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Of Late, Fewer Sunspots Than Usual
esocid writes "The sun has been laying low for the past couple of years, producing no sunspots and giving a break to satellites. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun, but this period has gone on longer than usual. The sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, with the next cycle just beginning and expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why. In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700." (More below.)
esocid continues: "The Hinode, a Japanese satellite mission with the US and UK as partners, has three telescopes that together show how changes on the sun's surface spread through the solar atmosphere. It orbits 431 miles (694 km) above the Earth, crossing both poles and making one lap every 95 minutes, giving Hinode an uninterrupted view of the sun for several months out of the year. Scientists are not extremely worried, but have added extra ground stations in case of interference from extra solar activity, and are ready for the Sun to resume its activity." (The Little Ice Age is fascinating, full stop.)
it's obvious why -- climate change and solar warming! we need legislation to fix this problem.
[move
a little spotty?
I can confirm that after looking at the sun I too have come to conclusion that the spots must all be hiding on the other side. (I did not see any spots or anything after)
...Larry Niven's Fallen Angels. Basic back story was that global warming was corrected, but it was the only thing holding back the next ice age. Not a bad supposition for a 17-year old novel. Pretty fun read with some decent science, as well.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
and we are still seeing global warming effects at a greater rate than expected, what will happen when the sun becomes active again ?
Apparently, no spotting at all. Word is the sun is tremendously worried and was seen at CVS in the pregnancy test section.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
Now it is just hiding.
While you probably don't agree with most of his stances on the myriad issues, his position on global warming is spot on. Even if all the hullaballoo surrounding whether humans are the primary cause of global climate change or not, if we take actions now to stem wholesale dumping of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, whether it turns out that we have a huge impact on the global ecosystem or not, at least the world we leave behind will be cleaner and more hospitable for our children and future generations.
With new data pointing to a possible solar cause to global climate change, it does not change the fact that sucking up all the available fuels and dumping CO2 into the atomsphere is making the world a worse place to live.
Hopefully we can make the right changes whether or not the science backs us up.
check figure 4 here.
I blame the Mayans and their stupid calender!!
What happens when an asteroid hits the sun? Does it splash? Or does it vaporize before it hits the sun?
I've read that sunspots are caused by the sun's internal magnetic field, how do we measure it?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
No discernible warming since 2000? Then this article from NASA must be all wrong then. Thanks for letting us know! *rolleyes*
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
It's actually a 22 year cycle because every 11 years the sunspots have a different polarity of the magnetic field associated with each pair of spots.
Even if that were true, which it isn't, one would expect *cooling* during this half of the cycle.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
are you sure we can't blame this on bush????
...and expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012 Causing the apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar, no doubt.Your brain is not a computer.
The sun is dying! Quick, we need more greenhouse gases!
Surprised that nobody has yet linked this to the Mayan 2012 prophecy, in which The world will end on Dec 21, 2012... I'm not a big believer in apocalypse prophecies, I think it's just one of Man's primal fears and along with death, probably one of the reasons religions were created.
Procrastinators, Unite Tomorrow!!
So what you're saying is that with the sun at a low point, the fact that we have not lost overall tempature here is evidence *against* global warming?
I am stunned
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
isn't that when the mayan calendar is supposed to end?
http://skepdic.com/maya.html
so the sun is just preparing to shut down, for the coming end of the world, of course
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In the article I havent found anything that says what will happen to the solar system if the trend continues like it started.
I am no expert on this field and I am interested in some expert explaining the effect of this trend.[insert lame sig here]
In an age where we are more and more dependent on electronics, radio (e.g. mobile phones), and satellite radio services (e.g. GPS), it is an incredible fluke that we are not being unduly affected by the sun's radiation.
Though I'm glad the threat of solar flares and radiation is being taken seriously (e.g. NASA's STEREO project) I do wonder if at least some of the technology we thrive under won't fail miserably when the next solar maximum takes place?
Stunned by the brilliant post or the brilliant slashdot community that promoted the post to Score:4 ?
A few hundred years ago William Herschel was able to notice the inverse relationship between sunspots and the price of wheat.
http://www.hao.ucar.edu/Public/education/bios/herschel.html
I find it amazing that this relationship (sun spots vs agricultural output) is dismissed so easily by the current anti-CO2 crowd. I am all for eliminating pollution but I am very worried that the focus on CO2 is completely wrong and is doing a great disservice to humanity.
CO2 is the breath of life.
_GP_
Jerks.
uhh; if the sun has not been producing spots AND the temperature has not been DECREASING then global warming is in fact a very real phenomenon and actually exceeds the ability of a process that previously created an ICE age to have any effect on it.
In other words this indicates that global warming is real, and explains the lack of temperature climb in previous years, the temperature is not climbing because all of the greenhouse gases are currently countering the heat loss from lack of sunspots, it also means things are much worse then the pragmatists say (but still likely not worse then what the doomsayers say)- because once the sun does start producing spots again the temperature is going to climb suddenly.
However it also means that we, humanity, us; have a reprieve- if we can fix this before the sun starts spotting again then we can avert the worst disasters that global warming might bring.
No discernable warming since 2000? And this gets labeled informative? Sorry, but you can't just make up arguments. 2005 is the warmest year on record since records started being kept. In fact every one of the 7 years since 2000 is in the top 8 warmest years on record (NOAA data), and there is an obvious pattern of warming over that period as well. So sorry, you don't even have correlation, let alone causation.
I came here for a good argument
No discernible warming since 2000? Then this article from NASA [nasa.gov] must be all wrong then. Thanks for letting us know! *rolleyes
The source isn't credible, because it's James Hansen, whose pretty plugged into the global warming scene. He has a lot of shoddy fortran code to stick up for.
Better comparison is look at the IPCC forecasts versus today, and you'll see that the planet hasn't actually warmed.
This is my sig.
...to spend their time sunspotspotting.
Great job. Where do I sign?
I speak England very best
I think your comment was right on the spot.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
You mean like these graphs from the IPCC which show an increase in global temperatures from 2000 to 2007?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Sorry, Jupiter is experiencing warming near the EQUATOR, not the poles like I erroneously posted in the above post.
Great this is how the world ends not with a bang but without sunspots. Enter dramatic music and dramatic gopher.
Guess we need to get ready to pump up the greenhouse gasses to compensate.
No Sun, that's a BAD Sun!
please people, please, do not go into the CVS unless the change is major enough to warrant the attention. every little class tweak is not Changelog-worthy. There are a lot of eyes reading this CVS, and we don't want to be too verbose. And as for pregnancy...
wait, what?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I hate to tell you this, but seeing as the temperature in 1998 is still the warmest year on record, that doesn't indicate warming. Worst case it indicates no change for the past decade. Furthermore, this goes counter to what the majority of the climate models have predicted: that the world would continue to warm almost exponentially. Personally, I find it amusing that 'global warming' has officially been replaced with 'climate change' for this very reason, yet people still try to defend global warming.
Just google "Vallejo bankrupt" when you get a chance to get a glimpse at how well legislating economic nonsense works out in the long run.
Clearly some very mean people are not paying their fair share!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Oh gee, I don't know, maybe the end of the little ice age? It only makes sense that seeing as the world was much colder than normal 150+ year ago, that the last hundred or so years would see some noticeable warming.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Especially illustrative is the butterfly diagram:
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
There is indeed a relatively unusual lull in sunspots, but not too different from, say, the situation around 1900.
You throw out the data for 1992, following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo.
Obviously, the answer to global warming is a system of manually operated volcanos. Any public-spirited supervillians reading out there?
1. Group A declares GLOBAL WARMING (and soylent green) comes from PEOPLE
2. Group B declares Nuh-uh! Not it doesn't!
3. World expends great effort in reducing human contribution, reducing warming by (a little bit)
4. Natural warming/cooling cycles shift, reducing warming by (a lot)
5. Earth cools due to natural cycle before effects of #3 really kick in.
6. Group A declares GLOBAL COOLING also came from human behavior. See! Told You So! Our efforts worked! We should do more of #3!
7. Group B says zOMG! The earth is cooling! Build more SUVs! Save the planet! Save the tropical fish from extinction!
8. The current arguments continue
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Both
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
So, let me see if I understand. The UNUSUAL lack of sunspots coinsides with a LACK OF WARMING, and your conclusion is that the prior warming is caused not by CO2, but by the USUAL prior sunspot activity? I guess people really do see what they want to see, and not what is there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
NASA disagrees with Wikipedia then. They changed their mind on this and now think that 1934 was the warmest year on record. Something about that NOAA data not necessarily being very accurate... http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2007/08/1998_no_longer_the_hottest_yea.html
And those few who actually are climatologists, like Mr. Hanson, know that they are lying. The facts are plain. There has been no warming (except where they move thermometers to hang over asphalt parking lots), and now there is cooling, in sync with the sunspot minimum in progress, and the Pacific Decadal Occilation. 31,000 climatologists, climate scientists and other scientists just signed a petition against the 1900 IPCC sociologists and a handful of scientists getting their grant money from promoting warming alarmism. The ice sheets are getting thicker, too. You are sooo easily deceived. Would you happen to be interested in buying a bridge? Or male enhancement pills?
You mean like these graphs from the IPCC
I was thinking more like the snow in China, and the hurricane season that hasn't happened in 4 years. But oh, we're going to get more hurricanes, any day now.
I mean by satellites operated without AGW funding on the line. NASA keeps changing its historical data, as do other people.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/
But really, the prediction is pretty simple. For the last six months, the earth's temperature has fallen, according to satellite measurements.
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_1.txt
The reason given for this in AGW circles is the recently ended LaNina. If temperatures continue to fall, then, AGW theories won't stack up.
But the main point is this: I've not seen a single climate (as in non-weather event), that justifies the amount of money proposed be spent on AGW. Just give me one predicted event... and I'll see you a snow in Iraq.
This is my sig.
In addition to the long-term overall global warming trend, there is also natural variability in global temperatures. It just so happens that due to that variability, 1998 was an unusually warm year. You may as well point to records that the stock market hit in 2000 and claim that it's impossible to make money on stocks now, as they have not been increasing in eight years. I still have nearly all my money in the stock market, because I understand that over the long term, they will increase in value far faster than other investments. Similarly, the Earth is getting warming over the long term, despite 1998 being the warmest year on record.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Don't let facts get in the way. Global warming can't be real because the Republicans say so. Science, law, reality, logic and previous statements Republicans have made that contradict the present positions are all just part of the liberal bias of reality.
Actually, the warmest year on record is 2007 (See this NASA site which includes a table of the top ten warmest temperatures. 1998 is tied for second place with 2005.
.But, it is good that you mention 1998. It was an anomalously high temperature year that skewed the temperature trend line going into the 21st century, giving rise to conservative climate change deniers assertions that temperatures have been declining in recent years. They have not.
At least, that's how the Globe might cover it.
So this indicates that human attempts at greenhouse gas control are effectively equivalent in impact to tossing deck chairs off the Titanic to slow the rate of sinking. Hubris, anyone?
Invenio via vel creo
"Second, while the warming of Jupiter can be explained by increases in solar output, the warming of Earth can not. Do you honestly think climate scientists don't take this into account?"
You mean climate scientists like Svensmark who have proven a direct correlation between cosmic radiation, cloud cover, and the temperature of the earth?
I don't know who these 'climate scientists' who say otherwise are, but most of the ones I see express opinions are not scientists, but either journalists or populistic politicians. The IPCCs report is a minority opinion that was HEAVILY censored before release.
CO2 is a crock.
I have spoken'eth.
I can see the increase in global mean temperature from 2000 to 2007 is not as steep as in the 1990s, but it's not flat. From 2000 to 2007, it went up 0.1 degrees Celsius. It's not as much as the 0.2 degree increase from 1990 to 2000, but it's not "flat" by any means. Are you looking at the correct graph?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I came here for a good argument
It due to those damn Americans and their SUV's that solely caused global warming -and- by relation the are to blame for the diminishing sunspots.
During summer in the Northern hemisphere, the Earth is farther from the sun due to its elliptical orbit. Of course it's been getting colder during the period that the Earth is getting farther from the sun. Try looking at the long-term trend of global temperatures, say, over the past twenty years. I think you'll see temperatures have been increasing.
.xxx degrees above or below "normal".
The anomaly figures I gave you already take seasonal variances into consideration. So, you would read the FTP link as
The planet has been getting colder over the last six months, of that, there is no doubt. Even the IPCC graphs and the NASA graphs are starting to show a downward trend at the very end, at this point.
But, that could be a "weather" thing and if the AGW people are right, temps should start moving back upwards. If they do, you are right. Hurrah, let's go blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages. But, if they do continue to go down, they do so against every prediction made by every computer model.
the problem with the sunspot people is, they don't have a model yet... they say, "oh lack of sunspots makes temperature go down', but no one has been able to find a physical mechanism. (outside from some controversial danish studies on cosmic rays and cloud formation).. but, if the temperature keeps going down, that means the AGW CO2 based computer models are wrong. So, yeah, its a pretty simple bet. Up or down. The science is not set in stone.
This is my sig.
Yes, it actually is wrong.
:p
Here's one explanation why, but you can probably find countless others if you tried http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/
First, any warming cooling trend within the last 8 years has not been statistically significant enough to actually say anything conclusive.
Second, measuring global temperature is not based on an accurate and well defined methodology - it's measured in different ways and guesstimated to a significant degree.
Third, I not only roll my eyes at you one sided opinionated people, I now also thumb my nose at you
We can all sit here and guess based on how we would like the facts to be, but fact is we actually know very little about it.
I have spoken'eth.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0804_050804_hurricanewarming.html
The great Flying Spaghetti Monster feels the "sauce" on the planet is getting a little too hot, and reached out with his noodly appendage has lowered the heat for us all. All hail his Al Dente-ness!.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
im starting to believe mayans were right.
Read radical news here
My jeep polluted and made the sun die :'(....
While you are looking around for the missing Sunspots, let us know if you find any of the Sun's Neutrinos. I hear they lost a bunch and cannot find them.
It's the spin! The stars are the next to go. Robert Charles Wilson warned us about this!
Blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages? Can you say straw man? Say it with me... straw... man. Straw man. Wasn't that easy? Now go look it up.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I bet Jupiter is just laughing at all of this right about now. ...that would be Uranus.
Heh. No, dearie. That was my satire at people who treat it as some kind of fucked-up religion. The moment you go some variant of "OMG, you're not worthy to question The Great Scientists", you're not about science any more.
Get this: you don't need anyone's seal of approval to use your own head. Einstein was a nobody working as a patent office clerk, when he thought he could do better than the great Lorentz. Galileo was a nobody to question the great scientists of the Aristotelian establishment. Etc.
There is _nothing_ that's sacrosanct and beyond questioning, no matter what Great Man said it. Even if he's a scirentist. In fact, _especially_ if he's a scientist.
Now I'm not saying that you or I are as smart as Einstein but the principle remains the same. Capisci? Attitudes like, basically, "OMG, don't even try to question The Scientists, you're not worth it," have _nothing_ to do with _science_. That's how religion works, not science.
Science works more like, "Ok, let's see your data."
And in a nutshell _that_ is what ticks me off about the carbon cultists. That fucked up attitude that there's only one Truth, some High Priests... err... "Scientists" hand it down as some sacrosanct beyond-questioning Holy Truth, and you're not worthy to question Them. And everyone is the Enemy if they even try to think about it on their own. That's _not_ science. That's religion in pseudo-science garb.
Regardless of whether the scientists studying that are right or right, and they probably are are real scientists... the gang of rabid eco-zealots waging holy crusade in their name, are not. They just perverted that science into some weird kind of religion.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, but on the other hand you could describe the early adopters as "hasty," too. It all depends on what the precise right time to jump on the bandwagon is, isn't it?
I'm OK with a President who is inherently cautious, who doesn't suggest certain threats are "imminent" until they damn well are, and who is more reluctant than recent Presidents to propose radical restrictions on our freedoms to address such "imminent" threats.
I mean, it's not like we need the President on board to be doing something, is it? It's not like the rest of us can't be reducing CO2 emissions all on our own -- driving less, saving energy, turning out the lights and turning up the thermostat -- if we choose to do so.
Personally, I am not saying the IPCC is wrong, but when your whole organizations existence relies on climate change actually occurring, I think some bias probably is guaranteed in their numbers...
Also, if you want me to produce some graphs that show that global temperatures have gone to 0C, I can certainly do that for you. Data can be made to look anyway you want, but with La Nina currently on the upswing, there is little disagreement that global temps are falling. At least in the short term, but no one has a clue what will happen in the medium term...
This may seem like, 'no big deal'. But the amateur radio community needs sun spots to give us good ionospheric propagation.
Blow 45 trillion dollars and knock the temp down 1/10th of a degree by living in the stone ages? Can you say straw man?
Ah, if it only were a straw man....
International Energy Agency Report
Now, if we blow through this money, and knock our emissions down, we still wind up with a CO2 level STILL HIGHER THAN TODAY.
http://ucsaction.org/campaign/3_6_07_sanders_waxman_climate_bills/explanation
Meaning that, we will spend 45 trillion dollars to basically get today's weather.
Now, let's consider what this means. It means we have to use 1/5th of the energy we presently use now. By any conceivable measure, modern society places the wealth of a society based on how much energy it can consume. All things being equal, spending money to get the same or less of an effect will make people poorer. I mean, in a perfect world, where oil just poured out of a big new 100 billion barrel find in Montana and we didn't have to do anything about AGW, we could take that 45 trillion and feed the world, cure AIDs, build a base on Mars, and still have enough money to invade Iraq 20 times over. It's a lot of money to basically make us poorer.
We might have to do it, after all. But, let's call this for what it is. Because of climate change, humanity is about to become a whole lot poorer.
This is my sig.
I was an active ham back in college - about 1998. 20 meters was great back then. But I moved into a series of apartments where I couldn't put up an antenna, and the Internet came along, so I let it slide. Recently, my wife sort of convinced me to take the hobby back up again (probably to take some of my time away from Poker), and now that I'm back on the air.... the Sun isn't cooperating. :(
But that's ok. At least we're on the upswing rather than the downswing.
Yes... It is called day and night... :)
Although these cycles average at 11 years (actually 11.1), they vary markedly between approximately 9 and 14 years. So while this one is running longer than average it's going to be another 18 months or so before it's really unusual.
On a related note the period of 'no sunspots' is referred to as the Maunder Minimum, though it should be noted that there were still sunspots, and the cycles did continue, just at a greatly reduced intensity.
Note: I do not look at the sun directly, nor do I play someone who does so on TV.
Yes, IPPC was censored. All there recommendations were toned down by politicians. IPPC scenario are generally called "best case scenario". They are already being revised up.
And yes, you must be right because you say so. All of IPPC knows nothing about climate. I mean, it is only their damn *JOB* to know.
What are you nutters going to say next? Oh wait! I know,
* year 2002 => "There is no global warming! There is no record more than few years and people can't be trusted with their thermometers."
* year 2007 => "Global warming is from the sun only!! We have direct evidence from Mars and Jupiter and Uranus that they are warming too. We must trust all those "direct" evidence!!" (they couldn't trust local thermometers before and suddenly they embrace temperatures on Mars????? - that's some baseline there!)
* year 2008 => "There is no global warming! There is a global cooling!!! See sun spots!! And if there is warming, see 2007!!"
Side note by anti-reality crackpots: "People who's JOB is to study these things, obviously are stupid and incompetent. And the 99%+ agreement means the http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/distortions.htm
So, who are the people that deny reality? Same people that finished off the passenger pigeon - the once most abundant bird in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon
"In 1896, the final flock of 250,000 were killed by American sportsmen knowing that it was the last flock of that size"
But hey, at least these people felt good at a time!
Fight on in spite of reality!
A lot of good that will do when all it takes is one asteroid or super volcano to make your children extinct.
Exactly why every cent to be devoted to "fixing" global warming should be devoted to space exploration instead. Then it doesn't matter who the planet is destroyed by, if indeed that is the course it is on by fate or chance or purpose - and we know we can go into space, we don't necessarily know we can "fix" global warming or the best way to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Huricane frequency isn't all that connected with global warming, hurricane intensity is what should increase.
That hasn't happened either. I work in hurricane insurance software, and it just hasn't happened.
This is my sig.
somebody already linked it to mayan
Apocalypse, well let us look at the small history of apocalypses, I mean that as if they all failed up to now and don't let us get started on the fact that the mayan calendar don't predict any apocalypse , it is simply a digit-end in their calendar (a bit like 999 to 1000... Oh , wait, many people went crazy at that time too. Funny.) mayan which could not even predict their own end by the way.
So yes, you are right, this is a play on man's primal fear. Move along. nothing to see here. Except the crazy as usual.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Or do you mean these graphs of the UAH and RSS satellites showing net global temperature actually decreasing over the past 10 years and how NASA's methodology is flawed?
Congratulations, the IPCC, UCS, and Al Gore have finally figured out another way to use you all as tools. GFG.
If I recall correctly, Jupiter produces far more heat than it absorbs from the sun, and any increase in heat is more likely to be due to an increased period of activity on Jupiter rather than the Sun.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Man! Part of the post was somehow erased when submitting!! Thank you slashdot for not quoting >
The part that was erased was regarding Rutherford model of the atom - nucleus with electron cloud. In first half of 1900s, some physics still believed the atom model was not as described by Rutherford's *direct* measurements in his alpha scattering experiments. So, about 1% of physicists did not agree - does that mean there wasn't consensus about the model??
This is exactly the same with current view of global warming by the denial crowd - and media is even playing into their hands! They take one person from the mainstream and put them in a "debate" against some crackpot from the tiny minority.
If media wants to be fair about discussions about Holocaust, (for example), and if they want to discuss it why not put some KKK extremist on the other side to debate?? That would rightly be never tolerated! So why is it tolerated with respect to established science?
The bottom line is people want to distort reality to feed good. That's why there is the denial culture that is prevalent in the mainstream (NOT in science community!).
http://www.emotionalcompetency.com/distortions.htm
Don't really care if the rocks are uncomfortable. Presumably there is a narrow band that 'life as we know it' exists within. 0K..270K really doesn't matter, we'd all be dead. Suppose the narrow band is in the range 290K .. 310K. Then 1K is ~5%. Thats a bit more troubling. What is the actual range?
Second, I think part of the issue is about distribution - head in the oven, feet in the fire - and all that. Although, the feet in the SUV, head up the ass seems more popular...
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
And now the source of the problem is revealed:
The sun is suffering from gender identity issues. Someone needs to take him aside and quietly explain to him that guys do not get knocked up. This lack of spots is just an indication that his acne is finally going away. Of course, that means he will probably be leaving home soon - and won't that mess up our planet's energy balance.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
Even NASA's data seems to disagree with you. We had twice your number since 1970 alone. Go figure. A 0.05% increase per decade, over a century, is 0.5%. (And over 150 years, it's 0.75%.) Now it doesn't go the full 1.2% we'd need to explain the Global Warming (unless it went up as a different rate before), but it almost halves the effect we can blame ourselves for.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Meaning, it is speculated that when you have less solar activity, it leads to more lower cloud cover.
And a tiny change in cloud cover means a BIG change in temperature. They reflect a lot of incoming solar heat - in the form of light in the short infrared through ultraviolet portion of the spectrum - back out before it has a chance to be absorbed, re-radiated in the long infrared, and trapped by the greenhouse gases.
So if:
- lower sunspots are associated with
- lower solar wind and solar magnetic field, which
- reduces deflection of cosmic rays, which then
- create more ions in the air, thus
- nucleating more condensation, leading to
- clouds forming sooner and more densely, thus
- reflecting more sunlight
you can see a large change in temperature in rather short order, even if the solar surface temperature and the resulting incoming solar heat and light (above the atmosphere) doesn't change at all.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Apparently, no spotting at all. Word is the sun is tremendously worried and was seen at CVS in the pregnancy test section.
Actually it just got hold of some benzoyl peroxide. It's ecstatic that its acne has finally cleared up.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, google reveals that it is 0 scientists, 0 of whom have PhDs. The sources I read includes a petition from Edward Teller, who has been dead for quite some time. Do you have a source that isn't a joke?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
could fill a proverbial thimble.
The changes we're witnessing (Solar activity, climate change here and on other bodies) are very likely related, but we don't have the proof or experience yet to determine that, or what the ultimate result will be.
Lets face it. We know next to nothing about how Sol works and cycles. We've been paying attention for, maybe, 400 years. The longest running cycle we've noticed is ~ 22 years, for the sunspots. 22 years is absolutely nothing in celestial time.
The timespan of humans on this planet hasn't yet been sufficient to do long-term forecasting, unfortunately. That doesn't mean that we should bury our heads in the sand and ignore the changes around us.
It may be that we are not responsible for the changes happening in our environment, but we sure as hell have to deal with them. It behooves us to take action to try to prevent what may end up being cataclysmic environmental changes.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Lesson learned. Next big bang, use protection.
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
In the past, solar physicists observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots, coinciding with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700."
This is really really *really* hard to say. Our data on sunspots in prior to about 1750 is pretty dismal. Most of the mentions of sunspots are casual or even accidental observation. You can find a lot of data on this at the NOAA ftp site:
Reports of sunspots from 164BC to 1918AD
Monthly average of sunsports from 1749 to present
Note two things: One, that there were reports of sunspots between 1650 and 1700; two, that the data prior to 1749 is inaccurate and (pardon the pun) spotty.
Note that the monthly averages file (the second one) is fairly accurate, as the older data in that file was made by the Royal Observatory and the later data in that file was made by the NOAA. I find it really hard to jump to the conclusion that the little ice age was a result of sunspots. Without a time machine, I don't think we could say that with any degree of certainty.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
The original post was about "NO" sunspots when, in fact, there have been sunspots. All the replies seemed to have gone off on wild tangents full of worthless (IMHO) speculation. Here, from a recent ARRL propogation report, are some actual facts.
This week we saw only one sunspot, numbered 997, and only on Labor Day, May 26. Alas, this was another sunspot left over from fading Cycle 23, and the appearance was very brief. One day it weakly emerged, and it quickly faded from view. The previous five days were spotless; spots appeared on the five days prior to that, and previous to those spotted days were ten days of no spots.
Recently we offered notes from Dr. Kenneth Tapping, showing why he doesn't think this minimum is unusual. Dr. Tapping is an astrophysicist at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, British Columbia (see, http://tinyurl.com/3lqtab).
The notes were offered after Dr. Tapping was widely misquoted several months ago (and since then, as the mangled quotes seem to have taken on a life of their own) on various web sites claiming that Dr. Tapping foresaw possibly decades of no sunspots, and then trying to link this to several sorts of worldwide calamity. Some pieces even claimed that the sunspot cycle hit bottom a year and a half ago, and that no sunspots have been observed since, a false claim easily refuted by existing data, widely available.
I was about to refute your statement and link to several places that show the massive increase in hurricane damage over the past few years, but then I stumbled across data that was normalized to population/infrastructure and you're right. There's more damage from hurricanes these days, but it looks to be driven by the value of the areas rather than the intensity of the storm.
A much better metric is the Lower Troposphere temperature as measured by satellite. It in fact shows no trend from 1998, and also shows a big drop globally in temperature since January 2007. See this analysis of the satellite data.
Actually it is quite difficult to make money in the stock market right now with all the volatility... :)
Also, let me be yet make a prediction for you.. I am definitely with you that we need to put in better policies to take better care of our earth, but big global changes are occurring right now that have very little to do with our involvement... Hopefully this will turn around in the coming years, so that we can get back to talking about GW..
Meaning, the global climate is now changing to the colder side, and the unfortunate part of this is that because of the GW issue, no one seems to be planning for possible outcomes. If the current growing season of corn crops and Australia's wheat crops are any indication of what we have to look forward in coming years, then I think that carbon emission will be the least of our concerns...
Ice age you say? Thank God we have cheap heating fuel.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Of course, the big coronal mass ejections which are associated with very intense ionizing particle fluxes at satellite level are not encountered in solar minimum.
However, the trapped proton fluxes of the Van Allen belts, mainly present in low earth orbit and medium earth orbit (roughly from 500 km to 18000 km) show an inverse dependance to the solar activity: they are more intense in solar minimum. In solar maximum, the atmosphere is heated up and expands, causing more trapped protons to decay. The increase in solar activity is also correlated with a decrease of cosmic rays coming from outer space, which are important contributors to the trapped neutrons belts.
For satellites in geosynchronous orbits which are mainly crossing electrons belts, it's the reverse story, though.
To get back on the topic, here are the current solar cycle predictions.
Irradiance is the energy that gets to ground level. The problem there is that the atmosphere absorbs everything outside a narrow band. Just because most UV doesn't get to ground level (or life would be well and truly fucked), it doesn't mean that the atmosphere doesn't get warmed by it anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Break down by specialty:
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Qualifications_Of_Signers.html
Only 40 "climatologists", but 3000+ in highly relevant fields.
Including Edward Teller and other dead scientists? This site has been thoroughly debunked as a fake. Sorry, anyone can claim anything on the Internet. For instance, did you know that eighty bajillion scientists believe in global warming? It's true, and I can show you their signatures, which all look suspiciously like mine, but that's just a coincidence. I also have similar proof that I have had sex with every hot chick on the planet.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know about your logic arguments. You claim that "global warming is an average trend over large time scales (decades, even)". Which I think you have under-estimated. Then you point to a 5 year average and a 7 year time span. Fuck man, stick to your own arguments!
Also notice the data he points to and look at how you can obviously see the trends by just looking for the minus sign.
That tells me:
1880-1920 = cold
1920-1960 = warm
1960-1980 = cold
1980-current = warm
so my guess is...
current - 2020 = warm
2020 - 2040/60 = cold
I think temperature and weather are things we really know little about. These damn people can't even tell me with any certainty what will happen this weekend!!! So predicting any climate beyond Friday is just them BSing ya!
And yes, I am just talking out my ass.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
When George Bush came into office, we had sunspots and nine planets. Now ...
[Insert pithy quote here]
Yeah, I've taken several statistics classes. There is most definitely a significant correlation between the year and the global mean temperature. You don't need to do a regression analysis to see it. Just a glance at a graph, and the increase in temperature is obvious.
Have you ever heard a lecture by a climate scientist? I have, and the predictions are quite dire. For one, in the western US severe drought will be the norm in several decades. Most people in the US will be okay, although I'm sure there will tend to be more deaths during extreme heat spells. In less developed parts of the world that experience extreme drought, possibly millions could die. I suppose a few degrees Celsius doesn't sound like much, but millions of lives are in the balance.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Maybe the sun has 1 BILLION sunblock? Or, got solar chemotherapy?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Straw man, indeed!
damaged by dogma
So what? So there's no little black spots on the sun today. It's the same old thing as yesterday...
Just cool it,,, ok.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Reference: My kindergarten, first, second, and third grade teachers. We were taught "global cooling" as fact in public elementary schools, and that if we didn't stop polluting the Earth and blocking all the sunlight then our grandchildren would freeze to death.
I'm dead serious about that and not exaggerating in the slightest. That is what the mainstream public school science curriculum was teaching in my part of the world. I know it's fashionable to deny that global cooling was ever taken seriously, but I assure you that a lot of kids from my generation were taught to be terrified of it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Feel free to make any predictions you want. My bet is on the people that have advanced degrees in relevant areas of science, who spend their careers collecting and interpreting the data, who build detailed climate models and run them on multimillion dollar supercomputers, who have made predictions in the past that have been verified. Their conclusions are quite different from yours, which are based on... wishful thinking, I guess?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
earth@sol/# shutdown -h now
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I'm not sure which one it is. I didn't mean to imply climate scientists have a lack of respect for science, that's absurd. I meant to imply that those that deny that human activity is changing the climate have a lack of respect for science.
I think I'll keep my civic, despite your generous offer of SUV.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The increase in temperatures on the earth do not match the cycles the sun has gone through in the last 100 years. Initially it seems like a good thing, but then when you actually study it it turns out to be false.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Group A finds the the current rapid increase in CO2 is generated by people
Group B offers no solid counters, therefore result to strawmen and non sequiters.
World tries to fins away to reduce human impact.
Natural warming/cooling cycles doesn't "shift" becasue there is too much CO2. This shift is based on the enviroment, there is no garrentee it will shift cooler with the addition mega tonnage of CO2 it can not absorb.
Group C continue to profess there ignorance as truth, doesn't bother to study or understand even the most basic elements of the science, and continues to confuse the issue.
Note Group A consist of almost every scientist, group B is filled with Fundamentalists and politicains, and groups C is full a poor excuses for limp wristed cum stains.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And as more science was done, more evidences and facts where determined, and the outcome changes. Welcome to the big world, jack ass.
On the other hand, the fact that you kindergarten teacher taught it clearly out weighs the mountains of evidence, so carry on.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
that's basically true, at night the algae metabolize stored food and consume O2 and give off CO2; but the plants generally store much more than they need for the night during the day, and the day tends to be longer than the night when the plants are most active. All of this tends to allow a surplus of stored food in the algae plants. In most of the ocean the algae that dies sinks to the bottom and if it's deep enough it doesn't rot much. It's very probably the the oil we are burning today was once oils make by algae that died and sunk in the ocean and slowly de-oxidized from triglycerides into petroleum.
The AGW thing is more of a estimate from a computer model that is still being worked on than a controlled experiment so there will be surprises along the way; if we don't get some sunspots we might be lucky we mucked up the atmosphere to hold more heat!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Global warming/Little Ice Age issues aside, I'm more concerned with the enormous amount of satellite-based technology that we've deployed in the past few years. The time of solar minimum, a minimum that seems to be taking its time about not being a minimum anymore.
When the sun wakes up again we may find stuff in space getting fried. And techie stuff on Earth stopping working. Important, mission-critical stuff.
...laura
Didn't you get the memo?
The CVS hasn't been touched lately because it's been deprecated. We switched over to SVN three weeks ago, and you still don't have a single commit. Would you please stop camping on the CVS and start merging to the SVN... and what's this about you being pregnant?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
OK, geekoid, this is a personal message.
I believe in Global Warming, and I think I've made that pretty clear. I didn't so much as hint otherwise. I was replying only to the people who don't believe that Global Cooling was ever presented as fact, as if they admit that it was and then was later dispelled, then Global Warming must also be untrue. Well, you and I both know that's not the case.
So why the personal attack? We're not even in disagreement here, and I certainly didn't do anything to call for that. You usually have interesting things to say, and it's beneath you to act this way.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There has been. Haven't you looked around my friend?
Snow in Iraq is one. Europe (or more properly modern USSR) bracing its coldest winter on record was another in 2007 was it?. This year pushing the cooling trend. Yeah, feels like it's getting warmer.
Don't get me wrong. Parent deserves all your mod points if that's your choice. He brought up what he believes to be factual evidence and properly applied it; if that doesn't deserve +4 Informative I don't know what does.
I know very little about climate change, but one thing I do know is that climate sciences are very complex and can never be "verified" as you call it. In fact, none of the current cooling trend of (0.7C) over the last year was ever calculated into any of the GW predicted models. This understandably is making it a little hard time right now...
Also, one other thing you might want to consider is that GW was never about the actual science, but rather is a political way of trying to get people to become socialists by apologizing for their existence. That is why at least in the US, I can promise you that real GW policy will never happen...
yes but we also use Grey's Anatomy for porn
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That NASA article is 5 years old. Within the last year or so Nature has run a report of a comprehensive review of solar radiance studies. The conclusion was that changes in solar radiation represent only a small part of recent warming. The link is one of the other responses in this thread.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You must have been looking at January 2007.
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930.
If this trend continues, will we be told to burn more fuel to bring the climate back up to "normal"?
-- All your bass are below two Hz
Unfortunately for you, the confirmation bias is one of the building blocks of NOAA surface station data adjustment and typical climate models!
This is totally contrary to what I remember.
I VERY CLEARLY remember being told in 1969 in elementary school that CO2 would "turn earth into Venus due to the greenhouse effect".
Go ahead and claim otherwise. Maybe both were being told at the same time. Maybe you can accuse me of lying, just like I can accuse you of lying.
I believe a lot of people claiming this are confused by "nuclear winter" which was popularized around 1983. I also pretty clearly remember people arguing against that by saying "everybody knows pollution will make the temperature go up, not down".
Kind of funny how people who can't back up their argument revert to name calling. Seems to be a pretty common tactic.
yar
The new cycle started back in February and is proceeding normally. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
You can view current solar activity here and there is at least one spot. http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/images/latest.html
"I'm never encouraged when a solar scientist describes the face of the sun as "dead"."
Do you even have the sense to realize that if what you are saying is true, the CO2 wouldn't be climbing at an unprecedented rate?
All right, enjoy your panic, if it makes you comfortable.
Temperature is mostly affected by clouds, CO2 plays quite insignificant role in greenhouse effect. Now blame hydrogen cars, because hydrogen-powered cars exhaust water vapors.
I really hate this human-inflicted global warming hysteria.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Why would I accuse you of lying? Both hypotheses were bandied about during that timeframe, back before they had enough data to tell which was actually happening.
I believe a lot of people claiming this are confused by "nuclear winter" which was popularized around 1983.Nah. I was taught about cooling in the 70s, the idea being that smog particulates would raise the Earth's albedo, causing water to freeze into white ice, further raising the Earth's albedo, etc.
Again, I'm absolutely not arguing against global warming, just presenting anecdotal evidence to the people who claim for whatever reason that the opposite was never taught.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"CO2 plays quite insignificant role in greenhouse effect."
Huh. All those millions of wasted research hours, supercomputer simulations and whatnot discounted in one sentence, typed in gramatically erratic fashion by one of the internet's faceless millions. Consider me convinced!
Jeremy
You don't have to get all upset and be rude to the guy. He said the algae dies and falls to the bottom of the ocean to sit there forever which takes the Co2 with it.
And no, Co2 level hasn't been climbing at an unprecedented rate. Usually, they follow the warming. Someone has shown that these rates are alongside the warming. I won't go into the insults of you not understanding the religions your practicing or anything. We will leave it with you need to be a little nicer.
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
Don't be too sanguine that the "global cooling" folks are all nutters.
A 2001 NASA/GISS study by Drew Shindell found a causal link between the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum (a prolonged period of no sunspot activity first observed by Galileo). The causal link was the loss of facular ultraviolet radiation from sunspots. The effect was a general -0.3 to -0.4 degrees Celsius cooling of the Earth, but since windborne oceanic moisture slowed down, inland winters became more severe.
We've already seen a -0.1 degrC (-0.33 w/m-2) effect from a decrease in solar radiance since the early 1990's. Some astrophysicists are already predicting an additional -0.1 to -0.2 degrC decrease in solar energy by 2025.
Although that's almost as much as the temperature decrease modeled to cause the Little Ice Age, remember the planet has warmed since then, so the effect will be to blunt global warming first, not send us back into another Little Ice Age.
In this scenario, fresh water in the Arctic decreases the density of the water there, reducing the rate at which northern surface waters sink when they cool, and thus reducing the rate at which warm tropical surface water reaches the North Atlantic. This cools the North Atlantic region.