Sunspots - The Real Cause of Higher Grain Prices | Tom McClellan

Tom McClellan (Jul 27, 2012) - Sunspots are a big driver for wheat prices. Various pundits are putting out stories blaming the drought in the plains states on global warming [...] A better explanation for the drought, and the ensuing spike in grain prices, is that this is all part of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. But to find that relationship in the data is what the story is about. The first point to understand is that sunspot activity has now been scientifically linked to changes in cloud formation. When the sun is more active, the charge particles streaming out from sunspot activity help to sweep away cosmic rays that might otherwise hit earth's atmosphere, where they play a role in cloud formation. [see also HERE] 

 

Once you get past that more difficult scientific hurdle of understanding that cosmic rays and clouds are related, it is pretty easy to understand that less cloud formation is related to less precipitation, and thus poorer growing conditions for rain-irrigated crops. That is what we are seeing with this year's drought, and it has been pushing up grain prices accordingly. Looking across the last hundred years of price data on wheat, it can be difficult to see the relationship between the sunspot number and wheat prices. Part of this comes from the fact that there are other factors which sometimes act upon crop yields and thus grain pricing. But a big factor is that the units we use to measure wheat prices, i.e. US dollars, can vary themselves, causing the relationship with sunspots to sometimes be disguised by what the dollar itself is doing. 

 

If we look at the history of these two sets of data before the modern era of floating currency exchange rates, we can better see how they were correlated. This chart shows raw wheat prices, un-adjusted for the value of the dollar. The sunspot number data is shifted forward by 2 years to reveal that bottoms and tops in the sunspot number tend to be followed a couple of years later by bottoms and tops in wheat prices. This relationship got into some trouble in the middle part of the chart, when President Roosevelt's New Deal price fixing artificially inflated wheat prices. The intention in the 1930s was to benefit farmers by keeping wheat prices up.  

 

That effort switched during WWII to the government putting a cap on all prices, including wheat, to support the war effort. Rationing of food, fuel, and other items took over for market forces. Additional trouble came in the 1970s, when the Arab Oil Embargo pushed up oil prices in 1973-74, reducing acreage under cultivation. Then later in that decade, the rising value in the dollar pushed down the dollar price of most commodities compared to prices in other currencies. So using dollars to see the normal cyclical relationship in price data became problematic.

All of this explanation brings us (finally!) back to the lead chart above. In [the above] chart, I have adjusted the dollar price of wheat, multiplying it by the US Dollar Index, which was created back in 1971. This mathematical step produces a unit-less measure of the value of wheat by factoring out the dollar's movements. Doing this allows us to better see how the peaks and troughs in wheat prices have been related to the sunspot cycle. 

 

I want to emphasize again that the sunspot number is shifted forward in that chart by 2 years, to reveal its leading indication for how wheat prices will behave. The conclusion from this is that the upward move in the value of wheat right now is just following the swoop upward in the sunspot number that began in 2009. We should expect to see generally rising prices for wheat and other grains until about 2 years after the sunspot cycle has peaked, a peak which has not even happened yet.

The Cloud Mystery | Henrik Svensmark

Looking at the Milky Way from above, we see four giant spiral arms. Our solar system is currently located within a small armlet called Orion, between the two large spiral arms, Sagittarius-Carina and Perseus. However, it doesn't stay there. It rotates at a speed of about 830,000 kilometers per hour around the galactic center, completing a full rotation every 250 million years. This rotation period is called a galactic year. This means that, on average, every 65 million years, our solar system moves through one of the major spiral arms of the Milky Way.

» The Sun controls the Earth's cloudiness. The climate is controlled by the clouds.
The clouds are controlled by cosmic rays. And the cosmic rays are controlled by the Sun. «

 

 The Solar System's passage through the Milky Way (HERE)

 

During such a passage, the average temperature on Earth is about 5-10°C colder than outside the spiral arms, where more clouds can form, causing cooler climatic conditions. Within a spiral arm, more cosmic rays reach the Earth because there are more supernovae in the immediate vicinity of our solar system. These dying stars emit cosmic rays—subatomic particles with enormous energy rushing through the galaxy at almost the speed of light. Some of them shower down and bombard the Earth. In our atmosphere, the cosmic rays serve as nuclei for the condensation of water vapor and cloud formation. The clouds then reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth.

The Sun, of course, also plays an important role in cloud formation. When there are many sunspots, the Sun's magnetic fields emit more charged particles, called the solar wind. The solar wind counteracts and neutralizes cosmic rays, controlling how many reach the Earth. During the 20th century, the Sun's magnetic activity almost doubled. As a result, fewer cosmic rays reached the Earth, the cloud cover thinned, and the Earth's climate warmed. 

 

 » Within a spiral arm, more cosmic rays reach the Earth. Cosmic rays serve
as nuclei for the condensation of water vapor and cloud formation. «

 

A ‘lazy’ Sun would produce less magnetic activity, less solar wind, and more cosmic rays would reach the Earth’s atmosphere, where they could build up clouds and cool the planet’s climate. The Sun controls the Earth’s cloudiness. The climate is controlled by the clouds. The clouds are controlled by cosmic rays. And the cosmic rays are controlled by the Sun.

 

The Cloud Mystery - Henrik Svensmark on Climate Change, 2007.

 

The Great Global Warming Swindle — Martin Durkin, 2007.

Sources: 

Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen, astrophysicists, Danish National Space Institute (DTU Space), Copenhagen | Nir Shaviv, astronomer,  Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Jan Veizer, geologist, Department of  Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa and Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Geophysics, Bochum Ruhr University | Jasper Kirkby (2011): The CLOUD experiment at CERN [65 m] | Lars Oxfeld Mortensen (2007): The Cloud Mystery - Henrik Svensmark on Climate Change [53 m] | Martin Durkin (2007): The Great Global Warming Swindle [76 m]