Dang, it looks like the sun is coming apart. I hope not--we don't (yet) have a backup.

This article in New Scientist says there have been more sunspots since the 1940s than in the previous 1000 years.

2 points,
1) Who was tracking sunspot activity in 1003 for that statement.

2) How can Krugman blame Bush? Was it his failure to ratify Kyoto?

Bob

Who wrote that breathless title? "Sun on fire"? I mean, c'mon.

Before Bush, the sun was warm with love, but the dastardy Bush W. rejected Kyoto and the resulting global warming caught the sun on fire and ended its universal love.

While we expect the sun to become a red giant in a few billion years (if I understand it correctly) we also tend to expect it to remain stable enough to be ignored. Perhaps this is because we have no options to do anything about it if that's not the case.

Twenty years ago or so I think I read that the neutrino output of the sun didn't seem to match prediction and some of the possible implications of that.

Wouldn't it be sad if the human race has taken too long to become spacefaring, resulting in an avoidable annihilation?

Not that I'm expecting such a thing. But it seems to me to be one more of the many reasons we need to get our collective arses in gear and start colonizing this system. Surely the villagers of Pompeii could tell us a little about the expectations of sudden disaster?

People sometimes say we have all our eggs in one basket, the earth; But they may be missing the point that we have all our eggs in another basket as well, the solar system.

Even if we do succeed in colonizing this system, there are events that could wipe us out system wide. Maybe we have all the time in the world to prepare... but perhaps we do not?

I agree with Mr. Anthony. Finally, a justification for a global project to build a fleet of Orion interstellar colony ships! And if the threat turns out to be nonexistent, at least we'd have something better to spend GNP on than guns and butter. (Not to mention the colonies of Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and 40 Eridani.)

Up the Space Arks! Support Project Noah! Mankind has only (Nn) Days Left!

Funny no one has mentioned Niven's _Inconstant Moon_ yet.

So how big would a flare have to be to produce the effects that Niven described?

?So how big would a flare have to be to produce the effects that Niven described??

It wouldn?t be a flare, it would be something far worse, a short but large increase in the sun?s output. In his story, not just the moon, but even Jupiter became much brighter ? it wasn?t something directed just towards Earth.

On neutrinos: In the last few years, scientists have found evidence that neutrinos can shift type, and that would account for the lower than expected neutrino counts. We don?t know why change yet.

We know from the historical record that the sun is pretty stable, but it is possible that is SOMEWHAT variable. That would have a big impact on the greenhouse question ? we know that the Earth has been much warmer and much cooler in the past millennia, we don?t know why. A variable sun could be part of the answer, and it may be starting to cause warmer temperatures now. We really don?t know yet.

While it isn?t likely the sun will go too far off kilter any time soon, it is becoming more and more clear that the climate just isn?t very stable over the centuries. And every so often something really nasty happens. Around 500 AD something very bad happened that had worldwide effects, perhaps a moderate sized comet or asteroid, perhaps a large volcano. And there are other incidents that show up every few thousand years like that. It looks like developing civilizations were destroyed or knocked far back more than once by these things, so yes, it is important that we get off this one planet, and learn all we can about what caused them.

Save humanity? Who'd want to do a thing like that?