German Media Openly Question Alarmist Science… FOCUS Magazine: “Scientists Fear New Little Ice Age”

Now that the global temperature has not risen in 15 years, part of the German media is actually beginning to take a serious new look at the possibility of global cooling and are slowly questioning the alarmist assertion that the sun played little or no role in the climate change of the last 100 years.

Solar flare

Solar flare on an active sun. Photo credit: NASA (public domain)

Yesterday the online FOCUS magazine published a piece called: Scientists fear new little ice age.

What’s a bit surprising is that the article is written by typically warmist journalist .

In the FOCUS article Odenwald describes how solar cycle 24 started unusually slowly in 2008 and quotes David Hathaway of NASA: “It is not only the weakest cycle in the modern space age, but also the weakest in the last 100 years.“ Odenwald also tells readers how solar sunspots are driven by the solar dynamo, which also generates the sun’s magnetic field.

In Part 2 of Odenwald’s article, he points out that historical records suggest solar cycle 25 will very likely also be a weak cycle. In the recent past, alarmist climate scientists dismissed, or even scoffed at, the notion that weak solar activity could have a significant impact on the earth’s climate – a dismissal that flies in the face of a mountain of data showing a strong correlation between weak solar activity and cold periods.

Recently a growing number of scientists from the USA, Europe, and Russia have been warning of a potential approaching cooling period because of low solar activity, and the media are now taking more notice than ever. FOCUS quotes Hathaway’s colleague Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory (translated from the German):

Should this trend continue, then solar cycle 25 will have hardly any sunspots at all. Then we could reach a new Maunder Minimum.”

The Maunder Minimum, Odenwald writes, was an especially cold period during the Little Ice Age.

Still, Odenwald is hardly ready to give up believing that CO2 a major player in the overall climate scheme, insisting that a new grand solar minimum would not necessarily cool the planet. Odenwald cites that the Little Ice Age may in fact have been precipitated by a “giant volcanic eruption that supposedly occurred in the year 1257 in Indonesia“.

But to his credit, Odenwald concedes that solar activity could very well have a major role on climate:

It’s possible that the reduced solar activity may bring some good, which the scientists gathered at the AAS conference indicated. It could counter the global warming that man is causing with the continuously rising emissions of climate-impacting greenhouse gases.

Good to see responsible German warmist journalists opening their minds to alternatives theories. Give it a few more years.

 

14 responses to “German Media Openly Question Alarmist Science… FOCUS Magazine: “Scientists Fear New Little Ice Age””

  1. Joe Bastardi

    Always interesting well people “discover” what others before have known

    1. Joe Bastardi

      Always interesting when people “discover” what others before have known

  2. DirkH

    Not THAT bad for an EU medium.

  3. Walter H. Schneider

    “…the global warming that man is causing with the continuously rising emissions of climate-impacting greenhouse gases.” What global warming would that be, and how much of it has anyone measured?

    Man-made CO2 emissions, annually, amount to four percent of total annual CO2 emissions. The remaining 96 percent of annual CO2 emissions are from natural sources. No one has yet established on the basis of any valid evidence that CO2 causes warming.

  4. mwhite

    http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/11/solar-activity-and-the-so-called-%E2%80%9Clittle-ice-age%E2%80%9D/

    “Another Maunder minimum would have a very small effect globally”

    Such certanty from Professor Mike Lockwood.

  5. Mindert Eiting

    A new little ice age would be a wonderful gift for the warmistas. Then it would take a few centuries for the human-caused heat to return and they can maintain their belief till the end of their lives. Nice exit strategy.

  6. Stephen Richards

    David Hathaway of NASA: “It is not only the weakest cycle in the modern space age, but also the weakest in the last 100 years.“ – See more at: https://notrickszone.com/#sthash.H83XSZBM.dpuf

    Badly phrased. Hathaway actually said that there was nothing unusual in cycle24 when we were many months into it. It is only recently that he has tried to recover his failed reputation by saying that it is unusual.

    Man-made CO2 emissions, annually, amount to four percent of total annual CO2 emissions. – See more at: https://notrickszone.com/2013/11/04/german-media-openly-question-alarmist-science-focus-scientists-fear-new-little-ice-age/#comments

    This comment appears repeatedly across the web but it is not fundamentally true. It is a guess and a guess based upon a guess. How much CO² is put into the atmosphere annually cannot be accurately measured. So +/- a few % is well within the accuracy of the guess. What % of that is then attributable to human activity is yet another guestimate. So please stop repeating this rubbish.

  7. Stephen Richards

    Incidently, the best description of the LIA is in Lamb’s book. He said it was global, although evidence was sparce, and that the only valid temperature measurements we have are anecdotal.

    1. alex

      No scientist owning two grey cells and a connecting synapse would believe that a 400 year long continuous anomaly would decide to lock itself inside a tenth of the planet’s surface without migrating to other sections of the planet’s continents.

  8. Greeniewatch

    “reduced solar activity might bring some good”

    or might do considerable harm:

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/

    Michael Odenwald might do some more research.

  9. Ed Caryl

    Perhaps the temperature will continue flat for the next 80 years. Why jump from one alarm to the next? Sheesh!

  10. Paul

    Its obviously our CO2 emissions affecting the sun – it really is.
    To solve it we need to tax everyone and every business based on their CO2 emissions and that will gradually reduce the problem, eventually solving it completely. Its as simple as that ……

  11. Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup | Watts Up With That?

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