36 thoughts on “The Sun”

        1. It is declining from record levels, and was still very high through the 1990’s.

          Sun Spot Numbers.png

          Your paper also dismisses the idea of a link between climate and the giant ball of fusion in the sky.

          1. Correlation is not causation – but for much of the graph you offer there isn’t even correlation, temperatures weren’t declining from 1840 to 1930 and haven’t been declining since 1960.

            Your paper also dismisses the idea of a link between climate and the giant ball of fusion in the sky.
            So it does, but that’s not surprising when it’s such an incredibly stable reactor, with output varying by less than 0.1% over the last few centuries.

          2. So the Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period, and Little Ice Age were caused by changes in Scandinavian hovel heating technology?

          5. Mostly just wind and water moving heat around.

            That gave me a brilliant idea. Instead of returning to a Medieval level of industrial development, why don’t we just have Rand rent a storage unit in Pomona where he can store all the planet’s excess heat?

          6. “with output varying by less than 0.1% over the last few centuries.”

            Yeah, nothing to freak out over. The sun has an obvious impact on our climate but we have to keep in mind there is natural variation in its output, just as there is natural variation in our own climate where small unpredicible changes shouldnt also lead to people freaking out.

            How does the variation you mention from the sun compare with temperature variation? Are they both really really small percentages?

          7. “The sun has an obvious impact on our climate but we have to keep in mind there is natural variation in its output, just as there is natural variation in our own climate where small unpredicible changes shouldnt also lead to people freaking out. ”

            When the sun goes quiet, volcanoes tend to erupt, fault-lines tend to shift and empires tend to fall. The last time the sun went really quiet in the 1700s/1800s, there were numerous famines in countries which couldn’t grow enough food.

            But aside from volcanoes, earthquakes, political collapse and famine, yeah, nothing to worry about.

  3. When the previous grand minimum ended, the mosquitoes returned to the James River, and Jamestown had to be abandoned. I live a little ways southwest and uphill of Jamestown. I wouldn’t mind seeing the mosquitoes leave.

    1. Since I have been unable to determine any particularly unique ecological niche mosquitoes fill, I wish they would all leave. Permanently.

      1. I always hope for 3-to-4 days of hard freeze in Central Oklahoma every winter. Enough to kill most of the mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, chiggers and other biting insects’ larvae while not causing everybody’s pipes to burst. Last year’s winter was mild and the bugs were a real pain…

        1. You and me both. Stay away Californians, we have mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, chiggers and other biting insects’ larvae. Also, INDIANS! Yes they are still a thing here! We also have rogue F250 dually drivers who love to practice mating rituals with Accords, Sentras, etc, on the interstates. Most of them have Texas tags, though.

      2. That’d be the bloodsucking flying leech niche…wait…can Pelosi fly?

        And I’m still gnawing on that ‘putting civilian volunteers to use in disaster response scenarios thing’ Good samaritanism would need to be a part. And if the gummint provides logistical support to the cajun navy, or whatever shows up, that’d be a way to exert a measure of control. “Ya want gas and food, you do it our way.”

    2. If you happen to see her shocked face lying around, she’d like it back. I swear I put it right back where I found it the last time I knicked it.

    3. “This appears to be the woman in the know (H/T Sarah Hoyt, the night watch at Instapundit).”

      From your posted link:
      “Furthermore, the substantial temperature decreases are expected during the two grand minima47 to
      occur in 2020–2055 and 2370–24156, whose magnitudes cannot be yet predicted and need further investigation.
      These oscillations of the estimated terrestrial temperature do not include any human-induced factors, which were
      outside the scope of the current paper.”

      I wonder how cold it will have to get after 2020 before the global warming “experts” concede that we are actually cooling not warming? One thing I have never heard the climate “scientists” explain; how much of the observed warming (setting aside the issue of “cooked” data) is caused by natural climate variation and how much by man-made greenhouse gases? What is the percentage breakdown? Is it roughly 70:30, 60:40, 80:20; would settle for a good guestimate.

  5. “The big question remains: Are we heading for a grand minimum with no sunspots for decades? We still do not know. Even these unprecedented trends prove nothing, as we really do not yet have a clear understanding of why the Sun undergoes these various cycles of sunspot activity/inactivity. The Sun could still come back to life in the coming years. We can only wait and see. ”

    This is important and an example of humility that you will never see from AGW Alarmists.

    It also shows how little we collectivly know about, well about much of anything. Humans are just now gaining some cursory knowledge and too many people think we are in the postdoc phase of learning rather than preschool.

  6. This is unacceptable!

    We have strong reason to believe, due to many correlations in history, that solar grand minima have a strong impact on climate. Just ask the Greenland Vikings, whose colonies there thrived for over 400 years, only to be wiped out by the little ice age (Maunder minimum).

    So, what we have here is essentially a fusion reactor – an *unlicensed* nuclear reactor! – that’s being allowed to have a major negative impact on our climate, due to Trump’s deregulation policies. This, clearly, is the real impeachable offense.

    As for that big nuclear reactor, it must be shut down until a license is obtained, and safeguards are put in place to ensure that it does not do this again.

    1. The Air Force notes that Japanese urban temperatures peaked way back in August 1945, and haven’t come close since.

      The story of Greenland has turned out to be dramatically different from the version where they froze in the Little Ice Age. New archaeological research shows that they went there for walrus tusks because they had a lucrative European monopoly on ivory, lived mainly off the land from the time they arrived, and sailed back home when the Portuguese opened up the European market to African elephant ivory. Climate probably had little or nothing to do with it.

      1. I think there were a couple of outliers in that data set, George, which when averaged with all the rest the data, skewed the 1945 average up somewhat.

        In August of 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were each briefly at 100 million K. It’s amazing how much that brings up the average.

        1. It certainly peaked last summer when I was there, it was so hot all the Tokyo TV stations the afternoon of my first full day there were showing reports, with the reporters showing their hand-held thermometers reading in the low-mid 40’s C, and on some black-painted surfaces over 45 C. I was out in it in Shinjuku picking up my apartment key from the rental office, and it was a long slog with my suitcase and backpack from the station to the apartment in the town where I stayed. I was never so glad to have air conditioning in my life!

    2. NavyNuke: They cut down their glaciers. Deforestation of Kilimanjaro’s slopes has led directly to reduced snowfall at the summit. It’s not a climate issue, it’s a land (mis)use issue.

  8. “It will be cosmically hilarious if, after all the climate hysteria, the glaciers return in the next few decades.”

    Not necessarily; they (the global warmist/climate change gurus) have already covered that base. Don’t you know that warming can cause cooling?

    “Global Warming May Trigger Winter Cooling”

    “Hot and cold. Warmer-than-average summers and the loss of sea ice in the Arctic can lead to frigid winters and excessive snowfall.

    It seems counterintuitive, even ironic, that global warming could cause some regions to experience colder conditions. But a new study explains the Rube Goldberg-machine of climatic processes that can link warmer-than-average summers to harsh winter weather in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere.”

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/01/global-warming-may-trigger-winter-cooling

    In other words the observed cooling which they don’t deny not only doesn’t refute the global warming hypotheses it is actually proof of it; i.e. warming causes cooling.

    1. Yes. They’ve already jumped on the ‘warming causes cooling, honest!’ bandwagon.

      Nothing short of an ice age is going to make them admit they were wrong. Actually, even the ice age won’t make them admit it, but most of us will die and no-one will care any more.

      1. “Nothing short of an ice age is going to make them admit they were wrong. Actually, even the ice age won’t make them admit it, but most of us will die and no-one will care any more.”

        The other critical point is the accuracy of estimated global temperature in the past; like say the Roman warming period or the Medieval warming period. They have to be “estimated” as lower than today because if they are the same as today (or higher) that would refute the man-made global warming hypotheses. If 500 + Giga-tons of CO2 added don’t make us warmer than those past warm periods the theory is in trouble. Also if direct temperature measurements from say the 70’s and 80’s had to be “adjusted” to make the reported warming hiatus of a few years ago go away what does that say about the accuracy of estimates of past global temp? Like the aforementioned Medieval & Roman warming? If you can’t trust direct measurements of only a few decades ago how can you possibly trust an indirect calculation of temps 1000 + yrs ago?

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