18-01-2014, 05:53 PM
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Another Ice Age To Come?
"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.
"If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says.
This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.
But apart from the odd event, like some recent solar flares, it has been very quiet. And this damp squib of a maximum follows a solar minimum - the period when the Sun's activity troughs - that was longer and lower than scientists expected.
The drop off in activity is happening surprisingly quickly, and scientists are now watching closely to see if it will continue to plummet.
"It could mean a very, very inactive star, it would feel like the Sun is asleep... a very dormant ball of gas at the centre of our Solar System," explains Dr Green.
This, though, would certainly not be the first time this has happened.
Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."
During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum (little ice age).
An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.
"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."
If scientists think that, from lack of solar activity, the Earth could be back in a mini ice-age within 40 years, where does that leave the global warming argument?
Can they have it both ways?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/2...ittle-ice-age/
18-01-2014, 06:20 PM
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Re: Another Ice Age To Come?
I worry about my children and granddaughters - especially an ice age scenario. I'm not all that convinced about the global warming argument (not much evidence of it really - from what I've read, Earth is actually cooling down) but those comments from the solar experts does worry me.18-01-2014, 06:31 PM
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Re: Another Ice Age To Come?
I read a while ago by the time my son reached 40 we would have run out of fossil fuels, these days i try to look between the lines and see if there is a hidden agenda by those producing the report. lLke you i have never been convinced by the global warming camp.18-01-2014, 06:34 PM
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Re: Another Ice Age To Come?
I gave up worrying years ago, what will happen will do, I do feel sorry for the next generations but like us they will have to do the best they can.I was never convinced by the global warming theories we are much more at the whim of natural cooling and heating than anything man has ever done.
19-01-2014, 11:11 AM
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Re: Another Ice Age To Come?
The Earth's natural cycles will carry on with us or without us and there have been many ice-ages in the history of the Earth, so the prediction of another one is hardly a surprise. Although didn't the climate scientists also moot this idea back in the sixties before they decided to invent Global Warming instead ..
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