ICE AGE? - Solar activity drops to 100-year low

Is a new Ice Age coming?

• Some believe with low sunspot activity the planet could be on the brink of another period of global cooling.
• One the flip side, man is furiously pumping millions of tons of warming gasses from under the ground into the atmosphere.
• Will these two activities simply cancel each other out?  And what happens to temperatures when the sunspots start up again?

Let's get this part out of the way. 

Socialists want to use global warming to advance their power.  On the other hand, Conservatives want to pretend that it is "magic gas" that man is releasing into the air.  That the gasses will simply go away and industry and autos can keep on pumping.

But I am a Conservative who believes in Global Warming.  I believe in science.  For ever every action there is a reaction.  If you pump warming gasses into the air they will do what they do.  But climate is a complex mix of gasses, sunspots and volcanism.

Now we are seeing predictions that 2013 would see an upsurge in solar activity and geomagnetic storms disrupting power grids and communications systems have proved to be a false alarm. Instead, the current peak in the solar cycle is the weakest for a century.

Subdued solar activity has prompted controversial comparisons with the Maunder Minimum, which occurred between 1645 and 1715, when a prolonged absence of sunspots and other indicators of solar activity coincided with the coldest period in the last millennium.

The comparisons have sparked a furious exchange of views between observers who believe the planet could be on the brink of another period of cooling, and scientists who insist there is no evidence that temperatures are about to fall reports the Times of India.


Sunspot activity is low.

New Scientist magazine blasted those who predicted a mini ice age, opening a recent article on the surprising lack of sunspots this year with the bold declaration: "Those hoping that the sun could save us from climate change look set for disappointment".

"The recent lapse in solar activity is not the beginning of a decades-long absence of sunspots, a dip that might have cooled the climate. Instead it represents a shorter, less pronounced downturn that happens every century or so," ("Sun's quiet spell not the start of a mini ice age" July 12).

The unusually low number of sunspots in recent years "is not an indication that we are going into a Maunder Minimum" according to Giuliana DeToma, a solar scientist at the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado.

But DeToma admitted "we will do not know how or why the Maunder Minimum started, so we cannot predict the next one."

Many solar experts think the downturn is linked a different phenomenon, the Gleissberg cycle, which predicts a period of weaker solar activity every century or so. If that turns out to be true, the sun could remain unusually quiet through the middle of the 2020s.

But since the scientists still do not understand why the Gleissberg cycle takes place, the evidence is inconclusive. The bottom line is that the sun has gone unusually quiet and no one really knows why or how it will last.

The Devastating Effects of Pollution in China
We went to the single most polluted place on earth, the coal-mining town of Linfen in Shanxi Province, China, where kids play in dirty rivers and the sun sets early behind a thick curtain of smog.

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Man is pumping millions of tons of warming gasses into the atmosphere.
 

It is not Magic Gas.

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Socialists want to use man made warming gasses to advance Marxism and centralized control of the economy.  Conservatives want to pretend that the warming gasses man is pumping into the air do not exist.  That it is "magic" gas that has no impact.  Both are wrong.

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Climate is a complex mix of gasses, volcanism and sunspots.  Some people have speculated that the Little Ice Age (1350 to about 1850) ended because of the warming gasses released by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

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The Little Ice Age brought colder winters to parts of Europe and North America. Farms and villages in the Swiss Alps were destroyed by encroaching glaciers during the mid-seventeenth century. Canals and rivers in Great Britain and the Netherlands were frequently frozen deeply enough to support ice skating and winter festivals. The first River Thames frost fair was in 1607 and the last in 1814.

Also see Little Ice Age.