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I'm Not Seeing Spots
By: David Carlson|Published: June 3, 2008 3:26 PM
Topics: Environment, Health & Science


Sun5 Those who know me might call me an environmentalist. Or at least an "earth-symp." I think I'm the only Prison Fellowship/BreakPoint employee who drives a hybrid.

I see the earth as the brilliant and beautiful handiwork of God. I cringe when I see trees torn down for a new strip mall. But, as my Swedish heritage would dictate, I'm no extremist. I don't buy into the hysteria over man-made global warming. But I also cheer on efforts to curb pumping gabillions of tons of crapola into the air and into the oceans.

That said . . . not only do I not believe in man-made global warming, thanks to my weather-nut friend, Roberto Rivera, I'm beginning to doubt global warming at all. Roberto's newest fascination, and now mine: Sun spots. Or the lack thereof.

It appears that increased sun spot activity during roughly 11-year solar cycles coincides with warmer temperatures on earth. Likewise, decreased sun spot activity coincides with cooler temperatures on earth. And . . . recent trends and data suggest that sun spot activity is cycling to the lowest points in a century or two. Read all about it. Roberto has also put me on to this blog.

I wonder when or if we will begin to see coverage in major media of the possibility of global cooling. As Roberto points out to anyone who will listen, global cooling would stink a whole lot more than global warming.

Can anyone say "little ice age"? Brrrr.


Comments:

Mita- could you please post the link where you found this? If it's for real- and I have no reason to doubt you! - I think I need to look into it!
Posted By: Luke on June 25, 2008 1:35 PM
Allen, I withdraw any friendly joshing about your "rant" on models, especially since you are in such august company. I refer, of course, to Freeman Dyson who recently plagiarized your ideas: "My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."
Posted By: Roberto the Weather Nut on June 05, 2008 6:48 AM
Fine enough to say we need more data, but remember that multivariate modeling can never - EVER - predict dependent variable values outside the independent variable dataset. So it's been crazy all along for anyone to claim that the models touted by AGWers as "scientific evidence" (BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!) is anything of the sort, when it was predicting climate metric values WAY outside the development dataset. So more data is fine. So long as it is used properly. I know Roberto, in a friendly way, used to give me the business (Beav...) about my statistical model rant. All the same, that's been the fundamental issue all along. It's always been all about the models.
Posted By: Allen on June 04, 2008 5:18 PM
4wd, otherwise it would be bad on ice, that's for sure. But it clears the 'plowed' roads with several inches of snow on them. I have had to use the 4wd quite a bit in winter, and sometimes back home on the farm, too. Roberto, The Year Without a Summer, massive starvation in America. I like cooler weather, myself, and I suppose Dad could always raise winter wheat and rye, oats and barley (if there were a place to sell it; there isn't), but while Currier and Ives winters are wonderlands, starvation isn't so much fun. Perhaps the Sahel would green up under those conditions, and the Aral Sea refill, and that balance out the crop failures in the US, northern Ukraine and Europe. We just don't know. We need to collect data (and not from brick walls right above asphalt parking lots). A lot more data.
Posted By: labrialumn on June 04, 2008 4:42 PM
As I type this, PF headquarters are under a tornado warning and I'm about to "weather" -- pardon the pun -- a severe thunderstorm. I like cold weather. I hate excessive heat. But I know that cold is far worse for human flourishing than heat. Labrialum, I'm impressed! Sincerely. Your invocation of the Dalton minimum is, as Darth Vader told Luke Skywalker "Impressive. Most Impressive." A return to the Dalton minimum, never mind the Maunder, will have us staging show trials for the AGW alarmists.
Posted By: Roberto the Weather Nut on June 04, 2008 3:04 PM
Hey labrialumn, I'd trade you my newly hail damaged Civic for your Ranger, unless it's rear wheel drive. I really liked my Ranger, but it was horrible in the snow. And since it looks like we'll finally be having snowier winters again here in MN I wouldn't want to go back to that.
Posted By: TimS on June 04, 2008 1:15 PM
Read Cool It. The author goes into the expected difference in number of heat-related deaths vs. cold-related deaths.
Posted By: Dan Gill on June 04, 2008 8:52 AM
Hybrids only do good in cities, due to the regenerative breaking. OTOH, anyone want to trade me a Civic for my Ranger? ;-) The planet has been cooling this past decade. Whether this will be a Dalton-type minimum, or a Little Ice Age, or a repeat of the Younger Dryas, remains to be seen. We -are- overdue for a major ice age. A few years back, Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote a satrical novel _Fallen Angels_ about this scenario. I believe you can legally download it for from from the Baen Publishing web site.
Posted By: labrialumn on June 03, 2008 10:15 PM
Dave the Swede, I use to own a hybrid--my gas mileage was that much better than I'm getting now driving a Volvo. CLH, they are terribly expensive, but I'm sure as they manufacture more, the cost will go down.
Posted By: Kim Moreland on June 03, 2008 4:10 PM
I'd drive a hybrid if I could afford one -- hey, don't we have a review coming up? ( :
Posted By: CLH on June 03, 2008 3:40 PM
Just be glad you're a Swede. You'll probably adapt better than Mediterraneans like Roberto and me.
Posted By: Gina Dalfonzo on June 03, 2008 3:28 PM
I think this is a distinct possibility... but of course when global cooling happens, the environmentalists will contend that there needs to be more government regulation to combat it. Check out the "Watt's Up With That?" blog - this is a meteorologist who has some common sense... like he knows you're not supposed to put a temperature reporting station on a hot concrete or asphalt surface... but that's where some of them are. http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/ http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/category/weather_stations/ There is actually an easy conversion to turn most modern engines into "hybrids" that run off of gas and... WATER... and it costs only about $60 to do the conversion. It supposedly makes your vehicle greatly increase gas mileage (in some reports up to 5X) - Why people aren't opting for this instead of spending the money on sky-high gas prices, I'll never know. I can more easily pay for the conversion rather than buy a whole new hybrid car.
Posted By: Mita on

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