Posted on 02/09/2008 12:25:57 PM PST by neverdem
Global Cooling comes back in a big way
Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."
Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.
During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.
But will it happen again?
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov predicted the sun would soon peak, triggering a rapid decline in world temperatures. Only last month, the view was echoed by Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. who advised the world to "stock up on fur coats." Sorokhtin, who calls man's contribution to climate change "a drop in the bucket," predicts the solar minimum to occur by the year 2040, with icy weather lasting till 2100 or beyond.
Observational data seems to support the claims -- or doesn't contradict it, at least. According to data from Britain's Met Office, the earth has cooled very slightly since 1998. The Met Office says global warming "will pick up again shortly." Others aren't so sure.
Researcher Dr. Timothy Patterson, director of the Geoscience Center at Carleton University, shares the concern. Patterson is finding "excellent correlations" between solar fluctuations, a relationship that historically, he says doesn't exist between CO2 and past climate changes. According to Patterson. we shouldn't be surprised by a solar link. "The sun [is] the ultimate source of energy on this planet," he says.
Such research dates back to 1991, when the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study showing that world temperatures over the past several centuries correlated very closely with solar cycles. A 2004 study by the Max Planck Institute found a similar correlation, but concluded the timing was only coincidental, as the solar variance seemed too small to explain temperature changes.
However, researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increases, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off.
Recently, lead researcher Henrik Svensmark was able to experimentally verify the link between cosmic rays and cloud formation, in a cloud chamber experiment called "SKY" at the Danish National Space Center. CERN plans a similar experiment this year.
A few years ago, Stanford University's Hoover Institution also reported finding a correlation between the sun and climate. Hoover
Even NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies -- long the nation's most ardent champion of anthropogenic global warming -- is getting in on the act. Drew Shindell, a researcher at GISS, says there are some "interesting relationships we don't fully understand" between solar activity and climate.
What would we do without experts? When the end comes, I hope the experts are the first to get it.
We might as well be panicking over comets in the sky as taking these news stories seriously.
I saw some economic development commercials from the state of Michigan today. Actor Jeff Daniels is the spokesperson.
He said “Green is the New Gold,” touting Michigan’s new businesses focused on environmental issues.
Yup, it’s all about the money...from our pockets to theirs. What a crock.
There’s going to be a New Ica Age ping, Xcamel.
You know, it would be worth it to go through another Ice Age to shut up the enviro-wackos and the green schemers.
Of course, they’ll figure out a way to say global warming caused global cooling.
And the Mainstream Media will go right along.
Does this mean we get to keep our light bulbs?
Of course, now we’ll need all the new sources of green energy even more to provide all that heat were going to need.
That’s the ticket!
I like the cover
I thought we were all gonna’ die in 2012?
If Solar sunspots hit a new ‘low’ , we will all have to go to hell to stay warm.
Of course, many would say the U.S. is going to hell, so I can’t decide. Live in hell, or go to hell.
What a choice!
Ping
No, no, no.... Our catchy slogan can't be given as a negative. What's the opposite of green?
If the astronomers said that a comet was going to hit the earth in a few months, it might actually *be* time to panic.
These are real scientists, just like those astronomers. In fact they are a sort of astronomer, or astrophysicist anyway. The scary thing about this particular Maunder minimum, it that what it turns out to be, is that we are also overdue, a little, for the next real, as opposed to mini, ice age. Do these sort of solar events trigger a bigger true "ice age" if conditions are otherwise right? That is something we probably don't know. 'Course we might get a chance to find out, maybe even in the lifetime of us old dudes. More likely our grandchildren will get to find out, and curse the name of Al Gore, who got the "powers that were" stampeding in the wrong direction. (even though he really just attempted to look like he was leading the herd).
HA! Your mention of Cornell led me to wonder how publicity hound Carl Sagan would have injected himself into the current scare if he was still around: "Rising sea levels will kill billions and billions of people..."
So was post 68. :-)
Response: I really hate to tell you this, but the truth will not even faze him. Nary a flicker will you see. Truth never impacts a politician.
Oh no, I’m so sure we could do it because man is creating global warming right so why not global warming on the sun?
The sarcasm switch is in the ON position.
GO BLUE! Being a tarheel fan that works for me...unless you want red...NONE of my teans are red. :(
It’s still -36 on the porch today. -42 downtown in the urban heat island. If this keeps up much longer I expect to have sabertooth tigers in the yard and wooly mammoths chowing down on my shrubs.
Authorities have built new observatories all over the planet to watch for NEAR’s.
Authorities have built a storage facility near the North Pole to keep seed stock in.
Authorities have built an entire underground city to house the ‘calamity government’.
It’s not what they would or are doing that worries me.
It’s what the general public will do.
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