Tea at Trianon: A Long Cold Winter

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

A Long Cold Winter

From Fox News:

A long cold winter could hit space in months bringing record low temperatures, NASA has warned. That's the warning from a scientist who fears sunspot activity on the surface of our star has dropped so low that record low temperatures could soon set in. “We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center.

“High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. "If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.” Solar minimum can enhance the effects of space weather, disrupt communications and navigation, and even cause space junk to "hang around", NASA said.

Mlynczak and his colleagues have recently introduced the "Thermosphere Climate Index" (TCI), which measure how much heat nitric oxide (NO) molecules are dumping into space. The results come from the SABER instrument onboard NASA’s TIMED satellite, that monitor infrared emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO). By measuring the infrared glow of these molecules, SABER can assess the thermal state of gas at the very top of the atmosphere – a layer researchers call “the thermosphere.”

When the thermosphere cools, it shrinks, making the radius of the Earth's atmosphere smaller. This means it can delay the natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth. “Right now, it is very low indeed,” Mlynczak told Space Weather. “SABER is currently measuring 33 billion Watts of infrared power from NO. That’s 10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle.”

“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” explains Mlynczak. “We’re not there quite yet,” he said of the record cold, “but it could happen in a matter of months."

The most famous example of a prolonged sunspot minimum is the Maunder Minimum, referring to a period around 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots become exceedingly rare. Maunder coincided with the middle part of the Little Ice Age, when Europe and North America experienced colder temperatures - fuelling speculation that the two were connected. (Read more.)