Your Global Warming Blogging

Not here, since I've been terribly busy traveling and everything. Kind of feel like I'm letting down the team.

But not to worry, DirtCrashr has the latest news, and it's a doozy. Scientists expect sunspots to entirely disappear in the next few years. The last time that happened, the world got colder than it had been since the last glaciation. Go read, because if this is true, things are going to get ugly:

The cold caused incredible crop-losses, and an estimated 75 million deaths worldwide by the Black Plague, a disease spread by a flea parasite (Got DDT anyone? No? Why?) that was benign in its native hot-temperature locale of Africa, but in Europe's cold climate the gut of the flea constricted and caused it insatiable hunger, because no matter the amount of blood ingested, it couldn't swallow it.

The only thing I'd add to DirtCrashr's excellent post is to point out that Nigel Calder explained why sunspots effect the climate. Actually, they don't, but fluxuations in the Sun's magnetic field do, and that effects both sunspots and our climate: Cosmic Rays stimulate cloud formation, which cool the planet. When the sun's magnetic field is more active, it's stronger, and reaches out further into the Solar System, inhibiting Cosmic Rays. Fewer rays, fewer clouds, warmer temperatures.

We're coming out of a period of energetic sunspot formation, which is directly correlated with stronger a solar magnetic field. Sunspots have been dropping for several years, which -surprise! - is precisely the time that we've seen the climate cool.

This is a very interesting hypothesis, because it's directly observable, and 100% subject to falsification: if sunspots go down and temperature goes up in the next 5 years, the hypothesis is wrong. If sunspots drop to zero (as forecast) and the planet continues to cool, that's evidence in favor. The next few years look to be interesting, climate-wise.

And colder. Glad I'm moving south, but I may take my snowblower ...