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Puzzled Scientists Say Strange Things Are Happening On the Sun
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Robert Lee Hotz reports in the WSJ that current solar activity is stranger than it has been in a century or more. The sun is producing barely half the number of sunspots as expected, and its magnetic poles are oddly out of sync. Based on historical records, astronomers say the sun this fall ought to be nearing the explosive climax of its approximate 11-year cycle of activity—the so-called solar maximum. But this peak is 'a total punk,' says Jonathan Cirtain. 'I would say it is the weakest in 200 years,' adds David Hathaway, head of the solar physics group at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Researchers are puzzled. They can't tell if the lull is temporary or the onset of a decades-long decline, which might ease global warming a bit by altering the sun's brightness or the wavelengths of its light. To complicate the riddle, the sun also is undergoing one of its oddest magnetic reversals on record, with the sun's magnetic poles out of sync for the past year so the sun technically has two South Poles. Several solar scientists speculate that the sun may be returning to a more relaxed state after an era of unusually high activity that started in the 1940s (PDF). 'More than half of solar physicists would say we are returning to a norm,' says Mark Miesch. 'We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.' If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn't be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. 'Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,' says Judith Lean. 'It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'"
Just sayin.. you're warned..
Climate change is messing up our sun!
...hey, if it buys us a hundred years to figure this pollution shit out, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.
Are you?
The peer review process, which has been around quite some time, works to prevent exactly the problems you claim exist with science today. Many peer-reviewed results later turn out to be incorrect - science does not follow a straight path to some mythical "truth" - but for the most part, papers which are peer reviewed are much more likely to be reporting work carried out in accordance with accepted scientific practice. The reason most people don't trust scientists is because, being scientifically illiterate themselves, they rely on the media to digest science for them. Stories of corrupted science and wild claims sell much better than the dull, careful, incremental progress most scientists make, leading to a popular perception of minefields of deceit or moats of lies.
Discrediting scientists (and by extension science) is going to be paying dividends for a long time. I wonder how quickly it'll accelerate the USA's loss of leadership in the sciences.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem