Irregular heartbeat of the Sun driven by double dynamo

Zebedee said:

mpitfield - my Grandmother used to say: "There are none so blind as those that will not see"

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Your Grandmother was a wise woman.

I don't think there is any question that man's activities have an effect, often detrimental, upon the environment. The only questions are to what degree and what if anything can we do about it. Basing public policy on largely unproven models and supreme court edicts strikes me as folly. Of course, I'm just a simple, carbon based life form who will soon be checking out...so what do I know? :duck:

Shade said:

Yes, I think the Sunspot minimum is linked to lower solar output and will likely will trigger an
other "Little Ice Age". I also think, the concept of global warming caused by man is a hoax
of bad science.

Seems that one article, by a reputable source PBS and Nova; lists solar output as first on the
list of things that effect climate, such as glaciation; and recent history, the "little ice age" and
the Maunder Minimum correlate well. I would say that sun spot activity and solar output, by
the empirical evidence do seem to correlate well.

I think if the predictions of very low to no sun spots could push the climate in to another little
ice age and with a cooling planet, the oceans will cool and absorb more C02. So CO2 level
may drop as well. Cold liquids hold more dissolved gas than warm liquids do.

Here is a NASA on the subject.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SORCE/sorce_03.php

Now my question and only time will prove it out is if the sun spot minimum activity going to
continue into the next few decades or not?

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I disagree that the Nova article suggests that solar output is any more important than the other factors in their list -- they describe it as a complicated dynamic interaction of factors, not a hierarchical list. And then they go on to expand on and describe in detail several of the other factors without ever mentioning solar output again:


Then they devote a couple pages worth to the size and distribution of continents, the shape of ocean basins and atmospheric CO2. They never go back to solar output. If they thought it was very significant, then I think they would at least mention it more than the one time.

The NASA article agrees with what I said earlier --- solar output varies by about .1% during the 11-year sunspot cycle. That is not much of a change. Since you brought up human-caused climate change, I think raising the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by 40% or more over pre-industrial levels means the atmosphere is probably trapping more than .1% more energy --- the greenhouse effect of added CO2 will dwarf any effect of a new "Maunder Minimum" or "Little Ice Age".

I know you said you think human-caused climate change is a hoax, but the NASA article you linked to disagrees and devotes a lot of time to discussing its importance.

UhClem said:

Except for the little detail that the little ice age started a few decades before the Maunder Minimum and that the difference in forcing from sunspot minimum to maximum is only about 0.2 degrees F. (Less than the change in temperature over the last 100 years and an order of magnitude less than the expected change.)

Then there is the problem that the little ice age was pretty much a European rather than a global thing.

A prolonged sunspot minimum will not save us from our own foolishness.

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This is how I've understood it from my past reading too. The Maunder Minimum does not match up well enough to the Little Ice Age for it to have caused the Little Ice Age. And the Little Ice Age was not a global ice age, so it's not likely to have been caused by solar output.

tmacklin said:

I can't help but wonder if Man and his activities were completely eliminated from the equation, would Earth's climate vary, i.e., change? And if it did, who would know?

I must go feed my catfish.

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Yes, it would continue to change. Nobody would know.

Shade said:

I will agree that they do not correlate exactly, and there is still a lot we do not understand
about our Sun, and its complexities. The fact that the Maunder Minimum and the little ice
age do occur so close in start and stopping, I cannot just negate it as happenstance.

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Sometimes it is just happenstance. Sometimes things happen at the same time, and they seem connected, but they aren't. Or maybe they are connected but not as deeply as you thought or not by the mechanism you thought.

To show things are connected, you need the facts to show that they are correlated, and then you need the theory for why and how they are connected --- cause and effect. And ideally you can use that theory to predict other cause and effect relationships that you can then look for or test.

I have understood the Maunder Minimum to have started after the beginning of the Little Ice Age, so my understanding has been that the facts show a very rough correlation but not one that would lead you to believe the Maunder Minimum could have caused the Little Ice Age --- the timing does not work.

The theory of how they are connected is that the decreased sunspot activity is correlated with lower solar output, and that lower solar output could have caused the effect of cooling that resulted in the Little Ice Age. That theory should predict other global cooling effects during the Maunder Minimum, but I have understood the Little Ice Age to be localized, not global.

Also, it would predict that during any similar minimum, similar cooling would occur. If this prediction of a new Maunder Mimimum holds up, then I guess we have a few decades to find out if it triggers a new ice age, and that would be a good test. But before then, have there been any other sunspot minimums in the past we can check for correlated cooling? Can this new theory of sunspot cycles be run backwards into the past to find sunspot minimums before the Maunder Minimum, and did those correlate to cooling?

Personally I think the sunspot theory of climate change is kind of flimsy. Maybe there is something to it, but I don't think it is a big factor.

KidRockET said:

Hey Thirsty,

Did you sleep in a Holiday Inn...

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No, but I did sleep in the Great Western "Outlaw Inn" in Green River, Wyoming. And I'm pretty sure someone was murdered in that room. I give it zero stars.

One of mans' activities is flying black powder rockets. The combustion of black powder produces carbon dioxide which is the propellant for most hobby rockets. The SCOTUS has ruled CO2 to be a "greenhouse gas" and thus a potential hazard to the Earth's environment. Let's all find another hobby and keep Our Planet Green. It's the responsible thing to do.

Zebedee said:

This article has some very clear graphics demonstrating the observed changes in global climate against the observed changes in all the potential climate change factors (including solar output - relevant to this thread):
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

For the wider climate change discussion - this article has an in depth argument about energy production, usage, probable climate impact and results from that climate impact (and then moves on to Tesla):
https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

mpitfield - my Grandmother used to say: "There are none so blind as those that will not see"

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Both of these links show really good examples of great science communication. Thanks for posting.

The first one's use of dynamic graphics is really interesting and engaging, and the text is nice and concise. It helps to make the various factors and their effects easy to see and understand. Very well done.

The second is very good at using easy-to-understand non-scientific language to explain a complicated scientific issue. It runs on for quite a long time, but I got through the first section relevant to this conversation before losing steam. I may go back and read the rest, even though it is not as much on-topic for this thread.

tmacklin said:

One of mans' activities is flying black powder rockets. The combustion of black powder produces carbon dioxide which is the propellant for most hobby rockets. The SCOTUS has ruled CO2 to be a "greenhouse gas" and thus a potential hazard to the Earth's environment. Let's all find another hobby and keep Our Planet Green. It's the responsible thing to do.

Click to expand...

I know this is a joke, but I want to answer it seriously. There are two points I'd like to make.

First, I believe that the carbon in a black powder motor is from charcoal, and charcoal is already part of the Earth's carbon cycle. In other words, the carbon in a BP rocket motor and the CO2 in the resulting exhaust was recently already part of the atmosphere before being stored in the wood used to make the charcoal. It was destined to go back into the atmosphere in relatively short order when that wood decayed or burned. Carbon that is naturally part of the carbon cycle is not a global warming concern --- the concern is with carbon sequestered underground being burnt and introduced into the carbon cycle and overwhelming the carbon cycle's ability to remove it from the atmosphere. If black powder motors were made with coal, then they would be adding to the problem, but if they are made from charcoal from wood, they are not.

Second, it's important to keep a sense of proportion. It's likely that the gasoline you burn just getting to and from a launch creates a much greater amount of CO2 than the motors you burn while you are there. If you are worried about your rocketry-related carbon footprint, share a ride to and from the launch.

Serious hat off --- return to silliness.

So, all CO2 is NOT created equally? Who knew?

tmacklin said:

So, all CO2 is NOT created equally? Who knew?

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Correct. That is why bio-masa and bio-fuels are not considered to contribute to global warming while fossil fuels are. Fuels made from carbon already in the carbon cycle are not considered a problem, but adding carbon from outside the cycle is a problem.

If atmospheric CO2 is the problem, what difference does it make with regard to the type of fuel that is being burned? Fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum were all once living bio-mass. Perhaps we should all just stop exhaling CO2 and walk to the launch events with your water rockets? Better yet, devise a perpetual motion machine.

The most plentiful greenhouse gas is water vapor...clouds. These precede rain events, something you Californians could use right now.

tmacklin said:

If atmospheric CO2 is the problem, what difference does it make with regard to the type of fuel that is being burned? Fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum were all once living bio-mass. Perhaps we should all just stop exhaling CO2 and walk to the launch events with your water rockets? Better yet, devise a perpetual motion machine.

The most plentiful greenhouse gas is water vapor...clouds. These precede rain events, something you Californians could use right now.

Click to expand...

I guess I should refine what I meant.

If you must burn a carbon-based fuel, then it is better that the fuel be something that is already part of the carbon cycle. For example, trees draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it as wood. In nature, that wood will later decay or burn and return that carbon to the atmosphere. Later another tree will grow in its place, and the carbon cycle will continue. The net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere stays the same. The cycle is in equilibrium. If you cut down tree and burn it for fuel, it's still the same cycle --- the C02 goes back into the atmosphere, a new tree will grow in it's place, pulling the CO2 back out of the atmosphere, and then you can burn that tree, and so on. As long as you burn fuel that is part of the carbon cycle, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere stays the same.

But if you burn fossil fuels, you are taking carbon that is not part of the carbon cycle, burning it and adding EXTRA CO2 to the atmosphere. The carbon cycle has no way to remove the extra from the atmosphere, so it builds up. That is why the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing --- we are adding extra CO2 that cannot be removed.

You are right that all the fossil fuels we use now were once living bio-mass. But over millions of years, that carbon was sequestered out of the carbon cycle through processes that are not ongoing now. And it happened hundreds of millions of years ago. For hundreds of millions of years, it was stored underground out of the carbon cycle. And now we are pulling that carbon out of the ground and returning it to the carbon cycle. What took tens of millions of years to store away underground, hundreds of million of years ago, is being returned to the atmosphere in a century. That's the problem. If the biosphere had a way to turn an extra 30 billion tons of carbon into plants each year, then maybe we could have equilibrium again, and the concentration of CO2 would remain stable, but it can't, so CO2 levels go up.

BTW, I know this is a gross oversimplification of the carbon cycle, and I know that some carbon released through the burning of fossil fuels is absorbed and does not remain in the atmosphere. But in broad terms, this is what is going on.

Dinosaurs that roamed the Earth 250 million years ago knew a world with five times more
carbon dioxide than is present on Earth today? Who is to day what the right level of CO2 it?
180ppm or 2000ppm or 7000ppm? Maybe the flux is part of God's plan.

Shade said:

Dinosaurs that roamed the Earth 250 million years ago knew a world with five times more
carbon dioxide than is present on Earth today? Who is to day what the right level of CO2 it?
180ppm or 2000ppm or 7000ppm? Maybe the flux is part of God's plan.

Click to expand...

I think our civilization would have a hard time surviving in the Land of the Dinosaurs (even without the dinosaurs). When you ask what is the "right" level of CO2, that's not the right question. There is no "right" in an objective sense. The real question is what is the right level for our civilization to function and what is the right rate of change. We are making a very fast change to a level never experienced in human evolutionary history.

Asking whether our changing the atmosphere and possibly changing the climate is part of "God's plan" is just silly. Ask your pastor about it. You could ask the same ridiculous question about any irresponsible behavior.

You're driving like a maniac!
Hey, maybe it's God's plan for us all to die in a car wreck.

You just peed in the punch bowl!
Who's to say hepatitis is not God's plan for us all?

You just set the building on fire!
Well, if anything bad comes of it, it must be part of God's plan!

The idea that it might just be part of God's plan has got to be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard anyone say with regards to human contribution to global warming.

Wait a minute! Did I hear someone say "global warming"? WTF, over, I thought that term had been abandoned in favor of "climate change".

So Thirsty, what are we (mankind) supposed to do with all this buried treasure we inherited from Earth's ancient past? Make it into a museum? Save it for the End Times? Or use it wisely until someone stumbles upon a viable alternative?

Trees eat CO2, create wood and release O2. I wonder who thunk of that?

tmacklin said:

Wait a minute! Did I hear someone say "global warming"? WTF, over, I thought that term had been abandoned in favor of "climate change".

So Thirsty, what are we (mankind) supposed to do with all this buried treasure we inherited from Earth's ancient past? Make it into a museum? Save it for the End Times? Or use it wisely until someone stumbles upon a viable alternative?

Trees eat CO2, create wood and release O2. I wonder who thunk of that?

Click to expand...

I use the terms "global warming" and "climate change" interchangeably. "Global warming" used to be the most common term, but at some point a conservative political strategist suggested "climate change" would be preferable from a messaging point of view, because it sounds less threatening than "global warming" and more like a natural process of change. So that term became more common. Now often you hear political pundits suggest that environmentalists wanted to change the term for their own messaging purposes. It's a stupid distraction. It doesn't matter who prefers what term or what you call it as long as people know what you are talking about, and I'm pretty sure people know those two terms refer to the same thing.

As for what to do with all the fossil fuels, you should read the article in the second link posted by Zebedee earlier --- find out about the dog who found the vast underground deposit of pulled pork.

I guess I should shelve my...

Coal fired rocket idea...

So as not to contribute...

To our demise...

ThirstyBarbarian said:

I use the terms "global warming" and "climate change" interchangeably. "Global warming" used to be the most common term, but at some point a conservative political strategist suggested "climate change" would be preferable from a messaging point of view, because it sounds less threatening than "global warming" and more like a natural process of change. So that term became more common. Now often you hear political pundits suggest that environmentalists wanted to change the term for their own messaging purposes. It's a stupid distraction. It doesn't matter who prefers what term or what you call it as long as people know what you are talking about, and I'm pretty sure people know those two terms refer to the same thing.

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Ah ha, I see! Sort of like the old "environmentalists" versus "tree huggers" debate. :rofl:

tmacklin said:

Ah ha, I see! Sort of like the old "environmentalists" versus "tree huggers" debate. :rofl:

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Do NOT call me a "denialist." I prefer to be addressed as "MISTER Denialist."

KidRockET said:

I guess I should shelve my...

Coal fired rocket idea...

So as not to contribute...

To our demise...

Click to expand...

I don't know know where this fits in all of this, but I used to have a coworker who claimed to have a tattoo of the devil shoveling coal into his butt.

One Earth, One People, One Slab of Concrete.

Both the Earth and Sun are dynamic bodies with complex systems man can barely understand let alone control. Yet man always seeks to control things rather than adapt to them. Anyone who has ever stood next to a roaring fire knows that the closer one stands to it the higher the temperature, the further the cooler. However, if someone adds additional fuel or oxygen to the fire the temperature will also increase regardless of the distance. It is what it is.

What I dread more than the Maunder Minimum is something I call the "Macklin Maximum" which causes more spots in my shorts than normal. :surprised:

tmacklin said:

... the "Macklin Maximum" which causes more spots in my shorts than normal. :surprised:

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Reminds me of my last trip to Mexico...

mpitfield said:

Only time will prove that our species did or did not contribute to global warming, at which time it may be too late, if not already. Sadly even if our species lives long enough to realize this, there will likely be the naysayers, or conspiracy theorists as there are with the moon landings or 911, because that just seems to be human nature.

My personal belief, not based on science but rather common sense, is that I would find it hard to believe that we as a species could exploit the resources to the degree that we have as well as develop things like nuclear and hydrogen bombs and some how none of this would have an appreciable effect on our planet. This is simply a preposterous notion to me, which defies reason and logic, and further demonstrates that we are a narcissistic species.

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I would agree that many, especially in America, are narcissistic. However the word I would use to describe those that subscribe to the faith of anthropogenic climate change is megalomania.They believe that we as humans have the power to change mother nature. There is a large body of evidence on both sides of the argument, but I have always subscribed to the concept of follow the money. The largest high profile proponents, and many less obvious ones, are proponents for one of a couple of reasons, power, money or both. Who of them, that you are aware of, do not contribute 10,000 time the carbon footprint of the average American, let alone the average world citizen? They expect everyone, except the ruling class or themselves, to reduce their standard of living to "fix the planet". They also make great profits by the fixes that they prescribe. This simply is not going to sell in 2nd and 3rd world countries that have seen what they can have on the internet and won't stop until they get it. I personally do everything I can to "think globally and act locally", however I am a pragmatist. The situation will eventually be resolved by mother nature. We as a species will survive or not depending on our personal actions. As a combat arms guy of 21 years I believe that when it's your turn, it's your turn and it is always your turn sooner or later, but you can try to leave things better for your contemporaries or those that follow. Do what you can personally and influence those close to you, it is the only way a movement actually starts. The ruling class is not your friend if money or power is at stake and I don't care what side of the political spectrum you come from. Sorry about the long screed, but I am really tired of the manipulation of major situations for benefit.

Well said Pat.

PatD said:

I would agree that many, especially in America, are narcissistic. However the word I would use to describe those that subscribe to the faith of anthropogenic climate change is megalomania.They believe that we as humans have the power to change mother nature. There is a large body of evidence on both sides of the argument, but I have always subscribed to the concept of follow the money. The largest high profile proponents, and many less obvious ones, are proponents for one of a couple of reasons, power, money or both. Who of them, that you are aware of, do not contribute 10,000 time the carbon footprint of the average American, let alone the average world citizen? They expect everyone, except the ruling class or themselves, to reduce their standard of living to "fix the planet". They also make great profits by the fixes that they prescribe. This simply is not going to sell in 2nd and 3rd world countries that have seen what they can have on the internet and won't stop until they get it. I personally do everything I can to "think globally and act locally", however I am a pragmatist. The situation will eventually be resolved by mother nature. We as a species will survive or not depending on our personal actions. As a combat arms guy of 21 years I believe that when it's your turn, it's your turn and it is always your turn sooner or later, but you can try to leave things better for your contemporaries or those that follow. Do what you can personally and influence those close to you, it is the only way a movement actually starts. The ruling class is not your friend if money or power is at stake and I don't care what side of the political spectrum you come from. Sorry about the long screed, but I am really tired of the manipulation of major situations for benefit.

Click to expand...

I always avoid the "what we need to do to fix it" topics on this forum. It never goes well. I limit myself to trying to discuss the scientific truth of what is happening, not what it means for the policy or politics. Questioning people's motives is also non-scientific. It's better to look at the facts and logic of what they say, not the motivation or "end game."

But if you want to talk about following the money with regards to the truth about whether or not global warming is happening, on one side you have the vast overwhelming majority of scientists saying that it is happening. What money do these scientists have at stake in making that case? What is their motivation? What drives them to say what they do? I've known scientists involved with basic research all my life. They don't make jack squat doing research. But they also don't make dirty money taking a side in a policy argument. They do research because that's what they like to do, and they sacrifice a lot to follow that calling. I personally believe the science is legit and not faked for profit.

Now if you choose to believe that scientists are motivated by money, they are corrupt, and they are willing to make up research to take a side in the global warming "argument", which side do you think would have the most money to offer? Would it be the side hoping someday to make money by offering a solution? Or would it be the side already making billions of dollars every single week selling fossil fuels, running power plants, selling cars, or running industries that benefit from the cheapest energy possible. Who do you think would have the most money to buy off corrupt scientists?

How much money do you think has been made in the past century from fossil fuels and the industry it drives? How many hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars of fossil fuel still are in the ground just waiting to be extracted and sold? Wars have been fought over these resources. People murdered. Governments overthrown. And even with all that power, you expect me to believe that somehow those fossil fuel interests have not managed to do a better job buying off some of the 97% of scientists who say global warming is real, and it's caused by burning fossil fuels? Somehow Al Gore and the other enviro-bogey-men have managed to buy off almost all the world's scientists with "carbon credits", and the oil and coal industry could not get the cash together for a better offer? All they have been able to afford is 3% of the world's corrupt, money-grubbing scientists? Seriously?

Whenever I hear the term "consensus" I remember the minutes of the last school board meeting wherein the secretary noted "...the decision of the Board was unanimous."

Winston, the original poster of this thread, referenced a number of scientific studies that seem to challenge the herd mentality currently in vogue by suggesting that internal dynamics of the Sun might have an effect upon Earth's climate. That view sounds perfectly logical to me. YMMV

Consensus is the business of politics...

Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world...

In science consensus is irrelevant...

~ Michael Crichton ~

tmacklin said:

Whenever I hear the term "consensus" I remember the minutes of the last school board meeting wherein the secretary noted "...the decision of the Board was unanimous."

Winston, the original poster of this thread, referenced a number of scientific studies that seem to challenge the herd mentality currently in vogue by suggesting that internal dynamics of the Sun might have an effect upon Earth's climate. That view sounds perfectly logical to me. YMMV

Click to expand...

Wrong.

You need to go back and read the articles. The first article does not reference "several studies." The article references only one scientific study. And that scientific study is only about the sun's internal dynamics having an effect on the SUN, not on Earth. It's the author of the article, not the study, who makes the suggestion about effects on Earth's climate, but the author references no scientific studies to support that idea.

The second study is about possible regional effects of a Maunder Minimum-like condition. It is not about a global effect. And it begins with the statement, "Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming."

KidRockET said:

Consensus is the business of politics...

Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world...

In science consensus is irrelevant...

~ Michael Crichton ~

Click to expand...

The problem with this is that Chrichton is ignoring how scientific consensus is built. It is built by exactly the process he described, "Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world..."

The process is that one investigator finds results that would change the way of understanding something. Next, other investigators do what Chrichton described, and they verify those results by reference to the real world. If they find the results verifiable, then they add their voice in agreement. After enough investigators are in agreement, the "consensus" is that the results have been verified by reference to the real world.

Chrichton's conclusion is wrong. Consensus is not irrelevant. Consensus is the result of the process he described.

All of the "data" is based on "Computer Models"...

None of it proves anything...

There is even substantial evidence...

That the "data" has been manipulated...

To "prove" a preconceived "consensus"...

I am not a Lemming...

Wake-up 'murica...

In America, everyone has the right to be wrong... at least in theory. And since we are discussing various theories I can't help but wonder what kind of car, if any, the Thirsty Barbarian drives?

Science - "The data don't match my theory, I might have to make a new theory"

Anti-science - "The data don't match my belief therefore the data must be wrong or faked by <insert flavor of the month conspiracy>"