Now it’s Global Cooling
Better hope this is not the case. It would make Global Warming look like a good deal. This has actually happened before. It wasn’t pleasant.
And they’re worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada’s National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
So if carbon makes us warmer, which is the opposite of what it did when that volcano caused the year without a summer, then maybe we should be burning more carbon. Time to harness all of that coal we got, drill in ANWR. Drill in the gulf. Drill in the rockies.
This part summed up the article.
How dare these people assert that the little old sun creates more heat than people.
Is this what you’re cherry-picking this week, #9?
When scientists speculate in ways that confirm what you want to hear, of course, you believe them and cite them. But as soon as they start claiming AGW is real, then it’s all “a conspiracy, maaaan!”
(It’s interesting to note, too, that IBD never actually directly quotes Dr. Tapping. One wonders if this article is an accurate representation of his position…)
Anyway, while it’s an interesting area of science, and worth studying, the Maunder minimum has nowhere near the consensus behind it that AGW has (and neither does the “Little Ice Age”):
source.
Once again, the spam filter eats me!
Anyway, I hadn’t responded to Glen’s comment:
So if carbon makes us warmer, which is the opposite of what it did when that volcano caused the year without a summer, then maybe we should be burning more carbon.
Volcanic eruptions have a temporary cooling effect for the same reason that any particulate air pollution has a cooling effect: aerosolized particulates in the upper atmosphere actually block sunlight from getting in, and thus have a cooling effect. What’s interesting about all this is that air pollution has actually masked the full effect of the greenhouse effect for several decades. As we clean it up (and there are plenty of good reasons to clean it up, I suspect even you will agree), we actually make the greenhouse effect potentially more dramatic. (The numbers from the two days after September 11th in which there was no air traffic are nothing short of staggering.)
There was a Nova special a year or so ago entitled “Dimming the Sun,” that addresses this. I highly recommend it.
How dare these people assert that the little old sun creates more heat than people.
*Sigh* It’s not about heat creation. It’s about heat retention. Can’t you even get the basic facts right? Or is it a matter of policy for you to only attack straw men?
Thank you Glen for citing that statement from the Exxon and GM funded Hoover Institute.
Your welcome William. I must confess, they sent me a 50 dollar gas card, just for pointing that out.
I’d be interested in being staggered by the data about heat deflection after 9/11–I pretty much don’t trust your flat assertion. But even if it’s true it only highlights how brilliant that war-mongering, environment-trashing Dick Cheney is.
William, do you have any substantive criticism of the statement other than the fact than BigOil and BigAuto contributed to them?
[…] course, I pointed out in comments that for one thing, the Maunder minimum is still quite controversial as a cause for the […]
[…] 08.02.08, 16:34: Now it’s Global Cooling (von tgirsch) […]
Ned, You might want to read this post. It reveals how political psuedo-science is ‘created’ by conservatives to mislead. Caught red handed