SkyandTelescope.com - News from Sky & Telescope - Solar Sleuths Tackle the "Quiet Sun"

For the past couple of years, our Sun has been at the minimum of its 11-year activity cycle. Its face has been virtually spotless for months on end, and there've been no dire alerts of titanic solar storms about to slam into Earth.

The problem is that this "quiet Sun" has continued far too long — two years ago, a special task force predicted that the transition from the just-ended Cycle 23 to the upcoming Cycle 24 would come around March 2008. It didn't. (To be fair, there was sharp disagreement within the group at that time.)

The Associated Press: THE INFLUENCE GAME: Excuse me! Lobby wins on burps

"I don't think livestock should be ignored. Every industry has to play their role," Mitloehner said. But laws designed to reduce emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes won't work with cattle, which can't be fitted with pollution control devices, Mitloehner said.

"The belching is very hard to collect," he said. "You cannot capture these gases."

Earth we have a problem

But when the subject comes up among the average grass roots conservative neighbor, you probably won’t hear much about legit science, data or empirical observations, from NASA or NOAA. It’s more likely going to be an incoherent jumble of self contradictory apologetics running the gamut from 1) there is no global warming, it’s a liberal hoax, 2) in fact the earth is actually cooling (Mars is cooling too!), 3) there is a slight increase in global temperatures but no one knows what’s causing it, 4) the earth naturally warms up and cools down on its own all the time, 5) the sun is causing it (Mars is warming up too!), 6) human activity may be causing some warming but no one knows for sure or by how much, 7) we’re causing it, but it would be too expensive to fix, and 8) humans are causing it and we could have fixed it, but now it’s too late. Those talking points are endlessly reinforced by a seamless, vertically integrated network of think-tanks, newspapers, talk radio, websites, and PR operations as slick and impartial as a Madison Ave advertising exec hired by Pepsi to take market share from Coca-Cola.