COMMENT: Dear Marty,
Thank you so much for warning all for what is coming !

Sorry to keep reflecting on details, you wrote :“The real issue is the threat of a VEI 6- 7 which could seriously alter the climate for a year or two resulting in a Volcanic Winter. The other risk is 5 to 6 small eruptions under VEI 6 but are VEI3 or greater.”

VEI is a logaritmic scale, so to create the same impact of one VEI 7, you need 10 VEI 6, 100 VEI 5, 10,000 VEI 4 or 100,000 VEI3. 5 to 6 small eruptions of VEI3 ? won’t do much, sorry hope attached table comes thru high VEI’s not only throw up more dust, ie VEI 6 does 0.003% of the stratosphere volume, VEI 7 0.032%, VEI 8 0.3% and VEI 9 3% high VEI’s do shoot much higher as well; VEI 5 may reach stratosphere; so the impact will not be limited to stratosphere only the frequency extrapolation does tell us a lot about how we can not imagine what could happen where VEI 5 would occur every 12 years, VEI 9 only once 27,000 years do not know where it ends, because it is an extrapolation BUT given the big mass extinctions come in cycles of multiples of 31.4 million years the event probably is much larger than that would it be a significant meteorite impact that triggers many quakes and eruptions ?

REPLY: You are absolutely correct. We do know that there were two volcanoes that erupted which produced the year without a summer. Evidence suggests that this event took place during the Solar Minimum and was predominantly the result of a volcanic winter event caused by the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) which was a VEI7. This eruption was probably the largest eruption since the 6th century AD which produced devastation between 535–536 AD. It is believed that the year without a summer was probably enhanced due to the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines which was VEI4.

You are correct that it would probably take a number of smaller eruptions because of the log scale. However, Tambora may not have been sufficient to alter the climate entirely by itself. It is hard to rule out that Mayon, which was only a VEI4, combined with the VEI7 to create the devastation.

However, evidence has been uncovered from around the world that the early Dark Ages of the 6th century AD was most likely triggered by an eruption around 535 AD, which was probably a VEI7+ event. There was a natural phenomenon of cataclysmic proportions that altered the world and even changed religion. This event created major political, economic and social changes that few people have ever bothered to connect the dots.

It has long been believed that there was probably an eruption from Ilopango in El Salvador. There was probably a second eruption perhaps in Indonesia and may have been Krakatoa.

There was a major volcanic explosion that was equal to more than 2000 Hiroshima size bombs. Human civilization was altered from the Mayan to Mongolia in the north to Constantinople and Southeast Asia. There were devastating plagues, famine, death, and great migration which caused people to move south. Empires and city-states collapsed including Teotihuacan in Mexico, the Anglo-Saxon victory over the Celts and invasions, and it contributed to the rise of Islam. Even in India, we see the Gupta Empire of Northern India collapsed by 543 AD as it too was overrun by the Huna during the mid-6th century. The Sasanian Empire in Persia also peaked during the 6th century.

The political, economic, and religious changes which took place because of this devastating 6th-century volcanic winter were profound. This is what might result from two VEI7s.

NOTE:

VEI km

3 frequency days =years %troposphere plume km km km3 delta
0 0.000001 0.000000003% 0.1 earth 31,879,029
1 0.00001 1 0.0 0.00000003% 0.3
2 0.0001 14 0.0 0.0000003% 1.0
3 0.001 90 0.2 0.000003% 3.2 troposphere 3 31,910,116 31,087
4 0.01 540 1.5 0.00003% 10
5 0.1 4,380 12 0.00032% 32 stratosphere 15 32,024,304 114,188
6 1 18,250 50 0.003% 100 mesosphere 50 32,381,370 357,066
7 10 182,500 500 0.032% 316 thermosphere 85 32,735,345 353,975
8 100 1,500,000 4,110 0.3% 1,000 exosphere 600 38,166,299 5,430,954
9 1,000 10,000,000 27,397 3.2% 3,162
10 10,000 90,000,000 246,575 32.2% 10,000

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; Is the head of the Bank of England Mark Carney using climate change to claim that pension funds will be worthless? He is just insane or a fraud using this to cover up the pension fund crisis?

SK

ANSWER: There is just no possible way that climate change has anything to do with pensions. We actually have major institutions asking us to generate a theoretical green portfolio that DOES NOT LOSE MONEY just so they can claim they have some “green” in their portfolio.

Any investment in “green” companies has resulted in major losses. So there is no logic to what Carney is saying unless it is a cover-up for the pension crisis that is unfolding. Governments have ordered pension funds to buy government debts and then they take interest rates down to negative. The governments, without climate change, are ensuring that pensions will be worthless. It seems that he is using climate change as the excuse for the pension system failure.

He is clearly demonstrating what the elites think of the people – just stupid!

Climate Change has become a fanatical religion because there is no proof and it rests entirely on belief. This is taking on the traits of the religious dispute which marked the fall of Rome – Pagans v Christianity. Like the Pagans, they immediately attack anyone who dares to disagree with them and they will not tolerate even a discussion. That was very much the same tactics employed by the Pagans.

What is clear is that the volcanic activity is increasing thanks to Solar Minimum. We now have another eruption going on in Mexico the residents call “El Popo.” This is the most active volcano in Mexico. It is not expected to be extremely dangerous. The real issue is the threat of a VEI 6-7 which could seriously alter the climate for a year or two resulting in a Volcanic Winter.

The other risk is 5 to 6 small eruptions under VEI 6 but are VEI3 or greater. The accumulative impact could be similar insofar it causes crop failures and thus a significant impact on agricultural prices. This is also concerning given the rise in earthquake activity in the Caribbean.

Recently, the Viking Rök stone, which is an ancient five-ton granite slab erected in southern Sweden sometime during the 9th century AD, has recently been translated after stumping scientists for more than 100 years. It turns out that it is referring to climate change when crops failed during the 6th century AD. We know that during the 6th century, there was a major climate catastrophic event which resulted in 50% of the population of Scandinavia starved to death. This event during the 6th century was a major volcanic event that devastated the human population globally.

We have further documentation of a major volcanic event also recorded during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. There was a truly tumultuous period where the climate turned violent with a volcanic winter, which enabled his many conquests as less organized societies were unable to cope with the effects. There was a mysterious fog that plunged over Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia casting them into darkness. This catastrophic event lasted for 18 months. The Byzantine historian Procopius wrote: “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.”  Temperatures in the summer plummeted creating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell as far east as China during the summer causing starvation as crops failed. The Irish chronicles recorded that “a failure of bread from the years 536–539” took place.

The mysterious clouds which engulfed the world contributed to the era being called the Dark Ages in Western Europe. From a Swiss glacier, ice core samples were obtained at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine. They determined that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere during early in 536AD. Two other massive eruptions followed in subsequent years during 540AD and again during 547AD. What appears to have been three successive major volcanic eruptions, the Dark Ages entered a volcanic winter which plunged Europe into famine which lasted for nearly 100 years into 640AD. This was also a solar minimumwhich seems to correlate to an increase in volcanic activity.

With famine comes lower nutrition leaving the people more suspectable to disease. It appears that following the 546AD eruption, we then see the Justinian Plague (541-542AD) which was bubonic plague, involving Yersinia pestis, which struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. This plague spread rapidly throughout the Empire wiping out one-third to one-half of the entire population of the Eastern Roman Empire.

My concern is we are headed into a Solar Minimum which may be the steepest since the Little Ice Age of 200 years or more. The climate change fanatics have risen their claims to the level of a virtual religious belief. Even the Royal Family of British has split with Harry and his wife claiming they are “progressive” and have also bought into the whole human-caused climate change.

These climate activists will not listen to reason. They immediately seek to attack and demonize anyone who dares to oppose them. They have weaseled into governments and  DAVOS using a 16-year-old girl they dare to present as a climate authority.

The extreme antics of the Climate Activists seem to be adopting the hostile role of the Pagans during the fall of the Roman Empire. They too were claiming that society was doomed because the Christians would not worship their gods and the gods were angry. The climate was turning colder which was indeed resulting in mass migrations south as the Romans called them the barbarians.

We seem to be experiencing the same sort of division with intense hatred being hurled at anyone who seeks to argue against the Climate Activists. Religion is declining and progressivism (Marxism) is rising and the core of the Climate Activists is to destroy modern society blaming the Industrial Revolution for the entire warming period post-1850 which was the normal cyclical rise from the Little Ice Age.

This is a very similar clash that divided the Roman Empire and set its final decline in motion. Here we are once again headed into Solar Minimum with the risk of cold weather resulting in serious mass starvation.

The Maya originally also declined into the 6th century AD, and then as the climate began to improve after the Volcanic Winter of the 6th century, this is when the Maya constructed Chichen Itza which was a major ceremonial focal point in the Northern Maya Lowlands from the Late Classic (c. 600–900AD). This became the only place where human sacrifices seemed to have taken place and they were most likely to appease the gods after the devastation of the 6th century AD. One life was offered to save thousands.

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; I am a new reader. I was recommended to look to your site when I was in a climate debate with a friend. They never tell us that the sun has a cycle which beats like your heart as you put it. I also never knew the north pole moved drastically. I am left speechless as to why these climate change people never address anything beyond CO2. Do you think the world will wake up before it is too late to discover these people are just liars?

HM

ANSWER: It has been in Europe which seems destined to collapse because of all the climate change regulations. It is a general consensus now among people I speak to in the German auto industry that they will be driven into bankruptcy before there is any recognition that this is all nonsense.

The North Pole is moving rapidly toward Siberia. The North Pole has always moved, but never at such a rapid pace in modern history. We have historical data from old ships’ logs covering the past 400 years. We know that the north magnetic pole has hung around northern Canada and was very steady. During the 20th century, it moved perhaps tens of several miles (kilometers) oscillating back and forth. It has been only during the last 50 years where the North Pole began to move northward. Then during the last 30 years, it began to accelerate rapidly. Suddenly it began to move about from about 6 miles (five to 10km) in a year to a sharp increase of about 37 miles (50 or 60km) per year.

The North Pole is now moving very rapidly towards Siberia. There has been considerable debate whether the complete disappearance of the woolly mammoths and other animals that thrived during the Ice Age was caused by a “quick-freeze” perhaps due to a pole shift, or some other major mystery of paleontology. There have been several carcasses discovered and the preserved food in specimens’ stomachs raised interesting questions. This is why the “quick freeze” catastrophe appears reasonable. Much of the support centers around the fact that the mammoths were quickly frozen, which explains the state of their food contents still in their stomachs, which has been also the main evidence for a quick freeze.

Actually, Birds Eye Frozen Foods Company ran an experiment based on heat conduction and the state of preservation of the stomach contents. They concluded that the atmospheric temperature had to quickly fall below -150°F (-100°C) (Dillow, J.C., The waters above: Earth’s pre-Flood vapor canopy, Moody Press, Chicago, IL, pp. 383–396, 1981). There have been some who tried to link this with the great flood from the Bible. This does not seems plausible in the least.

All we have are a lot of questions. There may be thousands of woolly mammoth carcasses still buried in the permafrost. Forget trying to fit this into the Bible. From carbon dating, the animals appear to have been frozen about 42,000 years ago. Recently, a 42,000-year-old Lena horse was discovered frozen in Siberian permafrost which contained the oldest liquid blood on record.

Clearly, whatever froze these animals was well beyond the Biblical flood or some 7,000 years ago. The speculation that seems to make the most sense was a polar shift which was perhaps sudden.

COMMENT: Dear Martin,

You might find this interesting.

Today the Taal volcano in Luzon, Philippines, erupted in a violent way sending an ash plume as high as 16 km (55.000 ft).

The last time this volcano erupted was in 1977. This is 43 years ago which equals to 5*8.6.

The low solar activity seems to be stirring up things quite a bit.

Best regards,

SG

REPLY: Taal has a long history, and I believe this is the 34th record eruption since the 16th century. I also believe that so far these eruptions are generally VEI 5 or less. Currently, there are warnings that this may be a precursor to a larger eruption.

Taal is very close to Manilla. It is on an island that settlement is forbidden because it has been very active.

The current record-holder remains 2008 when the sun was blank for 268 days making the 2008-2009 solar minimum the deepest since 1913. There have been studies, besides our own correlation models, which have shown that during Solar Minimum, which is a normal part of the 11-year sunspot cycle, there is an increase in volcanic activity. The Dalton Minimum produced the 1816 event known as the Year Without a Summer.

Harvard University explained that the “Maunder Minimum (about 1645-1715) … was responsible for at least 70 years of abnormally cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere.” There appears to be an increase in volcanic activity during these Solar Minimum events. Indeed, at Taal, there were eruptions that took place in 1572, 1591, 1605, 1611, 1634, 1635, 1641, and 1645. There was a gap again until 1707, 1709 followed by 1715, 1716. 1729, 1731, 1749, and 1754 with a gap until and the Dalton Minimum began with 1790, 1825, and 1842. There were subsequent eruptions, some minor, during 1873, 1874, 1885, 1903, 1904, 1911, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1976 and 1977.

Here, there were eruptions at Taal in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 with a gap until 2019 and now 2020 as we are headed back into a Solar Minimum which NASA warns will be the lowest in 200 years. It at least appears that we should expect an increase in earthquakes and volcanic activity going into the next ECM cycle.

This is the crisis with the Climate Change activists for they are blocking any other research for fear that it will reveal there is a natural cycle unfolding, not human-driven

QUESTION: Does your computer show that the major trend is down toward cooling and in the process were are getting these wild swings from new record golds to one day wonders of hot?

Thank you

‘DK

ANSWER: Yes, the broader trend is cooling thanks to the solar minimum. But there are also wild swings from new record lows to a single day of record high temperatures. This is similar to what was taking place during the 1930s. There was the dust bowl with drought and heat in the summer, and the winters were still the coldest on record which we have not yet reached on a sustained basis. It is just nonsense to claim that the violent swings from cold to heat are caused by us driving cars around when that pattern has taken place throughout history.

Storms are also not an indication of CO2 levels as they are claiming. There was the famous Spanish Treasure Ship fleet where all 11 ships were sunk in the Hurricane of 1715. The list of the worst storms from the 19th century forward is 1804, 1806, 1821, 1900, 1903, 1938, 1944, 1955, 1960, 1999, 2011, and 2012. The worst hurricane was 1900 insofar if the measurement is the number of people dead which reached 12,000 in Galveston, Texas.

The 1938 New England Hurricane pictured here was far worse than anything we have seen in my lifetime. Computer models rooted in cyclical analysis with a long database simply reveal that there is really nothing new in weather that we have not seen before.

The bottom line is rather clear. The broader trend is moving colder. That does not mean that there will be days where the temperature will swing abruptly to a record high. We are looking at sustained trends, not a single day that makes a record low or high. It is sustained trends, not just the volatility.

QUESTION: Marty, I just read that in the Dutch so-called climate Justice case the supreme court has upheld the original 2015 ruling, legally requiring the government to reduce emissions by 25%. This appears to be the first successful such case, and it might be a precedent for the others.

What about the separation of powers if the judicial power is used as a political tool to force the hand of the executive power? Wasn’t it rather meant to be a check and balance?

Thanks for what you do.
KR

ANSWER: The judges in the Supreme Court of Netherlands have made one of the worst decisions possible. In hindsight, the ruling will be the straw that broke the back of the European economy. The judges made their decision based solely on the international human rights law. This absurd ruling fails to consider that even if the Netherlands outlawed cars, manufacture, heating of homes, and the production of electricity from anything but wind or hydroelectric, it will not change the climate of the entire planet. The only outcome is to destroy the economy of the Netherlands.

There was no proof presented which established beyond reasonable doubt that there is any connection between CO2 and climate change. Nevertheless, on the 20th of December 2019,  the Dutch Supreme Court upheld the previous decisions in the Urgenda Climate Case, which held that the Dutch government has obligations to urgently and significantly reduce emissions in line with its human rights obligations.

The judges ruled against the Dutch government, which was the first in the world in which citizens established that their government has a legal duty to prevent dangerous climate change. The ruling was based on the fact that the government has established a policy claiming it would target a reduction by 2020 from 1990 levels. The court ruled the government must cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 (compared to 1990 levels). The ruling required the government to immediately take more effective action on climate change, and in the short time span, may seriously disrupt the entire European economy.

The United Nations rejoiced in slapping down the Netherlands government as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also published a news release about the decision in which she notes that “the decision confirms that the Government of the Netherlands and, by implication, other governments have binding legal obligations, based on international human rights law, to undertake strong reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The question whether the court has abandoned the separation of powers and is engaging in dictatorial powers is an interesting one. The court alluded to a very serious breach of democratic powers of government in confining the judicial role in cases of alleged state negligence. What if someone killed a member of your family. Is the state negligent because it failed to protect your family? The issue of protecting citizens raises the question of whether there is a duty imposed upon government and how can they achieve that protection if it exists.

The court looked at this issue and WRONGLY entered something which can lead to the collapse of the rule of law. Where the issues can be spliced and a minimum standard of protection can be reduced to quantifiable terms such as a percentage reduction. The court viewed it can dive into this question by separating the directive of ordering a reduction in CO2 from HOW that reduction is to be achieved. The court created a fictional Chinese Wall where the HOW is a policy issue not to be decided by courts. This raises the appearance that it is permissible for the courts to establish that standard but not the policy. In doing so, the court WRONGLY assumes it will remain within the correct confines of their judicial role, protecting rights rather than creating policy.

The court was well aware that it was crossing the line separating the judiciary from the legislative. Under a sub-heading entitled, “The Separation of Powers,” the court explained why the decision did not qualify as something beyond its constitutional powers. Under Dutch law, there is no true and complete separation of state powers. Instead, the Dutch system is not a democratic system which most people do not realize. As the court explained, in the Netherlands the judiciary has a “balance” of power rather than a separation of power within the constitution. They argue citizens require legal protection from the state, and created that with the power of adjudicating over those disputes.

The court reasons that the judiciary has “democratic legitimacy,” yet it is not democratically elected. Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by royal decree, chosen from a list of three, advised by the House of Representatives on the advice of the court itself. The justices are, like every other judge in the Netherlands, appointed for life, until they retire at their own will or after reaching the age of 70. Therefore, despite its reasoning, it is outside any democratic process.

Then the court reasoned it cannot refuse to decide matters within its jurisdiction simply because there may be political ramifications. Interestingly, the fact that the multiplicity of the very nature of the debate over climate change was disregarded by the court and was never fully addressed. The court simply said it did “not have a clear picture of the magnitude and meaning of … [all] consequences,” and there was a need for some restraint in what the court should order.

What is clear is that the judges WANTED to rule most likely because they believe in climate change being humanly induced. There is no other explanation for delivering such an unbalanced decision that has the risk of destroying the economy of Netherlands for it cannot order the climate change be reversed solely upon the actions taken in the Netherlands.

The court rooted its decision, claiming that the state was in breach of its duty of care to Dutch society by failing to take sufficient mitigation measures to prevent dangerous climate change. That argument can be applied to any citizen who is harmed even by being raped by a refugee or robbed on the street at gun point. Granted, up until 2010, the government had a national target for reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. The government continually ascribed to make reductions of 25-40% by 2020. The reductions were only 17%, which was used as evidence showing that the government had previously agreed to this 25%-40% reduction. Therefore, the case DID NOT settle the question that climate change was actually caused by humans.

The government did not even try to argue that the scientific consensus had changed or that climate change was not proven to be caused by CO2. They government’s argument was  or that the original target was economically impossible. Indeed, a reduction of 25% by the end of 2020 will destroy the economy and cause unemployment to rise. That argument did not matter to the judges. Therefore, they did engage in a usurpation of dictatorial power.

Therefore, this decision in the Netherlands is not likely to prevail in most other jurisdictions. There is certainly no basis for this to be even made in the United States. This merely appears to be another nail in the coffin of the dying European economy.