Valentina Zharkova, a Ukrainian scientist teaching at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK, talked about global warming in an interview with La Verità: "The cause is not humans, but rather the Sun," she stated. The expert wants to disprove some common beliefs, including the one that the temperature of our planet has been increasing since the Industrial Revolution.

"In reality, the Earth has been warming since around 1690, which marks the end of the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age (LIA). In 1976, Professor John Eddy proposed that Earth's temperature follows cycles of solar radiation intensity, with temperatures increasing during solar maxima and decreasing during solar minima. Then, in 1995, it was discovered that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth had decreased by about 3 watts per square meter during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1710), a period of significantly reduced solar activity that coincided with cooler global temperatures. Following the end of the LIA, solar radiation levels returned to their previous state, and Earth's temperature has continued to respond to cycles of solar activity," she revealed.

Professor Valentina Zharkova has highlighted that the Sun's activity has decreased since the 1980s, but the warming of the Earth has not stopped. It is for this reason that the scientific community has mistakenly blamed humans. "The IPCC is wrong when it assumes that solar radiation is essentially constant, thus attributing the warming to the increase in CO2 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere. In reality, the increase in CO2 is a consequence, not the cause, of the increase in temperature."

"The increase in temperature, rather, would be due to orbital effects. These are known as Milankovitch cycles, which result from cyclical variations in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the tilt of its axis relative to the ecliptic, and cyclical variations in precession around Earth's axis. These cycles have periods ranging from 25,000 to 100,000 years. However, there is a shorter cycle of solar irradiance variation, about 2,000 years, called the Hallstatt cycle. This cycle does not originate from activity within the Sun but from the Sun's variable position relative to the focus of its orbit, a phenomenon known as solar inertial motion (SIM). The origin of the additional terrestrial warming, therefore, would be this factor, which the IPCC has not considered, and it will influence climate until around 2600."

Valentina Zharkova, however, revealed that solar inertial motion is not the only factor influencing Earth's temperature. "Within solar activity, there are two significant cycles: one, the small solar cycle, with a period of 11 years, and the other, the large solar cycle, with a period of 350 years. The large solar cycles are separated by grand solar minima, the most recent of which was the aforementioned Maunder Minimum. The current solar cycle (Cycle 25) has had more sunspot-free days than any other cycle in the last 280 years of observations. During the current grand solar minimum, solar radiation is expected to decrease by about 3 watts per square meter. As a result, Earth's temperature is projected to decrease by about one degree over the next three decades."

Confirmation of the theory presented on La Verità, therefore, should arrive by 2050.

"In the next 30 years, it will be demonstrated what is warming the Earth's atmosphere, whether it's the Sun or human activity. Currently, the Sun is approaching that Grand Solar Minimum that we predicted in 2015. This should cause a decrease in Earth's temperature of up to one degree in cycle 26 (2031-2042). This should happen even though the Sun is already closer to Earth and has increased its temperature from the Maunder Minimum in 2020. If anthropogenic warming were underway, there would be no decrease in Earth's temperature, only an increase. However, the last few years already clearly show that the Earth's temperature is about to decrease," she concluded.