U-Turn! Scientists At The PIK Potsdam Institute Now Warning Of A ‘Mini Ice Age’!
…Spotless Sun again. Even a little ice age won’t slow the Man-Made Climate Monster
…Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘Arguments for a forthcoming Grand Solar Minimum are increasingly compelling’
…The face of the Sun has ‘gone blank’ and Planet Earth could be heading for an ICE AGE
‘The sun goes blank again during the weakest solar cycle in more than a century’
By Meteorologist Paul Dorian – Vencore, Inc.
The latest solar image is completely spotless for the second time this month; image courtesy NASA
Overview
For the second time this month, the sun has gone completely blank. On June 4th, the sun went completely spotless for the first time since 2011 and that quiet spell lasted for about 4 days. Sunspot regions then reappeared for the next few weeks on a sporadic basis, but are once again completely missing from the surface of the sun. The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years. At first, the blankness will stretch for just a few days at a time, then it’ll continue for weeks at a time, and finally it should last for months at a time when the sunspot cycle reaches its nadir. The next solar minimum phase is expected to take place around 2019 or 2020. The current solar cycle is the 24th since 1755 when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began and is the weakest in more than a century with the fewest sunspots since cycle 14 peaked in February 1906.
Sunspot numbers for solar cycles 22, 23 and 24 which shows a clear weakening trend; courtesy Dr. David Hathaway, NASA/MSFC
Solar cycle 24
We are currently more than seven years into Solar Cycle 24 and it appears the solar maximum of this cycle was reached in April 2014 during a spike in activity (current location indicated by arrow). Going back to 1755, there have been only a few solar cycles in the previous 23 that have had a lower number of sunspots during its maximum phase. The peak of activity in April 2014 was actually a second peak in solar cycle 24 that surpassed the level of an earlier peak which occurred in March 2012. While many solar cycles are double-peaked, this is the first one in which the second peak in sunspot number was larger than the first peak. The sunspot number plot (above) shows a clear weakening trend in solar cycles since solar cycle 22 peaked around 1990.
While a weak solar cycle does suggest strong solar storms will occur less often than during stronger and more active cycles, it does not rule them out entirely. In fact, the famous “superstorm” known as the
‘Going solar isn’t green if you cut down tons of trees’: Six Flags ‘to level 66 acres of trees’ to make room for solar panels
It’s music to an environmentalist’s ears: Six Flags Great Adventure wants to power its park with solar energy by installing a solar panel farm on a portion of the 134 acres of land it owns in Jackson, New Jersey. But as the company spells out its plan, the needle scratches across the record: To make room for the panels, it plans to level 66 acres of trees.
The plan, the largest solar installation in New Jersey, will generate 21.4 megawatts of electricity, enough to power the amusement park’s Garden State facility. The company projects that the initiative will eliminate approximately 215,000 tons of CO2emissions over 15 years, a result that it says more than compensates for the loss of trees.
“We are excited about the fact that this project will reduce carbon emissions by 31 times more than the trees and shrubs that will be removed, and that we will become the world’s first solar-powered theme park,” said Kristin Siebeneicher, communications manager for Six Flags Great Adventure and Safari. She added, “This project is a positive for the environment and will not harm the habitats of threatened or endangered species, nor impair protected wetlands or watersheds.” (Six Flags says that at the moment, it does not plan to carry out similar projects at its other parks.)
Those opposed to the project say if Six Flags really wanted an environmentally friendly project, it would have placed the lion’s share of the solar panels on one of its parking lots, creating so-called canopies—structures with panels placed
Veteran German Geologist On Models: Forcing For Solar Activity Likely Will Have To Be ‘Drastically Increased’
…Watch: Morano on Fox on failed green energy stimulus: ‘This could be Solyndra 2 — The Heretic!’
‘Risk and Reward with Deirdre Bolton’ – Fox Business – April 22, 2016…
Current Solar Cycle Continues To Be The Weakest In Almost 200 Years
Special to Climate Depot
Current Solar Cycle Continues To Be The Weakest In Almost 200 Years …Planet At The Mercy Of The Sun
The following is the solar part of the latest post at Die kalte Sonne.
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By Frank Bosse and Fritz Vahrenholt
(Translated, edited by P Gosselin)
Our mother star was once again less active than normal in March. The observed solar sunspot number (SSN) was 54.9, which was about 2/3 of the mean value (82.5) for this month into the cycle. Here’s what the current solar cycle (SC) looks like so far:
Figure 1: The course of the current SC 24 since it began in December 2008, up to March 2016 (month 88) in red, the mean of the previous 23 cycles is shown in blue, and the similarLY (since month 73) behaving solar cycle number 5, which occurred from May 1789 to December 1810, shown in black.
The accumulated sunspot numbers this far into the cycle are plotted as the anomaly from the mean for each cycle. It shows that the current cycle is one of the weakest on record:
Figure 2: The accumulated sunspot numbers for each cycle, shown as the anomaly from the mean, 88 months into the respective cycle, going back to 1755.
SC 24 is the weakest since SCs 5, 6 and 7, a time known as the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830). It appears that the current cycle may very well wind up being weaker than SC 7 when it ends. Our sun is a very mediocre star of the spectral classification G2, similar to our neighbor star Alpha Centauri A. That is one of the reasons evolution had enough time to spawn intelligent life. A more active star most likely would not have allowed it due to the powerful solar winds that would “blow away” a planet’s atmosphere.
What follows is a beautiful picture from the Hubble space telescope:
Figure 3: The light blue star inside the “bubble” of dust and gases is very active. Through pressure it generates its stellar winds that shape a sphere that measures 10 light years in size. Near the surroundings of the star a planet with an atmosphere would be inconceivable. Photo source: NASA
So can single super
Obama admits ‘solar and wind’ not ‘regular, reliable’ without ‘good ways to store power’
Promoting a transition to renewable energy, President Obama says, “solar and wind don’t work unless we’ve got good ways to store power… so that it can be used in a regular, reliable way.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Thanks to the investments we made in the Recovery Act we’ve seen huge gains in our advanced battery industry. Because, solar and wind don’t work unless we’ve got good ways to store power when the sun’s out or the winds blowing so that it can be used in a regular, reliable way.”
President Obama Speaks on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Jacksonville, FL
February 26, 2016…