Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high

I have labeled the quotes in the article as Fact and Speculation for ease of understanding. Please feel free to do the same for the rest of the article and see if you can spot the trend.

Scientists based at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich used ice cores from Greenland to construct a picture of our star's activity in the past. (Fact)

They say that over the last century the number of sunspots rose at the same time that the Earth's climate became steadily warmer. (Fact)

This trend is being amplified by gases from fossil fuel burning, they argue. (Speculation)

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years. (Fact)

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer. (Fact)

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer. (Fact based on supporting data).

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