Vic Socotra

06 July 2009

The Maunder Minimum

(The Solar Disc, unblemished. US Naval Research Laboratory photo)

Bless the Navy, both ours and that of the Queen, and throw in Portugal and Spain’s as well, since they were the first of the great Navigators.

All of them looked to the sky for portents of what would befall their frail vessels on the waves, and to sail the vast reaches without disaster, they had to discover a means of accurately telling the hours, minutes and seconds of the day.

You should read about the saga of the clocks of Greenwich, if you have the chance. Seeing them in person gave me a chill, since the outré devices constructed by the blue-collar John Harrison were the first to permit the accurate measuring of longitude, and enable mariners, naval and commercial, to avoid the rocks.

Charles the Second of Great Britain recognized the importance, saying:

“Whereas, in order to the finding out of the longitude of places for perfecting navigation and astronomy, we have resolved to build a small observatory within Our Park at Greenwich...”

Harrison built the first successful marine timekeeper in the 18th century, and the same basic design was used until the 1960s when mechanical chronometers were phased out by radio and then satellite navigation.

You’d like the story. It is not about invention as much as perseverance, and the entrenched power that sought to deny its just reward.

But neither the Visiting Dog nor I needed much precision in time keeping, except to note that it was early as we stumbled around Big Pink’s park-like grounds. It is decidedly cool for this 4th of July weekend. Yesterday there was a palpable chill in the air as the Intern and I emerged from a late afternoon dip in the pool.

We noted several things. The crowds waiting for the bus are larger than I have ever seen, more than a dozen workmen gathered in a long line along the sidewalk where we normally stroll. There are more people sleeping in their cars, too, and we spooked a homeless man who looked a little like the Mad Hatter, scuttling along with his pack.

Almost all of us were wearing long sleeved shirts, and some had on jackets.
This is the 6th of July, if you had not noted, in usually steamy Washington, DC.

Odd thing, this swing in the weather.

I would like to assuage the concerns of those who may be suspicious that I am about to launch into some polemic about the bad science of climate change, and the fact that there is clearly something going on that is not accounted for in Mr. Gore’s PowerPoint presentations.

I’m not. I’m more of a mind to follow the advice that the Queen of Hearts gave Alice:

"When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

I am fully prepared to believe that belching poisons into the air is a bad thing, and that we need to clean up our act as a matter of some urgency before we drown in our own toxins.

I believe that the traditional sources of our petrocarbons are not only controlled by malicious lunatics, bent on our destruction. They are also in relatively short supply, or can be manipulated in such a manner as to make that as good as true, whether it is or not.

I believe that what we do in terms of carbon may be inclining us to a warming trend, all things being equal, but of course they are not.

Thank goodness the Navy is still alert, and watching the skies.

The attached picture is one from a series of solar images captured by the Office of Naval Research. The sun is something we do not look upon directly with the naked eye, and its periodic blemishes are things that are only reported to us by those who work with indirect images.

The deal is this: the biggest producer of energy in this neck of the universe is the sun. It passed its nominal eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity last year.

The solar scientists have been peering intently, if indirectly, to observe the first sunspot of the new cycle. There was minor excitement in January, where a pimple was observed, but it turned out there has been virtually no such activity since.

I have no belief one way or another about whether this pause represents a blip or an event in solar history. Within written and observed history, there was a period of fifty years when there were no sunspots. It is known, historically, as “The Maunder Minimum.”

We have historical records of the Minimum, and the Thames River at Greenwich froze right across, and wolves were seen close to villages in the unaccustomed snow. The Minimum occurred, coincidently around the time of the Great Navigators.

That fifty year period of The Minimum is also known these days as the “Little Ice Age.”

I believe this: the sun is the largest single influence on our solar system, and it dwarfs anything that humans can do. Periods of inactivity are normal for the sun and also that the current spot-free period has gone on much longer than usual. That is five impossible things to believe and breakfast is nearly done.

For the sixth, to round things out with the end of the egg yolk and last morsel of morning toast, I will stipulate that even if Global Warming is a figment of an improperly understood science, a period of global cooling as an alternative is only a chill and uncomfortable solace.

That is why we are going to talk about a uniquely American figure this week.

I would say that I believe that T. Boone Pickens has the answer to at least some of the uncomfortable truths, whatever they might be.

But that would be seven things to believe before breakfast, and I will leave that for tomorrow. In the meantime, I salute the Navy and the watchers of the skies.

That takes no leap of faith at all.

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