highwaystar101 said:
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This is some pretty good data. And this is something the sunspot theory can be tested against compared to average global temperatures:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solar_minimum09.html
The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.
2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days. Prompted by these numbers, some observers suggested that the solar cycle had hit bottom in 2008.
Maybe not. Sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days (87 percent).
It adds up to one inescapable conclusion: "We're experiencing a very deep solar minimum," says solar physicist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Compare to this data:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116163206.htm
2008 Global Temperature Ties As Eighth Warmest On Record
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2009) — The year 2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record for the Earth, based on the combined average of worldwide land and ocean surface temperatures through December, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. For December alone, the month also ranked as the eighth warmest globally, for the combined land and ocean surface temperature. The assessment is based on records dating back to 1880.
So do I consider the sunspot theory conclusive? No. Do I think it is plausible? Yes. Has it disproven the previous model? No, not until it has been further tested with more data and by more people.
I mean seriously, why shouldn't you be as skeptical about this sunsport theory as you are about the previous model? Scientists are always more skeptical about newer hypotheses than older ones. That's really how the scientific community works. The newer hypotheses that can endure intense scrutiny will survive, much like natural selection. The other ones that seem plausible at first but turn out to be a bunch of bunk do not.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
