Sunspot Activity Continues To Drop

slreboy writes "The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower. The year 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent)..."

Comments

Here we go...

[geekoid]

1) The Sun does effect global temperature
2) It's effects are pretty immediate
3) The Global Warming Trend does not follow the Sun activities close enough for it to be the cause of the trend.
4) The only thing we know of at this time that could be causing this global warming trend is CO2

5)We are talking about the release of trillions of tons of CO2 that has been buried for millions of years.

6) If we keep increasing will will make the planet uninhabitable by us.

7) We have workable solutions to this right now.

Re:Here we go...

[geoffrobinson]

2) Oceans operate on different time scales, no? So is "pretty immediate" geological time or something or a day or so?

3) Could be problems with this point based on 2. And by "trend" what are we talking about. There doesn't seem to be much of an upward trend lately. So if you are thinking the last couple of years have been on an upward trend, that's wrong. If you expand that timeline, we may still be on an upward trend.

4) "The only thing we know"

Given the lack of ability to put past weather information in a predictive model and get accurate results, I would say we don't know much at all.

My climate scientist friend I once spoke to almost 10 years ago now was more skeptical. Even if C02 does what you say, are there feedback loops that mitigate the warming? Cloud cover, stuff like that. We don't know.

6) You don't know 6 is true at all.

7) While I remain skeptical of global warming, I want to get off foreign oil in general. So may I propose a workable solution that many environmentalists don't like: nuclear power. Cut the red tape and streamline the process.

Re:Like for like.

[fictionpuss]

One day doesn't form a statistically significant sample, 365 days do.

Re:fun with statistics

[the_lesser_gatsby]

The material world doesn't understand seconds either. Should we drop the whole of physics? A year is just a sampling period which can be compared to previous periods. Any natural cycles will be apparent regardless of the period chosen (nyquist notwithstanding).

Re:Like for like.

[Red Flayer]

Comparing a 90 day period to a 365 day period isn't a like for like comparison (obviously). Statistically it's meaningless.

Not so. We have two statistical samplings, one with n=90, one with n=365. Based on the sample sizes and some other info, we can establish a confidence interval. Yes, the interval will be larger for the 90-day sample... but just because we can't be 100% confident of the exact results doesn't mean it's statistically meaningless.

One other note -- historical data must be used to establish that there are not periodic cycles with a frequency of less than one year, which would make the 90-day sample set inaccurate.

Re:Venus

[KanSer]

Listen, I'm not going to argue the science but what drives me bonkers about both sides of the Global Warming debate is that it completely misses the point that affects us and our surroundings the most: pollution.

Heavy metals in the water, shitty particles in the air, poison in our food. I don't understand why we bicker about the temperature when it's undeniable how much trash we have injected in to our surroundings.

Is clean air, water, and food too much to ask? I'm not even talking about deforestation, over-fishing, and the deleterious affects of industrial agriculture.

We have a footprint, and a great big ugly one at that. We don't live responsibly. Global Warming is a big red herring and I sometimes wonder who benefits from us focusing on it.