Global cooling!

Here's a really good Arctic ice anomaly chart that you can bookmark and keep an eye on, by the way:

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg

If that thing continues an upward trend with anywhere near the same slope throughout this year, it's a good bet that we're headed for real trouble.

Pidgey

It hardly looks like the start of a new ice age. There is an interesting uptic during the past year or so, though. That is probably what brought on the "ice age" or "global cooling" discussion.
 
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No, actually it isn't--many solar scientists predicted the shift long before the 2007 NH summer Arctic ice melt even occurred due to the unsettling changes in many of the sun's observable properties. We were doomed to cool a bit when solar cycle 23 didn't peak out near as high as 21 & 22. Since 24 is showing a pretty poor start and is already significantly late, it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to cool even more. The bulk of the solar scientists had already predicted a weak 25 (~2018-2029) but several of them were hoping for a very strong (one of the strongest) 24. Most of the "high camp" scientists on the panel have revised their estimates much lower now for 24 and the original "low camp" members are just about ready to start sacrificing virgins in the hope that it'll do some good.

Pidgey
 
No, actually it isn't--many solar scientists predicted the shift long before the 2007 NH summer Arctic ice melt even occurred due to the unsettling changes in many of the sun's observable properties. We were doomed to cool a bit when solar cycle 23 didn't peak out near as high as 21 & 22. Since 24 is showing a pretty poor start and is already significantly late, it's a foregone conclusion that we're going to cool even more. The bulk of the solar scientists had already predicted a weak 25 (~2018-2029) but several of them were hoping for a very strong (one of the strongest) 24. Most of the "high camp" scientists on the panel have revised their estimates much lower now for 24 and the original "low camp" members are just about ready to start sacrificing virgins in the hope that it'll do some good.

Pidgey

We'll soon know whether their hypothesis is correct. If it is, then the next decade should be characterized by global cooling, and a lot of climatologists with egg all over their faces. If not, well, maybe that will be the result of whose virgins were best accepted by the gods.:D

I'm betting that this cooling trend will turn out to be a short term blip, but who knows, I've been wrong before. At least, we will know pretty soon.
 
Oh, that's just it--I don't know that we will know that definitively "very soon". The thermal inertia of the oceans will last enough years to keep the global average temperature above the mean for the 1950-1971 base period even with the cooling that we're currently seeing with the decrease in solar output. It has been pointed out that the bulk of the data indicates no increase in temperature in the last decade while the total atmospheric CO2 has increased by 4% during the same period.

The global average temperature will definitely recover some over the next few months and, believe me, we really want it to.

Pidgey
 

Those are interesting links.

What I glean out of it is that there is a whole lot we still don't know about global climate change. I think we know that already, but your links do illustrate that fact.

From the second link:

Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.

That is one of the keys: We have to look at the long term. While a one year downturn in temperature may be good news, it doesn't mean that we can forget about climate change, at least not just yet.
 
Due to my recent personal circumstances (she's getting worse and so's the overtime I'm having to do), I haven't had much time for personal commentary on this stuff. I am trying to maintain surveillance of scientific blogs and forums amongst honest-to-[insert name or title of the higher/-est being or authority of your choice] scientists and when I find something I believe to be of interest regarding the subject, I post it here.

Personally, I'm more worried about the continued low solar flux and planetary aa index than sunspots per se. If those damn things don't get up off their a$$es soon, then I believe we're in for some really deep $h*t down the road. That's my personal opinion based on all the research that I've actually done so far.

Pidgey
 
I'll continue that thought with this one: it was William Herschel in 1801 who first noted that wheat prices tended to rise and fall with sunspot cycles, due to the variation in harvests. Prices fell when sunspots were more and rose when they were less. That's because harvests were greater when there were more sunspots and lesser when there were less sunspots.

That said to tie my earlier point to this one in order to include the next link in this thread where you'd tend to think it doesn't belong. For whatever reason(s), we (humankind) are kind of in a vulnerable position here:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/feb2008/food-f25.shtml

Pidgey
 
And if you want to monitor yearly yields and surplus, you can use this link:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Wheat/YBtable03.asp

Of course, it doesn't update very often, perhaps only a few times per year. Anyhow, you can see the knife edge on which we balance. I think we're probably past the maximum amount of people that ole' Mother Earth can reasonably sustain.

Pidgey
 
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Here's an interesting note... it's been said that the Wikipedia has a left slant but if so then they slipped a bit on this current entry (which could easily be edited out later so I'll include the notable excerpt here following the link):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Niña

"In March 2008, La Niña caused a drop in sea surface temperatures over Southeast Asia by an astronomical amount of 2°C. It also caused heavy rains over Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia."

I think the Wikipedia political officer must have taken a sick day. Anyhow, open a new browser window (or several, if need be) and open four tabs for one each of the four following URLs:

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.26.2005.gif

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.27.2006.gif

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.26.2007.gif

http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.27.2008.gif

These are a series of global sea surface temperature anomaly charts for March 26-27 for the last four years starting with this one. You can snap from tab to tab and watch the cooling progression. We've done this before in this thread but this exercise just illustrates the "astronomical" cooling in the Southeast asia seas.

Pidgey
 
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