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http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/SeaIce.HTM

Why Doesn't Anyone Mention the Record Growth of Sea Ice Around Antarctica?

Typical of the commentaries on sea ice is this by Harold Ambler, published, of all places, in the Huffington Post, on January 3, 2009:

        P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007...

So, to answer Ambler's final question:

        Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

The answer is simple. The Arctic decrease is statistically significant, and the Antarctic increase is not. This is Stats 101. Ambler is flat out wrong. Not all trends are equally statistically significant.

What the last two (2) maps don't indicate is if warmer ocean temperatures increase precipitation inland.

http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar

I suggest if anyone wants to dig into this check Sciencebits. More specifically look here:

http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate#ShavivVeizer

Since we are still waiting for a very anemic solar cycle#24 to build up sunspots, I think perhaps we should wait till past 2015 because it seems the great solar science experiment in the sky is already underway.

  http://solarcycle24.com/sunspots.htm
http://sc25.com/

Well somehow I thought it was cycle 23 that finished and cycle 24 being underway... so much for journalistic accuracy. Look for instance here: http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Go check it out at http://www.solarcycle24.com/

This guy's everything about the sun that one can track. In particular, he has an image of the sun on the upper left hand corner that shows how pathetic this sunspot group.

I wouldn't say the sunspot drought is over, until there is sustained progress.

For those interested This site has some charts , monthly since 1991

We have seen many spotless months in the last year. See http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ http://www.solarcycle24.com/ and various parts of the propagation reports and predictions at http://www.arrl.org./

Typical Slashdot- publishing crap without verifying a shred of it.

Those of us who are paranoid about the sun have got some justification for our beliefs. First off, the new solar cycle is somewhat late, depending on who you believe. Secondly, there have been very few sunspots this year. In fact, right now, we have gone 30 days without a single sunspot.

http://www.solarcycle24.com/

Fire up those SUVs and coal plants, little ice age, here we come.

Because we're very near solar minimum, so this is about all the cooling we're going to get. Now for another ten or so years of rising, followed by perhaps another plateau

Let's examine the relavant phase in the article:

"The Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel anticipates the solar minimum marking the onset of Cycle 24 will occur in March, 2008 (±6 months). The panel reached this conclusion due to the absence of expected signatures of minimum-like conditions on the Sun at the time of the panel meeting in March, 2007:"

We can restate that in a less obfuscated way as: "we blew the prediction last march, so we'll make the same prediction again for this year." As it stands, the solar minimum continues, with no sign of abating, and, if it does, then we stand a chance of having a Little Ice Age. As it stands, right now, today, global temperatures are LOWER than they have been in quite some time. Keep your eyes fixed on this:

http://www.solarcycle24.com/

And note the most recent solar weather - one tiny little sunspot (nothing to write home about), continued low magnetic readings... basically, the sun's minimum continues for another year. So, in two weeks, we'll be TWO years overdue for the end of the solar minimum. My question to you is, how many years of an extended solar minimum coupled with plunging global temperatures will it take for you to believe that the sun is the predominant force in global temperature.

Now, I'm NOT saying that, we should go and say "hey, the sun is to blame, therefor, we are off the hook for emissions". Absolutely not. You can't dump waste into a lake and we shouldn't be dumping it into the atmosphere either. We manage the content of our water, the chemistry of our soil, and it stands to reason that we should take on the management of the air as well. But... to go and say that the sun doesn't have an effect on global temperatures is just, without even thinking about it, is ridiculous. Without the sun, there is no global temperature.