Out, Damned Spot

A month without sunspots is like... history.  Via Drudge:

Drop in solar activity has potential effect for climate on earth

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

       

A late update alerts us to a half-spot seen by a different observatory, so this record is marred by controversy:

Article Update, Sep 1 2008. After this story was published, the NOAA reversed their previous decision on a tiny speck seen Aug 21, which gives their version of the August data a half-point.  Other observation centers such as Mount Wilson Observatory are still reporting a spotless month.  So depending on which center you believe, August was a record for either a full century, or only 50 years.

And this is their link to the article relating climate change and solar activity.  The key seems to be not direct solar output, but rather the  effect of the sun's magnetic field on cosmic rays and cloud formation:

Such research dates back to 1991, when the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study showing that world temperatures over the past several centuries correlated very closely with solar cycles. A 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute found a similar correlation, but concluded the timing was only coincidental, as the solar variance seemed too small to explain temperature changes.

However, researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increases, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off.

Not up to speed on cosmic rays and cloud formation?  No worries - carbon emissions are sooooo five minutes ago.  Now we are worrying about reactive nitrogen as a greenhouse gas.  Al Gore explains how to prioritize and cut through the fog:

The tension can plague even the most informed and articulate campaigners. "One of the many complexities that complicate the task I've undertaken is complexity," said Al Gore, the former vice president who won a Noble Peace Prize for his environmental work. Mr. Gore added, "Look, I can start a talk by saying, 'There are 14 global warming pollutants, and we have a different solution for addressing each of them.' And it's true. But you start to lose people."

"One of the many complexities that complicate the task I've undertaken is complexity" - words to live by.

MORE:  Charts and graphs at Flopping Aces.

Comments

[kim]

Whether or not there was a sunspot in August, and it is still controversial, the impact is more psychological than scientific. The sun is still doing something unusual to our experience, if not its own.
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[Neo]

If global cooling goes on for more than a couple years, it would be good thing to have a leader who can handle a snowmachine and hunt caribou.

[Greybeard]

But the real question for me is-
What is it we humans are doing to cause this lack of sunspots?
Too much trans-fat consumption?
Driving my old 454 Corvette?

[clarice]

Listening to a guy who skipped all his lectures at Harvard on Thinking About Science (he took no hard science courses per Marannis)explain science to us is quite amusing.

[kim]

It was a sunspeck, but Livingston measured the magnetic strength of it and found it on the decline curve to no spots in 2015. It's all very interesting.

If we are cooling long term, and I believe we will cool for 20-100 years, then encumbering carbon is exactly the wrong thing to do. CO2's small effect to warm the globe, and its large effect on food production will warm and feed those living on the margin, and save lives during the cooling period.

We should be preparing to adapt to cooling and to mitigate its effects. Instead we are pushing to mitigate warming. Exactly backwards, and it is fundamentally hugely scandalous. How did science fail us?
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[kim]

Greybeard, believe it or not there is a recent article blaming fat people for global warming. I guess the theory is that they use more food. See at Anthony's 'Watts Up With That' climate blog.
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[Pofarmer]

No, no, no greybeard. You don't get it.

Global warming has caused the earths magnetic signature to change. The earths magnetic field is closely coupled with that of the sun. The change in earths magnetic field has caused shifts in the Suns magnetic field. We are KILLING the sun by driving SUV's.

(I really need some sarc tags)

[bgates]

On the other hand, he's one of the many simpletons who simplify the task he's undertaken by oversimplifying.

[Pofarmer]

If we are cooling long term, and I believe we will cool for 20-100 years, then encumbering carbon is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Well shucks Kim. What do you expect from govt?

[michaelt]

The NOAA also has ruled that CC Sabathia should be credited with a no-hitter.

[Pofarmer]

IMHO, the best status for our govt right now is gridlock.

[bgates]

Al Gore, the former vice president who won a Noble Peace Prize for his environmental work.
I'm not one of the most informed or articulate campaigners, but...Noble?

[kim]

Pofarmer, the sad thing is that I don't expect much from government; I did expect better from science.

Part of the problem is that the IPCC was chartered to discover and combat man's effect on climate. There are in fact changes caused by land use, and these have been systematically ignored by the IPCC. Instead, they have focussed on CO2, and have exaggerated its effect, badly.

They have gotten away with it because for the last quarter of the last century, CO2 rise paralleled temperature rise. The two were not in parallel before or since. This is the grandest example ever of the Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy.

We are cooling, folks. For how long, even kim doesn't know.
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[Charlie (Colorado)]

Driving my old 454 Corvette?

Showoff.

[Neo]

You'd think that after the whole Iraq War .. Bush lied meme, that people would be a bit more skeptical of (world) government truths. Afterall it was the consensus of the global intelligence community that Saddam Hussein had WMD (chemical & biological at least), so a consensus on Global Warming goes relatively unchallenged.

Fool me once .. shame on you.
Fool me twice .. shame on me.

But remember that it is an imperative that lawmakers do something now, lest the whole Global Warming thing will be "cured" by Nature, leaving them without any chance of claiming credit for ending the warming trend.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Pofarmer, the sad thing is that I don't expect much from government; I did expect better from science.

Why? Scientists are people too.

We are cooling, folks. For how long, even kim doesn't know.

The medium length cycle is about 100 years, the long cycle is about 400 years.

Before we knew to be worried about Global Climate Change, we called it "wow, bad winter, eh?"

[kim]

Fortunately, Neo, I think that window of opportunity has closed. There are just too many legitimate scientist now who are skeptical, and the errors made in science and policy-making are understood well enough to the cognoscenti. It is a matter of turning political will, now. That's one of the reasons I'm hoping that skeptic Palin may yet be an advocate, a paradigm changer. She is coming at the right time.
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[Captain Hate]

Pofarmer, the sad thing is that I don't expect much from government; I did expect better from science.

Yeah this is the really sad part, that purportedly smart people can get tooled so badly into violating what should be their bedrock values.

[kim]

Charlie, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has now flipped to its cooling phase, generally around 30 years long, and the sun is unusually quiescent. If its quiescence is temporary and it goes back to normal cycles, I think cooling will last as long as this phase of the PDO, another 20-30 years. If the sun's behaviour presages another Dalton or Maunder Minimums, we'll cool for 50-100 years, maybe more.

That's where I get my range of 20-100 years. I'm pretty sure of this, because I've been studying it maniacally for the last few years, but I could be dead wrong. There is that much uncertainty.

The Precautionary Principle, on the other hand, is a Paeon to Ignorance.
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[kim]

Right, Cap'n HaHa, the modelers should be questioning their assumptions. The real problem is their assumption of a large positive feedback of water vapor to the initial quite small forcing by CO2 greenhouse effect. Water vapor has a very strong greenhouse effect and the mistaken assumption is that the heating from CO2 will draw enough water vapor into the atmosphere to magnify the effect of CO2 by about four. That is probably wrong, and it really is that simple.

Spencer is showing that water vapor probably has a small negative feedback rather than a large positive feedback. You can easily estimate the difficulty of determining the magnitude and sign of this feedback when you consider that clouds in the day cool the earth, and at night, warm it.

Parameterizations of cloud formation and convection are also poorly modeled. These are very complex interactions, and the simplifications necessary to make the models work with the computer power available render the models poor in performance.
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[kim]

Heh, watch Biden have a pretend TIA and be replaced by Gore. Just kidding, I hope. That would be one way to politically neutralize Palin's climate views, but I still think it would be a loser for the Dems. This is all highly imaginative, but, I do wonder how the coming paradigm change about climate is going to be handled politically.

And for sure, the paradigm will change. The climate sensitivity to CO2 has been exaggerated and fossil fuel will continue to supply our base energy needs for a long time to come. CO2 is not the pollutant the warmers would have you believe. Fossil fuels will not be replaced until they are priced out of the energy market, and barring government meddling that will be awhile. It is inevitable, because it is a finite resource, even though large.
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[Bill in AZ]

In spite of it being pooh-poohed as "astrology" by solar "experts", I still think the barycenter analysis is the most interesting explanation. 100% correlation between minimums and disordered motion for the last 4 periods of disordered motion during the last 1000 years. This period of disordered motion started in 1985 and goes through 2040. 20-30 years of cooling is my bet.

[eagelwingz08]

Complexities complicating conundrous circumstances should not deter the Goreacle who singlehandedly invented the internet and who was the model for the lead character in Love Story. Cmon Al we're counting on you and the Obamanation to change the world. Let the rapture begin.

[kim]

Bill, I don't know whether Leif Svalgaard simply doesn't understand the mechanics(doubtful) or what, but he utterly pooh-poohs the barycentric theories. I agree, they look compelling to me.
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[kim]

Part of the reason from Leif's point of view, is that gravitational effects are very weak, but, more importantly, the sun is in free fall around the barycenter and can not be effected by the gravitation of the planets. I really don't understand that, because even in free fall, if the gravitational force is coming from constantly changing directions, then surely that falling body would feel it. Maybe he'll come over and try to explain it for us. He comments frequently at 'Watts Up With That' and now has eight threads totaling over 4,000 comments at climateaudit.org
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[M. Simon]

Clouds
The Big Heat Pipe In The Sky
Climate Science Needs To Go Underground

Also Google - Clouds In Chambers Classical Values

I was on this over a year ago.

Kim was there. - Thanks kim!

[M. Simon]

The #1 Green House gas is water. The Goracle doesn't say anything about sequestering oceans.

[thingumbob esq.]

It is the case that the Internet is indisputably a major, if not the major cause of enormous amount of energy usage around the world. Furthermore, it is beyond dispute that former Senator Gore profoundly and publicly prides himself as a major player of promoting said Internet (if not its inventor.) It being the case that our global climate change is putting the fate of humanity, nay all living beings in peril (as averred and propounded most vociferously to widespread renown and accolades by the aforementioned Mr. Gore.) Furthermore, the headlong promotion of a perverse technology which so threatens us all being akin to a palpably criminal enterprise, it would seem that those purveyors of this poison, including DARPA (a.k.a. the military industrial complex) be summarily charged with crimes against humanity. This certainly may be brought up in a court of law commensurate under the provisions of hate crime. It is a crime which will destroy in its course perhaps everybody and every living thing. It is therefor beyond the promotion of simple genocide. In fact, it has been hypothesized by serious scientists that the very earth may be plunged off its orbit by climate change. Indeed there can be no greater degree of criminality ever contemplated. Q.E.D.

[M. Simon]

Actually climate hysteria goes in 30 year cycles and has since about 1880. It will get too hot. Oh no! It will get too cold. Oh no! It will get too hot. Oh no! But this time we can do something.

BTW americans are pretty sceptical about CO2. I think the #s are at around 50%. Then there are the don't knows. The extreme warmists are in the minority.

Where it really drops of is: it it costs you $1,000 a year what should we do? $2,000? $5,0000?

[M. Simon]

Clouds In Chambers

[kim]

That's what we need, Simon, a Barack Inspector.
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[Barney Frank]

We are cooling, folks. For how long, even kim doesn't know.

---The medium length cycle is about 100 years, the long cycle is about 400 years.---

Sometimes the long cycle is several thousand years and includes a few thousand feet of ice on places like New York and Chicago.

[Bill in AZ]

Leif watches like a hawk for anything about barycenters, and pounces on it to dispell any silly notions folks might get. I suspect some as yet not understood interaction between gravity, magnetics, plasmas, etc that drives the solar/earth-climate interaction. Until it is understood, it gets dumped into "chaos" theory - which seems to be shorthand for "stuff we don't understand". Someday it will be understood, and weather people will use it to predict not only climate, but weather as well.

I keep hearing rumors that someone over in PUK's territory has a very accurate barycenter model that he uses to predict local weather (not climate) with a high degree of accuracy. Most barycenter analysis is done with the 4 major planets. This one (from what I have gleaned) takes in all of the planets, moons, etc, and comes up with a more accurate picture of ordered versus disordered motion. I presume from that he can derive a better picture of what kind of activity the sun will produce - which then affects the earth.

But I haven't been able to find much more information about his work - he's keeping it pretty close. There was rumor a few months ago he was going to release more information, but I haven't seen it.

[kim]

It has been fun, Simon, to watch this develop. It's like catching a wave.
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[kim]

Interesting, Bill. Part of Leif's problem in general is that he does not see any specific mechanism by which solar changes effect climate. And it's true, no one has been able to elucidate the mechanism. The specific mechanisms are probably so complex as to be beyond our understanding, yet.
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[Barney Frank]

Part of Leif's problem in general is that he does not see any specific mechanism by which solar changes effect climate. And it's true, no one has been able to elucidate the mechanism. The specific mechanisms are probably so complex as to be beyond our understanding, yet.

Yes Kim,
But sometimes we can't see things because they're not there. Seems like a wise precaution to keep that possibility in the forefront until some evidence is produced.

[Bill in AZ]

But sometimes we can't see things because they're not there. Seems like a wise precaution to keep that possibility in the forefront until some evidence is produced.

Very true - however, there does seem to be data with some level of correlation. The barycenter folks are looking at the spotless sun and nodding their heads saying "yep - expected something like that, expecting more of the same". They don't really know why, but they are at least digging, trying to understand, trying to come up with something that might explain the observations before their eyes.

Leif seems to attack the proxies that the data came from, attack the whole barycenter concept because of freefall, because the gravity tidal effect only raises the surface of the sun by a millimeter or something. It seems to me he tries to stuff the whole thing into a one-dimensional problem - where it is probably so multi-dimensional it is beyond current comprehension.

Early in my engineering classes, it simplified problems to strip off dimensions - "ideal temperature, pressure, gravity" lab environment. The real world doesn't operate like that, and in advanced courses, those simplifications were no longer used or allowed. Of course the math gets very much more complicated.

Leif is a smart man, and I understand where he is coming from when he is posting on a scientific forum - this is the accepted and understood science. It just seems to me he is a bit too eager to attack and push people away from something that requires perhaps another look.

For all I know (and hope!), he is digging just as hard.

[TCO]

The "sun worshipper" climate deniers are some of the goofiest and most amateur. I would avoid going down this rathole. It just weakens the reasonable arguments about lack of certainty wrt Global Climate Models, uncertain nature of the paleoclimate record, etc. when we have quasi-cold fusionists on our side.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Sometimes the long cycle is several thousand years and includes a few thousand feet of ice on places like New York and Chicago.

I promise I'll start worrying about this as soon as I have several thousand years to think about it.

[sylvia]

The whole global warming "crisis" was a farce from the beginning and any one with half a brain knew it (unfortunately that doesn't inlcude most of Old Europe).

This is how we knew or shoud have known- CO2 emissions were only on the big upswing for the last 100 years. Global warming and global cooling has been going on for the last 6 bilion years. Enough said.

As soon as you ask a global warmer about what has been happening all the time besides the last 100 years, they didn't want to tak about it.

It's ony logic that the sun has the main effect. Now, not to say that CO2 has no effect, but the science is to early to know what percentage is what. A few years ago, I had to google my own research on the sun and climate after I started wondering about it. I'm glad more people are also now finally catching on to the solar connection.

[sylvia]

Here's a dumb question that has never been quite answered for me. If all life forms are constantly consuming energy on this planet, by eating and burning, would the life on earth slowy consume its own resources after bilions of year and just leave us with a barren mineral crust? And if not, why not?

[Crimso]

Sylvia:
At the risk of drastically oversimplifying, think of it this way: photosynthetic organisms use free energy from the sun ("free energy" as in Gibbs free energy, not energy that you don't have to pay for) to maintain order in their systems. Such maintenance of order would appear to violate the laws of thermodynamics, except that it is accomplished by causing an even greater amout of disorder in their surroundings (so that, overall, the disorder of the universe as a whole increases, thus obeying the 2nd law of thermodynamics). Eventually, other organisms (that don't "do" photosynthesis) consume these organisms, such that ultimately the sun provides the energy for most of the life on the earth (some is apparently harvested from such sources as deep sea thermal vents). What you refer to as "eating and burning" isn't so much destruction of those resources as it is a rearrangement of them from what we call low entropy-high enthalpy (low S-high H) nutrients to high entropy-low enthalpy (high S-low H) waste products. Through such processes as photosynthesis, this process is reversed. In a very real sense, when you consume these resources you're not destroying them. You're simply playing a role in a cycling of the atoms involved between the various states of entropy and enthalpy.

Perhaps eventually the need to induce an even greater disorder in our surroundings than the magnitude of order we maintain in ourselves will lead to a barren lifeless world, but it is worth pointing out that the very act of energy transfer from the sun to the earth is a decrease in order (i.e., an increase in entropy).

[Bill in AZ]

"sun worshipper" climate deniers - would that be folks who somehow foolishly think that the sun has anything to do with heating and cooling in the solar system?

Heating/cooling on Earth, simultaneous receding/growing ice caps on planets? Can't think of anything in this "solar" system that could possibly cause that.

Oh, wait - CO2! I shall stop worshipping the sun immediately. We should harness CO2.

[kim]

Crimso, I once got full credit on a physics test essay question for postulating that the earth, where entropy was not increasing, was proof of the existence of God. The graduate instructor and I both knew that it was a joke, but the way I posed the concepts pleased him.
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[Barney Frank]

I promise I'll start worrying about this as soon as I have several thousand years to think about it.

Charlie,
while it might take thousands of years for the glaciers to reach their maximum extent, the effects of an incipient ice age on crops, commerce, ports, water and energy supplies and demands and a great many other things could happen in a matter of decades or years.

[Barney Frank]

Who let TCO out of his cage?

[kim]

See sylvia? There's an absolute absence of mishigas in your 12:25 post. Well, you wrote 'to' once instead of 'too'. Lobotomy for you, I guess.
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[kim]

TCO, we are proud of the appellation 'sun worshippers'. Ultimately, it will be shown that the sun drives the climate, as it always has; we simply don't understand the mechanisms, yet.

By the way you need to go back to DotEarth, and slam your weight around a little. I've been defending your statements about Bush begging them to evacuate New Orleans. They don't believe you, the silllies.
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[kim]

Hey Barney, it's no easier to cage TCO than it is to cage Sarah Palin, but I'd vote for her for anything sooner than him except for Leading Internet Burr Under the Saddle. TCO's talented. So is anduril.
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[kim]

Excellent critique, Bill, of Leif. He has tried to discourage, for the same scientific reasons, Erl Happ, who seems to have the most acute intuition about tropical clouds out there.

I do think it is such a complex interaction that we are presently unable to conceive it. The answer is going to be in clouds and the sun.

I think I've never heard so loud
The quiet message in a cloud.
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