With all of the pseudo-scientific propaganda being peddled about anthropogenic climate change, people sometimes forget that there are other, far more important drivers of the Earth’s climate than mankind’s carbon dioxide emissions. For example, that big ball of yellow light in the sky (aka the sun) has a huge effect on climate. And according to NASA, this year will mark the lowest level of solar activity in 200 years.
“Research now underway may have found a reliable new method to predict this solar activity. The Sun’s activity rises and falls in an 11-year cycle. The forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years. The maximum of this next cycle — measured in terms of sunspot number, a standard measure of solar activity level — could be 30-50 percent lower than the most recent one. The results show that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025.”
According to a growing number of scientists, the coming lower solar cycle — number 25 — may simply be a precursor to a period of prolonged solar minima such as the Maunder and Spörer minimums of the past millennium.
While NASA predicts that the lower sunspot activity will be a boon for potential upcoming space exploration with NASA’s Artemis Program, as high radiation and solar flares can be dangerous to astronauts, the lower solar output has other implications as well.
Prolonged periods of solar minimum are unfailingly linked to periods of cooler weather on Earth. For example, the Maunder Minimum, which lasted from the mid-1600s until the early 1700s is connected to a time on Earth known as the Little Ice Age, a time when rivers in England froze deeply enough for people to skate and hold winter fairs upon them.
The NASA story cites the work of Irina Kitiashvili, a research fellow with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Kitiashvili’s findings track with studies led by Professor Valentina Zharkova at Northumbria University in Great Britain and Dan Lubin at UC-San Diego, which also predict periods of lower solar output coming in the next decades.
The findings also seem to confirm other NASA data, such as findings from their SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry) instrument aboard their TIMED (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics) satellite, which measures infrared radiation in the Earth’s thermosphere.
Decreased solar activity is not the only potential sign of a cooling Earth. In the span of three days beginning on January 9, three different volcanoes — in Mexico (Popocatepetl), Japan (Mt. Shintake), and the Philippines (Taal) — erupted, sending ash and smoke miles into the atmosphere. In the Philippines, residents remain on high alert due to the potential of a more devastating eruption in the coming days.
In 1816, the combination of prolonged solar minimum — in that case, the Dalton minimum — along with the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia led to a worldwide phenomenon known as the Year Without a Summer, during which millions died due to extreme cold and famine caused by related crop failures.
The Mount Tambora eruption was the largest in recorded human history, so it’s unlikely that the events of 1816 will be repeated anytime soon. But the point is that nature itself has much more power than man in regard to climate change.
Climate hysterics focus on one small possible influence on climate, namely mankind’s carbon-dioxide emissions. It’s as if they are focusing their energy on a half-dead mosquito buzzing near them while a hungry pride of lions slowly encircles them.
Man-made warming is not the climate problem mankind should be worried about. The signs pointing to a natural global cooling cycle are much more dangerous and far more terrifying. It is well documented that extreme cold kills more people than extreme heat.
It seems the whole climate-emergency movement has more to do with politics than actual science.
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Heat or Cold: Which Is More Deadly?
Photo: visual7 / E+ / Getty Images Plus
James Murphy is a freelance journalist who writes on a variety of subjects with a primary focus on the ongoing anthropogenic climate-change hoax and cultural issues. He can be reached at [email protected].
