Sunspot Minimum or "Is the sun going to sleep?"

[Al Skierkiewicz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/sc...=2&ref=science

This from a local ham radio club reflector...

[Jared Russell]

When I was 6 years old my father took me to Fels Planetarium in the Franklin Institute and I watched a film about the sun. I remember hearing how the sun was going to burn out in 6 billion years and I spent the rest of the day in abject horror.

Sort of unrelated, but I wanted to share.

[JesseK]

There was a Science channel special on some abstracticians who were postulating how advanced intelligent lifeforms might survive in space once all of the stars burned out in billions of years. It was a very dismal existence indeed. They didn't even think about the lack of light that would be like driving down a dark road with no headlights on as the civilisations traveled from place to place. ::shudder::

I think we're on a role with Energy Conservation in general, and it'd be a shame if everything got cooler for a couple of decades. If you combine some NASA photos with findings (such as evidence that ice used to be at the top of a 1000-ft plateau in Madagascar) that support the 'Snowball Earth' theory, it seems logical that climate change is happening and that it can have huge ramifications. Yet I fear the uneducated masses will use a colder year that results from a docile sunspot maximum season as evidence that climate change is a myth.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Jesse,
We just don' have enough data yet. The Maunder Minimum, the longest period of no sunspot activity also coincided with the cold spell that gave Valley Forge such significance as well as all those winter scenes from northern Europe.

[EricH]

It may be (who knows) that the sunspots, huge volcanic eruptions, etc. that produce extra-cold winters and summers are acting as counters to global warming, giving the earth a chance to recover.

It also gives those who are so inclined a chance to poke fun at certain politicians/scientists. After a May blizzard a couple years ago in SD canceled classes (seen on a white board in the student lounge): "What happened to the global warming?" or something to that effect, along with this response: "It's now called global climate change."

[DonRotolo]

All I know is that High-Frequency (1.6-30 MHz) radio propagation is not all that good, and I'm anxious for more sunspots so I can "work the world on a Watt" again. This time on PSK31, I suppose.

[Mr. Pockets]

Originally Posted by JesseK

If you combine some NASA photos with findings (such as evidence that ice used to be at the top of a 1000-ft plateau in Madagascar) that support the 'Snowball Earth' theory, it seems logical that climate change is happening and that it can have huge ramifications. Yet I fear the uneducated masses will use a colder year that results from a docile sunspot maximum season as evidence that climate change is a myth.

Originally Posted by EricH

It may be (who knows) that the sunspots, huge volcanic eruptions, etc. that produce extra-cold winters and summers are acting as counters to global warming, giving the earth a chance to recover.

I know this might be a tad off topic, but as some comments have been made in reference to global warming I have a quick question: why are people so convinced that human activity is dominant cause of global warming. I'm not saying it isn't (I'm hardly anything remotely resembling an expert on the area), but warming and cooling far beyond what we are experiencing has happened in the past (way before humans industrialized). Take the end of the ice age, when the glaciers covering a massive portion of the northern hemisphere receded. There were no people spreading greenhouse gases at that point, so it's not as if natural warming has never occurred. I don't doubt that human activity plays a role in global warming (or cooling), but I think people might be a little quick to exaggerate it.
Just my $0.02

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pockets

I know this might be a tad off topic, but as some comments have been made in reference to global warming I have a quick question: why are people so convinced that human activity is dominant cause of global warming. I'm not saying it isn't (I'm hardly anything remotely resembling an expert on the area), but warming and cooling far beyond what we are experiencing has happened in the past (way before humans industrialized). Take the end of the ice age, when the glaciers covering a massive portion of the northern hemisphere receded. There were no people spreading greenhouse gases at that point, so it's not as if natural warming has never occurred. I don't doubt that human activity plays a role in global warming (or cooling), but I think people might be a little quick to exaggerate it.
Just my $0.02

I just so happen to be one of those that likes a good jab at the folks that say global warming is happening. (And the best way to cool the earth? Have said folks be quiet and stop talking, because talking produces hot air!)

And I seem to recall that certain animals produce lots of greenhouse gasses (whatever those are). As in, close to as much as humans do. (And there are some other things, but that would start getting way way way off-topic, so I'll leave it at that.)

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pockets

I know this might be a tad off topic, but as some comments have been made in reference to global warming I have a quick question: why are people so convinced that human activity is dominant cause of global warming.

Multiple peer reviewed scientific studies support the hypothesis that humans are accelerating global warming. The consensus in the scientific community is that humans accelerate global warming. I could link to all of the papers if you feel like analyzing them (as you shouldn't just take people's word on anything in science), but I'm sleepy right now.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Mr. Pockets

I know this might be a tad off topic, but as some comments have been made in reference to global warming I have a quick question: why are people so convinced that human activity is dominant cause of global warming. I'm not saying it isn't (I'm hardly anything remotely resembling an expert on the area), but warming and cooling far beyond what we are experiencing has happened in the past (way before humans industrialized). Take the end of the ice age, when the glaciers covering a massive portion of the northern hemisphere receded. There were no people spreading greenhouse gases at that point, so it's not as if natural warming has never occurred. I don't doubt that human activity plays a role in global warming (or cooling), but I think people might be a little quick to exaggerate it.
Just my $0.02

I'm not convinced that we're the dominant cause of global warming or climate change overall. I do believe that the profound impact we have on the environment creates a domino effect with sometimes unimaginable consequences. What we do cause, almost incontrovertibly I postulate, is rapid acceleration and amplification of localized events that slowly accelerate global change over what it would have been had we not made our impacts in the way we did. I believe it's been happening for centuries, yet it was nearly undetectable in the 1800's due to lack of global communications and the non-linear development characteristic of anything the human species does.

As an example, I'm pretty sure the French didn't analyze environmental impact in Haiti when they cut down 95% of the forests for, essentially, cash crops a long long time ago. Now, not only is the Haitian soil not quite suitable for food crops it also creates a localized effect of erosion and dust bowls. While seemingly minute, those logically contribute to the region's weather patterns (localized heating, high winds) which also effect the Gulf of Mexico.

[oddjob]

I just read the same stuff as everybody else.

Warming is predominantly caused by water vapor, not SUV's and backyard BBQ's. The planet has this irritating habit of warming and cooling over time, for reasons mostly unknown. You may have heard of the ice age, it's real and thank the lucky stars we aren't in one now. We are just about on schedule to begin the next ice age. Just imagine, the NHL will expand like crazy. CO2 levels track the warming some time later, and are not the cause, at least, that's the historical record and it might not be true today. Impossible to know. All of the proposed remedies to global warming will have almost no affect on the average temperature, fractions of a degree over many decades at best. Some are using scare tactics to extract money out of your wallet, but that applies across a range of topics (warming, health care, banks, mortgages, car companies, education, terrorism, ...) and isn't new. Fusion power, if ever practical, will solve a lot of problems and ensure a bright future. As long as we get there before all the oil runs out in a few thousand years, we're good.

[Chris is me]

I know I didn't start a good precedent with this, but if we're going to argue about global warming and claim facts such as "what causes it", can we do our best to link to preferably peer reviewed s ientic journal articles on the subjects? Otherwise the debate will just turn into "I think this!" "No, but it's actually this!" "You're wrong! I know this for sure!"

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

Multiple peer reviewed scientific studies support the hypothesis that humans are accelerating global warming. The consensus in the scientific community is that humans accelerate global warming. I could link to all of the papers if you feel like analyzing them (as you shouldn't just take people's word on anything in science), but I'm sleepy right now.

Peer-reviewed scientific studies are done by people. Also note the law of spontaneous generation.

(If you don't know what that law is, it was debunked by Pasteur a couple hundred years ago or so.)

[artdutra04]

I'm not a climate scientist. I haven't spent a lifetime drilling ice cores out of Antarctica, monitoring thousands of weather stations, designing complex mathematical climate forecasting algorithms, mapping the hole in the Ozone layer, recording the cyclical ocean temperatures of El Niño, measuring the accelerated extent of the shrinking glaciers and rising sea water, or any other of the highly specialized tasks that these scientists do every day.

As such, what qualifies me as being more competent than they are at drawing conclusions from their climate data? Subjective arguments and logical fallacies? I'm not a climate scientist, or even a meteorologist. But they are. And the vast majority of them (including the IPCC) all agree that global warming is not only real and observable, but that activity from humans has been primarily responsible for this current rapid upswing. (Note they are not stating that humans are solely responsible, since climate shifts obviously occurred in the four billion years prior to humanity.)

If Global Warming, which is the currently held scientific theory among the majority of scientists worldwide, works well enough for those which devote their entire lives to studying the climate, then it's good enough for me. Letting politics or personal ideas get in the way of science is like when Indiana tried to pass a law rounding pi to 3.2 to allow one to "square a circle", even though it had already been proven impossible with primitive actions.

But at the same time, if enough scientists find sufficient telling evidence to refute or alter the currently held theory of global warming (which at the current time is pretty unlikely, but not impossible), and if the majority of scientists worldwide support these changes, then I'll support those alterations.

Now as for the sunspots, there have been long lulls before, and subjectively they seem to line up with generic climate trends. But the only way to be sure is with data, numbers, with which we can run statistical analysis with decimal-point precision on it, and with a certain degree of confidence, make conclusions mathematically about whether sunspots have anything to do with our climate, or if it's just another textbook case of "correlation does not imply causation".

[DonRotolo]

Originally Posted by oddjob

Just imagine, the NHL will expand like crazy.

That's funny.

Originally Posted by oddjob

As long as we get there before all the oil runs out in a few thousand years, we're good.

I think your estimates of the amount of hydrocarbons on the planet is off by an order of magnitude.

Oil will never run out, but it will eventually become too expensive to use it as we do today. I expect that to happen in your lifetime.