I’m having a free day today in Brisbane, after an intensive week of travel and presentations. I feel zorched, but I still hope to catch up on correspondences and posts. If you have not booked into the tour yet, there are two weeks left in the tour. Details here.
The other candidate for QOTW via NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze merited its own story here.
National Geographic used to be one of my favorite magazines and television programs. I don’t subscribe anymore and I can hardly bear to watch the TV programs because they have so much alarmism in them. I had an ad popup on my MSN messenger which spieled gloom and doom for us puny humans, so I decided to check it out. While it is certainly true that we could see another “Carrington Event” and given our dependence on i-everythings and satellites in orbit these days, such a disruption could be more globally problematic than in the past.
But the NatGeo quote describing the video made me chuckle, not for the visions of dead iPhones, but for doing the very thing we skeptics get accused of, confusing weather and climate.
Here’s the quote from National Geographic Videos:
Just as the sun allows our atmosphere to remain stable, so too can it destroy civilization.
Ummm, confusing weather with climate there guys? From day to night, the atmosphere is anything but stable. In fact it is quite dynamic. Just ask anyone in Kansas about right now.
Plus, cycle 24 so far doesn’t look like a barn burner. That’s not to say we can’t get a big flare/CME, but the likelihood is lower with a quieter sun.
Watch the video by clicking below:
One of the slides from David Archibald’s presentation during our joint tour suggests a weakening solar cycle 24 and 25. Globally, that could be far more troublesome than some dead iPhones and power outages.
We can do without iPhones, but hungry masses due to declining growing zones tend to get a bit more testy than texters gone wild.
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more sea ice news for Steve Goddard
Also “in press” in “Quaternary Science Reviews”, with abstract available:
Quaternary Sea-ice history in the Arctic Ocean based on a new Ostracode sea-ice proxy.
T.M. Cronin, , , L. Gemery, W.M. Briggs Jr., M. Jakobsson, L. Polyak and E.M. Brouwers
Since you are in Australia, maybe some Australian humour? The science is clear -see http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/stories/victoria-dynamite-invetigates-sea-level
Even a Carrington Event will not damage your iPhone or any other hand-held device as long as it isn’t plugged into the power grid. It will probably take down the network, however. Only long conductors, like power lines, undersea and surface cables will be affected. Fiber optics, microwave links, and many satellites, will be OK. Of course the power grid is key to all that stuff working anyway.
in case u hadn’t noticed, the media has forgotten ‘climate change’!!!! DW finds an old study to recycle:
20 June: Deutsche Welle: Journalists should not forget climate change, say experts
A British study shows journalists are overlooking the issue of global warming in favor of more sensational stories, an issue that will be discussed at this year’s Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum..
Yet some experts argue that, the occasional scandal aside, climate change is a subject that receives relatively little media attention…
Today, according to Wormer, (Dortmund University professor of journalism Holger Wormer), climate change is a topic that has fallen from editorial grace…
Wormer’s concern appears to be backed up by the numbers. Last year, researchers from the University of Liverpool in the UK released the results of an exhaustive study of climate change coverage in British newspapers. They found that between 2000 and 2006, the number of articles addressing climate change was modest: coverage peaked at around 100 articles per month.
“Just to give you a comparison, the number of stories on health or crime were at about 400 to 500 stories per month the whole way through the period,” said Neil Gavin, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Liverpool and lead researcher of the study…
Gavin, who has written and researched extensively on the relationship between climate change and the media, said even fewer journalists were attempting to tackle climate change-related topics like emissions trading schemes (ETSs), the market-based approach to controlling pollution that provides big emitters with economic incentives to reduce polluting emissions, or peak oil, the point at which global petroleum discovery will peak, after which production will go into permanent decline…
What’s more, the Liverpool researchers found that in some newspapers, a significant amount of what little coverage appeared was focused on skeptical reporting. “In the top-selling newspapers like The Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Sun and their Sunday sister papers, 25 percent of the coverage ran along climate skeptic lines,” said Gavin.
Wormer said that despite recent revelations of mistakes in the IPCC reports, there isn’t necessarily any reason for journalists to give more attention to climate skepticism. “We should also be aware of the huge amount of pressure, the lobbying and the PR that goes into trying to [create] doubts over the science,” he said, citing the similar levels of pressure and skepticism in the last century over whether cigarettes posed a health hazard…
Hedegaard (EU Commissioner for Climate Action), herself a former television journalist, said while it would be wrong for the media to ignore climate skepticism altogether, it is also wrong to uncritically accept skepticism in the name of balance.
“The easiest thing in the world is to invite a guest who says that the planet is flat, and somebody who says, no, it’s round. And the reporter’s job there is not just to hold the microphone and say, ‘OK, A says it’s flat, the other one says it’s round,'” she said.
“It is sometimes also [necessary] to be equipped to say something is factual, something is right and something is wrong;” she said. “That is not being biased; that’s just to help the listeners, the viewers and the readers to orient themselves in a jungle of information.”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5710039,00.html
how nice!
Tokyo: Climate Scientists Awarded Prestigious Blue Planet Prize
Dr. Robert Watson, chief scientific adviser of the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and chair of environmental science and science director at Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, the University of East Anglia, was named as one awardee in a ceremony in Tokyo on Thursday…
Dr. James Hansen, director at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he has worked since 1967, and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, was named as the other awardee…
Each recipient is presented with a certificate of merit, a commemorative trophy and an award of 50 million yen (US$550,600 or 372,000 pounds).
Watson and Hansen will receive their awards on October 26 in Tokyo, where they will each give a commemorative lecture.
The prize, first awarded in 1992, is sponsored by the Asahi Glass Foundation…
Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, the former president of the University of Tokyo who headed the selection committee, said both men have extended “basic scientific findings into the realm of public policy.” ….ETC
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2010/2010-06-20-01.html
After reading every issue of National Geographic since I was about 8 years old (since 1965), I allowed my subscription to lapse this year. The magazine has become an unscientific political journal. Of course, Scientific American (also a favorite for most of my youth) was taken over by the propaganda gang a long time ago.
It is sad to see old friends die.
If we really are heading into another Minimum, maybe, with higher CO2 levels, there won’t be so many “hungry masses due to declining growing zones.”
I understand, I think. The last 450 million solar cycles were but previews to the monster cycle4 now coming. How prescient of the editors.
I think it is time for a change over at Nat Geo. Let us get people who can address the very real environmental needs and remediation of this world, rather than attempt to prove that once again they are merely Nostradamian idiots.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:06 pm
Matt says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:30 pm
What is the probability of any single large CME/flare event being pointed close enough to the Earth to […]
I may have missed the point of your question. CMEs are rather wide-angle, up to 60 degrees = one steradian [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steradian ]. Since there are 4pi steradians on a sphere, the probability that a random event will hit the Earth is 1/4pi = 8%. But CMEs are not random [occur mostly at lower latitudes] so the chance is perhaps double that. If we discount the ones we can’t see on the backside, we can double [roughly] again to about 32% or one-third. If it hits, the probability that it will cause wide-spread disruption is one.
Leif, do you have a link with numbers for this, for example energy coming in, frequency spectrum estimate, duration?
Since there will be at least 18 hours warning the intelligent thing to do would be to map the trouble, turn off the grids for the time necessary and warn people with independent power supplies , of the time and places affected. So disruption there will be, but controlled disruption.
I can see “wide spread disruption” if everything is running, since the logic behind all our electrical equipment now depends on tiny chips with microwatt energy requirements. ( We are not yet into quantum computing. )But the incoming power should be of the order of microwatts per cm^2 in order to have a chance to blanket destroy inert (unactivated) circuits. I would expect such energies when the sun starts turning Nova. (Of course if there is a front of cosmic rays accompanying this CME different numbers enter the game).
Because the obvious reaction expected is : make a sure warning system, which means more and better satellites, it is possible that the level of alarm expressed aims at that. To stop budget cuts for new satellites.
anna v says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Leif, do you have a link with numbers for this, for example energy coming in, frequency spectrum estimate, duration?
This is a pretty good source: http://www.leif.org/EOS/SSTA.pdf
Since there will be at least 18 hours warning the intelligent thing to do would be to map the trouble, turn off the grids for the time…
There may still be large currents induced that will cause disruption, e.g melt the wires, or corrode pipelines. The currents are not due to direct CME energy flux, but to the rapidly changing magnetic field changes when the magnetosphere responds. An old, but still mostly valid explanation can be found here: http://www.leif.org/research/Geomagnetic-Response-to-Solar-Wind.pdf
The Appendix [page 36ff] contains some illustrative calculations of the energetics..
Good to see you get a day off to feel tired.
Well, I hope you understand what I mean.
Speaking of getting “tired”; the sun’s cycles were unusually active for about 3 decades, compared to the preceding century. I noted the similarity regarding the cyclic behaviour towards prolonged quiet periods; Dalton and Maunder. Of course the observation records towards the Maunder are more scarce.
We also need to keep in mind that we’ve been counting sunspots differently for the past 60 years or so, as methods evolved rapidly to incorporate modern technology. Adding to that complication is that increased solar activity is not necessarily related to observable sunspots.
A prediction would be unwise, IMHO. One can certainly compare rescent with previous observed behaviour, but I understand that we know far too little about our favourite neigbourhood nuclear fusion reactor to draw definitive conclusions, especially during quiet periods.
I look forward to seeing you and the others in the West.
Nat. Geo. published: “Just as the sun allows our atmosphere to remain stable, so too can it destroy civilization.”
Sounds to me like they’re talking about the sun turning into a red giant and burning us all to a crisp before leaving us to assume a background temperature of 2.7 Kelvins. I didn’t know this would happen so soon!
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:46 pm
thanks
Leif,
http://www.leif.org/EOS/SSTA.pdf
this give “not found”
the top directory http://www.leif.org/EOS/ seems to have problems at the lower part, lots of zzz and then simple text
Bernd Felsche says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:46 pm
We also need to keep in mind that we’ve been counting sunspots differently for the past 60 years or so, as methods evolved rapidly to incorporate modern technology.
No, not for that reason. The methods have not changed due to technology. Waldmeier did introduce an upwards jump [of 20%] in 1945 because he was ‘new in the job’, so modern values [since 1945] are 20% to high [or older ones ~20% too low – make a choice]. See: http://www.leif.org/research/SOHO23.pdf
“Just as the sun allows our atmosphere to remain stable, so too can it destroy civilization.”
Profound words. The sun is. We can’t effect the sun. We can only mitigate very slight changes in the sun. Other than measure what the sun is doing, there really isn’t much purpose in commentating about what the sun can do.
Anthony, I look forward to your visit to foggy old Melbourne Town tomorrow. Thanks for coming and hope you manage a few well deserved rest days while your’e downunder.
anna v says:
June 20, 2010 at 10:27 pm
http://www.leif.org/EOS/SSTA.pdf
this give “not found”
Fixed
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 20, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Joe Bastardi on the hysteria about “huge space storm” from the sun. He talks too about the forecast for Solar Cycle 24 being revised:
http://www.accuweather.com/video/96827541001/run-hide-the-sun-is-coming-to-get-you-%28if-you-trust-nasa%29.asp?channel=vbbastaj
Warning: for those sensitive about Theodor Landscheidt you may not want to watch the video. 😉
This particular video doesn’t have much to do with Theodor Landscheidt, but it does give a boost to Geoff Sharp’s website at http://www.landscheidt.info where he has been using a pixel counting method to give us a more realistic ‘laymans’ sunspot count than that coming from the speck counting going on at SIDC. Also, Geoff is one of the people who forecast a big drop in solar activity due to the periodic (~179 year) alignment of the gas giant planets. Landscheidt also considered this alignment in his prediction back in the late 1980’s that the sun would go quiet, but he forecast it one solar cycle too early it seems.
Regarding big CME’s hitting Earth. Historically, the last two have occured at the top of the upramp of more active solar cycles following on from low periods, though as Leif notes, they can occur at low activity levels too. My intuition is that we are not as likely to get a big CME while the sun is spinning down rather than up, but I may be wrong.
tallbloke says:
June 20, 2010 at 11:44 pm
while the sun is spinning down rather than up
The Sun doesn’t ‘spin up’ or ‘spin down’ like that.
tallbloke says:
June 20, 2010 at 11:44 pm
where he has been using a pixel counting method to give us a more realistic ‘laymans’ sunspot count than that coming from the speck counting going on at SIDC.
How do you know it is ‘more realistic’? By what measure or metric?
SIDC is not counting any different than everybody else. Everybody is undercounting the sunspot number. Everybody’s count is too low. Are you arguing that we should increase everybody’s count? to make it more realistic?
As soon as i discovered many years ago that National Geographic had been overrun by radical environmentalist(doomers), and had lost most of its scientific basis, I stopped my order on it and told them that their hads becommed to radical politicized.
I did not and still do not want to support radical environmentalist(doomers) spreading their “doom”.
They called me a few months ago and wondered if I wanted to order the magazine again.
I just told him that the magazine is to much radical environmentalistic for my liking. And then he said that it no longer is dominated by radical environmentalist?
Is that true?
The only thing that can save us is a tin-foil hat.
Leif Svalgaard says:
June 20, 2010 at 8:13 pm
R. de Haan says:
June 20, 2010 at 7:51 pm
The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity
Very poor paper. Cyclomania.
Here I only want to give more attention to the forcast of Duhau and de Jager.
In 2009,
– they presented a forecast of solar activity during cycle #24 and foresaw a late (2013.5) and low (Rmax = 67) solar maximum.
– A regular episode (R-type), starting with a short (about a half of a century), Dalton-type minimum was forecasted.
We note that in the year 2009 the Gleissberg cycle exactly hit the origin.”
The new conclusions in 2010 are:
– Solar activity is presently going through a transition period (2000 – 2013). We expect that sunspot maximum #24 will even be weaker than the earlier prediction. The maximum will be late (2013.5), with a sunspot number as low as 55 (Rmax = 55).
– After the 2009 transition an M-type instead of an R-type episode is expected to occur.
The new data, though, lead to the prediction of a Grand Minimum.
Support for the above conclusions about the immanence of a Grand Minimum is found in Makarov et al. (2010) who showed that the rest latitudes of the sunspot bands gradually tended to decrease during the past few decades (cf. Fig. 16 in De Jager and Duhau, 2010). That phenomenon was interpreted by the authors as an indication that a Grand Minimum could start around 2020 ~ 2030. The present situation may be compared with that around 1620, where the Maunder minimum was preceded by increasingly weaker Schwabe cycles.
These lead us to conclude that solar variability is presently entering into a long Grand Minimum, this being an episode of very low solar activity, not shorter than a century.
N.B. There is a regrettable printing error in Section 5 (Summary and Conclusions) of http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html .
The second paragraph should read:
“Solar activity is presently going through a transition period (2000 – 2013). This will be followed by a remarkably low Schwabe cycle, which has started recently. In turn that cycle precedes a forthcoming Grand Minimum, most likely of the long type.”
Will Rmax of SC24 be 55 or 72? Will a Grand Minimum start within a few years? Wait and see and then it will be clear who is right!
“FijiDave says:
June 20, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I just went to check on the effect of the Dalton Minimum and saw this graph on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
[…]
Has this bloke Connolley been at this too?”
Yes, Dave. Look at the discussion page of the graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
“[…]Variation. Fair point – but a difficult one. Sometimes they measure different things. Or different methods of reconstruction. There is (ahem) some slight controvery over this issue. And why does the modern data series leave all of the others behind? – for the obvious reason: its got warmer. Error bars: I don’t think they all come with error bars. Some individual series do – MBH for example William M. Connolley 22:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC) […]”
William M. Connolley actually *IS* the infamous NPOV (neutral point of view) of the Wikipedia.