Climategate and Solar Cycle 24, Yin and Yang

As Climategate unfolds and the importance of the hacked emails is debated, another interesting and complementary story goes on and on. Or more importantly, remains entirely below the radar of the mainstream media. That's the extremely quiet behavior of the Sun.

There are actually three stories. The first two are about science in the abstract. About 3.5 years ago, research was reported at a major scientific conference and published in peer-reviewed literature that purported to show a sound basis for predicting the timing and size of peak sunspot activity. The prediction was made for Cycle 24 and, remarkably, the authors announced their intent to forecast Cycle 25 within a few years, more than a decade before its expected peak.

In the event, the predicted strong cycle did not materialize. Official predictions went down and down, until last May the official pronouncement was that Cycle 24 would be the weakest since the early 20th century. Soon thereafter, the second event took place. NASA, having prominently supported the early predictions, seized the fact that "new" research explained the slow start of Cycle 24, and combined that with some solar activity in June to announce with considerable fanfare that all was now clear and Cycle 24 was beginning is predictable rise.

On closer examination, the new research developed a trend based on one data point, plus another that was, at best, not inconsistent. To NASA's dismay, June did not foretell the onset of more activity. The summer was extremely quiet. The importance of NASA's PR barrage in June was not whether it was wrong, as it was, but the transparently self-serving opportunism. There was no science beyond speculation, which albeit a component of the scientific process is not to be confused with results. The purpose was to try to catch a break, announcing science which might with good fortune happen to correspond to the trend. Nobody seems to be criticizing NASA for this.

Finally, there's the possibility that this is important, so it's very odd that it gets no press. Being about half the activity that was predicted in May, a reasonable person would project that the peak will in turn be around half, which would put 24 in the range of the Dalton Minimum, which in turn corresponded with some very cold weather. But when I look at news.Google.com for that phrase, I get only two articles in the past two weeks, worldwide in English.

We can't really say what terrestrial effects a quiet sun will cause, but we can say definitely that it's too early to say it will be nothing. So it irks me when people who say that CO2's future impact is known, when it isn't, and that a quiet sun is known to have no impact, when they don't know.

The solar scientists are in a double bind. Their predictions have been wrong, making it seem that we're spending a lot on useless research. I don't think it's useless because I support basic research, but it's a public relations problem. The second is that the actual developments could cause at least a distraction from the onward march of AGW. Scientists who value their standing as team players don't want to appear to cast doubt on the most important principle (economics-wise) of modern science. So they don't, even though they clearly should. Their conduct is almost as ugly as the climate scientists.