Below is a note forwarded to me by John Sumption from Jan Janssens. For those who do not know him, Jan runs a very comphrehensive solar tracking website here.
Jan included the caveat:
This topic’s sure to start another heated discussion on the solar blogs
So I’m happy to oblige by posting it here. Jansen makes some good points about the possible first month that cylce 24 spots exceed cycle 23 spots. But when you are in a deep minimum like this one, it is hard to pinpoint the transition, because next month may bring the reverse condition. He writes:
Prior to August 2008, only 3 SC24-sunspot groups appeared. This was in January, April and May. During these 3 months, SC23-activity was higher than SC24-activity. Based on the NOAA-numbering, there were respectively (SC23 to SC24) 2 to 1, 2 to 1, and 4 to 1 sunspotgroups visible.
In August, there were no sunspotgroups numbered by NOAA. However, on 21-22 August “something” was visible well enough to be seen by several observers and to prompt the SIDC to give a (preliminary) non-zero sunspotnumber for those days.
This group had a SC24-polarity but appeared on a moderate latitude of 15 degrees. Based on previous cycle transits, it is not unusual that some “early” new cycle groups appear this low. If one considers this as a sunspotgroup and belonging to SC24, then August was the month during which SC24-activity outnumbered SC23 activity.
However, if one adheres strictly to the NOAA-numbering, then September ***might*** be that month. I stress “might”, because -unless some group appears tomorrow or tuesday- the score will still be 1 to 1: On September 11th, NOAA did number an even tinier group than the August one, and it was a SC23 group (NOAA 1001). SC24-activity then wins on “points”, because the Wolfnumbers for 22-23 September produced by NOAA 1002 (SC24) were higher than the NOAA 1002 Wolfnumber.
Last but not least, I want to emphasize that SC24-activity will be considered higher than SC23’s when its smoothed group (or Wolf) number exceeds that of the old cycle. This might happen in the coming months (or whenever her Majesty the Sun feels up to it 😉
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counters (06:49:59) :
“…There is no indoctrination of AGW going on; even at the University level…”
“…I thought it would be helpful to end by providing a ‘Brief Guide’ to just some of the Green Churches and Sects that one might think of joining:
(a) The General, or Pragmatic, Greens [believe that there may be many different pathways to heaven, to that Green Utopia. Often share buildings with the Church of England];
(b)The Particular Greens [reject nuclear power as a path option – often converts from The Old Church of CND, which was strong in the 1960s and 1970s];
(c)The Particular and Strict Greens [reject nuclear power absolutely, and hold to a closed communion table of locally-produced ‘organic’ produce];
(d)The Peculiar and Pure Greens [reject nuclear power absolutely, and hold to a closed communion table of vegan, or even fruitarian, food];
(e)The Primitive Greens [reject all economic growth, and hold to a strict communion table of living in, and with, Nature. Use earth closets and grey water];
(f)The Trustafarian Greens [wealthy churches which view being Green as a Sunday life-style choice. Key Biblical text: “It is easier for a Prius to go through the streets of Kensington, than for a poor man to enter into the Green Utopia.” (The Gospel According To Charles: 19:24)];
(g) The Church of Malthus, sometimes called the ‘Creationologists’: [commune with animals and trees, and wish to reduce sinful humans to small relict, subsistence populations living with Nature. Key Biblical text: “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation.” (The Other Gospel According To Thomas: 19:14)]; and finally,
(h) The Greens of The Latterday World [It is too late! We are all doomed, and we will burn with the Earth at Armageddon].
“Phew!” What a relief to be a non-believer! Lunch in a sunny, cant-free garden. ”
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_Warming_Politics/A_Hot_Topic_Blog/Entries/2008/9/28_Green_Churches%3A_Casting_Out_Demons_.html
John the Tenth
Thank you so much. Now if I had a better grasp of statistical ‘smoothing’….
Sorry, but that doesn’t sound very scientific.
Dee if your analysis is correct about the indoctrination of the Hitler youth and the AGW indoctrination our society today might we say that Gore is the modern day equivalent of Joseph Goebbels?
Reply – I will leave the reader to draw their own conclusions on this hot potato. But a word of caution, avoid drawing specifics where only vague generalities exist. The NAZIs were a terrible thing and America answered their aggressions with the greatest generation. I hope that another great generation would stand up to meet a similar threat if called upon. Lets all hope that never happens again. – Dee Norris
Jeff Alberts (08:41:35) :
edcon (09:08:47) :
I was snipped for using the JGM (Joseph Goebbels Media) analogy in an earlier post.
BBC investigated after peer says climate change programme was biased ‘one-sided polemic’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063110/BBC-investigated-peer-says-climate-change-programme-biased-sided-polemic.html
The BBC is being investigated by television watchdogs after a leading climate change sceptic claimed his views were deliberately misrepresented.
Lord Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, says he was made to look like a ‘potty peer’ on a TV programme that ‘was a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming’.
NEWS
Crude oil is ‘tanking’ again on the NY markets. Down over $8 per barrel.
Do you use oil to heat your home?
Get some bargains while you can.
Remember this story
Sep 26, 2008
Massachusetts Governor: “People Could Freeze to Death”
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct=us/2-0&fp=48e18028f0dcfbb6&ei=uALhSJiZOY34lQT79bWQAQ&url=http%3A//www.whynam560.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html%3Ffeed%3D189062%26article%3D4304667&cid=1250714450&usg=AFQjCNEzf_WowikJwOlSVyOfsnxi_Pc-qg
@Dee Norris
Global warming indoctrination in ‘publik skools’ is certainly not involuntary; yeah ok. I will assume Counters thinks it is perfectly legitimate to teach children we are destroying the planet and must reduce our carbon footprint to save it. See, it isn’t indoctrination because to AGW proponents it is factual, so how can it be indoctrination?
My neighbor’s kids go to a public school, mine do not. The difference in views on global warming are profound. Their kids are like scared little rabbits thinking everything they do could be harming the planet. They’ve watched AIT without parent’s permission and no alternative viewpoints. If that isn’t indoctrination, what is?
Being required to view AIT is not indoctrination either is it Counters?
counters,
It’s not the topic of the brainwashing, it’s the fact that the powers that be feel the need to be brainwashing little children in the first place.
I’ve had discussions with children who have been convinced by their teachers that the world is going to end if we don’t do something drastic, and soon.
There is no science behind such beliefs. Heck, there is no science behind the belief that future CO2 increases will cause any temperature rise beyond a few tenths of a degree.
After viewing the first pro-global warming ad by Pelosi-Gingrich, I emailed the Gingrich website questioning his buying-in to the scam and hoax. Interns at the website responded with a form letter saying that Newt was not sure about global warming, but that he wanted to be a part of the debate. The form letter conveyed concern about the best way to determine the reduction of atmospheric carbon. I responded by email saying that he had bought-in to the hoax and scam by accepting the premise that global warminng was anthopogenic and that he had lost any debate about the subject. There was no further form email.
Here is proof that Newt is a bonafide Algoracolyte.
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/04/22/lunch-losing-video-gingrich-and-pelosi-tag-team-for-al-gore/
Of course, telling kids that recycling isn’t hard…
So, that’s what your AGW cohorts who vandalised the Kingsnorth power station, and whom your friend the-ends-justify-the-means Hansen flew to rescue were protesting about? Recycling? Give us a break, counters.
Dee,
Propaganda is propaganda and the problem with the greatest generation is that a spin off of that generation created a counter culture that has evolved politically to control most of the news media and academia today.
“Will September be the month?”
No, but anxiety and impatience are understandable.
“There is lots of graphs using c14 records as a proxy for actual sunspot counts that go back centuries or a lot more if you want them.”
Because Carbon is chemically promiscuous, somewhat hydrophilic, heavier than air, etc., its use as a proxy of anything is dubious and fraught with imprecisions.
10Be is better as a cosmogenic proxy. It rapidly preciptates out forming oxides with Mg, Al, etc., which are relatively inert.
Gosh.
I guess I stirred up a hornet’s nest with the Al Gore WSJ link.
I’m afraid ‘edcon’ has it right.
Interesting times we live in.
Yep.
That’s my mantra.
It’s got to get me through the next months/years.
Interesting times . . . . .
NEWS
FWIW, DOW down over – 600 – points, as US House rejects the Bailout bill
Anthony
I haven’t read the post yet, but, once again, you have provided another great bit of desktop wallpaper!!!
Hey Anthony. Us Brits were ‘answering the NAZI’s aggressions’ too, you know? We do understand that the war ‘might’ have had a different outcome if the US hadn’t got involved, but together with Canadians, Australians, Polish, Indians, and too many to mention here, we were ‘answering their aggressions’ for two years before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Just wanted to make that point. : )
Reply – Blame me, not Anthony. My grandparents lived in London during the blitz. The entire free world answered the NAZI aggressions with equal valor (well, there were a couple of minor exceptions). – Dee Norris
edcon (09:08:47) :
I agree with your analogy. Last week Channel 12, Chico, CA, had a segment on a teacher who visited the Brown Penquins in their natural habitat supposedly damaged by AGW. The end of the segment showed the teacher (indoctrinette) asking the 10 year old pupils in her class, in Fresno, CA, what they would be willing to give up to save the Brown Penquins.
The “useful idiots” strike again.
Dee Noris, the Algore-UN campaign is not like the Nazi regime, but they are using the same propaganda technique the Nazi regime utilized. Using the technque on the vulnerable school children, who are in the learning mode, by the authority of the teacher is repulsive.
Here are two quotes by the leader of the infamous Nazi regime: “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” “As soon as by one’s own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one’s own right is laid.”
A quote from the propaganda minister of the Nazi regime: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
The success of the AGW campaign and the present bail-out of the mortage industry does not bode well for a free society.
Robert Bateman: “Look out your window, not up, but what’s going on at ground level. What do you observe?”
I think I’d be more impressed by the “just look around you” argument if I hadn’t done a bit of reading about the dreadful winters (and appalling springs, summers and autumns too) that Europe endured during the Little Ice Age. A particularly horrendous example is the winter of 1694-95, which went on well into April and during which in Britain apparently it snowed, at one point, for five weeks on end. I think this puts the recent gentle winters and mild early springs into sharp perspective.
So, looking out of my window, what do I observe? Generally, I notice a reassuring lack of deep snowdrifts, dead livestock, frozen wildlife and starving peasants foraging for nettles.
Cathy (10:31:21) :
” Interesting times we live in.
Yep.
That’s my mantra.
It’s got to get me through the next months/years.
Interesting times . . . . . ”
It’s hard to think of a better one.
I’m sitting here a little gobsmacked.
The bally-hooed bailout just went down.
Crude oil price has now crashed by more than $11 (traders betting on economic slowdown).
(Plus, the US drilling bans expire tomorrow – an “interesting times” event by itself)
The Dow was down at one point by about 705 points – if it closed there it would exceed the one-day point drop record set the first trading day after 9/11.
If it gets any more interesting, I think I might start drinking moderately again.
As reported above, here in the UK we are getting warm weather during the day, but cold mornings and evenings. However, we are also getting lovely sunrises and sunsets – dark oranges etc. Is there still sulpher dioxide in the air over the UK from that earlier emission – anyone know? Would that be the reason for the colours? [Microsoft writers, please note that it is indeed ‘colours’. You can change text for the French etc. but expect us Brits to put up with ‘colors’!]
The current problems on the money markets etc. can only be good news for sanity in matters ‘green’. Ask people if they want to be green, or burn whatever when they’re cold. You know what, they won’t want you to ask them – they’ll just expect you to go get it for them. [With apologies to the writer of Three Days of the Condor]
Steve Berry (11:50:44) :
” As reported above, here in the UK we are getting warm weather during the day…”
It’s already over. Rain and wind starting tonight.
The charts for the next several days look an awful lot like awful August.
Steve Berry,
You are right, of course. Before the U.S. entered WWII [as a result of Hitler declaring war on America on 12/11/41], Great Britain had pretty much stopped the Germans from launching a cross channel invasion.
But you must admit that if it weren’t for the dogged persistence and constant cheerleading of one man — Winston Churchill — England may well have made a separate peace with Germany.
In that case, the war definitely would have had a different outcome: Germany would have ruled the entire European continent, including Russia.
He’s always got a big audience
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aIBZNp8Znlc
indoctrination??????
Dee……
Interesting times we live in. …….(John-X)
ICECAP:
Outsiders familiar with the proper workings of science have long known that modern Climate Science is dysfunctional. Now a prominent insider, MIT Meteorology Professor Richard S. Lindzen, confirms how Al Gore and his minions used Stalinist tactics to subvert, suborn and corrupt a whole branch of science, citing chapter and verse in his report entitled “Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?” His answer: A resounding “NO!”
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf