Don’t throw away your winter woollies just yet. Contrary to the gibberings of the Krazy Klimate Kult, the climate threat that humans may have to deal with in the coming decades is not global warming at all. Instead, the opposite may well be nipping at our collective noses.
In the 1960s and 70s, the “scientific consensus” was that the Earth was on the brink of a calamitous “New Ice Age”. James Hansen changed all that with his scaremongering 1988 Senate testimony. Locking a bunch of politicians in a room, with the air-conditioning surreptitiously switched off, on a stifling June day in Washington, Hansen set the ball rolling on the “Great Global Warming Swindle”.
It turns out, though, that the Ice Age brigade may have been more right than they knew.
Astrophysicist Prof Valentina Zharkova has published a peer-reviewed paper arguing that new understanding of solar cycles suggest that the Earth is about to be plunged into an extended cooling period.
The Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature.
It has long been known that the Sun is subject to cycles of activity which affect its radiance – the amount of heat and light the Sun pumps out as electromagnetic radiation. These cycles vary in length from 11 years to much longer. These cycles seem to combine to produce Grand Solar Cycles of 350-400 years. In a “grand solar minimum”, sunspot activity and solar radiance fall to their lowest levels. Grand solar minima have been observed in 1645-1710 (the Maunder minimum) and 1270-1350 (the Wolf minimum).
Zharkova predicts an imminent grand solar minimum for 2020-2053, followed by another in 2370-2415.
The implications for the terrestrial climate will be significant.
From 1645 to 1710, the temperatures across much of the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth plunged when the Sun entered a quiet phase now called the Maunder Minimum. This likely occurred because the total solar irradiance was reduced by 0.22%[…]that led to a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature measured mainly in the Northern hemisphere in Europe by 1.0–1.5°C[…] This seemingly small decrease of the average temperature in the Northern hemisphere led to frozen rivers, cold long winters, and cold summers[…]
The surface temperature of the Earth was reduced all over the Globe, especially, in the countries of Northern hemisphere. Europe and North America went into a deep freeze: alpine glaciers extended over valley farmland; sea ice crept south from the Arctic; Danube and Thames rivers froze regularly during these years as well as the famous canals in the Netherlands.
But solar radiation is not the only factor in a grand solar minimum. A significant reduction of the solar magnetic field leads to an increased intensity of galactic and extra-galactic cosmic rays. Cosmic rays affect the formation of clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere. Increased cosmic ray intensity – by 19% in previous cycles – leads to more high clouds in the atmosphere, which in turn assists global cooling.
It is expected that during the modern grand solar minimum, the solar activity will be reduced significantly as this happened during Maunder minimum[…]This, in turn, can lead to a drop of the terrestrial temperature by up to 1.0°C from the current temperature[…]
Therefore, the average temperature in the Northern hemisphere can be reduced by up to 1.0°C from the current temperature, which was increased by 1.4°C since Maunder minimum. This will result in the average temperature to become lower than the current one to be only 0.4°C higher than the temperature measured in 1710.
If the Klimate Kult thought global warming was bad, global cooling is much, much worse.
The reduction of a terrestrial temperature during the next 30 years can have important implications for different parts of the planet on growing vegetation, agriculture, food supplies, and heating needs in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. This global cooling during the upcoming grand solar minimum 1 (2020–2053) can offset for three decades any signs of global warming and would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth.
Naturally, the Klimate Kult are sticking their fingers in their ears and chanting, “La-la-la-la”.
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