Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.
Excerpt: The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon. The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots. That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern. It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850. There is no doubt that the next little ice age would be much worse than the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There are many more people now and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural areas, especially in the US and Canada. Global warming would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it (such as planning changes in agriculture to compensate), and millions more will die from cold-related diseases. […] All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead. It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.
The Australian: Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh
To th poster way back who claims that 8 inches or so f sea level rise is proof f AGW. 1 ich per decde is the currentrate of rise in sea level and this hs been happening for many decades. Current value of waming compared with average for last 20 yers is .3 degrees for the globe, made up of a positive tend in th northern H and negative one in the southern one. see latest figures from John Christy. See sea level calculator. AGW isa caste built on sand.
Un commonly heard in the House of Commons,
Hear, hear!
I often post newspaper articles for discussion - science can then be posted in comments. I post peer reviewed articles when I spot interesting ones, especially if the mainstream media are likey to ignore them.
James Mayeau
The bit of about ice ages (not the type like the LIA) is that they are also associated with biosphere mass extinctions.
So the arrival of an ice age would seem to be sudden rather than gradual.
Here's hoping we don't get a new ice age. I like the warm. I haven't seen a compelling reason for why today's climate is the ideal that we should spend billions to maintain.
It's cold outside. This weather sucks. Bring on the warmin.