Little Ice Age coming?

The book "The Little Ice Age" makes for interesting reading, and the TV show by the same name is equally fascinating. It draws on a great deal of evidence, scientific, social, etc. that documents the time 1300-1850 when the world faced bitter weather conditions.

I am skeptical. Not because I am skeptical about mini ice ages in general or climate change, but because I'm not aware that anyone really has the ability to predict sunspot activity that accurately or that far in the future.

But this is also an opportunity to point out that technically we are in an ice age. Specifically, an interglacial period of an ice age. Any time the climate is such that there is year-long (i.e., non-seasonal) ice at sea level somewhere on the surface of the Earth, its considered at ice age. A non-ice age would be like the Jurassic, when even the poles weren't icy.

Part of this is nonsense - a new Maunder minimum was predicted before the current solar maximum, now that that hasn't shown itself to be true (it was a weaker cycle than the most recent few, but not extremely weak) they move on to the next one...

And at any rate, even if it comes to pass, the temperature drop during the worst of the "little ice age" was mainly limited to the Northern Hemisphere and even there mostly to Europe - the global drop in temperature was likely less than half a degree celsius, while we are currently almost a full degree above the average global temperature at the end of the little ice age, so at best, it'll postpone the worst of global warming by a few decades.

On top of that, one of the main culprits of the little ice age isn't even solar activity, but heightened volcanic activity compared to today, with huge volcanic explosions in the 13th and 15th centuries causing marked significant drops in temperature from which the earth took decades to recover.

So in brief : even *if* we go into such a minimum (which at this point is a far less well-founded prediction than our current climate models ) we're only going to be slowing down global warming, not even dropping to a climatic situation comparable to the first half of the 20th century, let alone a new "mini-ice-age"...

So there might be good science in the actual research coming uit of the University of Northumbria, the press reports are a little out of whack with reality and filled with the horrible, horrible canard "Scientists say..." followed by something no self-respecting scientist would actually say...

I assume that the researchers mean that the number of sunspots will decrease by 60% over the next cycles not that the sun's output will decrease by 60%? Personally, I don't buy it. During the so called global atmosphere temperature 'pause' 1998-2012 there were prolonged periods in which there were no sunspots at all, and temperatures still increased, albeit not significantly statistically (unless you don't adjust for the unrepresentation of the Arctic in calculating averages).

To get a Little Ice Age you need multiple reinforcing forces. Such as a prolonged period of low solar activity. More than an average number of large explosive volcanic eruptions (similar to Tambora in 1815 and 'volcano unknown' 6 years earlier - which appears to be as large as Krakatou in 1883). A drop in atmospheric CO2 levels, such as caused by the multiple outbreaks of the Black Death from 1347, reducing the Eurasian population by 30-50% and allowing large areas of cleared agricultural land to return to forest sucking up atmospheric CO2.

One YEC is already declaring this to be a fact (and he does not even mention anthropogenic climate change):
http://johnhartnett.org/2015/07/13/global-cooling-coming/

I assume that the researchers mean that the number of sunspots will decrease by 60% over the next cycles not that the sun’s output will decrease by 60%?

One YEC is already declaring this to be a fact

The ice was here, the ice was there, the ice was all around... (for a little while, anyway?)

Taking global warming into account...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/13/3679662/global-warming-speed-up-not-ice-age/

Media Reports the World Will Enter a 'Mini Ice Age' in the 2030s. The Reverse Is True.

The problem is that, if the authors of the paper are correct, the decreased sun spot activity will probably delay some of the effects of global climate change. Reality deniers will jump at the chance to claim that all the models were wrong and the climate scientists didn't know what they were talking about. They will use this as an excuse to ignore the real problem for another decade or two. Then, when sunspot activity returns to higher levels and another decade or two of carbon emissions has worsened the problem, there might be a tipping point where the climate changes extremely rapidly. By that time it might be too late to do much about it.

Unfortunately, he causes his rain to fall on the wicked and the just, he just doesn't tell you which is which.

You know what's really hilarious about the reaction of the AGW deniers to this paper. The paper is based on a simulation model of the Sun, which they seem to feel is absolutely correct and accurate. These are the same clowns who reject climate simulation models on the basis that they are only models.

Washington Post says this: News about an imminent ‘mini ice age’ is trending — but it’s not true - The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/14/news-about-an-imminent-mini-ice-age-is-trending-but-its-not-true/

.......Though University of Northumbria mathematics professor Valentina Zharkova, who led the sunspot research, did find that the magnetic waves that produce sunspots (which are associated with high levels of solar activity) are expected to counteract one another in an unusual way in the coming years, the press release about her research mentions nothing about how that will affect the Earth’s climate. Zharkova never even used the phrase “mini ice age.” Meanwhile, several other recent studies of a possible solar minimum have concluded that whatever climate effects the phenomenon may have will be dwarfed by the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Besides, that “Little Ice Age” that occurred during the Maunder minimum, it wasn’t so much a global ice age as a cold spell in Europe, and it may have been caused more by clouds of ash from volcanic eruptions than by fluctuations in solar activity.

(It’s also worth mentioning that Zharkova’s findings have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, so her conclusions haven’t been vetted and refined.)............