Days Without Sunspots Are In The Top Five

The news is about the cold weather in late 2008. Newspapers report that glaciers in Canada, California, and New Zealand are growing, as the result of colder temperatures and increased snowfall.

After years of decline, glaciers in Norway are again growing, reports the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).

Meanwhile, in Alaska, the United States Geologic Survey has maintained a research project measuring the state of Alaskan glaciers since 1946. This year records were broken for most snow buildup. It was also the first time since measurements began that Arctic glaciers did not shrink during the summer months.

Australian Ski fields recently recorded a heavy snow fall about a week before the summer started. Also, ski resorts across Europe opened last weekend ahead of schedule after the biggest November snowfalls in at least a decade. Meanwhile heavy snow and freezing cold closed schools in much of Spain.

In New Zealand, environmental groups are angry about the new government's plan to review the science behind climate change. Environmentalists think New Zealand's reputation would be damaged if the concept of global warming is questioned.

These are all stories making international news in recent days. Of course, these stories are the result of the significant drop in global temperatures over the last two years. A drop in temperatures that may well be connected to sunspot activity.

In 2007, there were 183 days without a sunspot observed on the face of the sun. The year would be ranked ninth in the last one hundred years for a lack of sunspot activity. This year, the number of days without sunspots have already easily surpassed that level from last year.

At the end of November 2008, the number of days without a sunspot was at 239. It made 2008, the fifth ranked year without a sunspot in a century, with one full month left to go. In fact, by the end of this week, the 2008 rank will likely move up to number three, since the sun has been blank, so far this month. The number two spot is within reach with fifteen days of sunspot inactivity during December.

Two years in a row of declining temperatures with a near record lack of sunspot activity while CO2 gas continues to increase in the atmosphere. If this trend continues, history would suggest that it could get very cold. Then, the huge, lucrative, international business of research into man-made global warming would have to be put on hold.

The Year Of The Man-Made Global Warming Skeptic

In 2008, scientists from all over the world are jumping off the man-made global warming bandwagon. This is due to the fact that environmental study after study concludes that the behavior of man is not the cause of significant global warming.

In a recently released Geological Society of America abstract, Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University, presented data showing that the global warming cycle from 1977 to 1998 is now over and that we have entered into a new global cooling period that should last for the next three decades.

He also suggests that since the IPCC climate models are now so far off from what is actually happening that their projections for both this decade and century must be considered highly unreliable.

Meanwhile, David Douglass and John Christy, in a paper just accepted for publication and now available on the internet, have come to the conclusion that natural changes in global water temperature are responsible for an increase in global temperature. Here is their scientific conclusion:

"El Nino and La Nina effects in the tropics have a more significant affect on global temperature anomalies than carbon dioxide, in particular it was an El Nino event that drove the 1998 global temperature maximum".

At NASA, Dr. Roy Spencer, believes natural cycles account for most of last century’s warming, with carbon dioxide increases contributing only a modest amount.

His new research, which was submitted to Geophysical Research Letters for publication, shows that climate models overstate the positive feedback from an increase in carbon dioxide, and therefore grossly overstate the projected warming during the next century

In addition, two new studies (article in Science Magazine) point to wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through the glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, not ‘global warming.’

In June, Dr. David Evans, an architect of Australia’s Kyoto compliance, and for years a noted climate change alarmist, became the latest man-made global warming doubter. Evans outlines the four main reasons why 2008 has become the year of the global warming skeptic and why he recently jumped off of the global warming bandwagon.

1.The missing “greenhouse signature”, which would be a hot zone about 10 km up in the atmosphere. It’s been sought for years - hundreds of measurements using radiosondes (a sort of temperature measuring weather balloon). It would constitute the smoking gun . Hundreds of tests have returned the same answer - it’s not there. It is statistically impossible that the hundreds of tests missed the spot. The existing models on greenhouse warming do not work without this hot zone.
2. “There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming” says Evans. “None". There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations” constituting evidence that carbon emissions are a significant driver in warming trends.
3. Satellites measuring the world’s temperature uniformly show that the warming trend stopped in 2001 and that in the past year the temperature actually returned to 1980 levels. Satellite measurements are the only truly reliable method for capturing the data as land-based measurements are vulnerable to encroachments of expanding cities and “urban heat island effect.”
4.“The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.”

As global temperatures continue to cool and research against man-made global warming continues to pile up, as scientists abandon the man-made global warming bandwagon one thing is becoming increasingly clear. The cause of global climate change should be based on facts and evidence and not just our fear.

(See: Melting Arctic Sea Ice And Global Warming Hype on eworldvu.com)

Climate Change And The Quiet Of The Sun

A sunspot was seen this month on the twenty second of September. However , it disappeared very quickly the following day.

The truth is that the lack of sunspot activity in 2008 is beginning to remind some observers of the low sunspot activity at the beginning of the Dalton Minimum.

Of course, none of us were alive at the time, but the Dalton Minimum was a forty year period (1790 to 1830) of low sunspot activity that would lead to a dramatic cooling of the planet. So, low sunspot activity could well be an indication that colder not warmer times for our planet are immediately ahead.

It was also interesting to read the NASA press release yesterday about the discovery from its Ulysses Spacecraft. The spacecraft revealed that global Solar Wind Output was at a 50-Year Low.

Dave McComas (Ulysses’ solar wind instrument principal investigator and senior executive director at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio) is quoted as follows: “The sun’s million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets the galaxy." He continued: "Ulysses data indicate the solar wind’s global pressure is the lowest we have seen since the beginning of the space age.

So what does this discovery from the Ulysses Spacecraft mean? Of course, nobody knows for sure, but low solar wind pressure will mean an increase in the amount of cosmic rays entering our solar system.

Now, consider that the study of cosmic rays has been the focus of Physicist, Henrik Svensmark of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen for over a decade. Svensmark's research has led to his theory that during the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. As a result, fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds leading to a warmer world and the increase in global temperature.

In his book released last year called: The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, Svenesmark described his theory that cosmic rays "have more effect on the climate than manmade CO2". So, if Svensmark is right, the increase in cosmic rays will lead to an increase in cloud cover and global cooling.

There has been little sunspot activity throughout 2008. In fact, last month was the first month without a sunspot since 1913. Meanwhile, the Ulysses Spacecraft has just measured solar wind output at a fifty year low. The quiet of our sun may well mean that the global climate is beginning to change once again. It could be that colder not warmer times are just ahead.

For more on man-made global warming read: A Nobel Peace Prize And A Weather Balloon
For more on the Sun read: To Predict Global Climate Change Look To The Sun on eWorldvu.com