Is a mini ice age on the way? Scientists warn the Sun has 'gone to sleep' and say it could cause temperatures to plunge

[Cincinnatus]

Subtitle:

Conditions 'very similar' a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit

Sensationalism (consider source) or a real concern? If the latter, how will Algore and the "preponderance of experts" explain it?
 

The Sun's activity is at its lowest for 100 years, scientists have warned.

They say the conditions are eerily similar to those before the Maunder Minimum, a time in 1645 when a mini ice age hit, Freezing London's River Thames.

Researcher believe the solar lull could cause major changes, and say there is a 20% chance it could lead to 'major changes' in temperatures.

'Whatever measure you use, solar peaks are coming down,' Richard Harrison of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire told the BBC.

'I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything like this.'

He says the phenomenon could lead to colder winters similar to those during the Maunder Minimum.

'There were cold winters, almost a mini ice age.

'You had a period when the River Thames froze.'

Lucie Green of UCL believes that things could be different this time due to human activity.

'We have 400 years of observations, and it is in a very similar to phase as it was in the runup to the Maunder Minimum.

'The world we live in today is very different, human activity may counteract this - it is difficult to say what the consequences are.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2541599/Is-mini-ice-age-way-Scientists-warn-Sun-gone-sleep-say-cause-temperatures-plunge.html

[Lipstick on a Hillary]

WHOO HOO!  Fire up the aerosol hairspray. 

[truth_seeker]

Mini Ice Age?  How about zip 92648, Surf City CA, 4:00 PM, PST, Jan. 18, 2014.

80 F. (Supposed to cool some tomorrow, but they have said that all this week and it hasn't cooled).

Clear, little breeze. Crowds at the beach almost like summer.

One man's ice age, is another man's drought and heat spell.

[Rapunzel]

They said the same thing in the 70's.  This weather pattern is almost identical to the 70's as a matter of fact....... if you read Cadillac Desert it talks about how the so-called experts were saying all the people who had moved west for the weather were going to have to pack up and move back east because we were drying up and were going to blow away.

BTW this is a picture of Havasu this morning.......

[EC]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6rD6LSdjpw

[Lipstick on a Hillary]

They said the same thing in the 70's.  This weather pattern is almost identical to the 70's as a matter of fact....... if you read Cadillac Desert it talks about how the so-called experts were saying all the people who had moved west for the weather were going to have to pack up and move back east because we were drying up and were going to blow away.

I don't remember it being nearly this cold in the 70's.   Seemed like it warmed up quite a bit in the 70's, after lots of cold/snowstorms of the 60's, at least where I was in Northern NJ and Connecticut. 

[Rapunzel]

I don't remember it being nearly this cold in the 70's.   Seemed like it warmed up quite a bit in the 70's, after lots of cold/snowstorms of the 60's, at least where I was in Northern NJ and Connecticut.

I don't know what the east coast, etc were like in the 70s but I do remember in California it was mostly warm and dry.  One of the periods of extreme drought which didn't turn around until 83 and 84 when we had two back yo back very Dr y years which came close to taking out all the major dams in the Colorado River.

[mountaineer]

Don't let that frostbite fool you.

Planet Getting Hotter, Say Scientists
By Clayton Sandell | ABC News Blogs – Tue, Jan 21, 2014 10:18 PM EST

As another frigid, snowy winter storm bares its teeth across much of the Northeastern United States, climate scientists today released new numbers they say show the planet is still getting warmer.

"There are times such as today when we can have snow even in a globally warming world. But the long-term trends are very clear. They're not going to disappear. There isn't an error in our calculations," said Gavin Schmidt, the deputy director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The year 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth warmest on record, according to a new  report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NASA, which uses a slightly different method for calculating global temperature, ranks 2013 as the seventh-warmest year since 1880, tied with 2009 and 2006.

Last year was the 37th in a row in which global temperatures were higher than the 20 th century average, scientists said, and nine of the 10 warmest years on record all occurred in the 21 st century.

"The long-term trends in climate are extremely robust," NASA's Schmidt said during a conference call with reporters, noting that any single short-term hot or cold spell doesn't dispel global warming science. "Quite frankly, people have a very short memory when it comes to their own experience of weather and climate."

Australia sweated through its hottest year on record, going back 104 years, the NOAA report said. Last year also brought the worst drought in 30 years to Botswana and Namibia in southern Africa, NOAA said.

Most of the planet's land and ocean areas were warmer than average, or broke heat records in 2013, scientists said. Only the central United States was cooler than average.

"No region of the globe was record cold during 2013," the NOAA analysis said.

The United States experienced seven severe weather and climate disasters costing, $1 billion or more in 2013, according to NOAA.

Around the world, there were 41 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2013, second only to 2010, The Associated Press reported.

Last week, climate scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric research in Boulder, Colo., released data showing Arctic freezes weren't lasting as long as they used to.

A vast majority of the world's climate scientists said the planet's temperature was rising because gases released by the burning of fossil fuels are trapping heat in Earth's atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect. A recent draft report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges countries to cut emissions and shift to cleaner sources of energy.

Just make sure those "cleaner sources of energy" come from fly-by-night firms headed by big Obama donors.

[Oceander]

Don't let that frostbite fool you.Just make sure those "cleaner sources of energy" come from fly-by-night firms headed by big Obama donors.

The real lie here is that last sentence, the one about this all being due to human activity.  Those scientists who believe that are acting on faith, not hard science.  There is certainly evidence that the global mean temperature is rising, to which I say so what?  The fact of the matter is, the Earth is still colder than it has historically been on the aeons-long scale, which means that nothing more than regression to the mean is needed to explain why things are getting warmer.

In other words, the mere fact that the planet's mean global temperature is increasing has absolutely no probative value when it comes to giving answers about the effects that human activity has on the planet.  And on that score, there is in fact a dearth of evidence pointing with any real confidence to human activity as being the main, primary, or even a significant, contributor to the increase in mean global temperature.  Scientists - or anyone else for that matter - who say otherwise are as enthralled with magic and mysticism as any primitive bowing and scraping before a medicine man and his totems.