Alec Rawls:
Nice hype by Matt Drudge, whose three linked quotes are all from the BBC’s one brief paragraph of text, but the accompanying video (full transcription below) is more substantial, with scientists talking about the likelihood of an extended Maunder Minimum type period low solar activity and the cold temperatures that coincided with the Maunder Minimum during the 1600′s.
Professor Richard Harrison from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is clear about the correlation [at 1:57]:
The Maunder Minimum of course was a period of almost no sunspots at all for decades and we saw a really dramatic period where there were very cold winters in the northern hemisphere. It was a period where you had a kind of mini ice-age. You had a period where the Thames froze in winters and so on. It was an interesting time.
BBC science correspondent Rebecca Morelle doesn’t shy away from the possible implications today:
So does a decline in solar activity mean plunging temperatures for decades to come?
Best of all is Dr. Lucie Green from University College in London, who describes the unsettled state of the science [at 3:35]:
It is a very very complex area because the sun’s activity controls how much visible light the sun gives out, but also how much ultraviolet light and x-rays that the sun emits and they create a web of changes up in the earth’s atmosphere producing effects that actually we don’t fully understand.
Green then wraps up the segment by declining to suggest that anthropogenic warming can be expected be outweigh solar cooling:
… on the one hand we’ve got perhaps a cooling sun, but on the other hand you’ve got human activity that can counter that and I think it is quite difficult to say actually how these two are going to compete and what the consequences then are for the global climate.
The weak link is solar physicist Mike Lockwood who makes irrational and unsupported claims about solar activity only affecting regional climate and not having a global effect.
The BBC voice-over sets up Lockwood’s unsupported speculation:
BBC: Less solar activity means a drop in ultraviolet radiation. Mike Lockwood says this seems to affect the behavior of the jet stream. The Jet stream changes its pattern. This ends up blocking warm air from reaching Northern Europe. This causes long cold winters, but what about global temperatures as a whole?
Lockwood [at 5:03]: One has to make a very clear distinction between regional climate and global climate. If we get a cold winter in Europe because of these blocking events it’s warmer, for example, in Greenland, so the average is almost no change, so it is a redistribution of temperature around the North Atlantic.
As Stephen Wilde has been pointing out for years, the wider meanders in the polar jet that seem to be associated with low solar activity can be expected to cause a net increase in cloudiness which would increase the earth’s albedo, having a global cooling effect. The jet stream follows the boundry where cold polar air slides beneath and pushes up warmer temperate air, creating storm tracks. Not only do wider meanders create longer storm tracks but the resulting cloud cover occurs at lower latitudes, where the incidence of incoming solar radiation is steeper, making the albedo reflection stronger.
I’m 72 years old with only a high school education but I try to listen to all of the arguments before I attempt to make an educated guess as to what the facts really are. Ever since the global warming proponents began the argument that we better stop using foscil fuels or we’re all going to be doomed, I began to ask “what about the sun’s over all effects on the earth!” I never heard anyone discuss these issues until I read this article. Now, no matter what we do as a civilization the sun is going to have the most impact on life on our planet. Whether it is heating or cooling and whether we like it or not, we are just along for the ride. Get used to it!
Richard
i read that the SUN has lost some power OF LIGHT,
other said the SUN is dying,
of course it won”t be tomorrow, but it”s scary STUFF TO CONTEMPLATE
BYE
i think it would affect it”s magnetic field effect,
i guess, and we don”t know the consequences of it on the EARTH,
and all living being,
IT’S A GOOD CAUSE FOR REFLEXION, IS IN IT?
WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED, AS WE TAKE OUR ONLY EARTH FOR GRANTED, WE WOULD NOT BE HAPPY WITH SUCH PREDICTION, WHICH WE CANNOT FIX,
BYE
Something always concerned me about this whole issue. 50,000 years ago, the spot where I’m sitting was covered with an ice sheet 2 miles thick. Now it’s gone. That sort of thing has been happening periodically since the Earth has been here. There was no human activity to cause it, so obviously, the Earth does what it damn well pleases. 😉 In fact, we should be entering the next ice age now…. so if there’s anthropogenic global warming, let’s cheer it on!
The other point is that natural variation in CO2 and other “greenhouse gasses” is larger than the human input. So if the Earth was prone to “thermal runaway”, it would have done so by now.
Jim S
JUST ONE THOUGHT CAME TO MIND,
what if the NATURE gage herself by the human lives and all other living beings,
if the freeze come it”s might be to sink the dead human and other beings, and cleanse the EARTH
and on the other extreme warming, than NATURE HAS HER PLAN TO DISENFECT AND REDUCE
IN SIZE
those decaying matters,what ever garbages human made or other being made, OR BURNED TREES, ECETERA,
it could take ions years but after it”s done, NATURE RESTART THE FREEZING PROCESS TO AGAIN SINK ALL THOSE MATTER in the debt of the EARTH, SO BOTH WARMING AND FREEZING ARE NORMAL HAPPENING FROM MOTHER NATURE, ALSO SINCE THE MAKING OF THE EARTH
WHICH BROUGHT GIGANTIC ANIMAL THE SAURES, DYNO AND ALL INCLUDING THE MAMOUTH, ALL UNDER GROUND
AND REDUCE TO PEBLE ROCK, AND SO ON AND SO ON, AND…TILL NOW,
JUST MY THOUGHT,
BYE it was a long thought
@Richard: I keep wondering, as we argue with those who believe they and only they take the side of true scientific knowledge, how they can ignore the scientific fact that warming is occurring on other planets throughout our solar system?
Bees: I don’t buy the “gaia” notion, that the Earth or Nature if you will, has a mind of it’s own that makes judgement calls. That comment of “the Earth doing what it pleases” was meant ironically. Still, there are a lot of folk I wouldn’t mind seeing ground up under a glacier and recycled. 😉
Bill Burris
very interesting, and why not, we arrogant human, think that we are alone to have grown on this
PLANET , alone and only one,
I’m open mind; and if so, we could have whatever on this other planet, detach it self
and fall on our World, like other boulder do,
and the funny thing is we walk looking in front of us, but not so often looking up,
dang we forget to look at the nice sky, the clouds of many shapes moving on, and the widest space
around,
we have reach where we never expected to reach in so many ways, technology is still advancing,
i read that some science are being study as we speak about geez I FORGOT THE NAME,
IT’S A WAY TO BE TRAVELING TO ANYWHERE YOU CHOOSE INSTANTLY, BY REPRODUCING
ANOTHER ME, AND BY WAY OF REDUCING MY OTHER ME, IN MOLECULES MANY TRILLIONS OF IT IN A ENCLOSURE MADE UP FOR IT, AND TRANSPORT THAT ME IN THE OTHER COUNTRY,
i have chosen to visit, where there is a same enclosure which will remake my other me as a real me,
alive and well, but THE THING IS THAT THEY WOULD HAVE TO DISCARD MY REAL ME before,
well no , not for me i don’t play, unless i keep my real me,
bye
THE WORD IS tele transport QUANTUM, I think, hey they are studying that as we speak,