Here we have the first of several solar cycles that affect the temperatures on Earth, hence Solar System Warming. Not to get too off track but I would like to send a former VP out into space to do some data gathering; of course he might have to tax himself so the gases in the space craft don’t get too al-noxious (you can put a little smiley face here). Anyway this fourth cycle is called the Schwabe cycle, also known as the eleven-year sunspot cycle.

Many warm and cold periods ago in 1843, an astronomer by the name of Samuel Schwabe was searching for a new planet closer to the Sun than Mercury. Supposedly this suspected planet was to be called Vulcan. During his searches he discovered that the Sunspots increased and decreases in an eleven years cycle. Just like today, when a real discovery is made no one notices. He didn’t get an award and he didn’t make a docudrama. In fact, his discovery didn’t make the news, especially the evening news, until many years later.

Today, we have years and years of data that show that the average sunspot cycle is around 131 months, or 10.9 years long. During the active periods of the cycle there are huge numbers of sun spots, and many are visible to the naked eye if you care to look at the sun. That is a no-no during the mid-day hours unless you have the proper equipment. I have seen them but only while the sun in on the horizon and I don’t look without good sunshades.
During the quiet periods there will be very few sun spots.

We are in one of those quiet periods right now and there are many things about this quiet period that the news media is not talking about. One thing is that we are currently experiencing one of the longest sun spot cycles and quietest sun spot minimums in the 300 year history of recorded sunspots. This is significant! And guess what? The intensity of sunspot activity runs in CYCLES! We will get to those is a later post.

Sunspot cycles are given numbers, and the one just ending is cycle 23. The new cycle that we are waiting on to ramp up will be cycle 24. If you track backwards in time you will get to Cycle 1 and past that the cycles are given negative numbers. Thanks to Galileo, we have sunspot records back to the 1600s. If you do some research on tree rings and the like you can track sun spot cycles back even further.

Here is the issue at hand, Sun Spot Cycle 23 began in March of 1996, over 150 months or 12.8 years ago and Cycle 24 has yet to be considered ‘started’. THis means that we are experiencing a long quiet period of solar activity. Trust me, there have been many AGW scientists who have wanted to claim that cycle 24 has begun; and there have been positive sunspots indicating the presence of a new cycle, but Cycle 23 has to die-off first. (I used the term ‘positive’ to define Cycle 24 sunspots because sunspot cycles alternate in polarity: Odd numbered cycles have negative polarity sunspots and even-positive ones. This alternating polarity creates a, guess what? Another cycle, we call the Hale Cycle. I’ll take up the significant of that cycle next time.

So what is the significance of the Schwabe Cycle, you may ask? Well, when the sun is in the active period of the 11-year cycle the Solar Wind, Solar Flares, and Coronal Mass Ejections increase in number and intensity. When the Solar Wind increases, it affects the magnetic field of our planet. It also repels Cosmic Radiation and keeps them from striking the earth. Solar Flares and CMEs significantly affect our planet in many ways other than creating a beautiful aurora borealis. These events can and do cause the upper atmosphere (ionosphere) of the earth to HEAT up! These events also hinder Cosmic Radiation from striking the earth.

So now you ask, what is it about Cosmic Radiation that makes it so important that I mentioned it twice in a single paragraph? Cosmic Radiation creates CLOUDS, low level clouds that shield the earth from the heat of the sun! When the Sun is very active then there are fewer clouds and more heat, GLOBAL WARMING. When the sun is quiet, like it is now, more Cosmic Radiation enters our atmosphere and creates more clouds causing GLOBAL COOLING! Remember the energy cycle: clouds reflect solar radiation?

There is empirical evidence that proves everything I just wrote. It is fairly new information, but not as new as the docudrama mentioned previously. Our Sun is the cause of climate change, not some dairy cow flatulence. If the AGW Terrorist al-Gore wants to tax something, have him tax the Sun. I will put in money to send him there; and the sooner the better.

Now one last thing; scientist are still debating on the cause of the eleven-year (Schwabe) cycle. That is right, the science is not settled, but I have a clue for you. The earth, Venus, and Mercury come into a good alignment with the sun on an average of every 11 years and in a near perfect alignment every 22 years (Hale Cycle anyone). I believe that we and our close neighbors cause the solar cycle that affects our climate.

Hmm, TAX that!

 It is hot here in Texas. That is because of Texas Warming. If you haven’t heard Texas produces the most power of any state, and likewise the most CO2—YeeHaw!  The last 15 days we have had 100+ temperatures. Just in case you haven’t figured it out yet—it gets HOT in Texas during the summer. Go figure. It always gets HOT in Texas during the summer.

When I was a teenager during the 70s, the summers didn’t seem so bad, but that is because we were all going through Global Cooling and the ‘Glaciers were coming!’ I thought that it would be great to take a vacation up to Kansas and play on the Ice sheets. What can I say, I was only a teenager.

As I said it is HOT here ‘this time of year’. Come, late October we will be experiencing Texas Cooling.  It wasn’t too hard to understand even as a teenager that the earth’s weather (Climate) goes through seasonal variations (Change) everywhere, with the exception near the equator. Isn’t it nice to have seasons? I think I learned in Junior High or maybe even in Elementary School that the earth goes through seasons because the earth’s axis of rotation is tilted with respect to the sun. It is not tilted because of CO2 or any other naturally occurring gas. And even as big as Al Gore is, with all his beefy stature can't alter the tilt of the earth. Therefore, since the beginning of Texas, Texas has gone through hot summers and cool to cold winters. There will be rain and wind in the spring. There will be storms, some quite strong, in the spring even through June. July, August, and September will be hot and usually DRY. Near the last week in October we will have a cool or cold front dip into Texas from the northern territories. That has nothing to do with CO2 either. Then comes November, December, January, and February when it will be damp to wet, cool to cold, sometimes bone chilling cold. Sometimes, we even get that cold white stuff down here in Texas. Then spring arrives again and we get storms to fill our lakes and reservoirs.

That cycle has been going on since I was born. My mother said it has been going on since she was born. Her mother said… you get the picture. It is a cycle. The Seasonal Cycle and we can all thank the good Lord that he tilted the earth so that we wouldn’t be bored with endless droughts, or endless rains, or endless snows, or endless heat, or endless cold. I do feel sorry for you folks down near the equator, but the Lord has given you some really pretty water and beaches to look at. Plus the Rotational Cycle I mentioned earlier keeps the equator covered with clouds so the sun doesn’t beat down on you all as severely. I am rambling now.

Back to my point: The second of sixteen cycles that dictate the weather, climate change, is the seasonal cycle caused by the 23.5 +/- 1 degree tilt of the earth’s rotational axis. In Texas, during the summer, the sun stays up a long time—from 6:30 am to 8:30 pm. More Sun equals more CO2 which equals more heat. Oops, that is not correct. More Sun equals more heat. CO2 has nothing to do with it. In the winter time the Sun refuses to rise before 7:45 am or later and then it takes off early and sets before 6 pm. Less Sun equals more CO2 therefore more heat. Oops, I did it again. That isn’t right either. Less Sun equals less heat. Go figure.

There is also an interesting thing about the path that the earth travels around the sun. This I learned in High school, public high school, so that no one, with the exception of flunkies and politicians, are without excuse. The earth travels around the sun in an elliptical orbit. That is an eccentric circle for you non-mathematically inclined people.  The eccentricity of Earth’s orbit today is 0.0167. (a perfect circle has an eccentricity of zero.) That means that the distance between the earth and the Sun varies between 91,397,488 miles and 94,510,588 miles.  It just so happens that on July the 4^th the earth is farthest from the Sun and closest on January 4^th. So what does this mean to you, you might ask. Well, it means that during the winters in Texas and the northern territories the earth is closer to the Sun by 3.1 million miles than it is during summer. Let me tell you—that means a lot to us here in Texas, in the heat of summer. If we were 3 million miles closer to the sun can you imagine how much hotter it would be.

‘Get that boy a bigger glass of iced tea!’

Now for you folks down under, I am sorry about your situation. You see, you guys are closer in the summer and further away during the winter. I guess that is why most of Australia is a desert even though is resides at about the same latitude as Texas and the northern territories (them other states north of the Red River.)

Can you imagine being so stupid as to think that climate change is due to an extra 100 parts per million of an odorless natural gas. I think Al Gore and his cronies have been in the sun too long. Oh, I digress again.

Tis the Seasons.