South Orange, New Jersey - In the Greek myth about Cassandra, she could foresee the future, but no one believed her warnings. Her name is believed to be derived from the words for beauty and the sun.
Any number of solar scientists and others are warning that the Earth is on the brink of a new Ice Age at worst, a mini ice age at best. Dr. Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam has concluded that the next Ice Age will come on so swiftly that in barely a year much of the northern hemisphere will be encased in ice and snow.
The last Ice Age lasted 13,000 years. The Little Ice Age from around 1300 to 1850 lasted long enough to transform European society and have a profound affect on the histories of America and France. In England, they went from growing grapes to skating on a completely frozen Thames.
All the signs are in place and throughout the northern hemisphere nations, their leaders prattle on about global warming, clean energy, endangered species, and all the other environmental foolishness without once casting an eye toward the source of all climate on Earth, the Sun!
Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.
Sunspots are regions of electrically charged, superheated gas (plasma) on the surface of the sun, formed when upwellings of the magnetic field trap the ionized plasma. The magnetic field prevents the gas from releasing the heat and sinking back below the sun's surface. These areas are somewhat cooler than the surrounding sun surface and so appear to us as dark spots.
Sunspots have been observed at least since the early 17th century, and they are known to follow an 11 year cycle from solar maximum to solar minimum. The solar minimum usually lasts around 16 months, but the current minimum has already lasted 26 months, which is the longest minimum in a hundred years.
The Royal Society has updated its guide after 43 of its members complained
that the previous version failed to take into account the opinion of climate
change sceptics.
Now the new guide, called ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’,
admits that there are some ‘uncertainties’ regarding the
science behind climate change.
And it says that it is impossible to know for sure how the Earth's climate will
change in the future nor what the possible effects may be.
And it avoids making any predictions about the possible impacts of climate change
and advises caution in making projections about rising sea levels.
It says: 'There is currently insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting
and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly
how much the rate of sea level rise will increase above that observed in the
past century for a given temperature increase.
It states: 'There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has
occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions
of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the list of potential
causes of climate change.'
'The former publication gave the misleading impression that the 'science
is settled' - the new guide accepts that important questions remain open and
uncertainties unresolved.
'The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend
of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years.
'In their old guide, the Royal Society demanded that governments should take
"urgent steps" to cut CO2 emissions "as much and as fast as possible."
This political activism has now been replaced by a more sober assessment
of the scientific evidence and ongoing climate debates.
'If this voice of moderation had been the Royal Society's position all along,
its message to Government would have been more restrained and Britain's unilateral
climate policy would not be out of sync with the rest of the world.'
The Royal Society’s decision comes in the wake of a scathing report
into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which called for it to avoid
politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science.
The review, which focused on the day-to-day running of the panel, rather than
its science, was commissioned after the UN body was accused of making
glaring mistakes.
These included the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 25
years - and that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was prone to flooding because
it was below sea level.