> Actually, not "very different from" - just "different from" - it's an
> attempt to deal with the way that sunspots tend to cluster - presumably on
> the basis that a number of close sunspots tend to have a common source /
> cause so the groups are given more weighting than individual spots by a
> factor of 10.

Okay.. Well it looks like my assumption on that part was way off, you 
obviously have studied the subject extensively J.
But...


> AND the ARRL man seems to be trying to be the sort of person who 
> encourages
> conspiracy theorists - by seeming to make up soothing theories of his own 
> as
> he foes along. Nothing excites conspiracy theorists more than being 
> offered
> "manifestly flimsy" [tm] excuses.

I still wonder about your conspiracy suspicions. To me it seems 
exceptionally unlikely that worldwide al the solar "experts" are conspiring 
together to keep the rest of us in the dark about upcoming disaster..


> organ or physicist. Gargoyling for the Maunder minimum maudlin meanderings
> (just the 1st two please)  will turn up all the discussion and conspiracy
> theories desired. Also some good science. As is generally well known by 
> all
> and sundry by now, a period of very very very low sunspot activity AND 
> thus
> sunspot number on the 1800's (when  ~ 0 + 0 = 00 was the order of the day
> for years) corresponded to an exceptionally low decades long low 
> temperature
> period in Europe when the Thames froze at London and a large percentage of
> Scandinavians died. There are arguments that this was a geographically
> localised effect, and that may be so (and even if it was the base cause 
> MAY
> have been correlated with sunspot activity) but true or not, it's not
> something that one scientist and one financial organ brought about.

A new Maunder minimum MAY be upcoming, but with our very limited knowledge 
it's impossible to predict at this moment. There have been other periods of 
prolonged low solar activity at least comparable the the current state of 
the sun (both sunspot number AND number of sunspots J), for instance 
somewhere in the beginning of the 20th century. The next cycle was then just 
slightly below average (as I remember. And not form personal experience of 
course).

I think our knowledge of the inner workings of the sun and its direct effect 
on our pale blue dot is so limited that we cannot even determine with 
certainty that there is an anomaly at all..



> I also noted (or was that only to NOAA?) that SOME of the other indicators
> (proton end electron energies, Hydrogen line RF, ...) are also producing
> somewhat anomalous results while others are not. ie the sun is doing
> something interesting but not utterly absolutely different than normal,

Quite.

> As for moving the goalposts, at least they now have a message saying that
> they are doing so. But the explanation given, while an adequate statement 
> of
> what they are doing, is a poor explanation of what the graphs represent. 
> It
> is probably not reasonable to assume the same max and min as they assumed
> before, the rate of change is almost certainly going to be different and 
> in
> fact anything else may well happen. The "most scientific" choices 
> available
> to them are to either leave the old indicators in place - which shows how
> unexpected the current results are, or remove the indicators totally from
> now on because their is as yet no better scientifically based idea of what
> is expected to happen. Just sliding the old curves across is worse than
> useless. Whatever.
> As above, maybe just stupidity and lack of rigour. But I am sceptical 
> about
> the 'deep silence' from the keepers of the norm, who are far from silent
> when reality's sometimes apparently random fluctuations seem to confirm
> their pet theories :-).


Stupidity I think not. But not understanding the process, while trying to 
explain it anyhow AND making predictions based on not understanding...



Minto Witteveen. 

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