I would also like to express my condolensces to the family of Dr. Jack
Eddy. I never had a chance to meet him, or even to hear him speak, but I can infer what a remarkable man he was through his work and through having met one of his children.

Rest in Peace. God Speed.

Without Humanity science is meaningless.

How rare then, the meaningful scientist.

Jack Eddy: One of a rare breed.

May You Rest In Peace.

And, THANK YOU!

Anyway, in summary, the total contribution is paramount and this Grand Minimum I’m living in would be well named after Jack. It kind of has a ring to it … ‘Eddy Minimum’.

Gravity, politically, scientifically, inertia, light … forget it … I need a few more neurons firing to carry on that thought …

To try to strip Ted of this honor just because Jack Eddy is a good man and Leif was his friend seems to me to be the kind of thing an AGW supporter might do, on a par with giving the Nobel Prize to Al Gormless … but I expect more of a scientist.

I think the last comment here may join their ranks.

I signed the petition and having a Grand Minimum named after you is not predicated simply by prescience like a stock market analyst. I think this man engaged most of the scientific community keeping its eyes open to how much they have to explore and therefore is an excellent candidate for this honor.

The less connected colorful mavericks that may have been able to see what most of us couldn’t until others corroborated the evidence sometimes aren’t the ones to coallesce knowledge into a nugget of truth. I defer to the century long fight over the nature of the Universe and the acceptance of the Big Bang Theory. Those of us that have the conviction that the Solar Barycentric Model for Solar Variation will triumph will get our ‘background radiation’ to sweep all other theories aside in due time.

Patience, we are about to observe what Jack Eddy was focused on first hand! Hopefully, for the most part, we can have fun with it … I mean the cold. Lemaitre eventually recieved his recognition. For me Jack Eddy is comparable to Hubble in that largely resolved debate. Those who pursue knowledge in the true spirit of observation, discovery … science … all deserve our thanks.

However well intentioned your proposed action might be, I find it despicable that you are trying to steal the fame from Ted. He, like Jack, was a good man, and you are proposing joining with a host of AGW supporters in trying to erase the memory of Ted and his work.

Finally, many people already call the upcoming (perhaps) minimum the “Landscheidt Minimum”. You’re swimming upstream. You might even succeed, but to me and many others, it will always be the “Landscheidt Minimum”.

As a result, you are dishonoring Jack Eddy’s name by falsely giving him credit in the naming. This does neither Jacks, nor your, reputation any good. Ted’s friends will certainly not thank you if you are successful, and I count myself among them. Your good intentions are leading you down a very ugly path.

The Sun’s Secret

A secret cloaked by history’s sweep
Submerged as if within the deep
In murky currents swirling slow,
An Eddy brought it from below.

He proved the sun a fickle friend
With tempers hard to comprehend.
Exuberance brings the Earth repair
And disregard a grim dispair.

Will a maunder bring the chill?
Will the storms begin to still?
Will Sol’s face with blotches fill,
Or Eddy’s words will Sol fulfill?

Sol may soon drift off to sleep
It will not help to pray or weep.
He’ll close his eyes in slumber deep.
Life’s promise, then, is our’s to keep.

Rest In Peace Jack Eddy

At the time in 1976 I had since 1974 been a member of the Priorities Review Staff, a small group of analysts set up to advise the newly elected Prime Minister Whitlam about the goals and strategies of his Government. By 1976 the Whitlam Government was no longer in power, the PRS had been abolished and I was advising Prime Minister Fraser about foreign policy and intelligence and security matters. But those of us that had worked for Gough Whitlam kept in touch.

Eddy’s paper ran counter to our entire outlook. We were of the view that governments could and should change anything for the better (or worse). My focus had been social and education policy. The idea that agricultural productivity and therefore the supply of essential foods might be largly regulated by the Sun and beyond government’s capacity to influence seemed absurd from within this outlook. Our general view was that Eddy’s idea was just another crazy idea. And yet the thought hit me vividly that just as the tides are outside our control so might ultimately agricultural productivty. I didn’t think much beyond that – I had no understanding of the Sun or the climate. The thing that struck me, and perhaps why my memory is so vivid, was the idea that forces external to the planet might have such power and governments might be so puny. But I was still in the camp of government can – and should – do anything. Improvements to agricultural productivity was one. Over the next decades I thought no more about the Sun and Jack Eddy and all of that until I stumbled upon the work of Rhodes Fairbridge about six years ago. By that time I had a better sense of the limits of government and about the proper role of government. Broadly speaking, I find myself in broad agreement with Douglass North and the institutional economists.

I now deeply admire Jack Eddy for being so persistent and successful in getting his research published and helping to break and unfortunate paradigm that I once held dear.

I can understand those who find repugnant and absurd the idea that our planet’s climate dynamics might be entirely out of the influence of governments whether because the dynamics arise form internal oscillations of very complex systems or because of a determinative role of the Sun.

As with agricultural productivity, there is much that governments can do to improve things and manage our adaptive efficiency. But if the temperatures plummet, if the droughts come, if things warm up a lot, if the floods come, we can’t stop what’s happening; we can learn to predict better and adapt better, but that’s about it. I am eternally grateful to Jack Eddy for helping to break an old paradigm. In my case, I was a very slow learner – almost 30 yrs – before I really understood what he was saying back in 1976.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/online-petition-the-next-solar-minimum-should-be-called-the-eddy-minimum/

Nearly 200 signatures so far.

- Anthony