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Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high
BBC News ^ | Tuesday, 6 July, 2004 | Dr David Whitehouse

Posted on 04/10/2007 7:30:56 AM PDT by George W. Bush

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

By Dr David Whitehouse
BBC News Online science editor

The Sun, Stanford University
Sunspots are plentiful nowadays

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.

Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past.

They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer.

This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

'Little Ice Age'

Sunspots have been monitored on the Sun since 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope. They provide the longest-running direct measurement of our star's activity.

The variation in sunspot numbers has revealed the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity as well as other, longer-term changes.

In particular, it has been noted that between about 1645 and 1715, few sunspots were seen on the Sun's surface.

This period is called the Maunder Minimum after the English astronomer who studied it.

Ice core disc, Epica
Ice cores record climate trends back beyond human measurements

It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

Over the past few thousand years there is evidence of earlier Maunder-like coolings in the Earth's climate - indicated by tree-ring measurements that show slow growth due to prolonged cold.

In an attempt to determine what happened to sunspots during these other cold periods, Dr Sami Solanki and colleagues have looked at concentrations of a form, or isotope, of beryllium in ice cores from Greenland.

The isotope is created by cosmic rays - high-energy particles from the depths of the galaxy.

The flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface is modulated by the strength of the solar wind, the charged particles that stream away from the Sun's surface.

And since the strength of the solar wind varies over the sunspot cycle, the amount of beryllium in the ice at a time in the past can therefore be used to infer the state of the Sun and, roughly, the number of sunspots.

Latest warming

Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.



TOPICS: Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: algore; bees; bushesfault; climate; climatecycles; climatology; globalhotting; globalwarming; godsgravesglyphs; honey; honeybees; sun; sunspots; weathercycles
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To: George W. Bush
Still going with the "Sun is causing Global Warming" theory.

:)

41 posted on 04/10/2007 7:47:37 AM PDT by Bosco (Remember how you felt on September 11?)
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To: George W. Bush
It coincided with a spell of prolonged cold weather often referred to as the "Little Ice Age". Solar scientists strongly suspect there is a link between the two events - but the exact mechanism remains elusive.

An in-depth study of the "DEFROST" cycle in the refrigerizer might provide a clue.

42 posted on 04/10/2007 7:47:46 AM PDT by azhenfud (The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.)
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To: George W. Bush

I would give Stewart Brand a break. I think he has come to his senses with age.

Sorry I would have to search to find the article that led me to this conclusion and I don’t have time to do it at the moment.

Doesn’t mean he wasn’t a flaming liberal when he did the whole earth catalog. I still have my copy...


43 posted on 04/10/2007 7:47:48 AM PDT by listenhillary
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To: George W. Bush
Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

When you put a pot of cold water on a gas stove at a constant flame, the temperature of the water will continue to increase over a period of time.

44 posted on 04/10/2007 7:48:13 AM PDT by Polybius
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To: George W. Bush

Wow. I read every quote you posted. Paul Erlich has got to stand out as one of THE most deluded minds - ever. I remember reading him way back when and wondering if he might be right. Yikes! I’m thrilled to have lived long enough to see his idiotic thinking exposed:)


45 posted on 04/10/2007 7:48:22 AM PDT by SE Mom (Proud mom of an Iraq war combat vet)
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To: TheDon

“When the next mini-ice age hits,”

I don’t know about where you live, but it’s frickin cold here...


46 posted on 04/10/2007 7:48:26 AM PDT by Jeffrey_D. (Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: George W. Bush
This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill

INDIRECT!!!????

47 posted on 04/10/2007 7:49:30 AM PDT by jtal
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To: George W. Bush
They mystery of the global warming has been solved !
48 posted on 04/10/2007 7:49:30 AM PDT by ßuddaßudd (7 days - 7 ways Guero >>> with a floating, shifting, ever changing persona....)
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To: George W. Bush; dirtboy

May I point out something.

Few if anyone says that global warming is not happening.

Some argue that the warming is not man made.

Some argue that global warming is good.

No one says it is not happening.


49 posted on 04/10/2007 7:50:06 AM PDT by staytrue
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To: George W. Bush

I’ve seen research indicating that revolution and war correlates highly with peaks in the 11 year cycle of sunspot activity. There is even a book written by Marxist radicals (I forget the name), suggesting that uprisings be timed for the peak. It is interesting to run backwards in 11 year increments, and look at the years, starting with 2001, the most recent peak. The author worked it all the way back to 1066, which was the year of the Norman Invasion. Is this correlation due to weather-related disruptions such as famine, or could there be some sort psychological effect?


50 posted on 04/10/2007 7:50:30 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: George W. Bush
This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue.

Environmentalists just can't give up their religious BS can they?

51 posted on 04/10/2007 7:50:40 AM PDT by EndWelfareToday (Live free and keep what you earn. - Tancredo or Hunter)
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To: CedarDave
Great minds...

Actually, the scary thing is, it seems to take a highly (or overly) educated mind to discard common sense.

The claim is that the globe has warmed over the last 20 years as sunspots remained constant.

However, climate has not warmed appreciably since the 1990s. So it appears a new equilibrium was reached several years ago - just as you and I surmised would happen - there would be a delay between increasing solar output to a new constant and the Earth reaching a new equilibrium. But that factiod is buried in the "20 year" claim - they lump 13 years of warming with 7 years of equilibrium. On purpose.

52 posted on 04/10/2007 7:51:46 AM PDT by dirtboy (Duncan Hunter 08/But Fred would also be great)
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To: George W. Bush

Bush lied, sunspots high’d!


53 posted on 04/10/2007 7:51:56 AM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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To: George W. Bush

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone
There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day’s done

And they’re only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race
They would kill me for a cigarette
But I don’t even wanna die just yet


54 posted on 04/10/2007 7:53:40 AM PDT by DancesWithBolsheviks (Demands, marches and media sob stories diminish my compassion.)
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To: George W. Bush
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production--with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it.
--Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

Interestingly enough, there may indeed be a drastic decline in production of certain types of food. But it would be due to conversion of corn and other crops to ethanol to power our cars. Ethanol is a false fuel. It has less btu per gallon than does gasoline and the energy used to make it, if you include costs of pumping water for irrigation for example, make it uneconomical except for the tax subsidies. And, of course, using corn for fuel prevents its use as a human food source as well as feed for cows, pigs and chickens which provide us with our meat.

55 posted on 04/10/2007 7:54:23 AM PDT by CedarDave
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To: George W. Bush
Very fine set of quotes. Have these been published anywhere?

Congressman Billybob

Latest article: "From Seventy Springs a Score"

56 posted on 04/10/2007 7:55:43 AM PDT by Congressman Billybob (Please get involved: www.ArmorforCongress.com)
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To: staytrue

From a previous post on FR

From the Blog of Theodore P. Savas

1. Proponents of manmade global warming are deeply concerned that unless the world acts now, the mean temperature of the earth may rise a few degrees over the next century. In other words, today’s temperature would become “abnormal” and hence we must change our way of life to prevent that from occurring. According to the world’s scientists, the mean temperature of the earth has risen 6/10s of one degree Celsius over the past one hundred years. But the earth has experienced dramatically different mean temperatures over its billions of years of existence; indeed, it has witnessed widely varying temperatures over the just the past two millennia, and over the last several centuries. Question 1: How do we know that today’s mean temperature is “normal” and what the temperature we should be altering our entire way of life in order to maintain should be? Indeed, can you point to a lengthy period of Earth’s history where the globe‘s temperature was constant and “perfect?”

Theodore P. Savas is an attorney, college instructor, and the director of Savas Beatie, a history-related publishing house (www.savasbeatie.com).


57 posted on 04/10/2007 7:56:40 AM PDT by Jeffrey_D. (Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: staytrue
Exactly right.

There was a thread yesterday which highlighted a debate between two scientists (Gray and Emanuel):

Gray said that Humans were not the cause of Global Warming.
Emanuel responded that only an idiot would deny that Global Warming was taking place.

It just shows how dishonest the Eco-freaks are in their efforts to change our society.

58 posted on 04/10/2007 7:56:46 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (Enoch Powell was right.)
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To: CedarDave

Russian Scientists Forecast Global Cooling in 6-9 Years
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml


59 posted on 04/10/2007 7:57:32 AM PDT by listenhillary
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To: George W. Bush

Good posting. Especially the quotes from radical envirowackos!


60 posted on 04/10/2007 8:01:35 AM PDT by Leftism is Mentally Deranged
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