[BartSimpson]

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-main ... -both-ways

Excerpt:

Quote:

It was announced June 15 that scientists are now fairly sure that around 2020, sunspot activity is going to lessen significantly. All the conditions for it are lining up so far. In layman’s language, less active sun, with fewer sunspots, can produce cooling because solar flares are diminished. Technically, this condition is a “solar minimum.” The last time it happened, experts say, we had a “Little Ice Age.”

Some 20 independent news sources published the findings emanating from at least three independent scientific studies and some dozen scientists. All seemed to concur that episodic sunspot activity lasting anywhere from 70 to 150 years is responsible for wild swings in weather on Earth as well as on other planets within our solar system. This 70- to 150-year cycle has embedded within it several shorter-term, 11-year solar cycles (“mini-cycles,” for lack of a better term), “that we all should have learned about in high school,” advises Dr. Michael Coffman, president of Environmental Perspectives, Inc.

Coffman explains that “everyone expected a normal cycle this time around. It hasn’t happened. The sun has massive ‘conveyor belts’ of plasma that circulate every 11 years. Our current solar cycle, Cycle 24, is very weak and scientists are now realizing the internal ‘conveyor belt’ is breaking down just as it did 150 years ago.” [See graph.]

“The number of sunspots (or, solar eruptions),” explains Coffman, “is already the lowest they have been in over a 100 years. [See the stunning graphic by clicking “here” at the bottom of the embedded link above.] There are indications that Cycle 25 may not have any at all! This hasn’t happened since the mid-1600s to the mid-1800s, when Earth experienced what is termed ‘the Little Ice Age.’” The “Little Ice Age” had no sunspots, and global temperatures dropped by 3 degrees Celsius. But in contrast to what people are led to believe by "global-warming" ideologists, the cooling did not turn out well. Coffman points to historical details showing that the dip in global temperatures caused, instead, massive crop failures, famine, and disease.

Unfortunately, science organizations that are responsible for grants and government contracts to scientists don’t know exactly how to spin these latest findings (much less their ramifications) in view of the politically correct necessity of maintaining man-made global-warming dogma to justify various legislative schemes of wealth redistribution now on the table — carbon footprints, cap-and-trade, etc. — all of which have become essential to the liberal establishment that holds the purse strings of research and development (R&D).

It’s no secret that many scientists have long had inconvenient misgivings about global-warming data, and now it appears that doomsayers such as Al Gore could come across as fools. But try telling that to politicians who have already bought in to the dogma for funding and electability purposes! They have even bent over backwards to aid and abet a recasting of the popular jargon, rephrasing “global warming” as “climate change” when it got a black eye after scientists’ personal e-mails questioning the data started surfacing last year.

For many readers, a refresher course in Earth science and astrophysics may be in order. One reason the public has been amenable to global-warming doctrine (and are even frightened by it) is that it covers a broad area of science, made more complex by newer spinoff disciplines, such as computer modeling, which were not typical 1960s college science curricula. The problem is made no easier by modern public-school science courses. Youngsters who never studied levers and pulleys, much less took a course in basic chemistry and physics, may view Al Gore’s CD An Inconvenient Truth in high school and decide it makes sense. Given the government school system’s liberal-left bias — including “professional” associations all aimed variously at science and math teachers, school principles, and district administrators — alternate theories don’t get an airing in the classroom. Add to that typical newspaper and magazine coverage, both print and online: They all have word-count limitations and are not meant as teaching tools. Consequently, the hapless citizen must be willing, on his or her own, to click on those links and dig deeper to understand either the research or the logic behind the theories.

If one reads many sources, component parts of the overall issue often falls into place. From National Geographic News (NGN) science reporter Victoria Jaggard, for example, we learn that “sunspots are cool, dark blemishes visible on the sun’s surface that indicate regions of intense magnetic activity.” Scientists have been aware of sunspots for centuries — some of them being wider than planet Earth. In recent decades, researchers have been using sunspots to track the sun’s magnetic highs and lows.

Then “the National Solar Observatory's Matt Penn and his colleagues analyzed more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona.” (Photos are linked on the NGN site.) That long-term project helped set off concerns of an impending “Little Ice Age.”

A June 15 Los Angeles Times article tells us that sunspots “are caused by pockets of intense magnetic activity that disrupt the normal circulation of heated gases on the sun’s surface, leading to areas of cooling.” Dr. Coffman explains that these conditions can create solar flares and more violent coronal mass ejections of plasma into outer space. When the sun is active with these events (every 11 years), the resulting solar winds interact with cosmic radiation in a way that heats the Earth, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

“But the opposite is also true,” cautions Coffman. “When there are very few sunspots, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections, the earth cools. In the case of the “little Ice Age,” the 3-degree Celsius cooling period caused the Thames River and the Holland canals to freeze over every year.” Moreover, global cooling is much more dangerous to humanity than global warming, he says — a point that is absent from most discussions on the subject available to the average person.

If Coffman’s concerns prove correct, it is highly relevant to Mitt Romney’s recent statement, championed by none other than Al Gore. Romney released the following in his “memoir,” judiciously timed to coincide with his 2012 presidential bid:

I believe that climate change is occurring — the reduction in the size of global ice caps is hard to ignore. I also believe that human activity is a contributing factor. Scientists are nearly unanimous in laying the blame for rising temperatures on greenhouse gas emissions.

Romney may regret those words, as well as the kudos from global-alarmist-in-chief, Al Gore.

Turns out there are more non-concurring scientists on the issue of global warming than most people thought, even given last year’s flap over hacked, dissenting e-mails exchanged among some NASA scientists and between a few researchers from the University of East Anglia in the U.K. Announcing the new studies June 15 was a gutsy move — even if some of the participating researchers felt they needed to equivocate just enough to appease the global-warming camp, thereby assuring (hopefully) continued funding. Unfortunately, some of their tortured explanations have compromised public understanding of the topic.

Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico, took the lead in announcing the overall findings from the three separate studies, stating that “around 2020, sunspots may disappear for years, maybe decades.”

“The fact that there are three separate lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction is very compelling,” Hill said in an Associated Press article. But, in contrast to Coffman’s assertion, he maintained there could likely be “mostly good” effects from this, including longer lasting satellites and possibly (note the caveat here) “a little less increase in global warming.” Whether Hill’s comment was meant to mollify global-warming activists, or whether he really believed it, is unclear. More tellingly, perhaps, is that the AP article noted the scientists were reluctant to discuss the global warming/climate change topic, stating that “there are questions about what this means for Earth’s climate.”

Various other articles came out the same day, with further details and the proverbial “spin” that would leave a non-expert in the field scratching his head.

A Los Angeles Times piece by Thomas H. Maugh II provided a very readable explanation of how “Hill and his colleagues [used] a process known as helioseismography, which monitors sound waves emitted by solar jet streams." He alluded to jet streams that typically precede the normal beginning of a solar cycle. They are missing, which hints again that the next sunspot cycle may be weak at best.

Maugh also alludes to the aforementioned 70-year cold stretch lasting from 1645 to 1715, as did Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force’s coronal research program at Sunspot, New Mexico — the period during which virtually no sunspots were observed. But, oddly, neither man goes into the ghastly side-effects of that cooling period — e.g., crop failures, famine, etc.

Matt Peckham, in his piece for Techland/Time Inc., posted a “clarification,” as he called it, after-the-fact, more likely in response to editors than to average readers: “Some commenters [to the website] seem to be confused about the terms ‘global warming’ and ‘global cooling’. … A less active sun may have a ‘global cooling’ effect on the planet. [But] that doesn’t mean the impact of greenhouse gases or the average overall thermal trend are offset. In fact it has nothing to do with offsets or equation balancing.”

Peckham wasn’t alone. An AFP/US Space Sun report by Kerry Sheridan quickly switched from covering the new studies to rehashing the questionable forecasts of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Stephen Adams linked two documents, from 2009 and 2010, for the Telegraph, a U.K. publication. They appeared to support the studies’ findings about the confluence of events leading to a possible cooling period and a new “little Ice Age.” But then, he too switched gears and quoted Joanna Haigh, professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, who claimed that “global warming could override any cooling effect on the Earth’s climate…. Even if the predictions are correct,” she said, “the effect of global warming will outstrip the sun’s ability to cool even in the coldest scenario.”

Any reader would be left wondering exactly how the developed world’s SUVs, airplanes, and fossil-fuel consumption might outpace the mighty sun or its sunspots, some of which, according to National Geographic News (see above) are wider than the Earth.

Among the most thorough examinations was an official document from the NASA-operated Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in “The Timeline of Solar Cycles.” SDO’s project scientist, William Dean Pesnell, said the studies “represent the first wave of new data that should help physicists better understand the sun’s internal workings.” And Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Bruce Tsurutani, a space weather scientist, led the team that sheds light on the time lag between solar events and Earth-based weather swings.

Any way you look at it, there’s a whole new dimension to the climate-change debate. Dr. Coffman puts it this way: “No one can predict we are going into a ‘Little Ice Age’, but it is more probable now than global warming. If we do go into another ‘minimum,’ it could get very nasty. Pray for global warming.”

[Zipperfish]

I don't think the idea of warming due to the spectral properties of carbon dioxide and cooling due to a low number of sunspots are mutually exclusive theories. I think it's probbaly safe to say that tehlevel of C)2 in the atmosphere will not have an effect on the number of sunspots. The number of sunspots could well have an effect on the CO2 concentration, however. To determine the effect I guess you could overlay global temperatures (derived from proxies) over the long sunspot cycle.

[BartSimpson]

The long and short of it is that climatology (at least the politicized version of it) is mere speculation founded in political ideology.

The only reason the global warming 'crisis' had the traction that it did have was because the chorus of a spectrum of leftists saw it as a justification to advance their various agendas.

As the climate perhaps cools down I've no doubt that the same 'solutions' will be presented to resolve the challenges of cooling as were presented with warming.

Cap and Trade will be called something else and take a different form, but will be effectively the same thing with the same impacts. Carbon emissions will lose their place in the sun (har, har) to be replaced by sulphur emissions and soot...which is reminiscent of the ice age alarmism of the 1970's.

What's nice is that with the internet it's now impossible for the left to simply ignore their past bleating about global warming as the climate cools down.

Maybe people will be more sensible this time around and instead of looking at snake oil solutions to something we can't solve they'll just get right to the more pragmatic aspect of planning for the possibility of 30-70 cooler years.

[sandorski]

lol, come on already, just get off the Denialist wagon and see reality. Every one of these threads is just a rehash of the previous one, it's getting boring.

[Freakinoldguy]

So if this prediction comes to fruition, I guess it'll finally prove that the Russian Scientist in the 70's was right about us going into an ice age.


Or just to keep the fight going how about.

Canadian scientists discover new clues to rapid Arctic ice melt

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2078461/


The only thing I'm sure about global warming and climate change is that it's making people rich but I'm not one of them.

[ShepherdsDog]

i definitely wouldn't mind a mini ice age right here right now. it's 31C(humidex of 43) as of 9AM. I may actually have to turn the A/C on.

[Thanos]

I miss the good ol' days when a hot summer or a long cold winter weren't immediately cast by the "activists" and their media lapdogs as Official Signs Of The Imminent Apocalypse. Seriously, when did we all get to be so frakkin' DUMB?

[Zipperfish]

BartSimpson wrote:

The long and short of it is that climatology (at least the politicized version of it) is mere speculation founded in political ideology.

The only reason the global warming 'crisis' had the traction that it did have was because the chorus of a spectrum of leftists saw it as a justification to advance their various agendas.

As the climate perhaps cools down I've no doubt that the same 'solutions' will be presented to resolve the challenges of cooling as were presented with warming.

Cap and Trade will be called something else and take a different form, but will be effectively the same thing with the same impacts. Carbon emissions will lose their place in the sun (har, har) to be replaced by sulphur emissions and soot...which is reminiscent of the ice age alarmism of the 1970's.

What's nice is that with the internet it's now impossible for the left to simply ignore their past bleating about global warming as the climate cools down.

Maybe people will be more sensible this time around and instead of looking at snake oil solutions to something we can't solve they'll just get right to the more pragmatic aspect of planning for the possibility of 30-70 cooler years.

Not even close, sorry Bart. The politicization of climate science is a direct result of the global warming controversey. Climatology existed long before as a science, and will exist long after.

The article you posted contains a number of elementary errors and it's pretty clear to me that the writer hasn't the foggiest notion of the scientific case for or against anthropogenic climate change. I happen to know this as a scientist myself. Unfortunately, many reading it will not.

The physics of claimte change is really quite simple. Incoming solar radiation hits the planet where is mainly converted to heat (infrared radiation). CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (as do many other chemicals, such as water) and reflects about half of it back to Earth. If you increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, you will increase the amount of heat reflected back to Earth, all other things being equal.

The tricky part is that not all other things are equal. The ecosystem itself responds in ways we don't really understand. But the bottom line is, from a scientists perspective, the big mystery would be: If increased concentrations of CO2 aren't raising the average temperature, then why not? Then you look for cycles of various kind that come into play.

But eventually the ever-increasing CO2 concentrations will "hit a sweet spot" with some type of warm cycle, and that's when we'll see the real nastiness of climate change, which at this point, is inevitable.

[DerbyX]

Then there is the competing sulphur pollutants that work to cool the earth by blocking solar radiation. http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 06976.html

[DrCaleb]

BartSimpson wrote:

Cap and Trade will be called something else and take a different form, but will be effectively the same thing with the same impacts. Carbon emissions will lose their place in the sun (har, har) to be replaced by sulphur emissions and soot...which is reminiscent of the ice age alarmism of the 1970's.

Zipperfish wrote:

The physics of claimte change is really quite simple. Incoming solar radiation hits the planet where is mainly converted to heat (infrared radiation). CO2 absorbs infrared radiation (as do many other chemicals, such as water) and reflects about half of it back to Earth. If you increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, you will increase the amount of heat reflected back to Earth, all other things being equal.

The tricky part is that not all other things are equal. The ecosystem itself responds in ways we don't really understand. But the bottom line is, from a scientists perspective, the big mystery would be: If increased concentrations of CO2 aren't raising the average temperature, then why not? Then you look for cycles of various kind that come into play.

But eventually the ever-increasing CO2 concentrations will "hit a sweet spot" with some type of warm cycle, and that's when we'll see the real nastiness of climate change, which at this point, is inevitable.

I don't normally weigh in on these; I've been reading something that makes sense.

There was a 'cooling' bit from the 1940 to the 1970s, around the time that the US and many industrialized countries started building many coal plants. Then in the 70's, 'acid rain' got tamed when plants had to reduce sulphur emissions. And warming started increasing.

Now that China is building coal plants at a record rate, and warming is slowing - let's see what happens when they put scrubbers on those plants and reduce sulphur emissions.

[eureka]

The article makes a fundamental error at its start. Sunspot activity has been about as low as it could be for decades now and there has been no lessening of the warming. It is calculated that the lack of activity could have been responsible for about. .01C per decade when, in fact, temperatures have been increasing by about ten times that amount.

Even a Maunder Millenium would not be very effective in "cancelling" warming. The last one produced a decrease in temperature of about .5C where the Planet has warmed by more than that in the past 35 years with the rate of warming showing no let up.