The Sun Also
Sets
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS
DAILY | Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al
Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek
funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.
Related Topics: Global
Warming
Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the
balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data
that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely
tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are
seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to
observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the
tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's
National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence
of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this
cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity
could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event
which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots
showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or
no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that
began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until
1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive
crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle
and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may
indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing
massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he
calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better
equipment.
In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been
conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the
next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more
rapidly and accurately.
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's
climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar
Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the
last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's
temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the
Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says
that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on
long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are
consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular
fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The
sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict
that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of
the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on
Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and
it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a
medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects
than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves —
and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting
that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to
be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data
and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss.
Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear
that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were
one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any
relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes
in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants
and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the
Earth, that's hanging in the balance.
