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I do believe a good case can be made for GLOBAL COOLING. Some of you may be interested in this article. You may even make a connection how this will relate to reliable sources of energy supplies,( gas, oil, electricity) storage as well as transportation of same. (energy related stocks) People want to stay warm. Not to mention secure sources of food, which may be affected by inclement weather. Well just a thought!

‘The climate historian Hubert H. Lamb in his 2002 book Climate History and the Modern World dates the cooling to two main phases. The first leg of this change he places at about 1200-1400, but his second phase of about 1500-1825 which for some climate historians is Europe’s Little Ice Age, was marked by much steeper drops in average temperatures. Indicators used by Lamb and other climate historians like Emmanuel Leroy Ladrie and Wolfgang Behringer include food price peaks as cold summers followed cold and wet springs, with increasing examples of “climate wars”, such as Louis X’s Flanders campaign where the climate chilling was a sure factor in play. I fear that we’re headed into such a period of great cooling and repetitive catastrophic flooding right now.’

This while our leaders prattle on about global warming, leaving us almost totally unprepared.

Winters are going to get colder...much colder - NASA consultant
Chris Carrington
D.C. Clothesline
Tue, 18 Nov 2014 01:45 UTC

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time.

Like the Dalton Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures.

During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000-50,000 spots. (Source)

Climatologist John Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, thinks that last year’s winter, described by USA Today as “one of the snowiest, coldest, most miserable on record” is going to be a regular occurrence over the coming decades.

Casey asserts that there is mounting evidence that the Earth is getting cooler due to a decline in solar activity. He warns in his latest book, Dark Winter that a major alteration of global climate has already started and that at a minimum it is likely to last 30 years.

Casey predicts food shortages and civil unrest caused by those shortages due largely to governments not preparing for the issues that colder weather will bring. he also predicts that wickedly bitter winter temperatures will see demand for electricity and heating outstrip the supply.

Casey isn’t alone in his thinking. Russian climate expert and astrophysicist Habibullo Abdussamatov goes one step further and states that we are at the very beginning of a new ice age.

Dr. Abdussamatov points out that Earth has experienced such occurrences five times over the last 1,000 years, and that:
“A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect.” (source)

Don Easterbrook, a climate scientist based at Western Washington University predicted exactly what Casey is saying as far back as 2008. in his paper ‘Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades’ he states:

Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade, and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100 which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy, water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly.
The list of climate scientists that are moving into the global cooling camp is growing, many of them base their views on past climate records and history suggests a link between diminished solar activity and bitterly cold winters, as well as cooler summers, in the northern hemisphere.

“My opinion is that we are heading into a Maunder Minimum,” said Mark Giampapa, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. “I’m seeing a continuation in the decline of the sunspots’ mean magnetic field strengths and a weakening of the polar magnetic fields and subsurface flows.”

David Hathaway of NASA’s Marshall Solar Physics Center explains:
“We’re at the sunspot maximum of Cycle 24. It’s the smallest sunspot cycle in 100 years and the third in a trend of diminishing sunspot cycles. So, Cycle 25 could likely be smaller than Cycle 24.”

A NASA Science News report of January 2013 details the science behind the sunspot-climate connection and it well worth reading. It should be remembered that since the report was written Solar cycle 24 has been proven to be not the smallest cycle in 50 years, but the smallest for more than 100 years. The last one with sunspot numbers this low was 1906, solar cycle 14.

“Indeed, the sun could be on the threshold of a mini-Maunder event right now. Ongoing Solar Cycle 24 [the current short term 11 year cycle] is the weakest in more than 50 years. Moreover, there is (controversial) evidence of a long-term weakening trend in the magnetic field strength of sunspots. Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory predict that by the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives, magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed. Independent lines of research involving helioseismology and surface polar fields tend to support their conclusion.”
Livingston and Penn are solar astronomers With the NSO (National Solar Observatory) in Tuscon, Arizona. They use a measurement known as Zeeman splitting to gather data on sunspots. They discovered in 1990, that the number of sunspots is dropping and that once the magnetic field drops below 1500 Gauss , that no sunspots will form. (A Gauss is a magnetic field measurement. The Gauss of the Earth is less than one). If the decline continues at its present rate they estimate that the Sun will be spot free by 2016.

If these scientists are correct, we are heading into a period of bitterly cold winters and much cooler summers. Imagine year after year of ‘polar vortex’ winters that start early, finish late and deliver unprecedented cold across the country. Cool wet summers will affect food production, as will floods from the melting snow when spring finally arrives.

The American Meteorological Society Journal gives the following information regarding cold related deaths in comparison to heat related deaths in the United States from 1979-1999. The article is entitled Heat Mortality Versus Cold Mortality.

During the study period from 1979 to 1999 a total of 3,829 people died from excessive heat across the United states. An average of 182 deaths per year. For the same time period 15,707 people died of cold, an average of 748 deaths a year.

Based on these figures cold kills four times more people than heat. If these scientists are right you can expect that figure to rise dramatically as energy demand outstrips supply. Power supplies are also impacted by ice storms and heavy snow which will lead to more outages and the disruption that brings. Generally the infrastructure will fail to cope with month after month of excessive cold. Transportation is severely impacted by weather events and that has the knock on effect of hitting the economy as people struggle to get to work. For the unprepared regular food deliveries not making it to stores will leave many hungry and increasingly desperate.

The consequences of global cooling are huge and those who fail to consider it as a possibility are risking their lives and the lives of their families.

Thank you for your detailed description of the issue and names of contributors to the discussion. I first became interested in sun spot cycles in 1958 while taking an astronomy class. Then they spoke of 11, 22, 44, and 88 year points in the cycle. At that time I said, “OK, lets try to predict the future.” Taking 1930 as a start for the Great Depression and it’s severe droughts (like they have been having in CA recently), I added 88 years, and came up with, wait for it, wait for it, 2018. So I guessed we would be having some weird and severe weather in the late 20 teens. And we have.

I also became interested in volcanoes in 1944. I was about 6 and I remember my father showing me the National Geographic about Paracutin, the volcano that sprouted in this poor Mexican farmers corn field. In the 4th grade I drew an elaborate color chalk diagram of a volcano on the blackboard with all parts labeled. In recent years I have been studying the effects of eruptions on climate and history and comparing the eruptions with world temperature charts and other records. For example if you look at the temperature chart for the last several hundred thousand years (Google Images Of ....) you can see a very abrupt drop in global temperature right at the 74,000 period when Toba erupted and left a crater 16 x 65 miles in diameter. I also noted that there were several downward spikes in the charts between 30 and 20 thousand years ago. I was excited when I found that Sakaru-Jima, a currently active volcano in Japan is on the edge of a 22 mile wide caldera and erupted 22,000 years ago where one of those blips shows on the temp. charts.

So, when I saw the figure 1876-1976, I thought this might be a reference to 1876-1877, which apparently it was not. Instead a typo of 1976-1977. Thus I went to Google and found this entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_volcanic_eruptions_of_the_19th_century

Since the person who made the typo was referring to the 20th century, at that link you can also click there to find very nice lists for the 18th and 20th centuries. It seems the severe weather happens several years after major volcanic events or several in close sequence. I remember for several years after Pinatubo there was crazy weather on the east coast and Canada. See the VEI index numbers to judge severity. Like the Richter scale for earthquakes the VEI numbers are a lot more that double the number preceeding. A 5 is much larger than a 4, and a six much larger than a 5. One interesting period in history was the Laki Fissure eruptions in Iceland in 1783 which Ben Franklin our ambassador to France thought might explain the crazy weather in Europe for several years after. The crop failures led to such poverty that the French Revolution erupted as violently as a volcano.