Sun's Activity Levels Reconstructed

neutron_p writes "An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades. The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively. The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As scientists report in the current issue of the science journal Nature, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years."

Comments

So...

[Jerf]

So... we'll schedule the Global Cooling panic for what, 2030-ish? That good for everyone?

Save your Global Cooling books from the 70s, they'll be invaluable in showing how long it has been a problem even as the Global Warming hysteria is quietly, but thoroughly, whitewashed out of existance (just as the Global Cooling panic has been, as of today).

See you then!

(This is about 1/3 humorous, 1/3 a troll, and 1/3 an attempt to get people to be a little less dogmatic and a little more thoughful about climate issues in general. Moderate accordingly, I guess.)

(PS: I would expect the Earth's temp, if it is affected significantly by the Sun, to lag behind it by several years, because it has one hell of a lot of "thermal inertia".)

No, the measurements go back much further

[Engineer-Poet]

The temperature variations have been tracked over centuries using heat-flow measurements in boreholes.

Re:RTFA

[Jerf]

AC says: Except, if you had read the article, you'd see that it quite explicitly says that this study shows that solar activity does not account for the rise is global average temperature since the start of industrial revolution.

You mean this part?

Whether this effect could have provided a significant contribution to the global warming of the Earth during the last century is an open question. The researchers around Sami K. Solanki stress the fact that solar activity has remained on a roughly constant (high) level since about 1980 - apart from the variations due to the 11-year cycle - while the global temperature has experienced a strong further increase during that time. On the other hand, the rather similar trends of solar activity and terrestrial temperature during the last centuries (with the notable exception of the last 20 years) indicates that the relation between the Sun and climate remains a challenge for further research.

Emphasis mine. It does not say anything about whether the activity can account for the temperature. In fact, it quite explicitly disclaims any such claims in either direction. It is too soon. You need to brush up on your science skills, and your ability to read what things say instead of reading what you want them to say. If more climate fearmongers demonstrated these skills, I might actually be willing to join them in their panic. But dogma, dogma, dogma, and carefully selected evidence seems to rule the day.

Less dogma, more science, please.