* Posts by John Englander

1 publicly visible post • joined 20 Jun 2011

Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

John Englander

Grossly misleading to make conclusion of mini ice age

If the lead paragraph had stopped after "...lengthy spell of low solar activity" it would have been accurate.

Jumping to the conclusion and indicating that solar physicists accept the rest, about heading to a mini ice age in a few decades, is rubbish, for a few reasons.

First, his graph of the last few years just shows the downward leg of the typical 11 year up-down solar cycle. It would have been much more honest to show the full cycle. While the recent few years of cooling are an anomaly and interesting, they need to be seen in context.

More important is to understand the scale of impact he is implying. The full range of solar cycles for many centuries adjusts the solar energy we receive by about 0.3 watts per square meter of the Earth's surface. That is about one tenth of one percent of the 342 watts received globally, enough to have some effect.

The problem is that greenhouse gases, largely carbon dioxide, now have a warming effect measured at 2.4 watts per sq m, according to NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen. That means the greenhouse warming effect is about 80 times stronger than the solar cooling effect. With our current emissions, it is hard to see how there could ever be another ice age.

The recent cold winters and snow in much of Europe and North America, are largely due to a change in the lattitude of the jet stream. While many of us have been colder, the Arctic has been MUCH warmer than normal--accelerating the melting. Overall Earth had the warmest year on record in 2010, and it was a decade of record warmth.

For anyone interested, all of the above are explained and illustrated on my own blog, johnenglander.net as well as many other good science sites, like skepticalscience.com