Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

Phil Chapman | April 23, 2008

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com,
where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and
Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point
between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the
average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined
during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global
temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate
Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote
Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C
in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental
record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature
does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is
over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally
cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter
in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the
austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered
the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends
from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap
as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of
somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum
was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon
after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn't happen. 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.

There is also another possibility, remote but much more serious. The
Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and other evidence show that for the
past several million years, severe glaciation has almost always
afflicted our planet.

The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America
and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid
climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials,
typically lasting less than 10,000 years.

The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history,
called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue. We
also know that glaciation can occur quickly: the required decline in
global temperature is about 12C and it can happen in 20 years.

The next descent into an ice age is inevitable but may not happen for
another 1000 years. On the other hand, it must be noted that the cooling
in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions. If it
continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14C cooler in 2027.

By then, most of the advanced nations would have ceased to exist,
vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world would be faced with a
catastrophe beyond imagining.

Australia may escape total annihilation but would surely be overrun by
millions of refugees. Once the glaciation starts, it will last 1000
centuries, an incomprehensible stretch of time.

If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent
or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon
enough and on a large enough scale.

For example: We could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use
them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the
reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.

We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent
greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the
continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the
deposits.

We cannot really know, but my guess is that the odds are at least 50-50
that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming
decades.

The probability that we are witnessing the onset of a real ice age is
much less, perhaps one in 500, but not totally negligible.

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.

In the famous words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you, in the bowels of
Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in
San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.

It's interesting that the prospect of global cooling is no less
attractive than global warming, from the standpoint of apparent
political implications, demanding aggressive collective action. Al Gore
and his followers would need some industrial-strength egg remover for
their faces, but then could embrace with no less alacrity a new
totalitarian project.

This is a bogus ³scientific report² that has already be debunked. It seems
that even Fox has already updated the story to reflect that.
------ Forwarded Message

I will reiterate my advice that Libertarians should not be debating
science.

Firstly, when we challenge the scientific consensus, it makes us look
like luddites. Even if we are right, we are talking about politics,
where perception is everything.

Secondly, it puts us on completely the wrong foot. If we challenge
government regulations because global climate change is not happening,
we concede the position that government regulations would be acceptable
if global climate change were actually happening.

The Libertarian position is that massive government regulations like
those proposed by some environmentalists are not only immoral but
ineffective; the best way to protect the environment is by having
well-informed consumers making decisions in a free market. This is true
regardless of the current state of the environment, and while we should
promote a vigorous and informed debate, and oppose any censorship of
dissenting viewpoints, the existence or absence of global climate change
is not a Libertarian issue.

~Chris

[For the record, since this list is publicly archived: I have too many
smart friends actively working in the planetary climate sciences to be a
skeptic. Climate change is almost certainly happening. It is
*probably*, though not certainly, anthropogenic. It is uncertain
whether we can do anything to change it. However, there are plenty of
other reasons to reduce fossil-fuel consumption, so we might as well do
so. VOLUNTARILY.]

exactly

Mike

Chris,

Well said--I whole-heartedly agree.

I assume Mike D. forwarded this info as a topic of interest, not because the findings reflect on libertarian premises.

Best, Michael

Harland,

  You note the existence of an eleven-year solar cycle that impacts temperatures on earth. If proponents of the anthropogenic theory of global warming are widely acknowledging this, that would be a major step forward. Many of their previous statements have given the impression that humans are solely responsible, and have ignored the role played by the sun.
  Could it be that there is now a consensus that global warming has been significantly driven by natural causes, while there is still no consensus that it has been significantly driven by human activity?

Love & Liberty,

        ((( starchild )))

P.S. - I respect the views of those who feel libertarian laypersons are better off not debating scientific matters, but respectfully disagree. I don't think we can afford to leave topics with significant political ramifications to the experts. Too often in the past, experts have betrayed liberty, and the "scientific" conclusions reached by majorities of those in various fields, such as psychologists declaring homosexuality a mental illness, have been flat-out wrong. Encouraging people to look at data and use their own abilities of reason on scientific matters will help get them in the habit of questioning authority and not accepting the word of government officials as the truth either. Precisely because "perception *is* everything," if we contribute to the impression that a crisis exists by remaining silent and letting claims of a consensus go unchallenged, then the public will be that much likelier to perceive it as a serious problem requiring human action to correct. Having by default accepted the premise that a crisis exists, we would then be hard pressed to convince the public that government action is not needed to solve this crisis. Our chances of avoiding additional harmful government measures are much greater if we can mount credible preemptive arguments that no crisis exists, and that to the extent the climate is changing it is largely a natural occurrence -- arguments which I believe are true. I believe Libertarians are tech-friendly enough in other respects to keep any charges of being luddites from sticking.

  You note the existence of an eleven-year solar cycle that impacts
temperatures on earth. If proponents of the anthropogenic theory of
global warming are widely acknowledging this, that would be a major
step forward.

I wrote a long reply, and then deleted it. This is a simpler example on
which to focus.

It is important to “look at data and use [one’s] own abilities of reason
on scientific matters” and to question authority.

But it is also important to have a basic understanding of what one is
questioning.

It took me two minutes to find <URL:
Solar cycle - Wikipedia >, which notes that the
sunspot cycles have been numbered since the mid-18th century. The
cycles are neither new or newly-acknowledged.

Many of their previous statements have given the
impression that humans are solely responsible, and have ignored the
role played by the sun.

And this is utterly fallacious. Every single climatologist has asserted
that the climate is a fantastically complex system. The sun is one of
only two things that warm the earth (the other being the much more
insignificant radioactive decay of elements within the earth); the
question is to what extent human activity causes the earth to retain or
shed that heat.

One may as well question whether 2+2 is 4 (or whether A is, in fact A)
just because the assertion came from authority. With a grounding in
number theory, one can indeed question whether 2+2 is 4, but trivially
asserting the doubt makes one look like a fool, not a rebel.

~Chris

Chris,

  Perhaps I should have been clearer. When I said that "Many of [experts'] previous statements have given the impression that humans are solely responsible, and have ignored the role played by the sun," I should have perhaps spelled out that I was referring to how their statements are often reported in the media and by politicians and political groups, which may not be reflective of their full views.

  Here is an example of one such comment, touted without context in a website (belonging to the National Resources Defense Council) which was one of the first ten to come up when I did a search for the term "global warming":

“Almost all of the models we’ve seen in recent
years show the [western U.S.] becoming warmer and more
arid due to climate change, but the question
was always whether we could believe them...
Now someone has done the statistical analysis
to connect the dots so they can say with real
confidence that this is happening because of
greenhouse gases.”
—Dr. Jonathan Overpeck, University of Arizona (2008)

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/west/west.pdf (p. 4, sidebar)

  While Overpeck may not have intended to give the impression that global warming is caused entirely because of humans -- after all, greenhouse gases are not mainly the result of human activity -- that's not the impression I think most people reading his quote will walk away with.

  Another statement from the same document asserts that, "The European heat wave in the summer of 2003 provides a recent example of how deadly extreme heat can be. The heat wave brought continent-wide summer temperatures averaging 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average and the hottest there during at least the last five centuries.25 About 35,000
people died as a result of the heat wave, according to the IPCC [a large group of scientists working under the auspices of the UN], which concluded that the excess deaths in 2003 are likely the result of human influences on the climate system."

  Again, this may not be *technically* not false -- if you define "excess deaths" as those over and above the number of deaths that would have occurred without any natural climate change, then the statement is true by its own definition! But highly misleading nevertheless.

  It didn't take me too long to find these statements, and I've seen similar quotes elsewhere before. I suspect their are many others like to be readily found, perhaps even in the same NRDC report if I took the time to pore through it.

  Also, in referring to "the role played by the sun," I meant the role played by the sun in historical and present global warming and cooling trends -- NOT the obvious and well-known role of the sun in providing heat to the earth! And if this 11-year-sunspot-cycle and its significant effect on climate -- significant enough, evidently, to cause cooling this year despite record amounts of greenhouse gases being emitted by human activity -- is old news, then why is it that it is so little mentioned by those talking about global warming?

  I don't think skepticism of anthropogenic climate change claims is like questioning that 2+2=4. It's more like questioning claims that a complex equation with lots of variables has been reliably solved for "x" when the mathematicians making the claim are just guessing at what the values for the other variables are, and when their solution relies on guesses (i.e. climate change models) which have not been proven to correlate with reality.

Love & Liberty,
          ((( starchild )))

Starchild,

Chris Maden also had a good answer, but let me add something. I feel sure
that I understand the argument made in the article and also what the
consensus is among scientists.

The sun goes through cycles of about 11 years, getting slightly hotter and
colder during each cycle. The sunspots are something like bubbles in
boiling water; the more spots the hotter the sun. Currently, the sun is at
its coolest point. The article says the cycling has stopped and we should
be frightened like the writer says he is. However, students of sunspots
don't think the cycle has stopped at all. There is no reason to think it
has. Sometime in the next year or so, they expect to see more spots.

The El Nino/Southern Oscillation is a variable ocean current. It flows
across the Pacific between the Australia area to the coast of South America..
This current might go in either direction, East or West, on the surface. It
changes every few years. Fishermen in Peru discovered the oscillation
because the current brings cold water up on the coast, or does not,
nourishing more or fewer fish. It also affects the global temperature.
Right now the Southern Oscillation is making the surface colder. But in a
or so, the El Nino direction will be making the surface warmer.

Taking the solar minimum and current direction together, this should be very
cold weather indeed. Nonetheless, the global temperature is still elevated
compared to historical records. When the sun starts heating up, and the El
Nino current comes back, the temperature will rise substantially.

Harland Harrison
LP of San Mateo County CA