Richard Rothwell
21.1K posts
@medialens What a poor excuse for failed predictions. On the flip of a coin, up or down, more than half of the models selected predicted warmth. Given that the 1970s were the decade of the coming ice age, the coldest of the 20th century, it was reasonable to say the future will be warmer.
@BasedMikeLee If climate change is causing a global wildfire crisis, why has global burned area been flat or declining for more than two decades?
THE LITTLE ICE AGE - The real reason why climate has been warming of recent is entirely natural: it is because we are still emerging from The Little Ice Age. See painting of a frozen over Thames by Graham Turner. In the winter of 1683/84, the ice was almost a foot thick and the Thames remained frozen for weeks. Boats were fitted with skates and stalls set up with food, shops and games. The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of significant regional cooling, particularly in Europe, characterized by harsh winters, and expanded glaciers. Winter temperatures in Europe dropped as much as 2°C below modern averages. The event lasted from roughly 1300 to 1850, spanning nearly 500 years. It is generally divided into phases: an initial cooling around 1300, a slightly warmer period in the 1500s, and the coldest interval between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum). The LIA was primarily triggered by the Grand Solar Minima, which caused reduced solar irradiance, and therefore cooling. We are still emerging from the Little Ice Age, and that is the only reason some areas are warmer than centuries ago. This has very little to do with CO2 and everything to do with the Sun. To put it simply, both the activity of the Sun and the Sun-Earth distance changes, and this modulates the amount of both solar irradiance and solar radiation, which affects clouds, and this combined change is what leads to long term changes in climatic temperatures. It's definitely not CO2 causing any of this.
