Monthly Archives: September 2020

Solar Cycle 24 Ends-Solar Cycle 25 Begins


The government science agencies, NOAA and NASA determined that Solar Cycle 24 ended November 17, 2019 and Solar Cycle 25 began.  Solar Cycle 24 was the least active cycle in 100 years. There are several ways to express solar activity, but sunspot counting is the most frequently used method.  Solar Cycle 24 smoothed maximum count was 116.4 in April 2014.  The highest unsmoothed count was 146.1 in February 2014.  The smoothed count is the official number.  It is smoothed over 13 months. Six months before and six months after.  The smoothed count method is detailed at the end of this posting if you are curious.

The consensus of the experts regarding the predicted count of Cycle 25, at maximum, will be 115.  This prediction came from the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction  Panel made up international experts  according to PhysOrg posting .  In my May 2020 posting of a summary of expert’s predictions, NASA predicted that Cycle 25 would be the least active Cycle for 200 years.  NOAA however, predicted it would be more active than Solar Cycle 24.

The following chart compares Cycles 23, 24 and the predicted Cycle 25:

Some say that you can tell how active a cycle will be by the early formation of sunspots.  Lots of sunspots right away would mean an active cycle.  And conversely, slow development of sunspots would likely be the opposite. If that is true, perhaps you can make a prediction from the following chart courtesy of Solen info solar :

 

Virtually everything on this chart is Cycle 24.  This chart’s info box is probably very hard to read.  So let me describe the lines to you.  The dashed lines are the smoothed sunspot numbers.  The blue dashed line is the sum of the smoothed sunspots in the Northern and Southern solar polar fields. You can probably see that the blue dashed line crosses the solar max (the vertical red line) where the smoothed sunspots are at about 116.  But to make our predictions, we need to actually unsmoothed monthly sunspot reading.  That is the brown line. Here again this line is the sum of the Northern and Southern solar polar field sunspots.  In February, 2014, the monthly max of 146 was registered. Those numbers, 116 and 146, are the ones noted in the opening of this posting.

Comparing the brown line peak at 9 months after Solar Cycle 24 began, it looks like it is about a monthly 7 sunspots.  Doing the same for Cycle 25, at 9 months it looks like a monthly sunspot count of 7.  That would suggest to me that perhaps those that say 24 and 25 are going to be the same, may be right. But I would not make a bet on that.

As Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame Baseball player, was alleged to have said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

cbdakota

Smoothed Count Method.

The smoothed count is a 13-month averaged sunspot count using this Belgium’s formula:
Rs= (0.5 Rm-6 + Rm-5 + Rm-4 + Rm-3 + Rm-2 + Rm-1 + Rm + Rm+1 + Rm+2 + Rm+3 + Rm+4 + Rm+5 + 0.5 Rm+6 ) / 12
Rs = smoothed monthly sunspot count
Rm = One month’s actual sunspot count
The “-6” through “+6” appended to each Rm is the number of months before or after the month whose smoothed count is being calculated. The beginning and ending months in the formula are only given half the value of the others.*

Michael Shellenberger Exposes Global Warming Alarmists


The man-made global warming eco-alarmists are composed of a cabal of scientists and bureaucrats that use scare tactics to frighten the public into supporting them.  Their objective is to destroy capitalism and replace it with Marxism.  This is fact, not opinion. Their leadership have repeatedly said that their movement is not about environmentalism. To accomplish their objective, for years they have been making predictions designed to frighten the general populace.  The literature is filled with predictions of the apocalypse that have never happened.  One of their most recent one is that the world is doomed in something like 12 years if we do not empower them to do the things they say need to be done.  To these eco-alarmists, the cost of their plans is not an issue.

Why am I highlighting Shellenberger as he is not the only one that has challenged them? First, Shellenberger is a certified environmentalist. He was Time Magazine’s “Hero of the Environment”. He has testified before Congress as an expert and he was invited to be an expert reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next Assessment Report.  A summary of his background can be found by clicking here.

Secondly, despite what you may have read, skeptics are not the recipients of large sums of money.  The eco-alarmists are recipients almost all the money spent on global warming.  Anyone that does not toe the line, endangers the alarmist’s incomes.  There are few scientists that are willing to sacrifice their jobs by openly speaking out. Shellenberger insists that he believes in the man-made theory of global warming, but he cannot sit by and let the alarmist poison the scientific dialog. That is unacceptable.

I think that he represents many scientists that do not agree with the alarmists but are afraid to speak their mind.  Perhaps Shellenberger’s example will encourage others to follow his lead.   A Skeptic, on the other hand, might not be able to instill the needed courage.

I have purchased Shellenberger’s book. It is powerful.  I recommend it.  He has developed an outline of his book and the following are excerpts:

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Can Global Warming Be Used To Bring Down Capitalism –Part 3 Failed Predictions of the Apocalypse


The previous two posting show that the real purpose of the leaders is to take down Capitalism using man-made global warming as the cover.  They concluded that global warming probably would not likely be dramatic enough if they just reported their scientific findings.  So, let’s see what a spokesperson of this movement decided would have to be done:

“On one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but—which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts.”

“On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination.”

“That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So, we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula.”

Each of us has to decide what is the right balance between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.” Dr. Stephen Schneider, former IPCC Coordinating Lead Author, APS Online, Aug./Sep. 1996

Schneider knows that to be honest will not work.  He is obviously endorsing the scary scenarios.    And it worked.

Along the way, some of the scientists challenged Schneider’s plan.  For example, emeritus professor Daniel Botkin related this story:

Some colleagues who share some of my doubts argue that the only way to get our society to change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe, and that therefore it is all right and even necessary for scientists to exaggerate. They tell me that my belief in open and honest assessment is naïve.”

” Wolves deceive their prey, don’t they?’ one said to me recently. Therefore, biologically, he said, we are justified in exaggerating to get society to change.”
emeritus professor Daniel Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Wall St Journal 17 Oct 2007

 Obviously, they disregarded Botkin’s opinion.   But those scientists have left a body of exaggerated predictions that demonstrate how poorly their technique has been. Yet, however poorly their predictions have been, the media has fulfilled Schneider fondest wish without thinking twice.  For example, they not only do not care how many bad predictions Al Gore has made, and often they find the most alarming part of his prediction and exaggerate it even more.  There is a problem with the reporters.  Do you remember what Ben Rhodes said about the reporters that covered his press releases promoting the then President Obama’s pact with Iran regarding Iran’s plan to make nuclear weapons?: Rhodes braggingly said that he could get them to write anything he wanted because:

 “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Ok, so what about these predictions?  You are going to have to work a little to see them.  The work will be to click on links to these predictions.  There are many lists of failed prediction available, but alas, if I included them all, this would not be a posting, it might be more like a tome.

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