Global cooling, anyone?

I am a global warming skeptic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Some time I’ll post in much more detail. Still, whatever the cause, if there is a moderate global warming of the scope most global warming supporters see over the next century, this will increase the overall agricultural productivity through more extensive geographic availability of cropland and the extended growing season. Global warming has historically, as far as we know, been accompanied in the broad temperate zones by population growth and higher standards of living. On the other hand, global cooling has been associated with population loss, economic difficulties, pestilence, and starvation. So, I am much more concerned about global cooling than warming. And, no, global warming true believers, you don’t get to blame global cooling on global warming by someone’s Chevy Suburban, as some of you have tried to do. No double-dipping.

This cannot be good news, if this theory is correct. The absence of these sunspots is alarming. I have read about the cosmic ray/sunspot/cloud formation interaction theory before. It sounded persuasive to me, someone who is fascinated by scientific explanations, but not a scientist himself (unless you count the series of geology courses I took in college, sort of like Obama considering his college international relations major as experience in foreign affairs). I have also read that scientists are closely watching this to see whether the sun will get active soon. If I recollect, the concern was that if the sun does not get active soon, within the next year or so, a significant cooling cycle is imminent, based on historic data. I am hearing reports that this year is well on the way to being the coolest in a number of years, and that warming has stalled over the last ten years. I can attest that the last several years have been unusually cool in the summer in my neck of the woods, with foggy July and August mornings. It’s called “June gloom,” not July or August gloom for a reason. And, of course, we had that humdinger of a winter (for Southern California) a couple of years ago that froze all my newly-planted tropical landscape plants. I remember seeing frozen patches of water on a shaded sidewalk at 3 in the afternoon. I realize that is only “weather,” but at some point persistently cooler weather over a period of years is as much evidence of climate change as persistently warmer weather is said to be. 

If this comes to pass, we should only hope that we puny humans can rev our SUVs enough to counteract the sun and prevent a mini ice age. Oh, but the good news, the silver lining behind all those clouds causing the cooling, would be that with an ice age, the “oceans finally will begin to fall” just as Obama has promised will happen in his administration. Hmm, maybe he knows something. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall the 415 feet that the oceans’ surface was lower during the last ice age because so much water was stored in the mile-deep glaciers covering a large chunk of the landscape.