SUN MAKES HISTORY - FIRST SPOTLESS MONTH IN A CENTURY

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.

According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.

When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.

But this year -- which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 -- has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

The paper's lead author, William Livingston, tells DailyTech that, while the refusal may have been justified at the time, recent data fits his theory well. He says he will be "secretly pleased" if his predictions come to pass.

But will the rest of us? In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.

This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark's "SKY" experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays -- which the sun's magnetic field partially shields the Earth from -- increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases.

Solar physicist Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu, Finland, tells DailyTech the correlation between cosmic rays and terrestrial cloud cover is more complex than "more rays equals more clouds". Usoskin, who notes the sun has been more active since 1940 than at any point in the past 11 centuries, says the effects are most important at certain latitudes and altitudes which control climate. He says the relationship needs more study before we can understand it fully.

Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.

What is incontrovertible, though, is that ice ages have occurred before. And no scientist, even the most skeptical, is prepared to say it won't happen again.

Yes, Comrades, give thanks to Comrade Algore with help from the Most Magical Messiah Obama for saving us from being roasted to death like a pregnant teenager at a Journalism Convention! Do not ask how they did it for they are great and wonderful and wise and we are but dog poop on the sidewalk of human endeavor. Unfortunately, as the article notes, they may have gone a bit too far and cooled things off a little too much; we may now freeze to death like a Hillary delegate at a Democrapic Convention. But fear not; we have the great and glorious Obama to do our thinking for us, and if he needs any help in solving this new crisis (yeah, Obama needs help, hah!) then the wise and wonderful Algore is there to back him up! The laws of physics are no match for these two gigantic intellects!

I don't buy it, Comrades -- just like I don't buy the John Edwards story. Global Warming will not be rid of until we submit to Communism and the blessings Communism brings to us all.

LIES, Who do you believe, Comrade Algore or these "physicist" sure they study facts, but Algore he invented the Internet, and rumor has it "indoor plumbing"

Very good points, Comrades! We may well ask, just who are these "scientists" anyway? Have they been vetted by the Party or by our useless useful idiot friends in the MSM? I think not, for they have had more important things on their mindless minds like finding out if a teenage girl from the Arctic Circle ever had an abortion. We don't know if these "scientists" have been properly trained in Party dogma scientific knowledge or are (excuse the word) "mavericks".

But fear not, Comrades! Even if AGW is just another MSM Chicken Little story catastrophe that wise Party planning prevented, we need not fear for Socialism will win out eventually. Institutionalized Envy is just too attractive with its promises of utopia and freedom from want. They will come to us in the end, Comrades, for if it is one thing we can depend on it is that the world does not learn from history. Especially in this country where they no longer teach it except to mention that Washington and Jefferson were slaveowners and this is why the terrorists freedom fighters want to bomb us.

Comrades,

I was saddened to read that on <a href="">August 9th, the earliest snowfall recorded fell on Mt. Fuji</a>. I seek collective guidance as to how this should be interpreted:

1) Japan, despite being often untruthfully referred to as "the world's only successful Communist country"--why, look across the Korean Sea to Kim Jong-Il's workers' paradise!--does have capitalist elements that might wish to plant intentionally misleading information. I note other website have reported the same information.

2) As an ally of the US, Bushitler's cabal forced the Japanese meteorology ministry to make a false announcement so he could claim global warming doesn't exist and thus keep his oil cronies and Oil War going.

3) The story is in indeed true and therefore proof that global warming is happening, causing bizarre climate change that will kill us all really really soon, unless we heed the Goracle.

I would invite you here, but your puny CEUs buy so few yen that I doubt you could afford it, unless, of course, you got one of those large green research grants to explore this snowjob.

Praise Barack, Algore is our second savior!

I could not help but notice that last night the planet (at least where I live) seemed to be getting cooler.... and then today WARMER AGAIN! Are we perhaps looking at this whole warming/cooling thing in the completely wrong way? I am thinking that maybe this is really a temporal issue. It is not a question of whether or not the planet warms and cools so much as how much time it takes to do so. What does the Goracle say about that? Can we perhaps find a way to cap and trade time?

Stavrowsky wrote:I could not help but notice that last night the planet (at least where I live) seemed to be getting cooler.... and then today WARMER AGAIN! Are we perhaps looking at this whole warming/cooling thing in the completely wrong way? I am thinking that maybe this is really a temporal issue. It is not a question of whether or not the planet warms and cools so much as how much time it takes to do so. What does the Goracle say about that? Can we perhaps find a way to cap and trade time?

You have not gotten the "Current Truth"©® of the time comrade. It's no longer "Global Warming" but "The Climate Crisis". From what The Party has told us, it was always "The Climate Crisis" and 2+2=5.