If you look at the sunspot data, the last four cycles look almost exactly like the four cyles before the Dalton Minimum occured. Not earth shattering cold, but chilly.
Of course if you look at the temperature data for the last few hundred of thousands of years, it looks like we are overdue for another major glaciation too.
We are about 8,000 years overdue.
One theory holds that “greenhouse gases” created first by agriculture, then by industrialization have kept the overdue ice age in abeyance. In a sense, it's a variation of the “global warming” theme — except that global warming is what's keeping us from doom and gloom.
“Of course if you look at the temperature data for the last few hundred of thousands of years, it looks like we are overdue for another major glaciation too.”
Which leads to the question, if we really wanted to cause global warming, could we?
“Of course if you look at the temperature data for the last few hundred of thousands of years, it looks like we are overdue for another major glaciation too.”
Which leads to the question, if we really wanted to cause global warming, could we?
Or looking from the veiwpiont that over the last million years, ice has been the norm, that the current (Holocene) intergalacial should be ending now.