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tallbloke says:
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 24, 2011 at 11:46 am
The easy way out is just to accept my analysis.This rebel isn’t ready to be assimilated. I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up, just like you.
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Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:08 pm
This rebel isn’t ready to be assimilated. I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up, just like you.
As you said: “I think you should consider letting other peoples ideas and data speak too”,
but I take it then that you would rather continue with blinkers on, instead of seriously looking at the “actual empirical observations”. This was, of course, predictable, although deplorable. -
Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 24, 2011 at 4:08 pm
I have my own internally consistent pet theory with data to back it up
Presumably that data involves solar activity in some form [otherwise it is of no interest]. Most likely the sunspot number is part of your data. So, the question is: “which sunspot number?” The group sunspot number or the ‘official’ SIDC (Wolf, Zurich) number? -
tallbloke says:
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm
“which sunspot number?” The group sunspot number or the ‘official’ SIDC (Wolf, Zurich) number?Greenwich/Hathaway for the sunspot areas from 1874.5. I use this dataset for my studies on the hemispheric asymmetry of sunspot production. You said two years ago that I was wasting my time, because no-one had ever found any way of making sense of it:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/barycentre-sunspots.gifSIDC for the full sunspot time series from 1749. This graph shows the relationship of solar activity with the motion of other solar system masses above and below the solar equatorial plane. It also shows why I agree with you that Waldmeier overcounted:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ssn-ssbz.jpgThat second graph also lends a lot of independent support to your idea that the GSN (group sunspot number) is way too low in the early part of the record, and shows that the sun’s recovery from the Maunder and Dalton Minima was quite sudden and complete, rather than gradual, as the GSN followers seem to think. Thus we are also in agreement that there is no ‘modern grand maximum’ although due to the short minima and high amplitude of cycles of the late C20th, the average sunspot number taken over a multi-decadal period was undoubtedly higher than average in terms of the last 300 years. So, a ‘modern maximum’, if not a ‘grand’ one.
I would be very interested in hearing your presentation at the proposed workshop, and also in getting a chance to have my own findings discussed by an expert panel. It would show great maturity and an open minded attitude to the science if you could extend an invitation so that I could have that opportunity.
On a personal note, I’d very much like to meet you, and discuss your work, which I hold in high regard. It’s always easier to learn from people and appreciate those aspects of their knowledge which conflict with your own, when a friendly, free flowing discussion takes place in a face to face situation.
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Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 12:25 am
Greenwich/Hathaway for the sunspot areas from 1874.5.
That record is a composite of Greenwich and SOON areas. The SOON data from 1977 on are 40% too low [different calibration], and Hathaway increases those data by 40% in one of his composites. But he has both the raw and adjusted data on his website, so you have to be careful which one you use. It looks like you use the unadjusted one, but check.SIDC for the full sunspot time series from 1749.
Yet you quote Solanki [who uses the GSN] on the ‘greatest in 10000 year’ nonsense. You shouldn’t mix and match use of disparate data like that.That second graph also lends a lot of independent support to your idea that the GSN is way too low in the early part of the record
I dislike using the match to a theory as support for adjustment of the data. What happened to ‘most people prefer actual empirical observations’? My analysis uses only the data as it must be. No ‘pet theory’ involved.the average sunspot number taken over a multi-decadal period was undoubtedly higher than average in terms of the last 300 years. So, a ‘modern maximum’, if not a ‘grand’ one.
If you reduce the modern values by 20%, the difference is much smaller and not really different from the mid 19th century or late 18th. There is a time in each century with elevated solar activity [some people call this the Gleissberg cycle].I would be very interested in hearing your presentation at the proposed workshop, and also in getting a chance to have my own findings discussed by an expert panel.
Th workshop is concerned with discussion of the actual data, so if you have something on that it might be useful.It would show great maturity and an open minded attitude to the science if you could extend an invitation so that I could have that opportunity.
IMHO Science should not be done with an ‘open minded attitude’. The only thing that counts at the end of the day is the data and one cannot be open minded about the data. The workshop will take place at Sunspot, NM, where we have limited logistic facilities [can accommodate ~12 people only], but our work and presentations there will certainly be open to everyone.On a personal note, I’d very much like to meet you, and discuss your work, which I hold in high regard. It’s always easier to learn from people and appreciate those aspects of their knowledge which conflict with your own, when a friendly, free flowing discussion takes place in a face to face situation.
I’m in Petaluma, CA, and everyone is welcome. As the National Solar Observatory at Sunspot is open to the public you are also welcome there in September. -
tallbloke says:
Hi Leif,
Thanks for the tip on the Hathaway dataset, I’ll check that out when I revisit my sunspot asymmetry work. It’s genuinely nice to know a welcome awaits me in sunny California when I get there. I’m hoping to do a good stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail sometime in the next couple of years, and a trip out to the coast is a must too. I guess the world can wait a little longer for my cosmically important discoveries. 🙂Perhaps one day the empirical planetary data will be regarded as important to the study of the sun in the same way geomagnetic data is now, thanks to the efforts of Wolf, and a line of people stretching from before him to you and your colleagues.
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Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:49 am
Perhaps one day the empirical planetary data will be regarded as important to the study of the sun in the same way geomagnetic data is now, thanks to the efforts of Wolf, and a line of people stretching from before him to you and your colleagues.When Wolf discovered that the geomagnetic data could be used to calibrate the sunspot number, nobody really believed him. It took until the 1930s for that to be accepted and even then there were important doubters [e.g. Sidney Chapman]. The stumbling block was the lack of a viable mechanism [as usual]. There is no shortage of weird correlations, but without a mechanism that is energetically plausible, no progress can be made.
[from: http://www.leif.org/research/Greenland-Magnetic-Observatory-Support.pdf ]
“The discovery of the sunspot cycle and the first results of the ‘Magnetic Crusade’ together made it clear that solar and geomagnetic activity are intimately related and that observing one is learning about the other [both ways]. Understanding of this magnificent relationship had to await more than a century of progress in both physics and observations, and only in the last few decades have we achieved the elucidation that in the middle of the 19th Century was so fervently hoped for: The lack of rapid progress so frustrated the observers [and their funding agencies] that many observatories were shut down or had operations severely curtailed, because as von Humboldt remarked in vol. 4 of his Cosmos: ‘they have yielded so little return in proportion to the labor that had gone into collecting the material’ “ -
tallbloke says:
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 25, 2011 at 3:35 pm
When Wolf discovered that the geomagnetic data could be used to calibrate the sunspot number, nobody really believed him. It took until the 1930s for that to be accepted and even then there were important doubters [e.g. Sidney Chapman].Yes, I can see it might be a long haul for the planetary theory. Wolf started that one too, and the progress is continuing through another strand of investigators stretching from him.
The stumbling block was the lack of a viable mechanism [as usual]. There is no shortage of weird correlations, but without a mechanism that is energetically plausible, no progress can be made.
There is no shortage of mechanisms. Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block. Once an oscillation has built up in a semi rigid body (high solar gravity and internal magnetism), it only requires relatively small energies to maintain it. Especially as the solar pulse engine bounces along working on the same frequencies as the orbital period of it’s biggest planet and the beat between that planet and Earth much of the time. Cycle lengths cluster around 10.4 and 12 years. Anyway, once the numerical relationships between the correlations are teased out, a critical mass will be reached where the correct mechanisms become apparent through logical inference and modeling confirmed by experimental observations.
…solar and geomagnetic activity are intimately related and … observing one is learning about the other [both ways].
Yes, I want to learn more from you about that. Specifically, what effect has the secular decrease in the strength of the geomagnetic field had on the magnetometer readings measuring the solar perturbations of it? Presumably, the differences of the magnitude of the changes in the geomagnetic field between northern and southern hemisphere stations enable you to calibrate in some way to adjust for this when reconstructing past solar activity?
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Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block.
The important word is ‘apparently’. These energies are not apparently small, they are in reality small.Once an oscillation has built up in a semi rigid body
The sun is a gas and does not pulsate. There are stars that do, but their pulsations are constantly driven by changes in opacity. This is a big [but well-understood subject]. The Sun does not fall in that category. “The accepted explanation for the pulsation of Cepheids is called the Eddington valve, or κ-mechanism, where the Greek letter κ (kappa) denotes gas opacity. Helium is the gas thought to be most active in the process. Doubly ionized helium (helium whose atoms are missing two electrons) is more opaque than singly ionized helium. The more helium is heated, the more ionized it becomes. At the dimmest part of a Cepheid’s cycle, the ionized gas in the outer layers of the star is opaque, and so is heated by the star’s radiation, and due to the increased temperature, begins to expand. As it expands, it cools, and so becomes less ionized and therefore more transparent, allowing the radiation to escape. Then the expansion stops, and reverses due to the star’s gravitational attraction. The process then repeats.”what effect has the secular decrease in the strength of the geomagnetic field had on the magnetometer readings measuring the solar perturbations of it?
The effect(s) is small and we do not correct for it. We should [and could] though, but since the effect goes in the direction of [artificially] increasing the solar influence with time, it meets with resistance from deniers if we try to correct for it [which will decrease the solar activity inferred from the compass needle]. It goes like this: the daily variation of the compass needle is caused by a dynamo effect where the ionosphere moves across the geomagnetic field lines thus inducing an electric field which then drives a current whose magnetic effect we measure on the ground. The electric field is determined [chiefly] by the magnitude of the geomagnetic field and the ions generated by solar UV, but the electric current also depends on the conductivity [inverse resistivity] of the medium: electric current = conductivity x electric field. The conductivity is determined by the ‘mobility’ of the electrons. The electrons like to spiral around a magnetic field, so a strong magnetic field acts as a hindrance to the free movements along the electric field, so a decrease of the geomagnetic field actually increases the conductivity and hence the current and the magnetic effect of solar activity, making the Sun look more active than it really is. You can now see why some people don’t want to correct for the decrease of the geomagnetic field. Then on the other hand, th electric field also decreases with the geomagnetic field, so the net effect is a kind of ‘tug of war’ between the increase and the decrease and it is not clear what the net effect is [except that it is small]. For our purposes that really doesn’t matter because the changes in the calibration of the sunspot number are discontinuous so we only we only require the geomagnetic field to not change too much for a few years before and after each ‘jump’ which is readily satisfied. For the IDV index the effect of the geomagnetic field is too small to measure, but for the IHV index the situation is a bit more complex: the size of the magnetosphere is determined as a balance between the inward push of the solar wind [kinetic energy of the particles moving at 400 km/s – called the ‘dynamic pressure’] and the outward push of the geomagnetic field. For constant solar wind [=constant solar activity] a smaller geomagnetic field results in a smaller magnetosphere. So the question is ‘will a smaller magnetosphere mean smaller geomagnetic activity or larger geomagnetic activity as measured on the ground?’. We don’t know. There are some that argue that a smaller magnetosphere means a shorter ‘reconnection line’ and hence weaker activity. There are others [including me] that argue that a smaller magnetosphere means that all gradients [change of field with distance] are larger which results in stronger activity. The questions is unresolved and is one of the topics to be discussed at the workshop. As support for the smaller magnetosphere resulting in larger activity we have the famous semiannual-Universal Time variation of geomagnetic activity: activity is strongest when the solar wind hits the geomagnetic field when it is weakest [at the sub-solar point]. The field around a dipole is twice as strong over the poles than over the equator, so as the geomagnetic field wobbles [annually and daily] because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis [annual] and of the additional tilt of the magnetic axis [daily], the solar wind will meet a changing magnetic field. Observations show that geomagnetic activity rather precisely follows that variation of the geomagnetic field at the ‘nose’ of the magnetosphere, being largest when the field is the smallest. But this is still an active area of research. So, as you can see, the arguments are complex and many people [even scientists – especially when addicted to their own pet theories] have a hard time following an argument with several links in the logical chain. -
tallbloke says:
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 7:30 amtallbloke says:
May 25, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Understanding how these apparently small energies have the effect they evidently do is the stumbling block.The important word is ‘apparently’. These energies are not apparently small, they are in reality small.
Apologies for my imprecision. I should have said ‘apparently insufficient’. And before you say “they are also insufficient” I just say ‘I know that’s what you think’ 🙂
The sun is a gas and does not pulsate.
When I said oscillation, a meant more a reverberation than a pulsation. The ‘pulse engine’ was just simile. The sun does reverberate I think, otherwise those scientists doing solar-acoustic experiments wouldn’t be getting any results. So although the sun is a gas, it doesn’t behave like a puff of smoke, due to the strong gravity and magnetic fields.
It goes like this :..
Great discussion and very informative, thanks.
Leif Svalgaard says:tallbloke says:
May 26, 2011 at 8:52 am
Apologies for my imprecision. I should have said ‘apparently insufficient’. And before you say “they are also insufficient” I just say ‘I know that’s what you think’ 🙂
Precision is everything in this game. Several people [e.g. DeJager] have shown that they are indeed insufficient, but you have to understand the physics to see this.When I said oscillation, a meant more a reverberation than a pulsation. The ‘pulse engine’ was just simile. The sun does reverberate I think
The waves are just ordinary sound waves created by overturning convection cells [‘sunquakes’] and like earthquakes only last a short time before dying out due to friction. The sun has several million such random sunquakes going off at any given time. Nothing lives long enough for any large scale effects or coherence, being clobbered all the time by new quakes.tallbloke says:Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 9:20 am
Several people [e.g. DeJager] have shown that they are indeed insufficient, but you have to understand the physics to see this.I don’t know all the specific physics involved with solar theory, not being a solar physicist, but I do understand the mechanics of Newton, and Wolf and Patrone’s mechanism, because I qualified in mechanical science, and no-one has refuted them in a formal way. Also, I don’t think anyone has thought through the argument about tides very well. Although the vertical tides are small, the horizontal tides are not. But in any case, as I said earlier,as the correlations improve and the studies deepen, so will understanding concerning mechanisms.
The waves are just ordinary sound waves created by overturning convection cells [‘sunquakes’] and like earthquakes only last a short time before dying out due to friction. The sun has several million such random sunquakes going off at any given time. Nothing lives long enough for any large scale effects or coherence, being clobbered all the time by new quakes.
I think you’d probably have a queue of helioseismologists wanting to pick arguments with you if you said that on the floor of a conference hall.
http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/press/00/pr0015.htm
“At the edge of the convective layer, Howe and her colleagues used GONG data to determine that the rotation rate varies periodically, completing a cycle about every 15-16 months. The team used data from the NASA and European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft to confirm the pattern of these variations.”
“At first we were skeptical of the pattern. Knowing the complexity of models used to explain the solar magnetic field and its connection to observed solar activity, we were expecting nothing, or chaos, in our observations at that location,” said Howe.And at your own institution too.
http://soi.stanford.edu/results/heliowhat.html
“Each oscillation mode is sampling different parts of the solar interior. The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe [Gough and Toomre, p. 627, 1991]“-
Leif Svalgaard says:
tallbloke says:
May 26, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I do understand the mechanics of Newton, and Wolf and Patrone’s mechanism, because I qualified in mechanical science, and no-one has refuted them in a formal way.
Newton has nothing to do with it, and Wolf and Patrone have no mechanism for transferring potential energy into actual kinetic energy. If I carry a suitcase up the stairs it gains potential energy because their is a coupling [I’m dragging at the handle]. What their ‘mechanism’ lags is a coupling.Although the vertical tides are small, the horizontal tides are not.
Tides depends on the distance between the ‘end points’, i.e. are proportional to the diameter of the Sun. I can tell you precisely how to calculate the vertical tides, now you tell me precisely how to calculate the horizontal tides. Without such a calculation you cannot make any statement comparing the magnitude of the two.But in any case, as I said earlier, as the correlations improve and the studies deepen, so will understanding concerning mechanisms
Spurious correlations degrade with time. Wolf thought in the beginning that the planetary influences were first order effects [i.e. that they directly cause solar activity]. After almost 50 years of observing sunspots he realized that they not could be and abandoned his hypothesis. With Hale’s discovery of sunspot magnetism and the polarity changes, the planetary theory was further discredited as a first cause. At best it was relegated to second order [as a small modulation of something created and maintain by other processes], and falls victim to Occam’s razor [expressed by Newton as: “We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances”]. The dynamo theory [the first cause] also explains and accommodate what modulations are found, and no further causes are needed.I think you’d probably have a queue of helioseismologists wanting to pick arguments with you if you said that on the floor of a conference hall.
Not at all, the examples you cite are not about the waves, but about what we have learned using the waves, such as flows inside the sun, the rotation rates in the interior, circulations driven by thermal differences, etc. The Howe observations are old and didn’t hold up with later data.The second example: “The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe” just affirms what I said about the oscillations being short lived [minutes].
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tallbloke says:
Leif Svalgaard says:
May 26, 2011 at 6:39 pm
Wolf and Patrone have no mechanism for transferring potential energy into actual kinetic energy. If I carry a suitcase up the stairs it gains potential energy because their is a coupling [I’m dragging at the handle]. What their ‘mechanism’ lags is a coupling.Feel free to set your suitcase example into a formal rebuttal in the journal. Meantime I’ll trust Wolff and Patrone, their reviewers, and my own knowledge of mechanical science.
I can tell you precisely how to calculate the vertical tides, now you tell me precisely how to calculate the horizontal tides. Without such a calculation you cannot make any statement comparing the magnitude of the two.
Even the vertical tides on Earth are imperfectly understood. Wikipedia tore down nearly all their entry on tides a year or so back, and replaced it with some very basic stuff. The equations we use are heuristic and do not have a proper physical basis. So far as horizontal tides are concerned, we can be sure that due to much higher gravity, the surface flows on the sun are going to be much bigger proportionally to the vertical tides than they are on Earth. More work needed, and not just by me.
Spurious correlations degrade with time. Wolf thought in the beginning that the planetary influences were first order effects [i.e. that they directly cause solar activity]. After almost 50 years of observing sunspots he realized that they not could be and abandoned his hypothesis. At best it was relegated to second order [as a small modulation of something created and maintain by other processes], and falls victim to Occam’s razor. The dynamo theory [the first cause] also explains and accommodate what modulations are found, and no further causes are needed.
The dynamo theory has almost no predictive power. The correlation discovered between the motions of Jupiter, Earth and Venus by Jean-Pierre Desmoulins and confirmed by NASA scientist Ching Cheh Hung do not degrade with time, and can be used to accurately predict solar cycle timings and approximate amplitudes. The alignment cycles never go completely out of phase and never ‘overtake’ or ‘slip behind’ solar activity by a complete cycle during the entire sunspot record.
With Hale’s discovery of sunspot magnetism and the polarity changes, the planetary theory was further discredited as a first cause.
I made the discovery that Desmoulins and Roy Martin’s findings are further improved and enhanced by additionally considering the alignments of JEV along the curve of the interplanetary magnetic field, allowing for the change in curvature caused by changes in solar windspeed. This addresses your objection that the alignments are not relevant to the electromagnetic nature of solar activity, in terms of the timing of solar cycles at least. I think that further work on the Wolff-Patrone mechanism will be worthwhile, because it may help improve solar cycle amplitude predictions. There may well be several mechanisms at work, as indicated by the complexity of solar variation.
Here’s my graph of the alignments along the IMF, solar windspeed adjusted:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/rotation-solar-windspeed-adjusted.png“The spectrum of the detected oscillations arises from modes with periods ranging from about 1.5 minutes to about 20 minutes and with horizontal wavelengths of between less then a few thousand kilometers to the length of the solar globe” just affirms what I said about the oscillations being short lived [minutes].
I bow to your superior knowledge on helioseismology.
I’m away to the mountains for a backpacking trip, so I’m leaving it there for now. Thanks for your knowledge and conversation, I’ll check back to see you’ve replied when I return. I really hope we can keep productive and rational dialogue going.
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I’ll keep tacking the replies into the headline post so if you are interested in the science (or just in seeing how long we can remain civil with each other 🙂 ) then check back here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
I have translated two big your articles in Italian !
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?p=14439
Rog….
let it be ..
It’s political….
de profundis…science..
Nice job Michele! Thanks for getting this out to a wider audience in Italy. 🙂
A very strong correlation can be used as a predictor before the mechanisms are found if, indeed, they need to be found: proxies are standard tools, though of course they need to be identified as such.
The IPCC has no problem with correlations as opposed to causations, despite their “certainty”. All statements are about “projections”, not predictions. When the so-called authority experts stop using “should”, “might”, “may” or “could” and begin using the terms “will”, “shall” and “does”, we will be in a time of true certainty. That is the greatest misunderstanding the public have of the IPCC, Hansen and the Gore/Suzuki tribe. Their certainty is uncertain. They insist that they “know” but still invoke the Precautionary Principle to justify their actions. If you actually know the tsunami is coming you don’t go about suggesting people may be better off leaving their sea-side houses.
If Tallbloke or Leif or ANYONE is convinced that they know or suspect they know the principal way in which the climate is changing, then predictions are demanded in scientific investigations. Falsibility, alfter all, or the lack thereof, is the bete noire of the IPCC/Gore. Make a prediction, see what happens, revise your theory:theory to hypothesis to truth (truth in a Pragmatic sense, something closer to reality than what was before, but still tweakable).
2015 is close enough to still remember what was said and still have some time for noise to be distinguished from signal. Let’s see some hard predictions. If one is not prepared to make predictions, then he must concede that the ideas of others, not just his, have some merit.
Hi Doug, I always like your definite and substantive style.
A very strong correlation can be used as a predictor before the mechanisms are found if, indeed, they need to be found: proxies are standard tools, though of course they need to be identified as such.
True, and the quality of the correlations we’ve been finding has been improving. However, one of the reasons I said I could see it being a long haul is that when the Sun goes into one of it’s minima phases, it becomes unpredictable. Could be 15 to 50 years before it pulls back on track with the curve I’ve generated. Unless I can find some way of ‘adjusting’ for these quiet periods accurately. A pretty tall order.
If Tallbloke or Leif or ANYONE is convinced that they know or suspect they know the principal way in which the climate is changing, then predictions are demanded in scientific investigations.
Well that’s another issue. I have a seperate theory on the solar energy, ocean heat content question. It’s working well so far, but the unpredictability of the sun in quiet mode makes decadal prediction tough.
We have a predictions page here, and I’ve said a good while ago that SST’s will have touched -0.3C before the end of the year. We’ll see. Svalgaard doesn’t do those kind of predictions. He did predict 75SSN for cycle 24, and that’s looking high. I predicted 35-50SSN three years ago on climate audit. That’s looking good at the moment.
Nice to be back here again after returning to these sceptred isles following an enjoyable and productive working holiday.
Also good to see Leif still pushing the ‘party line’ that the sun doesn’t change it’s output enough to have more than small effect on our climate.
I found this quote of his very revealing, “…The only thing that counts at the end of the day is the data and one cannot be open minded about the data…”
In truth, data is an area of solar science where even the current stuff is open to interpretation, with anything pre-satellite era on very shaky ground – much use of proxies and various assumption depending where you would like to see the dice fall. So I believe we must be open minded when converting data to information and to claim there is only one ‘truth’ in this regard speaks of dogma and protectionism.
It is also strange how both solar and climate data seems always to be presented using smoothing or arithmetic averages. As both systems exhibit much non-linear behaviour perhaps a better understanding of impact would be found by examining the effects of short-term spikes and troughs for data which has sufficient temporal granularity; short term events can have long term impacts.
Finally, I believe that the focus on TSI means that we are only looking at a small fraction of solar cycle changes in total energy flux and until we start to try and understand the effects of photon bombardment from the E/M charge field progress on understanding the solar/climate link will be slow.
Hey Tenuc!
Perceptive comment as always. I was thinking just this morning about this variability question. Seems to me that if the sun’s magnetic field can change by a factor of four over the solar cycle, and can flatline for 50 years with no sunspots visible, then trying to convince anyone that it can’t have a secular variation in it’s output of 0.1% or so over 300 years is an uphill task. Leif seems to go to pretty amazing lengths to do it though, with remarkable success.
Leif seems to go to pretty amazing lengths to do it though, with remarkable success.
Hi Rog,
Have to agree with amazing lengths… but no so sure about remarkable success. Repeating the same TSI arguments do not make him right… talking down commentators do not make him right… snide remarks do not make him right… just noisy, repetitive and impolite.
I would not have much faith in the Governor of the Bank of England if he quantified the Money Supply by only counting the number of 50 pence pieces in circulation… likewise, I do not have much faith in solar scientists who only quote TSI statistics to support their belief that solar variability cannot influence climate.
Leif Svalgaard says:
“…It goes like this: the daily variation of the compass needle is caused by a dynamo effect where the ionosphere moves across the geomagnetic field lines thus inducing an electric field which then drives a current whose magnetic effect we measure on the ground. The electric field is determined [chiefly] by the magnitude of the geomagnetic field and the ions generated by solar UV, but the electric current also depends on the conductivity…”
Wow, is there anyone out there who can throw Leif a lifeline! He’s clearly struggling in deep water and not yet learned to swim. Perhaps Miles Mathis should be invited to the workshop at Sunspot, NM – he could save them years of futile work and probably help them develop a solar system model that has good predictive power.
Never thought I’d see Leif having to resort to so much hand waving. I really feel sorry for the guy. Makes me angry to see what a sorry state physics has got itself into. The knock-on effects of getting so many of the basics wrong is devastating to the whole of science.
Love the final line of your reply, Rog, Leif’s diatribe was something else…:-)
He’s back for more, see above.
Leif is a complex character, and there is much I admire. His attention to detail, dogged persistence in tracking down old data logs, sheer hard work and output. Generosity with data and honest advice too.
I forgive him his bombast and dismissals of evidence. He’s dedicated to his own line of scientific investigation, and part of the maintenance of the level of self belief required for that causes him to reject alternatives if they threaten to conflict with or refute his interpretation of data. It’s gloves off combative old school stuff.
OK, last round for now is posted above, though no doubt Leif will be relishing the prospect of getting the final word for a few days, so I’ll post his response if I get a chance to. Or just use the date link on my last comment to visit the WUWT thread . I commented above on what I admire about Leif’s scientific approach. When I return to this, I’ll critique what I see on the other side of his way of doing science.
In the meantime, feel free to break the silence with your own thoughts. 🙂