No Sunspot, Mumblings of Mutiny

The sun continues quiet--eerily quiet. People are starting to notice.

Cooler weather has the blogosphere alight with speculation about the climate’s real changes. Short-term temperature moves fire up both camps. From Planet Gore:

Hopefully this will cool the hysteria in the U.S. Congress and parliaments around the world so that we can understand the science of our climate before we pursue policies that could wreck our economy and quality of life.

Environmental Defense says one month does not a trend make:

Global warming is a process that occurs over decades. It can’t be proven or disproven by a single month’s temperature.

There are theories for all tastes. Daily Tech started it all, arguing that last year’s nippy weather “wipes out a century of warming.” Energy Outlook pored through the data and points at the sea. Maybe it’s the sun? Environmental Economics did the heavy lifting, parsed all the sunspot data from Goddard, and concluded that’s not to blame:

The current downturn in temperatures may be caused by a valley in the sunspot cycle. But that doesn’t mean that global cooling is taking place. It just means that temperatures are likely to be more variable until sunspot activity increases again.

Whether it’s sunspots, La Nina, or something else altogether, the timing couldn’t be better for the Heartland Institute, set to host a global warming skeptics powow Monday on Broadway. Friends in high places?___WSJblog

Who would have thought a few cold days and a little snow in Baghdad would get people talking about "global cooling?" What is worse, northern polar ice caps are growing and thickening, glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are growing again, and preliminary research findings on the cosmic ray hypothesis of solar climate influence are provocative.

Periods of extended low sunspot activity correspond historically to cooler climates on Earth. The details are still being worked out.

Image from SolarCycle24.com H/T TomNelson and GreenWatch