Prepare for new Ice Age, says scientist

[thorbiorn]

_http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23584524-30417,00.html

Prepare for new Ice Age, says scientist Brendan O'Keefe | April 23, 2008

SUNSPOT activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year, raising fears that - far from warming - the globe is about to return to an Ice Age.

Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory showed there were currently no spots on the sun.

He said the world cooled quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.

"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," Dr Chapman writes in The Australian today.

"If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming isover."

The Bureau of Meteorology says temperatures in Australia have been warmer than the 1960-90 average since the late 1970s, barring a couple of cooler years, and are now 0.3C higher than the long-term average.

A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark. Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.

But scientists from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research published a report in 2006 that showed the sun had a negligible effect on climate change.

The researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the sun's brightness varied by only 0.07per cent over 11-year sunspot cycles, and that that was far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.

Dr Chapman proposes preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective. "My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he writes.

The original longer and more detailed article is _http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-5013480,00.html Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh by Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

Foxnews quoting the above: _http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352241,00.html Scientist: Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

But not all agree: _http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2225759.htm Cooling climate claims enrage Australian scientists published PM - Wednesday, 23 April, 2008 18:42:00 Radio interview with Phil Chapman by reporter: Emily Bourke. Site above has besides transcript also audiolink: _rtsp://media1.abc.net.au/reallibrary/audio/pm/200804/20080423pm09-ice-age.rm

MARK COLVIN: Meanwhile one of the arguments against man-made global warming has reared its head again.

The idea that it's the sun's activity, not carbon, that regulates earth's temperature, has never entirely gone away. It figured heavily in the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, debated on ABC TV last year.

Now an Australian-born former NASA astronaut is claiming that the recent lack of sunspot activity could actually portend a new ice age. Dr Phil Chapman - a geophysicist who lives in California - makes the prediction in an opinion piece in today's Australian newspaper.

But climate experts here are incensed. They say the evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming is irrefutable.

Emily Bourke reports.

EMILY BOURKE: It might be an unpopular view but Dr Phil Chapman is sticking to it. The geophysicist and former NASA astronaut says figures from four separate agencies show the global temperature dropped noticeably during 2007 and that the globe could now be returning to an ice age.

PHIL CHAPMAN: All the people who monitor the world's global temperature say that the temperature fell by something like 0.7 degrees Centigrade. We're talking about a very large drop that cancels out all the increase since 1930.

If this continues, then global warming will have to be, we'll have to admit that it's over.

EMILY BOURKE: He says the sun and sunspot changes have a bigger influence on the climate compared to carbon dioxide.

PHIL CHAPMAN: The variations in the number of sunspots and the time when they occur, how rapidly they build up, has a close correlation with previous changes in climate, in particularly back in the, around 1700 and again around 1790 when the sunspot cycle was delayed and those were two times it was extremely cold.

EMILY BOURKE: So can you see a repeat of that happening now with the few number of sunspots that have been detected?

PHIL CHAPMAN: It's that coincidence between sudden rapid drop in global temperature in the last year and the lack of sunspots which makes it seem a little worrying.

EMILY BOURKE: While he won't commit to a date, Dr Chapman says an ice age is on the horizon.

PHIL CHAPMAN: If the ice age comes, it will come, it certainly will come but we don't know whether it's started already or whether it is going to be a thousand years from now, we're probably okay but you can't be certain, that's all.

EMILY BOURKE: So what kind of preparation should we take?

PHIL CHAPMAN: (Laughs) It's hard to think of something other than trying to do our very best to warm the planet, I think we should have an open mind on the subject and not rush around doing things on the assumption that it's going to get warmer when in fact it's going to be cooler.

It may be that we should be pumping out all the carbon dioxide we possibly can in order to try and keep the temperature up.

DAVID KAROLY: This is not science.

EMILY BOURKE: David Karoly from Melbourne University's School of Earth Sciences is outraged.

DAVID KAROLY: This is misinterpretation or misrepresentation and miscommunication of the factors that influence global temperature.

It appears to be an opinion of Phil Chapman and he's welcome to his opinion, but in terms of climate variations and an approaching ice age, he is sadly misinformed.

EMILY BOURKE: He argues the figures have been misinterpreted and he dismisses the theory.

DAVID KAROLY: Yes, the climate system did cool from January 2007 to January 2008 quite dramatically. That cooling was associated with changes in the ocean temperatures in the Pacific, a well known phenomenon, the El Nino to La Nina switch. It isn't unprecedented.

EMILY BOURKE: But you're not attributing that in any way to sunspot activity.

DAVID KAROLY: We know it is not due to sunspot activity. Sunspot variations do not lead to the sorts of temperature variations seen from January 2007 to 2008. They don't lead to those large temperature variations, even on an 11-year sunspot cycle.

And so in terms of increasing greenhouse gases, we can also see that effect because the most recent La Nina, the current La Nina, is warmer than earlier La Nina episodes of the same strength. We're actually seeing a warming even in these cool periods associated with La Nina.

EMILY BOURKE: Dr Graeme Pearman is a climate scientist and past chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO. He says the doubt over global warming and its causes is not reasonable and he warns Dr Chapman's wait and see approach is dangerous.

GRAEME PEARMAN: And what science has seen over the last six months or so are changes that are occurring that are further advanced than we would like. And so I think there is a high probability, a much higher probability than his scenario coming true, that we're going to look back and rue the fact that we didn't act earlier. We must get on with trying to slow down the growth of our emissions as a global community and as an Australian community as soon as possible.

MARK COLVIN: Climate scientist Dr Graeme Pearman ending Emily Bourke's report.

 

[Beorn]

Hi Thorbiorn,
yes I heard that report on the radio. The guy trying to prove carbon emissions are the cause of the worlds weather worries sounded like a bit of a nutter.

"We know it is not due to sunspot activity. Sunspot variations do not lead to the sorts of temperature variations seen from January 2007 to 2008." - and how does he know?


Interesting this is what the C's say in relation to return of brown dwarf.

Session 980711:

Q: (T) As the brown dwarf approaches, will it intensify the solar flare activity?
A: The effect on the physical orientation of the sun from the periodic passage of its companion is to flatten the sphere
slightly. This returns to its original spherical shape with the retreat.
Q: (L) Is this flattening of the sphere of the sun going to have any noticeable effects in terms of enhanced, accelerated, or
magnified radiation from the sun?
A: No.
Q: (T) Solar flares or anything like that?
A: No.
Q: (T) So there is not going to be any appreciable effect on the planet from this as far as the sun goes?
A: The sun's gravity increases, thus inhibiting flares.
Q: (T) Inhibiting flares is good. (L) Not necessarily. Solar minimums have been periods of ice ages. (T) One of the recent
crop circles this year shows what the crop circle interpreters say is an image of the sun with a large solar flare coming off
of it. It is supposed to be a warning to us that the surface of the sun has become unstable...

So when the C's say it happens much, much faster than expected, just how fast are they talking about?

Jeff.

 

[Third_Density_Resident]

As someone studying climatology right now, this whole issue leaves me confused, because I understand what factors can influence other factors, based on research, and yet other so-called experts refuse to see what this evidence tells us.

"We know it is not due to sunspot activity. Sunspot variations do not lead to the sorts of temperature variations seen from January 2007 to 2008." - and how does he know?

I can tell you that it is indeed possible to examine potential correlations between sunspots and climate through history. Chinese astronomers have been keeping records of sunspot numbers since around 28 BC, and more rigorous records have been kept by European astronomers since about 1600.

Using these direct records as a "baseline period", scientists have reconstructed the variation in sunspots over the last 11,400 years using a method called "dendrochronology" -- they calculate the radiocarbon concentration variations in ancient tree rings. Since they apply this same method to modern trees, during a period when sunspots have been actually recorded, they can formulate a reliable relationship which can then be used to extrapolate thousands of years into the past what the sun was doing in terms of sunspots.

It is also possible to deduce global temperatures thousands of years into the past with ice core proxy records. Hence, it is possible to look back into the past to see how global temperatures may have been influenced by such factors as sunspot variation.

What is known is that during the last major decline in sunspot activity, known as the Maunder Minimum, the global temperature DID decrease, but it was, on average, only about 0.4 degrees Celsius. It doesn't sound like much, but the truth is, temperatures actually decreased much more in some places such as Northern Europe.

So, when that guy who you said sounded like a "nutter" said that "spot variations do not lead to the sorts of temperature variations seen from January 2007 to 2008" -- he was most probably correct. A 0.7 degree Celsius drop in temperature in one year from a decline in sunspot temperatures has most likely not occurred before, and it probably was due to the change from El Nino to La Nina.

Having said all of the above, however, there obviously IS evidence that sunspots CAN affect temperature. So that "nutter" guy just doesn't want to see that simple fact.

Now, that tree study I was referring to earlier was published in Nature back in 2004. The fascinating thing that was found, which you hear very little of, is that

According to our reconstruction, the level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional, and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. We find that during the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.

Now that sure is interesting. It basically says to me (and to anyone else, one would think, who has any amount of logic) that much of the so-called global warming over the past few decades was likely the result of this extremely RARE and erratic sunspot behaviour. It also tells me that if indeed this rare activity is linked to shifts in climate, then we are all in for some MAJOR shifts in climate, much worse than the Little Ice Age, and probably sooner than later!

But then, in true politically correct style, this fascinating finding is downplayed in the very next sentence:

Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.

To my knowledge, they offer no explanation then, for what is the cause of the Little Ice Age correlation with the Maunder Minimum, nor indeed for other later correlations between reduced sunspots and cooler periods. I get the distinct impression that a lot of denial is going on -- that some scientists simply cannot see what's right in front of them!

 

[Rick]

Third_Density_Resident wrote:

To my knowledge, they offer no explanation then, for what is the cause of the Little Ice Age correlation with the Maunder Minimum, nor indeed for other later correlations between reduced sunspots and cooler periods. I get the distinct impression that a lot of denial is going on -- that some scientists simply cannot see what's right in front of them!

As one who has been in the climate field for the past 17 years, I can assure you that denial among scientists is quite commonplace, but not only that, there's also the aspect that in the US the climate research is one of gradualism brought on by subtle changes in solar cycle, ocean currents, etc, whereas in the UK you have the catastrophists (Napier, Clube, Baillie) who rightly point out that there have been past episodes of cometary bombardment which has severely altered the climate. Gradually (no pun intended) some US scientists are starting to see the light, as it were. For example, see here . There's also the Holocene Impact Working Group out of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who have been scanning satellite images on Google Earth to find Chevrons, an indicator of tsunamis brought on by ocean impacts. Once your eyes open to these facts it almost becomes obvious that cometary impact events in the recent past are what most likely caused the fall of civilizations, most recently the Roman Empire. The Justinian plague, for example as pointed out by Mike Baillie in his book, From Exodus to Arthur, of around 539 AD was the beginning of the dark ages most likely brought about by a comet or asteroid striking the Irish Sea. They still like to find earthly sources of climate events, such as volcanoes, before they admit impacts (why is that?). As Clube's letter (sent to me, actually, but posted in Laura's article - hopefully, the cointel agents won't be coming after me) noted:

First, I should say your references to the (cosmically complacent) paleoclimate community and to my otherwise unread narrative report to the USAF european office strike a very considerable chord with me. After all neither Ms Victoria Cox nor your good self can be aware how very much Bill [Napier] and I had reason to appreciate the timely injection of USAF funds at a time when the line of research we championed appeared to be successfully closed down by the UK scientific establishment. Thus we were both in turn obliged to relinquish our career posts at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh on account of this line of research - which gave rise to our reincarnation at a more tolerant haven namely my alma mater (Oxford).

Victor Clube was referring to this letter to Ms. Victoria Cox, then Chief, Physics and BMD Coordinator of the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, in which he wrote:

"Confronted on many occasions in the past by the prospect of world-end, national elites have often found themselves having to suppress public panic -- only to discover, too late, that usual means of control commonly fail. Thus an institutionalized science is expected to withhold knowledge of the threat; a self-regulated press is expected to make light of any disaster; while an institutionalized religion is expected to oppose predestination and to secure such general belief in a fundamentally benevolent deity as can be mustered."

I should add that SOTT posted the above Ice Age article. The comment with the article stated:

Chapman has it only partly right. He excludes the evidence for cometary dust loading that contributed to the last ice age (and most likely previous ones). The increased depositional flux evidenced from Gabrielli's paper shows that it was not the sun alone that caused the last ice age:

And from Victor Clube's talk:

"You first take the modern sky accessible to science, especially during the Space Age, and you look at its' darker debris with a view to relating its behavior to the more accessible human history which we can, in principle, really understand. And by this approach you discover from the dynamics of the material in space which I'm talking about that a huge comet must have settled in a Taurid orbit some 20,000 years ago, whose dense meteor stream for 10,000 years almost certainly produced the last Ice Age."

Now the question must be asked, Is there a relationship between the sun's missing spots and a 100,000 year ice age cycle coupled with cometary debris entering the solar system?