The Sun

[jjohnson]

Good logic and evidence, Ray. Another thing with the heat island temperatures is the simple fact that there tend to be a lot more thermometers in urban complexes than in rural areas, as most are at airports, particularly larger, "controlled" (active control tower and en-route radar control sectors). If you had 3 thermometers in a heat island, each showing a high average temperature, and one or two out in a rural area, cooler, you are right - heat islands control the average. Depending on the differential, even having a lot of thermometers out in the countryside and one or two in a heat island locale might not really well describe what the temperature "average" is. It's like trying to state the average temperature of the sun, with sunspots, faculae, etc all at different temperatures. It is hard to get a geometrically even distribution of thermometers all over the Earth for a reasonable average temperature, and it is hard to get a reasonably reliable average temperature from high and low density distributions of thermometers. It's kind of like putting some of the thermometers near hot springs. That's okay, as long as they are on the same grid all over, and there are enough to give reliable error bars.
Jim

[ShaneMuir]

Hi Toroid,
Have you read the book? If you have, can you give us the quote and page number please? A lot of peole on this forum would be interested I'm sure.

“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill ... All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

Alexander KING, Bertrand SCHNEIDER - founder and secretary, respectively, of the Club of Rome - The First Global Revolution, pp.104-105


..and here is a great lecture to watch by physicist Jasper Kirkby.

Climategate: Revolt of the Physicists

"This lecture by Jasper Kirkby reviews the recent research that physicists have been conducting into climate change. Physicists have discovered that changes in the rate of cosmic ray inflow cause climate change and that solar activity shields the earth from cosmic rays. They haven't completely worked out the mechanism yet, but they think it has to do with cosmic rays causing cloud formation and clouds reflecting sunlight back into space.

When Kirkby gets to the screen showing Galactic Modulation of Climate over the last 500 million years and the cosmic ray variation that explains it, take a close look at the line that plots CO2 over the same period. Note that that line doesn't correspond at all to the temperature periodicity evident in the temperature data. Also listen when Kirkby points out that CO2 concentrations used to be 10 times higher than they are today.

And don't miss the most chilling (literally) prediction of all based on a careful study of sunspot intensity. This prediction was originally submitted and rejected for publication in 2005 (Sunspots May Vanish by 2015 http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress. ... spots2.pdf ), but has been coming true ever since. The earth appears to be headed toward a period of dramatic cooling, at present, due to reduced solar activity."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/175641- ... physicists

The video on the page is broken.. so go here to watch:

http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum ... 1#14648528

[Grey Cloud]

Hi ShaneMuir,
The question I asked Toroid concerned a 1972 book titled 'The Limits to Growth'.
The quote you have provided allegedly comes from a 1993 book titled 'The First Global Revolution'. I say 'allegedly' because the quote does not appear to exist, certainly not on those pages and I have searched the book. Have you actually read this book or have you just lifted the quote of some blog or website?

[The Great Dog]

The quote you have provided allegedly comes from a 1993 book titled 'The First Global Revolution'. I say 'allegedly' because the quote does not appear to exist, certainly not on those pages and I have searched the book. Have you actually read this book or have you just lifted the quote of some blog or website?

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13160503/The- ... 991-Report

Page 86

TGD

[seasmith]

Chapter 5 The Vacuum.

Think the quote is from page 75, of the actual book.
p. 86 on the Scribd version.

[Grey Cloud]

Thanks The Great Dog and Seasmith.

The full paragraph, sans ellipsis:

The Enemy of Humanity is Man
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions
these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking
symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed atritudes and behaviour that they can be overtome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
The First Global Revolution, p75. [emphasis in original]

Read in full and in context the quote does not seem to be quite the conspiratorial smoking gun it was presented as. Rather, it comes across as an eminently sensible and humanitarian piece of political science.
Nor is there anything new in there. It was well known, long before 1993, that, in the medium- and long-term, consumer capitalism promised more problems than solutions and that people are the cause of most of the planets ills.

For anyone who is interested in political science rather than conspiracy theories, the book can be downloaded from here:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheFirstGlobalRevolution [PDF with text 8.78MiB - link at left side]

[TOROID]

Grey Cloud.

The statement still tells us that global warming, among other things, was an idea to motivate people. Not reality as many other quotes from the same books and same people prove. Many other statements were made by these people along the same lines, that even if the data or theory were wrong it was still important to "convince" the people of the world that catastrophe would ensue if we didn't change our ways. Now I do understand that this isn't their long term strategy to hug trees and save the snails. This is to avert global meltdown due to primarily over population. If you understand the exponential function then with 10 minutes of very basic high school calculation you can scare yourself sheetless projecting resource use and availability into the next 5 decades!

But the debate here is whether sunspots cause climate change. There are heaps of evidence that sunspot cycles correspond very nicely with extreme weather events. Some data is available on this thread from such eminently trusted sources as NASA.

The easiest way to cut down the population is global cooling. Not wars, not plagues, but famine brought about by massive crop failures. The knock on effects would be starvation, rioting, civil war, disease and massive numbers of frozen dead. The threat of global cooling is truly terrifying and people think we have a better chance of survival because we have double glazing and central heating!
http://www.climatephysics.com/GlobalWar ... ooling.htm
http://www.climatephysics.com/index.html
They don't take into account their starving neighbours kicking in their door and demanding food or empty supermarket shelves for ten months of the year.
10cm of snow for 4 weeks and the UK grinds along like a crippled pensioner, imagine the chaos if we hit a period of 30 years of arctic weather with 3 metres of snow every winter!
This is far more likely than the silly notion of catastrophic warming!
In the past when the planet was much warmer life thrived and in the ice ages it struggled to survive!

I suppose the latest very low, very long sun spot minimum and the ensuing 2 very cold winters are just a bit of a slight coincidence? No, this is observational evidence that the sun controls the climate and if the sun calms down we'd better be prepared because if we aren't prepared then the population will be down to the 500 million that the ruling elite have been wanting to get it down to for many decades.
http://www.radioliberty.com/stones.htm

The global dimming theory is one to watch. The temperature of the US rose by 1C when all air traffic was stopped after 9-11 and it quickly dropped off again when flights resumed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/program ... rans.shtml
This has since been proven to happen whenever there is a build up of contrails. Whether you believe the deliberate spraying of the atmosphere by jets to bring down the worlds temperature is up to you. If we are heading for a long term cooling period then the cooling by contrails (almost double the change in temp from total CO2), is going to speed that up. It wouldn't take many degrees of cooling to cause massive crop failures. Don't you believe that cloud seeding is happening even though the MOD deny it. China had 3 million people displaced with hundreds of schools and other buildings collapsing due to very heavy snowfall following cloud seeding operations just before Christmas. I'll bet you didn't see the BBC shouting about that did you?
It seems the neighbouring province had been complaining about the drought they were suffering because their neighbours were cloud seeding and were said to be stealing their rain. Well it all backfired when the snow fell and wiped out everybody's crops!

If you really want me to I'll post some of the links I've found about sun spots. Biggest problem is dead links when some of my bookmarks are a couple of years old and finding the exact article again can be mind numbing!

Anyone been following Piers Corbyn of Weather Action and his unbelievably accurate long term predictions of extreme weather events? No? I suggest you take a look.
http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.a ... t2&fsize=0

[TOROID]

Fuel prices went up big time across Europe for 2 years running. Then we are plunged into 2 very cold winters. Coincidence?
Of course not. The fuel suppliers speculated that the last sun spot minimum was due to be a long, low one and would bring about a few cold winters so they hiked up the price and are now cashing in. The government were smart to raise fuel payments to pensioners over the previous few years so they wouldn't have frozen old folk on their hands.
They will hike up the prices of gas, oil, diesel, coal with the excuse that we must be more fuel efficient and produce less CO2 and pollution to save the planet.
Mark my words, when all the higher prices are in place, watch the snow fall and get yer cheque book ready!

In my opinion, the world population is heading for a nose dive but not through a nuclear 3rd world war. Frozen out of existence with maybe the odd virus thrown in for good measure!
If you think I'm talking nonsense then you really should brush up on your history!
Worse things have happened before.....just not on the same scale!

Sunspot max and min should be read over the longer 22+ year period.
Talking of sunspots and history, is anyone else aware of the correlation between sunspot max and major world conflicts?
I know this stems from an activist website but the underlying message is clear. Its not accurate to the day like Piers Corbyn's weather predictions but there is a definite link. Maybe we just fight better and get angrier when there's a sunspot max? Makes interesting reading if nothing else... http://carolmoore.net/articles/sunspot-cycle.html

[Ion01]

They will hike up the prices of gas, oil, diesel, coal with the excuse that we must be more fuel efficient and produce less CO2 and pollution to save the planet.

The they you are speaking of is government and the how is called cap and trade!

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Toroid,

The statement still tells us that global warming, among other things, was an idea to motivate people.

You are reading it wrong. The passage states that the authors came up with the idea of using pollution, global warming, etc as ‘common enemies’ of humanity. The authors are not saying that they invented global warming. To read the text as you are, the authors would also have to have invented pollution, water shortages, ‘and the like’.

I find the rest of your post politically simplistic and naïve.

What crops were destroyed in China ‘just before Christmas’?

But the debate here is whether sunspots cause climate change. There are heaps of evidence that sunspot cycles correspond very nicely with extreme weather events. Some data is available on this thread from such eminently trusted sources as NASA.

Correspondence is not causation. I would disagree about NASA being trustworthy.

Thanks for the offer of the links but I have been following the various elements in this for up to 30-odd years and have access to all the info I need.

[nick c]

GC

I would disagree about NASA being trustworthy.

I guess it depends. As far as collecting data is concerned they are very reliable, when it comes to interpreting that data in a theoretical context...well that's another story.

Nick

[tholden]

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 ... bbles.html

[mharratsc]

Ooh, hi-res pictures of 'hot gas' and 'magnetic fields'! I never seen a picture of a magnetic field before!

[sunsettommy]

Hello all,

I realize this is an old thread.But I have some to add here from a blog.

The attitude that I read in the blog about is deplorable when it comes to considering an alternative viewpoint.This being a good example:

Solar Geomagnetic Ap Index Hits Zero

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/23/s ... hits-zero/

Quotes:

Chris Reeve says:
December 23, 2010 at 10:49 am

Wal Thornhill writes:

“Sunspots are dark instead of bright, which is prima facie evidence that heat is not trying to escape from within. And the Sun’s corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. These simple observations point to the energy source of the Sun being external. Add to this the dominant influence of magnetic fields on the Sun’s external behavior and we arrive at the necessity for an electrical energy supply. It is the “subtle radiation traversing space which the star picks up,” and which Eddington immediately dismissed because his gravitational model required energy to be generated at the core of the star to bloat it to the observed size.”

Eugene Parker writes:

“[T]he pedestrian Sun exhibits a variety of phenomena that defy contemporary theoretical understanding. We need look no farther than the sunspot, or the intensely filamentary structure of the photospheric magnetic field, or the spicules, or the origin of the small magnetic bipoles that continually emerge in the supergranules, or the heat source that maintains the expanding gas in the coronal hole, or the effective magnetic diffusion that is so essential for understanding the solar dynamo, or the peculiar internal rotation inferred from helioseismology, or the variation of solar brightness with the level of solar activity, to name a few of the more obvious mysterious macrophysical phenomena exhibited by the Sun.”

More from Wal Thornhill …

“Countless billions of dollars have been wasted based on the thermonuclear model of stars. For example, trying to generate electricity from thermonuclear fusion, “just like the Sun.” The thought that solar scientists have it completely backwards has not troubled anyone’s imagination. The little fusion power that has been generated on Earth has required phenomenal electric power input, “just like the Sun!” The Sun and all stars consume electrical energy to produce their heat and light and cause some thermonuclear fusion in their atmospheres. The heavy elements formed there are seen in stellar spectra. It explains why the expected solar neutrino count is low and anti-correlated with sunspot numbers. It explains why many stars are considered “chemically peculiar.” Get the physics right first and the mathematics will follow.”

(These quotes come from “Our Misunderstood Sun” at http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=ah63dzac, and are intended to remind people that putting sugar sprinkles onto a turd does not make it taste or smell any better. We need to be looking at errors in the foundational assumptions that go into these models.)

REPLY: “And the Sun’s corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. These simple observations point to the energy source of the Sun being external. ”

Really? What rubbish. – Anthony

and from a Solar Scientist,

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 23, 2010 at 12:54 pm

Chris Reeve says:
December 23, 2010 at 10:49 am
REPLY: “And the Sun’s corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. These simple observations point to the energy source of the Sun being external. ”Really? What rubbish. – Anthony

Rubbish, indeed. As so much else.

Chris Reeve says:
December 23, 2010 at 11:50 am
I don’t think that this is too much to ask for on what is in truth one of the most complex questions facing mankind: What powers the Sun.

This has been known since 1938.

===================================================================================
Impressed at the depth of his factless one liners?and from a solar scientist!

Then this snotty reply to Chris Reeve who has all along been making constructive comments.Only to face this crap in reply such as this one:

phlogiston says:
December 23, 2010 at 1:36 pm

REPLY: “And the Sun’s corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. These simple observations point to the energy source of the Sun being external. ”

Really? What rubbish. – Anthony

Chris Reeve:

“Countless billions of dollars have been wasted based on the thermonuclear model of stars”

All these years thinking that things fall down when you drop them and stars are fuelled by hydrogen fusion to helium (the two elements that the sun oddly consists of in about the right balance) – but no … what you say makes wonderful sense all of a sudden. All the sun’s energy is instead mysteriously transmitted in an unmeasurable way through space! And all that material in the sun just sits there and generates no energy! Obvious when you think about it.

But lets not stop there. “Countless billions” have also been wasted on that other great scientific fallacy – the Copernical / Galilean model of the earth orbiting the sun. Any fool can tell you the sun orbits the earth! Ptolemy and those wise old Greeks were right – the apparent orbits are all the result of epicycles. The earth is stationary at the center of the Universe after all. How nice!

Electric energy transmission also makes much more sense between the spherical glass balls of the epicycles, within which all the heavenly bodies are embedded. No need to worry about those fantastic huge distances which make electric fields negligible.

Sparks between glass spheres – it all looks nostalgically like those old Gothic sci-fi horror movies, Frankenstein’s monster etc. All you need is some black and red costumes and cloaks, some white face powder and a nice big organ for sound effects.

Talking of Sci-fi, Chris Reeve – weren’t you in those Superman films and didn’t you – um – die?

O I forgot – now that there is no gravity, death is reversable also?

This amazing statement by a prominent Solar Scientists concerns me.Because he seems to ignore plasma flows from the corona:

Leif Svalgaard says:
December 23, 2010 at 1:45 pm

Dave Springer says:
December 23, 2010 at 11:56 am
The corona, because it’s so vacuous, throws off almost no radiation and neither does it absorb a significant amount .There is another more important reason. To radiate an electron must transition from one bound quantum state to another one. 99% of the corona is fully ionized, meaning that the electrons are free, not bound, and therefore cannot radiate.

That’s why it isn’t visible except during a full eclipse.what you see during a total eclipse is actually not radiation from the million degree corona. 99% of the light comes from the photosphere [which is why the corona is white] and is scattered off electrons and dust particles surrounding the Sun.

This is pathetic stuff.

[mharratsc]

Dr. Svalgaard has been making such statements since I first became a member here. He considers himself quite an expert too, not only on the Sun, but on plasma physics to boot, it seems...