The Sun Also Sets

Those of you interested in the climate change debate might want to note that Canadian scientists are currently asking for funding to research the sun’s recent activity because, according to Popular Mechanics, they’re concerned that its current ‘quiet’ will lead to global cooling ...

From an article on the subject in Investors Business Daily:

"Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

"Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

"This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

And, just in case you'd like the same kind of annecdotal, alarmist evidence that those on the warming side of the argument use (you know, like polar bears on icebergs?), this winter has seen things like:

• The lowest temperatures in 30 years and snow in Saudi Arabia,
• The lowest temperatures in 40 years in India,
• Snow falling in Baghdad for the first time in 100 years,
• Snow and freezing rain in Maui (yes, that Maui),
• The second coldest January in 15 years,
• The return of ice in Greenland (to pre-2007 levels),
• An average global temperature drop of .63°C over the past 12 months, and
• That I had to shovel 7+ inches of cold, wet 'global warming' off my driveway this week.

One might make the argument, you know, ‘for the sake of our children and our children’s children’ that we should try to make the world a warmer place ‘just in case’ these Canadian scientists are right ...