» Home > In the News

Richard Mackey and the orbit of the Sun around the barycentre of the solar system

8 February 2012
Astronomy

There is surprisingly a lot a sites out there that picked up on Richard Mackey's article in 2007. For instance, at http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/think4/post/climate_change_caused_b… … it seems Jupiter moves on an eloptic trajectory and one Jovian year = 11.86 Earth years. Is it thus a coincidence that one sunspot cycle of the Sun takes 11 years?

At http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/planetary-solar-theory-a-brief… is probably one of the best sites to visit but see also a less than solid kind of post at http://john-o-sullivan.suite101.com/top-scientist-says-new-solar-wobble-… which is a reference to global cooling 'in our time' (oh, dear) but is focussed around the wobble of the Sun as it negotiates the barycentre of the solar system – an idea picked up by a Czech scientist, Ivanka Charvatova. She claims to be the only scientist in the world, out-trumping even Rhodes Faribridge, to predict sunspot cycle 23 behaving as it did – but see also a more down to earth view at http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37… The same theme on the barycentre is aired, and also its affect on sea levels – which go up and down as a result of the Sun rather than melting glaciers. A controversial viewpoint certainly but uplift as a result of former glaciated regions bouncing back up must have affected the sea levels, and it should not all be attributed to melting ice.

Rhodes Fairbridge was the first scientist to document that ocean levels rise and fall over long periods of time (in 1950). He developed the 'Fairbridge Curve' of the Holocene Eustatic Fluctuations (1958). He accepted sea levels had been on the rise for the last 16,000 years but they showed regular periodic oscillations. The hypothesis, at the time, was roundly rejected – like a lot of the ideas of Fairbridge. It is now accepted – or mostly so. These oscillations have continued even over the last 6000 years, contrary to consensus theory that sea levels largely stabilised after 8000 years ago, and certainly after 5000 years ago. Fairbridge did however accept declining amplitude but the big point is that he showed there had been fairly rapid rises and falls of up to 4m, less so recently, which is remarkable similar to the kind of thing written about by Steve Mitchell in SIS publications. The rise and fall oscillation takes place at periods of no more than 10 or 20 years – which is very quick in earth science terms. Climate scientists appear to ignore the Fairbridge Curve – too keen on accentuating sea level rise by melting glaciers.  The Fairbridge Curve actually predicts a rise of a couple of metres some time in the next 100 years – perhaps climate scientists were keeping this back from the public in the hope of blaming it on co2 emissions.

Rhodes Fairbridge also argued the cycle of glaciation and climate change showed similar patterns to the Milankovitch cycles. He thought Milankovitch was just about the right length to explain sand ridges he and others had found along the Australian coast.

Skip to content