By Kenneth Chang, New York Times

The Sun is still blank (mostly). Ever since Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, a German astronomer, first noted in 1843 that sunspots burgeon and wane over a roughly 11-year cycle, scientists have carefully watched the Sun’s activity. In the latest lull, the Sun should have reached its calmest, least pockmarked state last fall.

Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century - 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more. “It’s been as dead as a doornail,” David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said a couple of months ago.

Most yearly sunspotless days since 1849. 2009 through July 20, 2009. 2009 is likely to enter the top dozen years along with 2007 and 2008. So far this minimum has had 663 spotless days according to spacweather.com as of July 20.

The Sun perked up in June and July, with a sizeable clump of 20 sunspots earlier this month. Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum. For operators of satellites and power grids, that is good news. The same roiling magnetic fields that generate sunspot blotches also accelerate a devastating rain of particles that can overload and wreck electronic equipment in orbit or on Earth.

A panel of 12 scientists assembled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now predicts that the May 2013 peak will average 90 sunspots during that month. That would make it the weakest solar maximum since 1928, which peaked at 78 sunspots. During an average solar maximum, the Sun is covered with an average of 120 sunspots. But the panel’s consensus “was not a unanimous decision,” said Douglas A. Biesecker, chairman of the panel. One member still believed the cycle would roar to life while others thought the maximum would peter out at only 70.

Among some global warming skeptics, there is speculation that the Sun may be on the verge of falling into an extended slumber similar to the so-called Maunder Minimum, several sunspot-scarce decades during the 17th and 18th centuries that coincided with an extended chilly period.

Most solar physicists do not think anything that odd is going on with the Sun. With the recent burst of sunspots, “I don’t see we’re going into that,” Dr. Hathaway said last week. Still, something like the Dalton Minimum - two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots - lies in the realm of the possible, Dr. Hathaway said. (The minimums are named after scientists who helped identify them: Edward W. Maunder and John Dalton.)

With better telescopes on the ground and a fleet of Sun-watching spacecraft, solar scientists know a lot more about the Sun than ever before. But they do not understand everything. Solar dynamo models, which seek to capture the dynamics of the magnetic field, cannot yet explain many basic questions, not even why the solar cycles average 11 years in length. Predicting the solar cycle is, in many ways, much like predicting the stock market. A full understanding of the forces driving solar dynamics is far out of reach, so scientists look to key indicators that correlate with future events and create models based on those.

For example, in 2006, Dr. Hathaway looked at the magnetic fields in the polar regions of the Sun, and they were strong. During past cycles, strong polar fields at minimum grew into strong fields all over the Sun at maximum and a bounty of sunspots. Because the previous cycle had been longer than average, Dr. Hathaway thought the next one would be shorter and thus solar minimum was imminent. He predicted the new solar cycle would be a ferocious one.

Instead, the new cycle did not arrive as quickly as Dr. Hathaway anticipated, and the polar field weakened. His revised prediction is for a smaller-than-average maximum. Last November, it looked like the new cycle was finally getting started, with the new cycle sunspots in the middle latitudes outnumbering the old sunspots of the dying cycle that are closer to the equator. After a minimum, solar activity usually takes off quickly, but instead the Sun returned to slumber. “There was a long lull of several months of virtually no activity, which had me worried,” Dr. Hathaway said.

A quiet cycle is no guarantee no cataclysmic solar storms will occur. The largest storm ever observed occurred in 1859, during a solar cycle similar to what is predicted. Back then, it scrambled telegraph wires. Today, it could knock out an expanse of the power grid from Maine south to Georgia and west to Illinois. Ten percent of the orbiting satellites would be disabled. A study by the National Academy of Sciences calculated the damage would exceed a trillion dollars. But no one can quite explain the current behavior or reliably predict the future. “We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.” Read full story here.

Edited by Lord Monckton, SPPI

SPPI’s authoritative Monthly CO2 Report for June 2009 reveals that global hurricane activity is at a 50-year low, casting doubt on the accuracy of projections that “global warming” would lead to more intense hurricanes. These and other disasters that are said to be happening are not happening. Hurricane activity graph, page 3.

Larger image here.

It is time to close NASA down. This month’s editorial comment cites yet another series of outright falsehoods uttered by one of NASA’s team of rent-seeking, fat-cat, “global warming” profiteers, and recommends that NASA be disbanded. Page 3.

The IPCC assumes CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but, for almost eight years, CO2 concentration has headed straight for only 575 ppmv by 2100. This alone halves all of the IPCC’s temperature projections. Pages 5-6.

Since 1980 temperature has risen at only 2.5F (1.5C)/century, not the 7 F (3.9C) the IPCC imagines. Pages 7-8.


Larger image here.

Sea level rose just 8 inches in the 20th century and has been rising at just 1 ft/century since 1993. Sea level has scarcely risen since 2006. Also, the oceans have been cooling since 2005, raising questions about “global warming” theory. Pages 9-10.

Arctic sea-ice extent is about the same as it has been at this time of year in the past decade. In the Antarctic, sea ice extent - on a 30-year rising trend - reached a record high in 2007. Global sea ice extent shows little trend for 30 years. Pages 11-13.

Larger image here.

Solar activity at last shows signs of recovery. The three-year solar minimum may at last be ending. Pages 14-15.

The (very few) benefits and the (very large) costs of the Waxman/Markey Bill are illustrated at Pages 16-18.

Science Focus this month studies the supposed effects of “global warming” on animals and birds. Pages 19-20.

A Special Report reprises Dr. Bill Gray’s recent memo showing why “global warming” is overstated tenfold. Pages 21-27.

An open letter from several eminent scientists to the US Congress sounds a strong warning against alarm. Page 28.

As always, there’s our “global warming” ready reckoner, and our monthly selection of scientific papers. Pages 29-33.

Extreme Autumn and Winter Storms of the British Isles
Allan et al. (2009) write that “one area of growing concern in climate science is the impact that global warming could have through modulations of the nature and characteristics of naturally occurring extreme events, such as severe mid-latitude storms”. They report that a recent study of a 47-year storm database (Alexander et al., 2005) “showed an increase in the number of severe storms in the 1990s in the United Kingdom”, but that “it was not possible to say with any certainty that this was either indicative of climatic change or unusual unless it was seen in a longer-term context” To provide that longer-term context, Allan et al. (2009) extended the database of Alexander et al. back to 1920, almost doubling the length of the record, after which they reanalyzed the expanded dataset for the periods of boreal autumn (October, November, December) and winter (January, February, March).

Larger image here.

Finally, a Technical Note explains how we compile our state-of-the-art CO2 and temperature graphs. Page 34.

See full report here.

See full collection of Lord Monckton papers here.

By Chip Knappenberger

“The current debate has proven one thing very clearly. The U.S. climate debate is not about saving the climate. It is about regulation for its own sake in the name of “saving the climate.” This fact should give pause to everyone who really cares about human welfare. Cap-and-trade is at odds with the economic wealth needed to adapt to a future that cannot be centrally planned by politicos.” ”Cap-and-Trade and the Temple of Enron,” MasterResource.

A New York Times headline (print edition) read: “House Backs Bill, 219-212, to Curb Global Warming.” But if the 219 House members who voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (HR 2454, aka the Waxman-Markey climate bill) thought they were casting a vote to “curb global warming,” they were sadly mistaken. As I have shown, the climate impact of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions prescribed under Waxman-Markey is very small - best case it reduces projected global warming by less than one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050 and only about one-third of a a degree F by century’s end - a reduction that is scientifically meaningless. Many Representatives, in their pre-vote statements on the House floor, pointed this out, and perhaps many of the dissenting vote casters took this fact to heart.

However, while many of the opposition speakers mentioned the paucity of climate impacts from the emissions reduction measures, the great majority of the supporting speeches focused on energy security and domestic job creation (a contention vehemently challenged by the dissenters) and left the influence on the climate out of it! Undoubtedly, they knew full well that it would be inconsequential.

The only thing that the bill’s supporters could muster up about climate is that U.S. actions were necessary in order to convince the governments of China and India to curtail their emissions (the countries that hold the biggest keys to the rate of future greenhouse emissions growth and thus climate change).

But this is a peculiar argument for passing legislation that will impact the daily lives of each and every resident of the U.S. in ways which we probably will not like (higher energy costs) and which will produce no direct climate effect. Why offer it up as a reason for the governments of India and China (and other developing countries around the world) to impose the same (likely unpopular) restrictions on their citizenry? Opposition speakers rightly referred to this as the see-we’re-jumping-off-a-cliff-won’t-you-all-follow approach.

But if the developing countries do not follow us (after all they are developing countries and limiting energy consumption is not particularly good for development), the best we have to hope for is that while the U.S. limits its energy consumption as it tries to develop new non-greenhouse gas emitting technologies to prepare us for the future, the rest of the world, using a proven and for the near future (if not longer) plentiful fuel sources, doesn’t pass us by - economically and technologically (i.e. they develop new energy technologies in the course of their growth and development).

By passing the bill, the U.S. House of Representatives indicates its support for the establishment of an artificial scarcity of fossil fuels - legislating that fossil fuels are “running out” (i.e., the ever-tightening “cap") and forcing us to try to use something else (all the while hoping that this doesn’t negatively impact our economy). The idea is to spark innovation in response to a dwindling supply. While it is certainly true that hard times lead to innovation, it is certainly not true that all innovation grows from hard times. The House has decided to impose hard energy times on us now (as if things aren’t hard enough already), rather than wait to see if they develop on their own (at some time in the not-too-near future).

Now, the debate moves to the Senate. Hopefully these 100 individuals will not be motivated by the “curbing global warming” canard - because, as I have shown, whatever they decide, America’s future energy choices will not alter the course of global climate. Any sacrificial song must have different verse.
Read story here.

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The Morality of Climate Change: (Uploaded 18 July 2009)
One has to know all the facts to determine the morality of an issue. John Christy on CO2Science.org, below and enlarged here.

See this town hall attack on Mike Castle, one of the Republicans who voted FOR Cap-and-Trade below.