I saw this article, and wondered why the science community is not more concerned with actual proof of an impending Maunder Minimum, than they are with a theoretical possibility of man-induced CO2 causing warming?
If the CO2 humans produce will really help retain some warmth in our atmosphere, wouldn’t we see this as desirable, since we are heading into a cool solar cycle, which could last 300 years?
According to a study by the University of California San Diego, the sun will begin to have diminished magnetism, fewer sunspots, and produce less ultraviolet radiation starting in 2020. The event, known as the “grand minimum,” is reportedly triggered at random points by fluctuations in the sun’s magnetic field and is expected to last for about 50 years.
Researchers are comparing the sun’s upcoming cooling cycle to the last recorded sunspot outage which occurred over 300 years ago. Called the Maunder Minimum, the drop-off in sunspot activity took place from 1645 to 1715 and was part of a period known as the “Little Ice Age.” That cold spell is believed to have lasted from 1300 to 1850 and saw a huge expansion in mountain glaciers as well as large portions of Europe frozen solid.
While the report expects the sun to be nearly seven percent cooler than it was during the Maunder Minimum, UC San Diego says the world has gotten so much warmer in recent years that the effect will not be as severe.
“A future grand solar minimum could slow down but not stop global warming,” Physicist Dan Lubin said in the university’s new release.
What “rigor behind the Maunder Minimum” could there be? We are talking about a repeat of the LIA. The reduced solar activity of our sun is an observable fact, and its affects on the planet are known, it’s not theoretical that a a 7% reduction in sun activity will result in cooling our planet.
The assumptions being made about the possible effects of AGW are also a prediction.
Dan Lublin is making a guess that the theoretical AGW from human-induced CO2 will theoretically over power the 7% loss in the sun’s warmth to our planet.
The point I see here, is that we know reduced energy from the sun will make the planet cooler,. We are currently experiencing the lowest solar activity in over 100 years.
A cooling sun, and the effects this will have on our planet, this is the part I’m saying is not theoretical.
The greenhouse effects of CO2 are also not theoretical. Taking observed data and making predictive models that are either supported or falsified by phenomena (i.e. strengthen or weaken a theory) is kind of what science does.
And the effects increased CO2 in the atmosphere have on our planet is also not theoretical.
You’re trying to pretend the effects of the Maunder Minimum are somehow “more well known” and thus “more scientific” than the effects of AGW.
They’re not.
The same climate scientists that study the effects of the sun’s relative radiance and heating on the earth’s climate are the ones studying the effects of increased greenhouse gases on the earth’s climate.
The same scientists that study the effects of CO2 on earth’s climate.
I understand it serves a talking point for you to pretend climate scientists ignore the sun’s output in their climate models…but they do not. They simply do not.
wait… you are serious. You are telling me… .me, who has studied radiometry in both my Bachelors and Masters degrees, taken more radiomentric measurements than I can even remember, can draw Planck blackbody radiation curves in my sleep, and tell you where in the spectrum CO2 absorbs and emits radiation through resonance… you are telling me that knowledge of the sun’s role in the heating of the earth is not new.
