Wendy WilliamsI WOULDN’T have believed it if it hadn’t been reported in The Daily Telegraph but, after 20 years of being bullied, chastised, ridiculed and verbally abused by the global warming lobby, astronomers are now saying that we could be heading towards a new ice age!
What on earth will the sandalistas do now? If they take my advice they will invest in something warmer for their feet and maybe some combination thermal underwear.
Evidently the general downturn in world temperature will be caused by something that we have been aware of for centuries: the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity.
It seems that the current cycle is due to peak in 2013 and a gentle decline is predicted thereafter.
The report points to the Maunder Minimum, a period between 1645 and 1715 when sunspot activity declined and an ice age followed it, often referred to as The Great Frost.
Needless to say the sandalistas’ propaganda machine has already swung into action with claims that global warming will outweigh any effect that sunspot activity, or the lack of it, might have.
I have no doubts that it will come up with more highly implausible reasons to explain why we are not frying in our own juice but the sandalistas are, increasingly, looking like the American evangelist, Harold Camping, who, having incorrectly predicted the end of the world on May 21 now says that he made a slight mathematical error and the actual date is October 21.
The climate is changing, always has been and always will be
I suppose if he lives long enough, like a million years, good old Harry might get it right one day.
Actually the astronomers behind this latest revelation tend to support my own long-held and oft-repeated belief that the climate is changing, always has been changing and always will be changing.
Our challenge is not to stop the process – we can’t – it is to learn how to adapt to whatever climactic conditions prevail. I think it is called evolution.
Astronomers–credible ones, anyway–are *not* saying we’re headed toward an ice age. What they are saying is that the weak solar activity the earth has been experiencing for the past decade plus will continue, and will likely weaken even further. And climate scientists–the folks who know about such things–are in pretty close agreement that the planet will continue to warm as it’s been gleefully doing in spite of the weak irradiance. And at any rate, the Maunder Minimum, which was characterized by extraordinarily heavy volcanic activity and which did *not* have to deal with so much CO2, wasn’t in any way an “ice age”–just a prolonged period of cooler temps.