Climate Mining
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) :-
“…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Is it at all improbable that a combination of circumstance can produce climate, volcanic eruptions, solar events and earthquakes? Is it impossible that the relative positions of the planets produce these phenomena? Could scientists set aside their obvious dislike of anything smelling of astrology (there, I have said it) and actually study these possibilities? You have the resources in both time (your own or your students’) and equipment far superior to that which is available to us. The clues are all around. You are paid to investigate, if not driven to do so. This is your mission, should you choose to accept it.
The Sun is a lens. It focuses the tidal and gravitic effects of the planets, (yes all of them, contrary to current belief) the barycentric effects of the system as a whole, the eccentricities of the orbits, not only of one cycle but also the precessional differences that change as the solar system presents itself in an altered state to the galactic plane and also as we pass through the arms of the Milky Way. What about Muller and Rohde’s study to show a 62 ± 3 million-year cycle in the fossil record echoes the Mayan temporal system and this by Mikhail Medvedev and Adrian Melott? Earth’s magnetic field has a 100,000-year periodicity in inclination and intensity with which the climate dances. Are these clues or blind alleys? Do the other planets have similar eccentricities that could affect Sol? There may also be an (albeit subtle) electrical causation. The permutations are manifold but not beyond human ingenuity to decipher I would hazard to guess.
The Sun passes these influences on to us by way of sunspots, coronal mass ejections and flares and the ejected material, coronal holes and the solar wind, magnetism and plages and faculae, gravity and tides, precession, the full electromagnetic spectrum including IR, UV, radio, electricity, x-ray and gamma emissions, and plasma bubbles and last but not least the Interplanetary Magnetic Field. It does so over short, long and very long time scales. Are we missing something simple? Something profound? If so then paleontology, paleoclimatology, astronomy, astrophysics, climatology, seismology, heliology and maybe even helioseismology will benefit from any discoveries made. Well worth the effort even if only to eliminate lines of inquiry from further, or future, investigation.
In all humility these are the questions we should be asking. Not whether we can afford to turn grain into fuel or plant food into a new type of currency. To my mind “far out” questions trump decisions based upon false conclusions every time. Get your magnifying glasses out. Myopia, in this instance, kills.
