Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict ...

[The Sonar Chicken]

Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age: Global Cooling comes back in a big way


A typical sunspot compared to the size of the earth. Sunspots have all but vanished in recent years.


Henrik Svensmark explains the SKY experiment


Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."

Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.

But will it happen again?

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.

Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. According to data from Britain's Met Office, the earth has cooled very slightly since 1998. The Met Office says global warming "will pick up again shortly." Others aren't so sure.

Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes. According to Patterson. we shouldn't be surprised by a solar link. "The sun [is] the ultimate source of energy on this planet," he says.

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.

Recently, lead researcher Henrik Svensmark was able to experimentally verify the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, in a cloud chamber experiment called "SKY" at the Danish National Space Center. CERN plans a similar experiment this year.

Even NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies -- long the nation's most ardent champion of anthropogenic global warming -- is getting in on the act. Drew Shindell, a researcher at GISS, says there are some "interesting relationships we don't fully understand" between solar activity and climate.

Source: www.dailytech.com/Solar+Activity+Diminishes+Researchers+Predict+Another+Ice+Age/article10630.htm

[Elliot Kane]

Good find, Luci

I wonder what the global warming hype macine will make of it... ;D

My own take on the cooling/warming thing is: none of it's new. we need to be sure either is happening before we start panicking.

The whole 'only you can save mankind' thing is just another version of 'humans are SO important!' IMO.

The Earth will be fine, with or without us, I'm sure

[The Sonar Chicken]

Well, whatever the causes for the vanishing sunspots are: we've gotta be careful? Just because they're "natural", doesn't mean mankind can't "push forward the due date". Leave it to humans to always find ways to mess up the environment.

My view on global warming: given how humans keep pushing the planet's resources, I'm not sure now that the most recent global warming is entirely natural. After all we've been diminishing plenty of rainforests and pushing enough species to extinction.

Sooner or later, there'll be repercussions. Nature may be strong, powerful, terrifying, etc. but can it even keep up with all the destruction and changes in the ecological system? Last I heard: many species of animals/plants/etc. have already gone extinct 'cos of deforestation and over-consumption(excluding causes of nature). Though some indeed have been re-sighted, most are still likely gone for good. And even if new species come forth... I doubt they can compensate for all the losses.

And given how more countries are evolving from third world/developing to a better status, the demand will likely outstrip supply and push poaching, deforestation, extinction of species, etc. to even higher figures.

[Elliot Kane]

Oh, we're contributing, no doubt. but the real attention should be on how fast we are using resources, IMO - particularly drinkable water. We're using up everything the planet has so fast that whether it heats or cools may be all one to us, in the end...

[LaFille]

I don''t think that people care about what will happen to the earth so much as to what will to what lives on it, themselves first. ;D The "humans are so important" thought aside, there's that humans want to survive, grow and be prosperous; and the way to define that and to go about it can be destructive for the man itself, his environment and the other lifeforms, which is at the heart of the problem.

The thing about the global warming phenomenon by greenhouse gas is that it throws in our faces that our use of the natural resources can have consequences in a way and to an extent that had no precedent. It's not the first large-scale phenomenon of the kind (we became aware of the nuclear and ozone layer destruction by pollution consequences before, for example) but it's much bigger and much more complex in repercussions too. Panicking is hardly ever a productive thing, and there are a ton of things that can threaten life/lives, but when we discover that there's of what we do that brings such consequences on us and our environment, the best thing to do to reach our goals is to ring the alarm bell, spread knowledge/awareness and try to rectify our ways accordingly...

That was a cool article, will be interesting to follow.

[Elliot Kane]

All true, Fille. But right now there's too much emphasis on the possibility of global warming, when cooling is just as possible and, bizarrely, for pretty much the same reasons. It's a minority of scientists who think that, but that doesn't mean they are certainly wrong. We need to be more careful of our world generally, but also to prepare for the possibility of both...

[Dark Phoenix Rising]

The thing is EK, that no matter what the theory, pretty much all of the scientists agree that we are having an impact on what's happening. It is because of this agreement that there's all the doom and gloom about gobal warming.

Regardless of what actually happens, if we don't get our act together it will be worse than normal. If there's a mini ice age, we can deal with it, if there's a big ice age due to human meddling... Well that's a whole nother kettle of fish.

[Elliot Kane]

Very true, DPR. But if we aim everything at stopping warming, the way some scientists want, and the world cools instead... Life's gonna be a LOT harder than it should be.

[LaFille]

One of the things is that the sources/activities that have an impact as producing greenhouse gas don't only produce stuff like CO2, methane & company; they also produce much more toxic stuff in the process and reducing that would be much more benefic than the contrary. Another thing is that it would be (relatively) easier to provoke or at least catalyse a phenomenon of global warming, with less polluant agents in cause on top of that, than to reverse such phenomenon and its effects... I don't think that we have a technical way to "cool" a planet in a way that the biosphere would tolerate well, while terraforming concepts involving global warming phenomenons that are favorable to and favored by life are on the table since some time already.

As dynamic as the systems are, stopping to produce an excess of greenhouse gas wouldn't be stopping a global warming phenomenon by greenhouse gas; even if we stopped, it's an ongoing phenomenon that would continue to be felt and affect things on the long term so a continuation (or worse, an increase) of our ways there is to makes the consequences snowball if nothing comes to balance it.