PAPER: Global warming ended 15 years ago; 'mini-ice age' next...

I have had liberals roll their eyes at me, when I suggested that the sun was the primary driver in our weather....and the source of the vast majority of energy on our planet. Up is down, black is white. These people will believe anything, except obvious truth.

"Wow, I'd like to hope it'll arrive before July. We live in the desert and the highlands have barely had any snow. We're in for a scorcher of a summer if there's no monsoon."

You're more than welcome to the layer of ice here (day or so to your northeast). It sprays every few days for a day or two with 60-110 mph winds from the peaks just to the west of us. ;-) This summer, some mornings will bring lows in the 20s, some hail but little rain.

We were going to raise a few head of cattle each year from bobby calves, but we're looking more seriously at yaks now. ...better suited to the climate, and they don't eat much. ...found out that goats get pneumonia after sudden temperature drops. We've designed some solar drainback heating systems (large tanks for thermal storage in water without antifreeze), but even those are too costly to justify one each, for several livestock shelters. We might build a simple one for one chicken coop.

This is a very sparsely populated area (high, intermontane basin, looks kinda like Mars). But with the possible extended solar minimum, reductions in local ~~robberies~~ revenues, the rest of the default process ahead (foreclosures all around) and most folks around us in their late-60s and 70s now, we'll probably have even far fewer neighbors within four or five years. ...maybe none at all within five miles or so.

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