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<p>Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."</p> <p>The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol.</p>

Global Warming: President Obama warns of planetary doom at the U.N. if we fail to pass cap-and-trade legislation. Meanwhile, a former warm-monger predicts decades of cooling as the sun stays nearly "spotless."The president had hoped to address Tuesday's United Nations climate change summit in New York with a finished cap-and-trade bill. Failing that, he hoped he'd at least have a version of the Waxman-Markey bill that has passed the House on his desk before the Copenhagen talks in December to cobble together a follow-up to the failed Kyoto Protocol. Not only did that not happen in the cool summer of...

The average person doesn't associate coolness with the sun. The sun releases energy through deep nuclear fusion reactions in its core and has surface temperatures as hot as 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NASA's Web site. Not cool at all. But the sun's recent activity, or lack thereof, may be linked to the pleasant summer temperatures the midwest has enjoyed this year, said Charlie Perry, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Lawrence. The sun is at a low point of a deep solar minimum in which there are little to no sunspots on its surface.

Climate Change: A team of international scientists has finally figured out why sunspots have a dramatic effect on the weather. It shows the folly of fearing the SUV while dismissing that thermonuclear furnace in the sky.Mankind once worshiped the sun. Now the world studiously ignores it as nations prepare to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, in Copenhagen in December. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark. Our own government is committed to fighting climate change whether it be though Son of Kyoto or our own growth-capping, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation known as Waxman-Markey. Despite...

Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science. The study can help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance.

Sun's Cycle Alters Earth's Climate By SPACE.com Staff posted: 27 August 200902:08 pm ET Weather patterns across the globe are partly affected by connections between the 11-year solar cycle of activity, Earth's stratosphere and the tropical Pacific Ocean, a new study finds. The study could help scientists get an edge on eventually predicting the intensity of certain climate phenomena, such as the Indian monsoon and tropical Pacific rainfall, years in advance. The sun is the ultimate source of all the energy on Earth; its rays heat the planet and drive the churning motions of its atmosphere. The amount of...

This image of the sun shows no sunspots continuing to be the case The sun seems to be back to its slumbering ways as we head towards the fall 2009. During the spring and summer months, sunspot activity, one measure of the sun’s energy output (another is the 10.7cm radio flux), was quite active. In July, the strongest flare in two years erupted from a spot that was rotating across the face of the sun. July was the third month in a row with heightened activity; this suggested a trend which would at last fall in line with projections...

Could Solar Cycle 24 be skipped ? This would be stunning, because it suggests that the sun has skipped a solar cycle (#24) . Researchers, three from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the other from Marshall Space Flight Center-NASA, have published a paper that suggests this possibility.

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss... But this dry statistic has more significance for the earth and its climate than all of Al Gore's gloom and doom about tailpipe emissions and rising sea levels. Whether the warm-mongers like it or not, the sun rules earth's climate — always has and always will.

Climate Change: NASA predicts the lowest sunspot activity since 1928. Is a major solar storm in the offing? While we worry about man-made warming, the sun may soon show us who's boss. It's the sort of news that makes one's eyes glaze over. "If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," said Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center. Yes, space has weather, in the form of solar radiation that varies with...

Climate Change: The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat, the first step toward regulating the American economy down to your lawn mower.We are often told how the pursuit of alternative energy will help save the earth from climate change and create lots of green jobs. Advocates rarely use the phrase "global warming" any more because the earth is in fact no longer warming, and hasn't for a decade due to a decline in solar activity and other natural factors. They prefer the phrase "climate change" because it can cover a multitude...

Climate Change: The Earth has been warming ever since the end of the Little Ice Age. But guess what: Researchers say mankind is to blame for that, too.s we've noted, 2008 has been a year of records for cold and snowfall and may indeed be the coldest year of the 21st century thus far. In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October. Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature...

Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world's economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. We were...

After one of the longest sunspot droughts in modern times, solar activity picked up quickly over the weekend. A new group of sunspots developed, and while not dramatic by historic standards, the spots were the most significant in many months. "This is the best sunspot I've seen in two years," observer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach, Calif., said on Spaceweather.com. Solar activity goes in a roughly 11-year cycle. Sunspots are the visible signs of that activity, and they are the sites from which massive solar storms lift off. The past two years have marked the lowest low in the cycle...

          Solar awakening: Two sunspots shown / July 4, 2009 / Dave Tyler During the past four years, the sun has been in a prolonged quiet phase which has led some to claim this signals a period of global cooling. The number of “blank” sunspot days, a measure of overall solar energy output, has been more than 30% above the long-term average.The year 2008 saw the sun with its lowest number of sunspots for any year in a century. This only fueled the speculation of an impending global cooling scenario.In fact, slight cooling has been observed since the year 2001, but the...

A sluggish, jet stream-like flow deep inside the sun could be to blame for the delay in increased solar activity that has been stumping astronomers. (Read "Sun Oddly Quiet—Hints at Next 'Little Ice Age'?") The jet stream, which is actually a plasma current called a torsional oscillation, has been migrating more slowly than usual through the star's interior, according to a team led by Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Every 11 years the sun generates new jet streams near its poles. These streams slowly shift from east to west toward the solar equator over...

Quiet Sun. (Space Weather Prediction Center) My colleague Ken Chang has written about the sun’s unusual stretch with 205 days this year without sunspots and a sleepy solar wind. Here are a couple of highlights: The sun has been strangely unblemished this year. On more than 200 days so far this year, no sunspots were spotted. That makes the sun blanker this year than in any year since 1954, when it was spotless for 241 days. . . . In another sign of solar quiescence, scientists reported last month that the solar wind, a rush of charged particles continually spewed...

The sun has been very quiet, with a decreasing number of sunspots and flarings since January 2002, and predictions of a return to the higher cycle seen at the end of the 20th century have not verified. But there have been some recent signs of increased sunspots as of early to mid June, but it's too soon to tell if it will prove meaningful. The calm on the surface of the sun ultimately will have some say in the course of weather across the Earth. For one, if the sunspot pattern does not revitalize soon, and continues for the next...

Polar bears are not dying out and Turkey Twizzlers are fine, according to a new book from scientists wishing to challenge science "scare stories" Contrary to widely held belief, polar bear populations are rising, according to the scientists It is widely thought that the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise, resulting in the loss of cities along the coast, as well as a the majority of polar bears. And if global warming does not kill us, then obesity or heart disease will thanks to an addiction to junk food and salt. But a new book, compiled...

Enlarge ImageWake-up call. The sun's jet streams (in red, right) have reached their critical position, and soon the first sunspots of the new solar cycle may mar the star's currently placid-looking surface (inset).Credit: National Solar Observatory/GONG (main image); SOHO/MDI (inset) Maybe old Sol didn't hear the alarm clock. After a mysterious 2-year delay, the next 11-year solar cycle seems ready to begin, scientists say. That means the reemergence of sunspots, and with them periodic electromagnetic assaults on global navigation, communications, and power supplies--as well as brilliant auroras in the polar regions. For unknown reasons, the sun goes through cycles...