Prepare for new Ice Age, says scientist

[sithgoblin]

SUNSPOT activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that - far from warming - the globe is about to return to an Ice Age.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory showed there were currently no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman writes in The Australian today.

"If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming isover."

The Bureau of Meteorology says temperatures in Australia have been warmer than the 1960-90 average since the late 1970s, barring a couple of cooler years, and are now 0.3C higher than the long-term average.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark. Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

But scientists from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research published a report in 2006 that showed the sun had a negligible effect on climate change.

The researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the sun's brightness varied by only 0.07per cent over 11-year sunspot cycles, and that that was far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Dr Chapman proposes preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective. "My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he writes.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23584524-11949,00

 

[sithgoblin]

And

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com,
where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point
between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the
average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined
during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global
temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate
Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote
Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C
in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental
record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature
does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally
cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter
in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the
austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered
the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends
from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap
as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of
somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum
was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon
after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and
lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished
within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that
there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between
variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a
cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially
cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's
Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly
due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of
cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but
it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin
contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another
little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than
the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do.
There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few
temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global
warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will
decrease it.

Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as
planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will
die from cold-related diseases.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The
Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the
past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always
afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America
and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid
climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials,
typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history,
called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We
also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in
global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for
another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling
in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it
continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist,
vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a
catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by
millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000
centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent
or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon
enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use
them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the
reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent
greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the
continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the
deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50
that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is
much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the
blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing
global cooling instead.

It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their
reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change
depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of
Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in
San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html

 

[Carcharodon]

Funny: advocates of climate change theory have predicted this for a while now. It's not new, it's not original, and it's not clever to keep pointing it out in a fashion that suggests the smug attitude of, "Oh, look, you guys don't know what you're talking about!"

 

[Captain_BluTac]

I'll buy a coat.

 

[sithgoblin]

Funny: advocates of climate change theory have predicted this for a while now. It's not new, it's not original, and it's not clever to keep pointing it out in a fashion that suggests the smug attitude of, "Oh, look, you guys don't know what you're talking about!"

What the ****? Smug attitude? I didn't even say anything.

 

[Handsome Rob]

What the ****? Smug attitude? I didn't even say anything.

You didn't need to. You posted an article that could be perceived as being against the current eco-fundamentalist belief in man-made global warming/climate change.

Therefore, you are the enemy.

 

[Warhammer]

I can't for the global warming people to come in here and be like "No, that's not true. That's impossible!" Then the people who don't believe that global warming is real will jump in, and will use this as fuel against them, then we will have a war in our midst.

Begun, the flamewar has.

 

[sithgoblin]

You didn't need to. You posted an article that could be perceived as being against the current eco-fundamentalist belief in man-made global warming/climate change.

Therefore, you are the enemy.

Haha, talk about shoot the messanger! Is it even possible to post something more neutrally than that?

 

[Orson_Randall]

"My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he writes.

maybe I am just high, but seems like that negates the whole article..

 

[I SEE SPIDEY]

If this is true, so what? I'm going to be dead before it happens.

 

[Gamma Ray]

The ice age will be cancelled out by the global warming and we'll all live in perfect climates.

 

[Handsome Rob]

Haha, talk about shoot the messanger! Is it even possible to post something more neutrally than that?

I would say that the total lack of commentary makes it about as neutral as it can possibly get. You could have thought, "Here's sticking to those global warming idiots." You could have thought, "Here's another lame article by Big Oil lackeys." There's no way of telling, thanks to your total lack of commentary.

But, you presented an article which dared to even entertain the notion that all the hype over made-made global warming/climate change may be for naught. You've betrayed the faith, and we simply can't have that. Either fall back in line like a good little boy, or you will need to be purified . . .

 

[CorpusBlack]

Global warming my arse.

 

[vindrow]

So we have a Global Ice Warming Age coming....damn, don't know if I should wear a coat or shorts or maybe both just to be safe.

 

[terry78]

It's all that damn sabretoothed squirrel's fault. Trying to get that damn acorn.

 

[CBGB]

The ice age will be cancelled out by the global warming and we'll all live in perfect climates.

Exactly.

Ice Age + Global Warming = a perfect world. A winning combination!

 

[jaguarr]

Well, hey, there IS a 50:50 chance of this happening.

jag

 

[BatSpider]

Exactly.

Ice Age + Global Warming = a perfect world. A winning combination!

 

[ShadowBoxing]

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

 

[Joker]

First they say we're all going to die because of the heat, and the oceans flooding. Now they say we're all going to die in an ice age. These people need to either make up there god damn minds, or stop being such alarmists. At this point, even I'm starting to think that maybe they're all full of s**t.

 

[sithgoblin]

It should be noted that the main scientific community doesn't support this at the present time.

 

[Victarion]

Wow this reminds me of that uber depressing episode of The Dinosaurs. These writers that do children's shows are some sadistic SOB's.

 

[bullets]

This is speculation . I choose to ignore it .

 

[ShadowBoxing]

 

[Arcturus]

Oh no...

NO!

NO!

NO!

Prepare for 2012!