Is another 'Little Ice Age' on the horizon??

Question

Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age

Michael Asher (Blog) - February 9, 2008 11:53 AM

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."

Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.

During the Little Ice Age, global temperatures dropped sharply. New York Harbor froze hard enough to allow people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island, and in Britain, people reported sighting eskimos paddling canoes off the coast. Glaciers in Norway grew up to 100 meters a year, destroying farms and villages.

But will it happen again?

Answer 1

Not a chance.

The "solar activity" theory has been completely discredited, in any number of scientific papers and articles.  Just 2 good ones:

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

and:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Scientists promoting this bogus theory have been caught distorting the data:

Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data, Eos,Vol. 85, No. 39, 28 September 2004

"the article published in 1995 by Lassen and Friis-Christensen, investigating the possible correlation of solar activity and terrestrial temperatures over the extended period of four centuries, contains unacceptable data procedures"

"actually the upward bend of their solar curve is only a consequence of their arithmetic errors"

etc.

Answer 2

According to scientists, an ice age is due to happen anytime now.  Opposed to all this "global warming" hoopla.

Answer 3

The earth stopped it's warming trend in 1998.  The normal thing now is to have an era of cooling, but I hope not that cold!  Things in the winter are bad enough here now..I hate the thought of being buried under a mile of ice.

Answer 4

God, let's hope so. That would give us another few decades to get our act together regarding CO2.

Bob, you're normally reliable, so let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. It is true that cycle 24 is late in starting, and it's also true that cycle length is strongly correlated with total solar irradiance. It's obviously far too early to begin Maunder Minimum-type warnings. But we can still hope.

Answer 5

Probably, most stars wobble because of the pull of one or more of their large planets, ours is certainly is no exception to the rule. The harmonics of the outer planets affecting solar variability and the subsequent modification of Earths climate have been observed by many physicists on a variety of different proxies. If it does occur it will certainly be a setback for civilization because of the current population size.