AP Swings, Misses on Solar Wind At 50 Year Low

Wire service Associated Press has cribbed up some scientists who say “there is no evidence to make any connection between solar activity and weather or long-term climate change.” It is reassuring to know that lunatics process the news; they might as well, since Al Gore makes the news. I would like to know which scientists say there is no connection between solar activity and long-term climate change, Mr. Journalist. These scientists are as unaware of history and geology as you are.

Solar Wind at Lowest Levels in 50 Years here

WASHINGTON — The sun has dialed back its furnace to the lowest levels seen in the space age, new measurements from a space probe show.

But don’t worry — it’s too small a difference to change life on Earth, scientists said Tuesday. In fact, it means satellites can stay in orbit a little longer.

The solar wind — a stream of charged particles ejected from the sun’s upper atmosphere at 1 million miles per hour — is significantly weaker, cooler and less dense than it has been in 50 years, according to new data from the NASA-European solar probe Ulysses.

And for the first time in about a century, the sun went for two months this summer without sunspots, said NASA solar physicist David Hathaway.

That record was broken Monday when a cluster of eight sunspots surfaced. Sunspots are temporary regions of high magnetic activity that from Earth appear to be black splotches.

The cause for the sun’s slight weakening seems to be a change in its magnetic flux, said Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute. Why it’s happening is a mystery, but it has fluctuated like this in the past.

Weaker solar winds mean less drag on satellites so they can stay in orbit a bit longer. While that’s good for satellites, it also means more space junk.

Normally the sun goes through an 11-year cycle of more, then fewer, sunspots and a similar cycle when it comes to solar wind strength. But scientists said Tuesday the sun is in “a very prolonged minimum.”

Typically a solar minimum lasts about a year, but this low point has gone on since the summer of 2006.

It is “like turning down the heat on a stove,” said McComas, a scientist who used the Ulysses solar probe to document a significantly weaker solar wind.

The 17-year-old space probe, which circles the sun from a distance of about 337 million miles, has been studying the environment above and below the poles of the sun. It is just months away from shutting down because of freezing fuel.

Recently, the solar wind has been about 14 percent cooler and 17 percent less dense, according to a paper by McComas in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

For the past 15 years or so, the sun’s overall output seems to be lower than normal, even when it was at the maximum for its cycle about eight years ago, McComas said. It may be part of a centurylong trend, said Boston University space physicist Nancy Crooker.

Some people historically have connected sunspots to weather, such as the Old Farmer’s Almanac. But solar scientists say there is no evidence to make any connection between solar activity and weather or long-term climate change.

The confusion is grand. Sunspots, or more precisely, solar magnetic activity, and long-term climate change on Earth, obviously including weather, are the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of precise coordination.

It is anthropogenic carbon dioxide, on the other hand, that lacks any documented connection with weather or long-term climate change.

A mechanism has been alleged (unsuccessfully) connecting anthropogenic carbon dioxide with weather and long-term climate change; and has been worked to death. “The greenhouse effect” has now disappeared from the wire service “scientific” lexicon in favor of undefined “climate change.” Of course there is a real “greenhouse effect” which is absolutely required for life as we know it on Earth; but the real greenhouse effect is now proven practically insensitive to anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

While there is no connection observable between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and weather including long-term climate change, there very much is an obvious connection between solar magnetic activity and weather, etc. One can observe this connection if he does not ignore history (Maunder, Dalton, etc.). Frankly, I would prefer that those who ignore history should desist from polluting the “wires.”

A mechanism, enhanced low cloud formation from increased ionizing radiation during solar magnetic quiet, has been demonstrated (The Chilling Stars) in compelling fashion. Beyond simply being connected, a causal relationship exists. Read the book, AP.

Selection From Overview – The Chilling Stars

By Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder – The Chilling Stars - Overview

(Some construction is going on here – by the Al Gore of HTML – me. Please pardon the dust; I don’t think it will cause global warming).

The Climate is always changing. The first clue that cosmic rays have something to do with it comes in Chapter 1, from the alternating episodes of warmth and cold over the past few thousand years. Most recently, the Little Ice Age, which peaked around 300 years ago, has given way to the present warm interlude.

The Little Ice Age coincided with an unusual state of the Sun, known as the Maunder Minimum. Sunspots were very scarce, a symptom of feeble magnetic activity. A jump in the production rate of radiocarbon atoms and the other long-lived tracers, made by cosmic rays in nuclear reactions in the air, was another indicator. We’re shielded from manyg of the cosmic rays by the Sun’s magnetic field, but when it weakens, more of them can reach the Earth.

Chilling events like the Little Ice Age have occurred nine times since the most recent ice age ended 11,500 years ago, always associated with high counts of radiocarbon and other tracers. Historians and archaeologists testify to the misery caused to our ancestors. Reaching further back in time, into the ice ages, a German scientist found stones dropped onto the ocean floor by armadas of icebergs during a succession ov very cold spells. Again, these coincided with low solar activity.

Among scientists who already agree that the Sun plays a prominent role in climate change, opinions differ about how it exerts its influence. Some want to explain the alternations of warm and chilly periods by changes in solar brightness. For them, the cosmic rays play no direct part in the weather but merely signal whether the Sun is more or less active, magnetically speaking, and therefore more radiant or dimmer. On the other hand, Danish scientists led by your author Svensmark think that a direct climatic role is more important, because cosmic rays affect the world’s cloudiness.

Chapter 1 ends with an outline of the strongest evidence against the Svensmark theory, assembled by a Swiss physicist. About 40,000 years ago the Earth’s magnetic field became very weak. Geophysicists call it the Laschamp Event. As a result, many more cosmic-ray particles entered the atmosphere, and left the atomic tracers of their passage. According to the theory of cosmic rays and clouds, shouldn’t they have caused a severe cooling? But that didn’t happen.

To rebut this well-reasoned argument, Svensmark looked again at the adventures of the cosmic rays, as related in Chapter 2. You don’t notice it, but about twice a second a cosmic-ray particle whizzes through you head and disappears into the ground under your feet. When you climb a mountain, or fly in a jet plane, the rate is much higher.

Cosmic rays seemed like an optional extra, after an Austrian scientist detected them nearly a century ago. They were of great interest to scientists, certainly but perhaps unimportant in the domestic economy of the Universe or the Earth. Only recently have astronomers realised that cosmic rays are an essential ingredient in the witch’s brew from which come stars, planets and the chemicals needed for life. And in ways that the experts have been slow to appreciate, the commic rays arriving here from a distant chorus of exploded stars continue to influence our lives.

(10 more paragraphs coming . . .)

On The Impact of Global Warming to Humans

With respect to success of the human species, from human history, and from paleoclimatology, success can be fairly summarized:  periods of warmth have been conducive to humanity, taken globally, but frigidness has presented great difficulty.    One crucial consideration is the impact of the length of growing seasons on the magnitude, quality, and variety in the food supply.  Without doubt, another crucial consideration is the mobility of humans, which is facilitated during warmth, but greatly inhibited during frigid periods.  By whatever mechanism, the human species thrives in warmer conditions.  Historically, human culture has progressed, by any measure, when abetted by warmth..

An argument is persistently made in The Chilling Stars (deep into the book) that ice-ages are also beneficial to human-kind. Humans, it is argued, evolve better in the freezing cold; or under climatic stress. Karl Marx (and successors) also made an argument which apparently persists today, that humans require more evolution; and some selection, however natural, was in order; as long as he, and they, did the selection. This is an extreme form of social engineering. Please take this opportunity to judge for yourself the fruits of this persistent dogma (don’t forget today’s food riots in Venezuela and elsewhere). The subject is generally avoided in polite discussion, for some reason. If changing humanity for the better requires one innocent human life be sacrificed, we should reject it; if only because we do not, and cannot, know what is better.

I guess we could make the argument that polar-bears would also benefit from some climatic stress.

I would dispute that ice-ages are beneficial to humans. I dispute even more that humans can evolve from our present condition, at any observeable rate. But most of all, I dispute that hypothetical “evolution” of humans can be beneficial; but maybe it can, if we can become independent of a star.

The “history” of Earth is profoundly clear (although more can be learned), with respect to climate: you will not be happy if you are trying to live on a glacier. You may even be dead. I would’ve thought it obvious, but it took me 300 words to get here.

Undoubtedly, species adapt. In terms of human life, and human misery, adapting to cold will be far more costly than adapting to warmth, whether evolution is involved, or not.

In conclusion, denial of Earth’s “history” will not help us avoid its repetition. Carbon dioxide has been higher than today by an order of magnitude and more; and if Earth gets as warm as it has ever been, which is far warmer than today, humans will thrive. On the other hand, if Earth gets as cold as it has been, humans will be decimated, if not become extinct. Studying “history” produces at least one simple result: odds favor a cold future, hands down. Earth today is uncommonly warm; and uncommonly comfortable. Will it get more comfortable, or colder?