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Sunspots to vanish within 10 years


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#1 Rogerdodger

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Posted 01 September 2008 - 11:32 AM

If you have been wondering why we have been seeing cooler temperatures on the earth as well as other planets...

Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century
September 1, 2008
Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth.

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.
The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.
According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.
But this year -- which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 -- has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.
The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.
The paper's lead author, William Livingston, tells DailyTech that, while the refusal may have been justified at the time, recent data fits his theory well. He says he will be "secretly pleased" if his predictions come to pass.

But will the rest of us? In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. On was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.

This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark's "SKY" experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays -- which the sun's magnetic field partially shields the Earth from -- increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases.

Solar physicist Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu, Finland, tells DailyTech the correlation between cosmic rays and terrestrial cloud cover is more complex than "more rays equals more clouds". Usoskin, who notes the sun has been more active since 1940 than at any point in the past 11 centuries, says the effects are most important at certain latitudes and altitudes which control climate. He says the relationship needs more study before we can understand it fully.

Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.

What is incontrovertible, though, is that ice ages have occurred before. And no scientist, even the most skeptical, is prepared to say it won't happen again.
Posted Image
Sunspot activity of the past decade. Over the past year, SIDC has continually revised its predictions downward.
(Source: Solar Influences Data Center)

Posted Image
Geomagnetic solar activity for the past two decades. The recent drop corresponds to the decline in sunspots. (Source: Anthony Watts)

Posted Image
A chart of sunspot activity showing two prior solar minima, along with heightened activity during the 20th century (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Edited by Rogerdodger, 01 September 2008 - 11:42 AM.


#2 stocks

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Posted 18 September 2008 - 12:15 PM

Astronomical Influences Affect Climate More Than CO2, Say Experts


An examination of warming and cooling trends over the last 400 years shows an “almost exact correlation” between all of the known climate changes that have occurred and solar energy transmitted to the Earth, while showing “no correlation at all with CO2,” Don J. Easterbrook, a geologist with Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., told CNSNews.com



As it turns out, this warming trend could be over anyway, according to Easterbrook, the geologist from Washington State. A slight cooling period that began to take hold in 1998 could endure for the next 30 years, he forecasts.

A phenomenon known as the “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (warming and cooling modes in the Pacific Ocean) points the way, in his view.

“It’s practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling,” he said. Not something you will read about in the media.”

http://www.cnsnews.c...px?RsrcID=35857
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#3 Rogerdodger

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Posted 18 September 2008 - 08:46 PM

This Carbon footprint stuff is a joke. Even as the Nobel prize winner buys a 100 foot houseboat, the UN says: "Methane is 23 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide." Wetlands produce methane in HUGE quantities. They call it "swamp gas". They will even take away your private property to "protect" methane producing swamps aka wetlands.

#4 Rogerdodger

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Posted 24 September 2008 - 10:38 PM

Posted Image Solar wind weakest since beginning of space age
Sep 24, 2008
The intensity of the sun's million-mile-per-hour solar wind has dropped to its lowest levels since accurate records began half a century ago, scientists say. Measurements of the cosmic blasts of radiation, ejected from the sun's upper atmosphere, were made with the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

The solar wind "inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system," which protects the inner planets against the radiation from other stars, said Dave McComas, Ulysses' solar wind principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

"With the solar wind at an all-time low, there is an excellent chance the heliosphere will diminish in size and strength," said Ed Smith, NASA's Ulysses project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"If that occurs, more galactic cosmic rays will make it into the inner part of our solar system," added Smith.

Scientists say the weakening of solar wind appears to be due to changes in the sun's magnetic field, but the causes of these changes are unknown.
The weakened solar activity can be beneficial because it slows satellites around the Earth, allowing them to remain in orbit longer.
The sun normally experiences 11-year-cycles between periods of great activity and lesser activity.
But, Smith said, the Ulysses mission's recent results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that "we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated."
The Ulysses mission was the first project to survey the space environment over the sun's poles. The data the spacecraft has collected has profoundly changed the way scientists view our nearest star and its effects on the Earth.
The spacecraft has traveled more than 539 million kilometers in more than 18 years, almost four times its expected lifetime.
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Edited by Rogerdodger, 24 September 2008 - 10:41 PM.


#5 stocks

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Posted 04 December 2008 - 06:26 AM

Solar science forum poll -- Is global cooling on the way?

Yes -- 76 votes
No -- 7 votes

We can thus almost be sure that the cycle 23 has ended, but despite the fact that the cycle 24 has clearly started, the rise has been so slow, that we can be pretty sure that the cycle will be very low, which in the past always has meant a colder climate.

http://solarcycle24c...n...ad=7&page=3



Very cool solar science website:

http://www.solarcycle24.com/
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#6 stocks

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Posted 29 December 2008 - 11:49 AM

AGW is a pseudo-science like astrology

(2) It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all, because a scientific theory makes non-obvious predictions which are then compared with observations that the average person can check for himself. As we both know from our own observations, AGW theory has spectacularly failed to do this. The theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience. NOW the global warmers claim that the Earth will enter a cooling period. In other words, whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

(3) In contrast, the alternative theory, that the increase and decrease of the Earth's average temperature in the near term follows the sunspot number, agrees (roughly) with observation. And the observations were predicted before they occurred. This is good science.


(5) Another shocking thing about the AGW theory is that it is generating a loss of true scientific knowledge. The great astronomer William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus, observed in the early 1800's that warm weather was correlated with sunspot number. Herschel noticed that warmer weather meant better crops, and thus fewer sunspots meant higher grain prices. The AGW people are trying to do a disappearing act on these observations. Some are trying to deny the existence of the Maunder Minimum.

(6) AGW supporters are also bringing back the Inquisition, where the power of the state is used to silence one's scientific opponents. The case of Bjorn Lomborg is illustrative. Lomborg is a tenured professor of mathematics in Denmark. Shortly after his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," was published by Cambridge University Press, Lomborg was charged and convicted (later reversed) of scientific fraud for being critical of the "consensus" view on AGW and other environmental questions. Had the conviction been upheld, Lomborg would have been fired. Stillman Drake, the world's leading Galileo scholar, demonstrates in his book "Galileo: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2001) that it was not theologians, but rather his fellow physicists (then called "natural philosophers"), who manipulated the Inquisition into trying and convicting Galileo. The "out-of-the-mainsteam" Galileo had the gall to prove the consensus view, the Aristotlean theory, wrong by devising simple experiments that anyone could do. Galileo's fellow scientists first tried to refute him by argument from authority. They failed. Then these "scientists" tried calling Galileo names, but this made no impression on the average person, who could see with his own eyes that Galileo was right. Finally, Galileo's fellow "scientists" called in the Inquisition to silence him.


Frank Tipler, distinguished mathematical physicist at Tulane University



http://www.urgentage....P.WARMING.html
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#7 stocks

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Posted 29 December 2008 - 01:16 PM

Galileo -- Sacrificed to Aristotle and the Gods of Philosophy


In this slim volume is packed the central thesis of one of the foremost students of Galileo:

1) that Galileo was not a victim of the inquisition but rather the Aristotelean method of reasoning particulars of Science from theoretical ideas. Galileo thought that experience, measurability and prediction should be the guide. Grand ideas he left to the Church and philosophers. Perhaps he was a little too naive in assuming that the inquisition would leave him alone. But it was in the defence of Aristotle that the inquisition indicted him. Not mere religious intolerance (which of course there was plenty).

The other observation was the in-fighting and jockeying inside the academic community for political and religious favour -- the competition for well-paying university seats was intense and Galileo was a direct victim of academics who ruthlessly pilloried him to gain favour.

2) Galileo was no crusader directly challenging the power of the church. He in fact had many freinds as high-archbishops and even a was a personal friend of the Pope. His desire was never to challenge the church and the church only very reluctantly charged him with "teaching" the doctrine of Copernicus and Kepler.


http://www.amazon.co...I...4175&sr=1-1
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#8 Rogerdodger

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Posted 01 January 2009 - 03:26 PM

2008: The second least active solar year since 1900...

The Warm Turns
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 12/30/2008
As we've noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October. Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.

he first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no sunspots at all — zero — something that has not occurred since 1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three previous such events — what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums — have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice Age (1500-1750).

The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by man.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre of Canada's Carleton University, says: "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."





Edited by Rogerdodger, 01 January 2009 - 03:27 PM.


#9 stocks

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Posted 19 April 2009 - 08:15 PM

Archibald (2006) predicted that climate during the forthcoming Solar Cycles 24
and 25 would be significantly cold. As at late 2008, the progression of the current
23/24 solar minimum indicates that a severe cool period is now inevitable, similar
to that of the Dalton Minimum. A decline in average annual temperature of 2.2° C
is here predicted for the mid-latitude regions over Solar Cycle 24. The result will
be an equator-ward shift in continental climatic conditions in the mid-latitudes of
the order of 300 km, with consequent severe effects on world agricultural
productivity.

http://www.davidarch...h...2009E&E.pdf
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#10 johngeorge

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Posted 20 April 2009 - 01:52 PM

Which all adds up to: Go long agricultural commodities!!! Shorter growing seasons are upon us. Global population is increasing. Storage is at an all time low.

Donald Coxe has been talking sunspots for sometime now. Don's public weekly commentary and analysis can be found at this link.
Peace
johngeorge