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The Sun Has First Spotless Month Since 1913
radioweather writes "August 2008 has made solar history. As of 00 UTC September 1st 2008 (5PM PST)
we just witnessed the
first spotless calendar month since June 1913.This was determined according
to sunspot
data from NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center, which goes back to 1749.
In the 95 years since 1913, we've had quite an active sun, but activity has been
declining in the last few years. The sun today is a nearly featureless sphere and has been spotless for 42
days total, but this is the first full calendar month since 1913 for a spotless
sun. And there are other indicators of the sun being in a funk. Australia's
space weather agency recently revised their solar cycle 24 forecast, pushing the
expected date for a ramping up of
cycle 24 sunspots into the future by six months."
As one of the links above indicate, there was a "sunspeck" reported August 21/22, though. Reader MikeyTheK adds a link to a story at Daily Tech on the spotless record.
The sun has discovered the best acne medication in the universe.
I am officially gone from
to 'prove' that global warming isn't manmade.
There we go, asking people to prove negatives again. Why don't you start by proving that it IS man-made?
Or conversely, prove that it ISN'T caused by the belly button lint of invisible space goats.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I know. How strange is it that they think that the largest source of heat in the entire solar system would have ANYTHING to do with one of the planets getting warmer...
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
"There we go, asking people to prove negatives again. Why don't you start by proving that it IS man-made?"
The argument being made is that it HAS been proven, as far as one can prove anything in such indeterministic systems.
Of course, we had proof for years that ulcers were caused by stress. Nope - bacteria.
Proof that the continents were immobile in their positions. Well, not so much proof as that it was just so totally OBVIOUS that continents couldn't move, and that "continental drift" was a crackpot theory. Until it wasn't.
AIDS was a breakdown of the immune system because of IV drug use, exposure to multiple venereal diseases, and the generally unhealth lifestyle of the gay community. Until they isolated a virus.
The reality is that scientific "proof" consists of general agreement among communities of people about the interpretation of observed phenomena, and that agreement can be driven by MANY factors, not just how well the data fits. One CANNOT get to the level of mathematical proof. So there will always be a role for skeptics, and those that just won't accept that, if you have a square peg and a round hole, you just pretend the peg's squareness doesn't exist, because it MUST fit into the round hole.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
As to how the Earth is heating up due to there being too few sun spots or birds are falling out of the sky and little children are being eaten by monsters at the worlds edge.
I'm really interested in stories about science but every one like this seems to be taken as an excuse for the uninformed to come up with todays hair brained theory to scare the masses. I wonder if we can link this to terrorism in some way.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Considering that recorded history is but a tiny fraction of human existence, which is in turn but a tiny fraction of earth's existence, I have a hard time believing anything anyone says about long-term trends. We just don't know.
Of course atmospheric/climate scientists have considered the impact of the sun. Please, don't assume they're complete idiots.
The problem with global warming alarmism is not not the climate science is poor, but that it is used to rationalize unnecessarily intrusive interventions in people's lives that have little to do with preventing catastrophe, and very questionable impact on net emissions.
The obvious, least economically damaging, least intrusive way to handle the problem is to simply internalize the costs that CO2 emissions throw off, either by tradeable caps or a tax, and then apply the funds to mitigating the damage. Then, you don't have to do impossible calculations about which activities are "truly wasteful", and people can decide how they cut back. And even if they don't, such a solution is still robust, as such a decision would just generate more funds with which to handle the problem.
But the most vocal alarms don't want this. Instead, they propose a laundry list of intrusive interventions, and then want to pick and choose which technologies are the "right" ones. If they were honest about wanting to avert catastrophe, the debate today would be about the size of the tax or cap, not about whether we should ban this particular product on the grounds that it gets an emotional reaction out of some people. Alarmism has been more about whether you're "on the team" or not. If the most efficient solution for you is to get better insulation rather than a hybrid, well, the latter would signal that you're "one of them" and the former wouldn't, so ...
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
...my boyfriend panics.
Actually, my tinfoil hat is much, much bigger than yours. The Powers That Be [PTB] (the queen, the rothchilds' the Colonel, etc.) control both the conservatives and liberals at the highest levels. They play us off each other and maintain their own power my ensuring the general public is clearly divided against each other, ignoring the rich and powerful who are the real problem.
Here's how it works:
The 'PTB' have recently given a lot of money and power to the libs to promote the global warming idea base on "science". This is a check on the conservatives, whom they slowly put in power over the last few decades in order to check the liberals they let in in the 60s and 70s, and so on. The dems will continue to gain power in congress and win the presidency this year, but the failure of Global Warming models, which all assume a constant input from the sun, and failed policies based on the incorrect global warming/evil CO2/oil shortage assumption, will give the 'PTB' the opening they need to put the conservatives back in power, thereby checking the soon-to-be-powerful dems. What's more, the failure of "science" will foster a mistrust of real science in the general public, keeping us ignorant and controllable.
Some of you might point out that even if the top 1% have a greater portion of the wealth now than they did 50 years ago, our standard of living has steadily improved (at least in Europe and America). This is true in many respects, such as the portion of our income we spend on food, access to communication, healthcare technology, etc. It's false in many others, however, such as quality of food (tasted a tomato lately?) and quality of communication (TV, blogs, and underfunded print media narrowly focused on national issues, vs. community clubs like the Elks and Lions and well funded print media focused on local issues). Plus, you have to take into account opportunity cost. How much more could our lives have improved had government made better decisions.
What's more, we've become dependent on a system controlled by a select few. Healthcare is better, but you'd better keep working or you won't be able to see a doctor when you need to. Home 'ownership' is up when you ignore mortgages, but real debt-free ownership is way down. Water and Mineral rights are independent of land, so even those who think they own land can have it effectively taken away at any time. They're handing out plenty of fish but jealously guarding the poles and nets.
Remember, it's not the guy with the thin black mustache you've got to watch out for. If he were evil, he'd be a complete failure because he looks it. The truly successful evil person is the ones that convinces his victims that he's not good. As I said, my tinfoil hat is the 10-gallon kind.
They use phrases like "it suggests", and "gives support to" rather than phrases like "statistically significant".
Actually, the Fourth Assessment Report produced in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a report with several hundred scientific contributors and co-authors, uses phrases like "very high confidence" and "very likely".
"There is very high confidence that the global average net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming" (p. 37)
"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations" (p. 39)