No, no article found with that claim, but I could easily see one being made via a ‘wiggle match’.
I was looking into the ways the Earth’s magnetic field changes over time, especially on short time frames, wondering if a lunar cycle might show up. Well, I found a daily variation (claimed to be due to solar induced electric currents) and several other variations all documented nicely by the British Geological Survey here:
What I found surprising was this chart of the sunspot cycle vs geomagnetic storms. While the sunspots mostly cycle, with some ebb and flow, the magnetic storms ramp rather nicely just like CO2 does over the same period. As we have a ‘wiggle match’, the AGW folks would happily claim CO2 causes solar storms (just as they claim all sorts of other nutty things from wiggle matches, often just wiggle matches of computer models and not even real data. This is real data.)
Now there is a problematic drop off at the end, coincident with the halt to ‘global warming’, and a wag might point out that causality seems to run the other way; that our warming trend follows nicely from the solar / geomagnetic storm chart. Heck, it even has a ‘dip’ in the late ’60s / early ’70s when we had the New Ice Age scare and snow in the Central Valley of California (where it very very rarely ever snows). A wag might also point out the spike near the early ’30s and late ’40s when we had a warm spike. Even the low level back in the late 1800’s when it was significantly cold. But hey, I’m sure that’s “just weather” ;-)
There’s another interesting image in that page. The magnetic field at sites in the United Kingdom:
A rather remarkable match to the hot peak in the ’30s, cold in the ’60s / ’70s, then warming since. About 2000 we have a spiky ‘wobble’ but the net rise has reduced / left. It will be very interesting to see if this starts heading down.
Does any of this speak to ‘mechanism’? Not really. But IMHO it does show that at a minimum the Earth’s magnetic field is an indicator of processes that change our global weather. That the magnetism is likely driven by solar changes is indicated by that solar storm chart. As to mechanism, I can’t say if it’s the impact of charged particles and induced electric fields causing temperature changes or precipitation changes, or if it might be a direct magnetic / angular momentum coupling causing oceans to be stirred around. What I can say is that any attribution of causality to CO2 has a couple of large hurdles to leap. Explain the rise in the ’30s, the drop in the ’60s, and the stagnation from 2000 on. Explain why THIS data has a close match and CO2 is a disconnect.
IMHO, one needs to use that scale of data (monthly to at most annual granularity) and attribute that changes on that scale vs magnetic variation to non-CO2 sources (i.e. to the magnetic driven events) and let any residual be fought over by the other attributions (natural variation, UHI / thermometer error, data-diddling, and yes, even a smidgen for CO2…)
While it pains me to say we need to attribute things to “magnets” as causal (as it is the usual dodge of magicians and charlatans) the simple fact is that magnetic forces drive everything from our electric motors to our computers. The sun is driven by magnetic dynamo forces, and the Earth is a giant spinning magnetic ball. To ignore all that is even more distressing.
Guess the next step is to ask what causes ‘solar storms’ and look at their correlation to things like solar angular momentum. They look, to me, like a better metric than just sunspot count for whatever mechanism is changing weather on Earth. Be it solar particles, solar wind, electric currents, or yes, even magnets and angular momentum…