But Baby, it's Cold Outside

Check this out.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A Russian astronomer has predicted that Earth will experience a "mini Ice Age" in the middle of this century, caused by low solar activity.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory in St. Petersburg said Monday that temperatures will begin falling six or seven years from now, when global warming caused by increased solar activity in the 20th century reaches its peak, RIA Novosti reported.

The coldest period will occur 15 to 20 years after a major solar output decline between 2035 and 2045, Abdusamatov said.

Dramatic changes in the earth's surface temperatures are an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly, he said, and result from variations in the sun's energy output and ultraviolet radiation.

The Northern Hemisphere's most recent cool-down period occurred between 1645 and 1705. The resulting period, known as the Little Ice Age, left canals in the Netherlands frozen solid and forced people in Greenland to abandon their houses to glaciers, the scientist said.

Do you think that he is proposing that the fluctuating energy output of the sun may have more to do with climate variation than us nasty old homo sapiens' and our wicked greenhouse gas output?!

You mean that western civilization in general and its evil spawn globalization aren't going to cook the planet and raise the sealevel by a few meters displacing all those peaceful, subsistence level, indigenous fishing communities?

Could it be that, all things being equal, that we should be happy - and I mean every man jack of us from Huntington Beach to Bangalore friggin' extatic - that we are blessed to live during the safest, cleanest, most disease-free, prosperous time with the longest life expectancy since we climbed out of the trees onto the African savanna.

Would this possibly tell us that we in the developed world should try our damnedest to expand the blessings of economic prosperity, productiveness and free trade to the wretched masses who live perpetual poverty under the heels of despotic kleptocrats?

Naaaahhhhh. Just go about your normal upper middle class angsting and guilty rumination. After all, good news is no news.

Oh... and contrary to what the Social Democrats say, it appears that you have more leisure time too!

I guess that means even more time for angsting and guilt!!!