A Russian astrophysicist thinks so:
A new study by a prominent Russian astrophysicist claims the “new Little Ice Age” started at the end of 2015 due to low solar activity, kicking off decades of “deep cooling” in the latter half of the 21st Century.
“As a result, the Earth has, and will continue to have, a negative average annual energy balance and a long-term adverse thermal condition,” Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, who is the head of space research for the Pulkovo Observatory at the Russian Academy of Sciences, wrote in a recent study.
“The quasi-centennial epoch of the new Little Ice Age has started at the end 2015 after the maximum phase of solar cycle 24,” Abdussamatov wrote. “The start of a solar grand minimum is anticipated in solar cycle 27 in 2043 and the beginning of phase of deep cooling in the new Little Ice Age in 2060.”
Vault-Co has been calling this, of course.
The big cost will be the changes in rainfall patterns. Our agricultural system has evolved into its present form based upon certain areas being consistently arable due to fairly consistent rainfall patterns. Change the climate, and you change rainfall patterns. Change rainfall patterns, and you have the Dustbowl again in many of the places where mankind presently grows its food.
Eliminate the food, so somebody has to die, and then you have real K-selection. Liberals do not live through real K-selection.
Even if you eradicated Western civilization – and eliminated all of the genetic underpinnings of Western Civilization – if you imposed an ice age, it would all remerge spontaneously, without any intervention by the will of mankind at all.
You can exploit a momentary glut, but you can’t fight a K-selected world.
[…] Has The Next Ice Age Begun? […]
Some are already preparing:
Our genes know what is coming, and are getting us ready.
The White Mountains of NH got their name from Samuel DeChamplain. He was in Portsmouth harbor in the early 1600’s – during the month of July – and could see Mt Washington in the far distance. It and its sister peaks were all covered with snow. Although they hold snow late ( late May – some year) – year round permanent snow cover is not something that you see any longer in NE England.
A. We are due for the slide into an ice age – every 110KY to 125KY… we are about 120KY out of one.
B. The sunspot activity or lack of it has been talked about at AGW skeptic sites for a while – Wattsupwiththat has been talking about changes towards cooling for about 5 years.
So yes, one is coming. How fast? how much displacement? I’ve no idea. Water/rain will be one of the big factors. But general temperature is not to be dismissed. The very bad summer of 1814 in New England caused a lot of farmers to move west into Ohio and other Midwest states. Corn couldn’t be grown that year.
And the building of the NY Erie Canal was in part because of this transport need. In r/K terms, even a short crappy cold snap relative to other years (about 2 deg F colder than the average at that time iirc) can cause a lot of people to move for easier places to farm, and work harder to get things done. (move=r or K and get things done =K)
If it is recognized, people will move towards allowing more fosil fuel use, and more energy production in general.
Actually, I’m gonna disagree with this. There won’t be a food shortage. Aquaponics, vertical warehouse style farming, graphene filtration for seawater desalination, liquid hydrocarbon fuels being made from the carbon in the air, and liquid fluoride thorium fission reactors will all converge to take the green revolution to it’s next level. In the next century humans will finally become truly independent of the environment. From there the process of mastering the environment begins.
I agree that could, but I think it runs off of r/K. Where I think we diverge is on whether they will adapt prior to the ice age. What you describe is K, and we are living in r. Rabbits today will not plan that far ahead, nor will they until a suitable catastrophe adapts their amygdala to do so. Until then, we will get corruption, failure, and unpreparedness.