Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: gunnss on May 26, 2008, 02:33:17 PM
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Copied from John Ringo's area over on Baen's Bar.
http://bar.baen.com/Default.aspx
John wrote,
When I wrote TLC I said it felt like dictation, but this is ridiculous.
I'm sure others have posted the various articles. But to reiterate.
The sun goes through sunspot cycles. All but the most hardcore 'it's all CO2' idiots recognize that those drive global tempertures along with current shifts. (More on that later.) Cycles vary in length from 8-16 years with the average being 11 and they overlap for about a year at the minimums. The 'cold' (low) cycles are longer and the 'hot' (high) cycles are shorter.
(High and low are based on the graph of the period. High/hot cycles have more sunspots at the high point of their graph thus go 'high' and cool ones go 'low.' I'll be using the terms interchangeably.)
Due to some new understandings and tracking ability, we know that Cycle 25 is going to be low. The driver is the lower-level 'racetrack' which is trackable now. It wasn't in time to figure out 24. Slow racetrack means low cycle. The norm is 6 meters per second. Current rate is .25mps. Low cycle for 25. (Cold)
We entered the 'low' period of Cycle 23 (which was a normal to high cycle, part of a series of normal to high that go back to the '80s and which account for most of the recent 'global warming') about when I was writing TLC. We should have seen the first sunspot for 24 around September.
There wasn't one until last January. Several months late.
As of this writing (late May) there have been only six or seven 'microspots'.
We had unusually cold weather in 2007. Guess why?
The IESE is the official group that looks in their crystal balls and tries to determine (for various reasons having to do with satellites mostly) what the 'normal curve' of sunspots will look like during a cycle.
The IESE had two predictions for Cycle 24. Exactly even among the predictors. One was a normal to hot cycle. The other was a flat cycle ala what they're predicting for 25. (In which case, we're going to be going into a minimum at least as bad as the Dalton. The Dalton was what caused the famine that's the background for Les Miserables.)
The current conditions are well into their 'normal curve.' Yeah, it's the sun. It could change. But the current normal curve is 50% under the low prediction. The sun is acting more or less exactly as I wrote about (I won't say predicted) in TLC.
It should kick up. It better kick up. Despite liking cooler weather (what I wrote in TLC was more wish-fulfillment than prediction, I hate heat) I fully recognize the nightmare that a truly reduced insolation would cause.
But wait! There's more!
Meteorologists, by and large, ignore sunspots. Their systemology is based on the sun being steady-state. I won't say that's changing alot, but it's starting to change a bit. But what they mostly look at is oceanic currents.
(On a side note: I personally think that's because it gives meteorologists a reason to take cruises. If they didn't have currents and only looked at sunspots they'd be stuck in observatories looking at the sun all the time. Which would you prefer? End digression.)
Thing is, they've identified four major currents that, from their perspective, are the major drivers of weather. Basically they're north and south Atlantic and north and south Pacific. The two biggies are north pacific and south Atlantic. (POD and AOC)
(Oh, by the way, according to them there's a 'notable oscillation frequency' between AOC and POD that is the driver for all long-term climate change including iceages. Uh-huh.)
Both, nearly simultaneously with the solar recession, have gone into recessive conditions.
Now the meteorologists are saying 'It's going to get colder.' (Of course, as soon as this 'masking' (their term) goes away, we're going to heat up and the world will end. Better hope we do.)
What I find fascinating is that there should be no connector between currents and solar output. At least, not without one hell of a lag.
But simultaneous with the last solar maximum we had an El Nino (which is what is credited with driving temps up in 1998. Not the fact that we were near a solar maximum. Oh, the El Nino and 'man-induced global warming' of course.)
And now we have a La Nina and cold conditions with AOC and POD.
There's something funky going on that defies theory. Even sunspot accepting theory.
Currents do have an effect. Don't get me wrong. They do. So does insolation. More than most climatologists are willing to admit.
(The latter I can back up with some original research. I'm still trying to figure out how to make money from it, though.)
Bottom line is that with the currents going into recessive condition and reduced insolation...
I said that damned thing felt like dictation!
Seriously, my completely un-accredited WAG is that we're looking at a 50-75 year minimum. Temperatures will drop rapidly after 2016 and may not go up alot during this cycle. (The currents are going to fight agin it.) If the sun doesn't warm up fast, temps may drop fast. But there's no way to tell when it's going to kick in or if as of now.
(If I could figure that out, I could make one hell of alot of money.)
Okay, digression.
Space is really big and really cold. We're on a ball stuck in space. What keeps that ball warm is the sun. When the sun is putting out extra energy, it gets absorbed by the seas. When it puts out less, the seas should be releasing heat.
If the seas aren't releasing heat and we're losing heat due to lack of insolation...
Think of a house in the winter and the heater goes out. It was warm. It doesn't suddenly get cold but you can feel it creeping in. By morning it's really freaking cold.
Extend this over a period of time. Right now, if you've been paying any attention to the weather, you can feel it creeping in.
Extending the metaphor. The heater went out in the afternoon. The house is well warmed. (It's summer in northern latitudes.)
This winter is probably going to be interesting. If we don't start having more sunspots (and neutron output)... It's going to really, really suck.
There was another thread having to do with gas prices and such. A bit on that.
You don't have to have an iceage for reduced insolation to affect commodity prices. The obvious one is heating oil but it's more complicated than that. A 'Bandit Six' discussion of farming.
This 'creeping minimum' hasn't really affected planting seasons and probably won't for a while. Maybe by a few days but farmers are used to a few days here or there.
What it does effect is production.
Plants need both light and warmth to maximize production. They are not hot-blooded thus they fall under Q10 rules. Their metabolism is reduced if temperatures are reduced. All things being equal (equal sunlight, equal rain, equal fertilizer) if you have cooler weather, you have less production.
Corn kernels are a bit smaller and less plump. Ditto wheat. Your soybeans are just a tad smaller. Ripe and harvestable, but...
It doesn't sound like much, but when you weigh your harvest, your field has produced a couple less hundred pounds/tons (depends on field size) than it would in warmer weather.
5%? 10%? Doesn't matter. It's the difference between 'bumper crops' (price goes down for the commodity) and 'reduced yield' (Price goes up.)
For us non-farmers, even without the biofuels craze, things get more expensive.
The commodity markets have been going insane, lately. Everyone factored for the biofuels. They're scratching their heads, mostly, as to why there's not more grains on the market.
Reduced. Insolation.
And we're doing the biofuel dance at the same time.
People, we don't get our head around reality sometime in the next decade, I'm afraid we are totally and completely screwed. We're heading for 'the perfect storm.'
And the possibility exists that this isn't a minimum.
It's possible, no way to tell for sure, that it's the first notes of a grand fugue called: Ice Age.
In which case, we'd better get our heads around nuclear. Fast.
If Mark Turuk ever reads the Bar:
This is not a time to be a wheat farmer in Saskatchewan.
John
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Slow people will eventually feed the Polar Bears.
Just a guess.
Mac
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Slow people will eventually feed the Polar Bears.
Just a guess.
Mac
Evidence..?
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Evidence..?
Yeppers... you never see slow people and Polar Bears in the same pic.
:D
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Sunspots have far more effects on earth than people realize...as well as aurora, solar wind, corona, and solar flares.
There was a period of time (The Maunder Minimum) where literally no sunspots were observed for over two centuries--plunging the earth into the "Mini-Ice Age".
Sunspots also help radio waves on Earth propagate distances that are not possible during sunspot minumums. During sunspot maximums, a 50mW morse code signal (half the power of a garage door opener) will easily get you a contact with the South Pole ar 28.010 mHz. During a sunspot minimum, a 1,500 W morse code signal the same time of day won't get you Aruba 95% of the time.
When I was a kid in Waukegan, IL...I would go to the beach and see the lake ripping apart houses during Nor'Easters. The lake grew over 1 mile in my lifetime. My Father-In-Law remembers when the beach was yet another mile further in when he was a kid in Zion, and would ride his bike to the lakefront to whatch navy F6F's practice strafing runs on floaring targets.
When I dug my garden in Waukegan, some 2 miles inland from the current beach I found ancient (non edible) lake clam shells and other fossils.
Most people don't even realize that a large chunk of methane comes from the ocean.
This Earth has been going through natural tempreture and climate ebbs and flows for eons, and the sun and sunspots are just one of the many components.
We have much to learn.
ROX
EDIT: The sunspot seen by astronomers last week was in the correct area to be considered the first sunspot for cycle 24, yet there is still debate among scientists if it is still a leftover from cycle 23.
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We entered the 'low' period of Cycle 23 (which was a normal to high cycle, part of a series of normal to high that go back to the '80s and which account for most of the recent 'global warming') about when I was writing TLC. We should have seen the first sunspot for 24 around September.
There wasn't one until last January. Several months late.
As of this writing (late May) there have been only six or seven 'microspots'.
We had unusually cold weather in 2007. Guess why?
2007 was the second warmest year since records began.
The bit about the sun going through a low point in its cycle is true, though. So how does "its the sun, stupid" work if temperatures are at a record high when the sun is at a particularly low point?
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2007 was the second warmest year since records began.
The bit about the sun going through a low point in its cycle is true, though. So how does "its the sun, stupid" work if temperatures are at a record high when the sun is at a particularly low point?
Not here, We had record snowfall in NM, and the winter from 2006-07 was the longest since I moved her in 2001, the 2007-08 winter has been even longer (we had frozen pipes in may) 3 days ago on the opening day of the C&TS RR they had cab High snow on Cumbres pass. (normally the snow is long gone by the beginning of April) Tonight's low will be in the 40's and I live in the desert.
Regards,
Kevin
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Not here, We had record snowfall in NM, and the winter from 2006-07 was the longest since I moved her in 2001, the 2007-08 winter has been even longer (we had frozen pipes in may) 3 days ago on the opening day of the C&TS RR they had cab High snow on Cumbres pass. (normally the snow is long gone by the beginning of April) Tonight's low will be in the 40's and I live in the desert.
Regards,
Kevin
It's a long documented fact that global warming makes it cooler
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Sunspots also help radio waves on Earth propagate distances that are not possible during sunspot minumums. During sunspot maximums, a 50mW morse code signal (half the power of a garage door opener) will easily get you a contact with the South Pole ar 28.010 mHz. During a sunspot minimum, a 1,500 W morse code signal the same time of day won't get you Aruba 95% of the time.
extreme dx with 50mw on cw.. some might find it a stretch but i can easily believe it.
try 200mw on 27.125mhz amplitude modulated. a confirmed contact from new zealand to the south western u.s during a brief quite period on a noisy cb channel, and with nothing more than a kids toy. admittidly it was fed into a 1/4 wave gp. that was in 1981 when skylab kill'n cycle 21 was still strong but on the slide.
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Yup, I wish the folks who pretend to know it all about global warming educate themselves to the scientific facts. Not just pick and chose the minority that serves their ego. The info is out there, got hit the NASA website and read what the probes observing the sun are observing, etc.
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nashwan.. we must be reading different sources.. NASA shows that the warmest years on their record were in the 1930's with another warm el nino year in 98.. the temps have been cooling since 98.
lazs
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Shhhhhh, don't try to get them to read hard scientific facts from people that are, well, actual scientists. That makes their whole "global warming" theory fall apart. They wont stand for that. It also makes their Noble prize winning leader look stupid (not a hard thing to do really) and they don't want to believe that either.
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Not here, We had record snowfall in NM, and the winter from 2006-07 was the longest since I moved her in 2001, the 2007-08 winter has been even longer
It's a bit much to expect global warming to mean always warmer, everywhere. We still have weather variations, after all.
This was the first year in my memory that there wasn't a substantial snowfall on the hills of South Wales.
nashwan.. we must be reading different sources.. NASA shows that the warmest years on their record were in the 1930's with another warm el nino year in 98.. the temps have been cooling since 98.
From NASA:
The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the "El Niño of the century". The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle.
NASA shows that the warmest years on their record were in the 1930's
That's just for the US mainland. From NASA:
(http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/Fig4_correction.gif)
Shhhhhh, don't try to get them to read hard scientific facts from people that are, well, actual scientists. That makes their whole "global warming" theory fall apart.
Again from NASA:
The Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on year-to-year global temperature change. Because both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable. It is apparent that there is no letup in the steep global warming trend of the past 30 years (see 5-year mean curve in Figure 1a).
"Global warming stopped in 1998," has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense. In reality, global temperature jumped two standard deviations above the trend line in 1998 because the "El Niño of the century" coincided with the calendar year, but there has been no lessening of the underlying warming trend.
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Shhhhh Nashwan,
Don't try to get them to read scientific facts from those that are...well...scientists.
Best to get the real deal from Gunns or lazs.
:rofl
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In fact it's official. Due to normal changes in the Earths climate. There will be no change until 2014 but then it will be business as usual.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml
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Nashwan,
For article above:
"Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions."
Did all the mathmatical models that have that have predicting Man-Made Global Warming predict this "lull" all along, or is this something new? I don't remember Gore mentioning this. All I remember seeing was a smooth upsweeping curve.
If not, isn't that a gross indication of their inaccuracy? At least their naive modeling of a incredibly complex system?
If they didn't foresee and predict such a major flat-lining of the data within 10 years, why should we trust they project over 100 years?
:huh,
Wab
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Sooooo.... 120 years, 1 degree Celsius. I am waiting to spontaneously combust
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"Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions."
Did all the mathmatical models that have that have predicting Man-Made Global Warming predict this "lull" all along, or is this something new? I don't remember Gore mentioning this. All I remember seeing was a smooth upsweeping curve.
If not, isn't that a gross indication of their inaccuracy? At least their naive modeling of a incredibly complex system?
This "lull" that one research team has predicted is not caused by global warming. It's a claimed natural cycle in ocean currents.
The model to predict climate change isn't designed to predict natural cycles, that's backwards. Natural cycles are data that needs to be entered in to the model, not variations that the model can predict.
And note that even the team that has predicted this cycle in the ocean currents say it will have a cooling effect in the short term, and a warming effect after that. Overall it has no net effect.
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Indeed Akwabbit. They didn't take into account a naturally occuring phenomena. In fact in another article I read the delay lasts until 2020. But of course the 'steep upward curve' begins again. We'll see.
I have also noticed at a personal level that people have begun to question the whole Co2 caused global warming issue. Even people I would have expected to fall for it all are beginning to have doubts. How are the global warmers going to keep these people on message in the next ten years or so when there is no appreciable warming. (That is if we to believe the latest theory) Over there in Britain at the moment the plan by the government to increase car taxes has run into serious opposition from their own members who have read the public mood. Even Greenpeace said it was unfair and gave 'green taxes a bad name' :lol
I think we are beginning to see a swing back toward common sense.
I have always believed that in fact we are going through a warming phase. In fact that is for the most part indisputable. It probably has been exaggerated though.
What is in dispute in fact is whether or not we have caused it. The jury is very much out on that. That's why there is so much controversy. It depends on which scientist you listen to. Right now, thanks to environmentalists and scientist, many people are maintaining the fantasy that we can in fact change the climate of the Earth in the first place and secondly we can reverse the process. If that is not human arrogance writ large I don't know what is.
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That's exactly the problem, Nashwan. Because it wasn't entered into the data in the first place. It invalidated all the previous models. Now we are expected to believe it will have a cooling effect in the short term and then it's back to business as usual. I've seen this characterised as a correction in the model allowing it to be more accurate. That really depends on how you look at it.
A few weeks ago, all we had was this steady state increase in temperature followed by the inevitable and scary 'tipping point'. Now we have lull, reality intruding on the computer model. No on can say that overall it has no net effect. I think in fact they really don't know what effect this will have.
If they didn't anticipate this cooling effect, then what other natural cycles lie in wait for us. Could it be that this warm period is in fact a natural cycle and a recovery from the 19th century 'little ice age'.
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That's exactly the problem, Nashwan. Because it wasn't entered into the data in the first place. It invalidated all the previous models.
Not really "invalidated", in that no model is ever going to be 100% accurate, and the results are still broadly the same.
Now we have lull, reality intruding on the computer model. No on can say that overall it has no net effect.
Nobody can predict the future of the climate with any certainty.However, the new model predicts the Atlantic current causes cooling when it weakens, warming when it strengthens. Overall that's no change.
If they didn't anticipate this cooling effect, then what other natural cycles lie in wait for us.
No doubt lots.
Could it be that this warm period is in fact a natural cycle and a recovery from the 19th century 'little ice age'.
Could be. Could be that we are currently going through a natural cold spell, and global warming is increasing temperatures far more than we thought.
There are three facts the theory of global warming is founded on. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat and warms the earth. We are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.
The facts suggest temperatures should be rising. They are. We can't be sure how much of the observed rise is down to CO2 or how much further it will rise, or how natural variations will affect the temperature. But natural variations could just as easily increase the temperature as reduce it.
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"The facts suggest temperatures should be rising. They are. "
Apparently not for the next decade, which the models did not predict.
Surely you have to admit that given such inaccuracy already, a reasonable person could have doubts that the models predictions will converge on accuracy as time goes by instead of diverging further. It doesn’t mean they are stupid, Republican, uneducated, or in the pay of big oil.
Scientific consensus? Debate declared over? I think global climate change is worth measuring and monitoring and refining the models over the next couple of decades. But obviously the models aren’t yet accurate enough to justify massive dislocations of our economies, or burdensome destructive carbon tax scams.
Granted there are some things we should do anyway just on general principal (having nothing to do with MMGW). Cleaner cars and industry. Energy conservation, efficiency. Development of alternative fuels. Etc, etc. Moderate, reasonable, measured actions.
Regards,
Wab
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extreme dx with 50mw on cw.. some might find it a stretch but i can easily believe it.
try 200mw on 27.125mhz amplitude modulated. a confirmed contact from new zealand to the south western u.s during a brief quite period on a noisy cb channel, and with nothing more than a kids toy. admittidly it was fed into a 1/4 wave gp. that was in 1981 when skylab kill'n cycle 21 was still strong but on the slide.
WOW! WTG! And that includes that 1/3 of your AM signal was wasted in carrier.
And a 1/4 wavelength ground plane is nothing to sneeze at.
I can fire up my 1.5 kW amplifier right now on 28.010 and the only folks who might hear me are within 200 miles of me. At the peak of a solar sunspot cycle, I can put that same amp in the closet because I wont need it.
During one contact with a friend in Wisconsin (I was in NC at the time) he pulled the coax out of the back of the rig and (using an antenna tuner) clipped leads with alligator clips--one to ground and the other to the aluminium lawn chair. "How copy now?" he asked. "You are still 5 by nine...S9 on the meter" I replied. He was running 50 watts into a single lawn chair he had set on top of a picnic table. We both went back to our normal antennas and had a 2 way contact at 50 mW. The S meter never moved, but we understood each other perfectly. Distance 600+ miles.
BTW: Ground Plane antennas are vertically polarized and great for DX. I use them on 40m (7.0 mHz) because the 33' height are easy to make. Put in a good ground radial system and the world is at your radio. You can build this type of antenna for less than $30 or you can by one manufactured for $150. I roll my own.
We are about to embark on Cycle 24 any day now.
ROX
Sunspots affect the Earth in more ways than we know, as do other solar activity.
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Here is another Sun cycle 24 article, Nice sun shot in it.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/30/the-deniers-our-spotless-sun.aspx
Regards,
Kevin
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The reason you have been seeing some show doubt about the C02 thing and man made global warming in general is twofold at least.
One.. we had winter. winter makes people who tend to panic about summer forget about it.
two.. the cost of what the socialists want to do to run the show is coming out and people figured out they couldn't afford it without some real proof.
Summer is upon us.. a new push will start at the first heat wave.. it is all so very predictable.
lazs