Winter Is Coming!

      Make the most of this summer because it could be your last decent one: winter is coming as the planet enters the most devastating cooling period since the 65-year Maunder Minimum of the 17th and early 18th centuries.

 

I realize this may be controversial for the global warming enthusiasts. But if theories from solar physicists are accurate, we may see a dramatic turnaround in our global climate. I, myself acknowledge that the earth has been getting warmer. Some of that may be from manmade sources such as greenhouse gases.

      But, in my opinion, it is more from natural cycles that occur at intervals across the centuries. So what is changing that makes some think our climate is about to reverse?  The answer lies in the sun. Normally, the face of our parent star is pocked by sunspots. But it’s looking as smooth as a billiard ball right now and sunspots are appearing at the lowest rate for 10,000 years as solar activity slows down. On the website Space Weather, a forecaster said there were more blank suns to come. “There will be lots of spotless suns,” they said. “At first, the blank stretches will be measured in days; later in weeks and months. The current blank spell is in the 4th day and has seen a total of 42 days of no sunspots in 2017, so far.

      It is feared the lack of sunspot activity could prompt the arrival of a cold snap similar to the Maunder Minimum, which started in 1645 and continued to about 1715. This period is known as the Little Ice Age and became famous for the winter frost fairs held on the frozen surface of the Thames. Analysis of the sun has revealed that there has been a sharp decrease in the amount of sunspots this year. Meteorologist Paul Dorian believes that this is indicative behavior of an approaching Ice Age. He told the Daily Star: “If history is any guide, it is safe to say that weak solar activity for a prolonged period of time can have a cooling impact on global temperatures in the troposphere which is the bottom most layer of Earth’s atmosphere — and where we all live.” Sunspot activity reaches goes in cycles of reaching its peak and back to minimum activity every 12 years or so. The next time it is set to reach its minimum is in 2019, which could herald a new Ice Age. The last time there was such low solar activity was in the 15th century, when a mini Ice Age occurred.

      Professor Valentina Zharkova, a solar physicist at Northumbria University, has based her predictions of a coming mini ice age on sun spot activity – known to be a significant driver of global climate – which is currently very low and likely to get even lower during the next three solar cycles. According to Professor Zharkova: “We will see it from 2020 to 2053, when the three next cycles will be have a very reduced magnetic field of the sun. Basically what happens is these two waves, they separate into the opposite hemispheres and they will not be interacting with each other, which means that resulting magnetic field will drop dramatically nearly to zero. And this will be a similar conditions like in Maunder Minimum.”  What will happen to the Earth remains to be seen or predicted because nobody has developed any program or any models of terrestrial response – they are based on this period we have been in when the sun has maximum activity — when the sun has these nice fluctuations, and its magnetic field is very strong.

      But we’re approaching to the stage when the magnetic field of the sun is going to be very, very small. Since the Little Ice Age ended in the middle of the Nineteenth century, we have all got used to the comforts and agricultural advantages (such as being able to grow wheat in more northerly latitudes) of living through a period of global warming. A second Little Ice Age will come as a very nasty shock. That shock will be felt most especially by the world’s climate alarmist Establishment, whose scientists and learned institutions have staked their reputation on the idea that CO2, not solar activity, is the prime driver of climate and that the planet is on a warming trend not a cooling one. Time will tell. Feel free to comment on this post and be sure to hit the “Like” button at the end.