The new model of the Sun's solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun's 11-year heartbeat. It draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone.

Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the 'mini ice age' that began in 1645, according to the results presented by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

The model predicts that the pair of waves become increasingly offset during Cycle 25, which peaks in 2022.

During Cycle 26, which covers the decade from 2030-2040, the two waves will become exactly out of synch and this will cause a significant reduction in solar activity.

'In cycle 26, the two waves exactly mirror each other – peaking at the same time but in opposite hemispheres of the Sun,' said Zharkova. 

'Their interaction will be disruptive, or they will nearly cancel each other. 

'We predict that this will lead to the properties of a 'Maunder minimum''

While global warming is being officially ignored by the political arm of the Bush administration, and Al Gore's recent conference on the topic during one of the coldest days of recent years provided joke fodder for conservative talk show hosts, the citizens of Europe and the Pentagon are taking a new look at the greatest danger such climate change could produce for the northern hemisphere - a sudden shift into a new ice age. What they're finding is not at all comforting.

In quick summary, if enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset - and the mid-case scenario would be a period like the "little ice age" of a few centuries ago that disrupted worldwide weather patterns leading to extremely harsh winters, droughts, worldwide desertification, crop failures, and wars around the world.

Here's how it works.

If you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia. Yet Europe has a climate more similar to that of the United States than northern Canada or Siberia. Why?

It turns out that our warmth is the result of ocean currents that bring warm surface water up from the equator into northern regions that would otherwise be so cold that even in summer they'd be covered with ice. The current of greatest concern is often referred to as "The Great Conveyor Belt," which includes what we call the Gulf Stream.

The Great Conveyor Belt, while shaped by the Coriolis effect of the Earth's rotation, is mostly driven by the greater force created by differences in water temperatures and salinity. The North Atlantic Ocean is saltier and colder than the Pacific, the result of it being so much smaller and locked into place by the Northern and Southern American Hemispheres on the west and Europe and Africa on the east.

As a result, the warm water of the Great Conveyor Belt evaporates out of the North Atlantic leaving behind saltier waters, and the cold continental winds off the northern parts of North America cool the waters. Salty, cool waters settle to the bottom of the sea, most at a point a few hundred kilometers south of the southern tip of Greenland, producing a whirlpool of falling water that's 5 to 10 miles across. While the whirlpool rarely breaks the surface, during certain times of year it does produce an indentation and current in the ocean that can tilt ships and be seen from space (and may be what we see on the maps of ancient mariners).

This falling column of cold, salt-laden water pours itself to the bottom of the Atlantic, where it forms an undersea river forty times larger than all the rivers on land combined, flowing south down to and around the southern tip of Africa, where it finally reaches the Pacific. Amazingly, the water is so deep and so dense (because of its cold and salinity) that it often doesn't surface in the Pacific for as much as a thousand years after it first sank in the North Atlantic off the coast of Greenland.

Medclinician

According to a piece in the http://beforeitsnews.com/r2/?url=http://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/612369/SHOCK-CLAIM-World-is-on-brink-of-50-year-ICE-AGE-and-BRITAIN-will-bear-the-brunt - UK Express , The world is on the brink of an ice age that will last at least 50 years and Britain will bear the brunt. The ice age is driven by freak changes in global ocean conditions and a weakening of the sun.

Climate experts warn a rare pattern of water cooling in the north Atlantic will trigger a chain reaction of events leading to a “fully-blown ice age”.

The say the UK is on alert for a “serious climate situation” with regular winter whiteouts pushing emergency services to the limit.

Medclinician

That's right -- a sitting U.S. Senator is suggesting using RICO laws should be applied to global warming skeptics. Courts have been defining RICO down for some time and in ways that aren't particularly helpful. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled http://www2.law.columbia.edu/faculty_franke/Civil%20Rights/NOW%20S.pdf - RICO statutes could be applied to pro-life activists on the grounds that interstate commerce can be affected even when the organization being targeted doesn't have economic motives. 

Obviously, there's a lot of money hanging in the balance with regard to energy policy. But when does coordinating "a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts" go from basic First Amendment expression to racketeering? The tobacco analogy is inappropriate in regards to how direct the link between smoking and cancer is. Even among those who do agree that global warming is a problem, there's a tremendously wide variety of opinions about the practical effects. Who gets to decide whether someone is "downplaying the role of carbon emissions in climate change" relative to the consensus? If message coordination and lobbying on controversial scientific and political issues can be declared racketeering because the people funding such efforts have a financial interest in a predetermined outcome, we're just going to have to outlaw everything that goes on in Washington, D.C.

Medclinician

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/28/1441491/-There-is-a-melt-event-beginning-to-happen-in-Greenland - There is a melt event beginning to happen in Greenland

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/28/1441491/-There-is-a-melt-event-beginning-to-happen-in-Greenland

NASA Debunks Global Warming: Ice Sheets Growing

October of 2015 May be the Hottest Month Ever Recorded — A Record That May Stand For But a Month

http://robertscribbler.com/2015/11/02/october-of-2015-may-be-the-hottest-month-ever-recorded-a-record-that-may-stand-for-but-a-month/

NASA did NOT debunk global warming

that headline belongs to  NEWSMAX

which like the FAUX N"News" Network is a right wing extremist,propaganda organization

many climate models predicted the ice actually growing in the Antarctic

its still melting most other places and at unprecedented rates

NEWSMAX does the same thing DRUDGE often does

they change the title of an article to something that suits their agenda and is inflammatory in nature

BUT

when you bother to actually read the article you quickly realize what they have done

sorry

global warming has NOT been debunked

the ice is melting

ready or not

Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica — that it’s inherently unstable

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/11/02/scientists-confirm-their-fears-about-west-antarctica-that-its-inherently-unstable/

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/09/22/fox-news-distorts-climate-science/ - Scientific American explains that, according to the analysis, in 37 out of 40 occurrences, Fox's staff made dismissive and inaccurate comments regarding climate change, http://video.foxnews.com/v/1729695908001/climate-scientist-explains-record-temperatures - misleading audiences of its importance and relevance , and that from August 2011 to July 2012 only nine out of the Wall Street Journal's 48 mentions of climate were accurate.

> drum roll <

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/chasing-ice-trailer-james-balog_n_1852839.html - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/chasing-ice-trailer-james-balog_n_1852839.html

"I never imagined that you could see glaciers this big, disappearing in such a short time. There's a powerful piece of history that's unfolding in these pictures," National Geographic photographer http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photographers/photographer-james-balog/ - James Balog describes in the new http://www.chasingice.com/ - "Chasing Ice" trailer.

"Chasing Ice" follows Balog's journey as he works to capture the fast-vanishing Arctic glaciers. Armed with 30 time-lapse cameras on three continents, Balog and his team compress years of video footage into seconds to reveal the disappearance of mountains of ice.

> one more <

point is - no one is saying the ice isn't melting - it is...

The fact it is melting so fast and could dilute the Gulf Stream hugely could bring us a "Mini Ice Age" in an area... not globally is very possible.

Still - we are hearing this - and the word mini-ice age keeps coming up

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/21/scientists-fear-another-little-ice-age-is-on-the-way/ - http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/21/scientists-fear-another-little-ice-age-is-on-the-way/

“By looking back at certain isotopes in ice cores, [Lockwood] has been able to determine how active the sun has been over thousands of years,” http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist - the BBC reported . “Following analysis of the data, Professor Lockwood believes solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.”

Aundhkar now argues that winter temperatures have dropped in the North Pole, causing severe winters, like the so-called “polar vortex” experienced by the U.S. last winter.

“This has also triggered the jet stream, which is active in the northern parts of the globe to shift in inter tropical climate zone like India,” Aundhkar said. “As a result, cold wind conditions were witnessed during the last two years. The unseasonal hailstorms in November and December are a result of the influence of the jet stream. This has also led to steady weakening of magnetic energy of the sun, leading to mini ice age like situation.”

Antarctica Is Gaining Ice. Here’s Why That’s Not Actually Good News

http://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-heres-why-thats-not-actually-good-news-389904

NASA found a way to track ocean currents from space. What they saw is troubling

MELTDOWN MYTH: Antarctic ice growing is just the first EVIDENCE global warming is NOT REAL

According to the organizing committee, the objective of the 2015 conference is to achieve, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world. ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference#cite_note-dipl-1 - [1]}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis - Pope Francis published an encyclical called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudato_si - Laudato si' intended, in part, to influence the conference. The encyclical calls for action against climate change. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Trade_Union_Confederation - International Trade Union Confederation has called for the goal to be "zero carbon, zero poverty", and the general secretary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharan_Burrow - Sharan Burrow has repeated that there are "no jobs on a dead planet".

Medclinician

La Niña causes mostly the opposite effects of El Niño, above-average https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitation_%28meteorology%29 - precipitation across the northern Midwest, the northern Rockies, Northern California, and the Pacific Northwest's southern and eastern regions. Meanwhile, precipitation in the southwestern and southeastern states is below average. ^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a#cite_note-7 - [7]} This also allows for the development of many stronger-than-average hurricanes in the Atlantic and less in the Pacific.

LAYING TEN GLOBAL WARMING MYTHS

Myth 1     Average global temperature (AGT) has increased over the last few years.

Fact 1       Within error bounds, AGT has not increased since 1995 and has declined since 2002, despite an increase in atmospheric CO2 of 8% since 1995. 

Myth 2     During the late 20th Century, AGT increased at a dangerously fast rate and reached an unprecedented magnitude.

Facts 2      The late 20th Century AGT rise was at a rate of 1-20 C/century, which lies well within natural rates of climate change for the last 10,000 yr. AGT has been several degrees warmer than today many times in the recent geological past. 

Myth 3     AGT was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times, has sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years (the Mann, Bradley & Hughes “hockey stick” curve and its computer extrapolation).

Facts 3      The Mann et al. curve has been exposed as a statistical contrivance. There is no convincing evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in AGT were unusual, nor that dangerous human warming is underway.

Myth 4     Computer models predict that AGT will increase by up to 60 C over the next 100 years.

Facts 4      Deterministic computer models do. Other equally valid (empirical) computer models predict cooling. 

Myth 5     Warming of more than 20 C will have catastrophic effects on ecosystems and mankind alike.

Facts 5      A 20 C change would be well within previous natural bounds. Ecosystems have been adapting to such changes since time immemorial. The result is the process that we call evolution. Mankind can and does adapt to all climate extremes.

Myth 6     Further human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere will cause dangerous warming, and is generally harmful.

Facts 6      No human-caused warming can yet be detected that is distinct from natural system variation and noise. Any additional human-caused warming which occurs will probably amount to less than 10 C. Atmospheric CO2 is a beneficial fertilizer for plants, including especially cereal crops, and also aids efficient evapo-transpiration. 

Myth 7     Changes in solar activity cannot explain recent changes in AGT.

Facts 7      The sun’s output varies in several ways on many time scales (including the 11-, 22 and 80-year solar cycles), with concomitant effects on Earth’s climate. While changes in visible radiation are small, changes in particle flux and magnetic field are known to exercise a strong climatic effect. More than 50% of the 0.80 C rise in AGT observed during the 20th century can be attributed to solar change. 

Myth 8     Unprecedented melting of ice is taking place in both the north and south polar regions.

Facts 8      Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are growing in thickness and cooling at their summit. Sea ice around Antarctica attained a record area in 2007. Temperatures in the Arctic region are just now achieving the levels of natural warmth experienced during the early 1940s, and the region was warmer still (sea-ice free) during earlier times.

Myth 9     Human-caused global warming is causing dangerous global sea-level (SL) rise.

Facts 9      SL change differs from time to time and place to place; between 1955 and 1996, for example, SL at Tuvalu fell by 105 mm (2.5 mm/yr). Global average SL is a statistical measure of no value for environmental planning purposes. A global average SL rise of 1-2 mm/yr occurred naturally over the last 150 years, and shows no sign of human-influenced increase. 

Myth 10   The late 20th Century increase in AGT caused an increase in the number of severe storms (cyclones), or in storm intensity.

Facts 10    Meteorological experts are agreed that no increase in storms has occurred beyond that associated with natural variation of the climate system.

comment: So - depending on whose computer model you run you can get just about anything. In some conclusions the common sense factor is noticeably absent.