The next Dalton Minimum?

Just picked this up at wattsupwiththat. A brace of scientific papers have been presented by some quite eminent solar physicists which suggest that the next thirty years will be significantly globally cooler than the last few decades. Now this isn't the first time an event of this nature has been predicted, yet the odds of a prolonged Maunder type solar minimum are not suggesting a new 'Ice Age'. The brainboxes are suggesting something more like a thirty to forty year 'Dalton' type event. Maybe we're already entering an '1880-1910 Event'. I'm not sure. What I am convinced of is that the Earth is not in a runaway heating phase, nor has it shown any credible signs of being so. In spite of all the doomsaying rhetoric.

There's been increasing speculation about something like this in the more serious science blogs for the past twelve months after two years of very low sunspot activity. While all the advocates and political types have been trying to browbeat everyone into believing that the world is getting hotter, including death threats and suggestions that 'deniers' and 'skeptics' should be executed or jailed (You know who you are), the sun has been figuratively putting its feet up. All right, that's anthropomorphism, but it's a metaphor to dramatise a point, nothing more.

Not being as frightfully clever as a lot of people, I still think that it's time to buy Bombardier shares and invest in a snowblower and a 4x4 with some decent snow tyres if you live north of thirty eight degrees latitude more than forty miles inland. Seriously. That's what I'm doing. Laying up stores during the summer to last through the Winters, which promise to get longer and harder for a while. Making sure the house insulation is up to snuff. Ensuring my families safety and warmth.

A while back I posted that I reckoned Piers Corbyn had it right with his prediction of a thirty year cooling and following century of cooler global temperatures. I wonder who Piers will be taking to the cleaners with that bet?


Still think he needs an interactive whiteboard to do his climate prognostications on.

Update: In addition, according to a peer reviewed scientific paper by Comisio and Nishio, the ice around Antarctica has been showing an increasing trend year on year since 1978. Links at wattsupwiththat.