Maybe not “never before” but certainly in the last 400 years, but we are on the downslope now and wont recover until 2130. Why Leif would prefer to look at proxy records rather than the real thing just baffles me.

In regard to my graph, the simplest method is to look at the purple angular momentum peaks in the background, when they are on an upward trend so is solar activity. The only time that changes is when we have grand minima signified by the green and orange dots.

http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/200predsm.jpg

Possibly because we are not so basking.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL038004.pdf
“A comparison with sunspot and neutron records confirms that ice core 10Be reflects solar Schwabe cycle variations, and continued 10Be variability suggests cyclic solar activity throughout the Maunder and Spoerer grand solar activity minima. Recent 10Be values are low; however, they do not indicate unusually high recent solar activity compared to the last 600 years.”
and neither a lack of solar activity [as reflected in cosmic rays] during the Spoerer and Maunder Minima.

But then there is the information that the Arctic was more free of ice in the 1930s than during our warmth in the 1990s and early 2000s; we had a cool spell from ~1940-1970 even though the spectacular numbers you include suggest that that time period should have been hotter; the increasing warmth of global temperatures are suspect because surface stations have not been recording temperature accurately and the inaccuracy has almost without exception moved temp in the warmer direction; the statement (from fallible memory) that the temperature in the warm period of the second half twentieth century (1970-1998?) was not as warm at that in the first half. I can’t connect your amazing (I find them amazing) collection of sunspot numbers from #16 in 1928 to #23 in our century with the ups and downs of global temperatures, even with a lag time. (I also keep trying with Geoff Sharp’s chart of angular momentum, but my eyes cannot see a predictable pattern.)

I keep trying but I have difficulty seeing a nice, tight fit. Without the sun we would not be warm, yes, but there is so much variability in the way our oceans, atmosphere (especially the long, slow waves of each), winds, and plate tectonics/volcanic activity distribute/affect that energy, plus Earth’s travel through space with the effects of cosmic rays (Be10 evidence) on cloud cover and whatever else, that I can’t find suspots telling us enough by themselves.

It seems to me that given “the remarkable, and unprecedented, never before seen period of abnormally high AVERAGE sunspot numbers” we should be basking in something like the Medieval Warm Period. I wish we were. Why aren’t we?

Here is how it works: http://www.phy6.org/Education/Intro.html
see especially section 30, but the whole thing is worth a read.

Also thanks for the info?

Donald Rumsfeld was heavily criticized for his statement that “there are things we know we know, there are things we know we don’t know and there are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

Rumsfeld’s problem was he didn’t follow his own advice. “I doubt 6 months” meant there was a lot he didn’t know he didn’t know, and apparently didn’t care to find out.

There is one element missing from Rumsfeld’s aphorism: “the things we don’t know we know”. I am referring to people making strong statements based on them not knowing what is already known.

to do italics here use the letter i between the less than and greater than signs. to finish italics use /i again between the less than and greater than signs.

Nevertheless, this is an aphorism that every scientist and engineer should hang on his wall.

It is also a concept that Lief would be well advised to ponder.

Amateur radio satellites were doing such conversions decades ago. The uplink/downlink bands were different. Although they were fixed.

From the design point of view that is the easiest way to design because the Tx/Rx filters don’t have to be near as sharp. Which also means things like temperature compensation can be avoided.

I’m mostly a DC guy myself i.e 2 to 30 MHz. Always looked forward to sunspot peak skip. However, low spot years were better for security. Part of the romance for me was hoping the next spot cycle was even stronger.

Which is why I love the Solar-Terrestrial Data on the sidebar.

Thanks a lot for that, really appreciated, that’s a pint of finest virtual ale for you my lad!

This shows amazing correlation between temp and length.
BUT the plot does not agree with Leif’s
BUT the plot does not even agree with cycles shown a couple of Figs later.
Also there are too many points plotted (perhaps min to min and max to max?)

CERN seem to have accepted other’s reports on faith alone!