THE NEXT ICE AGE - NOW!

Yesterday, the New York Times admitted that we could be entering an ‘extended chilly period.”

What do they mean by an “extended chilly period?”

“Among some global warming skeptics,” the article says, “there is speculation that the Sun may be on the verge of falling into an extended slumber similar to the so-called Maunder Minimum, several sunspot-scarce decades during the 17th and 18th centuries that coincided with an extended chilly period.”

“Last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century — 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth,” said the article. “Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more.”

“It’s been as dead as a doornail,” David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said a couple of months ago.

A panel of scientists assembled by NOAA now predicts that the May 2013 peak will average 90 sunspots. This would make it the weakest solar maximum since 1928, which peaked at 78 sunspots. An average solar maximum averages 120 sunspots. Some members of the panel, however, think the maximum will drop to 70.

So … the New York Times may not yet be admitting that we’re headed into an ice age, but they’ve certainly left the door open for a Maunder Minimum.

And the Maunder Minimum, for those who aren’t aware of it, was a period of no sunspots when the earth plunged into the Little Ice Age.

See entire article, entitled: “Is the sun missing its spots?”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?_r=1
Thanks to Philip Brennan and Marc Morano for this link