Of course you know if it keeps raining the envirozealots will blame that on global warming too!

It was a great read. You had great research. I like staying informed, especially when I’m being lied to by people like AlGore. I have this web site book marked so I can take a peek at the solar happenings myself. Sunspot 1019 is pretty nice, but so far it’s kinda quiet.

It’s funny, I live in the south, Georgia to be precise. It has rained like crazy this year. Lake Lanier is almost full again. People say they’ve never seen it rain like this. I have. When I was younger, thunderstorms rolled through almost every afternoon. I believe our weather is cyclical, always has been.

Galileo first started plotting sunspot appearances in 1612. Thus folks in the 1800’s knew that the Little Ice Age corresponded to a period of few sunspots and they assumed that the connection was causal.

Only later was the “solar constant” discovered: the fact that the sun’s total energy output does not change significantly with fluctuations in solar activity. That led to a drop-off in thinking that sunspots mattered, but the 1800’s was kind of a golden-age for investigation of the sunspot-climate link.

This was actually pursued through the science of economics. There were no available temperature records, but in 1801 an astronomer named Herschel theorized that if an active sun meant extra heat, the wheat harvests would be large when solar activity was up, which would drive wheat prices down, and they DID have wheat price records.

These were the first econometric studies ever done. They confirmed that wheat prices did indeed tend to be low when solar activity was high, and high when solar activity was low.

Eventually scientists realized that sunspots were a magnetic phenomenon, so that while the sun’s energy output remained almost constant, there was still an avenue by which solar activity could conceivably affect global temperature. Fluctuations sunspot activity actually coincide with huge changes in the solar-magnetic flux, which might somehow affect our climate, though no one knew by what mechanism the solar wind might be affecting temperature.

We now have a solid theory of how that mechanism works: Henrik Svensmark’s theory that by ionizing the atmosphere, Galactic Cosmic Radiation seeds clouds formation. When the solar wind blows the GCR away, it in-effect blows the clouds away, giving the earth a sunburn.

Yes, I know other factors could be at play on mars but one of those factors is NOT HUMANS nor LIFE(as we know it) for that matter.

I am not against being REASONABLY environmentally responsible and cleaning up where we can instead of doing what we used to do (i.e. just dumping tons of chemicals in local rivers, lakes, etc)

BUT to sit and blame this trend SOLELY on human activity is just ludicrous. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that solar flares/solar activity can affect temperatures here on earth.

It only takes standing next to a campfire and having someone add a log to it to figure that out.
Or … maybe the gloBULL warming fruitcakes are right – maybe the campfire just seems warming because Susie the soccer mom start up her SUV in the parking lot

We’ve long said that CO2 is NOT the driver behind global warming. So, WHY OH WHY should be embark on a cap and trade program that will cost trillions of dollars?

Surely not to save the planet so there must be some other reason Obama and the Dems want to do it.

What could that reason be?

Actually, someone snarked this or something like it at Ace’s place some months back, but it’s still appropriate now.