Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist, is the originator
of the revolutionary solar weather technique of long-
range forecasting and a founder of Weather Action Long
Range Forecasters. His first scientific publications
were on aspects of meteorology and astronomy. He also
carried out astrophysics research at Queen Mary College
London and published work on galaxy formation and the
mean matter density of the universe.
From his research into the causes of weather change, he
totally rejects the carbon dioxide-based theory of
global warming and climate change. Corbyn is one of the
scientists featured in the wagTV film-produced "The
Great Global Warming Swindle," shown on Channel 4 in
Britain in March.
Corbyn was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on May 2.
EIR: Could you please tell us a little of your
background?
Corbyn: I've got a first-class degree in physics from
Imperial College, and a high degree in astrophysics at
Queen Mary College, which are both part of the
University of London. Prior to that, I was always very
interested in weather, and I built myself an observing
weather station and did experiments in science and the
weather.
While studying astrophysics, I knew of various supposed
connections between solar activity (that is, sunspots)
and the weather, although at the time, I was more
interested in sunspots. Subsequently, I thought that
the idea of trying to predict sunspots, which is all I
wanted to do, was a bit silly, because, who cares? It
might be more interesting if one could predict the
weather using solar activity, and I set about doing
that.
Now, it was too difficult, and I gave up—until the
miners' strike came along in 1984. And friends involved
in these things in Britain, asked me, "Piers, you were
trying to do long-range weather forecasting. Is it
going to be a cold Winter?"
And I said, "I haven't a clue. I've given up."
And they said, "Well, have another go, see if you can
tell us."
So, I did go back into trying to do this, and I said
that the Winter of 1984-85 in the United Kingdom would
be very cold. And it was. It wasn't quite cold enough
for the miners—you know, they wanted to win—but it was
very cold.
After that, I went back into doing [weather
prediction]. And to cut a long story short, I found a
certain connection, a certain predictability. I tested
this by doing gambling with William Hill, the bookmaker
here, in the Summer of 1988. Then, for 12 years, I
carried on doing gambling every month [on weather
prediction], and made a lot of money, until they
stopped me from doing it.
This was things like, will April in London be warmer
than normal, or will there be thunderstorms in a
certain time period....
EIR: I noticed that on your website, that you got
banned. Now the going thing is risk management
services, one Bob Ward (who wants to stop the DVD of
"The Great Global Warming Swindle" from being released)
is running a weather derivatives operation. So, while
you were doing it on a small scale, now they want to
make a whole financial services industry out of it.
Corbyn: That's right. They want our financial services
industry run on fear. They want to carry on trading
carbon and energy and so on, running on fear. The last
thing they want, actually, is working long-range
weather forecasts.
Now, in 1995, I set up a limited company called
Weatheraction Ltd, and we've been through various
phases since then, on and off the stock exchange (we're
now off).... And we're now making long-range forecasts
up to 12 months ahead, more accurate than anything we
did before. We sell to farmers and the energy industry.
The rail network buys them, for example, to get warning
of heavy rainstorm and potential landslides.
EIR: It seems like you're producing your forecasts from
actual physical observations, not like NOAA, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in the
United States, which uses more computer modelling, and
which tends to have high inaccuracy.
Corbyn: As I said in a presentation I gave in January,
at the Science Museum in Imperial College: Computer
modelling for weather forecasting, and indeed for
climate forecasting, has reached its limits.
No amount of improved computer power will get past the
really basic climate inputs. The activity from the Sun,
which affects the upper atmosphere—these things are
also modulated by lunar effects for example. We do take
those into account in our forecasts. We have eight
weather periods every month and six or seven out of the
eight will be correct, in any one month.
EIR: It seems that the computer models hold the Sun's
output as constant. They can't model water vapor. And
what other researchers have told me, is that once you
start putting up the energy input in the computer
model, and the carbon cycle, the model is invalid.
Corbyn: That's right. The model is invalid, and it's
"rubbish in equals rubbish out."
On the very fundamental, basic level, I think we can
see it's invalid just by looking at the Ice Ages.
It's not the case that carbon dioxide drives
temperatures. When you leave Ice Ages, it's the other
way around: The temperatures go up first, and then
carbon dioxide levels go up. And if you look at the
fluctuations during the Ice Ages, you can see that,
actually, temperature goes up and down, about twice as
fast, and twice as often, as carbon dioxide levels go
up and down.
So that means that at least about half the time,
they're going to be moving in opposite directions, and
half the time, they'll be moving in the same direction.
I mean, essentially, that they are unconnected. They
probably are connected in some complex way, but there's
no evidence anywhere that carbon dioxide systematically
drives temperature. Where there is evidence of some
sort of driving, it's the other way around.
So, that being the case, that whole theory is
fundamentally a failure. Actually, since 1998, world
temperatures have been falling.
EIR: Lately, the BBC and the U.S. press have picked up
on how this is the warmest April in Great Britain, but
yet, they don't talk about the 4- to 5-year running
cold snap in the Southern Hemisphere, because it pokes
a hole in their line that "the whole Earth is warming
up, and Antarctica is going to melt and flood whole
islands in the Pacific."
Corbyn: There are fundamental things wrong with that
"warm April" view. First of all, of course, America's
just had a cold Winter. But the Central England data
set occupies 1/5,000th of the global area. So, to say
this warm April is evidence of global warming, is
insane.
This is a description. It can't be a cause of global
warming, in the world or anywhere. It's just complete
nonsense.
EIR: The latest now, in the New York Times, is that a
new study shows that the ice cap will melt 30 years
ahead of time. So they must have found a satellite that
looks 30 years into the future.
Corbyn: Well, of course, there's nothing new happening
in the world now, that hasn't happened before: In terms
of the post-glacial period, the last 700 or so years
have been the coldest part of the last 10,000 years,
and 4,000 years ago, it was much warmer than now. That
was the Bronze Age. It was called the "climate optimum"
by historians, and since then, temperatures have
actually generally declined, while carbon dioxide
levels have gone up.
And until about 1900, or 1910—about 100 years ago,
carbon dioxide levels had gone up, for various reasons,
at the same time as temperatures. But the general trend
in the last 4,000 years is that carbon dioxide and
temperature have been moving against each other.
Now, in the world, the fundamental periodicity of
temperature changes is the 22-year magnetic cycle of
the Sun. And we understand quite a lot about why that
is. The peak of the current 22-year cycle was in 2002-
2003, and we're now in a declining phase of that. And
if you take [as the global warmers did] the world
average temperatures, averaged over a two-year moving
average, the recent peak was in 1998, because there
were cold years before and after that.
But in 2002-2003, the world temperature moving average
peaked at the same time as the phase of the natural 22-
year cycle. So, what we think is happening is that
world temperatures may be not rising on average, but in
the last 10 years, up until 2002, we have seen the
rising course of a natural cycle [related to the 22-
year magnetic cycle of the Sun].
This happened to coincide with CO2 levels going up, but
so what? It may be, that really we're in a period
overall, where temperature and carbon dioxide are
actually moving in opposite directions, in terms of
deviations from a norm. But for some reason, there is
also a general increase in solar activity. That was
definitely the case since 1900 or so, and that is also
causing a general slow warming, which may also be
coming to an end now.
What carbon dioxide does, appears to be irrelevant.
EIR: What about the recent book of Henrik Svensmark and
Nigel Calder, The Chilling Stars, about the cosmic ray
connection to some formation of clouds and cooling? How
does the 22-year magnetic cycle of the Sun affect that?
Corbyn: I think their experimental work to show that
charged particles cause cloud nucleation and could
therefore affect the development of weather fronts is
of tremendously important significance, and
groundbreaking. And that is their contribution,
although I think their work has got a fundamental
problem....
EIR: There's another meeting of the IPCC in Bangkok
this week to produce another summary for policymakers.
To be more honest, it's a summary written by
policymakers.... And you wrote a letter requesting that
certain graphs that question the IPCC science
conclusions be included with their policy summary.
Corbyn: Correct.
EIR: Did you have an answer yet?
Corbyn: No, there are two things: One is, that I've
written the letter to the leaders of the British
activity on the IPCC, Sir David King, Chief Scientific
Advisor and David Miliband, the minister responsible
for environment—who, I would like to add, is the most
callous liar in British politics, I've ever come
across.
And I also sent a copy to Prof. Martin Rees, president
of the Royal Society, who, in previous times, I worked
with on the question of neutrino energies in cosmology.
So, I do know him. He is a very, very good scientist,
but I think he's sold his soul for something or other,
in the Royal Society. We'll see.
Anyway, there's been no reply to the letter I wrote
saying, "Please, by Bangkok, get the graph that you
left out put into that summary for policymakers."
What they've done in their summary for policymakers, is
put in a graph showing that carbon dioxide levels have
been rising, since about 5,000 years ago. So, I wrote
them saying: If you're putting this in, please also put
the graph, measured from my source, which show what
temperatures have been doing. We must have these
comparisons; policymakers should have these
comparisons.
What also happened is that one Member of Parliament—
Martin Jones—has now asked questions to Parliament on
the lines I suggested, because he got hold of my
letter. Jones is a scientist himself, and he's very
distressed about what's going on.
continued at link (long)
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