John Coleman on the recent solar slump announcement

“Keep an ear and hope for the best”
Present day society will not cope well with a Maunder type event, so “hope for the best”

Alarmist nonsense.

Looks like Al Gore didn’t get that unlimited cash machine passed into law fast enough….

I agree with jorgekafkazar: Overly dramatic until the very last bit. I don’t care for Chicken Littles on either side of the fence. We can’t count on a new Little Ice Age to save us from the CAGW fraud, and we shouldn’t wish for one. But if the skeptics keep nibbling away at its rotten foundations, the whole corrupt structure will collapse.

Here are 150 years of global warming and cooling fears. http://newsbusters.org/node/11640
Why do some humans panic about the weather or climate? Why do some humans blame man for anomalous changes in climate or weather? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a result of guilt of the relatively wealthy? Is this the birth of a new Western Earth religion?

Jimbo,
Thanks for the links.. good fodder for those ‘soft supporters’ of AGW!

The same video now on YouTube

I think “announcment” is spelt wrong, is there not an “e” in announcement. 🙂

Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
June 16, 2011 at 6:01 pm
“The same video now on YouTube”
Thanks For that link, I didn’t like the idea of reinstalling flash again! 🙂

“In response to news inquiries and stories, Dr. Frank Hill issued a follow-up statement:
“We are NOT predicting a mini-ice age. We are predicting the behavior of the solar cycle. In my opinion, it is a huge leap from that to an abrupt global cooling, since the connections between solar activity and climate are still very poorly understood. My understanding is that current calculations suggest only a 0.3 degree C decrease from a Maunder-like minimum, too small for an ice age. It is unfortunate that the global warming/cooling studies have become so politically polarizing.”
http://www.nso.edu/press/SolarActivityDrop.html

What, me worry?

There has to be a way to tax sunlight…. that’ll fix it.

The people in the Dark Ages did not fare well, neither did they do so ‘hot’ shortly after the MWP.
The uncertaintly in Grand Solar Minimums is that no two are exactly alike, that we know of.
It could be a small bear, it could be a Ursus Horribilius, or it could be a total Polar Bear.
Earthlings: Prepare for what you will.
Like the song said, “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone”.

No one knows what is going to happen. Those that say they do cannot say how. Folks are doing Hansens and Gores – swan dive off a cliff and a back flip into an empty pool. Settle down.

SteveSadlov says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:27 pm
If there is a Maunder, a goodly portion of the living may envy the dead.
People in the West by and large have forgotten what is what like to go really hungry and really cold, many have had it too easy for too long. The world is not the sugar candied land of milk and honey that many have come to
believe it is. Go to the shops and buy what you want, turn on the heater and watch the TV. Life has been just a little too good, like the summer days of our childhood that we thought would last forever. Ease breeds weakness, and weakness invites defeat. Think the regimes that have picked your pockets and grown so fat at your expense will save you? Do you really think they will go out of their way to save you when times get really tough? When the time of plenty comes there are many easy riders, and fair weather friends who will flatter you and take what they can but when times get tough, really tough then those easy riders will disappear as though they never existed.
We have had it too easy for too long and now the wheel of fortune looks like it is abut to come round once again, if you have ever known real hunger and real cold and real fear, you have a flavour of what may be coming, many have never known any of these things and they are in for the mother of all shocks. Many kids do not even know where their food comes from before it arrives at their plate and they care even less, they may well care when there is no food on that plate and they have to fight for every scrap that they now throw away. Nothing worse than the pain of an empty belly you cannot fill, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. In many ways a time of hardship and pain will be like a boot camp for a lazy fat teenager, it will be painful and it will be nasty but when the fat wears off and the callouses return and the muscles grow back so will the pride and the confidence.
Many believe that war and conflict was a thing of the past, many are going to be very shocked when they realise just what it takes to live and survive in a world that doesnt care if you live or die, the pampered middle classes of the metropolitan areas who can barely walk to their cars and would burst into floods of tears if a dog snarled at them are in for a rude awakening, those who have always had to struggle will adjust better of course and the transition to ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘if you dont fight for your life then someone will take it from you’ will come easy. The forces of law and order? If and when the dark and difficult times come the only law and order will what you carry in a shoulder holster and how prepared you are to fight for what is yours against those who are willing and desperate to take it from you, and there will be many of those.
My advice FWIW? Find your real true comrades and community and stick with them, prepare for the hard times and if they dont come then you have lost nothing have you?

Harpo says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:58 pm
There has to be a way to tax sunlight…. that’ll fix it.
Ohh good, bring back the window tax! It would be daylight robbery.

Warm or cold, prepare for either contingency. Although it might be interesting to snowmobile on ice 2 km thick.

Gee, imagine how well our governments will perform if the climate does actually do something nasty, instead of a slightly warm period in which we were made bankrupt.

Cassie King says:
June 16, 2011 at 9:57 pm
What have you been smoking? Please explain in detail about finding real true comrades and community and how to prepare for hard times. Also, having done what you shall suggest, how do we know if the hard times are not coming or just slow in arriving. Do you have a place in mind for all real true comrades to gather? Is there a means (money, supplies, whatever) to carry out your plan for an extended period?

This news of long term low solar activity is also verification for Piers Corbyn
Piers Corbyn 100 year forecast:

John F. Hultquist says:
June 16, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Cassie King says:
June 16, 2011 at 9:57 pm
What have you been smoking?
Smirk now, it may make you feel good for now but if and when the hard times come along then remember me. Your family, your street where you live, your village or town, your church or your community centre. All these places, the places that many have forgotten about in the good times will be there during the bad times, the state wont be there for you and you can take that to the bank(if its still open).
I hope I am wrong and life carries on as before but history tells us the good times never last, the Romans believed their world would last till the end of time and now we can wander through the ruins and wonder about them. Time after time civilisations rise and fall to the natural climate cycle, do you really think our society is perfect and invulnerable? Have a good laugh on me now, believe I am some whack job survivalist if you want, just remember this, our civilisation is not as robust as you think it is, we walk on a knife edge and its a long way down if we fall.

Higley7 says ‘If the known cyclical factors of the Sun, from the ~11 year solar cycle to the 70, 200, and 600 year patterns and run them at the same time, they create an interference pattern which nicely recreates the solar cycle sunspot numbers from the Maunder Minimum all the way up to today’s solar cycle 24. Following the interference pattern forward, we see, oh, another Maunder Minimum for the next two cycles. Fancy that! No computer model needed, just examination of history and detectable patterns. The prediction here is NOT one of many possible outcomes; it is the most likely outcome, however.’
Possibly – but one must remember that this is the sort of data-mining that the Met Office has always used to try to ‘predict’ what the next year’s summer is going to be like – and we all know how well that has turned out. Without good, comprehensive theories to explain (quantitatively and qualitatively) such apparent trends, that is all they are – apparent!

Ian E, Using previous cycles to predict future cycles has been the method utilised by many long range weather forecasters particularly here in Australia. I think here because our weather is so unpredictable. The fact that the cycle forecasters have a better record than the whiz kids and their computers says a lot for using history to forecast the future. The whiz kids nowadays have so many parameters dependent on AGW they are doomed to fail and most often do.
Whether this solar Grand Minimum causes another Maunder type event we will only know at natures leisure. I just hope science is prepared to have pet theories trashed or corrobarated and hope it is honest enough to accept the facts.

Doesn’t worry me at all. I’ve semi-retired in Thailand. Pig farm and all. As a side benefit I will not have to chill my beer, just leave it out in the sun. ….
As a serious aside. Maybe that is why Al Gore has “beefed” up. He is storing insulation in preparation. :-))
regards

SteveSadlov says:
June 16, 2011 at 8:27 pm

…The dream of colonizing space may vanish forever. Humanity and life itself may someday perish in silence on a sad old Earth as the Sun changes to such an extent that the conditions for life leave the Earth forever.

I hate to break it to ya, but we ARE colonizing space–our little spaceship is called planet Earth. But here’s the stickler: If conditions on Earth are so formidable that we as the human race don’t survive, what leads you to believe that colonizing space outside of Earth is going to be as good as or better than our current surroundings? I don’t know of any planet in the Solar System I’d care to live on (I tend to enjoy walking around unfettered with a breathing apparatus, space suit, etc. even if I might have to wear a coat and mukluks) and I don’t think I’d like to strike out to another planet so distant only my grandchildren might (emphasis on the “might”) survive to their destination. (They’d likely find out that the star powering that planetary system is rather variable, too.) No, we’re likely living on the most hospitable space vehicle imaginable, albeit not a perfect one.

10 years ago we weren’t converting 30% of our corn crop into auto fuel.
For crying out loud, we have so much agriculture that we are still paying farmers to not farm. We have millions of acres that have been allowed to go fallow because they couldn’t compete with the wide open midwest farms.
Even if we have a full blown Little Ice Age, there will be no mass starvation. Food prices will go up, and we might have to eat more grain and less meat. But that will be the extent of it.

““This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network […]”
So often we see “experts” cutting their own legs right out from under themselves like this [“This is highly unusual and unexpected”] when issuing science press releases.

The Maunder Minimum occurred during a larger period of cooling, we’re coming off of a period of warming. So, I don’t expect it to be as bad as Maunder, but I do expect it to be worse than the cooling phase that ended in the 1970s.

Mark Wilson says:
June 17, 2011 at 5:52 am
10 years ago we weren’t converting 30% of our corn crop into auto fuel.
For crying out loud, we have so much agriculture that we are still paying farmers to not farm. We have millions of acres that have been allowed to go fallow because they couldn’t compete with the wide open midwest farms.
Even if we have a full blown Little Ice Age, there will be no mass starvation. Food prices will go up, and we might have to eat more grain and less meat. But that will be the extent of it.

Our agricultural success has come at a very steep price to the long term viability of the soils and aquifers underpinning that success. The soil depth in the Great Plains are now a small fraction of what they were when they first came under tillage. Consumption of water from the Oglala and other aquifers has severely depleted them, and the recharge rates cannot meet the future needs, especially in the event of mulit-decadal droughts typical of colder climatic conditions. The biofuels emphasis upon using grain crops requiring tillage of these depleted soils accelerates their reduction and threatens their continued viability for food production in the coming decades. At some point, someone is going to need to find a means of reversing the depletions and restoring the soi.ls and soil depths while maintaining critical agricultural production. No till crops and fallow land conservation is helping, but the massive addition of organic matter will ultimately be needed to recreate the lost soils.