“I personally think it’s likely that these grand minima are related to climate changes, perhaps due to UV absorption, but there is no widely accepted mechanism for explaining this cooling phenomenon. It’s still an area of intense debate. ”
Primitive man didn’t know the precise mechanisms for very much but he knew enough to make decisions on the basis of observed events and ensuing consequences.
I’m inclined to think it is primarily a matter of changes in ozone quantities due to a fine balance between destruction at levels above the stratopause and creation below the stratopause (apparently arounf 45km where the sign of the atmospheric response appears to reverse). That does of course involve UV absorption issues but I think it also involves a whole range of atmospheric chemical reactions to changing solar wavelengths and particle compositions.
UV on its own just doesn’t do the job.
What we seem to have here is a situation whereby very small solar changes produce not so small energy flow consequences by changing the chemical composition of our atmosphere with differential warming and cooling effects at different levels. I don’t think simple radiative physics is much help where chemical processes intervene.
That then affects the vertical temperature profile throughout our atmosphere to change tropospheric pressure distributions and thus the quantities of solar shortwave energy entering our oceans.
So we see what is primarily internal system variability but arising from atmospheric sensitivity to variations in the composition and relative proportions of the photons and particles that reach us from the sun.
It isn’t a big deal from the planet’s point of view but our lives and works are highly sensitive to local and regional weather so our perceptions make it seem like a big deal.
The so called ‘coincidences’ are just too frequent to be ignored.

Thanks John, that is a resonable analogy.
From what I say certain observations must necessarily follow otherwise my proposals will be falsified.
Some such observations are available such as :
The generally cooling mesosphere and stratosphere when the sun was more active.
The cessation of such cooling and the beginning of slight warming as the sun became less active.
The discovery that from 45 km upward (the stratopause is around 50km) the ozone quantities increased between 2004 and 2007 when the sun was quiet despite the expectation that they would have fallen. Quantities decreased as expected below that level.
The fact that the jets moved poleward when the sun was more active and the stratosphere cooled. Under conventional climatology the stratosphere should have warmed with the jets shifting equatorward as happens during so called sudden stratospheric warming events.
Cloudiness and albedo both began to increase as the jets started to shift back equatorward.
The Arctic Oscillation turned more negative around the same time and has now become very negative.
Since the same processes all presumably occurred in the MWP it cannot be anything to do with human emissions.
So, there are lots of varied bits of persuasive evidence that have drawn me to these conclusions. We need some more observations to clarify the issue once and for all but I am confident that the process is already in hand.

John,
IANAC either.
It is my own but has no name yet as I’m not yet satisfied that it is complete. I’m building it step by step with the assistance of critics who make points that require me to refine it.
You can try my series of articles at climaterealists.com which record my gradual steps towards my proposed scenario.
This is the latest:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6645

John Day;
Aaggh! A Yogi misquote!
“‘You can see a lot just by looking.”
No messing with YB’s verbs, please.

Well, time has past, so I will only engage in brief discussion of the “reconnection” paper presented by Dr. Svalgaard:
http://www.leif.org/EOS/Plasma-Reconnection.pdf
From the paper:
“To an excellent approximation, magnetic fieldlines are frozen to the plasma and magnetic flux is conserved.”
Many, if not almost all “magnetic reconnection” papers rely on the above “approximation”, a priori assumption, where magnetic fieldlines are “frozen in” to infinitely conductive plasma.
But it is not an “excellent” approximation, rather, it is a misleading a priori assumption, because both space plasmas and laboratory plasmas are tenuous, not fluid, and have resistivity. The lower the percentage of ionized particles in the body of tenuous plasma, the higher the resistivity, but never in tenuous plasma, space or laboratory is resistivity zero.
Now, I mentioned that the paper does mention use the term, “electromagnetic”, but as is true to form for “magnetic reconnection” papers, the exception proves the rule.
The paper uses the term “anomalous resistivity” to describe regions of higher resistivity in bodies of plasma, as if resistivity is rare in bodies of tenuous plasma, but that is false and, again, misleading because zero resistivity does not exist in tenuous plasmas.
The elephant in the room is that when ions, electrons (charged particles, each with electric force), and magnetic fields interact, and charged particles are accelerated, thus, demonstrating electric fields exist, this is an environment where the fundamental force of electromagnetism holds sway.
So-called “magnetic reconnection” is an obfiscation.
Current sheets are referenced in the paper, but current sheets are the result of electric fields. when “magnetic reconnection” papers discuss “electron dissipation regions”, really, in point of fact, the papers are discussing electron acceleration regions.
Magnetic fields can deflect or change charged particle direction, but they don’t accelerate charged particles, electric fields do.
The paper discusses “magnetic self-organization” without any reference to Irving Langmuir, who first observed and described the self-organizing ability of plasma and identified such self-organizing ability as a function of the principles of electromagnetism.
Yet Zweibel & Yamada make no mention of Langmuir’s prior work. This is tantamount to academic fraud.
But let’s take a look at a UCLA paper, that while is a “reconnection” paper, at least is more forthright about the role of electric fields in the so-called “magnetic reconnection” process:
The paper employs the study of magnetic fields to, in part, derive a resolution of the charged particle current flows. As the authors contend resolution of the current flow is important for understanding the larger system. This fits well with what I’ve been pointing out: Mapping the movement of charged particles is critical for understanding the dynamics when two bodies of plasma collide. The authors conducted the experiment where bodies of magnetized plasma were collided within a background magnetized plasma. This is a laboratory experiment which offers a rough approximation of space plasma dynamics.
Space plasma environments tend to be “rivers within larger rivers of plasma”. Or distinct, structured flows of plasma within larger flows of plasma. In numerous instances, these structured flows of plasma take the form of magnetic flux tubes.
A quoted passage from the UCLA paper:
Caption for first image: “Three dimensional field lines taken from a volumetric data set in an experiment in which two laser produced plasmas collide. Data was acquired at 30,000 locations in a 3D volume in the LAPD device. Shown are the magnetic fields due to Alfven wave currents. The two Carbon targets that the lpp plasmas originate at are seen in the background. The “sparkles” are the induced electric field calculated from -dA/dt. Note that the induced field is largest in the reconnection region at the center of the image. The data is acquired 5 us after the targets are struck and 6.56 meters and 65.6 cm away. There is a background He plasma (n = 2X10^12 cm-3, B0z (not shown) = 600G)”
To highlight: “The “sparkles” are the induced electric field calculated from -dA/dt.”
http://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/pages/gallery.html
And here is a close up on the image showing the outbreaking of electric fields, “sparkles”, where the plasma density and magnetic stress is greatest:
http://plasma.physics.ucla.edu/images/gallery/BEz656-t512.jpg
The outbreaking of electric fields, mini- parallel electric fields, is due to the charged particles’ electric force interacting with the magnetic field. The maximum electric field breakout is in regions of maximum magnetic field stress and maximum charged particle density — it’s charged particle density that determines magnetic field strength.
The higher the charged particle density & magnetic field stress, the greater the formation of electric fields (arrayed mini-parallel electric fields).
It’s important to examine the UCLA image of the breakout of electric fields in relation to magnetic fields — the two forces are inter-related as Maxwell’s equations amply demonstrate.
This is all a product of electromagnetism, not some unquantified process of “magnetic reconnection”. The term, “magnetic reconnection”, is an attempt to obscure the fact that all these interactions happen within an environment where the Fundamental Force of Electromagnetism predominates.

Re: ““The core, which is where the energy is generated by gravitational compression of hydrogen to fusion temperature and pressure, is 14.5 million K and is by far the hottest densest portion of the sun.”
But Dave, according to the “Thunderbolts” website, the dark sunspots are a window into the interior of the sun, proving that the inside is cooler than the outside!
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.”
The real and ONLY question of any merit here is whether or not the electric universe theorists can facilitate the development of a solar model which makes accurate predictions. And just how accurate are those predictions?
We live within an era of social networking. If it CAN be done, people should expect that it eventually WILL be done.
What is startlingly missing from all of these forum discussions of the electric sun hypothesis is an analysis of the claims being made. Wal Thornhill and Don Scott are making the case for a plasma glow discharge model for the Sun — a Crook’s tube, essentially — where the power input is an electron drift current, and the geometry is spherical. Within the EU view, in theory, we should be able to accurately predict the Sun’s behavior by monitoring the electrical current arriving into the heliosphere along interstellar filaments (which are already observed at the 21-cm wavelength).
Anybody who thinks that EU theory is preposterous should really be speaking to the debate of whether or not these ideas can be codified into a working, predictive model … Because if they can achieve that, then people who are ridiculing them are just throwing up noise.
Any model which can predict solar eruptions will ultimately win. Is anybody here claiming that it cannot be done?

Re: “All the sun’s energy is instead mysteriously transmitted in an unmeasurable way through space!”
It’s neither mysterious nor “unmeasurable”. Our radio telescope astronomers already observe the interstellar filaments which connect the stars. You just choose to not read those papers. Look up Gerrit Verschuur.

Re: “I have a question for the electric sun people… I constantly see them purporting that, like on Earth, fusion is an effective energy sink, i.e. it takes more energy to get fusion going than you get out of it… therefore requiring a huge amount of electrical energy being transported to the sun through some mysterious means I can’t quite figure out, given that over 14 billion years, any widely distributed energy in the vacuum would have been all gobbled up… I digress.”
When comparing cosmologies, we have to take a philosophical approach. That means that we do not use the claims of one cosmology to evaluate the claims of another. Discussions of electricity in space are, to be clear, not bound by a Big Bang. This would be a “steady-state universe”.
The electric universe has its own mechanisms for creating and organizing charged particles in interstellar space. Look up Marklund Convection and critical ionization velocity. z-pinches and Birkeland Currents behave as ion vacuums. And anybody who has worked with lifters knows that neutral matter can easily get dragged into this activity.
And by the way, the interstellar electrical transport mechanism is not as mysterious as you propose. In fact, it can be explained with the right-hand rule and the fact that plasma filaments exhibit both long-range attraction, as well as short-range repulsion. This phenomenon is well understood in the plasma laboratory. These filaments attract one another with the strength of the electric force. And, unlike the gravitational force, there is no limit to their reach. This mechanism extends the electric force to infinite distances.
Keep in mind that Gerrit Verscuur — one of the world’s most famous radio astronomers — already observes these interstellar filaments and their CIV’s. And it is conventional theorists who would prefer to keep many of these “anomalous high-velocity clouds” anomalous, for they refuse to admit that the inferred redshift velocities at 35 km/s and 50 km/s are in fact critical ionization velocities.
Re: “How can you possibly assume that’s a valid concept though, given that the human energy input is needed specifically to provide the things that a stellar core provides… high temperature and pressure, conducive to producing fusion. It was my understanding that once the reaction was triggered, it was sustainable ONLY through maintaining high temp and pressure.”
The thing is, we can reproduce the core functionality of the Sun in the plasma laboratory without the need for a thermonuclear core. That — and the anti-correlation which has been observed between sunspots and neutrinos — suggests that the thermonuclear activity is occurring simply where the temperatures permit it. Many of these features which people observe to be enigmatic to conventional models — like the inverse-temperature at the corona — are in fact *required* by the plasma glow discharge model for the Sun.
Re: “Is that fundamentally wrong? Does it require more electricity or energy, sans triggering containment and thermoregulation, to MAINTAIN a fusion reaction than it produces?”
Very possibly.
Re: “Because otherwise, I can easily imagine that there’s an intrastellar/intrasolar electrical component, but the concept of pulling in essential unimaginable amounts of electricity from the ether for all of the stars in the galaxy… where exactly did you say all that electricity comes from (laws of thermodynamics and all that)? And why hasn’t the Universe already reached a final entropic stage?”
Our solar system is electrically connected to its galaxy, and the galaxies are electrically connected to one another. This is why filaments pervade both interstellar and intergalactic spaces.
People need to get over this notion that — without learning plasma physics — they are going to undermine plasma cosmology’s foundation. Plasma cosmology was created by Hannes Alfven, who received the Nobel Physics prize for his creation of magnetohydrodynamics (the plasma models). This is a theory which remains an ongoing subject of peer-reviewed publication in IEEE’s Transactions on Plasma Sciences. Anthony Peratt is a former adviser to the Department of Energy and an experimenter on the world’s premier plasma laboratory — the z-machine. These are clearly the guys who are working with plasmas in the laboratory. At the point where astrophysicists and conventional theorists are claiming that they don’t understand plasmas, people need to carefully consider these points. These are not the type of people who we should be dismissing.
The proper approach would be to first learn how plasmas tend to behave in the laboratory, then learn what plasma cosmology and electric universe propose, and then learn the arguments on both sides of the debate. Once you fully understand how observations are inferred for both cosmologies, then you have a basic handle for what’s being said.
And at that point, you can agree or disagree. But, there exists a burden to do some minimal background reading before people come to conclusions. Satisfy yourself that you understand the theory before criticizing it, and it will reduce the forum noise.
Keep in mind that 99% of what we see with our telescopes is matter in the plasma state. The models for plasmas do indeed matter.

Re: “So go see what they believe happens. [Except, of course, it doesn’t]. There are many theories about coronal heating. In fact, too many. There may be more than one mechanism. In general terms it works like this: The solar atmosphere is permeated by a magnetic field. The lower part of that field is rooted in the photosphere where violent motions [convection] move the field around, at times twisting and shearing the field. A twisted field has more energy in it than a quiet, regular, ‘straight’ field, and is notoriously unstable [as anymore trying to build a fusion machine will know] and explodes easily, heating the atmosphere.”
Perhaps, but what causes the twisting? Is it okay if we talk about the behavior of laboratory plasmas?
In the laboratory, plasmas conducting electrical current *naturally* form filaments. Furthermore, these filaments exhibit both long-range attraction and short-range repulsion with one another. In laboratory plasma physics, *this* is what causes the twisting morphology. Why does your explanation ignore that important fundamental observation of plasmas?
Re: “That is one reason why the corona is hot. Another is that waves are generated by all that surface motion. As these waves travel upwards in the rapidly thinning corona, the wave steepens and eventually breaks into a ‘shock wave’ also heating the plasma [much like cracking of a whip].”
By the way, waves have failed to explain the motions of spicules, so I’m not sure why we are still talking about them. See Zirker’s “Journey from the Center of the Sun” (pages 144 – 146).
Re: “A third reason is that the magnetic field points in different directions and at the boundaries between differently directed magnetic fields, the fields can reconnect [as we have direct observed by spacecraft about the Earth].”
But, your preferred theory is redundant of laboratory plasma physics principles which pertain to Birkeland Currents. Don Scott goes to great length to explain how these two inferences can be confused from the data. You are ignoring all of these arguments, and leaving the impression that there exists just one inference that deserves mention. It’s misleading.
And by the way, you cannot “directly observe” a reconnection event. Reconnection is an *inference* for the observations. It is no more directly observable than magnetic field lines. You should take care to distinguish between observations and inferences.
Re: “Such changes on the magnetic fields can create electric currents that also can heat the plasma. so, many ways to skin that cat, and possibly they are all active at the same time.”
But, of course, what is specifically NOT allowed is to propose that electric currents are the underlying cause for the Sun’s magnetic fields. That would be so utterly ridiculous that we should *never* propose it as an inference for our observations of large-scale cosmic magnetic fields. If I am following along properly, the consensus that it is absurd essentially proves that it cannot be happening. After all, we would surely see the electron drift through the heliosphere if it was there … riiiiiiight?
Re: “When solar physicists say they “don’t understand how the corona is heated” it general means that they can’t agree on which one of several possibilities is the most dominant [maybe there is single dominant one].”
What’s fascinating is that the model has remained so flexible, and yet, simultaneously, so impervious to comparison with other competing models. If we are to believe advocates for the standard solar model, it is perhaps best described as “vaguely perfect”.
(BTW, it sounds as though you’ve been reading your Tim Thompson. Don Scott replied to all of Thompson’s claims some years ago.)

It’s a little past midnight, but it’s still not to late, to be objective.
Science has seen many assumptions.
Good Science follows the evidence where it leads.
The evidence for the electric Sun is not in.
I don’t know.
But shouldn’t we look for the facts the best we can, and be open to the evidence,
even if it disagrees with the assumed knowledge we think we know?