“The resulting summary curve reveals a remarkable resemblance to the sunspot and terrestrial activity reported
in the past millennia including the signifcant grand solar minima: Maunder Minimum (1645–1715), Wolf minimum (1200), Oort minimum (1010–1050), Homer minimum (800–900 BC) combined with the grand solar
maxima: the medieval warm period (900–1200), the Roman warm period (400–10BC) etc. It also predicts the
upcoming grand solar minimum, similar to Maunder Minimum, which starts in 2020 and will last until 2055.” Oscillations of the baseline of solar magnetic field and solar irradiance on a millennial timescale, Nature
Peer-reviewed and everything.
For a long time, I have maintained that climate “science” is not robust enough for policy work. If Zharkova et al are even close to right the entire CO2 hysteria and the malinvestments resulting from that hysteria are worse than useless. If we are, in fact, heading into 35 years of a grand solar minimum we need steady, reliable, scalable energy sources – nuclear springs to mind.
Now, the interesting thing about Zharkova et al is that they make a testable prediction, namely that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum like period. So we should expect longer, harder winters, an overall drop in global temperature and shorter growing seasons. And we should see those effects in the next couple of years.
I trust Climate Barbie is on top of this.
Jay Currie 
I hope they’re wrong. More people die from cold than being too warm.
I too favour this theory that the sun is the prime mover in climate variations and thus it becomes the argument that invalidates “the science is settled” mantra. It follows that policy should not be based upon unsettled science as the watermelons have been doing. And you certainly shouldn’t use taxes as an intervening mechanism when it is almost certain that the tax will have no impact even is the green acolytes are right about CO2 being the villain. Note however that proving the prediction of cooling over the next 35 years may not be as simple as observing temperature changes since it might be argued that the tax worked; I think our Skippy is just so smart since the coldest, wettest spring in 50 years here in Ontario happened immediately after the new tax levy.
Jay, so let me get this straight. You are claiming that if they are right, the earth will see conditions similar to what was experienced during the Maunder Minimum. Is that correct?
We may not see conditions as deep as the Maunder Minimum; but if the Russians are right we are in for a period of cooling.
Meanwhile in Finland, there are some climate scientists who are suggesting that the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 may have been overstated by the IPCC by an order of magnitude due to the fact the IPCC has really never had a model which adequately describes the effects of clouds on temperature: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf
As you know John, my view is that climate science is a) not settled, b) not nearly mature enough to base any sort of policy on.
Just got around to reading the cloud paper you referenced and I am not impressed. My guess is that this is not a peer-reviewed publication since there are a number of flaws in it. For example they say “The major part of the extra CO2is emitted from oceans [6]”. I don’t believe this and can prove that it is not correct but I was willing to read their reference [6]; unfortunately it is unpublished.
Jay: you said “Now, the interesting thing about Zharkova et al is that they make a testable prediction, namely that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum like period. So we should expect longer, harder winters, an overall drop in global temperature and shorter growing seasons. ”
What you ignore is that the paper also says that the earth has warmed overall since the Maunder Minimum by about 1 1/2 C. Considering that the Maunder Minimum was between 1/2 to 1 degree cooler than the surrounding time, we are not going to see conditions like the Maunder Minimum. And if you had read the paper you would see that they ignore the anthropogenic rise of about 1/2 C. So I hope the paper is true since if it is we have bought ourselves some time to deal with the problem.
Here is a question for you. What models do you think are mature enough to base policy on?