Warming Hysteria: Sunspots and Politics

"Astronomers: 'Sun's output may decline significantly inducing another little ice age on the Earth'
'Maunder Minimum will arrive in time to save planet from utterly foolish global carbon tax'"

That's the headline by Marc Morano,
http://climatedepot.com/a/2452/Astronomers-Suns-output-may-decline-significantly-inducing-another-little-ice-age-on-the-Earth

Marc quoted a number of solar physicists (Dr. William Livingston, Dr. Matthew Penn, Dr. Cornelius de Jager, etc.) who declared that

"regardless of the relation to the sunspot cycles, magnetic intensity in sunspots is decreasing and if this continues in the same way as it has for the last 15 years, the Sun will be devoid of sunspots in five years time: overall the Sun's energetic output will decline significantly inducing another little ice age on the Earth."

This is another significant scientific finding. There is too much science about the Sun, and even the cosmic rays coming from outside our solar system, that the public and policy makers especially, should consider and understand. Over-reliance in blaming carbon emission is too simplistic. There is heavy politics and rent-seeking in carbon regulations like carbon tax, carbon cap and trade, carbon offset, etc.

But as sure as the Sun rising tomorrow and everyday after, the truth about the Sun-climate link will come out.

When that time comes, I really wish that the United Nations, the mother of all climate alarmism bureaucracies in the planet, will be significantly defanged. I also wish that many of its agencies and programs be abolished. All they do is paint all the scariest projections about the planet and its inhabitants, in exchange for more tax money, more political and regulatory powers, and more expensive global meetings.
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As of August 13, NASA’s http://spaceweather.com/ has this tally in number of sunspot-less (i.e., zero sunspot) days:

Current Stretch: 34 days
2009 total: 176 days (78 percent)
Since 2004: 687 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

Since 01 January 2009 up to August 13, 176 out of 225 days or 78 percent of all days have zero sunspot. This is very significant. In terms of percentage of days with not a single sunspot, this year is already in the top three since 1849. If current slumber of the sun will continue for the rest of the year, we should be hitting 80 to 85 percent of zero sunspot days.

Over the past 160 years, the top five years with highest sunspot-less days were:

1. 1913, 311 days, 85 percent
2. 1901, 284 days, 78 percent
3. 1878, 278 days, 76 percent
4. 2008, 266 days, 73 percent
5. 1912, 253 days, 69 percent

Why is a prolonged stretch of zero sunspot important?

Long number of few or zero sunspot days means (a) weak solar magnetic field, weak solar wind, (b) more galactic cosmic rays enter the solar system including the Earth, weak solar wind to push them away, (c) more low-lying clouds are enhanced and formed, lots of sunlight are blocked, and (d) global cooling results. Such cooling has nothing or very little to do with CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

There are a number of proofs for the current global cooling. For instance, July 2009 was the coldest July or 2nd coldest July on record for at least 10 states in the US, see “July’s climate: chilly USA, torrid globe.”

Here in the Philippines, cloudy skies have been the norm since last year up to the present, which is consistent with the above-mentioned causation between few sunspots and low-lying clouds. The summer months of March-April-May this year were sidestepped by the prolonged “cold front” that started in late 2008 to April this year. The rainy season came 1 ½ month earlier, in mid-April, instead of the usual July. A number of farms planted to “summer crops” like tomato, onions and water melon were destroyed because of such early onset of the rains.

For the first half of August this year, two typhoons (local names “Jolina” and “Kiko”, international name of the latter was “Morakot”) pummeled the northern part of the country. Morakot killed at least 22 people in the Philippines despite not hitting a landfall, while it killed several hundred people in Taiwan. Too much rainfall eroded mountainsides that were previously thought to be stable, causing widespread landslides.

Meanwhile, the UN IPCC is preparing to produce its 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and the UN FCCC is busy conducting various global meetings prior to the big meeting in Copenhagen this coming December for a “post-Kyoto Protocol” agreements to drastically cut global emission of the “evil” gas, carbon dioxide (CO2).

Until the IPCC and many governments later demonized CO2 as an evil gas that causes global warming, this gas is known in the biological sciences as a very useful gas. It is the gas that we humans exhale, that our pets and farm animals exhale, and it is the gas that our vegetables, fruits, flowers and trees need when they produce their own food via photosynthesis. It is actually plant food.

Now the useful gas is pictured as evil that must be drastically reduced globally. Can environmental bureaucrats and politicians do it? Yes, they think they can. That is why they invented the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN FCCC), Kyoto Protocol, the various expensive global meetings to succeed Kyoto, and the various “anti-climate change” bureaucracies in so many governments, both national and local.

Their grand design is plain environmental regulation. They forget or they deliberately overlook the Sun, inter-planetary orbit around the sun, galactic cosmic rays, volcanoes, the ocean, and other natural causes. For them, only the evil CO2 matters.

Why is this so? Political science, not climate science, provides the answer. Environmental bureaucrats, politicians and their militant environmentalist group backers cannot regulate the Sun and its solar wind. They cannot regulate cosmic rays that come from outside the solar system. They cannot regulate volcanoes and ocean that contribute to emission and/or depository of certain greenhouse gases. But they can regulate carbon emission. So they play the global hero by demonizing this gas and reducing their emission, by regulating and curtailing human economic activities that emit this “evil”.

I believe that we should deal with soot, methane, CFC, lead, carbon monoxide, particulates, mercury, etc. These harmful chemicals and gases have both short-term and long-term negative effects on human health. We should have clean air, clean water, clean environment, mainly for their own sake. But not to "save" the planet because the planet is never in danger.

Because of the successful demonization of CO2 by the UN, many governments and the big environmentalist groups, a non-commodity like the gas that we exhale suddenly becomes a multi-billion dollar commodity.

The carbon cap and trade system was worth US$63 billion in 2007 and US$128 billion in 2008. That was cap and trade among private corporations alone in the EU and Japan. Not included there are corporations in the US, Canada, Australia, China, Brazil, India, Korea, etc. because some or all of them were either not signatory to the Kyoto Protocol yet, or were not covered by the deep carbon emission cut. Also not included are carbon taxes imposed by various governments. In the US for instance, the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill is estimated to bring home about US$5.7 trillion in the US federal coffer from 2012 to 2030, or US$317 billion/year in federal carbon taxes alone. These are plain carbon rent-seeking.

The trend in the current prolonged solar cycle 23 points to an even weaker solar cycles 24 and 25 (others say that we are in solar cycle 24 already), according to some known astrophysicists, geologists and meteorologists. This points to the Earth entering a little ice age period similar to what happened during the Dalton Minimum (two centuries ago) or the even cooler and longer Maundeer Minimum (three centuries ago). When this happens, people in the rich world will soon be praying for more gases that can help warm the planet. When those temperate countries in the north will have snow from November to June and only four to five months of no-snow, I am sure they will be praying for more carbon emission, if CO2 indeed causes global warming.

Among the useful websites to see the Sun-climate link and other hard sciences are:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/ by David Watts
http://www.icecap.us/ by Joe D’Aleo
http://climatedepot.com/ by Marc Morano
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ by Bob Ferguson, Willie Soon and Lord Moncton
http://www.weatheraction.com/ by Piers Corbyn
http://www.davidarchibald.info/ by David Archibald

There are many other sites actually that discuss the hard science of various external factors that influence the global climate. The above list is just among my favorite sites. Some sites, they just watch the current solar cycle, monitoring sunspots, magnetic field and the ap index. If one will compare the scientific rigor and research of those sites, and compare them with UN IPCC and climate alarmists’ sites, one will easily see the difference of how limited the scope of research of the latter.
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Defeat of carbon cap and trade bill in Australian Senate

Yesterday, the Australian Senate voted 42-30 junking the carbon cap and trade bill. It is still reverberating in many countries around the world, especially those that have similar legislative proposals to regulate and reduce the "evil" gas, CO2.

Partly a product of unlikely alliance between the Greens (wanted deeper carbon cuts) and the realists (no cuts). It's like James Hansen of NASA, among the top global warming alarmists today, rejecting the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill (despite having won in the lower House) because it's not making deep cuts enough.

Sometimes the rabid Greens and alarmists become too irrational that they defy even minor compromise, and worse, they defy hard science. The Sun, cosmic rays, geological changes (like volcanic eruption), the ocean, other natural factors are insignificant for them. Only the "evil" CO2 is significant for them, and the need to regulate it. And that's where Statist greed comes in.

Meanwhile, I hope that the US Senate will reject the W-M cap and trade bill. Obama and the Dems are having a hard time selling their health reform agenda, they got very little time to further scare the public and have it passed in the Senate.

Trivia: one thing i notice, the US legislators think they are encuclopedia readers.
The Waxman-Market bill is almost 1,400 pages long.
The current health care reform bill is 1,000+ pages long.

there should be some logic behind this, something like:
if you can't persuade them with terse and straight logic, confuse them.

Below is one of several news reports.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE57C0FL20090813

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's carbon trading laws were defeated in parliament's upper house Senate on Thursday, leaving the government's plan to curb greenhouse-gas emissions in disarray and raising speculation of an early snap election.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the government would submit the package of 11 bills to the Senate a second time before year-end. Thursday's vote was defeated by 42 to 30, meaning the government needs seven more votes to get the plan through.