[TaraP]

Daily Sun: 01 Jan 11 The Earth-side of the sun has five sunspot groups. Not-yet-numbered regions are circled. Credit: SOHO/MDI

[allmost]

It’s cold, give it up...

[davetex]

WE’RE DOOMED!!!!......OMG...........OH NOZE!!!!!

[Cisco Nix]

“The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.”

1859. Never heard that before. An event like that now would make Snake Plisskin proud.

[pallis]

It’s a balmy 10 *F outside. A sun spot now and then might warm things up a bit.

[JRandomFreeper]

CQ, CQ, CQ DX.... nope. Not happening. I can't even hear the russians at the shallow end of the 40 meter novice band.

/johnny

[spintreebob]

That it might knock out manmade devices proves that it is manmade. Not only CO2, but magnetic waves and fields also must be listed as pollutants and limited in their usage. As a start, the FCC could limit unscientific speech that uses satelites and the air waves.

[catfish1957]

Wasn't the solar minimum supposed to end last year?

[familyop]

"'The latest prediction looks at around midway 2013 as being the maximum phase of the solar cycle,' said Joe Kunches of NASA's Space Weather Prediction Center."

Yeah, just keep postponing it for another year. It'll finally happen sometime. ;-) It should be late 2011, but we're going through an extended minimum. There's been some more frequent activity but still abnormally low in strength. IMO, look for increasingly cold weather in 2013 or 2014, with a low point at about 2017 or so.

~ -7 F where I'm at. -20 last night.

[Jack Hydrazine]

NASA’s Sunspot Prediction Roller Coaster

(excerpt)
Santa brought us a new Sunspot prediction to be added to NASA’s incredibly high series of at least five ill-fated predictions starting in 2006. NASA’s latest peak Sunspot Number for Solar Cycle #24 (SC24) is down 60% from their original, but it still seems a bit too high, judging by David Archibald’s recent WUWT posting that analogizes SC24 and SC25 to SC5 and SC6 which peaked around 50, during the cold period (Dalton minimum) of the early 1800′s.

Read the rest of the article here.

[Vaduz]

Should put a few cell phones on the fritz,at least my road rage finger will get a rest.

[Wonder Warthog]

What has to be remembered is that this sort of story is really all about saving the life of the "global warming" meme. Even dimly educated people have heard that periods of low sunspot activity correlate with colder global temperatures. Sunspot activity is and has remained at levels lower than seen at any time in recorded history.

What this is intended to convey is "yes, folks, the level of sunspots has been very low, and the weather has been REALLY COLD the last couple of years, but ANY DAY NOW, the sun will "stoke up again" and we'll be back into "global warming".

[SuziQ]

But two centuries of observing sunspots -- dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces -- have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.
The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.

The same thing has happened in the past, and when the lull is prolonged, we have a Solar Minimum. There was one in the early middle ages, the Maunder Minimum in the mid 1600s, and the Dalton Minimum in the mid-to-late 1700s. It's no coincidence that the Global Warming extremists always talk about the "warmest temperatures in 150 years", because it was then that the Earth was coming out of the Dalton Minimum, and just about any temperature would look warmer by comparison!

Instead of spending money on the silly premise that anything humans do can change, or even AFFECT the climate, we need to be thinking about how humans can adapt to the changes in the climate, be that a warming trend, like we had in the 90s, or a cooling trend, like we're having right now.

[JoeFromSidney]

KC8OUX here. I'm wintering in Anza, CA, to get away from Ohio snow. However, the snow has followed me. We're having alternate snow and rain here, at 4500 ft. altitude, as the snow line moves up and down. Right now we're inside the cloud, and fluffy flakes are coming down. I went to town earlier this morning, about 500 ft. lower, and it was raining there.

[Glenn]

Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.

Anyone who took 8th grade Science should not be surprised.

But I'm a boomer. What the hell do I know?