A Sprott on the Landscape

At www.scoop.co.nz/stories/print.html?path=SC0811/S00028.htm … a press release from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition on November 11th 2008 can be found at this web address, with the title, How Barycentric Orbits Influence Climate and was made by Dr Jim Sprott, OBE, MSc., PhD., FNZIC, a chemist and forensic scientist in Auckland. He warned the new minister for Climate Change (an AGW advocate) that projections by the IPCC are simplistic, superficial, and wrong etc etc. He claimed, in this piece, nearly 3 pages of text, that barycentric science can explain recent low sun spot activity and the cold winters of late. He then goes on to espouse the hypothesis of Rhodes Fairbridge who claimed the solar system regulated climate on earth. It is usually thought that the planets orbit around the Sun – that is the model taught in schools. Apparently, this is not so. The Sun and the planets orbit around the centre of mass of the solar systme – which is called the barycentre. Sometimes the barycentre coincides with the Sun but at other times it is well away from the Sun. It depends on the juxtaposition of the planets, particularly Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune. The orbit path of the Sun is complex but the divergent behaviour causes widely varying output of energy from the Sun. These variations in interaction between the Sun and the planets have been found to be repeated by geological and related studies, the variations being said to correlate with past vagaries in earth’s climate – such as the Little Ice Age. In other words, a cycle. The periodicity being about 179 years, it is claimed. Hence, we have some scientists out there who are expecting a cold period on a par with the Little Ice Age, in the very near future. Needless to say he was ignored by New Zealand politicians.