Essay/paper by Dr. Leif Svalgaard
Abstract
As our civilization depends increasingly on space-borne assets and on a delicate and vulnerable earth-bound infrastructure, solar activity and its potential impact becomes of increasing importance and relevance. In his famous paper on the Maunder Minimum, Eddy (1976) introduced the notion that the Sun is a variable star on long time scales. After the recent decade of vigorous research based on cosmic ray and sunspot data as well as on geomagnetic activity, an emerging consensus reconstruction of solar wind magnetic field strength has been forged for the last century. The consensus reconstruction shows reasonable agreement among the various reconstructions of solar wind magnetic field the past ~170 years.
New magnetic indices open further possibilities for the exploitation of historic data. The solar wind is a direct result of solar magnetic activity providing an important link to the effects on the Earth’s environment. Reassessment of the sunspot series (no Modern Grand Maximum) and new reconstructions of Total Solar Irradiance also contribute to our improved knowledge (or at least best guess) of the environment of the Earth System, with obvious implications for management of space-based technological assets or, perhaps, even climate. Several lines of evidence suggest that the Sun is entering a period of low activity, perhaps even a Grand Minimum. Average space weather might be ‘‘milder’’ with decreased solar activity, but the extreme events that dominate technological effects are not expected to disappear. Prediction of solar activity has a poor track record, but the progression of the current Cycle 24 is in accordance with its behaviour predicted from the evolution of the solar polar fields, so perhaps there is hope.
Introduction
Solar activity is the result of solar magnetic fields.
If our Sun had no magnetic field it would be as dull as models of stellar constitution proscribe and we would not have this conference. The magnetic field makes the Sun interesting, which before the development of our technological civilization was of little consequence, but that the Sun is a variable magnetic star is today of immense practical importance; in fact, a potential danger to our modern way of life. Increasingly, our civilization depends on environmental conditions, communication devices, and infrastructures that are vulnerable to solar magnetic variability [NRC, 2008]. The famous Carrington Event in 1859 [e.g. Cliver & Svalgaard, 2004] can be said to mark the birth of this concern, although the technological effects, some even damaging with attendant economics loss, of geomagnetic disturbances [accompanied by brilliant aurorae] on the nascent telegraph communication capability were already noted more than a decade before.
To assess the impact of solar activity and the chances of effective mitigation of its effect we need to monitor and understand not only current space weather, but also space climatology: what is the equivalent of a ‘hundred-year flood’? Direct telescopic observation of solar activity, of course, begins with the discovery 402 years ago of sunspots. Our understanding of that historical record forms the basis for interpreting the indirect evidence both from natural archives (e.g. 10Be from ice cores) and human naked-eye observations (aurorae, 日誌 [ri-zhi] blemishes on the sun) stretching much farther back in time.
The Sunspot Record(s)
The historical sunspot record was first put together by Rudolf Wolf in 1850s and has been continued by Wolf and his successors followed by a more ‘institutionalized’ approach later in the 20th century until today and hopefully beyond. Wolf’s original definition of the Relative Sunspot Number for a given day as R = 10 Number of Groups + Number of Spots visible on the solar disk has stood the test of time and recognizes [in Wolf’s own words] that the emergence of a coherent group of spots (an active region) is much more important than the addition of yet a few spots to an existing group. The factor of 10 has also turned out to be a good choice as historically a group contained on average ten spots.
A fundamental problem is the homogeneity of the series, that is: does a relative sunspot number of 100 mean the same level of solar activity today as it did in 1938, in 1872, or in 1739? And what is a useful definition of ‘solar activity’ anyway? From the viewpoint of solar effects on our technological infrastructure, the solar wind – the ever present expanding outer atmosphere of the Sun – is perhaps the most relevant element, although bursts of highly energetic particles and radiation also degrade devices and spacecraft and threaten humans in space. Almost all solar indices and solar wind quantities show a relationship with the Relative Sunspot Number [SSN], so homogeneity and proper calibration of the SSN become of utmost importance.
Hoyt et al. [1994] in a series of papers at the centenary of Wolf’s death asked “Do we have the correct reconstruction of solar activity?” and proposed to answer the question in the negative. A heroic effort from an extensive search of archives and primary sources yielded ~350,000 observations, many not available to Wolf, covering the interval 1610-1993. An earlier study showed that the ratio of individual spots to groups is nearly a constant. Theoretical arguments [Schaefer, 1993] showed that Wolf’s Relative Sunspot Number may be set equal to a constant times the number of sunspot groups, so an index based solely on the number of sunspot groups can simulate the Wolf SSN. Hoyt & Schatten called this index the Group Sunspot Number [GSN] and found that it appears that solar activity has steadily increased since 1700 to what might be called a Modern Grand Maximum in the latter part of the 20th century. Before ~1885 the GSN is significantly smaller than the Wolf SSN which does not support the idea of a Modern Grand Maximum. This discrepancy is not satisfactory and must be resolved so solar-terrestrial researchers have a stable and unique dataset to work with.
Recognizing the need to resolve this issue, a number of workshops on the calibration of the sunspot number have been sponsored by the National Solar Observatory (NSO), the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as an effort to provide the solar community with a vetted long-term (single) sunspot number series and the tools to keep it on track. The first workshop was held at Sunspot, New Mexico [yes, there is such a place] in September 2011, followed by a second workshop in Brussels in May 2012. Further meetings will take place in 2013 in Tucson, AZ and then in Switzerland. We are considering a special Topical Issue of Solar Physics for the eventual joint publication of the SSN series and the accompanying historical, procedural, and scientific papers. In this paper, I’ll report on the progress made so far.
An efficient way of comparing the Wolf Sunspot Number and the Group Sunspot Number is to plot the ratio between them as shown in Figure 1. That removes most of the solar cycle variation and will show obvious discontinuities caused by non-solar related changes in the calibration. Figure 1 shows two clear discontinuities, one near 1945 and one near 1885.
Figure 1: Ratio between monthly values of the Group Sunspot Number (Rg) and the Wolf (Zürich, International) Sunspot Number.
Explaining those will go a long way to resolve the differences between the two series. We shall show that the 1945 discontinuity is a problem with the Wolf Number while the 1885 discontinuity is a problem with the Group Number. When both problems are corrected, there is no longer a significant difference between the two series.
The Waldmeier Discontinuity
Some time in the 1940s the observers in Zürich began to weight sunspots when counting them. The director of the Zürich Observatory, Max Waldmeier described [Waldmeier, 1968] the procedure thus “A spot like a fine point is counted as one spot; a larger spot, but still without penumbra, gets the statistical weight 2, a smallish spot with penumbra gets 3, and a larger one gets 5.” This weighting increases the spot count by 45% on average and, since the spot count is half of the Relative Number, the SSN by approximately half that.
The Locarno Station in Southern Switzerland has since 1957 served as an auxiliary observer for Zürich [as the weather on opposite sides of the Alps often is complimentary] and is still today the reference station for the modern sunspot number maintained by SIDC in Brussels, as all other observers are normalized to Locarno’s count. Locarno is still weighting the spots according to Waldmeier’s prescription, so the weighting carries over fully into the current sunspot number. Normalization is done by applying a factor, k, in the formula for the Relative Sunspot Number R = k (10 G + S) such that different observers of the number of groups, G, and the number of spots, S, arrive at the same relative number, R. The k-factor depends on several things: telescope aperture and magnification, observer acuity, atmospheric seeing, and the precise way spots are recognized and grouped. The Zürich observers after Wolf chose to count all spots that were visible, while Wolf did not include the smallest spots near the limit of detectability, in order to be compatible with Schwabe’s observations. Consequently, a k-factor of 0.6 was, at first, empirically determined and later simply adopted to reduce the sunspot number to the original Wolf scale.
Figure 2 shows the effect of weighting using a typical drawing from Locarno. There is also a small contribution from an improved classification of sunspot groups introduced at about the same time. The combined net effect is to increase the sunspot number since ~1945 by ~20%. This explains the discontinuity in the ratio GSN/SSN at that time. A strong check and confirmation of the effect of the weighting have been carried out the past year by the Locarno observers, counting both with and without weighting, so the magnitude of the effect of the weighting is now established and is no longer an open issue.
The effect of the weighting turns out to be almost independent of solar activity, so a simple corrective action would be to multiply all numbers before 1945 by 1.20. Figure 3 shows the result of the correction. Such ‘wholesale’ correction is not without precedent. In 1861 Wolf published his first long list of the SSN covering the years 1749-1860. Around 1875, Wolf increased all the numbers on the 1861 list before 1848 by 25%, based on measurements of ‘the magnetic needle’, which we’ll hear more about later in this paper.
Figure 2: (Left) Part of a drawing made at Locarno, showing that the spot with penumbra designated 104 was counted three times (weight 3). (Right) Two spots with the same area on drawings from Mt. Wilson and counted with weight 1 by Wolfer, in each case as one group with one spot (Wolf’s notation: groups.spots = 1.1), as the group was the only group on the disk
Figure 3: Removing the effect of weighting after 1945 removes the discontinuity in 1945. There remains the discrepancy around 1885.
The lower panel shows the corrected SSN (Rz) in blue and the GSN in pink. Note that the corrected SSN reaches about the same level in each century
Group Sunspot Number Calibration
Hoyt & Schatten [H&S] quickly found that the constant that converted a group count to a simulated Wolf Relative Number was not a constant at all, but varied with the observer, and was, in effect, a k-factor to be applied to the number of groups. A decision must be made as to which observer should have a k-factor of unity. H&S chose the ‘Helio-Photographic Results’ tabulations from Royal Greenwich Observatory [RGO] covering the years 1874-1975 as their ‘standard’ observer. Because Wolf and successor Alfred Wolfer observed from 1848 through 1928 with overlap 1876-1893, their combined observations can serve as a ‘backbone’ for the determination of k-factors for other observers overlapping with them before the RGO series begins. H&S determined that the ratio between k-factors for Wolf and Wolfer was 1.021, i.e. that both observers saw very nearly the same number of groups. And herein lies the problem.
Because of extensive travel and other duties, Wolf from the 1860s until his death in 1893 exclusively used a small, handheld telescope, while Wolfer used a larger 80mm Fraunhofer telescope similar to what Wolf used earlier. Both telescopes still exist (Figure 4) and are even in use today by Thomas Friedli in Belp, near Bern, continuing the Wolf tradition.
Figure 4. (Left) the 80 mm Fraunhofer refractor used since 1855 by Wolf and successors. (Center) the same telescope in use today by Thomas Friedli (person at right). (Right) the 37 mm portable telescope used by Wolf since the mid 1860s.
Figure 5 shows that for the time of overlap between Wolf and Wolfer, Wolfer counted [as appropriate for the larger telescope] 1.653 times as many groups as Wolf, and not only 1.021 times as determined by H&S. This discrepancy is the main cause of the 1885 discontinuity in the GSN/SSN ratio. We can understand the reason why Wolf saw so few groups by considering that the small spots making up groups with Zürich classifications a and b (groups containing spots without penumbra) are usually not visible in Wolf’s small telescope. Such groups make up about a half of all groups.
Figure 5: (Top) Number of groups observed by Wolfer compared to the number observed by Wolf. (Bottom) Applying the k-factor of 1.653 makes Wolf’s count (blue) match (yellow) Wolfer’s count (pink)
Figure 6: Different colors (hard to see because they fall on top of each other) show the individual contributions to the composite (bright cyan). The black dashed curve is the Zürich SSN / 12 (to convert it to number of groups).
Using the Wolf-Wolfer composite record as a backbone, we can now confidently determine k-factors for 22 mutually overlapping observers stretching back to Schwabe and forward to Brunner and construct a composite series. As Figure 6 shows there is now no significant difference between the GSN and the SSN. So, with only two adjustments: ~20% for SSN before 1945 and ~50% for GSN before 1885, the discrepancy is resolved. The issue of the very early data, say before 1825, is still open and is the target for the next SSN Workshop, but if people can accept the current series without adjustments, then they might also accept that we, for now, assume that there are no further adjustments warranted for the early data.
Geomagnetic Calibration of Sunspot Numbers
Wolf [1852] discovered a beautiful connection between sunspots and the diurnal variation of the Earth’s magnetic field. He marvelled “Who would have thought just a few years ago about the possibility of computing a terrestrial phenomenon from observations of sunspots”, and he at once realized that such a relation could be used as an independent check on the calibration of the sunspot number. Today we understand the physics of that connection and can fully validate Wolf’s assertion. Solar Far Ultraviolet [FUV] radiation creates and maintains the conducting E-layer in the ionosphere. Thermal winds driven by solar heating move the charges across the Earth’s magnetic field setting up an ionospheric dynamo with currents generating magnetic effects observable on the ground. As the Earth rotates under the currents (which are fixed in direction to the Sun) a characteristic diurnal perturbation of the geomagnetic field is readily observed (discovered by Graham in 1722). The diurnal variation is best seen in the East component of the geomagnetic field. The 10.7 cm microwave flux from the Sun is a good proxy for the FUV flux and Figure 7 shows how well the amplitude of the diurnal variation tracks 10.7, thus validating Wolf’s procedure using modern data.
Figure 7: 10.7 flux correlation with the range, rY, of the diurnal variation of East Component
The Figure also shows the ‘equivalent’ 10.7 flux calculated from the observed range (average of nine stations) of the diurnal variation for many solar cycles before the advent of the flux radiometers. It is clear that the well-understood physics of causes of the diurnal variation of the geomagnetic field provides a reliable way of assessing the past variation of solar flux, and hence the magnetic activity responsible for it; a variation for which the sunspot number is a proxy. Careful application of this method fully supports the two adjustments of the sunspot series described above based on the diurnal variation as observed since the 1780s.
Solar Wind Properties in the Past
Direct in-situ observation of the solar wind goes back 50 years and it was clear from even the earliest data that geomagnetic activity (separate from and superposed on the regular diurnal variation just discussed) was directly controlled by the expanding solar atmosphere – by the expansion speed and by the strength and direction of the magnetic field dragged out from the Sun. Recent research [Svalgaard & Cliver, 2005, 2007, 2010; Lockwood & Owens, 2011] has shown that it is possible to infer the solar wind speed and the magnetic field strength from suitable, newly defined, indices of geomagnetic activity that have been found to respond to different combinations of these solar wind parameters, allowing the influence of each to be separately extracted and calibrated by comparison with the space-based data measured near the Earth, effectively inverting the ‘response function’ of the Earth to the solar wind. Figure 8 shows one result of this inversion.
Figure 8: Heliospheric magnetic field strength B at Earth inferred from the IDV geomagnetic index (blue) and observed by spacecraft (red). Data before 1872 (light blue) are preliminary and can be improved by adding more 19th observatory data.
Data exist to carry this inversion back to the earliest systematic observations of the geomagnetic field in the 1830s. We find that the reconstruction of the solar wind is consistent with the re-assessment of the sunspot number series described above, in particular that there also does not seem to have been a Modern Grand Maximum in solar wind parameters. Another finding of interest is that even during periods of extremely low solar activity [e.g. the years 1901-1902, 2008-2009] the solar wind is still present having a respectable magnetic field of about 4 nT. An important research issue at present is whether this minimum state of solar magnetic activity, a ‘floor’, is a general feature, at all times [Schrijver et al., 2010]. Recent work by Owens et al. [2012] suggests that “even a steady decline in sunspot number may result in a plateau in the Open Solar (magnetic) Flux”.
The Cosmic Ray Record
Cosmic ray particles reaching the Earth are mostly produced outside the solar system during supernova explosions. Two time-varying magnetic ‘shields’, the solar magnetic field and the geomagnetic field, modulate the cosmic ray flux. The weaker these fields, the higher is the cosmic ray intensity near the surface of the Earth. Ionization chambers and neutron monitors have directly monitored the intensity of cosmic radiation since the 1930s [Steinhilber et al., 2012]. Before that, no direct measurements exist, and cosmogenic radionuclides, are used as a proxy for cosmic radiation, especially 10Be and 14C, produced by cosmic rays colliding with atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen. Thus, the production rates of these nuclides are related to the flux of the incoming cosmic rays. As with the sunspot number, there are issues with the proper calibration of the cosmic ray proxies. What are measured are not variations of the production rate, but of the deposition rate, which in addition to the incoming flux also depend on atmospheric circulation and climate in general. Inversions of the ionization chamber data to extract the strength of the solar magnetic field are discordant with inversions of the neutron monitor data and with the result of the geomagnetic constructions. This issue will eventually be resolved and a special ISSI workshop towards this goal is ongoing [Svalgaard et al., 2011].
Of special interest is the cosmic ray record of so-called ‘Grand Minima’, like the Maunder Minimum. The solar magnetic field (expressed as the near-Earth solar wind magnetic field) extracted from the cosmic ray record falls to zero or at times is un-physically negative during Grand Minima (Figure 8) while at the same time a vigorous solar cycle modulation of the cosmic ray flux is observed [e.g. Berggren et al., 2009, Figure 9] indicating to this author that significant solar magnetic field was present.
Figure 8 [left]: Heliospheric magnetic field strength at Earth inferred from the cosmic ray record [Steinhilber et al., 2010]. The deep excursions to zero or even un-physical negative values are not understood and may be artefacts caused by too aggressive extrapolation from modulation potential to field strength. This is presently an open and controversial issue.
Figure 9 [right]: (Top) 10Be flux from the NGRIP ice core (Greenland). (Bottom) The 10Be data band pass filtered at 8–16 years [Berggren et al., 2009]. The red curve is the filtered GSN series.
Similarly, observations of the spicule forest (the ‘red flash’) during the total solar eclipses in 1706 and 1715 seem to require the presence of bright network structures, and thus of substantial solar photospheric and chromospheric magnetism during at least the last decades of the Maunder Minimum [Foukal & Eddy, 2007].
The very long cosmic ray record (when calibrated and understood correctly) provides the necessary material for statistical studies of the frequency and features of extremes of solar activity (the ‘500-year floods’). The first order of business is to understand why the variations are discordant compared to other solar indicators the past 400 years. This effort is ongoing and the results are not yet in sight.
Predicting Solar Activity
At this point in time it has become of great practical and societal importance to predict solar activity and space climate, rather than just recording them, e.g. for planning mitigation of the effects of extreme solar events. The NASA/NOAA international Panel for Predicting the Solar Cycle examined 75 ‘predictions’ of the current Cycle 24, basically covering the full spectrum of possible outcomes centered on the climatological mean, from extremely small to extremely large [Pesnell, 2012]. The Panel ended up (barely) endorsing the ‘precursor’ methods as the most promising where some property of the Sun near minimum is used as a predictor of the following cycle.
On physical grounds, the magnitude of the polar fields of the Sun seems to be a good candidate as a precursor as it is thought that the polar fields act as a ‘seed’ for the dynamo producing the next cycle [e.g. Jiang et al., 2007]. Leading up to the minimum in 2008, the polar fields were the weakest ever observed (since the invention of reliable solar magnetographs in the 1950s) prompting Svalgaard et al. [2005] and Schatten [2005] to predict that cycle 24 would be ‘the smallest cycle in a hundred years’. This prediction has, so far, held up well, providing (together with predictions using other precursors, such as the geomagnetic aa-index) a successful test of the precursor notion. Figure 10 compares the polar fields and the size of the next cycle for the past several cycles.
Figure 10a: The axial magnetic ‘dipole moment’ of the Sun, defined as the difference between the (signed) magnetic field strength near the North Pole and near the South Pole, for the past four solar cycles. To facilitate comparison of cycles, a ‘ghost’ mirror image is also plotted. Data from Mount Wilson Observatory (blue) has been scaled to match observations from Wilcox Solar Observatory (red).
Figure 10b: The polar field variation at the left scaled by the maximum smoothed sunspot number for the next cycle suggesting the same variation for each cycle, i.e. that the cycle maximum is controlled by the polar fields at the preceding minimum. For Cycle 24, the maximum was not known, but a very high value (165) or a very low value (45) does not fit the pattern. A maximum size of 72 for Cycle 24 seems to be the just right ‘Goldilocks’ value.
Figure 11 shows how the prediction is doing. The quantity plotted is the total number of active regions per month on the disk within 70º of Central Meridian (which is on average 2.25 times the sunspot number).
Figure 11: Numbered active regions within 70º of CM per month. Different cycles are plotted with different colors. The predicted Cycle 24 is shown as the dashed purple curve. We are very close to a drawn out solar maximum at this time of writing.
Recent Changes in the Sun?
Historically all solar indices have been closely correlated as they all derive from the same source: the variable magnetic field. In fact, the various reconstructions of past (and predictions of future) activity all rely on the implicit assumption that the correlations stay the same over time. This is likely to be true for indices that have a close physical connection, like the 10.7 and UV fluxes, but is not given a priori for correlations that are more indirect, e.g involving the sunspot number: the processes creating visible sunspots are varied and not fully understood. And indeed, while there has long been a stable relationship between the 10.7 flux and the sunspot number, allowing one to calculate or map one from the other, that relationship has steadily deteriorated in the past decade to the point where the sunspot number for a given flux has decreased by about a third (Figure 12).
Figure 12: The observed SSN divided by a synthetic SSN computed from a polynomial fit to the 10.7 flux over the interval 1951-1990. Red points are SIDC sunspot numbers while blue points are SWPC (NOAA) sunspot numbers scaled down by the their average k-factor of 0.655. Only years when the SSN was above 10 are included. Since ~1990 the observed SSN is progressively lower for a given 10.7 flux.
A similar decrease of the sunspot number for a given amount of magnetic flux in the plages surrounding active regions has occurred as well as a decrease of the number of spots per active region. This is unprecedented in the observational record. We interpret this decrease as a loss of primarily the small spots [Lefevre & Clette, 2012].
Observations by Livingston & Penn since 1998 until the present show that the average magnetic field in sunspots has steadily decreased by 25% [Livingston et al., 2012], regardless of the fact that we are now again at the maximum of a solar cycle, so there has not been a solar-cycle-related reversal of the trend. Since their magnetic fields cool sunspots, a decreasing field means that sunspots are getting warmer and that their contrast with the surrounding photosphere is getting smaller, making the spots harder to see. There is a minimum field strength in visible spots of about 1500 Gauss [0.15 T] and as that 1500 G threshold is approached, magnetic fields appear at the solar surface which do not seem to form dark sunspots or pores. Owens et al. [2012] suggest that the photospheric flux emergence in such cases may take place in flux tubes with field too weak, or of too small a diameter, to form sunspots, citing Spruit [1977]. The observed distribution of number of spots vs. field strength has been shifting steadily towards that limit. If, and that is a big IF, this trend continues, the number of visible spots in the next cycle [and perhaps beyond] may fall to values not seen since the Maunder Minimum, but without dramatic changes in the emerging magnetic flux. Without the dark spots, Total Solar Irradiance might even be a bit higher. It is not clear what this will mean for the impact of solar activity on the Earth’s environment, if any, but it portends exciting times for solar physicists.
Discussion
Our technological civilization has reached a point where solar activity and its prediction on all times scales have become significant factors in maintaining and safekeeping of the technological infrastructure, both on the ground and in space. New capabilities, in instrumentation, deployment, computer storage and power, and – last, but not least – increased awareness promise progress towards predictive improvements. On the other hand, if the Sun is moving into a new regime of lower activity, a period of uncertainty may make life hard for the forecaster. The possible, recent re-assessment of past solar activity should provide a better benchmark for theoretical modelling to meet. If the discrepancy between the sunspot number and other solar indices continues, it may be that the SSN, for a while, is no longer a good measure of solar activity and forecasters (and users) may be forced to rely on other indices for operational use. This does not mean that we should stop deriving the sunspot number from the usual visual observations; on the contrary, the evolution of the SSN must be followed closely in order to provide a continuing basis for assessing the historical record.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks Ed Cliver for serving as a long-suffering sounding board for my wilder ideas. I also thank Phil Scherrer at Stanford for support and I have benefited from participation in the International Teams in Space Science [ISSI] Workshop on ‘Long-term reconstruction of Solar and Solar Wind Parameters’ and from the Sunspot Number Workshops http://ssnworkshop.wikia.com/wiki/Home
This paper was a keynote presentation at the ”TIEMS, Oslo Conference on Space Weather, 2012″
@tallbloke:
While I found the explanation for the changes to counts very useful, and can clearly see why they were done, I, too, was a bit surprised by the use of present data to modify data from other periods when the present relationships are a moving target.
Yet it’s clear that two different telescopes were used, so have an effect… Yet if we know that spot contrast is a moving target ‘sometimes’, then it’s not just size, but the ‘contrastiness’ of the lenses too. (Every photographer knows that some lenses preserve contrast better while others are more ‘washed out’).
So I agree on the “adjust, ok, but keep the old series going too…” I could easily see the relative “k factor” for two telescopes changing with the ‘contrast’ character of sunspots in minimum vs ‘normal’ times.
With that said: I’ve seen little from Leif to indicate an “agenda”. You may not like his findings, or his reasons, but they sure look like they are based in reasoned decisions, not in an agenda.
Frankly, while I’m more in your (and Geoff’s) camp of ‘planet caused cycles’; I find your ‘going after’ Leif somewhat offensive… I’m just real tired of the “attack the messenger” ploy as it’s been done to me more than I care to admit.
So I’d suggest you just ‘make your case’ and stop throwing rocks at the other guy… We’ll figure out which one is best…
@Geoff Sharp:
Trying to read any ‘deep meaning’ into the order or number of ‘approved’ comments is a waste of effort. Moderation is somewhat haphazard. That’s just the way it is.
Some things to consider:
1) There are multiple moderators. Each has a different ‘style’ and different ‘capacity’.
2) While WordPress brings up the ‘latest comment first’, some moderators like to do ‘oldest comment first’ so scroll down to the end to start. There can be two moderators, or more, working at the same time who notice that the ‘other one’ is working one area and so changes to ‘the other end’ or even the middle.
3) Having done that, the other moderator may take a break, or even be done. It can take a while to notice that ‘the other guy’ is no longer working the opposite end of the queue.
4) Sometimes, when pressed for time, only short and clear comments will be ‘cherry picked’. Why spend 10 minutes on ONE long obscure comment when you can ‘approve’ 20 or 40 short ones instead?
5) Comments that require ‘think time’ to decide if they meet guidelines may be ‘skipped’ and then you come back to them later. “Snitty” or “grumpy” comments especially as they take a judgment call on tone and content. Similarly those that approach one of the blog guidelines may be left by a ‘junior’ moderator for a more ‘senior’ one to decide. Not all moderators have the same skill level with such decisions. A standing suggestion for new moderators is “if in doubt, leave it for someone else”. So a “Love it!” or a simple “I think ref. foo applies” gets a quick click while a “He’s an {ass | jerk | liar | worse}” may be set aside by junior mods, approved, or given a snip. It all depends.
6) So a very long, and grumpy comment, with questionable ‘tone’ could sit for hours if only a Junior moderator is looking at it.
7) Including a lot of links or video may require checking out what they are. That takes time, and can cause a comment to go on the ‘I’ll come back later’ list… while the simple ones get a quick approval. Over some number of links, WordPress automatically puts them in the SPAM queue.
8) Moderators work sporadically. It is all volunteer. So you may have 3 moderators for 10 minutes, then none for 5 minutes as they all ‘take a break’. Or one guy at 2 am only checking in once every 20 minutes. (Again remember they may be doing FIFO or LIFO or ‘cherry pick short and simple’ or…)
9) Moderators may take a ‘cycle’ to just dump SPAM, then pick up a few comments from the comment queue (not all) and then hit the fridge… If doing LIFO they may pick up a few from the same guy, while the older comments are ‘off page’ lower down. Eventually to be gotten to when the queue is finally fully emptied or a FIFO preferring Moderator shows up (or the guy just changes ends due to realizing they are not catching up fast enough to just clear the queue.)
Notice that NONE of these is “filter for friends”.
BUT,
10) Some ‘names’ are familiar and you get to know that they never violate the guidelines. They may get a quicker read and easier decision to hit ‘approve’. Other folks may have had a sporadic history of “grumpy to excess” or “words over the line” or just be having an angry tone, so you wonder more about what’s in their links and / or what did they say (some folks even try to sneak things in via indirection and even more complicated tricks). So they take a longer slower read. And maybe even watching ALL of a 1 hour long video they link just to make sure some bad behaviour is not hidden in the end. (On my blog I forgot to do that once or twice and ended up with some video links that were insulting to particular religious memberships despite having warned the poster not to go there… so then a couple of his postings got to sit for a day or two until I had TIME to watch an hour video end to end… There’s only me moderating my blog…) So if you have a long history of ‘playing nice’ it’s more likely that a hurried moderator will just click approve with a quick scan. If the history is more ‘checkered’ then a long slow read. And that slow time demand may put it later in the ‘approval cycle’ after 20 or 30 ‘quick clicks’ get done for maximal efficiency and shortest average wait time.
11) Some very offensive or generally irritating comments; but not clearly fitting the guideline for rejection, may sit for the blog owner to pass judgment. When that happens is highly dependent on the particular moderator, how comfortable they are that THEY know the guidelines and how to apply them, or how many other comments are demanding attention. So some comments may sit for hours ( or more). Dodgy names and questionable email may require verification. My first posting here sat for about a week. Why? The mods sent an email to me to confirm I was a real person (due to my email address looking a bit bogus). I didn’t read email for a week, so it was that long to respond…
12) So: It depends a whole lot on the workload and how the comments are stacking up. Somewhat on individual moderator skill and experience levels, and a little bit on ‘style’ in the comments. Note that none of this is about the POV of the comments…
13) Comments come in in time order but NOT by topic / thread. So a set of comments on this article will have interspersed a slew of comments on all the other active threads. It’s highly disjoint and hard to tell that two folks are ‘discussing’ on the same thread some times. So a comment like “What you said above is garbage” has no context. Hard to even follow the ‘discussion’ most time. So most all moderators are ‘reading for tone’ and not ‘content’. Looking for policy violations and forbidden words more than anything else.
14) Frankly, moderators often don’t care about the POV or content. It gets old fairly quick. It’s just “Geeze, there’s 100 in the queue! When did that happen? Better knock out a bunch of them and see if I can catch it up…” So while I might be interested in Solar stuff, I could end up looking at a lot of ‘sea ice’ or “funny of the day” or “what Mann did lately” that’s just not very interesting to me, one way or the other. ALL you want to do then is get it sorted into the right bin as fast as possible… as another 10 comments show up …
In short, you are barking up the wrong tree. There’s no ‘agenda’ in how moderation is done. Frankly, there couldn’t be. A dozen or so moderators self selecting when to moderate, on a 24 x 7 basis spread around the globe? Not going to be that coordinated. Ever. Too many divergent personalities and behaviours. Often working the queue at the same time…
Heck, my own ‘style’ varies a lot from day to day. Sometimes I’m a FIFO guy. Sometimes I’ll just pick off the newly arriving comments LIFO so that the queue isn’t getting bigger while ‘the other guy’ does batches of FIFO and meets me in the middle. Sometimes I’ll just rip through a 100 comment list and knock out everything under 4 lines long as a fast triage. Or sometimes I’ll pick one or two big fat ones to slowly work through over 10 minutes to clear them out of the way. Or watch a long video clip in a ‘questionable’ one. Depends on my mood and coffee level and how many comments are stacked up and how fast they are arriving and is there another Mod clearly working the queue too or …
So don’t try to impose any expectation of excessive structured complexity on a chaotic self organizing process… it’ll just drive you crazy 😉
[Reply: Very good comments by Mike Smith. Having moderated over 350,000 comments, I can assure you that it is routine and not personal. Like Elvis said, it’s just ‘taking care of business’. — senior mod.]
Leif Svalgaard says:
…………….
From Tokyo [so a bit late]
Hi doc.
Sun is bouncing back
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_4500.jpg
Enjoy your journey.
Dear Moderators,
Found in: E.M.Smith says:
November 14, 2012 at 2:19 am
[Reply: Very good comments by Mike Smith. (snip) — senior mod.]
Wrong Smith. Someone needs more coffee.
@Kadaka:
No added coffee needed. The “Senior Mod” just knows that the M in E.M.Smith is Mike…
I generally go by E.M.Smith for the simple reason that there is one Mike Smith for every 2000 of working population and a couple of OTHER Mike Smiths are already hanging around here…
But with folks who know me, they may actually use my name…
E. Mike Smith
aka EM Smith
aka Chiefio
Ah, okay. I just know Mike Smith as the meteorologist who wrote the highly-recommended Warnings book and has the Meteorological Musings blog, not the programmer/stock market player with the Musings from the Chiefio blog.
Kakada and other readers
In normal circumstances where reasonable people value their intelligence,they would have quickly identified systemic failure in the ability to argue against one 24 hour day and one rotation of the planet keeping in step,after all,February 29th is both one 24 hour AM/PM cycle and one rotation of the Earth that closes out 4 orbital periods to the nearest rotation,in this case 1461 rotations/days which divided into 4 ,giving an individual orbital circuit who produce 365 1/4 days/rotations for one orbital circuit.
Systemic failure is by far a greater problem,most here are content to argue over models and inputs but the real; damage is done through the education system as younger students are much more liable to adopt views which are neither good nor right.You probably learned the late 17th century Ra/Dec ideology in high school and never thought about it since,it doesn’t matter that the ideology teaches that there are 1465 rotations in 1461 days/4 years,not even with the strongest effort could you remove what was implanted in your mind and that is why forums like this ,however well meaning,will do more harm than good.
Human timekeeping began with a flood at a specific point in the orbital period of the planet,in this case the flooding of the Nile.The great astronomers in antiquity noticed that the flood arrived just about the same time Sirius appeared from behind the glare of the central Sun after a disappearance of a few months and it is this annual return of a star that provides the basis of the 1461 day cycle formatted as 3 years of 365 days and 1 year of 366 days.The next major development was the creation of the 24 hour AM/PM cycle in tandem with the Lat/Long system which keeps the Earth turning at a rate of 15 degrees per hour and once in 24 hours,the principles supplied the impetus for creating accurate watches and as a mean to resolve the longitude problem.
In short,readers are supposed to get into the spirit of planetary dynamics and how they relate to daily and annual effects but that is impossible when you and your colleagues dither around with false references for daily and annual cycles,try to do too much with too little,fail to recognize what modern imaging can really do and bring to terrestrial sciences and a dozen other important issues.
You are merely repeating the trick of 11 fingers for an audience that most likely never thought much about why the Sun rises and sets or what causes the temperatures to rise and drop daily and annually and those who were exposed to this within the education system learned something as hideous as modeling planetary dynamics using a watch and stellar circumpolar motion,- the 17th century equivalent of the Earth as a greenhouse and human control over the planet’s temperature.
The issue is not being lost in Universities where everyone gets paid regardless of what side they follow,the damage is done much earlier than that and it begins with the inability to teach children why one 24 hour day keeps in step with one full rotation of the planet hence systemic failure.
As you are part of the system that conditions you to think is a specific way,it is unlikely that you would see the relevance of losing the primary fact which holds astronomy and terrestrial sciences together therefore it is not strictly a criticism of you,it merely supports Pascal’s view that true intellectual independence is rare.
.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:November 13, 2012 at 7:35 pm
[..] What hens let out a morning call?
Had a Bantam hen while growing up that used to sit on a tree limb and lay her eggs, which went right to ground, but she crowed from sunup to sunset.
Leif,
On November 12, 2012, The SESC Sunspot Number (see http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/) was : 188/b>. The sunspot area was “1600” and the Radio Flux 10.7 cm was 144.
On November 13, 2012, the Sunspot Number was 108, the sunspot area “850” and the Radio Flux was 146.
Two events are strange looking for me:
– the sudden decrease (within 24 hours) of the Sunspot Number (- 80) and of the sunspot area (- 750);
– the great contrast with the stable evolution of the radio flux 10.7.
Has this something to do with the recent behaviour of the Sun: “Something is happening with the Sun?“?
To be clear, the NOAA sunspot number on November 12 was 188.
Rik Gheysens says:
November 14, 2012 at 10:25 am
– the sudden decrease (within 24 hours) of the Sunspot Number (- 80) and of the sunspot area (- 750);
That is clearly an error. SIDC, Locarno, and Catania show no such spike.
lsvalgaard says:
November 14, 2012 at 10:59 am
Rik Gheysens says:
November 14, 2012 at 10:25 am
– the sudden decrease (within 24 hours) of the Sunspot Number (- 80) and of the sunspot area (- 750);
That is clearly an error. SIDC, Locarno, and Catania show no such spike.
The error comes from a strange report from Learmouth, all other stations are ‘normal’
From Gerald Kelleher on November 14, 2012 at 5:03 am:
In normal circumstances where reasonable people value their intelligence…
They quickly glance at your long screed and come to the same conclusion the SETI researchers get: This is not a sign of intelligent life.
@Kadaka:
Don’t forget that Mike Smith was on the shuttle (the first one) when it blew up… as many many Mike Smiths were watching and listening…
I’ve also had Mike Smith watching TV where Mike Smith the reporter was reporting the death of Mike Smith in a boating accident…
It’s a strange world being named with the functional equivalent of Anonymous Anonymous…
One thing you get used to is ‘location specific naming’. Show up somewhere new. Look to see who is already using / claimed what variation of “your” name. So since Mike Smith the weather guy is a ‘known name’ in this context, I look for another variation… So far, using E.M. has been fairly consistently ‘unique’. At least here 😉
@Gerald Kelleher:
I’m presuming I come under “other readers”.
Your fixation on the difference between Sidereal and Synodic days was amusing the first time it came around. Turning it into a basic failure of (something ill defined in all of us) is awfully ‘fringe’. It’s getting tedious with repetition…
http://vspages.com/sidereal-vs-synodic-6535/
Frankly, unless you are an astronomer, it’s substantially irrelevant.
I first learned it somewhere around high school (physics class, I think). It is a natural and essential consequence of a rotating planet and an orbital period that are not synchronized. THE major effect of it is just that it makes calendar design a bit complex. Basically a PITA.
Beyond that, the meaning and impact are nearly nil, and for any typical person ARE nil.
Since the earth also wobbles and has Length Of Day changes and several other minor wanderings of various parameters (due to lots of stirring of the pot by various planetary and potentially solar interactions, and perhaps the occasional giant extinction causing meteor impact) having a 24 hour day that’s “close enough” is a very convenient standard. But if you want to go live in the desert on Sun Time, go right ahead. Though you might want to study up on the Equation Of Time first:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time
and realize just how much all the bobbing, wobbling, and weaving of the Earth Moon Planet Sun system causes L.O.D. to wander first…
IMHO, people have been dealing with the Equation Of Time for about 12,000 years (that we know of – first ‘alignment’ monuments are about that old, maybe) and seem to have come to a pretty good solution for day to day use.
BTW, there are even nice sundials that build in the Equation Of Time so that you can get accurate time of day pretty much year round.
You might want to visit some of these sites to check out the “state of the art”, both old and new:
http://sundials.org/index.php/dial-links/sundial-web-links
http://www.sundials.co.uk/equation.htm
Has a nice write up of the way sun time and clock time are kept in sync. (BTW, it’s a ‘feature’, not a problem, to have standard hours for regular use…)
So I think it’s pretty darned obvious that your “hobby horse” topic is neither hidden, nor unknown, nor, dare I say it, particularly important. Unless you are designing sundials…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundial
Has a nice variety of examples. I suggest you use the one with best Equation Of Time features.
IMHO, it’s this one:
Yes, that’s a PRECISION sundial…
(Maybe we could all chip in and buy one for Leif… seems appropriate somehow 😉
Now, while discussion of sundial design interests me, and is tangentially related to a posting about the sun, perhaps it would be better to take it to one of the many sundial centric blogs and sites on the internet?
(I’ve looked at sundials in several contexts on my site, but it is only a minor interest. Partly it grew out of wondering what Stonehenge was – an astronomical observatory and time / length standard NIST if you will – and realizing that a time standard was critical to designing it. You can get the Rod – or perch or pole – from a nice pendulum and a couple of sighting poles that way. I also found it interesting that an Equatorial sundial at the equator is basically a horizontal pole in the air… but doubt that has much to do with the topics here…)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/equatorial-equatorial-sundial/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/unifying-the-cubits-the-yard-and-the-rod/
But do please realize that lack of folks getting excited about your Hobby Horse Topic does not indicate lack of understanding. Much the opposite. It’s just not that interesting and for me at least, it’s a 50 years ago learned as a kid thing…
From Leif Svalgaard on November 14, 2012 at 2:00 am:
From Tokyo [so a bit late]:
Dear Leif, please avoid jetting to and from one of your many conferences during a Carrington event. The irony would be too great.
E.M. Smith
Thank you for affirming what systemic failure looks like as all readers here were asked to do was affirm that the 24 hour AM/PM cycle of February 29th is also one rotation of the planet with all the effects of rotation,once they know that fact they can then divided the total days/rotations into 4 orbital circuits and arrive at 365 1/4 days/rotations for one orbital circuit..If you can’t handle why the temperature rises and falls within a 24 hour period due to one rotation of the Earth there isn’t the slightest chance you can speak in any meaningful way about climate or indeed much else.
Systemic failure is the worst as it reflects a situation where there is no viable background in place to make the necessary corrections and when a situation arises where readers can’t see the relevance of maintaining the link between the most immediate experience of rotation and its daily effects,they may get a horrible feeling that climate is the least of our concerns.
You see Smith, when you subscribe to your high school physics course with the belief that the Earth turns 1465 times in 1461 days you have already left physical considerations behind and that is lethal to any conclusion you care to draw between planetary dynamics and terrestrial effects.You are basically the victim of the eleven finger trick because had you followed the proper principles you could easily affirming a round and rotating Earth through the Lat/Long system in tandem with the 24 hour AM/PM system just as all astronomers and innovators once did.
If it wasn’t so utterly stupid it would be a joke .
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
November 14, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Dear Leif, please avoid jetting to and from one of your many conferences during a Carrington event. The irony would be too great.
I check with the planets before every flight. So far all is well 🙂
Kadaka
Apart from poor proofreading,everything else is accurate.
Systemic failure is rare but it does strike nations and the last great one was the bandwagon that created the holocaust,systemic failure in science and astronomy in particular is global – something that has been going on for a few hundred years and is mostly driven by modeling pseudoscience that began with Newton’s clockwork solar system using the regrettable Ra/Dec ideology.
The wider community only gets glimpses of how rotten the vicious strain of empiricism is but in this case when they see and your colleagues argue against keeping the day and rotations in step they can be certain that the pseudoscientific modeling is behind it.
E.M Smith
http://prairieecosystems.pbworks.com/f/1179343887/crerar%20temperature%20variation.jpg
I would imagine a student can read the rotation of the Earth out of that graph and would probably inform you that the fluctuations within a 24 hour period do not fall out of step with one rotation.
Still believe there are 1465 rotations in 1461 days and then go on to talk about temperature fluctuations ?.What a nightmare for everyone !.
Gerald Kelleher says:
Well, at least that’s one thing we can agree on, but probably not in the way you expect… 😉
It would have been helpful had you bothered to look at the links provided and discover just how much I’m interested in, and aware of, motion of the earth vs the stars and sun.
Like I said, there’s not a lot of great significance to synoptic vs sidereal unless you are making clocks or calendars. That we do a different number of rotations relative to the stars than relative to the star we orbit (where the orbital movement changes the count by one) is a fundamental artifact of geometry, not much more to be said about it. Usually grasped inside 30 seconds by kids.
But you go ahead and fixate. Just really really consider not doing it here. You are displaying aspects of either being irrationally fixated, or simply a poor Troll. *Looking to stir things up with mindless distractions”. If you get flagged as a Troll, well, ask the moderators…
Personally, I see no more reason to ‘engage’ on the topic. All I cared about was the sundial connection, and it’s not ‘appropriate’ to this thread anyway.
I’ll leave folks with this:
Take a few stones, pick an open place, and stand in the sun, looking at your shadow. Place one stone at your feet (so you know where to stand next time). Each hour, place one stone at the end of your shadow. Congratulations, you are now a sundial:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Csa6sol1.jpg
Personally, I like doing this with a pot of flowers for the hour markers. If you get really ‘into it’ you can plant an angled curve of flowers (as in the precision example above) to allow for the Equation Of Time and keep the sundial accurate in all seasons. Makes it incredibly visible how the earth moves, what the sun does, and even gives you an answer to the question “Does anybody really know what time it is?”
If really really into it, use a different flower that blooms in the appropriate quarter so you always just read whatever flowers are in bloom 😉
(To get it right, though, you really need to understand the equation of time and how things change at your latitude. Or just set out pots on the solstices and equinoxes and interpolate for ‘close enough’. Maybe I ought to design sundials for a living 😉
Gerald Kelleher says:
November 14, 2012 at 2:03 pm
Still believe there are 1465 rotations in 1461 days and then go on to talk about temperature fluctuations ?.What a nightmare for everyone !.
I’m at a loss as to what your problem is. The rotation period of the Earth with respect to the stars is 23h 56m 4.09s and does not vary [to that precision] through the year. This has been known for centuries. A ‘day’ is not the rotation period of the Earth, but is the time between successive ‘high noons’ and is longer than the rotation period because the Earth itself moves around the Sun. The temperature changes obviously go with the ‘day’.
From Gerald Kelleher on November 14, 2012 at 1:41 pm:
But here you have fallen for the common conception of the Earth spinning like a ball on a rod. If invoking planetary dynamics, the major gravitational effect from rotation is the spinning of the Earth/Moon system around their barycenter, so that period should be considered.
Another rotational period that can be important is the Earth’s surface relative to the core. As seen in this 2005 work, the solid inner core is rotating faster, by about 0.3 to 0.5 degrees a year. It doesn’t seem like much, but that represents an enormous amount of angular momentum thus “stored” kinetic energy. Plus the spinning inner core is thought to be the source of Earth’s magnetic field, which is vital for protecting life on Earth from dangerous radiation from space.
But back around 1996 the quoted rate was 3 degrees a year.
And now new research shows the inner core hardly moves at all. From a 2011 paper, the new established rate is only about one degree every million years. This has major implications, such as how the Earth can even have such a relatively strong magnetic field with the dynamo turning this slowly. It also indicates the “liquid” inner core is very viscous.
(BTW this piece trumpets how it is still proven the solid inner core rotates faster, as if it matters all that much at that rate.)
Meanwhile, the physical considerations of exactly how fast the surface turns in relation to the Sun or the stars and resulting conclusions on planetary dynamics, are meaningless, as that period has nothing to do with the effects of Earth on other planets or the Sun. For terrestrial effects, outside of the unnatural human desire for perfection in timekeeping, it is also meaningless.
E.M Smith
Fluctuations in Arctic sea ice quantities arise from a single orbital cause as the polar coordinates,acting like a beacon for the orbital behavior of the planet ,turn in a circle/cycle to the central Sun.This requires
that axial precession goes from a long term axial trait to an annual orbital trait and readers can read this
polar cycle directly out of observations –
http://www.daviddarling.info/images/Uranus_rings_changes.jpg
The Earth has two separate rotations to the central Sun,one diurnal and the other rotation a component of its orbital motion,the combination of these rotations causes the known observations that each natural noon AM/PM cycle is different to the next .Because daily and orbital motions are separate,the averaging process which creates the average 24 hour day out of the natural noon equality allows this average to substitute for constant rotation so that as each 24 hour day elapses into the next 24 hour day,so too is rotation keep in sync.I don;t expect readers to become instantly familiar with the ins and outs of working timekeeping into the dual dynamics of the planet but the least they can do is affirm that February 29th is both a 24 hour cycle and one rotation as an anchor for understanding everything else.
For a group so concerned with Arctic sea ice fluctuations,it is quite a sight to see opposition to the polar day/night cycle and its orbital cause as the polar coordinates are carried around in a circle to the central Sun.The Earth has two day/night cycles with two separate causes,when mixed at lower latitudes with daily rotation,we call this combination the ‘seasons’ but at the North/South poles,the orbital cycle is experienced in splendid isolation where the great orbital temperature fluctuation between highs and lows take an entire year/orbital circuit.
Forget sundials, this is the 21st century and people now live at the South pole where they can experience the orbital effect of the Earth and daily rotational effects diminish,if you wish me to give you a lesson on what you are doing wrong with sundials I can do so but for everyone else,the sequential images of Uranus explain so much in terms of climate,the seasons,why natural noon cycles vary and especially how to define climate properly.
Isvalgaard
Many readers have enough common sense to identify that the central problem with modeling pseudoscience is that the scenarios exist only inside the heads of modelers and their computers and there is an antecedent to all this in the late 17th century when they tried to model planetary dynamics directly using mechanical means,in this case -watches.
The systemic failure is arriving at a conclusion and trying to get observations to fit that conclusion even though physical considerations should intervene and especially the ability to appeal to immediate experience to affirm or reject assertions.You are only interested in justifying what the watch is telling you rather than taking a wider view what within a 24 hour period,the temperature will rise and fall in response to one rotation and then move on to the next major fluctuation which is due to the orbital cycle.
I firmly believe that any reader can easily understand and explain why Arctic sea levels are increasing presently as the polar coordinates are carried around in a circle and away from solar radiation by just dwelling for a few moments on the sequence of images of Uranus.I know you can’t do it with the right ascension ideology as it is a contrived system.
Kadaka
Your assertions are all over the place as are your conclusions.
In 2005 when nobody was talking about rotation and plate tectonics,I was working on combining the planet’s 26 mile spherical deviation with plate tectonics using the already observed mechanism of differential rotation in all rotating celestial objects with exposed fluid compositions.
As you see,I am a great fan of planetary comparisons and in this case I look at Venus which is the same size as the Earth but with entirely different rotational characteristics.Venus has no spherical deviation and no geological activity outside volcanism while the Earth has a 26 mile spherical deviation and a very active surface crust due to its rotational characteristics.Another issue is geomagnetism ,Venus shows little reaction to CME ‘s due to its weak geomagnetic signatures whereas the Earth is well protected –
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/627070main_HFA-orig_full.jpg
The poor guys in the mid 19th century wanted to consider the electromagnetic properties of the Sun illuminating the Earth but they loved the clockwork solar system of Flamsteed/Newton too much which forbids discussing an intermediate agency between light and heat from the Sun to the Earth and so it remains to this day.I could go into great detail but not right now.
Again,systemic failure and to avoid its continuation requires a different type of investigator – one who actually is comfortable with 21st century technology and the ability to move information around while keeping an eye on physical considerations.
Apologizes for the extremely poor proofreading and I don’t blame readers for giving up on my posts.
Anthony; E.M.Smith’s post above (November 14, 2012 at 2:19 am) on moderation could perhaps be edited to it’s comments on moderation and be stored so that your moderators could simply link to it when questions and accusations arise from individual commentors believing they are being done down and punished.
[Reply: Good suggestion, thanks. — mod.]