The Saltbush Club this week announced the formation of the “Saltbush Solar Activity Watch” led by Mr. David Archibald.

The Executive Director of Saltbush, Mr. Viv Forbes, said it was obvious to everyone except schoolteachers, the ABC, the Greens and the leaders of CSIRO that the sun is the main driver of weather and climate on Earth.

This giant ball of nuclear power in the sky beams solar radiation and exerts gravitational force on everything on earth.

These two solar forces, radiant heat and gravity, control our world.

Radiant heat on an inclined rotating Earth drives the winds and the ocean currents, produces rain and snow, powers cyclones and storms, and affects the cloud-forming cosmic radiation that hits the earth.

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians, South African water engineers and Australia’s most famous weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, all knew that the sun was a key factor in weather/rainfall cycles.

Solar cycles have been observed for over 2,000 years and sunspots have been recorded in detail since the invention of the telescope in 1610. This record shows that cold periods like the Little Ice Age have coincided with periods of low sunspot numbers.

David Archibald’s analysis of solar activity suggests that the sun has driven a warming phase since about 1900 but probably entered a new cooling phase about 2006.

A new cooling era would play havoc with world food supply, and those who rely on unreliable wind/solar energy will regret their choices.

With reckless bravado, foolish Western politicians and their minions have placed all of our bets on an old fading gelding called “Global Warming”. They have not noticed a vigorous white stallion, “Global Cooling” which is racing down the straight.

Even a minor cooling will reduce world food supply in three ways.

First, any reduction in surface temperature will reduce crop growth and growing season in all subpolar regions.

Second, reduced solar radiation will reduce evaporation from the oceans and must reduce precipitation on land.

And, worst of all, cooling surface temperature on the oceans will cause oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide plant food, so plant/crop growth will be lower than in today’s warm well-fertilised atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide has never driven world climate and will play an even smaller part in future.