New spots are beginning to break out on the face of the Sun and may signal the end of a dry spell in solar activity. Watching for more spots in the coming months could help determine how severe – and potentially damaging to Earth's satellites and power grids – the next solar cycle will be.
Every single doom and gloom environmental prediction for 2008 (melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, numerous catastrophic hurricanes and typhoons) utterly failed to materialize. In fact 2008 may prove to be the coolest year of the past decade. On the other hand, the sun has virtually ceased its normally robust sunspot activity. This has caused a number of scientists to postulate that fluctuations in the earth's climate and sunspot activity may be closely linked.
2008 was also the year that man-made climate change skeptics began to form strong organizations and issue strong statements, such as the Global Warming Petition Project, which has been signed by 31,000 individuals with university degrees in science including 9,000 PhD's. And The Heartland Institute is now forcefully fighting back against climate change hysteria. It features an impressive roster of contributors including Fred Singer, Steven Milloy, and Roy Spencer.
What it means..
Once again, we are led to say: Not much global warming here! And this being the case in a place that is clearly demonstrated to be responsive to changes in solar and volcanic activity, we are led to wonder why there has been no response to the past century's historic increase in the air's CO2 content.
Well, to be totally truthful, we actually don't wonder, as we believe that a number of negative feedback phenomena of both a biological and physical nature tend to largely counter the modest greenhouse effect of the rising atmospheric CO2 concentration, rendering its impetus for warming too small to even detect.