Although we’ve been covering this quiet sun issue for over a year on WUWT, the light bulb seems to have gone on for mainstream media right about now.
There is growing press coverage about the current state of the sun, most recently from Charles Osgood of CBS News as well as the BBC and other major outlets. While the sun slumbers deeper and has missed its cyclic snooze alarm, our media is finally waking up to the solar somnolence.
Here is a short roundup of news articles on this subject today:
‘Still Sun’ baffling astronomers
Scientists warn sun has dimmed
Sun ‘at its quietest for 100 years’
Has the sun gone in? Earth’s closest star ‘dimmest it’s been for a century’
So the question arises, now that this has been identified, what should we call it?
There have been some good ideas, such as naming it after Jack Eddy, who coined the phrase “Maunder Minimum“. There’s been some discussion of a “Gore Minimum”, but I don’t like the idea of giving Gore credit for something he has nothing to do with, or even likely understands. There’s been suggestion of “The Hansen Minimum” which makes a little more sense, since he’s an astronomer by training. On that note, Leif Svalgaard predicted this, so maybe it should be his honor.
So, I’ve decided to have a poll, and I’ll take suggestions for other names than what I’ve listed.
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Gore Minimum
Gore Minimum
I suggest we call this the “Caused by Anthropogenic Emission of CO2” Minimum
Naughty Minimum.
It started in 08, naught eight, or naught nine, 09. And it is certainly naughty as it will upset a lot of people who were convinced that the sun had nothing (naught) to do with AGW.
Enjoy.
How about the Millenuim Minimum. Has a nice ring to it.
Yes this quiet spell is garnering a lot of media interest. However they are using a big caveat that “THIS HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING”
I mean, how ridiculous that the sun would effect temperatures on earth and variances in the solar output (electronic, magnetic, radioactive etc) would have ANY variable effect on the earth’s systems that could in turn act as a catalytic method for temperature variability. What utter tosh!
Go back to sleep people, nothing to see here. Go back to sleep, we are still destroying the planet in a unique way that can only be remedied by taxes and surveillance of the ignorant masses, ignore our large planes and huge palaces and our constant jet-setting around the world, YOU, yes YOU in the little car, YOU MUST PAY MORE, YOU must let us monitor your travel, because only by doing this will the global molecules of CO2 really know that we mean to tackle climate change.
Now shut up and pay your climate taxes.
It kinda turns my stomach to immortalize either Gore or Hansen like this. And “Modern” is too generic – in addition to being “modern” only until the next generation at which time it would be no longer “modern”. That leaves either “Eddy” or “other”.
I prefer “other” – but what other? That requires some thought.
I still like “Gore Maximum”. It would force a footnote of explanation (exposure) every time it showed up in print. If I can’t have that, I want “Goracle Minimum”.
Landscheidt minimum after Theodore Landscheidt.
http://itsonlysteam.com/articles/landscheidt_minimum_part2.html
Gore Minimum
Gore minimum (motion carried?)
The Ignored Minimum
The Inconvenient Minimum
(This fits in with Osgood’s theme of how it will upset the AGWA apple-cart.)
The Mann-minimum
Hmmm… “Gore Minimum”… Hard to beat…
Hmmm… I give up. 🙂
The Watts Up Minimum
Hey yall,
Read this interview with Jack Eddy before you decide!
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/eddy_int.htm
Eek!!! The Mayan Minimum!
I kind of agree with the point about not giving Gore credit, but the “Gore Minimum” is too good to resist although the Hansen Minimum has a nicer ring to it.
I don’t think it is shown yet to be a significant minimum, grand or lesser. It’s just a bit slow on the uptake to Cycle 24, and the spots may or may not be turning invisible.
If it turns into a real Minimum, my vote is for the Eddy Minimum. Jack Eddy liked words, and he is the one who popularized the idea that the sun has minimums. His extensive work should be recognized. Gore deserves to be remembered with scorn, or at the least, forgotten.
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Upon reflection I’d like to rescind my vote for “Gore minimum.” There is a long and honorable tradition in science of naming things after their discoverer. “Gore min” and “Hansen min” are intended to be ironic and disparaging, and “Modern min” is just typical self-centeredness and recentism that won’t make sense in another hundred years. Eddy would be good choice, maybe Salvgaard as well. And maybe we should not be quite so sure of ourselves. The Maunder minimum lasted 70 years, it would be a shame to hang a nametag on this one and have it turn out to last 17 months.
Gore Minimum. There’s no credit being associated with what may turn out to be the start of a new ice age. Minimum’s bring misery and steal prosperity, no sane person would want his name on one. That qualifies Big Al.
Gore minimum has the maximum humour value,
h/t http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzI3ZTYzZWNjNDliZThkMDJkYzRlZDI1NjQ2MDE0MjI=
In Theodore Landscheidt’s ‘Sun, Earth, Man’ published in 1989, and his 2003 paper ‘New Little Ice Age instead of Global Warming’ Energy & Environment , Vol 14 no 2&3, he makes the prediction that the sun will enter either a Dalton-type or Maunder-type minimum in the first cycles of the 21st century. He predicted that 1990 would be the peak of sunspots (cycle 22) and that cycle 23 peaking in 2000-2001 would be lower, and that cycle 24 would be much lower, with 25 leading into the minimum. He reckoned there was an 85% chance that it would be a Maunder-type minimum and that by 2030 we would be in the depth of a new Little Ice Age.
He also predicted the 1998 super El Nino and said that there would be one more in 2002, less strong but obscuring the cooling which would not be obvious until 2007!
He has been correct in all his projections.
So I nominate this minimum as the ‘Landscheidt Minimum’.
His projections were based upon Newtonian physics – the transfer of angular momentum from the giant planets to the solar sphere. The mechanism whereby this might affect the magnetic layers of the sun is not known, but his correlations and calculations of past patterns coincide with the previous Little Ice Age as well as other problematic climate events in the 5000 year history of agrarian civilisation – there is more in the book than in the paper.
Recent work on the accretion discs of newly forming stars is showing that the angular momentum of orbiting matter can be transferred by magnetic fields (I am not a physicist, so can only guess that this means if there is a low point in the angular momentum pattern (it varies according to the interplay of angles the planets make to each other), then maybe that also feeds back to the magnetic field – and if that operates on our own solar disc, then we are approaching a mechanism for affecting the sunspot frequency.
Irrespective of the mechanism, Landscheidt deserves credit for his predictions.
Algore Minimum.