Les Jones: Sunspot Activity Down, Temperatures Down

June 11, 2008

Environment > Sunspot Activity Down, Temperatures Down

One theory about the Earth's warming is of course that it's caused by changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The other theory is that it's caused by variations in solar activity. Here's more evidence for the latter.

Montana State University - Sun goes longer than normal without producing sunspots:

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. Minimum activity generally occurs as the cycles change. Solar activity refers to phenomena like sunspots, solar flares and solar eruptions. Together, they create the weather than can disrupt satellites in space and technology on earth.
The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now, Longcope said. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak sometime around 2012. Today's sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren't sure why.

"It's a dead face," Tsuneta said of the sun's appearance.

Tsuneta said solar physicists aren't like weather forecasters; They can't predict the future. They do have the ability to observe, however, and they have observed a longer-than-normal period of solar inactivity. In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period coincided with a little ice age on Earth that lasted from 1650 to 1700.

This past winter was the coolest winter in the U.S. since 2001 and last month was the coolest May globally in quite a long time.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

Did all the CO2 go away when the sunspots calmed? Nope, we're still belching it out in record quantities and fishing around for excuses to pretend it does not matter.

Markets are helpless because pollution costs are externalized, but market ideologues are either too stupid too apply their beloved principles to real-world problems or they just prefer the sky to be a big, communist dumping ground.

It seems that if we fixate narrowly on temperature, we can ignore the real issue indefinitely!

Posted by: persimmon at June 14, 2008

But if CO2 ain't making the Earth hotter then no one cares about it. That's the point. If CO2 is pollution it's only because it creates global warming. If it isn't creating global warming, then we shouldn't worry about it.

Posted by: Les Jones at June 14, 2008

Bullshit. It's acidifying the oceans and competing with living things for calcium, further depressing fisheries already under siege from countless other kinds of pollution and destruction. It is also acidifying rain.

And warming is just the broadest measure of what excess carbon gases can do to the climate. The extra energy trapped in the atmosphere can also manifest itself as deeper floods, longer droughts, heavier snows, stronger storms and rising seas. Your sunspots haven't prevented two consecutive years where 500-year flood levels and even theoretical maximums have been exceeded in Midwestern rivers.

Furthermore, what is happening now at 385ppm is not necessarily a good indicator of what will be happening when we are old men and CO2 is pushing 500ppm.

Posted by: persimmon at June 14, 2008