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.
charles the moderator (20:20:37) :
John Egan:
I’ve highlighted your post for Anthony, and left it embargoed in the mean time. It is not being ignored.
Awww…. c’mon…. wad he say? wad he say? 🙂
REPLY: It was an operational issue, nothing juicy, not that it is any of your business, but people often leave messages for me as comments. The moderating team make sure I see them. – Anthony
Are there monkeys flying out of certain places??
The Quiet sun was reported on the BBC yesterday with a big and blatant caveat that it is not quiet enough to effect global warming and it has been dimming since 1985 whilst global temperatures have gone up.
The BBC does not accept ANY contradictory evidence whatsoever. The BBC news readers are NOT reporters, but have become advocates. They are NOT impartial, they are totally biased.
Paul Vaughan (18:21:00) :
For comparison:
“‘Quiet Sun’ baffling astronomers” (Tuesday, 21 April 2009)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8008473.stm
I noticed too that Osgood’s story was very similar to the BBC article. It does not matter as the main thing is to spread the knowledge about the Sun. But maybe he should have dropped the “Remember, you heard it here first…” part.
I doubt that the public is going to be happy with Democratic policy come around 2012 or so.
Leif Svalgaard (22:41:44)
“I happen to agree with my good friend Ken […]”
He’s an eloquent writer.
“The magnetic field thus has increased buoyancy with depth, which might make the field close to unsinkable, like trying to sink a giant raft to the bottom of the ocean.”
“If the field of the Sun does descend deep into the solar interior, it is behaving in a manner unlike the manner it displays in terrestrial plasma machines, where the plasma and field are immiscible.”
“[…] as a leaf falling under gravity falls bowed side down […]”
“It would be a valuable test of surface versus deep field dynamo models to undertake the Svalgaard–Wilcox (1976) study with modern data and ascertain the persistence of their correlation. This may shed further light on the important question of whether the source of the Sun’s dynamo is deep or shallow.”
“Acknowledgements
We appreciate Leif Svalgaard for fruitful discussions and supplying us with his supersynoptic charts, originally developed by Roger Ulrich. […]”
Speaking of Ulrich, is there anything further along the lines of investigation pursued in the following?
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0004-637X/560/1/466/53641.web.pdf?request-id=e0d05d7d-279b-40c2-b0ad-0da6d7c67987
I couldn’t believe my eyes but…
YES !
THERE’S A NEW SUNSPOT!
Well, it’s already fading away but in these times, it’s very good new anyway, isn’t it?
A few more highlights from Schatten (2009) – Solar Physics:
“The name percolation is derived from the Latin term percolare, which means to strain or filter. Other scientists have often used it when other nonlinear phenomena occur (e.g., growth patterns in forest fires, crystal structures, etc.). […] For the Sun, we distinguish two forms or flavors of percolation […]”
“[…] using quantum statistics – which is inherently nonlinear,
since the variable jumps from integer to integer without smoothly going through the real number line […] used in forest fires, predator–prey (Lotka –Volterra) equations, and in a broad range of disciplines not amenable to the former techniques of differential equations.”
“[…] differential equations based upon physics, amenable to conditions where parameters are slowly changing […]”
“For chaotic conditions, where phenomena are changing so rapidly that differentials may not be possible […]”
“To avoid too much growth or decay, a “floor”
and a “ceiling” are also included. […] This is done for two practical reasons: i) Nonlinear physical phenomena always have some limit to their strength, and ii) observationally, a floor in the interplanetary field has been reported by Svalgaard and Cliver (2007). If a floor were not used, the duration of our broad activity minima periods would lengthen.”
Using Hadcrut temperatures, the average anomaly over the past three years has been 0.38. The average anomaly from 2000-2002, during the last peak in solar activity, was 0.38. Going back to previous solar minima, the three year average anomaly was 0.26 for 1995-7; 0.07 for 1985-7; and -0.11 for 1974-6.
If it’s warmer now in this deep minimum than it was at the maximum, and if for the last thirty years temperatures during each solar minimum have been warmer than the last, then changes in solar activity are not the dominant cause of changing temperatures.
What is the dominant cause of changing temperatures at the moment? Over the last 30 years, there is no correlation at all between either TSI or sunspot numbers and global temperatures. But the correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperatures is strong: R-squared=0.67.
Solar activity is not currently driving global temperatures. CO2 concentrations are. This simple analysis shows you that quite clearly.
Leif Svalgaard – I wish you knew how wrong you are.
[snip, play nice now ~ charles the moderator]
kim (18:25:04) :
Supposedly, the quiet sun is not cooling the planet.
From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8008473.stm
“Prof Lockwood was one of the first researchers to show that the Sun’s activity has been gradually decreasing since 1985, yet overall global temperatures have continued to rise.
“If you look carefully at the observations, it’s pretty clear that the underlying level of the Sun peaked at about 1985 and what we are seeing is a continuation of a downward trend (in solar activity) that’s been going on for a couple of decades.
“If the Sun’s dimming were to have a cooling effect, we’d have seen it by now.””
“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.”
My opinion of Prof. Lockwood’s belief is unprintable.
Paul Vaughan (00:12:21) :
Speaking of Ulrich, is there anything further along the lines of investigation pursued in the following?
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/torsional.html
Ninderthana (01:03:38) :
Leif Svalgaard – I wish you knew how wrong you are.
Tell me about it.
This is exactly the sort of thing that would be lumber with an anthropogenic cause if there was any possible way to do it.
I for one don’t underestimate the ingenuity of “scientists(TM)”
RW (00:58:50) :
Using Hadcrut temperatures, the average anomaly over the past three years has been 0.38. The average anomaly from 2000-2002, during the last peak in solar activity, was 0.38. Going back to previous solar minima, the three year average anomaly was 0.26 for 1995-7; 0.07 for 1985-7; and -0.11 for 1974-6.
If the solar cycle length/SSN has an indirect impact on temperature, (eg: Albedo from clouds, etc). Then, since we have just come out of 50 years of above average solar cycles we should expect to have seen a consistant long term increase in temperature during this period, and now as we enter a period of reduced solar activity we should expect a gradual cooling from the peak after about 2003. If solar activity stays low for 50 years we should end up back where we started.
So far, so good !
vg (19:50:52) :
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
In what way is David Archibald “right(er)”? Leif (and others) have been predicting a low SC24 sunspot count for some time now. DA came onto to the scene recently and has expanded on the ‘weak cycle’ theme to predict a 2 deg decline in global temperatures over the next “few” years – though he is not specific about the time period. He has come to this conclusion by using a crude correlation between solar cycle length and the temperature record at a few selected locations.
Whether SC24 is weak or not is not the issue for most readers of this blog. Rather it is the assumption (mistaken – I believe) that it will have a significant effect on global temperatures.
I think perhaps your simple analysis is a little bit too simple. If CO2 were driving climate as you suggest, then why hasn’t the temperature increased since the turn of the century? For sure it’s to do with the Oceans and the Sun, in tandem. That, perhaps, would be enough to confound any direct correlations you are looking for, I humbly suggest.
But more than this, consider the statement you have made above. Does that not seem counter-intuitive to you? It would take A LOT to convince me that it wasn’t at root the Sun, a whole lot. For some people however, it seems to take a lot to convince them it isn’t Co2, despite the fact that Co2 does not seem to be a causal actor in this play, whereas the Sun itself evidently is (being a giant ball of fire in an ice-cold room).
Funny how some people get excited when they see a single sunspot form. They clearly are upset that their AGW theory is being challenged by natural forces.
Richard Hill’s link to the Irkutsk data is certainly interesting. It should be noted though, that although the city is far from the sea it is close to Lake Baikal. This is no ordinary lake. It is large and extremely deep, containing about 20% of all the world’s fresh water – more than all the North American Great Lakes combined. This is bound to have some effect on the local climate.
There is an article in today’s printed version of The Times from the UK in the Weather Eye column on p.57 by Paul Simons. He says:
The Sun is having an unusually quiet spell. Normally it goes through 11-year cycle of activity that peeks with sunspots – dark freckles on its surface – followed by a calmer period with few sunspots. Last year the Sun reached its minimum and was expected to hot up again this year, but still few sunspots have appeared.
Another notably quiet spell of sunspots lasted from about 1645 until 1714 and coincided with a cold period known as the Little Ice Age.
Some people suggest that the lack of solar activity caused a cooling effect, and that a similar effect now might relieve the impact of climate change. But the picture is not so clear-cut.
True, the Little Ice Age was marked by some cold winters and short summers. The 1640s were particularly dire, when poor harvests led to rising prices and helped to spark political turmoil across Europe. And in Britain the soaring cost of food helped to drive the Civil War, as well as political and religious upheaval.
Could the lack of sunspots have led to the Little Ice Age? Several powerful volcanic eruptions struck between 1638 and 1643, launching clouds of dust that helped to cool off global temperatures. But by the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the climate improved and harvests recovered. And conditions remained good for another 30 years – despite the lack of sunspots.
Any comments?
It seems not to have been widely broadcast as yet that the Sun has been changed from incandescent to fluorescent, to help meet EU emission targets.
John Finn (02:19:28) :
Whether SC24 is weak or not is not the issue for most readers of this blog. Rather it is the assumption (mistaken – I believe) that it will have a significant effect on global temperatures.
That’s the whole point, for me at least. Nothing much has happened at all either in warming or cooling. What has happened is a deliberate misinterpretation of a slightly warmer than normal period to the extent of it becoming a global political agenda.
The quiet sun we’re encountering at the moment hasn’t got a hope in hell of putting the freeze on a catastrophe that never was, we’re dealing with reality versus fiction.
Now what we need is a group of Billionaire banksters and Industrialists to whoop us into a frenzy over global cooling, then we’ll have an ice age.
“Breaking scientific news”. When I hear this lead in I groan. All those Intro courses in science did for us was set us up for endless confusion and manipulation. Coffee is good, coffee is bad. CO2 is good, CO2 is bad ..always the hurricanes blowing, always the population growing, and the money owing… I want to live in America . Sorry, can’t get that West Side Story tune out of my head. Where was I? The sun, you say? Quite! Quite! Seems that might have something to do with it.
OT but …
Obviously the zealots at the BBC feel they overdid the “scepticism” with their quiet sun story yesterday. They are therefore making up for it with this piece of nonsense:
Rivers drying up due to Global Warming
Obviously the greater evaporation in a warmer world won’t translate into more rain, like it does in this universe. I despair!
Ok – a little late to the debate but I was reading tetris (17:34:56) comment from Europe. He mention Claude Allegre – the new climate minister from France, anyhew did anyone else notice this remark from the NY Times last week. The article quotes French President Sarkosy, who dished the gossip on his fellow heads of state. Of interest was his quote that Obama was “badly briefed on climate change”.
Tempting to speculate that Dr. Allegre – a very well respected isotope geochemist and climate realist is the one briefing Mr. Sarkosy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/europe/17sarkozy.html
RW (00:58:50) :
Of course, RW is wrong. I suspect that he just cherry picked a random number set purporting to show an R^2 correlation of .62. That is an extremely high number, and if it were true, the planet’s temperature would be tracking the rise in CO2 very closely.
But it doesn’t; as CO2 rises, the planet cools: click.
As Robinson points out above, the planet is not responding to CO2. As carbon dioxide levels rise, the planet’s temperature continues to fall: click. Note that the R^2 correlation is practically non-existent.
If CO2 caused global warming, then the planet would be getting much hotter. Instead, the planet is cooling — thus falsifying the CO2=AGW hypothesis.
People like RW are forced to claim that changes in a minor trace gas will cause runaway global warming and climate catastrophe. If they give up that hypothesis, they’ve got nothing left but natural climate variability, and where’s the money in that?