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So, are we in for a lucky break from climate change?


The Anti-Targ

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Latest news is global doom over the impending solar minimum and a drop in temperature, possibly triggering a mini-ice age. Are we going to inadvertently mitigate the severity of a mini-ice age because of our fossil fuel addiction?

http://www.ibtimes.com.au/sun-has-gone-totally-spotless-thats-bad-news-earth-1520410

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Climate experts have predicted that the Earth may be heading towards a mini Ice Age as the face of the sun has “gone blank.” The chilling warning is based on the analysis of the solar surface that is currently exhibiting a distinct lack of action. If this happens, it might be similar to the “Game of Thrones” winter, made popular by the show's catchphrase: "Winter is coming.”

A meteorologist at Vencore Weather, Paul Dorian, has stated that the sun has gone completely blank for the second time this month. He explained that this is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching. This would mean an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years. 

Generally, the face of the sun is marked by sunspots. However, scientists have spotted that the surface is totally smooth now. This may bring in a long shivering cold patch.

The lack of sunspot activity has spread fears that it will prompt the arrival of a very cold period on Earth like that of the Maunder Minimum, which started in 1645 and continued till about 1715. This period is known as the Little Ice Age.

Is there an argument for increasing carbon emissions? Or is that rolling the dice too much? 

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27 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Is there an argument for increasing carbon emissions? Or is that rolling the dice too much? 

Yeah my understanding is that if it does happen it'll be barely noticable, we're talking -0.1 to -0.3C in global warming terms, while we're currently looking at +2C or more in warming (the reality despite the Paris agreement).  

That and if it was more significant, and we did keep ramping up carbon emissions, the change when we came out of the minimum would be far, far more destructive than anything we're currently experiencing.

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no mini ice-age for us. this is a classic case of the media just hitting Wikipedia for information and jumping to conclusions. displaying a hygrogen-alpha pic of the sun next to one in the visual spectrum doesn't help matters either. go here for some perspective

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Good, that's what I was hoping would pop up.

I think in science communication these days the first question to answer in preparing any press releases is: could someone connect these findings to climate change? the second question is: If so, are they likely to get the connection wrong or wildly over stated?

Science communication is such an important thing, but almost every one is shit at it.

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6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Science communication is such an important thing, but almost every one is shit at it.

It's not that people are bad at it, there's just an obvious incentive towards sensationalism. How many people are going to get excited about a story titled "Fewer sunspots expected for a while" when compared to "We're probably entering a mini ice age"? With a few exceptions, the media's primary job is to get as many people to pay attention to them as possible, not to be absolutely accurate.

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Media companies write sensationalist headlines to draw attention and readership.  I have one phrase:

You provide the pictures... I'll provide the war.

 

 

 

This is nothing new.  We've had "yellow journalism" for as long as we've had journalism.

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I don't know much about the specifics of this case, but I assume solar activity is not too far out of the ordinary, if so then events like this would surely have been accounted for by climatologists when they created models, so I think it is safe to say not much of a long term effect on anything.

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fuck no, this is about controlling people's behavior, climate change is just a convenient and effective pretense

it's the perfect externality, nebulous enough to apply to any human activity they want to ban/mandate/fine/subsidize, combined with impacts supposedly dire enough that they can't be ignored, whatever the cost

 

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On Saturday, July 02, 2016 at 1:24 PM, Ser Arthur Hightower said:

I don't know much about the specifics of this case, but I assume solar activity is not too far out of the ordinary, if so then events like this would surely have been accounted for by climatologists when they created models, so I think it is safe to say not much of a long term effect on anything.

We have had one mini ice age that coincided with a dearth of sunspots.  Sunspots were not tracked before that so we have a sample size of one. This is not a good thing to base predictions on. Considering  that there is no mechanism that links Sunspots to weather it could most easily be coincidence.  

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On 01/07/2016 at 10:01 PM, Altherion said:

It's not that people are bad at it, there's just an obvious incentive towards sensationalism. How many people are going to get excited about a story titled "Fewer sunspots expected for a while" when compared to "We're probably entering a mini ice age"? With a few exceptions, the media's primary job is to get as many people to pay attention to them as possible, not to be absolutely accurate.

But the thing is, the press release by the Royal Astronomical Society is really the root cause of the problem in that it did not provide a correct context for the non-science media to properly understand the implications of the lack of sunspots. I may be being overly charitable to the motives of the Royal Astronomical Society, but it appears to me that they fundamentally failed in the principles of good communication by making a connection between the mini ice age and what's happening now without explaining the link or lack thereof. This opened the door for the popular press to totally misinterpret things and to think that suggesting a mini ice age is on the way is a legitimate interpretation of the press release. And you can pretty much forgive anyone for coming to that conclusion if they only read the press release and they don't have an understanding of the effect of sunspot activity on climate.

It was irresponsible for the RAS to bring up the mini ice age and leave it hanging there without explaining the relationship (or lack thereof). So in this case I don't really blame the popular media for coming to the wrong conclusion and causing a big stir. And then of course the Scientist who did the original sunspot research, actually started to agree with the popular media predictions of a new cooling period. And she being an expert on the sun, is not likely to be an expert on the sun's cyclic effect on climate. So this creates another problem with science communication whereby a scientist talks outside their area of expertise, but because that are a "respected scientist" what they say is reported as authoritative. Scientists need to make sure they only talk publicly within their field, or if they are going to talk outside their field they should be very clear that they are not an expert in that field and so they are talking as a lay person in this regard.

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5 hours ago, Criston of House Shapper said:

Isn't a minimum like this happening regularly every 11 years or something?

Not exactly. There is indeed a solar cycle which averages roughly 11 years (though some have been as short as 9 years and others nearly 14). However, there are longer term trends which determine the amplitudes of these cycles and occasionally are the dominant factor in how the sun affects us. The most famous of these is probably the Maunder Minimum, but there are many others. There are also short-term events (e.g. solar storms) which are only vaguely related to the cycles, but can also dominate our interaction with the sun for the time that they are there.

The sun is a fascinating and scary entity: the ancients were mistaken in calling it a god, but not by much. It is ridiculously large and powerful compared to anything human and tiny perturbations in its behavior can have massive effects on us.

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