Monday, June 01, 2009

Another "Maunder Minimum" Mini-Ice Age in Store?

NASA proves again that there is science and then there are scientists and finally there are NASA "meteorologists," who evidently do their dartboard predictions after a few pints of Guinness. And here is a cogent argument from Canada's only sane newspaper east of the Rockies.

Not until the end of the usual boring bureaucratese BS do the NASA frauds get to kinda sorta the point:
From a research point of view, that's good news because solar minimum has proven to be more interesting than anyone imagined. Low solar activity has a profound effect on Earth’s atmosphere, allowing it to cool and contract. Space junk accumulates in Earth orbit because there is less aerodynamic drag. The becalmed solar wind whips up fewer magnetic storms around Earth's poles. Cosmic rays that are normally pushed back by solar wind instead intrude on the near-Earth environment. There are other side-effects, too, that can be studied only so long as the sun remains quiet. Meanwhile, the sun pays little heed to human committees. There could be more surprises, panelists acknowledge, and more revisions to the forecast.


For more on the "Maunder Minimum" and the possibilities, check out more ata non-bureaufudge version of the above. Here's an anecdotal tidbit:
During the Maunder Minimum
During the Great Frost of (1683–1684) in England, the River Thames was completely frozen for
two months, the ice was 11 inches thick at London. Sea ice was reported along the coasts of
southeast England, and ice prevented the use of many harbors. The sea froze, so that ice
formed for a time between Dover and Calais, joining England and France. (It is more likely that
the shorelines froze and a great mass of densely packed icebergs, some 11 feet thick, built up
along the coastlines fusing into a semi-rigid structure that may have connected the two
shorelines together.) The Thames was recorded to have frozen over at London during the
years: 1649, 1655, 1663, 1666, 1667, 1684, 1695, 1709, and 1716. [Sources: River Thames
Frost Fairs and Historical Weather Events 1650-1699] [See also: The Great Frost of 1683-4 and
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide]

Not that Samuel Pepys or other highly-literate observers can tell the NASA Anthropogenic Global Warming Cabal about quack science. As Richard Feynman predicted in his famous talk on "Cargo Cult Science," the NASA quacks are now in control and have Nibelungs like Frank, Waxman, and other genetic freaks toiling on their behalf.

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