IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- The Sun Also Sets
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.
Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.
In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.
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The Coming Global Cooling
The Coming Global Cooling by Selwyn Duke
While global warming is the current the-sky-is-falling mantra, many scientists are warning of an impending cooling trend.
Follow this link to the original source: "The Sun Also Sets"
When I was a lad in primary school, we were warned of climate change. It was a tad scary, too, as the prospect of becoming an icicle in a frozen wasteland wasn't very appealing. Hey, we wanted to be able to go outside and sometimes play with balls not made out of snow.
Yes, it was said another ice age might be nigh. �
This isn't surprising. It was the early 1970s and temperatures had been dropping for the previous 30 years or so. �
That's right, dropping.
This is one of the problems with "living in the moment." While we often place great emphasis on it, it can be perilous when evaluating phenomena. It's much like a frog experiencing his first winter and thinking the days of verdant meadows are gone forever. Perhaps he is surprised when the flowers bloom next spring.
So it is with climate change today. Many people are a tad solipsistic and behave as if the happenings during their existence define reality; yet, the history that must inform here is that of the world, not that of our own little world.
This is why the anthropogenic global warming hysteria is truly fascinating. It's as if those in its grip never heard the phrase "ever-changing Universe." In point of fact, the only constants this side of Heaven are Truth and change. And the climate is no exception.
Nor is recent history. After a noticeable temperature increase from the mid-19th century till about 1940, there was that mid-20th century cooling trend; this was following by a return to warming between the mid-1970s and late 1990s. Now even that has abated, with temperatures having remained relatively flat or even dropping since 1998. Someone please tell Al Gore.
Why these natural cycles exist is a subject of some debate. While CO2 is widely "implicated" in global warming (and the notion that CO2 is harmful is a bit fanciful; for instance, crop yields increase when CO2 levels are higher; this is why gardeners pump it into greenhouses), a better explanation might be fluctuating solar cycles. This is the assertion of Canadian scientists conducting research on climate change. Reporting on this, Investor's Business Daily tells us:
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that 'CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.'
Rather, he says, 'I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet.'
This information isn't new or revolutionary, just largely ignored.� Of course, I've also heard that temperature variations are related to the amount of salt in the oceans, so I'm unsure of what the cause is. And I'm certainly no climate scientist.
I'm also not a frog.
So I am quite sure of what the cause isn't: Man. This is because I know history.
The Earth has seen at least four major ice ages and numerous minor ones during the last 1.5 million years, and each cycle was followed by a period of warming.� And these and other climatic vagaries occurred despite the absence of man's meddling hands.� For example, there was:
The Cryogenian Period, during which the planet was entirely covered by ice and snow.
A period where glaciers were virtually gone the world over. �
The time of the dinosaurs, where CO2 levels were 5 to 10 times what they are today and foliage was lush.
An age when the Florida sea level was 100 feet higher than today and another when it was 300 feet lower. �
More recently, we experienced what is known as the "Little Ice Age," which followed the "Medieval Warm Period" and extended from approximately the 16th century to the mid-19th. Thus, it isn't surprising that we had been experiencing a slight warming because we have been emerging from that period. To read more about this, read Professor Syun-Ichi Akasofu's article on the recovery from the Little Ice Age at TheNewAmerican.com.
Aside from history, a grasp of current events wouldn't hurt, either. Note that:
South America just had its coldest winter in 90 years. �
Afghanistan is being visited with the coldest weather since it started keeping records; low temperatures have thus far claimed more than 650 lives.
Tajikistan is "facing an energy crisis in the midst of the coldest winter in more than 25 years."
Mumbai, India is experiencing its coldest weather in 40 years.
Overall, the planet just experienced its second-coldest January in 15 years. �
Oh, we shouldn't base conclusions on anecdotal evidence? �
Exactly. �
Yet, when we view these events against the backdrop of trends, both historical and recent, it appears reasonable to conclude that the sun might have set on global warming. �
Whatever the trend, it's even more reasonable to say that it's the work of Mother Nature, not man. The Earth has many seasons: The 90,000-year ice-age cycles and 10,000-year interglacial warm periods; 1500-year cycles of warming and cooling; and then winter, spring, summer and fall. There are cycles, cycles within cycles, and cycles within those cycles. It's a very confusing picture, but one that was drawn before man graced the planet and by a hand infinitely more powerful.
As for our current capacity for understanding climate, Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, describes "weather and climate science" as being in a "primitive state." Thus, are we to believe predictions about the temperature 50 years hence?� Science can't even tell us definitively what the weather will be like on Thursday. The only thing we can know for sure is that it will be different.
And the only ones who don't understand this are frogs and those who mistake moments � chronological or ideological � for a fair sample of eternity.
Solar Activity Causing Climate Change 
Linear Mode
