Thursday, September 4, 2008

Global Cooling Cometh?

Could it be that instead of preparing for global warming it is really global cooling which looms over the horizon? We can’t be sure of course, but increasingly, there appears to be more evidence to support cooling than warming. We know for example that while the earth did warm about .6 degrees C in the past 100 years, the warming trend stopped in 1998. Even the strongest proponents of global warming admit that. They claim it is only a pause in warming and unless we essentially revert to a kind of Stone Age lifestyle we’re all going to fry, if we don’t drown first from the rising oceans!

But as I reported yesterday there is something going on with the sun which is beginning to deeply concern many scientists. For the first time in more than 100 years there were no sunspots for an entire month. The sun has entered into something called Solar Cycle 24 marked by an amazingly low number of sun spots. During some periods there are as many as 100 sun spots over a 30 day period, but for the past year or so that number has dropped to about 3 per month and during August for the first time since 1913 there was not a single sun spot according to the Mount Wilson Observatory at UCLA.

What is disturbing is that during the past 1000 years there have been three similar instances of very low or totally absent sun spot activity and during each episode the earth cooled substantially. In fact during one such period we experienced a “little ice age”. This occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries. During the coldest part, known as the Maunder Minimum, astronomers saw only about 50 sunspots over a 30-year period during which, among other things, the River Thames froze over completely and winter-like weather during the summer months resulted in widespread famine. Glaciers advanced rapidly in Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and North America, making vast tracts of land uninhabitable. There are reports of Eskimos landing their kayaks in Scotland. The Viking colonies in Greenland were abandoned completely. During the winter of 1780, New York harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island.

We are now at the beginning of Solar Cycle 24, so named because it is the 24th consecutive cycle that astronomers have listed, starting with the first cycle that began in March, 1755 and ended June 1766. Each cycle lasts an average of 11 years. Each is marked by sunspots that first erupt in the mid-latitudes of the sun and then over the course of the 11 years, erupt progressively toward the sun equator, each is marked by a change in the polarity of the sun’s hemispheres and each changes the temperature on Earth in ways that we humans don’t fully understand.

Are we headed for another little ice age? Who can say, surely not Al Gore. Sunspots could very well start to re-appear today or tomorrow, or perhaps not. And if they don’t? Could it be that the River Thames will freeze again?

When Shakespeare wrote of “lawn as white as driven snow” he had first hand experience. He was living in the little ice age. There were a lot of lawns as white as driven snow around here a few months back. Was that the start of something? Ask David Suzuki.

If you are interested in having a closer look at this check out the website dailytech.com. Another great source to check out is the book entitled “The Deniers” authored by Lawrence Solomon.

15 comments:

Vladtepesblog.com said...

For a really good explanation of sun spots and climate please see
http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=264 which is the complete movie 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and a really good watch. Most questions will be answered and scrutiny is applied to those who claim CO2 drives climate and especially man made CO2.
Also http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=1048 is an interview with a Harvard PhD. in climatology who speaks to real science and environmental issues. He actually comes out and mentions that most popular climate models are politically driven and not scientifically.

deneb said...

I wonder if anyone has ever had their Nobel Peace Prize revoked.
Al Gore might want to auction his off on Ebay while the thing still holds some value. Actually, in a few decades, when we are shovelling snow off our driveways in May, his little prize might become a much sought after curiousity and conversation piece for someone's coffee table.

treb said...

Winter,Spring,Summer,Fall...Dont know where these scientist went to school,but i was taught that there are four seasons.Why are they so astonished when the weather changes every 3 months.Every 100 or so years the temperature of the earth cools and heats up again and cools and heats up again.I,m not a scientist ,but are they just making up these scare stories for the research money.And does the money stop flowing if they tell the truth.?????

Anonymous said...

Only too true.

And just for fun: there is a retired (!) meteorologist who is trying to compile photos of all the ground stations measuring temperatures....incredibly, more than half are near AC exhausts, etc. Check it - and other criticisms of weather alarmism: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/

Anonymous said...

Now that Mr. Green is armed with this knowledge, I think Lowell should invite David Suzuki for a discussion on global warming and coolong trends. It would make great radio to hear CFRA's resident straight-talking straight shooter go head-to-head with the book-smart liberal.

Unknown said...

Very interesting, well researched, technically accurate. I will agree with the hypothesis that we are entering another mini ice-age.
Thanks for your blog Lowell

Unknown said...

Interesting, and well-researched.
I believe that we are starting a mini ice-age.
Thanks for your blog Lowell

Anonymous said...

Just came across this article in DailyTech: the predictions that this year's Arctic ice would shrink to record lows has NOT come true, as it has already started to grow (before shrinking to last summer's low).

It also explains that Siberian winds last year caused ice to drift into warmer waters, causing unusually large melting...

Read for yourselves: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12851

Xanthippa

Unknown said...

When these scientists can predict the weather next week within 3 degrees, I will give them the benefit of the doubt when they try to predict 50 years from now.

Great blog Lowell!

sandy said...

finally people are getting some facts. solar observation is a four hundred year old science with quantitative obsevations with exactly the same result with every solar cycle.
solar minumum=few or no sunspots=cooler temperatures,
solar maximum=many sunspots=hotter temperatures.
for daily sunspot obeservations from all over the world please visit www.spaceweather.com also for more information regarding minimums and maximums just follow the links there. we are now in a minimum cylcle with just over four hundred spotless days which is a bit high but still within normals.
The little ice age of 1645-1715 was solar minimum with 1019 spotless days. Hopefully we're not headed there again. Carbon induced global warming, I don't think so, maybe we should ask David Suzuki and Al Gore for all the billions back and use that money to start fighting real pollution.

JMD said...

Good work, Lowell. We need more of these inconvenient facts to counter the propaganda from the global warming scammers and their main stream media accomplices.

It is indeed the possibility of coooler temperatures that should worry us. Climatologist Tim Ball points out that no one farms to the north of us. What this means is that warmer temperatures expand Canada's (and the world's) food-growing zone northward. Cooler temps move it south and could means much less food produced in Canada.

Faced with these realities, it is astounding that so much of officialdom in this country worries about global warming. It is global cooling that we should fear.

Beast said...

I wonder if we can get some of that money "taken" for Global warming and put where it needs to go.

Fat chance. Hey can we sell Gorey boy and David suzymaker?

Anonymous said...

Lowell, have you ever read the book "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson? Beside the fact it is a very funny yet extremely accurate science book on nearly everything in science, it has an interesting chapter on the ice ages. It says that we are still living in an ice age, and the fact that we even have ice on the poles is proof of that. The Earth, in its between ice age stage will have no ice at all and is much, much warmer. We are currently in a so called interglacial period that has lasted, so far, for over 10,000 years and is just a period of brief warming during an ice age. There have been numerous warm periods in this ice age before, but they all lasted only an average of 2500 years. Our current civilization is entirely built in just a brief warming period in the middle of an ice age! We are in a warming period that is 7500 years overdue to returning to ice cold freeze-your-butt-off temperatures!

Beast said...

Lowell, I came across this Sunday morning. A zero emission car running on compressed air.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4217016.html

Why can't we explore this, I know a lot of people will whine it's too slow. But at $2 a tank they might come around.

Sean McAllister

Unknown said...

Lowell is once again incorrect. Global warming did not stop since 1998. In fact, global warming has steadily increased since 1998.

For proof, see:
http://tinyurl.com/57ymc7

and:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm

It's unfortunate that Lowell uses flawed research in order to advance his misguided political beliefs. Then again, what would you expect from a talk show host with no science degree.