What’s behind the record heat? | Fox News

A sunspot viewed close-up in ultraviolet light, taken by the TRACE spacecraft (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fox News should develop an alternative news source and drop AP. This one about the record heat looks identical to one getting printed all over the place, with a couple of word changes maybe, and maybe they got it from Live Science.

What should puzzle us, or get our suspicion antennae aquiver, is why, in a report about record heat, they didn’t even think about including a mention about the record sunspot energy this year:

What’s behind the record heat? | Fox News:
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/03/what-behind-record-heat/?intcmp=features

At the next link, we find that back in March of 2006 NASA itself was saying that a solar maximum would probably start building in 2010 and 2011 and solar physicist David Hathaway says would most likely hit maximum during 2012 –this year of record heat:

From http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/10mar_stormwarning/

“The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The ‘corpses’ are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun’s magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface.” Presto—new sunspots!

Right: The sun’s “great conveyor belt.” [Larger
image]

All this happens with massive slowness. “It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop,” says Hathaway. The speed varies “anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast).”

When the belt is turning “fast,” it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: “The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996,” says Hathaway. “Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011.”

Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati’s forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.

“History shows that big sunspot cycles ‘ramp up’ faster than small ones,” he says. “I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011.”

Who’s right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.

Good smart and honest reporters should be laughing the latest attempt to blame carbon dioxide on Earth for record heat obviously coming from the sun itself.

No wonder the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution held such high esteem for a truly educated and informed people.