The Sun is Dimming--Meteoroligical Scientists are Being Forced to Fight for Funding to Monitor the Harbingers of a New (little) Ice Age

The sun is in a "funk"--unsure of what to do, when to kick into its new cycle: Solar Cycle 24.

The last such solar funk corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. While there were competing causes for the climatic shift—including the Black Death’s depopulation of tree-cutting Europeans and, more substantially, increased volcanic activity spewing ash into the atmosphere—the sun’s lethargy likely had something to do with it.

...The planet’s climate is a messy picture, with all sorts of influences and feedback cycles that need to be taken into account. In order to build more accurate computer models, scientists need to understand both anthropogenic factors and the link between the sun and our planet, Tapping says. To help get at the sun’s influence, he and other researchers connect Earth’s temperature with historic sunspot records of sky watchers from Europe and China, as well as with carbon-14 isotopes­—residue from cosmic rays delivered by the sun’s magnetic field—found in tree rings. To understand our role in climate change,” he says, “we need to understand the natural process.”....“Things [new solar research telescopes] are all on hold due to the consequences of the huge science funding cuts in the U.S. and the U.K.,” Tapping says. “This is impacting other partner countries because of the possible need to cover financial holes. Nobody is clear yet as to how this will unfold so they are hanging onto their wallets, for the moment.”

PopMech

At least one veteran meteorologist is predicting the start of a global cooling, based upon satellite measured temperature trends combined with recent global weather patterns. The reluctance of the Sun to go ahead and do its job is simply an additional reason to be concerned.

Update:

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."___IBD

Global cooling is a potentially civilisation-stopping development--depending upon how far it goes. It could be a genuine catastrophe--in contrast to current overfunded CO2 hysteria. Scientific funding agencies have become steeped in a neo-Lysenkoism of climate, that is quickly taking on fascist overtones in terms of lack of tolerance of debate and dissent.

Westerners are being failed by their governments and scientific foundations. It is within the ability of many of the world's "concerned billionaires" to make up governmental deficits in funding for the vital heresies. Unfortunately, men such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, etc. cannot be bothered with such things.

The Real Climate Debate: A Russian Point of View

Russian scientists failed to get the memo that told them the climate debate was over. I suppose they recognise Lysenkoism when they see it.

The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.

Source

Notice that the Russian academician makes predictions which can be falsified within the next ten--even five years. Contrast that level of confidence with computer models giving predictions for 90 or 100, or 1000s of years in the future. Long distance forecasting is too much like Nostradamus. I prefer scientific hypotheses that can be falsified within a reasonable timeframe. Whatever you may call unfalsifiable theorising--using computers or not,--it is not science.

Via Green Watch

Update: The Sun Still Heats the Earth

Not that this will help anyone win a Nobel Peace Prize, but a recent research paper claims that the best evidence shows that the sun is responsible for at least 50% of any recent warming on Earth (since 1900).

A phenomenological thermodynamic model is adopted to estimate the relative contribution of the solar-induced versus anthropogenic-added climate forcing during the industrial era. We compare different preindustrial temperature and solar data reconstruction scenarios since 1610. We argue that a realistic climate scenario is the one described by a large preindustrial secular variability (as the one shown by the paleoclimate temperature reconstruction by Moberg et al. (2005)) with the total solar irradiance experiencing low secular variability (as the one shown by Wang et al. (2005)). Under this scenario the Sun might have contributed up to approximately 50% (or more if ACRIM total solar irradiance satellite composite (Willson and Mordvinov, 2003) is implemented) of the observed global warming since 1900.

Jnl Geophysical Research (full pdf)

Here is commentary from Lubos Motl:

That means that small changes of the Sun can lead to significant changes of the climate. With the preferred magnitude of variability as given by Moberg et al. 2005, one of their conclusions is that that Sun is responsible for roughly 50% of the observed 20th century warming. Not too surprisingly, if they choose Mann 2003 instead of Moberg 2005, the calculated effect of the Sun becomes negligible.

motls.blogspot

The problem with the CAGW climate orthodoxy is that it does not tolerate debate. By prematurely and arbitrarily declaring that "the debate is over" and "the science is settled," the archbishops of orthodoxy invite their "true believers" to go on witch hunts against the diabolical "deniers"--climate infidels and heretics. Current climate alarmism is like nothing so much as Lysenkoism--the pseudo-evolutionary biological "orthodoxy" of the late Soviet Union.

The closed-minded dogmatism of the climate orthodoxy would surprise no one who ever lived under a Nazi or Communist regime. Nor does it surprise anyone who has managed to recover from an academic lobotomy or psychological neotenic incompence.

More background on the paper by Nicola Scafetta

Burning the Heretics

Unbelievable.

Also, see this perspective.