Maybe it's because of a lifelong interest in science and engineering but I look for causation rather than correlation. So yes, simplistically looking at sunspots versus glaciations there isn't much correlation over 250 years, but it's easy enough [to me] to see the pattern of sunspots over short and 300 year periods. Considering other known variations such as Maunder Minimum, medieval warming and many other events and adding them all together, combining them with obvious things like variations in snow, cloud and plant cover, makes it pretty obvious to me that Earth's climate is anything but in balance as the Greenies like to think as titled "Earth in the Balance" by their main High Priest.
Correlation is an excellent guide, but as ElM says, what's the mechanism, which I explained for him [which he ignored].
We know that if a campfire dies down, it gets cold. We know there was sufficient cooling after the medieval warming to bring on centuries of Little Ice Age and that it went away as the sun heated up again. It's just what I'd expect. There is no magic. Everything happens for reasons. CO2 was at all time lows but the warming out of the Little Ice Age happened anyway.
Meanwhile, here's some recent information on sunspot activity and the official prediction. swpc.noaa.gov It looks to me as though my prediction from 2008 is going to be pretty well on the money, but we need another year or maybe even two to get a good idea. Hopefully I'm plain wrong and Earth goes with warmer, not cooler. Cooler [to cold] will not suit me at all. But I like to be ready and warned beforehand. As TJ says, being first to panic is a good idea. Imagine being stuck in the traffic jam heading south through France if it become sudden knowledge in June 2020 that the following winter will be perpetual snow. It's bad enough these days with hordes of Germans heading south just for a holiday, with many kilometres of jams.
While everyone is preparing for Global Warming, it's a great opportunity to prepare for the opposite.
Mqurice |
