Russian Scientist Predicts Ice Age
A UPI wire report, frustratingly spare in detail, quotes a Russian astronomer predicting a "mini-ice age" in the middle of this century due to reduced solar activity. He claims the earth's temperature has risen recently due to increased solar activity which is peaking and will begin to drop in six or seven years.
So, who are we to believe? Say you have a condo in Florida and you're concerned this might not be a good investment given global warming. On the one hand we have international teams of climate scientists securing all kinds of government grants, running these highly-complex climate models on super computers, using inputs from thousands of weather stations across the world, satellite data, ocean current temperatures, myriad greenhouse gas measurements, going to conferences in Rio, and coming to a consensus that the earth is warming and will continue to warm due to "anthropogenic forcings" - i.e., burning of fossil fuels.
On the other hand, we have this lone Russian astronomer presumably utilizing relatively straight-forward measurements of solar heat radiation that he has observed or measured himself over the last couple decades, concluding that the earth will soon begin to cool.
Not much of a contest there - I'd hold onto that Florida condo.
So, who are we to believe? Say you have a condo in Florida and you're concerned this might not be a good investment given global warming. On the one hand we have international teams of climate scientists securing all kinds of government grants, running these highly-complex climate models on super computers, using inputs from thousands of weather stations across the world, satellite data, ocean current temperatures, myriad greenhouse gas measurements, going to conferences in Rio, and coming to a consensus that the earth is warming and will continue to warm due to "anthropogenic forcings" - i.e., burning of fossil fuels.
On the other hand, we have this lone Russian astronomer presumably utilizing relatively straight-forward measurements of solar heat radiation that he has observed or measured himself over the last couple decades, concluding that the earth will soon begin to cool.
Not much of a contest there - I'd hold onto that Florida condo.
posted by ziel | 2/07/2006 10:42:00 PM
4 Comments:
There are also scientists who think cosmic rays play a part:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020731080631.htm
Then there are those who think climate change is being induced by the Deros:
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Mutan.htm
Here is the cosmic rays link Carter referred to (long strings such as url's tend to get truncated in the comments). Here's a debunking of this theory. The debunking is typical in its facile dismissal. Here's the original authors' reply.
Well, here's a graph of the solar constant while this is the temperature. Maybe there's a simple connection, but I don't see it.
This Russian could be just some crackpot - only UPI picked up the story - no indication of an actual paper being published - so who knows what's involved here. But perhaps he's found a way to measure solar output that is novel and does explain our recent climate. That would be pretty funny.
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