Inkwell
Gore's nightmare...the coming ice age
by Julie Gunlock
October 24, 2009, 9:33am
Australian geophysicist, astronautical engineer and NASA astronaut Phil Chapman has a slightly terrifying column in the Australian cautioning the world to focus on the real climate crisis--the next ice age. There have been rumblings (muted of course by the much louder global warming voices) the last several years of a coming ice age, based mainly on the slow yet steady decline in earth's tempurature during the past decade. Chapman, however, examines another indicator of temperature trends--a delay in sunspot cycles.
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.
3 Comments
Tad Cook | October 25, 2009, 5:18am | #
Yesterday you said that Chapman's article was in that day's paper, but as you can see from the date on the article you linked to, it is 18 months old. Chapman is not a climatologist, has no published work on climate, he did work for NASA, but never flew as an astronaut.
A week after Chapman's piece, a factual article by a real climatologist took him to task for his many misstatements of fact, and Chapman to the best of my knowledge has never responded.
Here is the piece that debunks Chapman's article, published in the same paper:
http://tinyurl.com/3pzzmq
The correlation between sunspots and climate is a very poor one, and only seems to work if you cherrypick your data. If there was a link, wouldn't 1957-1959 be the hottest years on record? That was the peak of sunspot cycle 19, by far the biggest one ever.
Here is a good guide to many of the global warming skeptic's arguments, and why they don't make sense:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Another interesting guide:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
I wish the global warming skeptics were correct, but they don't really have the facts on their side.
Ron Shultz | November 13, 2009, 8:25pm | #
The Renaissance, the last warm period, was a time of great prosperity: A time of art, building, and an extended growing period when previously unknown amounts of food were grown. Venice was not flooded.
The reason that so much of this planet has had drought for so long is that we’ve been in an ice age, and water needed for normal condensation has been frozen into glaciers. Glaciers are frozen water needed as condensation for barren and frozen lands of this planet, causing drought and flooding. When glaciers melt, some water runs into the oceans. Some water soaks into the ground. Some water evaporates into the upper atmosphere to become normal rainfall for the whole world.
The heat of the sun, clean air, and the absence of cold from glaciers and sea ice would cause more water to evaporate from the oceans, lakes, and rivers into the upper atmosphere than there presently is; the winds would blow it evenly around the world, providing normal rainfall world-wide, even where there presently is drought and barren and frozen land, preventing flooding.
The worldwide rainfall would cause long-dormant seeds in barren lands to sprout and grow into new plants: The best way to go green. The new plants would inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, which we breathe. There would be so many new plants, that we might have to increase the amount of carbon dioxide we generate, to provide enough for all of them
Many parts of the world have record amounts of snow and ice. Arctic ice is as thick as it was in the 1970’s when an ice age was predicted. Polar bears, which had thrived during the previous decade, are heading south to escape the severe cold. The Farmers’ Almanac predicts numbing cold this winter. We’re entering another ice age in 2014. We must drill and pump our own oil, natural gas, and mine our coal as soon as possible, so they are available for use.
Rita | November 15, 2009, 2:24pm | #
Hello...Al Gore...are you reading or listening? No? You must be too busy making money by espousing untruths. Clearly, you have no shame. For those who discount this, all you need to do is follow the money. Gore has made millions on his crusade for a "green" world. Money trumps conscience.