A website claiming to be “documenting earth changes during the next GSM and pole shift”, with a bunch of climate claims, graphs, facts, a future global cataclysm coming real soon now, and the occasional conspiracy. Sounds interesting? I decided to check it out.
Quick summary
I conclude that Electroverse is a site with little credibility:
- It misinterprets data on global warming and confidently predicts the future based on little data.
- It uses erroneous data on magnetic anomalies, extrapolates with very little justification, and so promotes sensationalist and apocalyptic conclusions.
- It cherry picks temperature data to highlight only those places and times which show cold temperatures and ignores the greater number of places and times, and the overall global trend, that shows warming.
Read on to see why I came to this negative conclusion.
The website
The Electroverse website is part of Patreon, a website platform that allows web site owners to seek a monthly income from readers. The main instigator of Electroverse appears to be “Cap Allon”, but the site tells us nothing about him. This Facebook page gives little information. There is a children’s author named Cap Allon, so maybe they are the same person.
The site tell us: “Electroverse has been setup to wade against the mainstream propaganda and accurately document Earth Changes as two world-altering climatic events unfold simultaneously”. The two events referred to are:
- Grand Solar Minimum – an event where the sun’s radiation is at a minimum, thus causing lower temperatures on earth.
- Pole shift – the idea that the earth’s magnetic poles can rapidly “flip”, that is, swap polarities or move around, with impacts on the earth’s biosphere.
The combination of these two events, Electroverse says, will cause catastrophic changes to earth and its life. We need to be aware! It advises us to “Prepare accordingly — learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own“ food. There is even a sister site, Electroverse Prep, to help people prepare to be self sufficient in the coming crisis, though the site hasn’t been developed much.
One clear consequence of these two events will be significant cooling, negating global warming. Many of the Electroverse posts point out places where unusually cold weather is occurring. The Electroverse Facebook page currently features the temperature graph shown above, drawing attention to the fact that global temperatures in 2021 are (so far) lower than in 2020.
On this page I examine whether Electroverse is a reliable source of information on the Grand Solar Minimum, Pole shift, the future cataclysm and the future of global temperatures.
Grand Solar Minimum (GSM)
Electroverse believes radiation from the sun will remain significantly low over the next few decades (a Grand Solar Minimum), which, it says, is one aspect of a future cataclysm facing earth.
Variations in the sun’s radiation
The sun is a ball of hot gases, and produces heat by nuclear fusion. The gases are always moving, leading to varying amounts of heat radiation into space. When there is more solar activity, there is more radiation.
Some cycles in solar activity have been detected, some of them centuries long. One important cycle is 11 years long, and correlates with sunspot activity. Sunspots are areas where the sun’s surface is cooler, but are signs of increased solar activity. Thus sunspots are signs of higher radiation.
A solar cycle begins with a low level of solar activity and hence lower levels of radiation being emitted into space. Halfway through the cycle, a maximum is reached, and then radiation falls to a new minimum and a new cycle begins.
A solar minimum occurred at the end of 2019, indicating that solar activity is now beginning to increase. During the most recent solar cycle (about 2009 to 2019), solar activity was weaker than usual, but scientists predict the cycle that has just begun will be slightly stronger.
What exactly is a GSM?
There are also longer period variations in radiation, over periods of several centuries. Thus sometimes several weaker cycles will occur together and a “Grand Solar Minimum” will occur, lasting maybe 50 to 100 years. An especially severe minimum (known as the Maunder Minimum) occurred around 1700.
How a GSM affects earth
The lower radiation of heat from the sun has some effect on temperatures on earth, but calculation of the effect is very difficult because so many other factors have an effect. For example, it is believed that the Maunder Minimum may have been caused by the occurrence of a GSM and increased volcanic activity (which puts ash into the atmosphere and reflects some of the incoming radiation).
There have been various estimates of the effects of a GSM on earth’s temperatures:
- In the Maunder Minimum (1710 CE), temperatures dropped by 1-1.5°C.
- Valentina Zharkova (2020) from Northumbria University predicted that a severe GSM will occur over the next 30 years, reducing earth’s temperature by about 1°C, before returning to much hotter temperatures.
- An earlier paper (2015) found that a prolonged GSM from now to 2050 would only reduce global temperatures by around 0.13°C.
- In 2010, Feulner and Rahmstorf calculated that a prolonged Maunder Minimum to mid century would lower global temperatures by 0.3°C. Papers in 2012 and 2013 gave similar estimates.
- Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv believes the sun has a large effect on climate, but apparently accepts that anthropogenic causes will predominate this century.
NASA conclusions
NASA has examined this question and concluded that:
- The historic Maunder Minimum occurred after a mini ice age had already commenced (for other reasons). Therefore another Maunder Minimum is unlikely to result in such a large temperature drop.
- If a GSM occurred as some predict, its impact would only be a sixth of the temperature rise caused by climate change. It would therefore temporarily slow global warming by about 3 years only.
- There is little evidence of a strong connection between variations in solar radiation and global temperatures. NASA points to the fact that solar irradiance (the amount of solar radiation reaching earth) has been declining over the past 70 years while global temperature has been rising (see graph).
Conclusion
We can conclude then, that:
- It is hard even for the experts to predict if a GSM is likely to occur, and no good reason to expect it soon.
- If a GSM does occur in the next 2 decades, its impact is likely to be in the range of -0.1°C to -1.0°C, most likely around -0.3°C.
- This temperature decline will slow but not stop global warming.
- When any GSM has passed, disastrous global warming will still be with us unless we take action now.
It seems that Electroverse has misunderstood and overstated the impacts of variations in solar radiation.
Pole shift
Electroverse believes a significant shift in the earth’s magnetic poles occurs about every 12,000 years, and it is due again soon. This, it is said, is the second element (along with a GSM) that will lead to a global cataclysm.
Movement of the earth’s magnetic poles
The earth spins on a north-south axis around the north and south geographic poles. The earth also has a magnetic field, with north and south magnetic poles. The poles don’t coincide.
The centre of the earth is extremely hot, with a solid core, a liquid outer core, the semi-solid mantle and then the crust. The core contains large amounts of iron and nickel, which are ferro-magnetic elements. The molten outer core is constantly and chaotically moving, due both to heat convection and the spinning of the earth.
This movement generates both electricity and a magnetic field, which reinforce each other and produce the earth’s magnetic field. But because of the movement, the magnetic field is constantly changing, and the magnetic poles move around.
Scientists can track the past movement of the poles because iron in molten rock is magnetised as the rock cools and solidifies, thus preserving information on the direction and strength of the magnetic field at the time.
There are three types of movement of the magnetic poles.
- Each pole can “wander” about as the molten outer core moves around. The north magnetic pole used to be located below Canada, but it has moved towards the geographic pole and is heading towards Siberia. And its speed is increasing, from about 15 km per year two centuries ago to almost 60 km per year currently.
- The polarity of the earth’s magnetic field can be reversed. The causes and mechanisms of reversals are not clear, and it is thought they occur randomly and unpredictably. The average time between reversals is estimated to be almost 500,000 years, but this can vary greatly. The most recent reversal was 780,000 years ago. A reversal may occur over a period of years or thousands of years, and it is a time of magnetic instability.
- An “excursion” can occur, where there is a significant but relatively short-lived change in the magnetic field (likely just thousands of years). The change may be a short-lived reversal or a movement up to 45°. The most recent excursion was the Laschamp event, about 41,000 years ago, when the poles reversed for a few hundred years only.
The effect of pole movement
The slow movement of the poles has little impact on life on earth, but the earth’s magnetic field is generally significantly weakened during reversals and excursions (sometimes down to as little as 5% of normal). The magnetic field protects the earth from harmful solar radiation, so for hundreds or even thousands of years more powerful radiation can reach the earth’s surface. In the past, this may have changed the climate, made some regions inhabitable and may have been responsible for species extinction (though this isn’t certain).
Studies have suggested that many of these catastrophic events occurred 42,000 years ago during the Laschamp Event.
If a similar event occurred in the present day, increased radiation would disrupt satellites and communication, and could have an impact on climate via changes to atmospheric ozone. Scientists are studying how an imminent reversal or excursion might be predicted.
Are we heading for imminent disaster?
Electroverse provides a table showing the 6 most recent excursions occurring neatly every 12,000 years, approximately, with the last one occurring 12,000 years ago. It is therefore argued that we are due for another one soon, and it will be disastrous, especially as it is said it will coincide with a GSM.
It appears that his data is almost completely wrong, and so his conclusions are highly doubtful.
The data suggest that reversals and excursions are statistically random, and so have no identifiable period of occurrence. The experts don’t seem to be certain about identifying excursions, but the sources I have found show that:
- If the six excursions referenced by Electroverse are accepted, the dates of them are not as he shows:
| Claimed excursion | Years ago (Electroverse) | Years ago (various scientific studies) |
| Gothenburg | ~12,000 | ~13,750 – 12,350 |
| Lake Mungo | ~24,000 | ~30,780 – 28,140 & ~26,000 (a 2nd excursion) |
| Mono Lake | ~ 35,000 – 37,000 | ~33,000 |
| Laschamp | ~ 40,000 – 47,000 | ~41,000 – 42,000 |
| Vostok/Greenland | ~60,000 | ~54,000 – 57,000 ~67,000 – 70,000 (two excursions) |
| Toba | ~72,000 | I can find no Toba excursion, but a large volcanic eruption occurred at Toba in Indonesia about 74,000 years ago. |
- Some scientists dispute some of these excursions, and add others. There was apparently an excursion just 2,800 years ago. This 2008 paper identifies 14 “validated” excursions and 6 more “possible” excursions over 2 million years, and there is clearly no regularity to their occurrence.
It is quite clear, then, that Electroverse’s table of regular (12,000 years) geomagnetic excursions isn’t based on science, and it is notable that he provides no source for his information.
Nevertheless, there are signs ….
While there is no apparent justification for Electroverse’s claim that we are “due” another reversal, there are some signs that the magnetic field is weakening, which may indeed lead to an excursion. And this excursion may indeed have cooling effects on our climate (although in the past, due to different atmospheric conditions, excursions likely had a heating effect). However experts consider it most likely that such an excursion is more than 500 years away.
But of course, no-one knows for sure.
Global warming or cooling?
The Electroverse website and Facebook page feature many examples of localised cold weather, with the implication that global warming is not happening, or at least not any more. The sheer number of extreme cold events around the world seems very convincing, until we remember that there are even more hot weather events.
I have addressed this questions in Another cool month – so what? In summary:
Read the graph, Luke!
Despite many ups and downs, the global temperature graph is steadily rising. 2020 was the second or equal hottest year on record. There are meteorological reasons for the variations about the trend, but the trend is clear.
Cherry-picking months
The monthly global temperature graph currently is showing a downturn. Every time this happens, climate change sceptics argue that warming has stopped – and then ignore the fact that (so far) every time the warming trend returns after a few years.
Electroverse has been guilty of this. In 2018 when there was a similar decline in global temperatures, Electroverse published the global temperature graph several times.
But it didn’t show the graph (as far as I can find) when the temperature rose again to record levels in 2020, except after March 2020 when the temperature dropped in the middle of a rising trend.
Cap Allon said at that time (April 2020): “A continuation of March’s sharp downward plunge (with the odd bump on the way) is highly probable over the months ahead, and we can now consider a reading below baseline by the end of the year “likely”.” As it turned out, December 2020 was a relatively cool month, but the same UAH data shows that 2020 was the second hottest year in the 42 years of record (hardly “a sharp downward plunge”). I haven’t seen this acknowledged anywhere on Electroverse.
Electroverse doesn’t seem to understand trends and the length of time required to establish a climate trend. It is thus following a familiar pattern of climate change deniers – ignore the clear long-term trend and the majority of months, and focus on the less common occasional contrary events. It isn’t honest and it isn’t correct (so far).
Assessment
It seems clear that Electroverse is a site with little credibility:
- It misinterprets data on global warming and confidently predicts the future based on little data.
- It uses erroneous data on magnetic anomalies, extrapolates with very little justification, and so promotes sensationalist and apocalyptic conclusions.
- It cherry picks temperature data to highlight only those places and times which show cold temperatures and ignores the greater number of places and times, and the overall global trend, that shows warming.
Others have come to similar conclusions.
- Media Bias Fact Check website (based mainly on climate change articles) concludes (perhaps a little unkindly) that Electroverse is “a quackery level Pseudoscience source based on the promotion of misinformation regarding climate change that does not align with the consensus of science.”
- Science Feedback website assessed three Electroverse climate pages and concluded two were incorrect and one used “flawed reasoning”.
- Hydro International website investigated an Electroverse claim about Arctic ice and a Norwegian ice breaker stuck in the ice, and found it wasn’t factual.
The site is probably best ignored.