'No Sun link' to climate change

[Mr Sleet]

An official rebuttal from Shaviv:

http://www.sciencebits.com/SloanAndWolfendale

That's quite a serious rebuttal. It confirms my observations that some scientists ( and I speak as one who has made a good living out of it for 23 years) believe in something too strongly ( ie have already made up their minds, subconsciously) when they design their experiment and analytical means, so that their objectivity is lost.

Edited April 15, 2008 by Mr Sleet

[Devonian]

That's quite a serious rebuttal. It confirms my observations that some scientists ( and I speak as one who has made a good living out of it for 23 years) believe in something too strongly ( ie have already made up their minds, subconsciously) when they design their experiment and analytical means, so that their objectivity is lost.

What evidence is there that Nir Shaviv isn't utterly convinced he's correct?

[Admiral_Bobski]

What evidence is there that Nir Shaviv isn't utterly convinced he's correct?

Have you read the rebuttal, though? It looks pretty watertight from here - we'll have to wait and see if there's a rebuttal to the rebuttal...!

CB

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

What evidence is there that Nir Shaviv isn't utterly convinced he's correct?

The fact that he has explained why their disregard of the cosmic link is wrong may be a decent indicator that he has assessed the situation fully

BFTP

[Devonian]

The fact that he has explained why their disregard of the cosmic link is wrong may be a decent indicator that he has assessed the situation fully

BFTP

Has he? Then perhaps you can explain how he did to me, because I don't understand any of it...

[Admiral_Bobski]

Has he? Then perhaps you can explain how he did to me, because I don't understand any of it...

If you didn't understand the rebuttal then how could you have understood the original article to the extent that you can accept and agree with it?

CB

[Mr Sleet]

If you didn't understand the rebuttal then how could you have understood the original article to the extent that you can accept and agree with it?

CB

CBOB 1 Dev 0

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Global temps continue to fall and the current sunspot number is.....0. Link anyone?

BFTP

[pottyprof]

Global temps continue to fall and the current sunspot number is.....0. Link anyone?

BFTP

Its down to global warming Fred.. Come on now.. face the truth.. You're not watching enough tv mate..

[Guest Shetland Coastie]

How about this one Fred? The sun is still completely blank - no sunspots.

Spaceweather

[0000]

the sun may have some good clearasil

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Thanks guys, some good wit there :lol: I like it! Yes Bob exactly my point.

BFTP

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

How do they know the how the sun has spots? You can't look at it with a telescope?

Yes you can with special solar filters.

BFTP

[0000]

Yes you can with special solar filters.

BFTP

trying to recall an experiment we did at school where the sun's immage was somehow projected onto a white sheet.it was fascinating but cant think how it was done

[Admiral_Bobski]

trying to recall an experiment we did at school where the sun's immage was somehow projected onto a white sheet.it was fascinating but cant think how it was done

Two sheets of white card is enough to get a pretty good look. It's called a pinhole projector - you put a pinhole in a sheet of card and then place the second sheet some distance away (you can move it back and forth until you find the right focal length). No telescope required!

I've got a peephole in my front door, and when the sun's at just the right height it shines through the peephole and projects a pretty good image on my kitchen door about eighteen feet away.

:lol:

CB

[0000]

Two sheets of white card is enough to get a pretty good look. It's called a pinhole projector - you put a pinhole in a sheet of card and then place the second sheet some distance away (you can move it back and forth until you find the right focal length). No telescope required!

I've got a peephole in my front door, and when the sun's at just the right height it shines through the peephole and projects a pretty good image on my kitchen door about eighteen feet away.

:lol:

CB

Thanks CB that was it :lol: rather like the old cameras........the immage is upside down if I recall correctly.

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

Indeed but you won't see sunspots on that :lol: .

BFTP

[Roger J Smith]

I hadn't "spotted" this thread before. Just a few comments.

The university study is clearly talking about the finding that warming from 1986 to around 2006 could not be pinned on solar activity. It was not talking about whether or not a recent downturn in global or hemispheric temperature is perhaps related to the quiet Sun phenomenon.

So the jury is still very much out on that latter and more important possibility. I would tend to agree with their findings related to the warming in the previous twenty years. It falls under the rather elementary logic that the cycles that peaked around 1989 and 2001 were nothing out of the ordinary compared to the majority of the data since the Maunder minimum ended around 1715, so there would be no particular reason from that data to expect warming.

This more recent business about the long inter-cycle downturn in solar activity perhaps signalling that we are in a new "minimum" period is of course more interesting because it has a better chance of providing a link to global temperature. I've discussed thie extensively in another thread that I set up to discuss solar variations, and my own conclusions are mixed. Obviously there is a pretty strong case to be made for the Maunder minimum being linked to the coldest part of the LIA, but arguments for the Dalton minimum of about 1795 to 1827 are more mixed -- it was fairly cold before, during and after this period and there was a large volcanic dust veil in the midst of it (1815 to about 1819).

The same can be said for the rather modest minimum that occupied the years 1875 to about 1915. This was actually a period where the climate seemed to undergo natural warming while solar activity was still rather low, and once again, there was a major dust veil inconveniently timed for 1883. One of the most persistent denied facts in all of climatology as far as I'm concerned is the easily verified fact that it had already turned cold in the spring of 1883 in North America at least, six months before Krakatoa exploded, so that all of the "cooling from Krakatoa" that is so prominently discussed in the literature has to be suspect.

Now, as to the shorter-term correlations between solar activity and temperature, these proved to be on the order of random correlation when I did a correlation analysis of monthly sunspot number and CET anomaly. I think this is the sort of finding that almost every scientist (including before the AGW era) came up with when he or she tried to find such a correlation.

So I think much will depend on how prolonged this current minimum turns out to be. So far, it is not entirely out of the range of longer inter-cycle quiet spells in active periods in the past, although I think the majority of predictions are now for a longer and weaker cycle ahead. Whether yet another volcano decides this is a good time to blow up remains to be seen.

I've been amusing myself reading textbooks written in the 1970s about ice age studies. One says that the summer of 1978 was proving to be quite cold and snowy in the arctic -- could this be a sign of impending downturns and the onset of a new ice age?

But the less glee-inspiring part of one book had this to say -- the consensus was (and I presume, still is) that the onset of a glacial period was often to be found when the water temperatures between Baffin Island and Greenland warmed and possibly when the Arctic Ocean started to experience long periods of ice-free conditions that would promote heavier snowfalls in the surrounding sub-arctic regions. That would in turn lead to continental glaciation at latitudes above 55 N and if the Milankovitch cycle factors were favourable, then rapid glaciation might proceed as it did supposedly 105,000 years ago after the last inter-glacial.

And all the studies I have been reading seemed to place the next glacial onset around 2,000 to 5,000 years from now although one of the three main Milankovitch cycles flattens out (eccentricity) so that some have postulated that the next glacial might be a partial or scattered sort of business compared to the past four mega-glacial episodes.

And all of these 1970s textbook authors had something to say about greenhouse gases and global warming -- it might accelerate from the faint signal that some had detected then, and could interact in unpredictable ways with the natural variability.

Are we any further ahead now than back then, aside from the political dimension of the current discussion? I don't know, but there are clearly many different things going on in the climate machine at any given time and even if you accept a lot of the current science, there are no guarantees that we can accurately foretell how this new variable will interact with others that might not be showing their full strength today.

[Gray-Wolf]

And that is the crux Roger. We do not know how large a climate driver we are creating nor how it will interact with the 'natural' drivers we know of.

We know that raising temps over the globe will lead to 'natural' CO2 being released into the system and this in it's turn will lead to more heating so where does it stop? In so far as terrestrial drivers I think the 'new' signal will become so dominant as to over-ride many of the old drivers but will it be enough to fore-stall the next ice age? Could ,by then, the onset of cooler conditions bring us back to todays global averages alone with no 'freeze up' at all?

We are in virgin territory and ,it would seem to me, only time will tell the full consequences of our actions over the past 150yrs.

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data...t.7.17.2008.gif

To highlight my above post. This chap holds that he suns 'activity' does correlate to past warming events through interactions with our magnetic field. Due to the slow start (though not abnormally slow we are told) of cycle24 he expects this 'solar forcing' to be less.

When the suns activity is back up and running we may have some nasty surprises awaiting us. Cycle24 is still progged to be a biggie and as such any added heating this may promote may well be the straw to break both the arctic (and Greenland) and Antarctic's back.

[Snowball Earth!]

Well time will tell GW but I would like to have a wager with anyone that the opposite will happen

[Roger J Smith]

This might be worth a thread of its own, but as we are going to be waiting for a year or two to see if the Sun is going to resume normal service or not, I will stick this in here.

All of the above speculation, as well as the whole concept of climate change as it exists in the pro-AGW lobby, brings to mind that we are now entering the head space of climate modification on a large scale. We have had climate modification on local scales for years, with varying success, but so far (unless the Russians really were up to something) we as a species have not had the means or perhaps the will to modify global weather.

Regardless of who is right or wrong about climate change, natural variability, etc, the human race might well take on the task of trying to modify the earth's climate at some point in the future, to achieve some mutually acceptable outcome, or possibly one set of powerful nations just acting on their own, even with benign intentions for the non-consenting or perhaps even with hostile intentions. What could be less costly to the protagonist than climate warfare, if that were not outrageously expensive, especially if you could create a net benefit for your own side while destroying the economy of the enemy?

Anyway, let's hope (against all the odds) that such a project came about under favourable circumstances of many states agreeing to an objective, and nobody seeing any harm in that objective. What would it look like, and how could it be achieved?

Let's also say that we were well past the temporary glitch of 21st century AGW (it might be 2275 to 2500 AD before this sort of thing became feasible) and the climate had stabilized into something resembling the 19th or 20th centuries. Let's add in the wrinkle that the leading scientists of the day had accepted the Smith theory (why not promote your own horse in the race?) and therefore had some clue what might cause natural variations to occur. And let's add the big concern that the Milankovitch obliquity factor was starting to point down on the temperature scale, as well as the precession meter on a longer time scale. In other words, on this future and possibly more peaceful earth, with its 15 billion inhabitants and complex economy, governments were starting to fear the onset of much colder climates, as well as much larger ice sheets.

They might turn to any number of remedies to stablilize the climate in the relatively benign mode it had adopted since the Second Little Ice age of 2080-2200. Lucky for Fred that enormous advances in medical care allowed him to live through it, enjoying every frosty moment of it.

Some of these remedies would include mass modification of marginal ice sheets with the aerial seeding of dark patches at key times of year. Controlled explosions would widen the sea passages between Greenland and Ellesmere Island to permit the Atlantic currents easier access to the Arctic basin. Large laser-driven satellite systems would focus solar energy and transmit it to selected regions of the atmosphere to create 0.5 C degree increases on a regional scale. Carbon dioxide generating stations would pump out carefully regulated amounts of greenhouse gases, recalling the warmth of the Gore Climatic Optimum, without recalling the irony of the name.

But then the Yellowstone supervolcano would explode and shroud the earth in dense clouds of ash, accelerating the ice age and driving all fifty million people in Ontario to relocate in Vancouver. It would be slightly worse than today, in fact.

[jethro]

Update from David Archibald:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/UpdatetoIc...3rdJuly2008.pdf

If the next Solar cycle is as quiet as some predict, hopefully we'll be one step closer to gauging how much impact the Sun does have on climate, interesting times ahead.

[Gray-Wolf]

Update from David Archibald:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/UpdatetoIc...3rdJuly2008.pdf

If the next Solar cycle is as quiet as some predict, hopefully we'll be one step closer to gauging how much impact the Sun does have on climate, interesting times ahead.

and you always have the fall back ,should cooling not occur as expected and therefore reinforced the royal societies view on solar impact, of blaming human induced climate catastrophy <_< ......well maybe not you Jethro

[jethro]

and you always have the fall back ,should cooling not occur as expected and therefore reinforced the royal societies view on solar impact, of blaming human induced climate catastrophy :lol: ......well maybe not you Jethro :lol:

I reckon there'll be more than one or two at the royal society with their fingers firmly crossed, hoping that if the Sun does go quiet, that they've got their calculations right on climate impact. Sure as eggs are eggs, if we get a quiet Solar period and temperatures do go down, they'll never hear the end of it.

Human induced climate change and me; yup I believe in it. Responsible for all the changes; never on your nelly. Catastrophy? I'll leave that one to you