Just published in GRL, a new paper by Lockwood et al that suggests the sun may be headed for a Maunder type minimum.:
The persistence of solar activity indicators and the descent of the Sun into Maunder Minimum conditions
Key Points
- Can we predict the onset of the next grand solar minimum
- Grand minima can be predicted using some solar indices
- The design and operation of systems influenced by space climate can be optimised
Abstract:
The recent low and prolonged minimum of the solar cycle, along with the slow growth in activity of the new cycle, has led to suggestions that the Sun is entering a Grand Solar Minimum (GSMi), potentially as deep as the Maunder Minimum (MM). This raises questions about the persistence and predictability of solar activity. We study the autocorrelation functions and predictability R2L(t) of solar indices, particularly group sunspot number RG and heliospheric modulation potential Φ for which we have data during the descent into the MM. For RG and Φ, R2L(t) > 0.5 for times into the future of t ≈ 4 and ≈ 3 solar cycles, respectively: sufficient to allow prediction of a GSMi onset. The lower predictability of sunspot number RZ is discussed. The current declines in peak and mean RG are the largest since the onset of the MM and exceed those around 1800 which failed to initiate a GSMi.
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Dennis Ray Wingo says:
December 2, 2011 at 3:35 pm
“Hey, I just noticed that if you flip that graph, it could be substituted for the Tijander sediments in the Mann/Jones paper!”
And if you build bridges in Finland it makes the atmospheric CO2 percentage increase. It’s a causation/correlation kind of thing. You can’t deny it surely?
I thought it was a “number of pirates” thing, Jimmy?
crosspatch says:
December 2, 2011 at 11:29 am
The massive die-off of human population is only possible if every country collapses simultaneously.
I disagree. I believe all it would take is one massive killing frost in the upper plains of the US/Canada…..
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If it happens you can curse the name of Dan Amstutz. He is the S.O.B. who got rid of the US strategic grain reserves via his 1996 farm bill “Freedom to Fail” http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2000/00july-aug/lilliston.html
He also wrote the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Ag while he danced between being VP of Cargill, working for the USDA and working for Goldman Sachs. I doubt it was a coincidence that Goldman Sachs and Cargill profited from the 2008 food riots. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis?page=0,1
The last I checked I think China was the only country with any real grain reserves. The USA got rid of the last of her reserves in 2008.
The North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA), started the Dan Amstutz Award for Amstutz’ outstanding job in betraying the USA to the global grain cartel.
Joint Letter with NGFA to President Bush, Arguing Against a Global Reserve Grain Stockpile: http://www.naega.org/images/pdf/grain_reserves_for_food_aid.pdf
I believe ethanol mandates and the use of high fructose corn sweetener are the main causes of the lack of grain reserves in the US (we have no grain reserves anymore, we live completely hand to mouth). Those two things have caused corn prices to rise. That causes farmers to take land out of wheat, oat, soy, barley and rye production and put it into corn. So we burn all the corn we can produce and run short of wheat which is why we now import things like wheat gluten from China with melamine in it. The melamine is poison but it causes tests for protein content to show higher which brings the gluten a higher price (test higher quality). A lot of dogs died from that a while back when the gluten was used in dog food.
An article appeared a few years ago in one of the more reputable newspapers, and it said,
The southern hemisphere will be flooded with refugees from a coming ice age.
Look in Australia, Aborigines were resident during the last ice age. Very little glacial advances, maybe less rainforests. So they survived in a hunter gatherer and fisher economy. Well we have domesticated animals, lots of good fruit and veggies, and wine, and …. beaut beaches as well as inland areas. Australia has lots to offer the world with selling food and meat, fish etc. The only proviso is you bring your money with you. Unless you are an asylum seeker of course, then we support you….forever if necessary. A full glacial is thousands of years away, if it ever comes,
Read Colleen McColloughs ‘Creed of the Third Mellenium’. She describes the next glacial period well, if in rather pretensious prose. But I remember turning my electric blanket on while her descriptive writing was brilliant describing how an ice age affected the Northern Hemisphere.
Or read Ice not Fire, Al! On the net.
Also, Gail, there is another strategic reason to eliminate the stockpile: If we feed enough of the world’s population having no reserve makes us a less tempting target for attack. If we have no stockpile it makes us fragile which makes it more likely countries will want to help defend us lest THEY starve. It is a way of making countries more interdependent.
But I really wish I hadn’t read “Goldman Sachs”. That is one outfit I would like to see eliminated from the face of the Earth at this point. Italy’s new appointed President and the head of the European Central bank are Goldman Sachs guys, too. Basically Goldman Sachs has bought the entire Western world at this point. It’s time to get rid of them.
crosspatch:
I can only suggest that you look at the production increase for corn before you state that we have burned our “reserves”.
2. The reason we don’t have “reserves” per se, is that no one can afford to hold those reserves.
I agree that Godlman is hip deep in the financial mess.
To Harry Dale Huffman:
I invite you to read this for a more humourous take on your point – this is from my blog which I maintain for my students but sometimes it is relevant here:
http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com/2009/08/make-mine-on-rocks.html
Enjoy
pochas says:
December 2, 2011 at 1:18 pm
C’mon, guys – Is this rhetoric really necessary? I’d rather see planning rather than scaremongering for a change. If we’re going to have to get our food grown elsewhere, let’s talk to the folks who will have to grow it. Loan them money to set up irrigation, transportation, whatever. Cooperate with the people who will be short. Heck, China has lots of lunch money.
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And China is buying up farmland in Africa and South America as are hedge funds, University Endowment funds, George Soros, Al Gore, Lord Rothschild, The World Bank, Citi bank….
What you are missing is the change in treaties and laws that have force peasant farmers off the land. Mexico lost 75% of her farmers, Portugal lost 60% of her farmers, The Eu decided 2 million Polish farmers had to go and India has a farmer suiciding every 32 minutes.
This means the control of the global food supply is passing from the hands of independent farmers into the hands of a few wealthy corporations. The red tape in the new US food “Safety” Modernization Act will wipe out the last of the independent American farmers and may also make a backyard garden nearly impossible.
Trojan Horse Law: The Food Safety Modernization Act http://www.examiner.com/scotus-in-washington-dc/trojan-horse-law-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009
Famine does not necessarily mean not enough food, it means NO ACCESS to food.
Amartya Sen won the 1998 noble prize in Economics. As a nine year old boy he witnessed the Bengal famine of 1943 first hand.
This was the famine that occasioned Winston Churchill’s remark that the famine was of no great account because the Indians would simply “breed like rabbits.”
THAT is the type of attitude that is STILL prevalent today and allowed Cargill, Monsanto, and Goldman Sachs to callously orchestrate the 2008 famine starving thousands so they could post record earnings.
<blockquote ….For much of his career, Sen focused on the fact that during the worst period of the Irish famine of the 1840s, “ship after ship sailed down the Shannon, bound for England, laden with wheat, oats, cattle, hogs, eggs, and butter.” Similarly, during the Ethiopian famine of 1973, food moved out of the hardest-hit Wollo province and headed toward more affluent purchasers in Addis Ababa…..
…food “counter-movements” led Sen to the insight that if governments were to intervene in such situations, famines would not be so very difficult to prevent. “The rulers,” he wrote, “never starve."
…Even so, said Sen, famines are not terribly difficult to avoid. Prevention requires the speedy implementation of emergency income-creation and employment programs, in combination with the broader social infrastructure of representative democracy and a free press, which happens to be the best early-warning system. Famine happens when rulers are alienated from those they rule, he explained, and a functioning democracy is a simple way to remove such alienation. Famine happens when there is no free press, because rulers tend to feel embarrassed when photographs of starving children appear on the front page…. http://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/harpersmag/Let%20Them%20Eat%20Cash!.pdf
Theodor Landscheit predicted a solar minimum equal to or perhaps more deep than the Maunder Minimum years ago. He claimed it was due for about 2030 but the absence of El Nino or only weak El Nino effects will be overshadowed by cooling with La Nina conditions predominating.
There is a prediction which can be tested in the near future unlike the IPCC ones which no-one alive today will be able to laugh at with proof positive they were wrong.
The conditions in South East Queensland are suggestive La Nina is growing but not like late 2010 early 2011 yet. Hopefully it won’t as the last powerful La Nina was a disaster for us.
crosspatch says:
December 2, 2011 at 3:38 pm
If sun affected major climate changes through the TSI (including UV etc) it would show up in the data
We don’t have the data…..
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Actually Richard Feyman’s sister Joan Feynman was co-author of this paper.
Is solar variability reflected in the Nile River? http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/40231
Pop Science version: NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1319
crosspatch says:
December 2, 2011 at 6:35 pm
I believe ethanol mandates and the use of high fructose corn sweetener are the main causes of the lack of grain reserves in the US…
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Yes that was all part of the scam too. ADM made a mint off biofuel. There were a whole bunch of linked laws and treaties that set up the scam. Wiping out third world farmers was a main part of the goal.
The grain subsidies also made it more cost effective to factory farm Cattle, Hogs and Chickens instead of range raising them. Grass fed is going to be cheaper if the tax payer is NOT picking up the tab for the grain.
There is a real I gottcha in “Corn fed” The animals have been breed for fast growth on grain. They do not do well on straight pasture like the older slow growth breeds. Unfortunately a lot of the Heritage Breeding stock got wiped out during the UK foot and mouth disease fiasco.
As a Purdue University Prof said the loss of the older breeds could be a major problem in coming years. He was finding “weaknesses” in the commercial chicken strains.
Tom G(eologist) right on, partner. Only if all alarmists had just a knowledge of geology, archaeology and palaeoanthropology. And remember too guys, the arctic circle also has restricted hours of sunlight or excessive sunlight hours, like the Arctic and Antarctica. Norway and the Hebrides in Scotland, and parts of Canada and Alaska. They have 22 hours of sunlight for some months and the reverse in winter. Anyway, I wonder how they handle short days and long nights, most probably lack Vit D too.
@ur momisugly Jimmy Haigh at 5:09 pm
Great clip! I started out in Oakland, CA, who knew I’d end up here? My best buddy back in CA quickly sent me a cassette… However great Sinatra is, I submit the following:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt6JC3njOi8&w=560&h=315%5D
From Scott Covert on December 2, 2011 at 11:43 am:
Don’t know. Is it near your time of the month?
My youtube contribution:
M.A.Vukcevic says:
December 2, 2011 at 12:32 pm
I have not seen the new paper (I shall search for it), but Dr. Lockwood put his name to a sunspot projection, which was quoted at the recent Santa Fe Climate conference.
The paper is here http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL049811.pdf
Mike Lockwood, Juerg Beer [ice cores], and I are conveners for a workshop designed to bring about a consensus [if possible] about the long-term behavior of solar activity. You can see our [accepted] proposal here: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf so in a couple of years, mainstream [!] science might [hopefully] have a unified and thoroughly vetted view on this.
Is this the modus operandi of a person who professes to believe in and use the scientific method?
“..and I are conveners for a workshop designed to bring about a consensus [if possible] about the long term behavior of solar activity.”
“…so in a couple of years, mainstream science [!] might [hopefully] have a unified and thoroughly vetted view on this.”
Other than using words like the “the team” and “the cause”, you might think that this person was Dr. Mann or Dr. Jones. Consensus.., unified [view]….thoroughly vetted view… mainstream science… surely these are not the words of a scientist with an open mind?
Well, at least he does not stoop to smearing those who disagree with him on this issue like Mann and Jones has done.
“I’m busy right now. And most of the comments [on this post] are just the same old, tired sycophantic babble by the usual pushers of pseudo-science which we all have heard a million times.”
Isn’t it good to know that you can look forward to Dr. Leif Svalgaard telling what to think on this important topic. Don’t bother your little minds with any of those silly little independent thoughts that might lead you to stray from the party line……Dr. Svalgaard is here to save the day!
>>M.A.Vukcevic says: December 2, 2011 at 12:32 pm
>>I used Dr. Svalgaard’s data for the heliosphere’s magnetic field at
>>the Earth’s orbit and compared to the temperature data, and there it was:
>> http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/HMF-T.htm
Vuk – you are the master of creating interesting diagrams with dozens of wiggles, and no explanation of what the hell is going on. Temperature? What temperature??
.
India has a huge wheat reserve, 200 million+ tons. Although much of it is rotting due to inadequate storage.
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 2, 2011 at 9:58 pm
………….
Thank you for the links. I wish you good luck with your efforts, taking down the SSN post 1940 (or alternatively taking up pre-1940) I can see (says he selfishly) only as helpful. I am a bit surprised by Dr. Hathaway not knowing of the Waldemeir’s hockey stick ‘trick’.
Jimmy Haigh says:
December 2, 2011 at 4:55 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15995845
This might have been posted lread. If katla goes up it could be messy. It could be a “get out of jail free” card for the warmists. We know how it will go: “if Katla hadn’t erupted…
The last two paragraphs are the best bits!
But the biggest threat to Iceland’s icecaps is seen as climate change, not the volcanoes that sometimes melt the icecaps.
They have begun to thin and retreat dramatically over the last few decades, contributing to the rise in sea levels that no eruption of Katla, however big, is likely to match.
The BBC doing what it does best!
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 2, 2011 at 9:58 pm
……………….
I had a quick look through the paper (thaks for the link), not that I understood lot of it, with all references (which may or may not be correct).
– 10Be is less accurate than it is given credit for.
– The correlation coefficient is shown as a function of lag (in units of a mean solar cycle length of 11.1 years
My spectrum toy calculates fundamental at 130 months (10.83 years, which by the way is very close to my ‘irrelevant’ formula period of 10.81).
Would difference between 11.1 and 10.83 for the calculation of the autocorrelation make any difference, I have no idea.
The end goal of this effort is to use a vetted record of IMF B (or the Sun’s open flux (Φ)) for the past ~170 years to extend this time series back through the Holocene (~11,000 years before present) using the long-term 10Be and 14C data sets.
I predict Leif’s consensus will confidently demonstrate a solar history with the minimum variation that can plausibly be derived from the data.
The research done by planetary-solar theorists indicates that the Sun itself will probably prove the new consensus wrong within 20 years. I sincerely hope Leif is still with us to witness whatever happens.