Although we have been enmeshed in a long debate over global warming and climate change, this controversy has been politically motivated, not a response to actual global warming, as there has been no warming for 16 years.
In fact, it is likely we will soon need to take a long, hard look at adjustments in behavior based not on warmth, which, by and large, results in good things, but, rather, on cold, which creates endless problems for both individuals and society.
Solar Activity Waning
Scientists from Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia, stated in the Voice of Russia on April 22 that solar activity is waning to such an extent that the global average yearly temperature will soon begin to decline.
Now, there is no reason to believe there will be any warming during the remainder of this century, says Vladimir Kotlyakov, head of the Institute of Geography at the Russian Academy of Science, speaking with Vladimir Radyuhin for the Hindu newspaper on April 22, 2013. In the same article, Dr. Yuri Nagovitsyn, academic secretary of the Pulkovo Observatory, is quoted as saying coming generations will have to grapple with temperatures several degrees lower than those today.
On Jan. 8, on NASA’s Science News website, Tony Phillips cited Matt Penn and William Livingston of the National Solar Observatory as noting we are now in the final stages of Solar Cycle 24, which has been “the weakest in more than 50 years.” By the time Solar Cycle 25 arrives shortly, they predict, “magnetic fields on the sun will be so weak that few if any sunspots will be formed,” Phillips wrote.
Cold Temperatures Appearing
The effects of this weak solar activity have been notable. The United Kingdom just suffered through a winter with temperatures 5 to 10 degrees Celsius below normal, and German meteorologists report 2013 has been the coldest year in 208 years. Writing April 27 in England’s Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker noted 3,318 places in the United States that had recorded their lowest temperatures for that time of year since records began. Similar records were set in every province of Canada, and the Russian winter has brought its deepest snowfall in 134 years.
Anthony Watts, at his Watts Up With That blog, shows that, in this century, average U.S. winter temperatures have dropped by 1.45 degrees C, more than twice as much as their rise from 1850-1999 and twice as much as the net rise in the 20th century.
This cooling has come as a big surprise to many. All of mankind’s new carbon dioxide emissions were supposed to make things too warm, with climate models indicating the world would heat up by 0.3 degrees C every decade.
Armed with an understanding of the solar cycles, however, Vladimir Bashkin and Rauf Galiulin from the Institute of Fundamental Problems of Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences state the warming in the past century was simply what should be expected when coming out of a mini ice age, rather than any changes caused by man’s activities.
Government Changes Needed
Cold causes more disruptions for people than warming, and mankind always has been more prosperous during warmer periods. However, with modern technology, we have the ability to plan accordingly and manage the slow change toward cooling that is likely upon us. But unless the governments of the world turn off the spigots that have fed tens of billions of dollars annually to support only research on man-caused warming, and begin to fund serious science intent on determining what the real global temperature trends are, it will be a decade or more before the truth is told.
The suggestion that the Earth may actually be cooling, not warming, is based on centuries of real data of how our planetary system actually works. It is time to turn away from supposing and direct our attention to reality.
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is science director of The Heartland Institute. This article first appeared in the Orange County Register. Reprinted with permission.