Meanwhile, people obsess about carbon on the basis of junk science.
11 thoughts on “The Sun”
Clearly, this is a serious issue, and therefor the blame game must be played. I think it’s obvious; it’s George W. Bush’s fault, because while he was in office he did absolutely nothing about solar cycle stability.
On a serous note, a new Maunder minimum (IMHO, it’ll be more like the Sporer minimum, the first half of the Little Ice Age) would decrease global temps for over a century. The last one lasted for around three centuries. What this means is that even were the AGW crowd to be right about AGW, we’d be foolish to cut carbon emissions. Bear in mind that the little ice age had drastic impacts on crops and viability, and amongst other things led to the failure of the Viking colonies in Greenland, which had been there for twice as long as the United States has been a country. Cooling has far more negative impact per degree than warming does.
(IMHO, it’ll be more like the Sporer minimum, the first half of the Little Ice Age)
What are you basing your humble opinion on?
I’m basing my humble opinion on, well, little more than extrapolation, which I admit isn’t a sound method based on one historical sample.
My reasoning is that the current behavior of the sun looks a lot more like the Spoorer than the Dalton, given the rapidity of decline – and I think Livingston and Penn nailed it with their theory on decreasing intensity of sunspots (not just decreasing number).
The Maunder was the second half of the little ice age. There’s some inherent confusion here; many count the Spoorer as part of the Maunder.
“. ‘We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.’ If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. ‘Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,’ says Judith Lean. ‘It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'””
Well, that shows some astounding ignorance of current research. First, solar scientists say they don’t actually know that luminosity only drops by 0.1% during one of these events, it’s just an assumption that a certain solar feature doesn’t disappear, but that assumption isn’t backed by any observations. Second, nobody is claiming the change in visible output drives the temperature change, they’re saying changes in the UV and solar wind cause changes in cloud formation and upper atmospheric dynamics, creating large changes in albedo and water vapor content. Third, if changes in solar output can’t cause a steep drop in temperatures, what caused the Little Ice Age, the Wicked Witch of the North? In science we assume that the laws of physics operating in the 1700’s are the same as the laws operating today. In climate science that assumption gets tossed out the window, along with notions like having climate models obey the laws of conservation of momentum or treating gravity as an inverse square law.
You realize you are arguing with Rand’s source.
Nothing to worry about. It’s just the solution to the Fermi Paradox. Jerry Pournelle warned about this in the 70s (an eye blink from today in terms of solar stability.) Perhaps we should pay attention? Did they ever find the missing neutrinos?
The smoking gun was discovered. The smoking gun is the difference between the total number of neutrinos and the number of only electron neutrinos. The missing neutrinos were actually present, but in the form of the more difficult to detect muon and tau neutrinos.
“But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. ”
“most researchers…..”
Tally up the papers.
The deniers are fairly few in number and scientific productivity.
The thing to remember about the Sun is that scientists don’t have an understanding about why the Sun acts the way it does. NASA constantly revises sunspot predictions and flushes their old inaccurate predictions down the memory hole. Sometimes they even post predictions after events have happened. This solar cycle we had a double peak and no one knows why or how.
We are in the golden age of scientific discovery but that is only because we know so little.
Clearly, this is a serious issue, and therefor the blame game must be played. I think it’s obvious; it’s George W. Bush’s fault, because while he was in office he did absolutely nothing about solar cycle stability.
On a serous note, a new Maunder minimum (IMHO, it’ll be more like the Sporer minimum, the first half of the Little Ice Age) would decrease global temps for over a century. The last one lasted for around three centuries. What this means is that even were the AGW crowd to be right about AGW, we’d be foolish to cut carbon emissions. Bear in mind that the little ice age had drastic impacts on crops and viability, and amongst other things led to the failure of the Viking colonies in Greenland, which had been there for twice as long as the United States has been a country. Cooling has far more negative impact per degree than warming does.
(IMHO, it’ll be more like the Sporer minimum, the first half of the Little Ice Age)
What are you basing your humble opinion on?
I’m basing my humble opinion on, well, little more than extrapolation, which I admit isn’t a sound method based on one historical sample.
My reasoning is that the current behavior of the sun looks a lot more like the Spoorer than the Dalton, given the rapidity of decline – and I think Livingston and Penn nailed it with their theory on decreasing intensity of sunspots (not just decreasing number).
The Maunder was the second half of the little ice age. There’s some inherent confusion here; many count the Spoorer as part of the Maunder.
“. ‘We might be in for a longer state of suppressed activity.’ If so, the decline in magnetic activity could ease global warming, the scientists say. But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. ‘Given our current understanding of how the sun varies and how climate responds, were the sun to enter a new Maunder Minimum, it would not mean a new Little Ice Age,’ says Judith Lean. ‘It would simply slow down the current warming by a modest amount.'””
Well, that shows some astounding ignorance of current research. First, solar scientists say they don’t actually know that luminosity only drops by 0.1% during one of these events, it’s just an assumption that a certain solar feature doesn’t disappear, but that assumption isn’t backed by any observations. Second, nobody is claiming the change in visible output drives the temperature change, they’re saying changes in the UV and solar wind cause changes in cloud formation and upper atmospheric dynamics, creating large changes in albedo and water vapor content. Third, if changes in solar output can’t cause a steep drop in temperatures, what caused the Little Ice Age, the Wicked Witch of the North? In science we assume that the laws of physics operating in the 1700’s are the same as the laws operating today. In climate science that assumption gets tossed out the window, along with notions like having climate models obey the laws of conservation of momentum or treating gravity as an inverse square law.
You realize you are arguing with Rand’s source.
Nothing to worry about. It’s just the solution to the Fermi Paradox. Jerry Pournelle warned about this in the 70s (an eye blink from today in terms of solar stability.) Perhaps we should pay attention? Did they ever find the missing neutrinos?
The smoking gun was discovered. The smoking gun is the difference between the total number of neutrinos and the number of only electron neutrinos. The missing neutrinos were actually present, but in the form of the more difficult to detect muon and tau neutrinos.
I should remember to search first.
There’s that codswallop again:
“But such a subtle change in the sun—lowering its luminosity by about 0.1%—wouldn’t be enough to outweigh the build-up of greenhouse gases and soot that most researchers consider the main cause of rising world temperatures over the past century or so. ”
“most researchers…..”
Tally up the papers.
The deniers are fairly few in number and scientific productivity.
The thing to remember about the Sun is that scientists don’t have an understanding about why the Sun acts the way it does. NASA constantly revises sunspot predictions and flushes their old inaccurate predictions down the memory hole. Sometimes they even post predictions after events have happened. This solar cycle we had a double peak and no one knows why or how.
We are in the golden age of scientific discovery but that is only because we know so little.