[StBernard] The Sun Also Sets

[Westley Annis]

Editor's note: In honor of Earth day, be sure to use a few more carbon
molecules to view this also:
---
Seems the Rev. Algore used a bit of trickery in his fictional movie. But
it's ok, when the story is make believe, you can use computer generated
imagery.

Now, I wonder why he wouldn't return ABC's phone calls?

http://tinyurl.com/4adtwo

http://tinyurl.com/6aka8q

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The Sun Also Sets 

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY 

Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT 

 

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical
"consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better
observe something bigger than your SUV - the sun.

________________________________

Related Topics: Global Warming
<http://www.ibdeditorials.com/FeaturedCategories.aspx?sid=1802>  

________________________________

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the
balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data
that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely
tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking
additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun,
which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and
smokestacks on our planet combined. 

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's
National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of
an increase in sunspot activity. 

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the
sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal
the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs
every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century. 

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots
showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no
11-year cycle. 

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began
around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715.
Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop
failures, famine and death in Northern Europe .

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and
warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate
a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive
snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere. 

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he
calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better
equipment.

In Canada , where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted
since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar
flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's
climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in
Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60
years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature
over the last 100 years.

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the
Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that
"CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long,
medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are
consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations
of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the
stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that,
by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past
two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it
most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a
medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects
than 'global warming' would have had."


In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves - and not
a few enemies in the global warming "community" - by predicting that the sun
would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied
by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and
came to a similar conclusion.

"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss.
Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear
that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one
in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any
relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in
global temperatures." 

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and
factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the
Earth, that's hanging in the balance.