So I guess we could call that prediction a micro-Ice Age centered on 2012-2013 ? Let us hope such a cooling event will indeed be short. Gee, I sure wish I could afford 30 year old Scotch.
Nothing so drastic; just a cold-weather cycle.
Like the one that delayed the Normandy landings in 1944, and closed O'Hare in 1978.
34 years apart.
I'm trying to find an old post of mine that lays out my entire reasoning (so my lazy fingers don't have to retype the whole thing). Stand by...
Somewhere, years ago, I read of an approximate 34-year sun cycle. It's like the sun has a pulse, my source (since forgotten) read. It has a point of high output, and a point of low output, and the extremes are about 17 years apart. My thought was well, that's interesting, lets run some numbers from recent history.
I remember the vicious winter of 1978-79. O'Hare was closed for days (at a time? or several times?). There were so many snow days at my school that there was talk of lengthening the school year (they planned for a few snow days, but they were used up quickly). It was plain nasty (if, like me, you abominate winter weather from the get-go and regard every snowflake as a personal affront-- OK, not quite that bad).
OK, I thought, let's say that was a low period in the sun's output. Let's look forward and back 17 years each way and see what we see.
17 years before was 1961, three years before I was born, so I had to ask around. To give people a reference point, I brought up the start of the Kennedy Administration. Almost uniformly, people told me it was a gorgeous year weatherwise, the sun shone brilliantly upon Inauguration Day, etc. etc.
Seventeen years the other way, 1995, I moved to Texas. I was expecting hot, and got it. However, those around me were complaining that it was unusually hot had had been getting noticeably hotter over the past couple of years. That summer, the alternator in my newish car gave up the ghost, and when I had it replaced, I was informed that they'd had a lot of those, in various makes and models, that year and it seemed to be due to the heat. I wouldn't have thought so given the temps to be found in an engine compartment, but deferred to the wisdom of the tech.
So...let's look some more.
34 years before 1978 (our benchmark for cold weather) was 1944. The summer of 1944 was known for unusual weather patterns that disrupted war planning (remember how they nearly delayed D-Day?) and the winter of '44-45 was among the coldest on record. We can thank the War Department of the era for keeping the records, again as part of the warfighting effort. My late, Michigan-born 101st Airborne uncle told me he'd never seen such an inclement season in all his years before or since, growing up on a farm in similar climate and terrain, as he saw in Bastogne in December '44...leaving aside the rain of lead and steel.
I had more hearsay data going back another two +/-34-year "solar pulses", but my memory fails me at the moment. Do recall that, on the first Earth Day (1973?) the big worry was Global Cooling and the New Ice Age, and if my theory is correct, the data from the next five years would certainly have supported that panic.
I think we are past the peak of the warm pulse (about 1995) and gradually cooling toward the next cold valley, in 2012-13.
...I'm glad to put this back at the front of my file. Should make it easier to find next time I need it.