I & I Editorial BoardI&I Editorial
Climate researcher Michael Mann said last week that if President Donald Trump is reelected, it’s “game over for the climate.” It’s the same alarmism we’ve been hearing for decades, all of it empty. But the alarmists won’t stop telling us we’re about to set the sky on fire. Even if NASA has said record cold might be on the way.
The sun, it seems, has been powering down.
“We see a cooling trend,” Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center said two years ago, a remark largely ignored but still relevant. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”
Like the humans it keeps alive, our star goes through phases, usually about 11 years, over the course of its life. Right now we’re in what NASA calls solar cycle 25, emerging last December from a solar minimum that fell between solar cycles 24 and 25.
“It is important to remember solar activity never stops; it changes form as the pendulum swings,” says Lika Guhathakurta, solar scientist at NASA’s Heliophysics Division.
But climate alarmism continues to grow exponentially. It’s more shrill today than it’s ever been.
For the record, global temperatures dropped from 2016 through late 2019. We don’t know about any unprecedented cooling in the last two years. But maybe the climatistas need to consider that solar activity affects our climate. The Little Ice Age, in which Europe and North America experienced brutally cold winters and mild summers, coincided with the Maunder (solar) Minimum of 1645 to 1720. They don’t want to deny science, do they?
A couple of months ago science told us “the sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature.”
“This global cooling during the upcoming grand solar minimum 1 (2020–2053),” says Valentina Zharkova, “can offset for three decades any signs of global warming and would require inter-government efforts to tackle problems with heat and food supplies for the whole population of the Earth.”
And who is Valentina Zharkova? A math professor at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. She has degrees in mathematics and astronomy, and a doctorate in astrophysics. She’s clearly a published scientist employed by an English university whose tech roots go back to the 19th century. Shouldn’t we trust her science?
Or are we to trust only the science that says man’s CO2 emissions are overheating Earth? These are the researchers who are worshipped by the press and politicians eager to shut down our economy and rob our liberty to “fight” global warming with far more prohibitive limits than we’ve endured during the pandemic lockdown.
Before deciding if Zharkova is an outlier, or just maybe a crackpot, consider that she was one of only two scientists’ models out of 150 “to correctly predict solar cycle 24 would be weaker than cycle 23,” reports Electroverse, which also says “Zharkova’s models have run at a 97% accuracy.”
So whose science do we believe? The scientists with a political agenda who have for more than 30 years predicted that a global disaster due to human greenhouse gas emissions is imminent, yet have been wrong, wrong, and wrong again? Or the skeptics without whom real science can never progress?
Until events show the agenda-driven researchers are absolutely right, we’ll favor the latter.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Break out your Parkas.
Even if we have short-term cooling as stated in this article, which is doubtful, are you implying that it’s OK to continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere, because the effects will be masked until after 2053? That it’s OK to make things worse for our grandchildren, because some of us won’t be here then? And that it’s OK to have a mass extinction a few decades later?
I don’t believe the article suggested that. CO2 by the way has no impact on global temperatures, at least to the best of our understanding. CERN says so at least, and they have not been contradicted yet. You do realize that as temperatures increase, the oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. So our best understanding would suggest that as things cool, the CO2 levels will probably decrease, or at least stop increasing. We will learn much over the next few years and decades to better understand how this system works. But right now the global warming alarmists have no evidence or modeling to support their claims. I expect true science, that hopefully gets rid of shysters like Mann, will debate and poke and prod and uncover truths we do not yet know. But without evidence supporting their thesis, implementing the remedies of the “alarmists” will harm millions, perhaps tens or hundreds of millions in a very negative way. This harm we know to be true, as energy poverty does kill, and is well documented to do so.
Opinion masked as fact (see what I did there?) Try using research evidence.
I think you meant to address the author, who is unlikely to respond. However, I will answer your question.
The IPCC report has exactly one scientific finding, and it isn’t that we are doomed. It states that, “all other things remaining equal” (which they clearly do not), there is a near linear relationship between total atmospheric CO2 and mean global temperature. I accept that as 100% truth – which is why I am not concerned in the least about it.
First, let’s put things in perspective. We have been in an Ice Age for about 5 million years. Ice Ages make up about 10% or less of the Earth’s history, and during one global temperatures AVERAGE about 25F colder than the more usual temperatures of the Earth. Within Ice Ages are inter-glacial periods, such as the one which started about 40,000 years ago (corresponding to the entire existence of modern humans). These inter-glacial periods make up about 5-10% of an Ice Age, meaning that today’s temperatures correspond to less than 1% of the Earth’s history – the least likely “normal,” if you will. FYI, the current inter-glacial is still 5F cooler than more typical ones. So, when people talk about doomsday scenarios, they are speaking of property values shifting – nothing more.
Second, the answer to whether AGW is a “problem” lies outside of climate science. Humanity is adding CO2 to the atmosphere, and will continue to do so for about 30 more years. NOTHING governments can do at this point can move that needle by more than 5 years, which means that nothing we do can change the peak temperature increase due to CO2 by more than about 0.02C/ 0.05F. Nothing. Consider that when you hear all of the histrionics and see all of the hand waving. Fortunately, however, the prices of solar and batteries have been dropping exponentially for almost 70 years and show no signs of stopping in the next decade. Leading energy experts and, perhaps more importantly, financial experts are now in agreement that in less than a decade solar plus enough batteries to cover 24×7 operations uninterrupted will be cheaper than new coal or natural gas plants. When that happens, NOBODY builds new fossil fuel plants. About six years later they will be half that price, and industry, businesses, and individuals will be ditching fossil fuels just as quickly as they can build replacement capacity.
The future is bright (literally) and clean, with plentiful clean cheap energy. This notion seems to upset climate alarmists, whose political ambitions depend on public fear. Here’s a short video to give you a preview of what is coming. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ud-fPKnj3Q
Our society is highly over litigious, and solving issues has been infected on all fronts by legal tactics.
Uncertainty is one of those tactics whether used in the Cavanaugh hearing, the covid crisis, or most supremely as it is employed with global climate misery.
These weather alarmists do not know what any target goals are for the planet and whether if you could effect some herculean change, what damage it might headlong send us into. Such as an extinction level cooling event.
Please drop the kool aid! The Leftism is strong in you.
Enjoy the warmth while you can, ice ages are unpleasant. But in a few billion years the sun will run out of fuel and any unsolved problems that remain will no longer have a noticeable impact.
The zealots will pivot, on cue, to the “fact” that global cooling is a sign of global warming, or Globalony, as I like to call it. They have been sounding the alarm on climate for over 100 years. We’re all still here. We will perish from an asteroid before any of their predictions come true.
Remember when it was “global warming” until it started to cool, as it has on and off for centuries. That little problem led to the name becoming “climate change” as in WEATHER!!!!
To play devil’s advocate….it does say that this next sun cycle of 33 years can offset any signs of global warming…meaning that global warming is still here, it’s just being offset by this coming/current Grand Solar Minimum cycle. Now, don’t get me wrong…I still believe it’s all B.S. on the part of the leftists….ELIMINATE THE LEFT.
What percent of global emissions are we responsible for in the US? China? India? if we alone increase our cost of energy while the other major world players do not, will we alone be able to keep the climate from warming? What is the evidence for this?
How much more does emission control add to the cost of energy production?
If China and India, which undersell us already due to cheap labor, also have a guarantee of cheaper energy going forward, and can then cap their emissions output at the level they achieve decades from now (because that is what we settled for in the Climate Accord) that will keep our manufacturing going to them and not coming back to us. Besides, there is no enforcement mechanism in the Accord. Suppose China blows it off at the end of her period of increased emissions and says, we’ll just do as we please, suckers?
Who could have ever guessed that the big furnace in the sky could affect the temperatures on earth. There must be something we can do to change this.
What drives our temperatures is thermal energy absorbed by the ground, water, and atmosphere. The input for that is solar energy reaching the planet. That is affected by solar output, distance from the sun, and the eccentricity of our orbit. Our orbit isn’t circular, it has an eccentricity that varies from 0.05 to 0.003 (0.0 is a circle, 1.0 would be a straight line). When our eccentricity is higher, we’re further from a perfect circle. What does that mean? When our eccentricity is 0.05 we’ll be closer to the sun for part of our orbit, and further from the sun for the other part, than we are when the eccentricity is 0.003. But we’ll be closer to the sun for less time than we’ll be further away (Keppler’s Laws of Planetary motion). So we’ll spend more time with less energy reaching the planet than we will getting more energy reaching the planet (if solar output is constant; which of course it isn’t). So the effect is cooling (again, if solar output is constant). If you look at the pattern of our orbit’s eccentricity (and it has one) as well as the solar output from the solar cycles, you discover that our climate is predictable. And the alarmists have gotten it wrong.
You have omitted the effect of greenhouse gasses, which have increased by over 45% since 1880. Changes in solar energy absorbed by the Earth are in a very slow cooling trend, and have had far less effect in this period.
Rubbish. CO2 has increased 45%. Greenhouse Gasses have not measurably changed – the biggest greenhouse gas being di-hydrogen monoxide. The total net effect of insulation from the DIFFERENCE in greenhouse gasses is nearly insignificant compared to the effects of solar output variation – as you are going to see over the next 30 years of the Grand Minimum.
Too, you seem to lack perspective. We are over 5 million years into an Ice Age. Ice Ages make up less than 10% of the Earth’s history. We are about 40,000 years (almost the entire existence of modern humans) into an inter-glacial period. Those make up about 5-10% of Ice Ages. We are well within – and will REMAIN well within, the normal temperature variations within an inter-glacial period – currently more than 5F cooler than peak temperatures for a typical inter-glacial.
In other words, temperatures today are completely normal for an inter-glacial, but utterly the LEAST likely temperature for “normal” in the Earth’s history.
All of those are interesting, but none of them are “existential threats.” Everyone agrees we want clean power; nobody wants to pay more. Fortunately, within 8 years clean energy will be cheaper almost everywhere, and the change will be nearly as quick as the change from horses to automobiles.
So i guess that screwball James Hansen is not in charge anymore? Goodbye Hansen you Dweeb