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Sunspots Reach 1000-Year Peak
rlp writes "Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000-year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots. Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on both observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years."
I've heard that missiles can be guided to a target through GPS. Could the noise generated from massive sunspot activity cause the missile to drift enough to hit a completely different target even though it THINKS it's on target?
In other words, could the noise corrupt the GPS signal and offset the readings (but still be understood by the missile), or would it mess-up the system up completely to become totally incomprehensible?
I mention them because of all the possible groups out there, they're about the last that would think to jump on the global warming bandwagon. And yet, Reason Magazine (Free Minds and Free Markets!), the definitive Libertarian magazine, has at this point pretty much accepted: global warming exists, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contributes to it, and a variety of things will Need To Be Done about it, one way or another, sooner or later. And I think this sort of thinking, coming from this group, should serve as sort of a bell-weather in politics. And I think that their approach to the topic is one that the Republican Party should strongly consider mimicking: stop squabbling about what is and isn't happening, and why. Worry instead about What Should Be Done.
Now, granted, their ideas of what Should Be Done and the state of things are not very much in line with what the Democratic Party would probably favor. They had a recent article entitled The Convenient Truth on the topic (and they lambast current global-warming politicans for "mistaking panic for virtue").
I would advise any right-leaning free-trade-ish pro-capitalist or Republican types to take a good long look at Reason's articles on the topic of global warming and, with all due consideration, study, and time, try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming. (As a matter of fact, I would advise any left-leaning types who are actually care about these issues for their own sake, and not merely for some sort of anti-capitalist or anti-Western-decadence agenda, to take a look at them as well, perhaps an even longer one.)The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
We had the middle ages. Europe was warmer, you could grow wine in regions you can't now. The middle East was a trading empire, Vikings were on the march, some Christians were planning the crusades. All things considered, you would probably be a poor peasant, half starving, and about to drop dead from plague or some other ailment at the ripe age of 30.
In all seriousness, when I was working on my M.S. in Astronomy (circa 1993), we had a seminar given by solar physicist on sunspots. She showed two slides that were quite interesting: The first slide showed a plot of "global average" CO2 concentration and "global average" temperature and the second slide showed sunspot activity and "global average" temperature. From her brief look into the topic (by her own admission), sunspot activity appeared to correlate better than CO2. She submitted a NSF proposal to study it further and was rejected on the grounds "the cause of global warming is well understood and further research is not warranted.'
Here's an explanation from NASA. In shorter version, how fast the sunspots cycle in and out of the Sun's surface determines how big they get.
So the article says that the sunspots have reached 1000-year peak, but the NASA article says that sunspots are at the minimum right now (Solar Minimum). Which one is correct?
No, I said that "I would advise [people] to look at Reason's articles ... and, with all due consideration, study, and time, try to develop a healthy attitude about the reality of global warming." It is apparently obvious to you that basing your ideas about Science on political groups is Not Healthy. So, umm...
no, you shouldn't do that.
And I think a Healthy attitude is not particularly well served by breaking out the "omg Pope Middle Ages" comparisons on your opponents. There was a Slashdot article some time back about a study finding how political thought is essentially emotional, and not rational:
I worry that this is the case here. You appear to appeal to the Scientific. If you do, indeed, value reason and logic, then I hope that you can quash the emotional reaction and see the reason in Reason's articles, and elsewhere, evaluating it on its own merits rather than how well it serves your biases....
On a related note, I wasn't able to tell: are you coming from more of a "pro-global-warming" angle or a "global-warming-is-fake" angle?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Nevertheless, IMO the global warming alarmism being used to push a neo-communist agenda stinks. I've looked at the evidence, and humans as *the major* contributor just doesn't add up. I'm not convinced by "all the real scientists say so" either. There is too much censoring of dissenters for that to be convincing.
In many cases, the cures exacerbate real problems. For instance, demand for ethanol is causing more rain forest clear cutting to grow sugar cane. Paving large areas causes local warming (urban heat island effect) far in excess of the worst case estimates of global warming, and loses even more ability to recycle CO2 in the air. Eating beef/pork for breakfast, lunch, and dinner has causes a 10 fold increase in methane, much more that the increase in CO2. All the driving causes stress, and the fatty, sugary fast food combined with the lack of exercise has made most of us fat, driving up health care costs.
My point is that I would like to see a positive agenda. Keep and expand greenspaces and forests. I'm not a stickler for "everything wild" like Gore - parks are fine. Walk, ride bikes, use mass transit. Rent a car for vacations. Use a ZipCar for trips to the store to pick up heavy items. Eat meat only on feast days (e.g. Sunday - modify for your religion), like we used to, and observe a Sabbath (on a day appropriate for your religion). Getting rid of my car saves $300 to $800 dollars a month (depending on how nice a used car I would have gotten to replace it). I have a ready excuse why I can't jump up and drive all over the county on a moments notice. Stop the rushing around. Relax, enjoy your food instead of wolfing it down in a hurry. Eat slowly. Eat less. Fast on a regular basis - if only so you know what it feels like to be hungry. Eat only when you are hungry, not when you are bored, or pressured by friends.
Use our own oil (offshore drilling, Alaska, and/or plant it instead of corn for the cows you aren't eating as much of) instead of buying it from our enemies and carting it over the ocean. Save the oil for the truckers so your fresh veggies won't cost an arm and a leg. The trees will slowly take care of the CO2 if we don't cut them down and pave them over. Whatever you do, don't give control to the government to "fix" things. They will only make it worse. Sufficiently large corporations are indistinguishable from government in their capacity to foul things up.
Take these suggestions slowly so the affected industries have time to adjust.
Both articles talk about different time scales. The sun spot rate is going from minimum to maximum in only 11 years (not sure about the correct time scale but should be approximately right). Just last year, the Sun hit the minimum and for the first time a gigantic explosion with a shockwave running all around the Sun was observed. While the Sun Spot number goes through this cycle, the solar magnetic field is reversed. This is critical for the solar wind which helps to protect earth from the cosmic radiation. Same is true for the magnetic field of the earth. And Earth's magnetic field is also reversing now! Why? The interplay between the solar magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field is not known.
The NASA article talks about this minimum, and the science article talks about the average Sun spot number increasing over the last 1000 years. This is surely interesting, as it explains quite a lot of the global warming. The astronomical influence on the weather system should be studied in more detail. For example, it is believed by some scientists, that the Sun's orbit around the Galaxy is causing Ice Ages as well. At the moment, this is all far fetched, but if we do not understand it better, we will never know for sure what is causing how much of the observed global warming.