The Daily Signal - Climate Series Part 2: Causes of Climate Change

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

The scientific community doesn't all agree on the core causes of climate change, and according to climate expert Willie Soon, humanity should look beyond Earth to find the source. The Earth’s rotation around the sun affects the planet’s temperature, says Soon, a visiting fellow on the Science Advisory Committee of the Center for Energy, Climate and Environment at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)  Glaciers, for example, “melted away because the sun started to get … brighter and provided more solar energy to the climate system,” according to Soon.  Throughout his career, Soon, a former researcher with the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, says he has sought to pursue the facts surrounding shifts in the climate because "science is not about belief." "Science is about data," he said.  Many people think that it is “rising carbon dioxide that is the main factor … that affects climate change, and that is wholly untrue,” Soon says. “That is such a distorted view that I think it needs to be corrected.”  Soon joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” for part two of a three-part series discussing climate change. In part one, expert David Legates explained the history of climate change.  On today’s show, Soon explains why he thinks the sun is the source of the changing climate and how the sun affects the Earth’s cycles of warming and cooling. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, January 4th. I'm Virginia Allen. Today, we are diving into part two of our climate change podcast series. On the show yesterday, we discussed the history of climate change with David Legates, and we established that, yes, the climate is changing. But now it's time to talk about the cause of why the climate is changing. Climate expert Willie Soon joins us to do just that. Stay tuned for our conversation. Next. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the

radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture, or what Congress is up to, Problematic Women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are of particular interest to conservative leaning, that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my pleasure today to welcome to the show, Willie Soon. He serves as a visiting fellow on the Science Advisory Committee for the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment here at the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Soon, thank you so much for being with us. Oh, thank you, Virginia, for doing this. And I think the topic of climate change, as we have just heard from the news in UAE, you know, in Dubai, fossil fuel should be phased out and so on and so forth. It's a big topic. So my primary team is indeed that we have to decouple energy policy from this dangerous climate hysteria. It's such a critical and important topic to be talking about, and I'm really excited to talk with you today about what. some of the root causes are of climate change. I was very pleased. Yesterday, we talked about on the show about some of the history of climate change, and we established the fact that, yes, the climate is changing, but I'm excited that we get to talk about some of the causes today.

But before we get to that, I was wondering if you could share a little bit of your own background and a bit about your work on the topic of climate change. Sure. I am what you call the good old average. scientists. But scientists here in a very serious sense in the sense that I don't compromise with all the force, what you call, incentives like money, fame, and fortune. So you just focus on data and science. So in that sense, I've been studying climate for almost 33 years now. I was formerly at the Harvard-Svisoning Center for Astrophysics for some 32 years. So now I'm actually from my own institute. It's called Siri.

Science.com. And I am focusing on climate change because indeed the topic is very, very scientifically challenging and interesting. And throughout my career, I believe that I've cracked a few problems that is very, very long running. So I've really been doing a lot of serious work on this, how the, you know, especially on the causes and the factors that affect climate change for this long, so 30-some years. And this is why today I feel very happy to.

be able to chat a bit more on details exactly how and what. So whenever you're ready, I'll just tell you what I know. Because I think that the topic has been highly confused, obviously, because people apparently believe, I mean, science is not about belief. Science is about data. It's people believe that it's the rising carbon dioxide that is the main factors. In fact, it's the predominant factors that affect climate change. And that is wholly untrue.

That is such a distorted view that I think it needs to be corrected. Excellent. Well, I'm excited that we get to correct some of those views. And thank you for your willingness to just bring that knowledge that you have. So as I mentioned, we established during a conversation yesterday with David Legates that, yes, indeed, the climate is changing. So how much do we know about why the earth goes through these cycles of warming and cooling? What do we know about that? We know quite a bit, actually.

But first off, let's understand one. Let's set that established point. The Earth by itself does not, what you call, generate heat. The amount that it generates is actually based on radioactive decay, okay? It's from uranium, taurium, all those things, right? Even your potassium in a banana. But in that sense, we have no energy. So how does the ocean move?

How does the tree grow? How does the wind blows, you know, whatever that you want in terms of the earth structure, even the tectonic, like how the mountain move up, you know, Himalaya, for example. A lot of these forces and energy are all totally supplied by solar sun. That bright yellow star out there, of course, don't stare into it because it's going to hurt your eye. So in that sense that is overcomingly the, what you call the

governor of the climate system, you know? Because it's at least in terms of quantified in terms of power in terms of unit called what. It's actually two billion times stronger than the Earth. The Earth itself has nothing. Basically, the radiogenic heat is even

10,000 times smaller. So there's nothing else, really. Even the, what you call, the people are now interested in what you call geothermal heating. The geothermal heating is actually also the main source of energy is really also supply a bit by the sun, right? So in that sense, and then there is another very, very important factors that is actually what you call the group like the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change, like to what you call people, essentially quiet a bit about this. It's actually

the seasonality in the whole climate system. What is the most obvious thing that we know about the Earth's weather and climate system. It's the season, isn't it? Of course, when you move towards the equator or near the tropics, you see less of that effect because you have not four seasons, you have actually two seasons, basically. Season, you know, analyzed in the sense of more rain or no rain. Monsoon.

That one is because around that region, in the tropics and equator, they're driven by what you call the monsoon changes, which is the land-sea contract of the, you know, different imbalance of the heat, and therefore drive all the, what you call circulation of the air and the moisture and the ocean current and things like that. So our season is basically caused by what? It's just because we are forced by gravity. Earth is forced to go around the sun.

The sun is not going around Earth. So remember that? That's a big controversy. We took 400 years to clarify. And among that, even that is because the Earth, constantly are being perturped by all these other planets in our solar system, yes? So the orbit doesn't go exactly what it is every single year. It does change very, very small, but it changes in a very subtle way.

So, for example, the Earth may look like a bit circular, but it also slightly more elliptical changes because of forces from southern and Jupiter. And then also on the exotil, because we will. by our own, that's why we get the day and night, yes? And then the tilt is changing over 40,000 year time skills by about two degrees. And if you compare that with Mars, Mars killed by 20 to 70 degrees, because it has no moon around. We have moon to control our tilting. And then you have another effect called the precession.

These are the effect like a spinning top. You know, it's actually the orbit. Like, for example, now the closest distance between sun and earth is during the recession. southern hemisphere summer, right? And then in our northern hemisphere winter, it's actually the furthest away. And then, but 11,000 years ago, it was the opposite around. So this is called the precessional effect. These are the three well-known factors. They are known, and it was known since the 1940s, 30s and 40s, by a Serbian engineer by the name of Milutin Milankovic. He basically solved all that problem, essentially told him.

knowing the how the big picture, because back then they were curious. From geology, you actually learn that over time, there are some very enormous ice ages being formed, and then you have very, very warm periods, you know, and it's just back and forth, back and forth. So most of that factors are really related to what we call this, it's named after Melanchovic cycle, the orbital changes. And then on top of that,

I got to emphasize because I've been studying the sun for as long as I study the climate. So the sun itself is a magnetized body, yes? The earth itself is also a magnetic bar in the sense. But then the strength of the magnetic field on the earth is actually 10,000 times smaller. So the sun is a significant magnetic hotball of gas. And so with the magnetic field, there are all sorts of structures and features on the sun. And the well-known one is the sunspot, right, that many people know, because Galileo, Calile from Italy, obviously was the first few guys who actually observed this phenomenon, yes?

And from that sunspot phenomenon, you realize that this magnetic field is able to modulate how strong or how weak this sunlight is coming out, which means how bright or how dimer, how much dimer. So that factor also, okay, you got orbit, you got, say, intrinsic. changes of the sun and I content myself because after a lot of analysis of data that this is more than sufficient to explain almost all the if you like not not maybe not a hundred thousand years kind of ice cycle even all the changes of the last thousand years for example okay uh I think yesterday you probably has spoken about the hockey stick temperature curve that but then the reality of the knowledge is that

We have a period called Medieval One Period, and it's global and it's real, because myself and Professor David Lagueres actually published one of the most definitive papers that summarizes all the available evidence, not from thermometer, obviously, because we don't have a thermometer a thousand years ago, but by studying what you call paleo-climate proxies. Right? Paleo-climate proxies just mean something that indirectly is measuring, you know, the climate system, like the temperature, the rainfall, you know, so on and so forth. Some of them even is sensitive to sunshine. Some of them is sensitive to, you know, wind, you know, direction.

Sand June, you can study Sand June property. But for the paleo-climate proxy, the main one are basically what you call three rings. You know, how strong, how thick or how thin the width is when the spring come. You know, this celluloid is forming. So every year you can actually truck this back. And then you can have from ocean sediment, sea sediment. you can have a wide variety of information actually. And then there you can actually confirm

that middle warm period that runs from around 800 to about 400 AD are actually a relatively warm period. And then come about 1,300 onwards, so 14th century, lasting until about, let's say, the beginning of the 20th century, so from about 1900, 1300 to 1900, that's a period called the little, And these are significantly cold time. In fact, why is it called a little ice age?

Because it's apparently this 600 years of period during this time. It's actually the coldest of the last 10,000 years, actually. We have came out from an ice age about 20,000 years ago, correct? I mean, Boston, Washington, D.C., we are under the two-mile thick of ice. And that's called the ice age. That's why the coldest period of the last 10,000 years is called Little Ice Age. I mean, that you can tell from historical information, right? I mean, the River Thames in London was frozen.

They were able to have froze regular cross fare, what they call, you know, on the London. You know, basically now, of course, the River of London. I mean, Thames River never froze, really. And that shows you that the difference between the climate change, during little ice age and present time, for example, or middle of one period. So this whole phenomenon, and one important fact that I have to clarify is that,

if you look for the cost, okay, science has a very important thing called causality, yes? Okay. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, if you try to claim that lung cancer causes cigarette smoking, you know, that doesn't quite make sense, isn't it? Because which one comes? first. You have to smoke first to get the lung cancer, isn't it? Right?

So it's actually the causality is very important. So I want to emphasize, for example. So after little ice age, what happens? Actually, the climate warms up again. It warms up way, way before the rising of the atmospheric carbon dioxide from the Industrial Revolution, for example. This is a factor that no one wants to actually deeply identify and clarify. But then if you look carefully after, for example, myself and David Lagueres and many, many, many of our colleagues that studied this natural variability, natural climate variability,

we actually realized and able to find evidence that actually it was because the sun was brightening up again, but was brightening up. It was actually deeming quite a bit, especially during a period called the Mondal Minimum in the 17th century. That's where it's from 1645 to 1715. The Mondi Miner is related to the Sun, which is actually, my specialty because I have published a labor of love, a book, a semi-popular book on that, the Monumentum, and that explained that what happened during that time period. I mean, there was a famous saying because Louis XIV was the raining the sun king at that time. And then apparently when he was raining, the sun is afraid of him, so all the sunspots disappeared.

In some sense, it's true because from this 70-year period, there is no sunspot appearing in the northern hemisphere of the sun. there were a few in the southern hamster of the sun. So it's very, very highly, highly, highly unusual, I have to emphasize. Because if you look at the sun now or the past 200 years, you know that it's changing and going in every 11 years or so. So during the sunspot minima when the sunspot disappear, but when you don't have sunsport, it doesn't last for maybe 10 days, 20 days or 100 days. But this one, over 70 years, we have the sunsport disappear.

So, modern minimum period is very, very unique. This is why it's almost like a fingerprint of the effect of the sun on the climate system. And I found that the evidence are everywhere except for the IPCC crowd, continuing to try to revise history, to try to change stuff, and try to change story, basically. And no evidence to defend it. This is part of the reason why, I mean, myself, Lagitz, and many of the people that on the, you call Heritage Climate Science Advisory Board,

Jodi Alio, and who else is on it, Roy Spencer, Dr. Roy Spencer. It's a great crew. Yeah, even Professor Stephen Kroonin, who wrote that beautiful book called Unsettle, right? I mean, I really, really think that it does take a whole village of scientists from all sorts of expertise. I mean, Stephen Kooning is a theoretical physicist, right? I'm also a physicist myself, but I also have experience in engineering, Professor Legate is actually the rare professor of climatology. And he has his PhD from climatology.

One of those few rare degree in Ph.D. That's rarely many, no school offer climatology degree anymore. Well, Mr. Zudar, I would love just to jump in here. And I think this is so fascinating. So I want to clarify some of what you've been saying. What you're saying is, you know, so much of the conversation that we see happening, especially over the past 10, 20 years, years, everyone is talking about the effects of climate change and how, you know, things like

CO2 emissions are causing climate change, things like the number of people on the planet are attributing to climate change. But you're saying we actually have to look outside our planet to see the real effects. And you're saying that the sun and what's happening with the sun, what's happening with Earth's rotation around the sun, that that in your research proves to be really the core reason for climate change, correct? Yes, that's the answer, basically. And then, by the way, I mean, I know you want to talk about the Earth, but if the Sun is causing the Earth to change, yes?

I mean, let's call it a hypothesis, yes? Then don't you think that what is the implication? Can we see it anywhere else? Yes, we can't. We saw it on a Mars. We can see it in Neptune. We can see it in, you know, interplanetary phenomenon, you know. So the sun activity does come and go, right?

Wicken and stronger and weaker. So this is quite consistent. That is another important features about science, is that we're not able to sort of be internally consistent. You have to really have this picture. And then whereas if you start talking about CO2, it just doesn't do anything. That's part of the problem.

I've been looking for the possible fingerprint of the CO2 on the Earth climate very much. boat. Anyone you pick. Anyone. Temperature, precipitation, ocean acidification, polar bears, hurricanes. I don't know what have you. Ice, even ice, you know, glaciers, for example. Glaces were melted away because the sun started to warm, started to get brighter and provide more solar energy to the climate system.

I mean, that's how little ice age. All the glaciers in Europe disappeared because of that because it built to a maximum size. That's why it's called Little Ice Age. You know, you can see in the Alps, I mean, these glaciers are driving down to the village and destroying churches, you know, during the minimum period, for example, right? I mean, yes, that's what I'm trying to say, yes, that the so-called greenhouse gas covered outside and even methane. Ridiculous, because maintaining is about a thousand times even less significant. And yet, they want to promote that as the, what you call the satanic gas. That's a very wrong notion and incorrect.

I have to say, scientifically just unsupportable. So then, Mr. Soon, are there any factors related to climate change that human beings can control? Well, you can say that a few things that we can control is what you call the normal issues about air pollution, for example, right? I mean, when we burn fossil fuel, there are many side effects, obviously. and then I do want to remember we burn it by necessity, right? We need energy, we need electricity, right? But then we have technology

to solve a lot of this problem, for example, the particulate emission, or, well, put it this way, smart, you know the phenomenon that's famous in Los Angeles. I don't know if you are old enough to understand the phenomenon of smoke. In the 70s, it's all over the place.

You cannot see anything because on London Forbes actually is one of the well-known phenomenon. That one is from clear burning and then all these particulates, you know, glue to sulfur and things like that. But then now what do we do? Do we want to choke ourselves to death? No one

is doing that. We are all trying to be sensible and violently. And just living in earth, you know, in harmony, really, in some good harmony with the environment and ecology. So, yes, there are stuff like that, but then those are all basically completely

what you call reasonable that we do that, that we have a lot of these pollution control technology, isn't it, right? So, yes, I mean, there are things like that. But carbon dioxide, I'm very sorry. It's just not doing anything. I mean, it's one of the worst yet. I have to remind everybody, sorry that I keep repeating,

because it's the gas of life. The only evidence we have, by the way, we do have an evidence. What is the impact on the rising carbon dioxide so far on the planet system? It's not on the temperature, it's not on the rainfall, it's not on the hurricane, it's not on anything or tornado. it's actually on greening the planet. The NASA satellite and the European satellite, we've been able to demonstrate and show that the last 20 to 30, 40 years or so,

the planet has been greener, places, the marginal region near the desert has been growing greener too. So, I mean, that mainly because, when you have more carbon dioxide, plants are able to utilize water in a much more efficient way, because the somata, those tiny holes behind the back of the leaves, they close it so the water loss is much less substantial, so they are able to use water in more efficient way when you have more carbon dioxide. So this is why some of the margins of the desert region

around the world are greener now. I mean, of course, some people may not like this thing. I have no idea, but all I know is that it does look more positive in terms of productivity and so on and so forth, right? If you look measured in certain index, you know, in terms of greenness and all that stuff. So in this way, it's truly an outrageous sort of a misunderstanding and a grave misunderstanding.

I sure hope that some policymaker will make some use of this and then sort of openly debate these issues or discuss this issue before any. This is what I'm trying to say. Remember, I first started by saying that we have to decouple energy policy, which we really need, to power the engines, right, for business, economy, everything, agriculture, all kinds of things. They coupled that from the climate hysteria

that appears to be mostly psychological, in my view, because the data just doesn't bear out. Even the UN-IBCC, if you ask Professor Stephen Cooning, that's part of his book that becomes so famous because he actually used every evidence from IPCC report. And then look to it carefully, especially in the extreme weather that they say, oh, more tornado, more drought, more heat waves,

no cold weight, whatever. He just never find the evidence. He just concluded it's just not there. Even the sea level scare is all not there. This is why that most of the scientists, serious scientists like this, who actually have known what you call major constraint, meaning that you have to depend on all your funding

from, let's say, the government funding, that you actually have to quiet down a bit. Like you cannot speak so freely because you're afraid that, you know, it might affect the grant, not even for yourself, maybe for your whole department, your whole university, that kind of so on and so forth. So there is this type of what you call not science kind of factors involved. Also, in terms of this popularity of carbon dioxide being the dominant gas of climate change,

it's just not true. It ain't so. I'm so, I apologize to anyone who disagree with that, but let's all look through the evidence and also don't like this message because fact is fact, science is sign. So you cannot deny this much of evidence that we have learned over the past, you know, 40 to 50 years at least, right? Mr. Sun, this is incredibly fascinating and I really appreciate just your insight in breaking this down. And the role that you just don't hear that talked about in among the media, among press, among reporting on the issue of climate change is that affect.

of the sun. This is very fascinating. I want to encourage all of our listeners to visit the Heritage Foundation website so that they can keep up Mr. Soon with the work that you're doing. But I truly appreciate your time today. And thank you for being part of our climate change podcast series here at The Daily Signal. Thank you so much. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks for being with us for part two of our climate change podcast series. If you miss part one, make sure to go back and catch the conversation. with David Legates. And also make sure that you catch the Daily Signal's top news around 5 p.m. this afternoon,

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