Solar Cooling

An event occurred last August that hasn’t happened since 1913, almost 100 years ago.

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots — is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

And how would this lack of sunspots influence Earth’s climate?

In the past 1000 years, three previous such events — the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a “mini ice age”. For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

The only thing worse for mankind than global warming is global cooling, if you want to look at it that way.  And it looks like we could be in for quite the cold snap.

The rest of the article is worth a read.  It includes charts showing sunspot activity since the year 1600 that seem to correlate with global temperatures (including a dip during the 1970s when global cooling was the cry of the scientists).

Filed under: Doug • Environment • Global Warming

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