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The sunspot count keeps dropping; what’s that mean?
What does it mean that the sunspot count for the first three months of 2009 (when 87% of days were without ANY sunspots) is even lower than the average for last year (2008, when 73% of all days had no sunspots), which was the lowest year since 1913? See this article on sunspot activity.
What does it mean that the output of the sun’s extreme UV is down 6%? And that radio emissions from the sun are the lowest they’ve been in 50 some years (since they started tracking it)?
What does it mean that the average temperature of Mars has gone up in the last 100 years, by about as much as the Earth’s average temperature increase?
Could the sun actually have been the driving force behind the slight global warming that has been perceived over the last 100 years here on Earth? When I stand outside in the sunshine, close my eyes and look toward the sun — it seems to be the source of all the warmth! If that’s where all the heat for the earth is coming from, isn’t it conceivable that slight variations in its output might be responsible for the slight variances in our global temperatures?
The sun has a regular sunspot cycle of about 11 years between minimum and maximum number of sunspots.
Now that sunspot activity is tanking, perhaps that explains the severely cold winter last winter?
I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stock up on long johns, buy a warmer winter coat (I’m thinking a fully lined parka) and take in some extra firewood for next winter.
I think we’re all in for a cold spell for the next year or two.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
You know, I think that there’s valid reason to question whether man is responsible for global warming. There are so many other factors not taken into account (such as this sunspot thing).
But,,, the benefit from this idea that man is responsible for global warming is that there is now a push to curb pollution. That there is pollution going on and that it has detrimental effects on man is not in dispute. Maybe overall our survival will benefit from this small alteration of facts.
In the meantime I think I’ll buy some new winter boots.
-Phil
December 20th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
To Phil Jones:
Phil, we don’t need to be lied to about CO2 killing us all by melting the ice caps to understand that pollution is a bad thing.
CO2 is not pollution however. It is plant food.
The current push by world socialists is a grab for power and money by trying to control CO2, when we all know that NO ONE is going to curb overall CO2 output, not without culling 2/3 of the human population. Even then, it won’t make a darn bit of difference as to whether the climate warms or cools.
Instead of putting efforts into the vain, and dishonest, pursuit of climate control via CO2 taxation, invest in the ingenuity of free people to come up with ways to cope with whatever the climate has to send our way.
Pete S.
December 27th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Sunspots,rotational orbit of the earth around the sun and the tilt of the earths axis can be elements of the equation but still the oceans acid level should be at the front of the issue!
December 27th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Hm. Not sure I agree with you at all, George. The ocean is pretty big. Locally it varies in pH, depending on God only knows what factors.
Volcanic eruptions below sea level and above the ocean dump a tremendous amount of ash into the ocean every year, which would tend to make it more basal (as opposed to acidic). One good volcanic eruption (like Krakatoa back in the 1880s) can literally do away with an entire summer of growing season for the whole planet (by increasing earth’s albedo?) — they called the year that it exploded “the year without summer”.
I just tend to think that the larger geologic and planetary and solar processes are much more likely to have an impact on Earth’s climate over decades and centuries, than the piddling efforts of mankind in comparison.
Spending trillions of dollars trying to reduce CO2 emissions by some fractional percent in 50 years, and making 3rd world countries stay that way, because it makes Al Gore feel good to be “doing something about the environment” is not my idea of wisdom, or truth of any convenient or inconvenient kind.
I’m curious why you think the ocean’s acidity level would be something on which attention should be kept?