Just As I Thought, Climate Change Linked to Sun Activity

I have been saying here and elsewhere for over a year that global climate change is a cyclic phenomenon closely linked to the activities of the sun. The naysayers have in the past attempted to challenge my assertions but to this point haven’t been able to produce any proof that isn’t tainted. But today, I am happy to report that I have additional proof to what I’ve been claiming.

From Investors Business Weekly…

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. emphasis mine

Excuse me while I pat myself on the back.

Continuing…

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.

Where have I seen that printed on the net before. -takes a moment to think-

Oh yeah, HERE!

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. emphasis mine

So why is it that they are now asking for funding to research sun activity? How about evidence that the sun’s activity is slowing and there is now a threat of a new ice age. You read that right, an ICE AGE.

I have no problem with scientists researching the phenomenon. What I do have a problem with is these chicken little ‘the sky is falling’ BS warnings that have come since High Priest Al Gore of the Church of Global Warming of Modern Day Idiots (MDI) produced his propaganda film ‘An Incomplete Deception’ (sorry, I thought that a more accurate title) ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

The hysteria created by High Priest Gore and his minions of the MDI have caused world-wide panic over something we have little control over. I think that it is telling that the authors of this article chose to use the words,

“… our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth’s climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.”

This tells me that it is possible that soon we will hear from the idiots from the MDI warning of global cooling. But I also suspect that we won’t hear them back off their insane assertions about CO2. At least I won’t hold my breath.

UPDATE:

Someone, asked for additional proof – so here it is.

A new NASA computer climate model reinforces the long-standing theory that low solar activity could have changed the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere from the 1400s to the 1700s and triggered a “Little Ice Age” in several regions including North America and Europe. Changes in the sun’s energy was one of the biggest factors influencing climate change during this period, but have since been superceded by greenhouse gases due to the industrial revolution.

During the Little Ice Age, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s. At the same time, canals in Holland routinely froze solid, glaciers advanced in the Alps, and sea-ice increased so much that no open water was present in any direction around Iceland in 1695.

Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and other researchers have used a computer model to reconstruct climate and atmospheric conditions from the present back to the Little Ice Age.

They determined that a dimmer Sun reduced the model’s westerly winds, cooling the continents during wintertime. Shindell’s model shows large regional climate changes, unlike other climate models that show relatively small temperature changes on an overall global scale. Other models did not assess regional changes.

During the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, from 1645 to 1715, there is believed to have been a decrease in the total energy output from the Sun, as indicated by little or no sunspot activity. Known as the Maunder Minimum, astronomers of the time observed only about 50 sunspots for a 30-year period as opposed to a more typical
40-50,000 spots. The Sun normally shows signs of variability, such as its eleven-year sunspot cycle. Within that time, it goes from a minimum to a maximum period of activity represented by a peak in sunspots and flare activity.

Beginning in 1611, Galileo Galilei made drawings of lower sunspot activity before the Maunder Minimum. Records of sunspot activity during the Minimum from other astronomers confirm the lower number of sunspots over the70 year event.

During those periods of low solar activity, levels of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation decrease, and can significantly impact ozone formation in the stratosphere. “The changes in ozone that we modeled were key in producing the enhanced response,” Shindell said. “The changes in the upper atmosphere then feed down to the surface climate.”

Between the mid-1600s and the early 1700s the Earth’s surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere appear to have been at or near their lowest values of the last millennium. European winter temperatures over that time period were reduced by 1.8 to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1-1.5 Celsius). This cool down is evident through derived temperature readings from tree rings and ice cores, and in historical temperature records, as gathered by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Virginia.

Shindell noted that the effects of this period of a dimmer Sun were concentrated more regionally than globally. “Global average temperature changes are small, approximately .5 to .7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.3-0.4C), but regional temperature changes are quite large.” Shindell said that his climate model simulation shows the temperature changes occurring mostly because of a change in the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO).

This oscillation is basically a hemispheric-scale see-saw of atmospheric pressure and temperature between the mid latitudes and the Arctic which modulates the strength of the westerly jet stream winds. These winds are reduced as the AO/NAO shifts in response to a dimmer sun. Because the oceans are relatively warm during the winter due to their large heat capacity, the diminished flow creates cold land temperatures by reducing the transport of warm Pacific air to America, and warm Atlantic air to Europe. During this shift, winter temperatures cooling of as much as 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit (1-2C).

The paper, “Solar forcing of regional climate change during the Maunder Minimum,” by authors Drew Shindell, Gavin Schmidt, and David Rind, from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and co-authors Michael Mann and Anne Waple, from the Universities of Virginia and Massachusetts respectively, appears in the December 7 issue of Science.

“The period of low solar activity in the middle ages led to atmospheric changes that seem to have brought on the Little Ice Age. However, we need to keep in mind that variations in solar output have had far less impact on the Earth’s recent climate than human actions,” Shindell said. “The biggest catalyst for climate change today are greenhouse gases,” he added.

Source? NASA December 6, 2001

They knew this then but yet we still got the Chicken Little ‘the sky if falling’ BS anyway. Global Warming agenda driven? I think so.

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