Sun at its dimmest for nearly a century, say scientists...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/space/5194381/Sun-at-its-dimmest-for-nearly-a-century-say-scientists.html ^ | April 22nd, 20009

[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.

[Kozak]

Yeah. The sunspot numbers are good going back a few hundred years. And are somewhat less reliable but still pretty good going back to Galileo and the invention of the telescope.

It’s still too early to tell but if this keeps up we are looking a pretty deep minimum...

[CougarGA7]

I was doing fine on that test until I told it I spend money. Apparently if you spend money to feed and cloth your kids you are destroying the planet.

It’s all a matter of perspective though. I took a test a couple of years ago for a class I was taking and it said that I was using 4.7 earths. (Meaning it would require 4.7 earths if everyone had my lifestyle) Again the test was flawed but the instructor told me I should consider ways to reduce my usage. I told her, no, I just need to go kill 5 people with a simular lifestyle (putting me up 0.3).

She just had the wrong perspective.

[presently no screen name]

I agree - he gets into our house and the world grows dimmer.

[xp38]

The dims are dim on solar dimming.

[Fledermaus]

I love Dim Sun...I’ll take a pork pouch and two spring rolls!

[JohnG45]

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.

Boy, do you have that right.

Back in the early 1980s, when AIDS was first diagnosed (it was called GRID then), every laboratory in the country including Physics and Chemistry labs were trying to find a way of getting in on the grant money that became available for research into our first politically correct disease. GRID, by the way, stood for Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.

GRID was quickly, and I mean quickly, cleaned up by our PC police to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

[Dapper 26]

Don’t you just hate it when nature doesn’t comply with the computer models designed by all those smart environmentalists?

[evad]

YES YES!!

PRAISE THE LARD!!!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Evidence from tree trunks and ice cores suggest that the Sun is calming down after an unusually high point in its activity.

But don't you dare think for an instant that global warming is caused by the solar cycle!

It's ANTHROPOGENIC you ignoramuses!

[TheFrog]

Darn, I guess we are back to global cooling again.