At our regular lunch meeting our guest speaker is Prof Michael Asten with the topic of Natural climate cycles – what they tell us of global temperature changes, human advancement and human misery.

Michael Asten was Professor of geophysics, now retired from School of Earth-Atmosphere-Environment, Monash University.  Prior to that he was a Senior Principal in BHP with 18 years experience in world-wide programs for the search for new mineral resources.  He is a past-President of the Australian Society of Exploration Geophysics, has published 224 scientific papers and has various research awards from the Australian SEG, BHP and CSIRO for innovations. 

Prof. Asten has been researching for several years the role of natural cycles in centennial and millennial global climate change. His research found evidence for multi-centennial climate cycles within the ages described as the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age.

 These cycles also highlighted events in history which have played major roles in the rise and fall of human advancement or reduction of civilisation in the past 1000-2000 years.  Quantitative study of climate cycles also showed that much of the warming of the past century appears to be independent of changes in atmospheric CO2. Natural cycles indicate that future warming will not be solely a function of CO2.

 A projection to the year 2100 predicts global temperature changes different from those provided by current climate models. The year 2100 will be colder.