Posted on 04/22/2009 11:40:46 AM PDT by TaraP
The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period. Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity. Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity. Professor Mike Lockwood, of Southampton University, believes that as well as the Sun's 11-year cycle, there is an underlying solar oscillation lasting hundreds of years. He suggests that 1985 marked the "grand maximum" in this long-term cycle and the Maunder Minimum in the 17th century marked its low point. "We are re-entering the middle ground after a period which has seen the Sun in its top 10% of activity," said Professor Lockwood. "We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum." He added that the current slight dimming of the Sun is not going to reverse the rise in global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels. What we are seeing is consistent with a global temperature rise, not that the Sun is coming to our aid," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Obama’s fault.
Forget about the sun — the planet is doomed by my Chevy Tahoe.
Professor Lockwood. “We would expect it to be more than a hundred years before we get down to the levels of the Maunder Minimum.”
He may live to see himself proven wrong.
Maybe the scientists investigating are just squinting more...?
The hot air from my mouth has already doomed us all. Sorry, everyone.
Must be all that damn carbon dioxide.
I'm betting that this was the whole point of releasing his statement. He wanted to beat the "deniers" who would use this data to argue that the sun is the cause of "global warming" and human intervention is meaningless.
There is no hope for these people.
It may be that he fears that his grants for further research into solar cycles will not be funded unless he makes clear that it is all perfectly consistent with global warming dogma.
Ask him the BIG QUESTION — Should we eliminate all CO2 from the atmosphere?
I played this joke on one of these losers and boy were they mad when I told them what would happen if we could do that.
Which is true of course.
Nothing can reverse what isn't happening. Moron.
We just had our first sunspot in 45 days....
Last one out forgot to turn off the lights
But wait, once that Sun gets crankin’ again — ooooh boy, that Global Warming will really get going!
But, the message: "YOU! And only you! Can save the planet by buying new, eco-friendly lightbulbs....(this ad brought to you by the good folks at GE.)" is a load of bull.
Doesn't amount to a spit in the ocean.
This is what politicized science does: the planet has been cooling for nine years in an almost perfectly synchronous correlation with reduced in solar activity - but that means nothing. Man-made contribution to greenhouse gases is 3%, but that means everything.
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