Re: Solar Activity Reaches 1,000 Year Peak

On Sat, 14 Apr 2007, Earl wrote:

"Jake" <jcbepstein@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1176554757.515175.182990@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:


I am also waiting for Earl to reply since he has some
background and brought up the cosmic ray issue.


The problem of solar sunspot activity is that it is a measure of
the change in the type of radiation received. It has two
effects, a stronger solar wind which lowers cosmic ray values,
and a change in the distribution of the frequencies (and total
value) that are emitted by the sun.

You will be happy to receive a kilowatt of infra red, just a
nice warm feeling from sunlight. But if that kilowatt was in the
form of hard Xrays (sunspots - though "cooler" are the sites for
high energy magnetic fields generating xrays) you would quickly
have health problems.

So the change in distribution of the frequencies of the
radiation emitted by the sun is of very high importance. But the
only way we measure the solar constant is to let all the
frequencies be absorbed on a black body and measure the
temperature increase. (bolimetric measurement) Crude to say the
least!!!

The measurements are ok if we assume that there is no change in
the solar spectum, but we know that to be false. So all
conclusions reached about the solar constant are false also. And
note that a "constant" solar constant is a fundamental
assumption in the AGW theories.

Garbage In, Garbage Out !!!


The Earth's albedo is complicated by the environmentalists.
Normally the atmosphere is relatively transparent. But add
sulphate micro particles and you change the distribution of
cloud droplet sizes, which alters the IR reflectivity and
absorption characteristics of the clouds.

In some way the massive changes in the absorption/reflection
characteristics of clouds is unimportant. There are no valid
models that take the behavior of clouds into account. Since the
econuts are not able to account for clouds in their analysis
they assume that clouds are of zero consequence and are
invarient.

Anyone with a memory will recall the religious mania associated
with the Gaia preachings (Lovelock). That Earth is self
regulating. It gets too hot and clouds appear (water
evaporation) and reflect the excess heat via an increase in
overall albedo. This negative feedback effect is effective until
the cloud cover approaches 100% - like Venus, at which point
there is no safety margin and a runaway greenhouse effect
becomes possible. Since Earth has about a 10% cloud cover, we
have a long ways to go before we have to worry about CO2
greenhouse runaway. I would estimate that we would have to get
CO2 to over 4% concentration (from current 0.04%) before CO2
would be the dominat greenhouse gas (I think it is currently
providing about 2% of total greenhouse influence). By that time
you will be dead because concentrations of CO2 over 4% are
deadly.

Of much greater influence than CO2 has been the sulphate
particulates. These come from several sources, principaly high
smokestacks and volcanos. The ships at sea produce more sulphate
than all the worlds cars and trucks. So having improved emission
standards on big trucks or your auto is a wasted effort. We now
trap the sulphates from smokestacks, but we have long ago
handled the cheap 90% of emissions. To reduce the extra
percentages will cost at least as much and only result in 1/10th
the effect.

But all the pollution from man is estimated to only result in
abot 1/2 degree reduction in temperature (though it did cut back
ground level sunlight by about 25%). In fact the clean up of the
sulphate pollution has caused a significant part of the recent
runup in temperature. An example of one set of econuts political
successes creating a different set of pollution.

But nature can quickly exceed the miniscule effects of man. When
Toba exploded 75,000 years ago it put a sulphate concentration
into the air that lowered worldwide temperatures by about 5
degrees and lasted for about 1000 years (ocean temperature
readings O18 abundance on microflora, and ice core sulphates).
(note that a single event was 10 times all the effects of man).
Yellowstone (and about 100 other super volcanos) can give a
similar effect when it goes off (it is overdue !!)


We are just barely getting a scratch on the surface of the many many components that influence the temperature of the Earth. Predictions of disaster are a joke until we actually get some good data.

But politics (and environmental religion) drives the AGW crowd. They have religious zealots in all the high places and control the purse strings of science. As has been quoted before (MIT prof). If you do not mention GW in a favorable light, you will not receive grant money, nor survive peer review. And this from a university professor who has never taken money from the energy companies. But who has taken money from the controled government science industry. And do not mistake the importance of grants. It is estimated that a asst proff relies on grants for abot 1/2 his personal income and about 90% of research expendature.




In summary: There is more affecting the temperature of the Earth than industrial emissions. But not to the True Believer.

When we actually get a decent set of data on all the effects and can actually make predictions that correspond to the real world, then we can trash our economies in the interest of religion.

But until then, the prognostications from the gurus of the computer models are doing no better than priests examing entails.

I would agree. But I don't see anything wrong with taking a measure of all energy from the sun, because if it were shone to vary, then it would have implications to the theories of star formation.

During a sunspot maximum, the chormosphere and corona of the sun are enormous and greatly disturbed and huge ammounts of energy are released in light of shorter wavelengths and hence greater energy per photon. The magnetohydrodynamic turbulence also emits strong radio emission which even at millions of miles from the sun, disturbs our radio transmission. Too close, and you might be micro-waved to a crisp. The turbulence also throws up huge amounts of high energy particles that cause polar light displays.

We might even think that because of the huge activity of the magnetic field on the surface, and in the chromosphere, and corona, that the total energy might increase rather than decrease during a solar maximum. If a theory that the total energy does go down when sunspots reach a gigantic sunspot maximum is true, then something is vastly wrong with our current ideas of star formation.

It's currently believed that the reaction at the sun's core is pretty stable. Changes in the energy balance take place over billions rather than millions of years-- that is not to say that in particular times of the sun's evolution, changes could be relatively faster (think of a supernova burst).
.

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