Tom Nelson interviews independent researcher Javier Vinos reporting his discoveries of facts and evidence ignored or forgotten in the rush to judgement against humanity for burning hydrocarbon fuels. When these factors are acknowledged they can be integrated into a more wholistic view of Earth’s climate activity.  For those who prefer reading, below is an excerpted transcript with my bolds along with some images and key exhibits included. TN refers to Tom Nelson and JV to Javer Vinos.

JV: For the past ten years I’ve been studying climate quite in depth with a basic focus on natural climate change, on how the climate changes naturally. I did this because I had a science blog and one day I decided I was going to talk about the science of climate and when I started to read the articles and looking for the information I became very surprised because I do molecular biology and Neuroscience that is experimental science. And climate science is not an experimental science and I was very surprised because they were claiming the evidence was there and it was not.

So I began researching it more and more until I became so involved I started writing books and telling other people what I was finding about climate.

The Scientific Method and Climate Science

One of the elementary principles of the scientific method is that establishing a theory before examining all the evidence leads to error and confirmation bias makes us stick to it.  Has the scientific method been forgotten in the postmodern age?  It seems so, at least in climate science.  Climatology is not an experimental science which is a major handicap.  It is also a very young science compared to the mainstream Sciences of physics, chemistry, geology and biology.  The consensus was reached in 1988 almost without data and wholly based on the Greenhouse Effect and The Coincidence of temperature and CO2 during the Pleistocene in Antarctic Ice cores.

Understanding Albedo and Heat Transport

There are two absolutely essential processes in determining climate that are largely unknown.  The first is albedo or the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.  It’s crucial because it determines the amount of energy the Earth receives.  We ignore why it has the value it has, why it varies so little from year to year, why it varies so much from month to month, why both hemispheres have the same albedo and how the albedo has changed in the past.

As a result of our ignorance, models are unable to adequately reproduce the Earth albedo failing to show its small inter-annual variability, its large seasonal variability and its symmetry between the two hemispheres.   Nevertheless many scientists believe that the models are capable of predicting changes in albedo otherwise they will have to admit that the models cannot predict future climates. Small changes in albedo can produce large climate changes of natural origin and this is the basis of several alternative hypotheses to CO2.

I have focused my research on a second essential process and this is what my book is about.  The transport of heat from the equator to the poles also known as meridional heat transport because it runs in the direction of the meridians.  There is much evidence that this is the primary cause of natural climate change.  Heat transport is also an enormously neglected process, we do not know how it works and there is no established Theory to explain it.  We also do not know how it is distributed between the atmosphere and the ocean, how it is divided among the different types of ocean currents, how it changes with the seasons, how it changes from year to year, why Antarctica receives less heat than the Arctic although it should receive more or why heat is transported from the colder hemisphere to the warmer hemisphere.

The models do not understand heat transport because no one understands it,
and that is where the evidence for most natural climate change lies.

In fact we can’t even measure it properly and if we don’t know how heat transport works, it’s obvious that the models don’t either.  They fail miserably at reproducing the amount of heat being transported and reflecting transport changes in the atmosphere and ocean, they do not even correctly reproduce the distribution line, the climatic equator where the trade winds from both hemispheres converge.  Nor do they reproduce seasonal changes since the amount of heat entering and leaving the ocean throughout the year is not known.

If no one understands heat transport, then models cannot understand it either. because they are just a product of our minds with no physical connection to reality.  Even if there are other secondary causes of climate change, including increased CO2, the evidence points to changes in heat transport as the primary way in which the climate changes.  In the end it’s like the joke about the drunk who looks under a street lamp for his lost keys because the light is better there than where he thinks he lost them.

Climatologists look for the answer where the knowledge is better in the greenhouse effect. the culprits are certain gases that together make up 1% of the atmosphere.  In this graph we can see the profile of the gases that make up the atmosphere in different colors showing their abundance on the lower axis with respect to altitude on the vertical axis the gases in the squares do not absorb in the infrared.  Note that water vapor with a blue dotted line is very abundant near the surface but a thousand times less abundant in the stratosphere.  The opposite is true for ozone with a purple dust line which is almost entirely in the stratospheric ozone layer.  The thick black line is the temperature profile which in the troposphere has a positive lapse rate, that is the higher we go the colder it gets. This is fundamental to the greenhouse effect.

The Greenhouse Effect and CO2

What is the greenhouse effect?  In order to return all the energy is received from the Sun and maintain stability, the Earth must keep at a temperature of 23 degrees C below zero.

The Greenhouse Effect

Without greenhouse gases this would be the average surface temperature instead of the current 14.5 degrees. The black line in this graph represents the temperature profile of the troposphere and the lapse rate is the slope of that line in the absence of greenhouse gases.  Infrared radiation will be emitted from the surface but greenhouse gases make the atmosphere opaque to infrared radiation, so this radiation is emitted from higher altitudes as shown by The Black Arrow.  Although in reality there is emission from all Heights including the surface the average height of emission is about 6 kilometers. The emission temperature at this height is 23° below zero but the lapse rate of about 6° per kilometer makes the surface about 37° warmer.  If we were to double the CO2 as shown in red, and everything else remains the same, the average emission height would increase by about 150 meters.   As the atmosphere becomes more opaque so the temperature at that height would be 1° cooler it would be necessary for the surface and atmosphere to warm by that degree in order for the earth to return the energy it receives from the sun which is absolutely necessary.

But in the climate system everything is interconnected and when something changes everything changes and nobody knows how much the temperature would change.  So when they tell us that we have to reduce our emissions by a certain amount to avoid some amount of warming they are lying to us because nobody knows that these gases cause the greenhouse effect.  Only the first three are really important. They are trace gases but that does not diminish their importance.  Ozone is a thousand times less abundant than CO2, but its contribution to the greenhouse effect is only five times less.

Greenhouse effect is not uniform across the planet.

Look at water vapor in yellow.  Together with the clouds it forms, it is responsible for 3/4 of the greenhouse effect but it’s abundance varies greatly because it depends on temperature.  When the temperature drops it condenses and falls as water or snow.  Because of this the greenhouse effect is highly variable on the planet.  At the poles there is practically no water vapor or clouds in Winter. These are the places on Earth with the driest atmosphere and a much weaker greenhouse effect.  Not much attention is given to this, but it is very important, and I point out in the book it’s one of the pieces that must be used to solve the puzzle.

Every year has two winters, and heat transport
to the pole in winter is greater

Having such a weak greenhouse effect makes it very easy for heat to escape from the earth through the poles.  The climate works like the internal combustion engine of a car; only instead of one cooling system it has two, one at each pole.  The engine block is the tropics, the hottest part because that is where most of the sun’s energy arrives.  The tropics lose heat by radiation but not enough.  The excess must be transported to the radiators to be radiated to the outside.  And this is done by a fan which is equivalent to the atmosphere and a circuit with a cooling liquid, which is equivalent to the ocean.

Climatologists do not see it this way, but the other way around.  For them heat transport does not change the temperature of the planet but only warms the poles.  But because of this erroneous view they encounter paradoxes that they cannot resolve. in the early Eocene, at the beginning of the age of mammals, the poles were so temperate that palm trees grew in the Arctic and frogs lived in Antarctica, indicating that the average temperature of the coldest mouth was above freezing. Climatologists do not understand how this was possible because the smaller temperature difference made the heat transport much smaller which prevented the poles from warming.

Like all paradoxes it is solved by changing the frame of reference.  It was possible because the smaller heat transport made the planet lose less heat and get warmer, which warmed the poles along with the rest. When it is winter in one hemisphere, the atmosphere transports more heat to that hemisphere.  But the atmosphere also carries angular momentum or rotational inertia since it is a conserved property.  Any change in the angular momentum of the atmosphere must be compensated for by a change in the spin rate of the earth.  Just as ice skaters increases their spin rate rate by bringing their arms closer to the body,  similar to the skater the Earth’s spin rate increases by about 1 millisecond per day as atmospheric circulation and heat transport increase in Winter.  Since 1962 it has been possible to measure this to an accuracy of one microsecond.  Thanks to the invention of the atomic clock and radio astronomy, it is possible to know the exact orientation of the Earth in space, it has been well known since the 1970s.

The Earth spins faster in winter.

The Influence of Solar Activity on Climate

That solar activity affects the Earth’s rotation has been published many times.  The phenomenon is particularly pronounced during the Boreal winter as we can see in the graph above for 2015 a year of high solar activity and 2018 with low activity.  And it is measured by the variation in milliseconds of day length.  In the lower graph we can see the solar activity represented by the sunspot cycle with a red dash line.  The black solid line shows the changes in the Earth’s rotation caused by the Boreal winter.  It shows the same cycle as the sun although the Earth’s rotation is also affected by equatorial stratospheric winds and the El Nino phenomenon.  The dotted line is from a paper published in 2014.

Everyone ignores this phenomenon especially the IPCC which says that the sun does not affect climate.  But if the sun can change the Earth’s rotation speed then it can change the climate.  My research has been like that of Sherlock Holmes looking for clues that have been missed, ignored and forgotten. Studies show the effect of the sun on the rotation of the Earth has been known for 50 years but very few people in the world know about it.

What I have learned about climate science is because I have stood on the shoulder of giants giants like the Canadian atmospheric physicist Colin Hines who explained in a 1974 paper that the sun’s effect on climate could be due to planetary waves.  It was ignored and his theory was forgotten.  Art lovers will recognize the Great Wave print by Hokusai.  Atmospheric waves are like ocean waves except that they move in three directions,  planetary waves are the largest.  Many of you will remember the tsunami that occurred in Indonesia at Christmas 2014.  It reached the coast of Africa 6,000 km away in 8 hours traveling at the speed of an airplane.  Obviously water does not travel, energy travels, and when it is released upon reaching the coast it still causes damage.

Planetary waves are atmospheric tsunamis that hit the wind walls of the polar vortex and weaken them. It worries us when cold air escapes from the interior because it produces very cold waves and storms.  But the climate is more affected by the heat that is exchanged with that cold, because the planet loses it and cannot compensate for it.  Another Giant on Whose shoulders I stood is Karin Labitzke who in 1987 found a correlation between the temperature of the Polar Stratosphere in Winter and the solar cycle. it is an extraordinary finding because in Winter the sun does not shine on the pole, it is a relationship in the dark not based on solar energy.  It is also extraordinary because it is the first proof of a solar effect on the climate after 190 years of a search began in 1800 by William Herschel the discoverer of Uranus and infrared radiation. Instead of giving her the Nobel Prize she deserved for such a fantastic discovery, her finding was ignored and she’s not even mentioned in climate books.

First evidence of the Sun’s effect on climate

Here I show only the data for years of low solar activity 30 Hectopascals is about 20 km in the stratosphere when the tropical Wind Blows from the West as shown by the blue circles.  The polar stratosphere is very cold, but when it blows from the East as shown by the red circles, the polar Stratosphere warms by about 15°.  In years of high solar activity the effect is reversed as I show in the book The El Nino phenomenon also strongly influences this effect.

For many scientists a solar effect that occurs in the dark, reverses depending on equatorial winds and depend on other phenomena is too complicated to understand and they prefer to ignore it.  But not to me because I have studied Hines.  The propagation of planetary waves into the stratosphere depends on several factors that affect the Dynamics of stratospheric circulation.

How does the Sun influence these Dynamics?

We know that solar activity affects the Earth’s rotation, heat transport and Atmospheric circulation. We also know from Labitzke for the last 35 years that it affects the temperature of the Polar Stratosphere.  And it does so as Hines said 50 years ago by affecting the propagation of planetary waves into the stratosphere.  These waves strike the polar vortex.  This is a gigantic tornado that circles the polar regions in winter with sustained wind speeds of 180 km/ hour.

Planetary waves affect climate through the Polar Vortex

Since heat is carried by the wind, the Warm Winds from the South have a hard time getting through this wall of wind creating a strong temperature gradient as shown in the second image. The black line in the graph shows the profile of this gradient which is a real wall that creates a 30° difference between its two sides as shown by the red dash line.  By weakening the vortex planetary waves allow heat to enter and cold to leave, changing the temperature of the polar region.  As we saw at the beginning, the greenhouse effect inside the vortex is very weak causing the planet to lose unrecoverable energy.

This is how the Sun affects the climate as explained by Hines and Labitzke and I am not just alone saying this, It has been shown.  The study of planetary waves in the stratosphere is extremely difficult because they are invisible and the stratosphere is little known but there is already a study based on measurements that proves it. And the intensity of the planetary waves depends on the solar cycle as its authors defend. The sawtooth appearance of the amplitude of the planetary waves is due to the effect of the tropical winds which change direction every one or two years and to the El Nino effect.

Intensity of planetary waves depends on the solar cycle

My contribution to these studies is to put all the pieces together:  the low polar greenhouse effect, and the effect of the sun on the Earth’s rotation heat transport atmospheric circulation, polar temperatures and planetary waves, and to show the effect that all this has not only on climate but also on climate change.

When solar activity is low, the Arctic warms

When there is low solar activity the Arctic warms as is shown in Blue by the temperature of the central Arctic according to data from the Danish meteorological Institute.  Today global warming and Arctic warming are linked in our minds.  We have forgotten that between 1976 and 1997, despite intense global warming, the Arctic not only did not warm but actually experienced a slight Cooling in its central zone.  Just as we have forgotten that the Arctic warmed in a similar way 100 years ago. It was reported at the time and there are scientific studies that support Antarctic warming a century ago similar to today’s in its effect on Greenland’s melting.

When solar activity is high, the rest of the planet warms

Why did this happen.  It is because solar activity has a cycle of about 100 years this graph shows the level of activity of each solar cycle relative to the average and we can appreciate the Centennial solar cycle shortly after 1700 1800 1900 and 2000 solar activity was below average and the Arctic warmed.  When solar activity is high the opposite happens and the Arctic cools but the rest of the planet warms because it becomes more efficient at conserving energy.

Glaciers and proxies show modern warming before CO2 emissions

The IPCC acknowledges that solar activity in the 20th century was in the top 10% of the last 9,000 years.  In the graph we can see the trend line indicating that solar activity has been increasing for the past 300 years and global warming is 200 years old.  we can see it in the behavior of glaciers which began to shrink worldwide in 1820 as shown by the line in the graph. The photos are from the Rome Glacier in Switzerland which melted enormously between 1850 and 1900.  People didn’t care, on the contrary they built hotels for tourists where the glacier used to be.

Climate proxies show the same thing.  The green line is from tree rings and the orange line is from other proxies, both showing a 30-year oscillation on a long-term warming trend.  In stark contrast, our emissions in Gray were nonexistent until 1900 and low until 1950,  the curves clearly do not match.  A much better match is obtained for solar activity shown in annual data with a thin line and a decade long smoothing that shows in red when it was above average and in blue when it was below average.

Global Warming is largely due to the Modern Solar Maximum

The modern solar maximum is the long 70-year period in the 20th century when it was above average, something that has happened only 10% of the time in the last 9,000 years.  We can therefore conclude that a reduction in the transport of heat to the polls during most of the 20^th century is responsible for the planet conserving more energy and warming up contributing greatly to global warming.

And as Sherlock Holmes would say the IPCC has made a capital mistake by establishing a consensus Theory without properly examining all the evidence.  A this and much more is explained in my latest book solving the climate puzzle I want to thank three other scientists for reading my book before its publication and providing positive feedback.  They are William Happer professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University who also wrote the forward to the book,  Judith Curry professor emerita of atmospheric physics at Georgia Institute of Technology and Willie Soon research scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian center for astrophysics.  I also want to thank Andy May, a writer I have collaborated with on many climate science web articles over the years.  The book has been written at several reading levels and divided into a large number of short chapters to make it more accessible to a general audience despite the inherent complexity of the subject.  It has been translated into five languages of which two have been published and three are in the process of being published.  There are plans to publish it in three more languages including Greta Thunberg’s.

My main interest for the past nine years has been to find out why and how the climate changes on our planet.  It is clear from the evidence that we are missing some essential processes because we don’t understand the majority of past climate changes. There are more scientists who agree on this than is usually acknowledge.  Several new theories have been developed including mine and they should be seriously considered by the IPCC because the CO2 Theory lacks sufficient evidence.  I defend my theory as having more support from evidence than the consensus one, but what is important to everybody is that on top of the IPCC’s Capital mistake of reaching a premature consensus, we don’t make the capital mistake of embarking the global economy on a planned experiment of unforeseeable consequences.

TN: You argue that climate change is largely due to natural causes and in particular you attribute a key role to high solar activity in the 20th century.  How does your theory differ from others who also argue for such a role?

JV: Well the mechanism is different. There is a lot of debate about the role of the sun in climate and over the last 30 years there has been a lot of advances in understanding how solar variability affects the stratosphere and how this effect is transmitted to the surface.  What I add is how these effects change the energy content of the climate system and thus produce climate change.  In my book I present evidence that climate is changing due to changes in the amount of heat that is being transported to the poles and the amount of solar energy that changes is not that important.  So in essence I refute the IPCC’s arguments that dismisses a solar effect on climate based on small changes in solar energy and in the trends in solar activity not being the same as temperature Trends

TN: Okay so how does your work fit with other theories like there’s the role of geothermal heat by Viterito and Kamis and the role of cosmic rays by Svensmark and Shaviv.

JV: It is good that there are all these theories because in science we should always discuss several explanations.  The important point is that the climate is always changing and it is a very complex process, so there is not a single cause for for climate change.  Many of these processes may be contributing to climate change including the the increase in CO2 and it is important to determine which ones are the most important in driving climate change.

We should continue researching and debating these processes.  Any viable Theory should provide a mechanism for changing the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere because this is what changes the energy content of the climate system.  And it should be supported by the more evidence the better.  The theory that I propose meets both requirements, while the theory that it is all due to CO2 lacks evidence.

The Role of Water Vapor and Volcanic Eruptions

TN: What do you think of Joe Bastardi’s views about the importance of water vapor in the climate?

JV: I think it is fundamental because water vapor is the main greenhouse gas and what really defines the Earth is that it is a planet that has a lot of water in its three states,  And I believe that the role of water is to provide stability to The Climate system through its thermal inertia.  This is what explains that for the last 540 million years when everything has happened the temperature of planet has remain compatible with Life.  So I think none of the IPCC’s predictions is going to come true because I think the role of the water is misunderstood and it doesn’t behave the way it is expected to.  I don’t think water increases climate change,  I think it actually decreases it

TN: What do you think about the eruption of the hunga Tonga volcano in 2022.  Is that a major reason for the recent temperature Spike?

JV: I think it is very likely.  The volcanic eruption of 2022 was very unusual in that it was underwater so it placed 146,000 tons of water vapor into the stratosphere and the stratosphere is very dry so in a single day the water vapor in the stratosphere increased by 10% and the greenhouse effect is very sensitive to changes in the stratosphere  because it is a lot less opaque to infrared radiation than the troposphere.  So the expected effect from this change as was published in January in natural climate change is a substantial increase in the warming rate so and this is what has been observed. The fact that the onset of this warming has such a delay is normal for volcanic eruptions for example the eruption of the Mount Tambora in April of 1815 produced the year without the summer more than a year later in 1816.   If this explanation is correct we should expect over the next months the warming rate should decrease substantially,  and this increased warming should disappear over the course of four to five years as the extra water vapor leaves the stratosphere.

Concluding Remarks and Future Implications

TN: So if your theory is correct what are the economic implications?

JV: Well if humans are are not primarily responsible for climate change this will have huge implications for the global economy.  We should question the energy transition in the form of urgency that is being made because it is not exempt of risk.  Even if the theory is correct, we should be aware that a lot of people will not be willing to accept it regardless of the evidence.

TN: Other than the economic implications, what are the other consequences if your theory is right?

JV: Well I think people should be very calm.  We are very lucky to be living through a warming period because cooling periods are much worse, usually accompanied by famine and epidemics. Being in a warming period is a lot better. So we should not fear climate and only be concerned when the warming period turns into a cooling period.   That will happen eventually, but we don’t expect it during the 21st century.   So essentially I think we are uh very lucky with respect to climate and as long as the cooling period doesn’t doesn’t start I think the climate is our Ally not our Enemy.