Holy Cow! Charles Osgood, a skeptic?
A QUIET SUN DOESN’T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT.
excerpts:
I know you’ve already got a lot to worry about as it is, but something rather odd is going on — on the Sun.
The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity — and last year, it was supposed to have heated up — and, at its peak, would have a tumultuous boiling atmosphere, spitting out flares and huge chunks of super-hot gas.
Instead, it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. Right now, the sun is the dimmest it’s been in nearly a century.
Did you know that? It’s true. Astronomers are baffled by it, but has the press covered the story? Hardly at all. Is the government doing anything about it? No, it’s not even in the Obama budget or any Congressional earmarks.
Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises the question: Could another minimum activity period on the Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?
read the entire article at the link below:
Transcripts, podcasts, and Mp3’s of all this program can be found at theosgoodfile.com.
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Is this the AGW crowd’s ‘Cronkite’ moment? As in, if we’ve lost Charles Osgood, we’ve lost middle america.
Prepare for RealClimate alarmist attacks in …3, …2, …1 …
Funny he says “you heard it hear first” ? LOL.
Guess he doesn’t do much researching about this, as I have seen it posted on this site alone regularly for the last year, at least.
Love the site btw.
Anthony:
The Dutch [like yours truly] know all too well that when water is allowed to start seeping into a dike, just a mere trickle at first and most often barely noticeable, it is only a matter of time before the whole structure is breached.
George Will [Washington Post], Tierny [NYT] and even Revkin [NYT] those days his head is turned the right way and now Osgood at CBS…. The Daily Telegraph in the UK, The Australian down under and the list is growing. Unless Gore, Hansen, RC and the Hockey Team show up with a really serious load of sandbags, they’ll all be bobbing around in row boats sometime soon.
And before I forget, it seems that French president Sarkozy has in mind to name Allegre – a highly regarded scientist and one of the original “Warmist-Alarmists” turned profound skeptic – as his new Minister of the Environment….
The Obama/Chu/EPA team are turning “man-made global warming/climate change” square dance into a pretzel I’m afraid.
“Is the government doing anything about it? No”
Even HE recognizes that we just aren’t spending enough on the Sun! A million dollars weighs a metric ton. So 100 million dollars would weigh a hundred metric tons. Getting a space program to shoot additional fuel into the Sun would be no worse of a stimulus program than what has already been undertaken and it would put many people to work.
Will it work? Who knows? Can’t hurt. Why, I heard down at the cafe this morning that the government has been throwing money down rat holes. NASA could dig all that back up, clean it off, and send it to the Sun for some extra heat. And that means even MORE stimulus having to hire the diggers! It is a win, win proposition.
You mean there’s still a journalist out there somewhere?
Well, the radio flux is creeping up. But hallelujah, the poobahs have finally noticed.
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I don’t think Charles Osgood’s opinions will make much of a splash in the MSM. He’s one of the older broadcasters with only minor radio slots during news breaks.
He’s kind of like Paul Harvey-lite, and Harvey wasn’t actually swaying too many folks in the last few years before he passed away.
I have to admit though that he does sound (I listened to his podcast) more than bit skeptical of the AGW/Leftist meme though. Maybe its a small crack in the door of the MSM blockade of alternative views on AGW.
Look at this madness
WASHINGTON – The flow of water in the world’s largest rivers has declined over the past half-century, with significant changes found in about a third of the big rivers. An analysis of 925 major rivers from 1948 to 2004 showed an overall decline in total discharge.
The reduction in inflow to the Pacific Ocean alone was about equal to shutting off the Mississippi River, according to the new study appearing in the May 15 edition of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate.
The only area showing a significant increase in flow was the Arctic, where warming conditions are increasing the snow and ice melt, said researchers led by Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
“Freshwater resources will likely decline in the coming decades over many densely populated areas at mid- to low latitudes, largely due to climate changes, Dai said. “Rapid disappearing mountain glaciers in the Tibetan plateau and other places will make matters worse.”
Added co-author Kevin Trenberth, “As climate change inevitably continues in coming decades, we are likely to see greater impacts on many rivers and water resources that society has come to rely on.”
While Dai cited climate change as a major factor in the changes, the paper noted that other factors are also involved, including dams and the diversion of water for agriculture and industry.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090421/ap_on_go_ot/us_sci_shrinking_rivers
There are activists for who no amount of scientific evidence will dissuade — it’s part of an ideology — but for the great bulk of humanity in democracies, they are open to scientific evidence.
But they haven’t been getting it…unless they have been actively seeking it.
Even so, according to the Rasmussen poll more and more people are seeing man-made “global warming” for what it is: A hoax perpetrated by ideologically committed individuals bent on implementing certain public policies and the demagogues that see an opportunity for attention and power.
Could it be a “Cronkite moment”?
I hope so…I truly hope so.
Roy Tucker (17:38:29) :
Nah. Just another shill for Big Oil. Exxon-Mobil owns The Osgood Files, lock, stock and barrel. Besides, everyone knows he is really just a plant at CBS by Fox News and Karl Rove. /sarc off
Astronomers are baffled by it
On the contrary, this was expected and even forecast. See e.g.: http://www.leif.org/research/The%20IDV%20index%20-%20its%20derivation%20and%20use.pdf
From the abstract: “solar cycle average B will return to levels of ~100 years ago during the coming cycle”
From http://www.leif.org/research/Cycle%2024%20Smallest%20100%20years.pdf
“yielding as our result: Rmax24 = 75 ± 8. This would make cycle 24 potentially the smallest sunspot cycle since cycle 14 (Rmax14 = 64 in 1906). […] Such low cycles will be important for calibration of various empirical relationships between solar and interplanetary conditions and terrestrial phenomena, many of those derived during intervals of rather high solar activity [Lockwood et al., 1999; Svalgaard et al., 2003]. Average space weather might be ‘‘milder’’ with decreased solar activity, but the extreme events that dominate technological effects are not expected to disappear. In fact, they may become more common. Two of the eight strongest storms in the last 150 years occurred during solar cycle 14 (Rmax = 64) [Cliver and Svalgaard, 2004], while three of the five largest 30 MeV solar energetic proton events since 1859 [McCracken et al., 2001] occurred during cycle 13 (Rmax = 88 […] The solar polar fields are important in supplying most of the heliospheric magnetic flux during solar minimum conditions. […] With weaker polar fields, the interplanetary magnetic fields that the Ulysses space probe will measure during its next polar passes in 2007–2008 are therefore expected to be significantly lower than during the 1994–1995 polar passes.”
REPLY: Leif, Don’t take it personally, he was probably thinking of Hathaway. 😉 Anthony
Oh c’mon guys. Just look at that picture.
Then look at this one.
Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?
BOW TIES!
The cat is out of the bag.
Leif Svalgaard (17:59:58) :
Astronomers are baffled by it
REPLY: Leif, Don’t take it personally, he was probably thinking of Hathaway. 😉 Anthony
From an email a few days ago to the NASA-panel from David Hathaway, discussing the next cycle: “I hate to admit it when Leif is right but that seems to be the case here”
🙂
Leif 17:59:58
Sure, his science was not spot on. But who’s is when it gets to mass media? And just the fact that a little doubt about the dominant paradigm is showing is a good sign. And still, we don’t know that diminished sunspots won’t cause global cooling, even if all the other manifestations of the dynamo persist ‘normally’.
Besides, rejoice and laugh at the crack about it being Bush’s fault.
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Cool. I’ve been hoping this year will the year the mainstream media finally starts covering “The Other Side of the Story.” (Yeah, yeah, I’m mixing hosts.) WBZ in Boston carries Charles Osgood, definitely not middle America!
I sent a note back through the Westwood One form describing the possibility that sunspots may fade from view by 2015 and included the URLs http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/06/02/livingston-and-penn-paper-sunspots-may-vanish-by-2015/ and http://wermenh.com/climate/climate2009.pdf
Should this be part of the wakening of the MSM, can we call Joe D’Aleo’s article in the 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac the start of the trend?
http://www.almanac.com/timeline/
“Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?
BOW TIES!”
So, I reckon we look for this fellow, next:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye
For comparison:
“‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers” (Tuesday, 21 April 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
(^This very similar story came up in a recent WUWT thread.)
I’m pretty sure, and I know that Leif would agree with me, that if we could somehow transport all the CO2 in our atmosphere into the roiling core of the sun, we could solve two problems at once. The sun would almost certainly spring to its former glory, as life here on earth winks out!! Problem solved.
The flip side of all this rejoicing, though, is the opportunity in this for the alarmists to blame any cooling on the sun, and not on the fact that CO2 doesn’t raise global temperature to any great extent. I thought they were going to confuse the issue with a whole lot of palaver about albedo, but I can smell a strategy in this quiet sun. Why, oh why, must money, power, and politics interfere with science?
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Meanwhile, in a triumph of “virtual news”, AOL’s front page today is
screaming SOLAR STORM WARNING, with an article about the
possibility that a giant solar flare could take down our power grid.
The article admits that this possibility isn’t really fresh news (to be
exact, it’s 1859 news!) but it still gives the definite impression that
the sun is dramatically stormy right now instead of dramatically calm.
The Watt Effect Lives!
from solarcycle24.com
Sunspot 1015
04/21/2009 by Kevin VE3EN at 23:15
The small new Cycle 24 sunspot has been numbered 1015 and is the first real sunspot in nearly 45 days. It poses no threat for solar flares.
Positively uncanny.
We’ll see how long it lasts. Of course the Watt Effect doesn’t guarantee longevity, only nearly immediate spots.
Congress needs to pass a “solar stimulus” package.
The sun is simply too big to be allowed to fail.
Leif, your coolness is a real study in how not to be a redhead.