Articles Tagged "Web Article"

I shall rephrase this question. Is the sun a major factor in causing climate change?

The answer is YES and I shall endeavor to explain the current thinking on the subject.

Global warming is now more commonly called "climate change", which can include global cooling. Also, I don't wish to blame the sun because it can't help doing what suns and planetary systems have to do, by virtue of their existence. Do we blame dogs for barking?

The correlation of sun spot activity to climate was first reported by Sir William Herschel in 1801 who noticed a relationship between solar activity and the price of wheat, from the data given in Adam Smith's book "The Wealth of Nations" published in 1776.

by Mike Hoffman

During the past year the sun has become VERY quiet. What that means is that the number of sunspots has dropped to levels that we have not seen in about 100 years. The sun goes through cycles of about 11 years, where the numbers of sunspots spike and then drop off again. Here is a link that will show you what I mean: http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/sscycle.html You might notice a couple of things. Notice the low numbers of sunspots in the early 1800's. Do you know what the weather was like during this time frame? It was colder than normal worldwide. And during the 50-60 years before this graph there were almost no sunspots to speak of...that is called the Maunder Minimum, and it corresponds to the Little Ice Age. This would mean global cooling, which is scarier than global warming, although this trend of sunspots would have to continue for 50 years to approach something like that. So being the optimist that I am, I'm not worried yet. :)