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"All Quiet Alert" Issued For the Sun
radioweather writes "The phrase sounds like an oxymoron, and maybe it is, but the sun is extremely quiet right now, so much in fact that the Solar Influences Data Center in Belgium issued an unusual 'All quiet alert' on October 5th. Since then the sunspot number has remained at zero — solar cycle 24 has not yet started. There are signs that the sun's activity is slowing. The solar wind has been decreasing in speed, and this is yet another indicator of a slowing in the sun's magnetic dynamo. There is talk of an extended solar minimum occurring. There are a number of theories and a couple of dozen predictions about the intensity solar cycle 24 which has yet to start. One paper by Penn & Livingstonin in 2006 concludes: 'If [trends] continue to decrease at the current rate then the number of sunspots in the next solar cycle (cycle 24) would be reduced by roughly half, and there would be very few sunspots visible on the disk during cycle 25.' We'll know more in about six months what the sun decides to do for cycle 24."
Here is a nice graph that shows sunspot data from 1620 to 2000
http://spaceweather.com/glossary/sunspotnumber.html
We can see that this isn't anything new.
BTW - If you are interested in Auroras, keep watch on the 18th-19th. We are about to get hit with a solar wind stream.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
The number of sunspots hits a minimum as the globe warms up. Denials at 11.
Obviously this is due to global warming on Earth caused by humans.
Fusion has just finished its 6 sigma training after 5 billion of years. Which is good time considering that it was only hydrogen taking the training.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And get Al Gore on the phone, now!
We must take immediate and drastic steps to fight Global Darkening!
Maybe we can get that Kim Stanley Robinson person to write a book? 70 Days of Night?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Send Hermes to throw a parallel universe in it!
Quick, somebody send Cillian Murphy and Michelle Yeoh to restart it.
A slowing down sun - finally something to counteract global warming.
Is there any relevance? Does this mean the sun will emit more or less energy? Will overall insolation drop?
Anything you say will be held against you.
If cooling is seen some how it will be chalked up to anthropomorphic climate change. Or they will credit Gore..
I see you, and several others in the comments, making connections to sunspots and global warming. There really isn't one, or rather, it's the opposite of what you'd think. The more sunspots the sun has, the hotter it gets. Indeed a prolonged period of low sunspot activity is one of the (unproven, competing) theories on what caused the Little Ice Age.
So, if you want to draw a conclusion on this, if the sunspots are low, and the earth is still getting hotter... that means we really are getting hotter (disclaimer: sunspot numbers go up and down all the time in regular cycles. Global Warming is a very long term trend that is going up over several sunspot cycles. You can't really draw a conclusion on global warming based on a short term sunspot activity. I'm just saying, if you really wanted to draw one, that'd be it).
Is this a GOOD thing or a BAD thing? Inquiring minds want to know.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Can someone explain what this means to us in laymans terms? I'm just a software geek. I know nothing of this "sun" you speak of.
No, I am drawing a link between the article and humor. Try and keep up.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The sun is going to burn out and I never even got to post a "first" post on Slashdot. I'm going to die cold and unfulfilled! (Not by sharks with lasers thank god. That's a plus.)
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
In this case, you can.
Notice any kind of pattern here?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
We think of sunspots as following a fixed, 11-year cycle, but this may only be one part of the story.
I don't think the 'experts' necessarily know anything more at this point, either; just a few years ago, NASA was predicting that the next cycle would be the strongest ever, and that got a lot of people (especially folks that do a lot of shortwave/HF radio) very excited. Now, it looks like we may have a very small cycle, or no cycle at all -- it's anybody's guess.
The dead spot on some sunspot charts from 1650-1700 is called the "Maunder Minimum". During that period, rather than talking about sunspots, observers of the day would write about the appearance of a particular sunspot (very much singular!). Unfortunately, the data prior to the beginning of the minimum is pretty sparse, and exactly when it started is under some dispute.
There was also another minimum in the early 19th century, called the Dalton Minimum, although it wasn't as severe and it only lasted about 25 years.
So that's two minima separated by a 150-year gap. But at 150 years after the 1800 minimum, rather than another minimum, we actually get a maximum in 1950. There's just not enough historical data to make a good prediction, because we don't know how complex the cycle is. But it's clearly more complex than just 11 years.
I can't find a link to it online, but I heard a talk recently about a group that was using geological evidence to try and track the sunspot cycle further back than we have human observations. Not sure quite what the method is, or if it's yielded any results. But that would certainly be interesting, if you could get some real historical perspective instead of the piddling 7 centuries (at most) that you can find written records of. That might give us some idea of what's been going on, on very long timescales, as well as perhaps filling in the gaps in the historical record in more recent times (not sure what kind of resolution you can get).
To use a water analogy, the 11-year cycles might be waves lapping at the shore, but there might be scores of other forces acting on them at higher levels, like tides, wind, and the seasons, all on vastly different time-scales.
All in all, for something that we spend the majority of our waking lives under, our understanding of the sun is surprisingly poor. Particularly given how much modern technology (radio communications is the obvious one, but there are others) can be affected by the solar cycle, it seems to be ignored until it does something unexpected.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
(said the Anonymous Coward.) Gaia has a church? Wouldn't that be a bit limiting for something 196,950,000 square miles big?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
And if scientists don't understand something, it logically follows that God exists, creationism is true, etc. Surely that's good news for everyone. (Except infidels, of course.) We should all be very happy about this.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Sunspots cool the suns surface though, so no.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
HOLY CRAPOLA I think you've got a reasonable solution to the global warming problem!!!! Mars is too cool for humans, and Earth is starting to get too hot. So, let's send SUV/Factory Emission worshiping Republicans to Mars to warm that planet while we keep all the intelligent people here on earth to relive the dark ages of human history without incandescent bulbs and 18 wheeler trucks. It's brilliant I tell ya! We simultaneously solve the religious war of Global Warming while ridding Earth of Rush Limbaugh fans!
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Given that the Sun is itself a large ball of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace in which hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees, and on the surface of which flares and eruptions with the energy of millions of times the entire nuclear arsenal of the planet Earth go off more or less daily, I'd say it's a pretty damn noisy place all the time.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Obviously the sun is shutting down to do its regular backup.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I'm a bit agnostic to the whole global warming issue, but it'd be fun if this phenomenom shuts up the most vocal doomsday clowns.
\u262D = \u5350
Bollocks !
For the first 18 years of my life, I never went into a pub.
The next 20 years of my life I was in there every weekend, for 3 days.
Am I in the pub now ? Please, enlighten me. And bear in mind that the sun has a lot longer life cycle than me. (and I have access to the net anywhere due to 3G telephony).
You Called?
Now everybody listen carefully: GTFO my internet.
Sunspots are local areas of cooling on the solar surface. However, a less immediately obvious but highly significant factor is that the area around sunspots is warmer than the natural solar temperature. The net result is an increase in total solar output during times of high sunspot activity. Thus there is a positive correlation between sunspot activity and the energy which is delivered to earth. I'm lazy and can't immediately find a better reference than the relevant Wikipedia page, but I'm sure someone with more diligence could dig up something better.
You may be surprised
You can't take the sky from me...
Wow, I thought you were going to quote the entire They Might Be Giants song there for a second...
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
I think they should be looking into the solar system warming problem and not be so Earth-centric...
I mean, I find it interesting that there are reports about how the temperature of Mars has increased at the same rate as Earth for the last three or four years... So, obviously, we're screwing up so bad we're even having an effect on our nearest planetary neighbors, maybe even the entire solar system!
Nuke us from orbit, it's the only way to be sure...
Someone alert the scientific community that sound from the sun used to travel through the luminiferous aether, but due to recent advances in physics the sun has fallen oddly silent! It's like a giant vacuum is sucking all the sound out of the sun!!!
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
Did anybody also notice the irony of the SunFire ad at the top?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"Am I in the pub now ?"
If you don't know, you probably are.
I would, but it's firmly esconced in my abdomen. So I don't have to run after it.
Joke all you like, but your hyperbole doesn't change the facts. Solar radiation is decreasing, and yet the Earth is still warming up. Your world-view is skewed. Scientists don't care whether the earth is warming or cooling, in fact, anyone who can prove the mainstream wrong will be lauded as a genius, just like Einstein was when he showed that our previous understanding of physics was wrong. No one gets extra funding for supporting global warming. In fact, there are companies willing to give huge cash handouts to scientists who will deny global warming.
I don't buy the 'disinterested skeptic' bit. People who deny global warming are the ones with ulterior motives, even if that's just not wanting to change their lifestyle or not wanting the damn hippies to be right. Global warming deniers have a classic case of projection going on, calling others' motives into question when their own are the more questionable.
But I'm with you on the Gore thing. Peace prize? Please.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Global warming has put out the sun!
No one doubts thoes effects, and if you think the issue is 'only people cause global climate change' then your a fucking nitwit.
The issue has to do with speed, and considering there is NO DATA that correlates the suns changing temperature with the global climate change we are currently experiencing, your post doesn't even belong here.
The only political issue is caused by people pushing there anti human influenced climate change agenda, ALL OF WHICH has been disproved.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Chuck Norris killed you for offending him, and you still had to come back as a ghost and apologize.
Don't deny climate change; it hates when you do that.
I know you're joking, but there really IS a "Global Darkening" phenomenon, at least according to THIS episode of NOVA.
It sure sucks being at the mercy of nature. Scientists must all be frauds, it's not like science has done anything for us in the last thousand years. Good thing those Gods and spirits told the priests and witch doctors about advanced medicine, metallurgy, physics, biology, psychology, and mathematics or we'd all still be living in caves.
All hail Ned Ludd!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And those were able to detect patterns as well, possesing the ultimate nanocomposite scientocrystalite ball:
Quote: "The next sunspot cycle will be 30-50% stronger than the last one and begin as much as a year late, according to a breakthrough forecast using a computer model of solar dynamics developed by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)." (as of March 6, 2006)
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Don't anthropomorphize climate change either. It really hates that.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'm not a solar physicist, and to the best of my knowledge, it doesn't significantly directly affect weather, unless you count the Aurora Borealis. In fact, they're not even sure sunspot numbers are a good predictor of solar activity.
What solar activity does, however, is things like screw up GPS and other systems that depend on radio signals, kill satellites, and damage the power grid. It can also affect flights that go over the poles, as they try to avoid those routes during high activity.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
"what the sun decides to do "
Please stop anthromorphising astonomical bodies. It just makes them angry.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Given that you say 18 years, not (for example) 21, and are on an English language website gives a good chance that you are British (there are plenty of other options, but it's a pretty good guess). Given that your username is "smoker2", there is a good chance you smoke. Since smoking is banned in British pubs, I am going to guess that you are *not* in the pub right now - you may, however, be sitting outside it.
The more sunspots the sun has, the hotter it gets.
Sorry, but we have a consensus of scientists to prove that the sun has NO effect on the Earths temperature. If the sun went cold overnight, the Earth would still be heating up due to global warming. The ONLY thing that affecting the Earths temperature is human activity. You need to keep up with Algore's speeches.
I drink for my liver thanks
I have to say that I tend to agree with Freeman Dyson and Richard Lindzen rather than Al Gore. And I think the majority of the corrupt money is definitely in the Global warming camp.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
I offer a third mode of existence for your soul after your body's death:
Cheeseballs.
Fucking Cheeseballs.
This message brought to you by the PAST: People Against Stupid Thoughts.
"Solar radiation is decreasing, and yet the Earth is still warming up."
Right because it works like a switch....
"People who deny global warming are the ones with ulterior motives"
Funny where did I deny global warming? I simply dont believe its entirely or even mostly anthropomorphic. The ones who sell movies promising a 20 foot rise in sea level by the year 2100 are the ones with an ulterior motive.
There is room to disagree and work towards a founded understanding. My problem is that we have seen temperature fluctuation's throughout human history (we have in human history had england under a glacier and england covered with vineyards). I dont think *everyone who buys whole sale into 'its the co2' has an ulterior motive, just the folks who play that up for publicity (Gore)...
Are their folks on the other side with ulterior motives? sure am I one of them? no..
Hmm?
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
And in the last 10 years that's started to reverse.
Program Intellivision!
If cooling is seen some how it will be chalked up to anthropomorphic climate change.
Well you know, all those fine particles migrating to the upper atmosphere, causing a "nuclear winter" like effect...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
And in the last 10 years that's started to reverse.
(This time with a working link.)
Program Intellivision!
and no matter how much data you have, you cannot predict nature.
Wanna bet?
I have very little data on you, yet I predict you will be dead within 100 years. Just because a particular branch of science is not yet completely understood doesn't mean you can extrapolate from that to generalize that scientists in general can't predict nature.
In fact, we're so good at predicting nature that now you expect it from us as a norm.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
..who originally thought this article was referring to Sun Microsystems? I mean, then I finished reading the summary, but jeesh that was confusing for a second.
Am I in the pub now ? Please, enlighten me.
No, but only because your wife doesn't let you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Maybe we'll get another little ice age! That would be, like, really *cool*.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Correction: I meant carbon, not CO2. These should be 7.33 billion tons of CO2, and 220 billion tons of CO2 respectively.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Global Darkening is actually a moderate problem, though it's actually caused by particulate pollutants in the atmosphere, not sunspots. The amount of light energy reaching the Earth over the last hundred years has been dropping slowly, until recently, when it started going up again -- as dirty pollution has been regulated and replaced with "cleaner" CO2 pollution.
There's a lot of concern among climatologists that global darkening has been masking the effects of global warming, and that as solar radiation on the surface goes up again, the effects of global warming might come upon us more severely and faster than our previous estimates.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
I believe the Sun was forced to file a 10K because of new Sarbox regulations. Thus the quiet period. The Moon has been asked to stop reflecting, but hasn't made their filing... could face a delisting notice.
Keeping an eye on a 870,000 mile wide ball of fusing hydrogen...
Didn't your mother ever tell you not to do that?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
This isn't just global darkening, it's the whole solar system! We need a Clinton!
The government can't save you.
Take a look at SpaceWeather.com.
And remember, there are all kinds of things in the world that you don't care about and don't have to, because somebody else is caring about it for you. Satellite operators and many other people largely take care of worrying about the sun for us. God bless 'em. Not a criticism, just something I find handy to remember.
I don't know, but your joke certainly caused personal warming, judging by the flamebait mod... which is like the third I've seen in this story alone.
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
So the answer to this "global warming" is obvious. Fire the EPA and let us drive cool Camaros and Firebirds again, and we'll start to get cooler. No biggie.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic field concentration that suppress local convection in the area, and are thus are relatively cooler and darker than the surrounding area.
...).
Sunspots correspond to the amount of magnetic activity, which is the major driving force behind activity (flares, CMEs, filament eruptions,
(I work in the field)
Sensationalism at its finest.
- The "talk" of a near-future Ice Age was from a few scientists and was not supported by the mainstream. Just like the "talk" today that there's no anthropogenic global warming.
- The most recent sunspot minimum (2005) coincided with the hottest year ever recorded for our planet! (Or second-hottest, depending on which set of numbers you use. Also, just to head you off at the pass, note that I mentioned the planet and not just the United States.)
- There is more than just "talk" of the ice caps melting. We just surpassed the previous minimum Arctic sea-ice records by more than 20%!! (Meanwhile, while the Antarctic sea-ice area reached a maximum, the total mass continues to decline.)
Of course, you probably know all this already. If not, and you'd like links for any of this, let me know.Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Wasn't the little ice age caused by the fresh water being dumped into the Atlantic when a glacier melted on North America? This stopped the gulf stream current which stopped bringing warm water to the northern hemisphere.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm not how accurate it is to state that the weird magnetic phenomenon has a significant impact on heat energy received from the sun. Earth's magnetism probably has little impact on the Sun producing sunspots as well.
Eternity is a time bomb.
Sorry, but we have a consensus of scientists to prove that the sun has NO effect on the Earths temperature. If the sun went cold overnight, the Earth would still be heating up due to global warming.
Please tell me you are being sarcastic...
Last time I check... Winter was caused by the angle of the planet. Meaning that the further away from the sun the colder the surface temp. Now if you want to talk about the core temp of the earth, then I suppose it would be possible that the sun has no effect.
But then, core temp has little to do with global warming.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
450 C to 480 C degrees is a *bit* warmer? I'd really hate to see what you think of as a lot warmer.
Q: How many days between this all-quiet alert and Sun changing its ticker symbol to JAVA?
A: 42!
It cannot be a coincidence that this magical number popped up here as well. The Sun needs some time to find itself before it decides what to do for the next quart^H^H^H^H^H solar cycle.
...Too quiet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And in the last 10 years that's started to reverse.
(This time with a working link.)
And global warming has increased even more in the last ten years.Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Actually, the sunspot history seem to tell a wholly different picture compared to the temperature history on Earth, so I would *really* not suggest making a notable connection here.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
just had to say that...
sig goes here!
Worrisome, isn't it? As Cecil pointed out, global dimming may have artificially slowed the apparent rate of global warming.
Program Intellivision!
Reminds me of the "everything is okay" alarm, invented by Homer Simpson :D
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Lighten up, Francis.
In these days when we wonder what can we do to reduce greenhouse gases and fight global warming, a little ice age can help.
;-)
Yet, we shouldn't forget the ice age won't last forever
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Thus, the solution to global warming will be to create a giant ball of garba^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H to spew lots of dirty pollution into the atmosphere, and let our descendants worry about cleaning it up!
I had a look earlier, and I could see plenty of spots.
IKYABWAI?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
So the sarcasm truck hit the dude and he was fine...but he was like wow what hit me? Then it backed up on him, luckily he was fine again but he still was confused as to what hit him.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
The poster before copy and pasted a Wikipedia page.
Obligatory blog plug: http://www.caseybanner.ca/
I, like everybody still living, am a potential immortal.
SteveM
Found one.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
Except that there has been no EVIDENCE produced in support of AGW. Sure, there is a hypothesis that rising CO2 levels will increase the earths temperature, and there is evidence that Humans do cause CO2 to be released, but as yet NO MODEL has been able to come even close to representing current conditions based on KNOWN historical data (say 1960's/1970's), with all models producing results well in excess of observed temperatures. This little piece of information SHOULD, in a person with a scientific background, trigger warning bells that maybe there is a problem with the whole AGW hypothesis, and that maybe it isn't a valid hypothesis to believe in (or at a minimum that it needs a LOT more work done on it).
Yet the southern hemisphere is not warming at anywhere near the rate of the Northern hemisphere...And measuring stations data has been selectively "tweaked" if it doesn't fit the warming pattern instead of trying to work out if maybe there's a problem with the stations that don't have their data tweaked (Urban Heat Island Effect for example?). It is strange how measuring stations away from towns, etc. haven't noticed much (if any) change in temperature, while those in towns do, don't you think?
But measurements of Arctic ice began in 1979 (from memory) while there are several records from the 1700's and 1800's of ships using the "north west passage"...Which was recently announced as having only just recently being done for the first time in history.
And of course, all of this is predicated on the assumption that there is a fixed, optimum global temperature, whereas it has been shown that human's (and the earth for that matter) actually thrive much better in warmer temperatures, and that an increase in the earths temperature from the current levels may actually be beneficial.
Having read material from both sides of the AGW arguement myself, I personally find the claims and supposed proofs in support of the AGW hypothesis to be lacking...
Of course, you probably know all this already.
Google says 500 billion feet. Assuming your feet are about a foot.
6 billion is actually pretty close to 50 billion. It's less than an order of magnitude.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Other, less-dusty schemes involve raising the albedo at ground level - painting buildings white, as a simple example (with the local benefits of lessening the urban heat-island effect and cutting cooling costs and fuel use). I thought this one in particular was the most interesting and creative application of environmental science I've encountered, and I'm surprised it's not better pursued, as it ought to be extremely practical, generally painless, and all but entirely uncontroversial. (It's not nearly as politically exciting as the "omg excesses of capitalism stabbitystabdiediedie" angle, though. And it's not as "interesting" as solar panels. And there are fewer special interests seeking subsidies for it...)
* Proposals in the scientific for-your-consideration "this could do something, so we've written a paper on it" sense, not so much the actual "let's go and do this" sense.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Actually, sunspots are cold! That is why they appear dark on a photograph. Solar flares on the other hand are *very* hot.
Anyways the sunspots are caused by a local irregularity in the magnetic field, and those irregularities become very small during a solar minimum, which is why there are no sunspots right now. The solar minimum is what makes the sun cold, not the lack of sunspots. During a solar maximum the magnetic field gets very "twisty" and there are lots of sunspots in addition to flares, mass ejections and so on.
As I understand a recent theory:
- Sunspots are associated with increased solar wind and coronal mass ejections,
- This improves the magnetic/plasma shielding of the earth from cosmic rays,
- Which reduces the nucleation of water droplets,
- Which reduces cloud cover,
- Which reduces reflection of sunlight,
and this reflection of sunlight totally swamps the minor change in the solar radiant output.
When the sun goes through a prolonged period of no sunspots the result is enough of an increase in reflection of sunlight to significantly drop the Earth's temperature.
If you compare the graph of sunspot numbers linked from the great-great-great-grandparent post to the wikipedia article on the "Little Ice Age" you'll see that the sunspots-went-away period from about 1650 to 1700 corresponds to the first - and drastically deepest - temperature drop. MAJOR global cooling - the temperature crash at the end of the medieval warm period which we've just recovered from.
Seems to me an "All Quiet Alert" is appropriate. This could be the start of some significant global cooling.
And that could be a problem. According to the orbit-based climate forcing models the peak of the last interglacial corresponded to the start of agriculture, and temperature should have begun a gradual but accelerating descent into the next ice age, which should have been moderately steep by now. Instead it pretty much leveled out (ignoring "minor" bumps like the two I just named and the recent upslope). If fossil-fuel greenhouse gasses are indeed holding back a downhill slide we could be in pretty sad shape in about four more centuries, when the fossil carbon runs out. And once that snow persists into summer it does a darned good job of reflecting sunlight, too.
Meanwhile, if we're going into a cold period and at the same time are cutting our carbon emissions in order to "stave off global warming" - with a resulting drastic hit on the economy - we could generate the scenario Niven and Pournelle described in _Angels Down_.
Bummer!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You sound like a fun guy. I bet you get invited to parties a lot.
I think they already tried this in California. The Earth-Mars redux would go something like this:
Day 1: launch rocket ship to Mars carrying all the Repugicans, conservatives, NRA members, NASCAR fans, and silly religious people.
Day 2: party!
Day 3: party!
Day 4: pass laws requiring gay marriage, banning gun ownership (who needs em anymore?), and legalizing recreational drugs.
Day 5: party!
Day 6: make law saying no one has to work over 8 hours a week. raise taxes on business in order to pay for educating alternative lifestyles to the world's children.
Day 65: people starving in the streets.
Day 100: rocket ship launched to Mars because Earth has turned into such a shithole.
California is in a slow crumble, so all the nanny-state do-gooders that fucked up the state are now spreading like a virus into the neighboring mountain states, in turn transforming local and state communities into the same Potempkin shitholes they are fleeing in California. Liberals are good for parties, but if you actually want to run shit and run it right, you need conservatives.
yes, but: higher sun activity WAS the biggest possible explanation besides global warming which could explain rising temperatures.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I'm assuming when you state that the 'sun is closer during the winter' that you're talking about Earth's orbital eccentricity (non-circular orbit) resulting in the entire planet being about 5 million kilometres closer to the sun during winter. Living in the northern or southern hemisphere would make no difference.
If however you're talking about Earth's rotatational axis then you might want to look at your facts again. Earth axial tilt is ~23degrees which during summer means the North pole is tilted towards the sun, resulting in the northern hemisphere being (on average) closer to the sun.
Wish there was a -1 slightly-wrong tag. Some posts just deserve it. [/joke - but you did ask for it!]
As an aside, just thought I'd mention that the eccentricity results in Earth being about 2 degrees cooler during perihelion (closest point during orbit).
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Ya see? The sun is obviously getting ready to retire. And when it retires, it will require more Social Security payments than any retiree in history cause it needs to pay for hydrogen, plus it didn't take early retirement like these lazy Baby Boomers.
I figured while all the conservatives were being retards and thinking their pony (no sunspots) had arrived to stop Al Gore from killing all the polar bears (global warming), we might as well get stoopid about other conservative boogeymen, like the impending Social Security crisis.
Of course, the sun is hiding Iraq's WMDs (where better to hide them than inside a giant nuclear explosion). And Al Gore invented the internet. Maybe when Mitt Romeny beats Hillary Clinton the Republicans can ask Mormom Jesus and his Indian friends to go kick the suns ass.
I'm assuming that since that all was stoopid and belligerent and pointless that it will be well received by all the conservatives.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
See?
Global warming is just nature's defense against the lack of solar activity.
Use those florocarbons, help keep the Earth warm while the sun is napping!
You (and everyone I have ever heard deny that the sun has anything to do with global warming) seem to assume that the only mechanism by which the sun can affect our climate is through its solar energy output. You (and everyone...) ignore the affects on our atmosphere due to solar weather. We know that our magnetosphere is shaped by the solar wind... solar wind is related to sunspot activity... how do you know that these effects on our magnetosphere (which have nothing to do with solar energy output) don't affect the Earth's albedo?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
> Day 1: launch rocket ship to Mars carrying all the Repugicans, conservatives,
> NRA members, NASCAR fans, and silly religious people.
Hey, you forgot about the hairdressers, middle-management, and cellphone virus cleaners.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
What we really need to do is to launch a satellite to survey this activity by the Sun.
We can call it the Solar Min, and repair it a few times while it's out there.
A little less scary if you will.In any case, during reversal the magnetic field does not go away, it only gets weaker and develops several more magnetic poles, at unpredictable locations.
Aaaand ... I was completely of the mark. I was thinking about the Sun doing a "magnetic flip", but apparently I'm a flop: her poles will reverse in 2012. Sorry.
It is my understanding that the actual sun spot is cold but the surounding areas are hotter because of something with the spot. This is why they are general considered hotter or the effects of a sun spot tend to increase the thermal output of the sun.
but this doesn't mention the solar wind and amounts of radiation that is presented from the sun and digested into the atmosphere. It can effect weather patters, has been linked to the souther pacific oscillation and the northern Atlantic oscillations (either directly or by the links between the souther pacific oscillation and the NAO). Both of which we know impact weather.
Anyways, back to point, It isn't the spot that we are worried about perse, it is the increased activity surounding the spot that is thought to be caused by the same process that creates the spot.
Oh shit, I think I just violated Godwin's law again. Oh well.
This alarm will sound every three seconds as long as everything is ok...
Hey, it stopped.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
No, I am drawing a link between the article and humor.
But isn't humor meant to be funny?
I've read some good back and forth on this from skimming the discussion so far. Yet I did not see this issue raised. Why is it that some people are so quick to draw definite conclusions from this? It doesn't take much brainpower to see that the original source is an online ideological cloister, desperately grasping at any pseudo-scientific straw they can use to prop up firm political convictions about empirical findings in the realm of climate science.
With one breath they insist the science behind anthropogenic global warming simply must be bogus, and with another they use two weeks of data about a much less well-understood complex of systems to make bold forecasts as to its long term behavior?!? This discussion also shows a number of instances where beliefs in matters of science are driven primarily by political passions. This unusual solar activity is a good subject for the daily dispatch, but surely it didn't need to be presented in context established by a blatant political hack on a personal crusade to "debunk" science that happens to establish an inconvenient truth and thus inspire negativity in him.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Incredule at first, I've just looked for five good minutes straight in the Sun without any filter. I can garantee you there are still a lot of dark spots !
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
And a very good one too!
Oops. Yeah, I didn't state that explicitly, I'd assumed it was implied on the basis of the OP's statement.
Although as a naive European northerner I associate December with christmas holidays, and christmas holidays with winter. I was in Hong Kong for christmas a few years ago - that was quite odd, christmas carols playing in the streets with 30degree heat.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
"Environmentalists responsible for global warming!"
Well, OK, the New York Times won't ever print it, but it is still true in that scenario. Makes you wonder what are current bunch of environmentalists are setting themselves up to be responsible for with all the various carbon management schemes they're planning.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Actually you have the effect backwards. The two equinoxes are when the sun appears to be over the equator. During the July the sun appears to be over the Tropic of Cancer in the northern hemisphere, which is why it is light all day in Alaska around the summer solstice, then the earth is approximately 152 million kilometers away. During the December the earth is approximately 147 million kilometers away and the sun is approximately over the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere.
Meaning the sun is further away when the northern hemisphere is facing it making entire earth colder when it is summer in the northern hemisphere and hotter on average when it is winter in the northern hemisphere. Hence the northern hemisphere is more temperate and the southern hemisphere has greater extremes.
http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/faculty/ritter/geog101/textbook/energy/earth_revolution_rotation.html
Unless of course you were referring to the grandparent post's phrasing which does seem a bit geocentric, perhaps he is American and afraid of being called a heretic for suggesting the earth rotates around the sun. Though you would have to be quite the grammar nazi if you're saying he should have phrased it "the earth is closer to the sun" as opposed to "the sun is closer."
You might want to rephrase that or look at the facts again.
I'm assuming when you state that the 'sun is closer during the winter' that you're talking about Earth's orbital eccentricity (non-circular orbit) resulting in the entire planet being about 5 million kilometres closer to the sun during winter. Living in the northern or southern hemisphere would make no difference.
It makes all the difference in (either half of) the world!
To be absolutely clear. The perhelion currently occurs around the begining of January. In the nothern hemisphere January is in winter, whereas in the southern hemisphere January is in summer. The Aphelion occurs around the begining of July. In the southern hemisphere July is in winter, whereas in the northern hemisphere July is in summer. Thus "[i]f you live in the northern hemisphere the sun is closer during the winter than during the summer." Conversely if you live in the southern hemisphere the sun is closer during summer than it is during winter. Can you now understand what the OP wrote, and why it is correct?
That being said, Earth's orbit is only slightly elliptical, so the difference (and climatic effects) between perhelion and aphelion is slight. By contrast the effects are significant on planets (eg. Mars) which have greater eccentricity.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Day 65: people starving in the streets.
If those 65 days were sufficiently fun I'd forfeit the rest of my life for them.
In actuality the "nanny-state" you refer to in California is far less than what the Europeans with their gang busters economy which is starting to look way way way better than ours since Bush took office. (Okay, can't blame Bush compeltely, the Europeans have their shit together and any President of the US would've had trouble keeping us on top. Unfortunately we had shit for brains in office and he didn't even try.)
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
Makes perfect sense. The less the sunspot activity, the less heat the sun puts out. So the less heat the earth receives. Yes the earth is still warming up. Geez, how dumb can you be.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
By disproved, do you mean our projections were all wrong, and it global warming is much worse than initially thought, as I just read on /. about 3 days ago? Not to get all "sciencey" on you, but I believe the dire news we just got also closely matches events in the fossil record as paleoclimatologists were the ones who discovered the very real and awful curve of losing arctic ice we are currently on.
I'm just waiting for Kevin Costner to grow gills.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
DAMN! And here I was dusting off my CB radio and SWR meter and now I find out that there'll be no damn sunspots!
I ain't gonna 10-4 no more!
Maybe I'll just slide my Truckers cassette into the rig's deck and sing along to them good old days!
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
More like: Remove the particle-filters on coal power-plants. ^_^
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
According to http://www.census.gov/ :
WORLD 2007 Total, all ages 6,602,236,753
According to http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~ramsey/People.html :
[...] one estimates that 96,100,000,000 people have lived on the earth.
The dead outnumber the living roughly 15 to 1.
So chances are you are already dead!
You can attach boosters to anything. It just costs more. -
Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, @12:26PM
So what you're saying is that Al Gore managed to get Ra involved in the fight against global warming ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
You got it all wrong! A naturally occuring anomaly in the sunspot number proves that the Earth's climate is not affected by the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere... or something...
I'm assuming when you state that the 'sun is closer during the winter' that you're talking about Earth's orbital eccentricity (non-circular orbit) resulting in the entire planet being about 5 million kilometres closer to the sun during winter. Living in the northern or southern hemisphere would make no difference.
Yes it would, seeing as winter occurs during different parts of the year in the different hemispheres.
Wish there was a -1 slightly-wrong tag. Some posts just deserve it. [/joke - but you did ask for it!]
Indeed.
Interestingly, the sunspot activity has flattened over the last decade, and latest figures show that the Earth's surface hasn't changed average temperature since 1998.
Go figure..!
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
I see you and raise you this:
If the polar ice caps on Mars have been getting smaller (or other planets observed as also warming) at the same time the Earth is warming, is Global Warming still the cause of humans?
Are Sun spots the only indicator of energy output from the Sun?Yet, we shouldn't forget the ice age won't last forever ;-)
That was my first thought when I read this: it's a new tactic by Big Oil to keep us addicted to fossil fuels, now that Big Al's propaganda campaign decided the climate change debate. They are aiming for a compromise: we must cut carbon emissions before 2200.
- There has been plenty of evidence to support AGW, both in terms of basic science and model validity. Ever since Svante Arrhenius, the basic science of how CO2 contributes to global temperatures has been known. More recently, studies have shown that predictions made from climate models of the 80s and 90s have largely borne out. Perhaps you're not familiar with these studies?
- The "tweaking" of measuring stations has been downward, not upward, (to account for the urban heat island effect) so it hasn't exactly been in an effort to "fit the warming pattern". And, yes, the Southern hemisphere is not warming as fast as the Northern hemisphere—just as the models predict.
- There have been no records of ships using the Northwest passage that did not involve either (a) overland passages, or (b) ice-breakers. If you'd like to prove me wrong, provide one such instance.
Do you disagree with any of this, or do I need to provide (additional) sources?Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The *Sun* has a *fever*!
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
He said the earth will be swallowed by the sun in the year 5.5/Apple/26 (5 Billion year in the future) and destroys the earth. He has lied. I propose we send him and his magical police box back to where they came from. Who needs a time lord anyway.
hm... maybe time to pull out the HF rig and give it another shot. I always seemed to hit peak solar activity and couldn't do any more than pick out a few CW beacons. Maybe if its quiet I'll be able to have better luck.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
This graph, so often waved in people's faces by individuals convinced of the dangerous crisis of global warming (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png correlates directly to this graph (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5c/Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg/800px-Carbon14_with_activity_labels.svg.png) which shows solar activity. (note reversed timescales)
So what's going to happen is that over the next 50 years solar activity is going to drop, global temps are going to drop, and the eco-marxists are all going to then claim that An Inconvenient Truth, Kyoto, and the global warming hysteria all caused people to change ENOUGH to avert the otherwise-certain global warming disaster.
Al Gore will be canonized in 2060.
-Styopa
Now, regarding that shit for brains currently in office, his influence over the economy is grossly overrated. He recommends a budget. Congress passes it (usually with lots of pork thrown in). That's it. He doesn't even control the Fed or monetary policy except by way of appointment. We aren't technically a socialist command economy (yet), but if we're in the business of blaming Bush for things he doesn't and can't control, we're going to be here a while. And anyway, Bush isn't a conservative. Especially when it comes to fiscal matters. He'd be one of the people partying down here while the crops rot in the field.
Of course the Sun affects global warming. Look into the Little Ice Age.
You missed at least one connection. The solar cycle affects both the solar wind and the Sun's UV output, which is a part of the solar energy output, so there is a correlation between the solar wind and solar radiation output. But environmental researchers do take these effects into account.
As for albedo effects, the magnetospheric plasma has little effect on the Earth's albedo. The total column density of the plasma in the magnetosphere is tiny compared to the column density of the atmosphere from the ionosphere down. People have done these sorts of calculations.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
You mean winter in the northern hemisphere?
Because, y'know, when it's winter in the southern hemisphere, the sun IS farther away due to the orbital eccentricity of the earth. The OP was right.
Because poster's point of view differs from the moderator's? That's not trolling.
Ah yes, I'll never forget the day my mother came to me and said, "YttriumOxide, it's very important that you never keep your eye on an eight hundred and seventy thousand mile wide ball of fusing hydrogen...".
The main reason I won't forget it is of course that measuring things in miles just seemed so quaint since I grew up with the metric system.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
...and the only cure is more cowmethane!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Yeah, I know. Some folks just don't have a sense of humor. :-(
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
No cause for panic, everybody. I checked, and it's still running just fine.
I submit the theory that you are simultaneously inside and outside of the pub, until you read my post. You will then collapse into a definite inside/outside pub state.
Because this state collapse must be physically and mentally very disorienting for you, you would definitely need a beer after such an experience. You would therefore head quickly to the nearest pub.
This suggests that you actually exist perpetually in an "inside pub" state, just at varying degrees of intoxication based on how often you click refresh.
Please reply and confirm your current state.
----- And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word...UNLESS.
Write <. And > will get you a ">"
Rethinking email
They thought things were going to stay the same, but it turns out that things are about to change.
Winkydink Wrote: >No, I am drawing a link between the article and humor. Try and keep up.. Okay Winkydink. It helps when the humor is funny though.. Sunspots may have some indirect relationship with global warming, but not through accumulation of greenhouse gasses. There is a possible effect, by no means proven that sunspot activity isrelated to solar output. This is based on the so called Maunder minimum, that occured during the little ice age OL.
Why is this even on SlashDot?... Why is this even on Slashdot?...Why is this even on Slashdot?
I thought for a moment it was a remote exploit for Solaris, or a breach in the containers ... It's good to see it's just the Sun
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
Er, megadittos?
I read an interesting article called Reading the Sun Spots that discusses sun spots and climate change.
The article makes the point that:
In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.So what is the missing piece? Either it is human activity or something these researchers found (or both):
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.So they say based on mud core samples and other research that the increase in the solar activity isn't sufficient to cause the temperature increases we are experiencing, but if you add in the blocking effect of the cloud-forming radiation, then that does provide sufficient increase. An interesting note though is if this is correct about cloud formations not occurring as regularly during high sunspot activity, that could explain some of the drought conditions plaguing the world.
The really interesting point of the article is that if this proves out then by 2020 we are looking at a cooling period because with the decrease in sun spot activity not only will the Sun's heat drop, but the shielding effect of the solar winds will diminish, allowing increased cloud cover which will increase cooling.
This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age.So now the question is, will human activity make up for the variation and continue the warming trend, staving off another Little Ice Age or will the world cool?
For those of you old enough to remember, the 1970's environmental concern was the coming ice age, so here we are again.
So you spent 3/7ths of you time in pubs for 20 years and 0% of your time in pubs for 18 years. Piece of cake:
(3/7 * 20 + 0 * 18) / (18+20) = 0.226
I predict that you are not in a pub. It's not a bad prediction. Even without accounting for the change in your pattern that occurred when you reached 18, I'd still be right more than I was wrong on any random selected day.
Actually, you revealed one other important fact that makes it even clearer:
You went only on weekends, so you spent 0% of your weekdays in a pub for 18 years and 0% of your weekdays in a pub for 20 years. Today is Wednesday (you posted on Tuesday):
(0* 20 + 0 * 18) / (18+20) = 0
So I'm pretty darn confident you're not in a pub.
I could go a step further and use the number of days as a sample size to establish a confidence interval, but that's just obsessive. Of course, you could always make a conscious decision to prove me wrong, something the sun can't do. That's a rather important dependent variable.
It's a lot easier to prove a positive than a negative. In fact, the negative that you're asking me to prove cannot possibly be proven. Where in the world did you come up with your 100% positive evidence? That's not science, that's equivocating. Nothing is ever 100% positive in science. However, the preponderance of evidence suggests that no one was able to accomplish this feat in the last several hundred years. (If they did, it seems logical to assume that it would have been written about and that we'd still have those records. Sorry, no 100% certainty in that.)
On the other hand, if you're actually interested in science (and I'm skeptical that you are), there is a new method that has been developed to evaluate how much Arctic sea ice has been around in prehistoric eras. (By prehistoric, I mean in the literal sense - prior to written history in the region. I don't necessarily mean thousands of years ago.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
The sun is just sitting there, fusionin'. It's not like it will suddenly decide to take a shot at the wild side and break some laws of physics tomorrow.
Don't know why you were rated informative instead of funny. Is the age limit to enter pubs is 18 in your country?
I lost my sig.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
With regards to point 1:
Could you provide a reference to those studies...I haven't heard yet of a model taking data from the 1960's
With regards to point 2:
The tweaking may not be doing what it should be doing in that case. For example:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1943
If the average values for these were taken into account, it would cause a skewing of the data. Strangely, the one relatively constant graph is from a rural area, while the other 5 are from areas that have rapidly urbanised...The one without urban heat island effect(UHIE) doesn't match global warming "predictions", while the others do. As such, it would seem prudent to consider that the AGW hypothesis may be based on the mistaken assumption that UHIE doesn't alter reading much.
In addition, with the GISS modelling, there are a number of recording stations that are duplicated, while others are ignored...This will also skew the data don't you think?
With regards to point 3:
Roald Amundson 1872 - 1928
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northpole2001/explorers.shtml
http://hnsa.org/ships/stroch.htm
Additionally:
These are extracts from a letter by the President of the Royal Society to the British Admiralty, recommending they send a ship to the Arctic to investigate the dramatic ice reduction - in 1817. (Ref; Royal Society, London. Nov. 20, 1817. Minutes of Council, Vol. 8. pp.149-153.)
As such, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that ice levels in the Arctic region are at record lows...
I hope that is of interest to you.
It's from 1990, not the 60s or 70s, but here's one such evaluation. (If you're unable to access that on-line, it's from the 2007 February issue of Science, and titled "Recent Climate Observations Compared to Projections".)
With regards to point #2, I don't know enough about the actual data to know what is the best way to include the data. I am familiar with the need to do weighted analysis when some areas are more sparsely covered than others. I'm also familiar enough with climate audit's site to take anything they say with a grain of salt.
As for point #3, you'll note that I stipulated without using overground routes (as Amundson did) or ice-breakers. I suppose St. Roch's trip meets those criteria, but you'll note that the Northwest Passage was never completely open during that time period. Each year a slightly different region would melt which is why it took him 3 summers to make the trip! This year, the trip was made in a single summer without the use of icebreakers. (It's been made in a single summer in the past, too, but that was with icebreakers.)
Your last bit is extremely interesting. I'm still fairly certain that we're at record lows (after all, didn't they explore that region after the letter, and if so, wouldn't they have reported back that the Northwest Passage was open if it was?), but I'll admit you've introduced reasonable doubt.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Sorry, I couldn't get to the article.
However from what I could tell from the abstract it doesn't seem to cover my point. The problem I have with the models is that they talk about how, based on the levels of CO2, etc in the atmosphere today, the future (say 20-30 years) is going to have temperatures of X degrees. However, if you were to put in the equivalent data from 20-30 years ago, the results don't match (or in many cases come close) to current observed temperatures.
With regards to the climate Audit web site, in this case I wasn't really interested in the analysis (other than the mention of the location of the measuring stations), and as far as I can tell the data for the graphs has not been "altered". I'm generally fairly sceptical with claims from both sides (real climate is another site I take "analysis" from with a grain of salt).
As to the "north west passage", from what I can understand, the levels being measured are being measured by satellite. However, as these measurements started in 1979, there's not really enough recordings to say this is unprecedented. Additionally, should 1979 be the starting point, it does happen to appear towards the end of a time of lower than average temperatures, so that would also potentially skew the results.
And yes, I had noted the reference to overland routes...I just hadn't had a chance to clarify the method of travel used.
I'm really impressed by your "science and math and evidence and stuff", but where in that PDF does it say that doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere doesn't also affect the climate? Is it maybe that "English and reading comprehension and stuff" has taken a back seat position in your debating efforts?
You seem appropriately skeptical. I'd agree that (depending on what you mean by "analysis") the RealClimate site also demonstrates a fair degree of bias beyond just what the facts dictate. Most recently, their analysis of the judge's ruling of An Inconvenient Truth bear that out. I trust their facts completely, but not always their interpretation of those facts. Or rather, I see the spin that resides in their interpretation. ClimateAudit, on the other hand, I don't always trust with even the facts.
You're right that we can't compare apples with apples on the Northwest Passage beyond 1979. However, if this trend continues (as most climatologists believe it will), it will be very hard to deny the unique nature of the modern climate in another 10-20 years. What I mean by that is that, from 1979 to 2006, the Arctic sea-ice extent has dropped by an average of 100,000 sq km per year. That's averaged over the entire 27 year period. In 2007, it dropped by 1,200,000 sq km, or 12 times the average rate. (If you include this new melt into the total melt since 1979, by my calculations the new average melt is 140,000 sq km per year. Of course, this also highlights the newness of satellite data.) Now, everyone is saying that's an anomaly, but it still seems logical (to me, at least) to expect that the rate of melt has sped up. If we split the difference between 2005 and 2007's record minima (to get 4,730,000 sq km) and assume that the melting now is 200,000 sq km (all of these assumptions made up by me), then in 24 years (2031) the Arctic will be completely* free of sea ice in the summer. Of course, the longer we wait to act, the more expensive it will be to act.
*I need to qualify "completely". A location is considered to be ice-free if there is less than 15% ice in that location. Per NSIDC: "In the calculation of ice extent, we simply sum up the area of grid cells that have an ice concentration of at least 15%." Note, this is the same measure being used from 1979 up to the present. Also, in looking further at the data, my assumption about 200,000 sq km per year is arguably unjustified, although at least one climatologist has stated he would no longer be surprised if the Arctic ocean were completely ice free by 2030. (Naturally, saying "not surprised if" and "expecting it" are two different things.)
Ben Hocking
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