"Roger Coppock" <rcoppock@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:cb3bda75-e41e-491f-9794-17002c2e03eb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The Sunspot Scapegoat
> Actual sunspot
> count data barely show any correlation with the observed
> global land and sea surface temperature from 1880 to
> today.
>
Oh really???????
Influence of Solar Activity on State of Wheat Market in Medieval England
Authors: Lev A. Pustilnik, Gregory Yom Din
Proceedings of International Cosmic Ray Conference 2003,SH,p.4131
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0312244
The database of Prof. Rogers (1887), which includes wheat prices in
England in the Middle Ages, was used to search for a possible influence
of solar activity on the wheat market. We present a conceptual model of
possible modes for sensitivity of wheat prices to weather conditions,
caused by solar cycle variations, and compare expected price
fluctuations with price variations recorded in medieval England.
We compared statistical properties of the intervals between wheat price
bursts during years 1249-1703 with statistical properties of the
intervals between minimums of solar cycles during years 1700-2000. We
show that statistical properties of these two samples are similar, both
for characteristics of the distributions and for histograms of the
distributions. We analyze a direct link between wheat prices and solar
activity in the 17th Century, for which wheat prices and solar activity
data (derived from 10Be isotope) are available. We show that for all 10
time moments of the solar activity minimums the observed prices were
higher than prices for the correspondent time moments of maximal solar
activity (100% sign correlation, on a significance level < 0.2%). We
consider these results as a direct evidence of the causal connection
between wheat prices bursts and solar activity.
SLAC-SPIRES HEP (refers to, cited by, arXiv reformatted);
NASA ADS;
CiteBase (autonomous citation navigation and analysis)
6. Discussion and Conclusion
The results of our study show:
a) The coincidence between the statistical properties of the
distributions of
intervals between wheat price bursts in medieval England (1259-1702) and
intervals
between minimums of solar cycles (1700-2000);
b) The existence of 100% sign correlation between high wheat prices and
states
of minimal solar activity established on the basis of 10Be data for
Greenland ice
measurements for the period 1600-1700.
These results imply a causal connection between solar activity and wheat
prices in medieval England. This conclusion is consistent with our
conceptual model
of the causal chain, consisting of "solar activity - cosmic ray
intensity - terrestrial
weather - wheat production - wheat price" that presented in this work.
The sign of
the causal connection (maximum prices for minimum sunspot activity and
maximum
cosmic ray flux) is the same sign that can be expected for
agriculture/weather
conditions in medieval England. We reiterate that England, at that time,
was a
region of "high risk" agriculture resulting from the "cold" side of the
weather axis,
when ".the cultivation of wheat was not carried on successfully beyond
the north
bank of the Humber" (Rogers, 1887, V.1, p. 29).
Regarding possible manifestations of solar activity in the dynamics of
prices of
agricultural production in modern times, we believe that the causality
shown in the
above causal chain "solar activity - . - wheat price" should remain
valid. More
generally, one can think of cereal production and prices in this chain.
Clearly,
however, the globalization of international food markets by
transcontinental
****pping leads to diminished local effects on variations of these
prices. Another
stabilizing factor results from successful development and
implementation of
genetic, selective and agrochemical technologies, which can widen
feasible
conditions for cereals production (zones "b", "c", "d" in Fig. 3).
However, the last 50 years of global warming could lead to ****fts in
climatic conditions for different regions, especially near desert areas,
to "boundary" conditions, making them more ensitive to hot summers and
droughts, with catastrophic drops in agricultural
production. As the result of the climatic changes and other negative
factors of socioeconomic nature, the danger of famine in developing
countries placed in the high risk agriculture zones is still very real.
In these countries, the influence of variations
in solar activity could be essential for agricultural production.
On the other hand, large-scale international activities are devoted to
help these
countries. The aid of the international community comes in the form of
sup****t in
agricultural research and reforms in these countries, and in the form of
direct food
supplies in extreme periods. Discovery of the manifestation of the solar
activity in
cereal production and prices could supply im****tant information for
planning the
expected need for direct food supplies, and for the agro-economic
evaluation of
different crops in zones of high-risk agriculture.
Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. L.Dorman, Prof. G.Beer and Prof. L. Alperovich for
helpful
discussions.
References
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Warmest Regards
Bonzo
". researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany
re****t the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years,
accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over
the last 100 years."
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175
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