Now its Global cooling or rather Solar cooling.

[G7PSK]

Apparently the sun is cooling down and will have up to 60% less output by 2030/40. Another mini Ice age, What about solar cells then.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/entries/6d50a6bd-779a-32d6-bfca-06e4484d6835

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/07/13/a-mini-ice-age-is-just-15-years-away-as-scientists-predict-drop-in-solar-activity_n_7782928.html?1436776483

[ElectroIrradiator]

Write 100 times on a blackboard:

"Solar activity is not proportional to radiated solar output power."

The BBC article got it right. The expected drop, if it happens and all other things being equal, is expect to be on the order of 0.3-0.4 ^oC on global average temperature. This means it will probably not even be able to keep up with global warming over the same time period. So as seen from today the main consequence is likely to be political, when global warming naysayers will use the phenomenon to say we can just keep doing business as usual.

[Mechanical Menace]

I wonder which if either prediction is closer to what will happen? That a solar minimum may cause a mini ice age in the Northern Hemisphere but not really effect the global climate as Lockwood and his team suggested in the 2001 report linked to in the 2013 blog post or if the new as yet unpublished study suggesting global effects. Or if the new model even predicts that given (almost every) news outlets generally abysmal science reporting.

TBH if this does happen it wouldn't effect summer in the northern hemisphere much in regards to solar panels, the southern would hardly notice at all. Not sure how it would effect solar cells output in winter in the northern hemisphere, guess that would depend which parts of the sun's spectrum are most reduced. Are the frequencies most likely to directly heat the atmosphere the same as those solar cells harness most efficiently? They mainly use the blue-green end of the spectrum don't they?

[grumpydoc]

Write 100 times on a blackboard:

"Solar activity is not proportional to radiated solar output power."

Just as well - I would think that a 60% drop in the Sun's output would not cause a mini ice age but a full blown one, and then some. It would be the equivalent of moving the earth just beyond the orbit of Mars.

[ElectroIrradiator]

Just as well - I would think that a 60% drop in the Sun's output would not cause a mini ice age but a full blown one, and then some. It would be the equivalent of moving the earth just beyond the orbit of Mars.

Indeed.

People need to stop the stupid. Right now. The reduction in solar activity, meaning sunspots and coronal activity, will not have a noticeable effect on the efficiency of PV cells, except possibly a minor local effect due to an increase in average cloud cover. Additionally PV cells are already a dubious investment in the northern latitudes due to a combination of clouds and low average incident solar angle, particularly during the winter.

On the contrary, then if we do get a period with slightly harsher winters and ditto colder summers, then this would mean more wind power and more precipitation for the hydroelectric dam reservoirs.

[JoeO]

FTA: "According to research conducted by Michael Mann in 2001, a vociferous advocate of man-made global warming, the Maunder minimum of the 1600s was estimated to have shaved 0.3C to 0.4C from global temperatures. "

Michael Mann is the gentleman who included in his computer program, a "fudge factor" his term, in order to create the famous "hockey stick" graph.

Michael Mann has zero credibility.

[G7PSK]

According to the latest research by Prof Valentina Zharkova the down turn could be near the Maunder minimum. When the Maunder minimum occurred the River Thames froze over in winter and there was wide spread famine in Europe.

http://nam2015.org/index.php/press-releases/64-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo

[Mechanical Menace]

Michael Mann has zero credibility.

Funny how the scientific community and the courts disagree

[ElectroIrradiator]

According to the latest research by Prof Valentina Zharkova the down turn could be near the Maunder minimum. When the Maunder minimum occurred the River Thames froze over in winter and there was wide spread famine in Europe.

http://nam2015.org/index.php/press-releases/64-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo

The Mainder minimum is actually a very good example of how a minor change in average global temperature can have a significant effect on the local weather.

[LabSpokane]

Regardless of what happens to weather, ocean acidification *is* real and the very demonstrable effects are evidenced by dramatically reduced shellfish reproductive rates in the ocean waters off the coast of my home state of Washington.  Oysters used to propagate naturally here.  Now the juveniles have to be started in Hawaii and flown back.  If the pH keeps going down, that may not even work. 

Then there's the food supply: we're feeding whatever current population of the earth that exceeds approx. 1B with fossil fuels.  Without them, we could not extract or create the chemical fertilizers and pesticides that we are using to sustain the "green revolution."  Fertilizer production is the new global gold mine - almost literally.  It is what mining companies are turning to sustain them after the collapse of global metals prices. 

The petroleum century has filled everyone with unrealistic expectations of abundance without consequence.  Neither will be true.    No matter what happens with climate, releasing tens of millions of years of stored up solar energy in the geologic blink of an eye is turning out to be a bad experiment for everyone involved.

[M4trix]

Speaking of which, this is my favorite one...

[nctnico]

It never ceases to amaze me that climate sceptics keep posting links that they clearly haven't read or understood. The very first link to the BBC article debunks the OP in his own post.

The sun's output seems to be quite constant although there is a very regular 0.2% variation:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/solact.html

By the way there is a strong correlation between winters in the NL and the cycle of the sun. In NL there is a tradition which goes back over a century where they have an ice skating race on natural ice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht) . If you put the years where they where able to keep the race next to the years where the solar output is minimal you'll see it matches almost perfectly. So even though the variation is only 0.2% it does have an effect.

Anyway I'll just see and happens. According to my memory winters have become less snowy and icey over the past couple of decades. I think I have been able to walk on natural ice only twice in the past 20 years while this used to be possible nearly every winter when I was a kid.

[Deathwish]

It is best to ignore this topic. Now that Dave has been kind enough to provide an ignore topic facility it is easy. It is just another mischievous trolling attempt.

where ?, i cant find that

[G7PSK]

I really cannot understand why any one would think I am a climate sceptic or a troll. I posted this as I find it interesting that the Sun has two magnetic fields that move about at slightly different rates which affect its output according to how in phase the fields are. I realise that one cannot shit on your own doorstep indefinitely and burn hundreds of millions of years worth of carbon sequestering in a few tens of years. On the other hand there are far greater forces at work than mere humans in the universe and I do not mean gods of any form. If people had bothered to follow the stories and the sources and links within them they would have found that the UV is going to have the greatest drop in output which will have far reaching affects on earth, a large part of the suns heat is from UV absorption in the atmosphere wireless communications will be affected some good and some bad. Plant growth will be reduced and better violins will be able to be made as a result of that. And just from the title it should be possible to see that I am rather scornful of the media's take on this research.

[Halcyon]

I really cannot understand why any one would think I am a climate sceptic or a troll.

Don't feed the actual trolls. No matter how hard you try to remain objective and mature about things, it's inevitable for a handful of people to take something out of context, look into some hidden meaning that isn't there or just have to have the last say.

'Climate change' is a touchy subject for some people.

:-)

[zapta]

'Climate change' is a touchy subject for some people.

:-)

Like any other religion. People feel threatened by decent.

[LabSpokane]

I really cannot understand why any one would think I am a climate sceptic or a troll.

I inferred the climate skeptic part from the title. I'm skeptical of the most dire predictions as well. I was only trying to point out that there are clearly demonstrable, objective consequences, adverse ones, of our fossil fuel use today.

As for the interest in solar activity, I am totally down with that.  The sun and its affect on space weather is widely ignored by the general public.

[tom66]

Like any other religion. People feel threatened by decent.

Hm Freudian slip from the climate troll?

[TerraHertz]

"Now its Global cooling or rather Solar cooling"

What do you mean 'now'?
There have been many sources predicting the Sun will be going into a new Minimum. These predictions have been based on actual solar cycle decline for about the last three years iirc.  And there were speculative but sensibly based projections of this happening since at least 2009.

Whether the Sun's _already_ obvious quietening, and discernible Earth cooling are related, and how long it will take to really start biting, is the only remaining issue. Some argue there are already signs of a dramatic cooling trend. This present solar sunspot cycle is very weak and there are a lot of new minimum seasonal temperature records being broken around the world this year.

All that's happened 'now' news-wise, is that suddenly a few mainstream outlets have noticed the latest predictions. Possibly due to Earth's 'disastrous warming' having been paused for about 19 years now (other than in Warmists' fudged data dreams) and so maybe the Warmists have decided it's time to start shifting blame for the complete failure of their predictive models. Before cooling becomes too obvious to hide with more 'hottest year ever' faked-data lies, which just make them look absurdly stupid when they get caught in the lies every time. Not to mention culpable for all the mis-allocation of economic resources per the CO2-warmist creed.

Incidentally, there's much more to it than plain solar radiance output. A large factor is the solar wind strength, determining the radius and density of the heliosphere. The heliosphere acts as an absorbing barrier to high energy cosmic rays (from outside the solar system.) The cosmic ray flux in the Earth's upper atmosphere has been experimentally demonstrated to influence high altitude cloud formation, via ionization of air molecules initiating water droplet nucleation. So, less solar wind, results in more cosmic rays reaching Earth, which results in more high altitude cloud, resulting in greater average Earth albedo, thus less admittance of solar radiance, hence cooling of the Earth.
As an aside to that, the CO2-Warmists tried to shut down the CLOUD experiment at CERN LHC, that demonstrated the cosmic ray - cloud nucleation effects. Because CO2-Warmists are not scientists, they are cultists, and actually hate real science.

A few AGW-skeptic sites below. Note that the term 'climate change denier' is a straw-man, in that the AGW skeptics are all perfectly aware that climate changes all the time, always has and always will - a LOT. In fact the 'skeptics' tend to be far more aware of this than the Warmists. It wasn't a skeptic who wrote "We have to hide the medieval warm period", it was one of the early originators of the AGW-CO2 bullshit, during email discussions with colleagues on how to manipulate (lie, fudge, alter, distort) the historical temperature record to obscure the awkward detail that Earth was actually warmer around 1000-1200AD than it is today. Oh and I note Wiki is still trying to pretend the MWP was localized, though it's long been soundly established that it was global. Plus they seem to have caught hockey-stick disease in their leading graph, in order to pretend today is warmer than the MWP. Do you see anyone growing grapes in Wales (England) today? Like they did in the MWP? No, didn't think so.

Anyway... the last two of these sites have existed for years, and are dedicated to effects of solar cycles on Earth's temperature variations. If you think you know anything about the climate debate but didn't know about these, then you have had your fingers stuck in your ears. For years.

http://wattsupwiththat.com              One of the best Climate Sense sites.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com      Real Science
http://climateaudit.org/                Climate Audit
http://www.climatedepot.com/            Climate Depot
http://nextgrandminimum.wordpress.com/  The Next Grand Minimum
http://iceagenow.info                   Ice Age Now

And more: http://everist.org/archives/links/     (several lists titled "__AGW_***")

LOLs at all the people who can't tell the difference between the term 'solar activity' and total solar radiance. So start waving their arms and running around yelling "Sun's output to drop 60%". How the hell is humankind supposed to survive .... with dimwits like those amongst us?

[Seekonk]

Global Dimming has been known for decades.  Not the sun, but reflection off particles like dust and clouds.  After 911there weren't aircraft flying for a while.  The lack of reflection off jets vapor trails was quite measurable and average temperatures rose.  Agriculture records go back more than a 100 years. Evaporation pan water loss records are a good indicator of solar radiation.  Evaporation depends more on radiation bouncing molecules off than temperature.  So we would be in a lot worse shape climate warming wise without all the jets and pollution.

[Marco]

Apparently the sun is cooling down and will have up to 60% less output by 2030/40.

Apply some critical thought to what you wrote there ...

[Marco]

A few AGW-skeptic sites below. Note that the term 'climate change denier' is a straw-man

In the other thread we had a Nobel Prize winner arguing based on Greenland's hottest and coldest years that the global temperature data was being forged ... they aren't straw men, they are easy targets who confuse the issue. One side has it's hockey sticks, the other side has it's denialists ... I imagine they'd both be happier without them, but neither is made of straw.

[mtdoc]

A few AGW-skeptic sites below. Note that the term 'climate change denier' is a straw-man, in that the AGW skeptics are all perfectly aware that climate changes all the time, always has and always will - a LOT.

Being a skeptic means having an open mind to evidence. A skeptic is willing to give up their skepticism once presented with evidence.  Scientists are skeptics - the nature of good science demands it.

Climate change (or if you prefer AGW) deniers are not skeptics but are ideologues pushing a political or philosophical agenda.  Typical AGW denial websites as you link are propaganda points generally funded by right wing political organizations and/or the fossil fuel industry.

At this point. in the face of 20+ years of overwhelming evidence,  unless woefully uninformed, calling oneself a  AGW skeptic is akin to calling oneself an evolution skeptic or a germ theory of infectious disease skeptic.

For a true scientist skeptic who appropriately gave up his skepticism once he looked at the evidence see below:

[donotdespisethesnake]

The funny thing is... although the deniers are utterly wrong on the science, AGW is actually good for long term human civilisation. A glacial period would pretty much wipe out modern civilisation. By inadvertently raising CO2 levels, we have postponed the next glacial period, possibly for several million years. If the polar ice gaps melt, then technically we will be out of the Ice Age completely.

That's a pretty remarkable achievement, even if it was accidental!

Of course, if we are not careful we might overcook it. However, a truly planetary scale intentional civilisation lasting thousands to millions of years would have to carefully manage CO2 levels, which would require controlled release or sequestration of CO2 as necessary.

I don't put a high chance on human civilization surviving at a high level, a super-volcano would probably wipe it out. We'll be back to pre-industrial agrarian existence. With all the easy to access resources gone, industrial civilization will never arise again. Perhaps that is the answer to the Fermi paradox (if intelligent aliens exist, why aren't they here yet?).

Life on Earth survives in a fine line between deep freeze and overheating, both of which have caused mass extinctions. Without those extinction events, would humans even have evolved?

[zapta]

Being a skeptic means having an open mind to evidence. A skeptic is willing to give up their skepticism once presented with evidence.  Scientists are skeptics - the nature of good science demands it.

The skepticism is not just about temperature change and its cause but also about the implications and the catastrophe projections by the alarmists.

Climate change (or if you prefer AGW) deniers are not skeptics but are ideologues pushing a political or philosophical agenda.  Typical AGW denial websites as you link are propaganda points generally funded by right wing political organizations and/or the fossil fuel industry.

That cherry picking. The alarmist side is heavy on propaganda and has vast financial interests. A skeptic climate catastrophe scientists has much more difficult to get funds.

At this point. in the face of 20+ years of overwhelming evidence,  unless woefully uninformed, calling oneself a  AGW skeptic is akin to calling oneself an evolution skeptic or a germ theory of infectious disease skeptic.

Well, the data doesn't match the prediction. No increase in storm, no increase in ocean floods, no reduction in food production and the planet gets greener, so it's not that simple.

For a true scientist skeptic who appropriately gave up his skepticism once he looked at the evidence see below:

Muller and is Berkeley Science is one of the more honest scientific operations in this area. My understanding is that he debunked the Mann/ICPP hockey stick graph, observed that temperature increased correlates with CO2 emissions, observed the 15-20 years hiatus but claims it is not statistically significant yet and as far as I know, didn't addressed the implications/catastrophe claims of the alarmists.

We need honest scientists, without the thick layer of propaganda and fear that the alarmists attach to it.