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
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 cores record climate trends back beyond human measurementsIt 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.
:)
An in-depth study of the "DEFROST" cycle in the refrigerizer might provide a clue.
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...
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.
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:)
“When the next mini-ice age hits,”
I don’t know about where you live, but it’s frickin cold here...
INDIRECT!!!????
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.
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?
Environmentalists just can't give up their religious BS can they?
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.
Bush lied, sunspots high’d!
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
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.
Congressman Billybob
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, todays temperature would become abnormal and hence we must change our way of life to prevent that from occurring. According to the worlds 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 todays 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 Earths history where the globes 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).
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.
Russian Scientists Forecast Global Cooling in 6-9 Years
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/08/25/globalcooling.shtml
Good posting. Especially the quotes from radical envirowackos!
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