Tag Archives: global temperatures

If the planet’s warming, why is it getting colder?

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There’s more to global temperatures than atmospheric carbon. An interesting story today on January in November: Arctic blast to hit USA. It’s been a pretty miserable spring in these here parts as well, but this is the US in late autumn:

Snow will accompany the frigid air in areas including the northern Rockies, northern Plains and upper Midwest. Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Mich., could be the cities that see the most snow, the Weather Channel predicts.

“It looks like winter’s starting early,” Oravec said.

The Plains, western Great Lakes and Upper and mid-Mississippi Valleys will see high temperatures 10 to 30 degrees below average by Monday and Tuesday, the Weather Channel predicts.

Cities such as Minneapolis, Chicago and St. Louis will endure the worst cold as high temperatures reach only the 30s, said Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather meteorologist.

Highs may struggle to top the freezing mark in the Twin Cities for several days, and strong winds will add to the wintry feel.

Though the heart of the cold air will be anchored over the northern Plains and Midwest, by late in the week, some of the chilly air will reach the East Coast and South, though it will be lessened by that time.

It’s just the weather, of course, but eventually the weather is the climate. No one can know what the weather will be like over the next decade but why leave global cooling out of your range of possibilities? As I discussed here, if the planet is warming, it will be a minor problem. If it is is cooling, it will be a catastrophe.

And what if the planet is cooling?

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There is so much evidence of global cooling at the moment so that given the preoccupation with AGW, the consequences could be more catastrophic than anything anyone is remotely contemplating precisely because no one is thinking about this at all. Here’s how the article starts:

We may be witnessing the sun’s last dying gasps before entering into a long slumber. The impact of that slumber on Earth’s climate remains the subject of growing scientific speculation.

In 2008 William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, in a controversial paper that contradicted conventional wisdom and upset global warming theorists, predicted that sunspots could more or less disappear after 2015, possibly indicating the onset of another Little Ice Age. They stated, “The occurrence of prolonged periods with no sunspots is important to climate studies, since the Maunder Minimum was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth.” The Maunder Minimum lasted for approximately 70 years from about 1645 to 1715, and was marked by bitter cold, widespread crop failures, and severe human privation.

And this is how the article ends:

The upshot for scientists and world leaders should be clear, particularly since other scientists in recent years have published analyses that also indicate that global cooling could be on its way. Climate can and does change toward colder periods as well as warmer ones. Over the last 20 years, some $80 billion has been spent on research dominated by the assumption that global temperatures will rise. Very little research has investigated the consequences of the very live possibility that temperatures will plummet. Research into global cooling and its implications for the globe is long overdue.

Make hay while the sun shines is a concept a bit out of fashion. But there may come a time not that far off that we will deeply regret our attempts to keep the planet from warming by killing off our carbon-based energy production. If the planet is about to cool we will find what “severe human privation” really means in practice.

Global cooling

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The sun has gone quiet…solar cycle 24 continues to rank as one of the weakest cycles more than a century is the story. And this is why it matters:

If history is a guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a negative impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom-most layer of Earth’s atmosphere – and where we all live. There have been two notable historical periods with decades-long episodes of low solar activity. The first period is known as the “Maunder Minimum”, named after the solar astronomer Edward Maunder, and it lasted from around 1645 to 1715. The second one is referred to as the “Dalton Minimum”, named for the English meteorologist John Dalton, and it lasted from about 1790 to 1830. Both of these historical periods coincided with below-normal global temperatures in an era now referred to by many as the “Little Ice Age”. In addition, research studies in just the past couple of decades have found a complicated relationship between solar activity, cosmic rays, and clouds on Earth. This research suggests that in times of low solar activity where solar winds are typically weak; more cosmic rays reach the Earth’s atmosphere which, in turn, has been found to lead to an increase in certain types of clouds that can act to cool the Earth.

I realise the left has a great deal invested in global warming, but if they are wrong, and there’s plenty to show that they are, then they are preparing for a very different kind of future from the one we are actually going to have. Warmer makes the planet more lush, specially if accompanied by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide. Colder shortens growing seasons and increases the need for an ability to heat our homes. In my own lifetime, the planet’s population has risen from two billion to seven billion. If the world is warming, we can accommodate the lot. If it is cooling, we cannot, specially if we go out of our way to impair our ability to develop economical forms of energy supplies.