Seriously, those would likely be the headlines today if we weren’t so invested in global warming. The Solar Radio Monitoring Program, which is owned and operated by the National Research Council and the Canadian Space Agency has released their latest measurements on the sun’s radio flux and the numbers are rather telling.
The IPS Solar Geophysical Summary’s theory holds that the lowest 10.7 cm solar radio flux the sun can hit is 67. That value would represent a dead calm on the sun - the lowest output of solar energy. Flux readings taken this month (July, 2008) indicate that the sun is in a deep slumber, or minimum, with recorded values of 67 - the lowest they can go. The last time that the observed 10.7 cm flux was this low was in July of 1964. The flux is a direct indicator of the Total Solar Irradiance or TSI. Looking at the last year’s TSI measurements, one can see that the TSI is on a sharp decline.
What does this mean? It means that we are in a period of global cooling which started back in 2002. It is winter in the Antarctic with the average temperatures dropping to 1.53 C cooler than the seasonal norm - Antarctic’s third coldest winter in 50 years. Portions of the Anarctica south of Australia were as much as 5.5C (9.9 degrees F) colder than seasonal norms. North of the equator, the trend towards cooler has been measured throughout the United States. A weather station in Enterprise, Oregon records this year’s summer temperatures as being 9 F cooler than last year. Here in Las Vegas, it has been an unseasonably cool summer. Typically temperatures this time of year are around 110 F to 117 F with current averages being around 105 F. There is no question that we are in a cooling trend worldwide.
In complete denial of the current cooling trend, global warming alarmists point to the breakup of the ice sheet bridges in the Wilkins Ice Shelf (WIS) on the Antarctic Peninsula as evidence that the ice sheets are responding to the rapid global warming. Richard Courtney, an expert peer reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former chair of the Plenary Session of the Climate Conference in Bonn has this to say; "The suggested idea really is clutching at straws. Melting is induced by heat and fracture is induced by stress. The fractures are happening in winter. And winter is the season when temperatures are at their lowest and when ice growth is greatest. Unless there is direct evidence of the ice thinning then there is no reason to introduce any suggestion that the fracture of the ice bridge is related to higher temperatures. Indeed, the fact that the fractures are happening in the winter implies that the reverse is true: i.e. the most probable explanation is that large ice growth is providing stress to the ice bridge with resulting stress fractures of the bridge."
It is important to note that the WIS ice thickness is at a record high for this time of year. There are two more months of ice growth in this current winter season and it appears that at the current rate of growth, this year’s ice thickness will break last year’s record. This fact collaborates Courtney’s explanation of why the WIS is breaking off, much to the upset of global warming alarmists.
The bottom line is that we are in a 10.7 cm flux minimum of the sun’s TSI output
and global temperatures are dropping as a result. Global warming alarmists look
at global events with an almost religious indoctrination and make bold and
unsubstantiated claims that are in complete ignorance of the facts. As a
researcher and man of science, I can embrace only an objective analysis of the
facts. Despite our present cooling trend, I see irrefutable evidence that we are
in a period of interglacial global warming. However, I see no convincing
evidence for man having any significant impact on it.
I predict that sometime in the future global climate alarmists will be lamenting
that the solar reflectors in the desert are reflecting too much of the sun’s
energy back to space and are snuffing out the sun. They will say that the evils
of solar energy have wrought a new ice age upon us. In the great forces of the
universe, there is no greater force to cause destruction than man - or so they believe.