Unified Cycle Theory and Climate Change

A review of “The Unified Cycle Theory: How Cycles Dominate the Structure of the Universe and Influence Life on Earth” by Stephen J. Puetz, OutskirtsPress.com, Denver, CO, 489 p. (2009).

This is an excellent, remarkable, and most outstanding book of sweeping breadth. This, or some version of it, is destined to become a classic. Puetz, a mathematician, statistician, and financial wizard, has compiled data concerning cycles with wave lengths that extend from days to billions of years. The known cycles that affect Earth, of course, are either geomagnetic or gravitational, appearing as the result of interactions between the Sun, Moon, Earth, and other planets. But, through detailed analysis of as much cyclic data as he apparently could get his hands on, Puetz has discovered a third set of all-encompassing cycles that he calls EUWS (Extra-Universal Wave Series) cycles.

For the “unification” whereof he speaks, Puetz simply takes the number 22.176 billion years and divides it by 3, getting 7.392 billion years, and then divides the result again by 3 to get 2.464 billion years, and so on. At first, I was quite skeptical, thinking that all this was mere numerology. That was until Puetz used the calculation to show that all of the geologic epochs fell right into this cyclic behavior. My favorite, because I have worked with Quaternary geology for decades, is the 41,728-year EUWS cycle. The data for the eastern equatorial Pacific sea temperature for the last million years shows remarkable agreement with that cycle (Fig. 1). The precision surpasses that of the 41,000-year cycle observed long ago by Milankovitch (1941) as well as the more recent correction to 42,000 years, attributed to cyclic variations in the axial tilt of the earth. Of course, in nearly all cycle theories, various subcycles can exhibit constructive and destructive interference. This results in extra peaks or diminished peaks that at first appear to be random variations within the major intercyclic periods. As in all of science, real data generally give skeptics plenty of chance for doubt. Puetz handles part of this intercyclic noise with something called the Turning Point Distribution Principle: “This principle describes how the EUWS cycles reverse direction at tops and bottoms. Variations from theoretical turning points distribute themselves in a non-random manner. …If a EUWS cycle misses its theoretical turning point, alternatives include theoretical turning points of its sub-cycles. This tendency produces non-random, stair-step distributions” (p. 5). Being a neomechanist, I can appreciate this fully. The ideal cyclic motion of a simple pendulum, for instance, is either forward or back. To get subcycles, there would have to be additional causes (other bodies impacting the pendulum).

Puetz goes on to calculate 13,909-year, 4,636-year, 1,545-year, 515-year, 172-year, 57-year, 19-year, 6.36-year, and 2.12-year cycles. There even are 258.11-day, 86.04-day, and 26.68-day cycles, all of which he supports with data drawn from the literature, including the stock market. Given his focus, there probably is some cherry picking involved, but too many of the peaks and troughs are precisely as predicted by the calculation. I haven’t checked all the charts for accuracy, but the references for the raw data are meticulously included, with many readily available on the Internet. You can judge for yourself. Reconstructed temperature variations for Greenland appear to be remarkably in agreement with the 1,545-year cycle (p. 281). He shows the correlation between sunspot and climate cycles with the rise and fall of various civilizations. And most pertinent to our present situation, he shows that the 57-year EUWS cycle coincides with the highly controversial Kondratieff Wave cycle in economics. The 57-year cycle postdicts four market crashes in a row: 1720, 1778, 1835, and 1892. He calculates that the possibility of this happening by chance is 1 in 10 million (1/57 X 1/57 X 1/57 X 1/57). The 1929 market crash came one 19-year panic cycle early. Most surprising: Both the 57-year and 172-year cycles predicted a major depression to begin in 2007. Sound familiar? He also points out that “Since 1934, the Dow Jones Industrial Average correlated with the 2.12-year EUWS frequency for 34 cycles.” If you think there is profit potential in all this, you can get Puetz’s financial newsletter (http://www.uct-news.com), which at the moment, is more bearish than anything else I have seen.

The book goes into some interesting esoteric detail: Who knew that the price of rice in China pretty much followed the 172-year cycle ever since 976 AD? Who knew that the rise and fall of civilizations followed a 515-year EUWS cycle? One needs to appreciate a lot of data in chart form and bear with quite a bit of necessary repetition. Some of the conclusions will be a stretch for sociologists, historians, and others more knowledgeable about the details, but the shear extent of this first attempt is outstanding.

Puetz’s data doesn’t shrink from controversy. Not only does he see 2007 as the beginning of another Great Depression, he also points out it’s coincidence with the sudden drop in global temperatures that occurred in January of that year (Fig. 2). Note that the figure shows a general rise in global temperatures at the beginning of the 20th century, similar to the 2-mm/yr rise in sea level that I pointed out previously (Borchardt, 2009). Next questions: Will sea level begin to drop along with global temperatures? Will the so-called “great recession” become the “Global Depression” that Puetz predicts? There is no doubt that Puetz is on to something really big here. But what is it?

Without a mechanism, all these data are still looking for a home. One disingenuous reviewer covers the indeterministic view: “This new concept shows that someone or something with extreme intelligence and wisdom is in control of us. …someone out there, who has our best interest at heart, is in absolute control of everything” (Ott, 2009). Egads! That fellow must have slept through the part about cycles that might leave us freezing in the dark. It seems clear that the EUWS cycles are associated with changes in climate. Puetz shows, however, that the conventionally accepted 11-year sunspot cycle and the Milankovitch cycles are not sufficient to produce many of the effects he draws attention to. It certainly wouldn’t account for “Snowball Earth,” the time about 700 million years ago (p. 178) when most of the planet was covered with ice. One can see increases in crop yields, surpluses, and price declines as the effects of increases in global warmth, but two-year fluctuations in the stock market with special emphasis on the full moon? Nonetheless, that is just what the data show. This definitely is a “unified” theory, but it is missing a central character, perhaps some supermicrocosm that acts as an “Extra-Universal” cause.

Why the number 22.176 billion and the divisor 3? The whole book is just begging for a formal mathematical solution. That’s the obvious next challenge for Puetz to complete the theory and silence the inevitable critics. To sum up, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the universe from a univironmental point of view. A magnificent compilation and a towering achievement!

References

Borchardt, Glenn, 2009, Global warming 2 millimeters at a time, http://thescientificworldview.blogspot.com/2009/12/global-warming-two-millimeters-at-time.html.

CRU, 2008, Climate Research Unit, Data: Temperature (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt): University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Lawrence, K.T., 2006, Eastern equatorial Pacific 5 Myr Alkenone SST and paleoproductivity reconstruction: Boulder, CO, IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology. Data Contribution Series #2006-044. NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program.

Milankovitch, Milutin, 1941 [1969], Canon of insolation and the ice-age problem: Jerusalem, Israel Program for Scientific Translations, v. 132.

Ott, Donald, 2009, You will want to keep this book! (http://www.amazon.com/Unified-Cycle-Theory-Structure-Influence/product-reviews/1432712160/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1).

Puetz, S.J., 2009, The unified cycle theory: How cycles dominate the structure of the universe and influence life on earth: Denver, OutskirtsPress.com, 489 p.

 

Figure 1. Chart 22C from Puetz (2009, p. 255) showing the cyclic fluctuations in temperature determined from studies of sediments sampled near the equator in the Pacific Ocean (Lawrence, 2006). These data are excellent indicators of climate change for the last million years (Kyr = kilo years). The arrows simply mark the numerical locations for each turn of the 41,728-yr cycle discovered by Puetz. Note that the famous 41,000-yr cycle of Milankovitch (1941) becomes progressively imprecise going back in time, with the 24th cycle being 984,000 years as opposed to the 1,005,000 years correctly postdicted by Puetz.

 

Figure 2. Chart 28K from Puetz (2009, p. 358) showing the variations in global temperature compiled by CRU (2008). The three downward arrows for January 2007 represent the juxtaposition of the 19-year, 57-year, and 172-year EUWS cycles that result in the recent cooling trend. Likewise, the three arrows in the trough at 1921 represent the beginning of the 20th century warming trend according to Puetz.