…it is with great sadness that I report that Jack Eddy passed away yesterday.
– Dr. Leif Svalgaard in comments today
“My reasons for taking this less-traveled road were many. One is the inevitable thrill of discovery when you wander into new areas. More importantly, you also avoid the danger of being too comfortable in too narrow a niche. I truly believe the sayings that there is no hope for the satisfied man and that without fear there is no learning. Entering a new field with a degree in another is not unlike Lewis and Clark walking into the camp of the Mandans. You are not one of them. They distrust you. Your degree means nothing and your name is not recognized. You have to learn it all from scratch, earn their respect, and learn a lot on your own. But I also think that many of the most significant disc
overies in science will be found not in but between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines: the terra incognita where much remains to be learned. It’s not a place that’s hidebound by practice and ritual. I have always tried to keep moving between fields of study.” — Jack Eddy, 1999. Click here to view full text of Eddy interview
I didn’t know Jack Eddy personally, I knew of his work (the Maunder Minimum ) in 1978 before I knew he was the man behind it.
I think I speak for the entire WUWT community when I say that we have lost a man whom was true to his craft, careful in his outlook, and courageous in his challenge of the solar consensus of the 1970’s. The WUWT community, offers our sincerest condolences to the Eddy family and to his friend, Dr. Leif Svalgaard. – Anthony
Tributes can be left in comments.
UPDATE:
An online petition has been started to name the next solar minimum per Leif’s suggestion in comments:
Nearly 200 signatures so far.
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Thank you for showing us the past.
Rest in Peace.
Condolences to family and colleagues.
I read that fascinating interview as well as an essay at:
http://engr-sci.org/history/climate/solar.htm#eddy
His seems to have been an interdisciplinary approach that challenged a consensus and we are the richer for it.
At a time when I was encountering heavy administrative opposition, I was deeply inspired by the story told by Jack Eddy in the following interview:
“Interview with Jack Eddy, April 21, 1999
In Michigan by phone, conducted by Spencer Weart”
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/eddy_int.htm
This was a man who patiently endured that which opposed.
I’m sure I speak for all of the Kiwis on this site, when I express our sorrow at hearing this news. I can only echo Mike Bryant’s words:
As I read the rest of the interview I came to see in Eddy a very polite and humble man with a towering integrity. This type of integrity should absolutely be celebrated. Condolences to all who called this man a friend or a loved one. Your loss is also the world’s loss.
The Eddy Minimum is an appropriate memorial to the man and his work.
I support the Eddy Minimum; I never agreed with attaching Gore’s worthless name to it.
Haere ra, Jack.
Let’s stand on his shoulders.
I too learned about the Maunder Minimum( and other minimums) in the 70’s at school, a few years after we were all told (me 6 or 7 at the time) we were causing the NEW ICE AGE with our carbon monoxide and CFC/HFC emissions/aerosols that caused cooling and a ozone hole! OH DEAR!
We tried fixing it through government banning and grants to believers. Nope, we didn’t do squat of a difference. They said in public forms, TV, Radio and print. We’ve got to SAVE THE WORLD from a depletion of ozone that can make the sun more intense, creating more cancers because harmful rays are coming in, OH DEAR! Beware the sun!
But then things started getting warmer and we called our new war on CFC/HFC’s.. WON! Changed over our cheap easily made safe refrigerates out for expensive government mandated corporate makers. And made toxic emissions into life giving co2 for plant/ocean/human food.
Skip forward 30 F-ing years in understanding and now “the sun has nothing to do with the heating in the last 30 yeas , it’s the CO2 in the atmosphere building up and the warming of the air for almost 200 years that is causing this!”
Yep, and here we are today. Still no proof, going full circle and ended up at the next shift in climate like back to the 70’s.
When I think about the minimums, I think back to the time that I read about the Dalton min/Maunder Min. and was exploring my love of earth sciences and palaeontology.
I learned about tens of thousands, if not millions of climate variations from our sun. Extinctions and flourishing, depending the area and time you live in.
The person Jack Eddy I never knew, but his science did reach/touch me and this is why I’m still fighting AGW/C 30 year old garbage. The old real sun science that makes up my thinking today, is still there!
I’ve held the knowledge(his) of the suns minimums and then the understanding of solar variations in a cycle. The powers of the sun and our civilizations survival/adaption.
I too think “The Eddy Minimum” is only logical and right.
RIP
For some reason I’m reminded of the Elton John song:
“I would have liked to known you,
but I was just a kid,
your candle burned out long before,
your legend ever did”…
It would seem we have lost a great scientist. May the principles and integrity he stood for prevail.
Condolences to his friends and family.
I fully endorse much of what has been said. Condolences to his family & friends for their loss. I sincerely hope his passing was peaceful & with dignity.
However, I believe that whilst his passing is a loss to all in the scientific community, we should celebrate his life & his achievements more than ever. That is the way to silence the LIA deniers, his work should be pushed to the fore as much as possible to bring him into the general public view.
AtB
If this link has been posted, my apologies, if you don’t know who Jack Eddy is or what he accomplished this is the quickest read that covers most of it that I found;
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/eddy_int.htm
My sincere condolences to everyone who knew him personally.
Leif Svalgaard (21:56:56) :
At the Solar Physics Division [of the American Astronomical Society] next week in Boulder, CO, I’ll formally request that if a significant solar minimum materializes that it be called the ‘Eddy Minimum’.
Leif, I suggest you phrase the request as “the next solar minimum.” He deserves the honor, no matter when the event occurs.
Only a few dream and then live the dream. Here is a man who did.
A kind and wise man.
R.I.P.
Leif, you have my sympathy as well.
A suggestion of raingear for next week’s conference in Boulder was made already. You might consider warm clothes as well if you intend to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. Trail Ridge Road was closed again last night because of snow, the third or fourth closing since it opened for the season just before Memorial Day.
John W. (05:23:48) :
“At the Solar Physics Division [of the American Astronomical Society] next week in Boulder, CO, I’ll formally request that if a significant solar minimum materializes that it be called the ‘Eddy Minimum’.”
Leif, I suggest you phrase the request as “the next solar minimum.” He deserves the honor, no matter when the event occurs.
I’ll formally request that when a significant solar minimum materializes it be called the ‘Eddy Minimum’
“Entering a new field with a degree in another is not unlike Lewis and Clark walking into the camp of the Mandans. You are not one of them. They distrust you. Your degree means nothing and your name is not recognized. You have to learn it all from scratch, earn their respect, and learn a lot on your own. But I also think that many of the most significant discoveries in science will be found not in, but between the rigid boundaries of the disciplines: the terra incognita where much remains to be learned. It’s not a place that’s hidebound by practice and ritual. I have always tried to keep moving between fields of study.” — Jack Eddy, 1999.
His life and achievements, eloquently stated, are the quintessential rebuttal to “doesn’t have a degree in climatology”.
Eddy minimum indeed.
Lief and others-Yes it should be the “Eddy Minimum” Algore has no right to be honored as such. RIP Mr.Eddy…
Truly a sad day. I was taken with his early publications on the subject and tracked them down and sumamrized their main points in a couple blog posts:
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/landscheidt-part-4-eddy-summary/
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/landscheidt-5-review-of-eddys-the-case-of-the-missing-sunspots/
(While under the Lnadscheidt category because of his references to Eddy, the two posts above are almost strictly summaries of the Eddy Papers).
Included at the end of that second post is a quote that jumped out at me, which I will repeat here, from Eddy’s “Case of the Missing Sunspots.”
“It would seem that Maunder and Spoerer were right and that most of the rest of us have been wrong. As is often the case in the onrush of modern science, we had too quickly forgotten the past, forgotten the less-than-perfect pedigree of the sunspot cycle and the fact that it too once came as a surprise. We had adopted a kind of solar uniformitarianism, contending that the modern behavior of the sun represented the normal behavior of the sun over a much longer span of time.”
The “scientific consensus” on climate change jumped out at me when I read this. Keep questioning! The truth will eventually bare itself, whether or not in our lifetimes.
RIP, Mr. Eddy.
I can only second all the comments above. A person worthy of being associated with a major scientific event, I also strongly support a request that the next solar minimum be named for Jack Eddy.
Likewise my thoughts are with his friends and family.
Larry
It was fascinating to read, in the interview, of Jack Eddy’s navigation through the often wayward and uncertain currents of academic science, and especially about his confirmation of the historical evidence of the Maunder Minimum using contemporary tools—proof positive of the value of interdisciplinary research.
It is a little puzzling to read, at the end of the interview, that he seemed to have espoused the anthropogenic hypothesis of recent global warming:
Not to introduce a negative note (from the standpoint of this blog). Did Dr. Eddy ever consider that the late 20th-century warming, such as it was, might have been caused by a solar maximum?
/Mr Lynn
Condolences to his family and friends.
Hope to meet you in heaven!
The Eddy Minimum, in honor of a truly great scientist, dedicated to discovery, definitely.
My heartfelt condolences to the Eddy family and to you Dr. Svalgaard. The Eddy Minimum has a ring to it. To sleep, perchance to dream, …..
“I truly believe the sayings that there is no hope for the satisfied man and that without fear there is no learning.”
Wise words indeed, words to live by.
Here is a poem I often turn to on such occasions.
“I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.”
~ Stephen Spender ~
The Maunder Minimum.
Lest we forget.
To Jack Eddy, cheers mate.
May this minimum be a maximum worthy of your name.
RIP.