Decrease in Solar Activity Predicted: is Global Cooling imminent?

Sunspots: Saving you from the eternal stiffy

Source: Bad Astronomy
Link: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/17/are-we-headed-for-a-new-ice-age/
Title: "Are we headed for a new ice age?" by Phil Plait
Date: June 17, 2011

There seems to be enough of this sort of talk going 'round—

—that even Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has been moved to consider the issue:

So that may be the connection between the Sun's Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age. Fewer sunspots meant fewer faculae, so less heat from the Sun. Not enough to kickstart an ice age, but it had some minimal effect. Volcanic eruptions added their cooling. Finally, a weak jet stream dropped supercold air farther south into Europe—thus the winters in Europe were extraordinarily bitter, but summers weren't all that affected, and other regions of the world were spared the worst outcomes from all this.

Mind you—and this is fairly important—there's evidence that the Little Ice Age began long before the Maunder Minimum. It may have actually been more like series of cold pulses that started centuries earlier. So any connection between the solar cycle and ice ages is pretty weak.

• • •​

So, to wrap things up in a nice little bow:

1) Claims of an imminent global ice age are at best exaggerated.

2) The link of global cooling to an extended solar magnetic minimum is tenuous, and almost certainly needs something else to force it to occur (like lots of volcanoes), and

3) We're not even all that sure we're headed for an extended minimum.

I know a lot of folks tend to panic, and a lot of so-called "news" outlets know that disasters sell ad space. So there you go. No need to panic yet over global cooling. And we've still got warming deniers to deal with.​

You know, of all the things children of my generation were taught about sunspots, it was mostly how the things weren't really all that dark, just a bit cooler, and that they could screw with wireless broadcast and reception. I don't recall anybody ever saying, "But it's worth the little inconveniences, because without sunspots, we'd all be frozen stiff!"

 

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Negative heating has gone unperturbed upwards even with lower solar activity as per NOAA. I believe NOAA

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http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/indicators/solar-variability.gif

Energy from the Sun Has Not Increased
Solar Variability
Global surface temperature (top, blue) and the Sun's energy received at the top of Earth's atmosphere (red, bottom). Solar energy has been measured by satellites since 1978.

The amount of solar energy received at the top of our atmosphere has followed its natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs, but with no net increase. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. This indicates that it is extremely unlikely that solar influence has been a significant driver of global temperature change over several decades.



http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/

Again this can prevent the current heating we are experiencing.

http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s54/hurricanedude/clip_image002-1.jpg

 

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I have to laugh at the illiteracy of most posters regarding this subject. Trippy is a fool posting graphs based on cherry picked NOAA, IPCC, et al data.

Government funded "scientific organisations" always pander to the party line. They ask "more funding" and the politicians say "yes....only if say this to the public."

Dopehat governemnts and a gullible public....what a mix!!

 

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You are incorrect about that. I know someone who worked for decades at NIST. Funding was political, but scientific papers are peer reviewed and must hold up to unbiased scrutiny, or the scientists would lose their reputation and never be able to work again... not something they would be personally happy about.

 

Glacial and interglacial periods over the past ~ million years are attributed to slight changes in the Earth's orbit. These slight changes cause ice to shrink and grow. As ice grows, more light is reflected. As it shrinks, more light is absorbed. As the ocean warms, it absorbs less CO2. As it cools, it absorbs more. These feedbacks and others amplify the slight orbital forcings. This is the greenhouse effect. Without it, these slight orbital changes could not have caused the average ~ 6 degree C swings between glacial and interglacial periods.