Quiet Sun May Cause Global Cooling, Says Newcastle Astrophysicist
In this newsletter:
1) New Solar Research Raises Climate Questions, Triggers Attacks
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016
2) Quiet Sun May Cause Global Cooling, Says Newcastle Astrophysicist
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
3) NASA Image Shows Solar Activity At Its Quietest In 100 years
Daily Mail, 27 June 2016
4) James Lovelock: Nobody Really Knows The Future Of Climate Change
The Bournemouth Echo, 23 July 2016
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016
2) Quiet Sun May Cause Global Cooling, Says Newcastle Astrophysicist
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
3) NASA Image Shows Solar Activity At Its Quietest In 100 years
Daily Mail, 27 June 2016
4) James Lovelock: Nobody Really Knows The Future Of Climate Change
The Bournemouth Echo, 23 July 2016
Full details:
1) New Solar Research Raises Climate Questions, Triggers Attacks
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016
Recent research by Professor Valentina Zharkova (Northumbria University) and colleagues has shed new light on the inner workings of the Sun. If correct, this new discovery means that future solar cycles and variations in the Sun’s activity can be predicted more accurately.
The research suggests that the next three solar cycles will see solar activity reduce significantly into the middle of the century, producing conditions similar to those last seen in the 1600s – during the Maunder Minimum. This may have implications for temperatures here on Earth. Future solar cycles will serve as a test of the astrophysicists’ work, but some climate scientists have not welcomed the research and even tried to suppress the new findings.
Click on image to view full video
New Solar Research Raises Climate Questions, Triggers Attacks
To most of us the sun seems unchanging. But if you observe its surface, it is seething with vast explosions and ejections.
This activity has its origin in intense magnetic fields generated by swirling currents in the sun’s outer layer – scientists call it the solar dynamo.
It produces the well-known 11-year solar cycle which can be seen as sunspots come and go on the sun’s surface.
But models of the solar dynamo have only been partially successful in predicting the solar cycle – and that might be because a vital component is missing.
After studying full-disc images of the sun’s magnetic field, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University and colleagues, discovered that the sun’s dynamo is actually made of two components – coming from different depths inside the sun.
The interaction between these two magnetic waves either amplifies solar activity or damps it down. Professor Zharkova’s observations suggest we are due for a prolonged period of low solar activity.
Professor Valentina Zharkova:
We will see it from 2020 to 2053, when the three next cycles will be very reduced magnetic field of the sun. Basically what happens is these two waves, they separate into the opposite hemispheres and they will not be interacting with each other, which means that resulting magnetic field will drop dramatically nearly to zero. And this will be a similar conditions like in Maunder Minimum.
What will happen to the Earth remains to be seen and predicted because nobody has developed any program or any models of terrestrial response – they are based on this period when the sun has maximum activity — when the sun has these nice fluctuations, and its magnetic field is very strong. But we’re approaching to the stage when the magnetic field of the sun is going to be very, very small.
She suggests it could be a repeat of the so-called Maunder Minimum – a period in the 17th century with little solar activity that may have influenced a cooling on Earth.
Whatever we do to the planet, if everything is done only by the sun, then the temperature should drop similar like it was in the Maunder Minimum. At least in the Northern hemisphere, where this temperature is well protocoled and written. We didn’t have many measurements in the Southern hemisphere, we don’t know what will happen with that, but in the Northern hemisphere, we know it’s very well protocoled. The rivers are frozen. There are winters and no summers, and so on.
So we only hope because these Maunder Minima will be shorter, the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century was about 65 years, the Maunder Minimum which we expect will be lasting not longer than 30-35 years.
Of course things are not the same as they were in the 17th century – we have a lot more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. And it will be interesting to see how the terrestrial and the solar influences play out.
This is promising research – a new insight into our sun with predictions as to its future behavior, yet Professor Zharkova relates than some climatologists resented her discovery.
Professor Valentina Zharkova:
Some of them were welcoming and discussing. But some of them were quite — I would say — pushy. They were trying to actually silence us. Some of them contacted the Royal Astronomical Society, demanding, behind our back, that they withdraw our press release. The Royal Astronomical Society replied to them and CCed to us and said, ‘Look, this is the work by the scientists who we support, please discuss this with them.’ We had about 8 or 10 exchanges by email, when I tried to prove my point, and I’m saying, I’m willing to look at what you do, I’m willing to see how our results we produced and what the sun has explained to us. So how this is transformed into climate we do not produce; we can only assume it should be. So we’re happy to work with you, and add to your data our results. So don’t take the sunspots which you get, we can give you our curve. Work with our curve. So they didn’t want to.
Professor Zharkova’s work may have significantly improved our ability to forecast solar activity. If we do enter a new Maunder Minimum, then we are bound to discover new things about our sun and its influences on our climate.
2) Quiet Sun May Cause Global Cooling, Says Newcastle Astrophysicist
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
Peter McCusker
Solar expert Valentina Zharkova warns that the earth is about to be affected by a solar event that will see temperatures plunge
Ice skating on the River Tyne in the early 20th century
The sun is in good shape and has a ‘healthy heartbeat’ which will last at least another five billion years, says Prof Valentina Zharkova, of Northumbria University.
Ms Zharkova, a professor in the department of mathematics, physics and electrical engineering, says this regular heartbeat of the sun is subject to predictable fluctuations of its magnetic field, and over the next few years as it enters a lull temperatures, here on earth, will plummet.
This time last year Prof Zharkova announced she had discovered a key solar event which determines magnetic field variations over time.
And she ‘confidently’ predicts we will be heading to another ‘Solar Grand Minima’ in solar cycle 25, beginning in 2020 and lasting until 2053.
During the last such event on the sun between 1645 and 1715 – and known as the Maunder Minimum – people skated on a frozen Thames as the average temperature in England fell by almost 2°C.
Prof Zharkova believes the cool summer we are currently experiencing is a precursor of things to come.
For over 400 years people have associated such cooler periods with reduced sun spot activity on the sun’s surface.
Prof Zharkova and her team postulate from their observations of the whole sun that sun spots on the solar surface are caused by the movement of a pair of background magnetic waves across its interior and surface, in both hemispheres.
The magnetic waves start their journey from opposite hemispheres and when they interact with each other on this journey sun spots develop.
The intensity and number of sun spots depends on the amplitude of the magnetic waves when they cross.
We are now entering a period where the sun’s pair of magnetic waves will cross at low amplitudes, beginning with solar cycle 25 in 2020.
And in solar cycle 26, beginning in 2031, we may enter a period of little, or no sunspot activity – and much cooler temperatures – as the pair of magnetic waves fail to cross at any point as they will remain fully separated in the opposite hemispheres of the sun.
Prof Zharkova and her colleagues have been able to simulate this on computer models allowing them to predict future cycles for the next millennium.
Prof Zharkova says her research is ‘the first serious prediction of a reduction of solar activity and upcoming Maunder Minimum that might affect human lives’. [...]
Prof Zharkova’s predictions also fly in the face of much of what is being said and written about global temperatures.
This worldwide movement was crystallised in last year’s Paris Agreement which saw almost all of the nations of the world unite to vow to try and keep temperature rises to less than 2°C by the end of the century.
Prof Zharkova said: “When it comes to controlling the earth’s temperature the sun trumps the work of mankind infinitesimally.
“The sun controls the temperature of all of the planets and anything else is pure fallacy. As the earth’s ice caps have melted so have the ones on Mars, and Jupiter has had more typhoons in the last decade than in any previous period.
“I accept and agree that we should be doing all we can to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as cutting pollution, but the models that are being used to support this idea of manmade global warming are flawed.
“Much of the research is misleading, the models downplay solar activity but solar activity is by far and away the key player in any attempt to explain fluctuations in global temperatures.”
She added: “How this reduction of temperature will be offset by global warming and increasing temperatures caused by the technological progress of human civilization remains to be seen.”
Full story
3) NASA Image Shows Solar Activity At Its Quietest In 100 years
Daily Mail, 27 June 2016
Ellie Zolfagharifard
The sun is in the currently in its quietest period for more than a century.
For the second time this month, Vencore Weather claims the sun has gone into 'cue ball' mode, with images from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots on its surface.
Astronomers say this isn't unusual, and solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year cycles, and we're currently in Cycle 24, which began in 2008.
However, if the current trend continues, then the Earth could be headed for a 'mini ice age' researchers have warned.
The sun is in the currently in its quietest period for more than a century. For the second time this month, the sun has gone into 'cue ball' mode, with images from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots on its surface
We've had the smallest number of sunspots in this cycle since Cycle 14, which reached its maximum in February of 1906.
On June 4th, the sun went completely spotless and activity remained low for around four days.
This follows another period of inactivity in February when another image of Nasa showed the sun in 'cueball mode'.
'The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years,' wrote Vencore Weather.
The previous solar cycle, Solar Cycle 23, peaked in 2000-2002 with many furious solar storms.
During Solar Max, huge sunspots and intense solar flares are a daily occurrence. Auroras appear in Florida. Radiation storms knock out satellites.
The last such episode took place in the years around 2000-2001.
During Solar Minimum, the opposite occurs. Solar flares are almost non-existent while whole weeks go by without a single, tiny sunspot to break the monotony of the blank sun. This is what we are experiencing now.
The sun is in the midst of its quietest period in more than a century. In February, it was in 'cue ball' mode, with an incredible image from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots seen on its surface
The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years.
During this period, sunspots were rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken down completely.
The period of quiet coincided with the Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in Earth's northern hemisphere.
Many researchers are convinced that low solar activity, acting in concert with increased volcanism and possible changes in ocean current patterns, played a role in that 17th century cooling.
A study last year claimed to have cracked predicting solar cycles - and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.
Full story
4) James Lovelock: Nobody Really Knows The Future Of Climate Change
The Bournemouth Echo, 23 July 2016
Catherine Bolado
James Lovelock
IT’S not every day you get to meet a scientific hero – an earth scientist and inventor who worked for NASA in its infancy and helped to discover the devastating impact of CFC gases upon the ozone layer.
Chatting down the phone from his west Dorset home, the 96-year-old is everything (as a surprisingly nervous science geek) you hope he will be – witty, insightful and engaging.
The Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT) patron clearly has a very soft spot in his heart for Dorset and is delighted to be living in “one of the best bits of the whole country.”
He has lived in and around the south all his life.
He said: “Dorset is very much a part of my life. I walked through it as a child and an adult. I have always been very fond of it. I have worked here both as a writer and managing an MoD site at Winfrith. I first came here in 1929 as a child to Swanage for a couple of weeks and spent time walking around the coast.”
His association with DWT is deep rooted. He used to visit Cranborne Chase and “grew very fond of it,” becoming a lifelong member of DWT in the late 1950s and has made charitable donations to the charity.
Mr Lovelock said it was a “nice feeling” to be made a patron. He said: “There’s talk of making Dorset and Devon into a national park and I hope it comes off. It should happen.
“To have Dorset as a park would be a great idea.”
He was pleased the Navitus Bay wind farm development didn’t get the go ahead, as the energy that would be produced “wouldn’t be very reliable.”
A more sensible idea would be to create a solar farm in the Sahara, he suggested. This would create enough energy for Europe, but was unlikely to happen, Mr Lovelock added.
Climate and energy production is not surprisingly one of his main concerns. But as to predictions about the future, he is far less certain, saying: “I think anyone that tries to predict more than five to ten years ahead is a bit of an idiot, so many things can change unexpectedly.”
He added that global warming proponents stated that the earth would get hotter and hotter but “they don’t really know,” and climate models are only based on what data goes into them, so it was hard to say what would happen in the future.
Mr Lovelock is interested in what can be measured, what can be observed.
So for example the sea temperature around Chesil Beach being so low and the effects of the Gulf Stream dropping ‘significantly’.
He said: “That’s one reason global warming hasn’t been so noticeable around here. Far from being an automatic warming up. If the sea starts moving the currents in different directions we get quite cold conditions.”
He said: “The other thing I predict, everyone will be living in cities towards the end of the century,” adding: “This is a trend all over. What’s left of the rest of the world is difficult to predict.”
“Don’t try and save the world, it’s pure hubris. We might be able to save Dorset. I don’t know how we do it. It’s up to us. I think it’s easier to save Dorset than the planet.”
Adding: “There’s one thing to keep in mind here. We don’t need to save the planet, it’s looked after itself for four billion years. It’s always been habitable and things have lived on it, so why worry.”
This is where Gaia Theory comes in – the idea that the planet itself is a self-regulating system. It is perhaps Mr Lovelock’s best known work and perhaps his most controversial. Named after a Greek goddess, the idea has alternatively been criticised or lauded over the 50 years since Mr Lovelock first proposed it.
Gaia Theory suggests that living organisms and their non-living surroundings on Earth are bound together into a system which self-regulates. This maintains the conditions for life on Earth.
Full post
Global Warming Policy Forum, 9 August 2016
Recent research by Professor Valentina Zharkova (Northumbria University) and colleagues has shed new light on the inner workings of the Sun. If correct, this new discovery means that future solar cycles and variations in the Sun’s activity can be predicted more accurately.
The research suggests that the next three solar cycles will see solar activity reduce significantly into the middle of the century, producing conditions similar to those last seen in the 1600s – during the Maunder Minimum. This may have implications for temperatures here on Earth. Future solar cycles will serve as a test of the astrophysicists’ work, but some climate scientists have not welcomed the research and even tried to suppress the new findings.
Click on image to view full video
New Solar Research Raises Climate Questions, Triggers Attacks
To most of us the sun seems unchanging. But if you observe its surface, it is seething with vast explosions and ejections.
This activity has its origin in intense magnetic fields generated by swirling currents in the sun’s outer layer – scientists call it the solar dynamo.
It produces the well-known 11-year solar cycle which can be seen as sunspots come and go on the sun’s surface.
But models of the solar dynamo have only been partially successful in predicting the solar cycle – and that might be because a vital component is missing.
After studying full-disc images of the sun’s magnetic field, Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University and colleagues, discovered that the sun’s dynamo is actually made of two components – coming from different depths inside the sun.
The interaction between these two magnetic waves either amplifies solar activity or damps it down. Professor Zharkova’s observations suggest we are due for a prolonged period of low solar activity.
Professor Valentina Zharkova:
We will see it from 2020 to 2053, when the three next cycles will be very reduced magnetic field of the sun. Basically what happens is these two waves, they separate into the opposite hemispheres and they will not be interacting with each other, which means that resulting magnetic field will drop dramatically nearly to zero. And this will be a similar conditions like in Maunder Minimum.
What will happen to the Earth remains to be seen and predicted because nobody has developed any program or any models of terrestrial response – they are based on this period when the sun has maximum activity — when the sun has these nice fluctuations, and its magnetic field is very strong. But we’re approaching to the stage when the magnetic field of the sun is going to be very, very small.
She suggests it could be a repeat of the so-called Maunder Minimum – a period in the 17th century with little solar activity that may have influenced a cooling on Earth.
Whatever we do to the planet, if everything is done only by the sun, then the temperature should drop similar like it was in the Maunder Minimum. At least in the Northern hemisphere, where this temperature is well protocoled and written. We didn’t have many measurements in the Southern hemisphere, we don’t know what will happen with that, but in the Northern hemisphere, we know it’s very well protocoled. The rivers are frozen. There are winters and no summers, and so on.
So we only hope because these Maunder Minima will be shorter, the Maunder Minimum of the 17th century was about 65 years, the Maunder Minimum which we expect will be lasting not longer than 30-35 years.
Of course things are not the same as they were in the 17th century – we have a lot more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. And it will be interesting to see how the terrestrial and the solar influences play out.
This is promising research – a new insight into our sun with predictions as to its future behavior, yet Professor Zharkova relates than some climatologists resented her discovery.
Professor Valentina Zharkova:
Some of them were welcoming and discussing. But some of them were quite — I would say — pushy. They were trying to actually silence us. Some of them contacted the Royal Astronomical Society, demanding, behind our back, that they withdraw our press release. The Royal Astronomical Society replied to them and CCed to us and said, ‘Look, this is the work by the scientists who we support, please discuss this with them.’ We had about 8 or 10 exchanges by email, when I tried to prove my point, and I’m saying, I’m willing to look at what you do, I’m willing to see how our results we produced and what the sun has explained to us. So how this is transformed into climate we do not produce; we can only assume it should be. So we’re happy to work with you, and add to your data our results. So don’t take the sunspots which you get, we can give you our curve. Work with our curve. So they didn’t want to.
Professor Zharkova’s work may have significantly improved our ability to forecast solar activity. If we do enter a new Maunder Minimum, then we are bound to discover new things about our sun and its influences on our climate.
2) Quiet Sun May Cause Global Cooling, Says Newcastle Astrophysicist
Newcastle Chronicle, 13 July 2016
Peter McCusker
Solar expert Valentina Zharkova warns that the earth is about to be affected by a solar event that will see temperatures plunge
Ice skating on the River Tyne in the early 20th century
The sun is in good shape and has a ‘healthy heartbeat’ which will last at least another five billion years, says Prof Valentina Zharkova, of Northumbria University.
Ms Zharkova, a professor in the department of mathematics, physics and electrical engineering, says this regular heartbeat of the sun is subject to predictable fluctuations of its magnetic field, and over the next few years as it enters a lull temperatures, here on earth, will plummet.
This time last year Prof Zharkova announced she had discovered a key solar event which determines magnetic field variations over time.
And she ‘confidently’ predicts we will be heading to another ‘Solar Grand Minima’ in solar cycle 25, beginning in 2020 and lasting until 2053.
During the last such event on the sun between 1645 and 1715 – and known as the Maunder Minimum – people skated on a frozen Thames as the average temperature in England fell by almost 2°C.
Prof Zharkova believes the cool summer we are currently experiencing is a precursor of things to come.
For over 400 years people have associated such cooler periods with reduced sun spot activity on the sun’s surface.
Prof Zharkova and her team postulate from their observations of the whole sun that sun spots on the solar surface are caused by the movement of a pair of background magnetic waves across its interior and surface, in both hemispheres.
The magnetic waves start their journey from opposite hemispheres and when they interact with each other on this journey sun spots develop.
The intensity and number of sun spots depends on the amplitude of the magnetic waves when they cross.
We are now entering a period where the sun’s pair of magnetic waves will cross at low amplitudes, beginning with solar cycle 25 in 2020.
And in solar cycle 26, beginning in 2031, we may enter a period of little, or no sunspot activity – and much cooler temperatures – as the pair of magnetic waves fail to cross at any point as they will remain fully separated in the opposite hemispheres of the sun.
Prof Zharkova and her colleagues have been able to simulate this on computer models allowing them to predict future cycles for the next millennium.
Prof Zharkova says her research is ‘the first serious prediction of a reduction of solar activity and upcoming Maunder Minimum that might affect human lives’. [...]
Prof Zharkova’s predictions also fly in the face of much of what is being said and written about global temperatures.
This worldwide movement was crystallised in last year’s Paris Agreement which saw almost all of the nations of the world unite to vow to try and keep temperature rises to less than 2°C by the end of the century.
Prof Zharkova said: “When it comes to controlling the earth’s temperature the sun trumps the work of mankind infinitesimally.
“The sun controls the temperature of all of the planets and anything else is pure fallacy. As the earth’s ice caps have melted so have the ones on Mars, and Jupiter has had more typhoons in the last decade than in any previous period.
“I accept and agree that we should be doing all we can to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as cutting pollution, but the models that are being used to support this idea of manmade global warming are flawed.
“Much of the research is misleading, the models downplay solar activity but solar activity is by far and away the key player in any attempt to explain fluctuations in global temperatures.”
She added: “How this reduction of temperature will be offset by global warming and increasing temperatures caused by the technological progress of human civilization remains to be seen.”
Full story
3) NASA Image Shows Solar Activity At Its Quietest In 100 years
Daily Mail, 27 June 2016
Ellie Zolfagharifard
The sun is in the currently in its quietest period for more than a century.
For the second time this month, Vencore Weather claims the sun has gone into 'cue ball' mode, with images from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots on its surface.
Astronomers say this isn't unusual, and solar activity waxes and wanes in 11-year cycles, and we're currently in Cycle 24, which began in 2008.
However, if the current trend continues, then the Earth could be headed for a 'mini ice age' researchers have warned.
The sun is in the currently in its quietest period for more than a century. For the second time this month, the sun has gone into 'cue ball' mode, with images from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots on its surface
We've had the smallest number of sunspots in this cycle since Cycle 14, which reached its maximum in February of 1906.
On June 4th, the sun went completely spotless and activity remained low for around four days.
This follows another period of inactivity in February when another image of Nasa showed the sun in 'cueball mode'.
'The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years,' wrote Vencore Weather.
The previous solar cycle, Solar Cycle 23, peaked in 2000-2002 with many furious solar storms.
During Solar Max, huge sunspots and intense solar flares are a daily occurrence. Auroras appear in Florida. Radiation storms knock out satellites.
The last such episode took place in the years around 2000-2001.
During Solar Minimum, the opposite occurs. Solar flares are almost non-existent while whole weeks go by without a single, tiny sunspot to break the monotony of the blank sun. This is what we are experiencing now.
The sun is in the midst of its quietest period in more than a century. In February, it was in 'cue ball' mode, with an incredible image from Nasa showing no large visible sunspots seen on its surface
The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years.
During this period, sunspots were rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken down completely.
The period of quiet coincided with the Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in Earth's northern hemisphere.
Many researchers are convinced that low solar activity, acting in concert with increased volcanism and possible changes in ocean current patterns, played a role in that 17th century cooling.
A study last year claimed to have cracked predicting solar cycles - and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.
Full story
4) James Lovelock: Nobody Really Knows The Future Of Climate Change
The Bournemouth Echo, 23 July 2016
Catherine Bolado
James Lovelock
IT’S not every day you get to meet a scientific hero – an earth scientist and inventor who worked for NASA in its infancy and helped to discover the devastating impact of CFC gases upon the ozone layer.
Chatting down the phone from his west Dorset home, the 96-year-old is everything (as a surprisingly nervous science geek) you hope he will be – witty, insightful and engaging.
The Dorset Wildlife Trust (DWT) patron clearly has a very soft spot in his heart for Dorset and is delighted to be living in “one of the best bits of the whole country.”
He has lived in and around the south all his life.
He said: “Dorset is very much a part of my life. I walked through it as a child and an adult. I have always been very fond of it. I have worked here both as a writer and managing an MoD site at Winfrith. I first came here in 1929 as a child to Swanage for a couple of weeks and spent time walking around the coast.”
His association with DWT is deep rooted. He used to visit Cranborne Chase and “grew very fond of it,” becoming a lifelong member of DWT in the late 1950s and has made charitable donations to the charity.
Mr Lovelock said it was a “nice feeling” to be made a patron. He said: “There’s talk of making Dorset and Devon into a national park and I hope it comes off. It should happen.
“To have Dorset as a park would be a great idea.”
He was pleased the Navitus Bay wind farm development didn’t get the go ahead, as the energy that would be produced “wouldn’t be very reliable.”
A more sensible idea would be to create a solar farm in the Sahara, he suggested. This would create enough energy for Europe, but was unlikely to happen, Mr Lovelock added.
Climate and energy production is not surprisingly one of his main concerns. But as to predictions about the future, he is far less certain, saying: “I think anyone that tries to predict more than five to ten years ahead is a bit of an idiot, so many things can change unexpectedly.”
He added that global warming proponents stated that the earth would get hotter and hotter but “they don’t really know,” and climate models are only based on what data goes into them, so it was hard to say what would happen in the future.
Mr Lovelock is interested in what can be measured, what can be observed.
So for example the sea temperature around Chesil Beach being so low and the effects of the Gulf Stream dropping ‘significantly’.
He said: “That’s one reason global warming hasn’t been so noticeable around here. Far from being an automatic warming up. If the sea starts moving the currents in different directions we get quite cold conditions.”
He said: “The other thing I predict, everyone will be living in cities towards the end of the century,” adding: “This is a trend all over. What’s left of the rest of the world is difficult to predict.”
“Don’t try and save the world, it’s pure hubris. We might be able to save Dorset. I don’t know how we do it. It’s up to us. I think it’s easier to save Dorset than the planet.”
Adding: “There’s one thing to keep in mind here. We don’t need to save the planet, it’s looked after itself for four billion years. It’s always been habitable and things have lived on it, so why worry.”
This is where Gaia Theory comes in – the idea that the planet itself is a self-regulating system. It is perhaps Mr Lovelock’s best known work and perhaps his most controversial. Named after a Greek goddess, the idea has alternatively been criticised or lauded over the 50 years since Mr Lovelock first proposed it.
Gaia Theory suggests that living organisms and their non-living surroundings on Earth are bound together into a system which self-regulates. This maintains the conditions for life on Earth.
Full post
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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