Is this the way the Great Global Warming Scare fades out?
The UK newspapers are full of “Maunder Freeze Coming” as forecast by Ineson et al.[1] Rest assured, the solar-driven-cold is only a local effect, only 0.1C, and only a vague short 20 to 40 winters to come. The Sun, which has been ruled out as a major cause of global warming, is still not a cause of global warming — it’s just a minor technical issue called UV from a local star, which will be affecting an ocean current. Then the Big 6.6 degrees of heatstroke will land upon us.
Britain could be on the verge of a mini Ice Age as the Sun enters a cooler phase, the Met Office warned yesterday.
The last big chill was felt hundreds of years ago when Frost Fairs were held on the frozen River Thames.
However the Met Office said the new freeze will not be enough to cancel out the effects of global warming.
We’ve seen this all before, but not on this scale. If there was a volatility index — like a VIX for climate-PR — it would be setting records. The contradictions are head-snapping. Climate Change will shrink bread, make babies small, ruin coffee, and generally cause the extinction of everything, but in the meantime, there’s a Mini-Ice Age in the kitchen that will hit before your 90th Birthday. What to do? Keep sending those cheques for the carbon reduction, and scratch the snow off the solar panel, right?
If the UK gets “weather”, the UK Met Office was “right”.
The forecast cooling is described in ominous, awesome language, but stay calm, it’s only 0.1C of cooling, practically nothing. If an ice-age arrives, the UK Met Office will be lauded as stars, but if winters stay the same, they are still 100% accurate; and don’t change the scoreboard if January heatwaves arrive instead. If the UK gets “weather”, the UK Met Office was “right”.
A few years ago there were endless mild winters on-the-way, now we’re talking of “Frost Fairs” and “Maunder Minimums” but nobody is issuing headlines of “UK MET OFFICE BACKFLIPS”. There’s no admission here that their 95%-certain-models missed this ice age in all 3,000 runs over the last 20 years, or that if the Sun can bring future cold, it might have had a role in past warmth, eh?
A Maunder type phase of the sun,
Could put climate-change hype on the run,
When predictions would crumble,
And temperatures tumble,
As a Mini Ice Age had begun.
— Ruairi
There’s no sign that if UV changes the Northern Atlantic, maybe it has an effect on the South Pacific or the Eastern Indian too? Not to mention that it’s been a tenet of climate modeling that the models don’t do the regional predictions, just the the global type.
There’s also no mention that this is what a lot of skeptics have been saying, and some for years. The rabid Deniers of East Anti-Science beat the Met Office?
No one is talking either of Australian rivers freezing over, but I wonder whether every Western nation will end up with its own private ice age? Remember, warming is a global phenomenon, but cooling just happens locally everywhere, and where warming is forever, cooling is temporary. The missing heat hides everywhere outside of large population centers and big tax bases (and very very far from actual thermometers).
We haven’t had the appearance of the Big 6.6C “worst case” scenario for years. It’s like something from the 1990s.
The public surely can’t keep swallowing the line that we have to prepare for the heatwaves between ice-ages?
Tell me again what the Wind Turbines are for?
ADDENDUM: This study is similar to one a few weeks ago which, for very different reasons, forecast that the AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) had just started a downturn which would cool the UK and Europe by 0.5C. It looks like quite a few scientists are waking up to the possibility that the natural cycles that drove temperatures on Earth for 4.5 billion years might still be in the drivers seat.
h/t GWPF
Abstract
Any reduction in global mean near-surface temperature due to a future decline in solar activity is likely to be a small fraction of projected anthropogenic warming. However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance is linked to modulation of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations, suggesting the potential for larger regional surface climate effects. Here, we explore possible impacts through two experiments designed to bracket uncertainty in ultraviolet irradiance in a scenario in which future solar activity decreases to Maunder Minimum-like conditions by 2050. Both experiments show regional structure in the wintertime response, resembling the North Atlantic Oscillation, with enhanced relative cooling over northern Eurasia and the eastern United States. For a high-end decline in solar ultraviolet irradiance, the impact on winter northern European surface temperatures over the late twenty-first century could be a significant fraction of the difference in climate change between plausible AR5 scenarios of greenhouse gas concentrations.
REFERENCE
[1^] Ineson et al (2015) Regional climate impacts of a possible future grand solar minimum, Nature Communications,Volume: 6, Article number: 7535 DOI: doi:10.1038/ncomms8535