MET Office scientist flunks simple logic test.

I pointed Richard Betts to the Charles D. Keeling (Yes, that Charles D. Keeling) and Timothy Whorf paper on lunar tidal cycles and their connection with rapid climate change. Here’s what happened:

Basically, Betts ran away. He’s a natural climate change denier. His job is to ‘do outreach’ promoting the Carbon Dioxide causes climate change hypothesis, but maintain plausible deniability that anyone ever showed him what a crock of crap it is compared to more likely explanations.

Keeling and Whorf found an 1800 year Lunar tidal cycle which is what Betts is referring to with “millennial timescaless”. If he actually read the paper he would also find this nugget:

“A cause for such greater regularity in tidal forcing might be resonances of other bodies of the solar system, especially the outer planets. We are struck by the close correspondence of the average period of the 180-year tidal cycle of 179.5 years (1/10 of that of the 1,800-year cycle) and the period of the sun’s rotation about the center of mass of the solar system of 179.2 years, the latter a manifestation of planetary resonances”

Which is why Ian Wilson found a Lunar resonance between the alignment of its lines of Apsides and Nodes and El Nino events, and I found a similar resonance between the solar cycle and ENSO: The Moon’s orbit and the Solar cycle period are shaped by the same forces generated by the rest of the solar system.

The Moon and Sun are the two bodies with the biggest tidal and angular momentum/vector effects on the Earth’s oceans. We will eventually drag these CO2 gasbag theorists into 21st century science.