The Sunspots Are Coming, Or Going

For John, BLUF:  Predicting the future is dicey, but it needs to be done.  And, in preparing for the future one must invest in the likely outcome, but also put some money in hedging against alternative futures.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Ocasio-Cortez dings 'predominantly white' areas for hurricanes that killed minorities

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put a racial spin Wednesday on climate change and hurricanes, attributing emissions from “predominantly white” corporations and communities for juicing recent storms that cost “predominantly black and brown lives” in Louisiana and Puerto Rico.

Even as House Republicans argued that cheap electricity from fossil fuels has helped lift more than a billion people out of poverty around the world, the New York Democrat asked a witness about whether “the Global South and communities of color” bear the brunt of climate “havoc.”

“[T]he people that are producing climate change, the folks that are responsible for the largest amount of emissions, or communities, or corporations, they tend to be predominantly white, correct?” she asked at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on civil rights and civil liberties.

The National Wildlife Federation’s Mustafa Ali replied that “yes, and every study backs that up I know no one is intentionally trying to kill people and hurt people.”

But, looking back to April of this year, we have this headline:

Sunspot update March 2019:  An upcoming Grand Minimum?

From the Blog Behind the Black, by Mr Robert Zimmerman, 8 April 2019.

Here is the lede plus two:

Even though we are now deep into the beginning of what might become the first grand minimum in sunspot activity since the invention of the telescope, that does not mean the Sun has as yet stopped producing sunspots. Yesterday NOAA released its the monthly update of its tracking of the solar cycle, adding sunspot activity for March 2019 to its graph. Below is that graph, annotated by me to give it some context.

It shows the Sun with a slight burst in activity in March, suggesting that though we are now in the solar minimum that minimum still has the ability to produce sunspots.

At the same time, for me to say that we might be heading to a grand minimum, a time period lasting many decades where no sunspots are visible and the sunspot cycle essentially ceases, is not click bait or hyperbole. It is instead based on what I now think the solar science community is thinking, based on this very graph.

So, while we need to be looking at the environmental and engineering tradeoffs of global warming, we also need to be hedging against 50 years of global cooling.

The other thing is we need to talk about is the billion (repeat one billion) people we pulled out of abject poverty in the last quarter century.  We couldn't have done as much, as fast, without carbon fuels, Ms Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff