The Sun is going to sleep ( not die or anything like that fyi )

[Irving]

Global cooling is far more dangerous to life than global warming.

We might have some influence on the climate, but it isn't quantifiable.

Do you feel that non-native, invasive species have quantifiable effects to the environments in which they are introduced?

[MrPrena]

The article needs to be more specific. Is some huge ass star or some neutron star going to be near our solar system from our galaxy spinning to offset the mag field? Is our Sun just randomly decided to have lesser fusion? Is super nova from 60bil l/y going to effect our mag field from the sun?

[theGinsue]

If these models are so accurate, why aren't they throwing temperature numbers out versus simply stating "60% reduction in solar activity"?

Also, while they're predicting a start time for these cycles and this "mini ice ice", I didn't read nor hear a predicted year when things would return to "normal".

Were those things there and I just missed them?

[Irving]

If these models are so accurate, why aren't they throwing temperature numbers out versus simply stating "60% reduction in solar activity"?

Also, while they're predicting a start time for these cycles and this "mini ice ice", I didn't read nor hear a predicted year when things would return to "normal".

Were those things there and I just missed them?

Just thinking out loud here, but 60% probably comes across more clear than "only 1,200 sunbillion galvatrons next cycle"

Interested to know the answer to the second question as well. Does solar activity change in Q1 and not affect Earth until Q3?

[Bailey Guns]

I wonder if any of these alarmist scientists ever stopped to consider if maybe we're living in the age of the anomaly...and maybe that's why humanity has thrived. Now we go back to the "normal" colder period and much of the population will die off for various reasons. The time mankind has been on earth is just a second or so in terms of geological time. Maybe we don't have enough of an historical record to determine what is "normal" in terms of climate.

[GilpinGuy]

Maybe we don't have enough of an historical record to determine what is "normal" in terms of climate.

This is the cause of all the debate. There is no "normal". The climate of this planet has always been changing, even when <gasp> humans weren't here.

[GilpinGuy]

I thought this would be a place for this. SOURCE


Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

1. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald

2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

3. "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial

4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich

6. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

7. "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

8. "In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine

9. "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

10. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." — Paul Ehrlich

11. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

12. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine

13. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt

[vossman]

Ahhhhh science. That was a good post.

[Aloha_Shooter]

If these models are so accurate, why aren't they throwing temperature numbers out versus simply stating "60% reduction in solar activity"?

Also, while they're predicting a start time for these cycles and this "mini ice ice", I didn't read nor hear a predicted year when things would return to "normal".

Were those things there and I just missed them?

Perhaps because -- like true scientists -- they are sticking with what they can predict. Their study is about the solar cycles and they show how different cycles will be nullifying each other during solar cycle 26 which is why they can predict a 1 significant figure effect on solar activity. They're not claiming to be able to quantize how the change in solar activity will affect terrestrial temperatures although the gross effect is well known thanks to the Little Ice Age.

I haven't read the actual paper, just skimmed a summary, but I expect the cycles that nullify each other should start drifting apart again but the Little Ice Age lasted about 300 years in total (some people mark the start at about 1350 rather than 1550 so would claim a 500 year duration. IIRC my astronomy classes correctly, the smallest period solar cycle (there are many different cycles at play) is about 22-23 years (11-12 years between minima and maxima) so there would be some variation over the course of decades but we'd be looking for the longer period cycles to move out of their minima in order to "return to normal" (whatever normal is).

[Gman]

Do you feel that non-native, invasive species have quantifiable effects to the environments in which they are introduced?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Holy non-sequitur, Batman.

Our environment is so chaotic, its mechanisms are not fully understood. The models have all been wrong and are unable to predict with any accuracy. When that's the reality, the contribution of mankind is indiscernible.

Saw this in the headlines today; News about an imminent ‘mini ice age’ is trending — but it’s not true

Even if the upcoming decline in solar activity turns out to be as Zharkova’s suggests, scientists who study the sun say we can’t be sure how it will affect Earth’s climate.

“We have some interesting hints that solar activity is associated with climate, but we don’t understand the association,” Dean Pesnell, a NASA scientist who worked on one of the 2011 studies about the grand minimum, told National Geographic at the time.