Two things have already happened ElM. One is that the sun went into a fizzle decades ago and that was obvious [to me anyway though neolib in SI was unable to see it even when pointed out] as the last solar minimum was being bottoming 3 years ago. As you can probably imagine, if there is less heat coming in, it gets colder, like turning down the number of bars on a bar heater when sitting in front of a heater on a cold winter's night or my like if you don't chuck another log on a campfire to keep the flames roaring.
The Little Ice Age was due to such fluctuation in output.
The other thing that has happened is that deserts have spread. You have no doubt flown over deserts, not desserts, though you have probably eaten desserts while flying over deserts thanks to modern aviation marvels. Looking down, you have perhaps noticed that when flying over oceans and vegetation, it's dark down there and when flying over deserts, snow and cloud, it's bright down there. It's dark because sunlight is absorbed and turned into heat which makes the air warm. It's bright because sunlight is reflected back into space.
If snow melts, the darker ground absorbs light. If clouds don't form the sunlight is absorbed instead of reflected. If plants grow, the dark chlorophyll covering the ground absorbs light instead of reflecting it.
You might have noticed that when you stand on dark ground, such as things painted black, they are very hot on a sunny day. When you stand on something painted white nearby, it's very cool by comparison. That's because the light is reflected by the white and absorbed by the black.
It's difficult to stand on clouds and snow is cold on feet so you can't test that well but the fact that snow is cold is a clue. If snow absorbed light, it would get hot and melt.
Deserts have spread since the end of the last glaciation because the temperate zones moved towards the poles as snow cover retreated. The retreat of snow made Earth warmer as more light was absorbed. Because it's warmer, the dew point moves further north so less cloud is formed equatorially meaning less sunlight is reflected, meaning more heat absorbed. The feedback loop makes the snow retreat faster and hey presto, the glaciation ends and snow melts and sea levels rise and life is good again in Sweden, Mongolia and Ottawa.
But as the heat builds the deserts start spreading as plants can't cope with the excess sun and reduced water. Cacti hang on but even they eventually give up. When deserts reach their maximum, reflection reaches a maximum and cooling is set to happen again. When the sun goes into a lengthy minimum, the tipping point is reached, Earth cools a little, and the dew point moves south, causing reflecting cloud and snow to form. The reflecting snow causes more cooling. A feedback loop of cooling is formed and gradually the plants get more water but it's in the form of snow, burying them. As snow and cloud cover extend south, the area reflecting inceases because a latitude is longer the closer you get to the equator. So 1 degree move south at the Arctic circle involves a lot less land area than 1 degree move at Ottawa level or Morocco.
The deserts are still deserts but with reduced sunlight due to the solar minimum, they are cooler. Plants gradually regain a footing. Humans find life in the Sahara and Arizona area better than under the glaciers forming to the north.
Because of the extra CO2, which helps keep Earth warm, we might have avoided the process, but my guess is not because despite a vast effort, the global warming has been less than 1 degree and that includes the warming due to the end of the Little Ice Age. Sea level has not risen significantly in 100 years. 1 mm a year is not going to make many Lost Cities of Atlantis. Even Venice continues to thrive.
Here is the solar cycle for a few hundred years. ih.fotothing.com You can get some that go back further. Observe how from about 1930 to Y2K the sun was very active compared with the hundreds of years before that. As you can imagine, turning up the heat for nearly 100 years caused a slight rise in temperature on Earth. But if you look at the cycles, you will see that the end of the cycle was underway and my predictions of 2008 have now been confirmed in the record with a very low minima which hung on for a couple of years longer than the "experts" expected. My prediction from 2008 for the next maximum looks to be on the money too and the "experts" have now come around to my numbers.
With that low output from the sun, we can expect more clouds due to the dew point extending south, more snow due to more condensation falling out of the sky in freezing conditions, more reflection from snow and cloud, less absorption of light as plants are buried in snow and water freezes - in a word, reglaciation.
If you think the process is slow, it isn't. It takes years to reach full strength, but even a very snowy winter season is very noticeable in places like London which normally get none or little. Sure, it melts again. This time. And the next. But the snow comes earlier and hangs around longer. Until one winter, only a few years later, it stays on the ground all year. And gets deeper the following winter.
It doesn't take an Earth axis wobble to cut the sun's output. The sun does it by itself. It has already done it. It's a done deal.
The sun will reach the next minimum before 2020 and by 2020 the chilling effect will be done.
As with all living things, they have peaks and troughs in how well they do. When rabbits proliferate, predators do too, until there are so many predators than the rabbits get depleted. Which means the predators die off too. The grass regenerates, the rabbits start gaining ground again, predators start feasting and breeding Gung Ho com gusto and the cycle continues. There are many natural cycles. Earth is not in Balance, contrary to the myth propounded by Greenism. It never has been and never will be. There are huge numbers of natural cycles. which, like waves on the ocean, form interference patterns with very high peaks at times. When snow cover increases, plant cover reduces, cloud cover increases, desert reduces, ocean and lakes freeze, solar output fizzles, that means chilly weather in Sweden, Ottawa and areas previously covered in glaciers.
Don't forget contrails. youtube.com They are cooling too. More so than the CO2 emitted is warming.
2020 ElM. As explained many times, with the mechanism too. When things don't match your preconceived ideas, you just reject them out of hand without thinking. Show me the fault if you think 2020 is wrong.
Mqurice |
