NASA Sees Climate Cooling Trend Thanks to Low Sun Activity
Written by James Murphy
The climate alarmists just can’t catch a break. NASA is reporting that the sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age; and Earth’s atmosphere is responding in kind.
So, start pumping out that CO2, everyone. We’re going to need all the greenhouse gases we can get.
“We see a cooling trend,” said Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”
The new data is coming from NASA’s Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry or SABER instrument, which is onboard the space agency’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) satellite. SABER monitors infrared radiation from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances that play a vital role in the energy output of our thermosphere, the very top level of our atmosphere.
“The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet,” said Mlynczak, who is the associate principal investigator for SABER.
Who knew that that big yellow ball of light in the sky had such a big influence on our climate?
There’s a bit of good news in all of this. When the thermosphere cools, it literally shrinks, therefore reducing aerodynamic drag on satellites in low Earth orbit. In effect, the shrinking thermosphere increases a satellite’s lifetime.
But that appears to be where the good news ends, unless you prefer cold weather and increased space junk. “The bad news,” according to Dr. Tony Phillips, editor of spaceweather.com, is: “It also delays the natural decay of space junk, resulting in a more cluttered environment around Earth.”
Mlynczak and his colleagues have created the Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI), which measures how much NO is dumped from the Thermosphere into outer space. During Solar Maximum the TCI number is very high. At times of Solar Minimum, TCI is low.
“Right now, (TCI) is very low indeed,” said Mlynczak. “SABER is currently measuring 33 billion Watts of infrared power from NO. That’s ten times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle."
SABER has been in orbit for only 17 years, but Mlynczak and the scientists at NASA’s Langley Research Center have been able to recreate TCI measurements back to the 1940s. “SABER taught us how to do this by revealing how TCI depends on other variables such as geomagnetic activity and the sun’s UV output — things that have been measured for decades,” said Mlynczak.
In fact, TCI numbers now, in the closing months of 2018, are very close to setting record lows since measurements began. “We’re not quite there yet,” Mlynczak reports. “but it could happen in a matter of months.”
The new NASA findings are in line with studies released by UC-San Diego and Northumbria University in Great Britain last year, both of which predict a Grand Solar Minimum in coming decades due to low sunspot activity. Both studies predicted sun activity similar to the Maunder Minimum of the mid-17th to early 18th centuries, which coincided to a time known as the Little Ice Age, during which temperatures were much lower than those of today.
If all of this seems as if NASA is contradicting itself, you’re right — sort of. After all, NASA also reported last week that Arctic sea ice was at its sixth lowest level since measuring began. Isn’t that a sure sign of global warming?
All any of this “proves” is that we have, at best, a cursory understanding of Earth’s incredibly complex climate system. So when mainstream media and carbon-credit salesman Al Gore breathlessly warn you that we must do something about climate change, it’s all right to step back, take a deep breath, and realize that we don’t have the knowledge, skill or resources to have much effect on the Earth’s climate. God — and that big yellow ball of light in the sky — have much more impact on our climate than we ever could.
accompanied by
predictions of doom.
predictions to determine
just how much confidence
we can have in today’s environmentalists’ predictions.
was conceived, the late
George Wald, a Nobel
laureate biology professor
at Harvard University,
predicted, “Civilization
will end within 15 or 30
years unless immediate
action is taken against
problems facing mankind.”
a Stanford University
biologist and best-selling
author of “The Population
Bomb,” declared that the
world’s population would
soon outstrip food supplies.
Progressive, he
predicted, “The death
rate will increase until
at least 100-200 million
people per year will be
starving to death during
the next 10 years.”
1969 to Britain’s Institute
of Biology: “If I were a
gambler, I would take
even money that England
will not exist in the year
2000.”
Ehrlich warned, “In
10 years, all important
animal life in the sea will
be extinct.”
Ehrlich has won no fewer
than 16 awards, including
the 1990 Crafoord Prize,
the Royal Swedish
Academy of Sciences’
highest award.
(July 1975), Nigel Calder
warned, “The threat of a
new ice age must now
stand alongside nuclear
war as a likely source of
wholesale death and
misery for mankind.”
C.C. Wallen of the World
Meteorological Organization
is reported as saying,
“The cooling since 1940
has been large enough
and consistent enough
that it will not soon be
reversed.”
David Viner told
The Independent, a
British newspaper, that
within “a few years,
” snowfall would become
“a very rare and exciting
event” in Britain. “Children
just aren’t going to know
what snow is,” he said.
“Snowfalls are now just
a thing of the past.”
the U.K. saw some of its
largest snowfalls and
lowest temperatures
since records started
being kept in 1914.
Watt told a Swarthmore
College audience:
Nelson, D-Wis., wrote in
Look magazine: “Dr. S.
Dillon Ripley, secretary
of the Smithsonian
(Institution), believes
that in 25 years,
somewhere between
75 and 80 percent
of all the species of
living animals will be
extinct.”
published a chart in
Scientific American that
year estimating that
mankind would run out
of copper shortly after
2000. Lead, zinc, tin,
gold, and silver were to
disappear before 1990.
didn’t start with Earth
Day.
Department of the
Interior said American
oil supplies would last
for only another 13 years.
n 1949, the secretary of
the interior said the end
of U.S. oil supplies was
in sight.
from its earlier erroneous
claims, in 1974 the U.S.
Geological Survey said
the U.S. had only a
10-year supply of
natural gas.
according to the U.S.
Energy Information
Administration, is that
as of 2014, we had
2.47 quadrillion cubic
feet of natural gas, which
should last about a century.
part of the environmentalist
agenda. Environmental
activist Stephen Schneider
told Discover magazine
in 1989:
Wirth, D-Colo., said:
“We’ve got to … try to
ride the global warming
issue. Even if the theory
of global warming is
wrong … we will be doing
the right thing anyway
in terms of economic
policy and environmental
policy.”
steep price for buying
into environmental
deception and lies.