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That was junk reporting. > not predicting a 60 percent drop in the light and heat emitted by the Sun, but a drop in magnetic activity in the Sun. This has only
by hartror 11y ago
That was junk reporting.
> not predicting a 60 percent drop in the light and heat emitted by the Sun, but a drop in magnetic activity in the Sun. This has only a marginal effect on the Sun’s light/heat output.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/07/14/global_cooling_no_were_not_headed_for_a_mini_ice_age.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/07/14/global_c...
- mturmon 11y agoPhil Plait, who does the Bad Astronomy blog, did a well-calibrated and respectful job with that piece. Phil is well hooked in to the solar community, so he is a good person to be consulting. Thanks for linking to it. Basically, the uproar was caused by a very speculative theory [1] that solar magnetic activity might be decreasing in the coming decades. This concept is not well-established; in fact, it is better-described as a highly speculative theory coming from a data extrapolation by a very small group of solar researchers, at one institution, over the last year or so. But even if their solar claims turn out to be true -- very big if given their methodology -- they (A) can't (and don't) link their magnetic claims to irradiance, and (B) the irradiance effect of sunspot/magnetic change is strongly believed to be quite small relative to other effects anyway, especially anthropogenic ones. [1] It was published in ApJ, but here is a relatively open link: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/266799418_PREDICTION_OF_SOLAR_ACTIVITY_FROM_SOLAR_BACKGROUND_MAGNETIC_FIELD_VARIATIONS_IN_CYCLES_21-23 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/266799418_PREDICTION...