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No, We're Not Headed For a New Ice Age
purkinje writes "Unusual calm in the solar cycle — called a solar activity minimum — has sparked claims that the Sun will cool the Earth, leading us into a new ice age. While Europe did experience a Little Ice Age during a solar activity minimum three centuries ago, the connection between sunspots and climate is a lot more complicated, and it's unlikely this change in the Sun's activity will cool Earth down — or even affect the climate at all. Plus, any cooling that might come from this would be less than the global warming that's been going on. So don't pull out that parka yet; a new ice age seems more than unlikely."
We're currently in an interglacial period of the current ice age, so it's not a matter of moving towards another one, but how long the interglacial period will last, and how if we're moving into a glaciation period will humanity be effecting that.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
That's an interesting claim. That's the fabricated evidence I usually see in arguments against global warming. In fact, 2010 tied 1998 as the warmest year on record according to the NOAA. You can see the instrumental temperature record to see the warming of the past several decades. If there were good evidence against global warming, you wouldn't need to fabricate any, would you?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
False.
The ability to predict solar activity has nothing to do with climatologists. Climatologists don't predict what the sun will do, they look at past solar activity and past temperatures and past human activity and a whole host of other data and develop models that explain what the climate will do based on what any of the others will do. (e.g. if the solar activity is X, the earth's temperature will respond Y, etc).
If the sun goes into an unexpectedly deep minimum, that doesn't mean climatologists "don't have everything figured out" because it has nothing to do with climatologists.
If the Sun does cool and earth does cool as a result, exactly according to climatologist models, I predict that the climate change deniers will still not notice.
The last paper I read on the subject couldn't disprove it. This was done in the lab because doing real experiments in the real atmosphere with real cosmic rays is very hard. The best they can do is measure cloud formation in relation to solar wind levels. It will take a full normal solar cycle to do this.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.