Sun Spots and Climate Change

Sunspots, solar cyles and the current solar minimum 

and how they relate to the climate change debacle

Al Gore has quite a reputation for being a harbinger of snow and record low temperatures just about everywhere he goes to speak about Global Warming. It has happens so frequently that the phoenominon has been given a name: The Gore Effect. In December of 2009, the UN held it's annual Global Warming summit in Copenhagen. Remember what happened there? The Gore Effect. Copenhagen is a city in Europe with a rather mild climate. It had record low temperatures over the week of the summit and it actually snowed on Christmas which has only happened a handful of times during the last century. As over 200 countries participated in the global warming summit in a couple of weeks ago in Cancun Mexico there was an unexpected reccurrance of the Gore Effect. Cancun experienced 54 degree temperatures. A record low not felt there in 100 years. This is very funny. Full of irony. I personally believe it is God's cosmic joke on the world full of arrogant people who believe global warming is being caused by mankind. (actually I feel pretty cynical about this because I personally believe 'they' don't really believe it either- Incidentally this issue is being used by the UN in a global take over- but that's besisdes the point – and probably a topic for another night.)

While it's fun to poke fun at the Gore Effect we had better come up with something more solid than that if we are going to overcome objections of others who truly have bought into this hoax. A hoax it is- as we all know. In my mind it is a criminal hoax- I don't have to explain it to you of all people.

I want to give you all a simple tool to use as a discussion point when talking with others.

Well, the topic isn't that simple- but I'm going to try to make it simple so you can use it as a quick and easy strategy to speak knowledgeably. My goal for tonight is for you to walk away with a solid enough understanding that you can make a couple of general graphs on a napkin to give your auadience “reasonable doubt” as to the cause of Global Warming. What I am about to show is somewhat controvercial- though many many more scientists are being forced to grudgingly acknowledge that it has merit. We don't have to prove absolutely to a regular joe-schmo liberal media listener that man made global warming is a lie- just create reasonable doubt.

Our sun is goiong through a very peculiar 'stage' currently that has scientists baffled- and excited.

The solar activity recently has been extremely low. Lower than low. Nearly non existant. There are several ways sun activity is measured. We are going to discuss two.

1. Conveyor belt

This picture shows how the outer and inner layers of the sun interact. Basically the sun hasa tidal flow- like the oceans of earth- but the flow runs outside to inside and then back out again. It takes the stuff from the outer layer and cycles it back into the core. Then it shoots it back out. Generally a complete curcuit takes about 40 years. Typically the 'conveyor belt' carries the flow at a rate of about 3 meters per second. Recently the conveyor belt has slowed way way down to about ½ the speed.

The speed of the conveyor belt affect the second area of activity – really the main focus of our discussion- Sun spots.

The slower the conveyor belt- the less sunspots occur on the surface of the sun.

Sunspots are areas on the sun with very high magnetic activity. They form a dark spot on the surface of the sun. The first recorded mention of sunspots was about 800BC by the chinese. In the year 1610 Galilea and other scientists began making regular observations of the sun with telescopes.

Here is a recent picture of the sun taken Jan. 1- (taken by SOHO – Solar and Heliospheric Observatory- Godadrd Space Center Maryland)

The next one using a different format from 1.3.11

Scientists measure and chart sunspots every day. One of the first things they noticed was a definite patern to solar activity. The sun's magnetic activity cycles over an 11 (9-14) year cycle. Some cycles are longer than others. The longer cycles have less sunspot activity.

Notice the yellow spikes in the chart above. These represent daily sunspot counts. As you can see while they vary from day to day, a patern emerges. The red line shows the smoothed averages. Notice the last couple of years as having very little- to no sun spot activity. As you will see in a minute this is virtually unpresedented during the last 100 years or more. There are many scientists who see a link of overall earth temperatures and the sunspot activity. I think you will feel the same way. The evidence seems so obvious it's ridiculous to discount it.

Below are the charts for the last 50 years. Rember the beginning of the 'Gore' era? Early to mid-1990's? See the major spike? It coincided with some pretty hot and dry years. Remember the droughts here in PA over those years? Notice how the last few winters seemed longer than others? How the last couple of springs seemed interminably cold? Check out the last couple of years of sunspot activity.

Let's go back a little further. . .

This chart goes back to 1700. You can see the variety of sun cycles. If you look at the early 1800's and 1900's you can see another correlation with well known teperature and sunspot correlations.

Since these charts don't quite finish the picture, let's look a little further back. Did you remember about the dates back to the early 1600's when Galileo and other scientists began making regular observations through telescopes? So? What happened to all that data? The sunspot activity DISAPPEARED around 1635 and stayed inperceptable until about 1710. This phoenominon is called the Maunder Minimum.

The Maunder Minimum coincides eactly with the period caled the Little Ice Age. A very interesting fact about sunspots is that the more there are the hotter the surface of the sun. The sunspots themselves are cooler but when the magnetic activity disperses the sunspots it releases a fair amount of heat. Enough to keep the sun nice and 'bright'. During the Maunder Minimum the lack of spots actually dimmed the sun.

The issue of the Maunder Minimum as well as the other cold periods mentioned are well established scientific fact. The sun activity is widely accepted to be correlated with earth temperature.

The climate change scientists acknowlegde this as absolutely true. BUT they say that now man made CO2 emissions supercede the affects of the sun. Imagine the arrogance of THAT. Seriously!!?? Maybe if there were more cars and industry earlier in history we could have avoided the Maunder Minimum and mankind would have been saved from a terrible period of suffering and wide spread death and starvation. Hehe. . . That's absurd.

Now we have looked at history. Let's look at the predictions for this current sun cycle. Incidentally- as we are going to see in a minute- NASA has made all sorts of - “oh we have a consensus on this prediction of the sun's activity and they state it with dead seriousness. But as we are IN the new sun cycle the prediction looks like this:

Scientist are seeing extremely low sun activity and the weather seems to match- though I don't expect the last couple of years worth of lack of sun spots to have cooled the earth as far as it is going to. I think there is a possible delayed effect when it comes to cooling.

Compare this sun cycle to the early 18 and 1900's. Kind of makes you go – hmmmm. . .There are a very few scientists who are daring to suggest another cooling period like we haven't seen in over a hundred years. Time to knuckle down, folks. As scientists are looking even farther in advance they see the next sun cycle to be even lesser than this one we just started.

Now let's get back to the predictions of the “experts” at NASA. Look through the years at the confidently predicted beginning dates for the cycle we just started. Look at the numbers of how many sunspots they predicted- and now look at the reality.

These are the folks who are supposed to be the saviors – the best of the best of what science has to offer us. Astrophysicists for pete's sake. Obama is listening to these people and making policy to fit this drivel- or as I think- they are making the drivel to fit the policy. Climatologists who do not hold logically to this 'established' solar priciple are selling you the brooklyn bridge. It's completely illogical and I wonder if they see it.

I'm kind of annoyed at them. It's like the Gore effect. But on a massive scale. There is a reason I wat to escape to warmer waters- but if they keep on insisting they are more powerful than the sun- and God Himself we are going to be into one cold cold 22-50 years or so. After all. It's not rocket science.