Sunspot Activity Continues To Drop 435
slreboy writes "The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower. The year 2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008. Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent)..."
why (Score:3, Informative)
/rant
While it may not be time to panic, there are some other startling signs
At this point there's nothing really we can do, but it may need an explanation as to why it has hit such a low, and when the below-average maximum will occur (supposedly in 2012).
This has happened before (Score:1, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_minimum
Re:Maybe we're on the wrong side of the sun? (Score:5, Informative)
The sun rotates. [wikipedia.org] In the course of a month, we see it from all sides.
I know your being funny, but for are other readers (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to point out that this law states:
"If A and B are each in thermal equilibrium with C, A is also in thermal equilibrium with B."
Important links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroth_law_of_thermodynamics [wikipedia.org]
and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy [wikipedia.org]
Plagiarism (Score:5, Informative)
Not only is the summary ripped from the linked article without quoting it, but the article is plagiarized in whole from ScienceDaily [sciencedaily.com]! I knew I'd seen it before this article, and this explains why. The blogger even hotlinked the image from science daily, wasting their bandwidth.
The linked article in the summary should be adjusted to the original ScienceDaily article and the entire summary should be quoted from it rather than attributed to slreboy.
Bad news for Amateur Radio (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that HAM radio is a bit of an anachronism in the eyes of most slashdot readers, but it's still the most viable medium for emergency communications. Unfortunately, with sunspot activity being so low, HF communications become very limited. Whole bands of RF spectrum are almost unusable, because the E-layer of the ionosphere can no longer bounce higher frequencies of radio waves. 40m wavelength and lower tend to still be usable, 20m is come-and-go, and 17m and higher become sporadic or completely unusable.
I'm 31, I've been a HAM for 6 years. My cell phone often doesn't get coverage where I roam, and my power and internet and landline phone have been knocked out by storms and provider mistakes. Radio works when all else fails... ...but sometimes it works better than others!
Re:Here we go... (Score:0, Informative)
MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.
FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8C over the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").
There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.
MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature decrease for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.
FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to 1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 Ãff" 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.
The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.
MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.
FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased. The RATE of growth during this period has also increased from about 0.2% per year to the present rate of about 0.4% per year,which growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years. However, there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO2 as a result.
MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.
FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapor and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and Ãff" in the end Ãff" are thought to be responsible for 60% of the "Greenhouse effect".
Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.
MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
FACT: The computer models assume that CO2 is the primary climate driver, and that the Sun has an insignificant effect on climate. You cannot use the output of a model to verify or prove its initial assumption - that is circular reasoning and is illogical. Computer models can be made to roughly match the 20th century temperature rise by adjusting many input parameters and using strong positive feedbacks. They
Re:fun with statistics (Score:5, Informative)
I think his point was that you should not compare a year's worth of data to 3 months' worth. They could simply take the last 365 days and compare it to the 365 before that and it would make a lot more sense.
The problem, of course, is all the -other- people already using calendar years with their data like it means something.
Re:Venus (Score:5, Informative)
Direct satellite measurements of solar output for the last 30 years [noaa.gov].
Re:Venus (Score:2, Informative)
Jupiter [usatoday.com]
Re:Venus (Score:5, Informative)
The article about Jupiter mentions nothing about a planet-wide increase in temperature. The Mars article mentions an increase in dust storm reducing albedo and therefore increasing light absorption. Still a far cry from the ggp's claim that 5 planets are all experiencing the same increase in temperature.
Re:Venus (Score:4, Informative)
ROFL, and how, pray tell, do those articles qualify as "30 years" of temperature data that "correlate with the rising temperature trends on Earth in that period." Oh, wait, they don't.
Hell, the Jupiter article isn't about planetary warming at all. And as for Mars, "Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming." (source [skepticalscience.com]).
See how I provided a citation for my quote? And how the article linked contains references for its claims? Neat, eh?
Re:Here we go... (Score:2, Informative)
That's right I am sick of their agenda, which has nothing do to with clean water and air. I want clean air, and clean water. Not water filled with heavy metals and PCBs from their stupid soon to be mandated CFL lamps, or LED lamps. I want air that is not filled with all sorts of nasty acids from manufacturing all these stupid solar panels, LED lamps, batteries for retarded hybrid cars, etc, etc.
I will take a little extra of the HARMLESS C02, that you, I, and the rest of the air breathing creatures of this planet are exhaling every instant. Slightly larger fruit and some small risk of rising temperature, for which there is no compelling evidence are all things I can live with.
We should be ensuring that our burring of focile fuels coal, oil, etc, is being do cleanly and producing only CO2 + H20. That would be the most "Green" thing we could be doing. Most of this "Green" tech is just lower C02 tech and comes at the expense of being "Green" not in support of it. C02 has become everyones sole focus, and its completely wrong. It might not even pose any sort of threat! Yet we are doing all sorts of things to reduce it that have very well known negative side effects.