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.
kim (18:25:04) wrote:
“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.”
OTOH, perhaps this will provide politicians with the excuse they need to delay expensive mitigation measures for a year or two: “Because things aren’t getting worse at the moment, so there’s no need to act as though there’s an emergency.” It might also give other fence-sitters and secret skeptics the excuse they’d need to come down on the side of “a temporary delay.”
After a year of two, when the sun ramps up again, but the temperature fails to follow, and the controversy has cooled down, people on all side of the issue will be happy to let it remain on the back burtner and gradually fade away. Anyway, that’s a possible scenario.
A couple of years ago, a commenter on CA put up the history for Irtusk in Siberia.
It is a beautiful expostion of an 11 year temperature cycle,
http://climexp.knmi.nl/gettempall.cgi?someone@somewhere+30710+IRKUTSK+
Irktusk is interesting. Perhaps the furthest from the sea with a long history.
D Overcast,
A lot of people who refuse to do any research on the side of skeptics and simply parrot the AGW alarmist nonsense probably have heard it from him first.
And the move to mainstream news continues….
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDtgU7eRVxUAIAcRsShLOcgYfiywD97N6PJO0
Regarding this paragraph:
“President Barack Obama wants all of the permits auctioned off with billions of dollars in auction proceeds to blunt the cost hikes of electricity and other energy as fossil-fuel generated energy becomes more expensive.”
… when I read it I think I heard my wallet scream.
Leif Svalgaard (18:08:04) : “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” 🙂
ROFL! About time!
geophys55 (18:20:24) : Not a chance:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=7E60E3FA-802A-23AD-4291-E3975CBB96CB
D Overcast (17:21:04) : Given that this kind of news isn’t disseminated to the majority of people by the MSM that they place undue trust in, it is highly plausible that this is the first time many people are hearing. Not any readers here, obviously, though.
Leif, I made it through the mountain of reading material you piled on last time I asked a (somewhat technical) question. Everything is a lot more clear now – including the limitations of spectral analysis for analyzing non-stationary time series affected by differential rotation and the potential for misunderstandings arising from lax use of the term ‘coupled’ as if it was synonymous with ‘synchronized’ — what an eye-opener…
A loose end:
Would this article now be considered ‘out-of-date’?
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1986SoPh..104..425S
Leif Svalgaard (18:08:04) :
Dr. Hathaway, however grudgingly, is acting as a gentleman in this situation. Would that more in this debate would follow suit.
Regarding the quiet sun, no doubt there will have to be a new solar irradience tax to offset the falls in TSI.
Sounds stupid? Almost as stupid as taxing rainfall.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25364452-5006784,00.html
‘….is the government doing anything about it?’ Is this fellow a journalist? Does he mean what is the government doing about the sun? As a person sitting at the centre of the gaussian curve of human achievement, I am perplexed at this chaps choice of words. What is he saying? Please! Could someone raise me from my solitude?
Well, for goodness sake. It’s so bloody obvious. What’s the matter with you all ?If we keep on emitting all this CO2 it’s bound to start putting the sun out just a little isn’t it.
Isn’t it ?
I disagree with deadwood (17:50:26) about Charles Osgood being only in minor radio slots. Word spreads, even if he only does his one or two minutes on the radio each day. He is respected, and as others have said here, once the dam springs a leak, the whole scam about AGW may burst.
When the sun spots do return, I am anticipating is the following AGW tactic. Gore, late-September 2009 in front of cameras somewhere near the Arctic summer melt: “Since the Sun has been dormant for so long, the effects of excess CO2 in the atmosphere has been minimized during this brief respite, but when the solar activity resumes, global warming will increase even more dramatically than anticipated and sea level will rise even faster than we could have ever anticipated in our computer models. Manhattan Island and most of Florida will be under water in less than five years!!!.”
Then they will give Al the Nobel prize in Science.
F Rasmin (19:16:09) : It is actually, as I see it, brilliant social commentary. The government seems to want to o something about everything nowadays. I’m not sure what the “gaussian curve of human achievement” is, but it kind of sounds as if you think we are at the peak of human achievement. That would be an absurd and ignorant statement on its face, so if I am wrong, please correct me.
Last fall I began informally checking Google News for the number of returns on searches for “global cooling” and “global warming”, in hard quotes. Changes in the occurance of these terms have been dramatic. There are also been large changes in whether an article is mentioning ‘cooling’ or ‘warming’ in a positive or negative sense.
I am aware that others – skeptic & believer – are making similar surveys, some much more formal & sophisticated than mine. Warming activists have made reports of these changing statistics on the green/AGW Gristmill blog. They know …
Posts here on WUWT have mentioned a changing ‘media consensus’ on the topic of climate change. They and others have noted that media in general have been happy to cheerlead for fellow liberals who happen to be promoting AGW … but that as indications emerge suggesting that the science of it has been hijacked by old-fashioned activism-politics, the media could prove unusually sensitive to having ‘been had’.
Media tend to like a liberal cause … but they don’t like feeling ‘played’, no matter how politically-correct the topic.
Making a huge symbolic issue out of the melting Arctic Icecap could be a turning point for AGW. If late this summer the ice is clearly hanging in there better than recent summers, the various spin-options will be weak. The public is comfortable applying common sense to questions about Arctic ice-coverage, and will happly smirk at the spin-slingin’.
The Osgood File is an early indicator of how the ‘the media war’ is going.
That is a terrific piece Mr. Osgood. You get a Standing Ovation from me. And you are right, you are the first “on TV” that I have heard such a story from.
http://www.the-green-wind.com
Wow. Two more reports like this and I may end my 28 year boycott of CBS. Really. (OK, except for The Masters.)
Frederick Michael (18:44:08) :
Expect a letter from lawyers regarding the damage from high-speed, fluid nasal ejections.
Of course, we will now have to regulate the sun to ensure it never gets this big again.
I skipped the comments as I am in a hurry, but I am certain I am joining many in thanking Mr. Osgood for a stimulating read. I also thank him for having the courage to speak his mind in the face of certain hysterical rebuttal.
Good on you sir!
It’s not that I worry about who is right but about the weather we’re in for. . . ,
Gil Russell
Leif: How about “I hate to admit it when David Archibald is even right(er) but that seems to be the case here” or Landscheit maybe? LOL
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
The BBC reported the stor:
“We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity,” said Professor Lockwood.
“We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum.”
He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
“What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid.”
Data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows global average temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the beginning of the 20th Century.
And the IPCC projects that the world will continue to warm, with temperatures expected to rise between 1.8C and 4C by the end of the century.
…it appears the BBC found a Professor that shares their ideology. Good to know that the Sun is just behaving just as Professor Lockwood expects and that Global Warming will go on unabated. He seems to be all knowing. Anyone know this clown?
Finally, a main stream commentator who has some knowledge of our climate history. One would think the MSM has never heard of the Maunder or Dalton Minimum. Yay, Charles Osgood!
Osgood is right if he is referring to NASA . David Hathaway, et. al. may be coming around now, but how long did he and his NASA friends deny what most of the rest of us on this blog acknowledged? Remember, not so long ago he rhetorically answered the question, “What’s Wrong With The Sun?” “Nothing,” as in everything is perfectly normal. Osgood is also correct about the media cover up of what should be front page headlines.
I don’t know that Hathaway is “baffled.” He may be embarrassed to admit he has been so wrong. We all seemed to see this coming.
Mike Bryant (18:24:57) :
“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”.
Mike, you are a real party animal.
The BBC Journalist who reported the “Sun Baffling Astronomers” has a reputation for environmental ideology and twisting facts according to this Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pallab_Ghosh
Perhaps what Prof Lockwood actually reported was misrepresented. Certainly an ideologist with an environmental agenda (anti – GM crops) is unlikely to give a balanced report.