Posted on 05/10/2009 7:05:20 PM PDT by Signalman
Washington, May 5 (ANI): Some scientists say the prolonged lull in solar activity hints towards the next “Little Ice Age”, which could occur in the near future.
The sun is the least active it’s been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years.
The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.
The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum.
During that time, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice, and canals in Holland routinely froze solid.
Glaciers in the Alps engulfed whole villages, and sea ice increased so much that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695.
For hundreds of years, scientists have used the number of observable sunspots to trace the sun’s roughly 11-year cycles of activity.
Sunspots, which can be visible without a telescope, are dark regions that indicate intense magnetic activity on the sun’s surface.
Such solar storms send bursts of charged particles hurtling toward Earth that can spark auroras, disrupt satellites, and even knock out electrical grids.
In the current cycle, 2008 was supposed to have been the low point, and this year the sunspot numbers should have begun to climb.
But of the first 90 days of 2009, 78 have been sunspot free. Researchers also say the sun is the dimmest it’s been in a hundred years.
The Maunder Minimum corresponded to a profound lull in sunspots. Astronomers at the time recorded just 50 in a 30-year period.
If the sun again sinks into a similar depression, at least one preliminary model has suggested that cool spots could crop up in regions of Europe, the United States, and Siberia.
According to Jeffrey Hall, an astronomer and associate director at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, during the previous event, though, many parts of the world were not affected at all.
“Even a grand minimum like that was not having a global effect,” he said.
Scientists say that even if the current solar lull is the beginning of a prolonged quiet, the star’s effects on climate will pale in contrast with the influence of human-made greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). (ANI)
It mutated into "Climate Change."
Get yr sunspots (or lack of them) here on a daily basis http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sunspots/
Good until the last sentence.....CO2 IS STRONGER THAN THE SUN...
get up at sunrise.....notice the Temperature....watch the Sun rise...wait 3 hrs ....notice the Temperature rise.
Repeat until you are smarter than a 5th grader.
Noticed that. Check the source: “Scientists say”.
I think the latest mutation is "Climate Crisis".
TRANSLATION: Even though the Sun may be on the verge of causing a new Little Ice Age, that doesn't mean us evil humans aren't screwing up the environment.
They must have realized that the Sun was making the Goracle, and his delusional followers, look bad.
Welcome to Minnesota!
and the White House won’t be cool until about another 4 yrs, when the election votes out the hot air.
1. The solar flares diminished and caused a mini ice age (average drop of what, 3-8 degrees C? — see Little Ice Age Wikipedia).
2. The solar flares returned and warmed up the entire planet to our current condition (an average increase of what 3-8 degrees C?).
3. But it was man's activity in the last 100 years that really warmed up the planet (by .7 degrees C).
4. If the solar activity remains low (risking a drop of what 10 degrees?), the planet will still stay warm because of man's activity (a net decrease of possibly 8.3 degrees?)??
Absurd conclusion.
In the future he**! The little ice age happened in one summer, suddenly without warning. It is a matter of written record, of course records were not as good then I would not think but if they think it will take 100 years to reach a little ice age again they had better get ready, we are already headed that way from the looks of the weather we had this winter, and are still getting somewhat, in Northern CA.
IOW, why let facts get in the way of agenda?
I remember in the mid 1980's when I was in high school all the enviromental fanatics had their bumper stickers warning of the coming ice age....
Then the past several years of the coming global warming...from the same useful idiots.
Again...proof...never let facts interfere with Agenda...
Cheers!
"The Year Without a Summer (also known as the Poverty Year, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, and the Year There Was No Summer) was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe, the American Northeast and eastern Canada. Historian John D. Post has called this "the last great subsistence crisis in the Western world". It appears to have been caused by a volcanic winter."
Good point. NewSpeak is constantly evolving.
Ping
How does he know?
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