Chief Scientific Adviser advises.

[snow hope]

Any answers to my questions Chris? Did you get a chance to read the Landscheidt paper - if so, what are your thoughts?

Agree with what you say Ken, we need sustainability due to the fact that we are (obviously) in overshoot - 6.5bn of us is far too many! Whether it turns warmer or colder it makes sense to minimise our resource requirements and dependancy.

[snow hope]

Sept. 23, 2008: In a briefing today at NASA headquarters, solar physicists announced that the solar wind is losing power."The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring
solar wind almost 50 years ago."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008 ... arwind.htm

Link to the BBC report on the reducing solar influence.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7632331.stm

[skeptik]

[ I'd been waiting to see what the ice loss in the Arctic was going to be like this year in order to gauge whether AGW or solar cycles were having the strongest effect.

Looks identical to 2007 to me. Bottomed out at 3 million square Km. Where that ice is located in the Arctic is very different, which I imagine must have an effect on weather patterns around the arctic.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere ... nt.365.jpg
home page
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

[biffvernon]

This page gives a good summary of this summer in the Arctic.

[kenneal - lagger]

This page gives a good summary of this summer in the Arctic.

That shows that the sea ice didn't recede quite as much this year as last, which would be consistent with our being at the bottom of the sun spot cycle and at minimum solar activity, making the earth cooler. Over this coming year solar activity should start to increase and continue to do so for the next 5 to 6 years. We may have another year or two of lower temperatures, which could result in the Arctic sea ice showing a slight recovery in summer area and thermal inertia in the ocean could carry that on further, perhaps even until the solar maximum. But after that I would expect to see the sea ice decrease again right down to the solar minimum in 11 to 12 years time and if global warming is happening, decrease even further than 2007.

I just hope someone does some research to relate our current temperatures with other solar minimums and CO2 levels. It really if important to have a good picture of how the sun's activity does relate to our current temperatures, the El Nino/La Nina cycle and to GW research. If GW researchers are going to silence the doubters they have to put it all in context.