It's Not Wise To Taunt The Stars

clipped from planetgore.nationalreview.com In an updated edition of The Chilling Stars, published earlier this year, Dr Svensmark and I remarked that we were advising friends to enjoy the global warming while it lasted. Since we wrote that, portents of a solar downturn, and possibly even a new little ice age, have become more sinister. The sun ought to be freckled with sunspots now, as a symptom of magnetic vigour, but instead we’ve had more than a year with very few spots. Global temperatures are down on last year and Australia and South America are just emerging from a bitter winter. Not convinced? Well back in April the UK Met Office, one of the shrillest of global warming outfits, issued a forecast for summer 2008. It declared, ‘the risk of exceptional rainfall, as seen last summer, is assessed as very low’. These are the folk who claim to tell you what the climate will be like 100 years from now. As I finish writing, amid torrential rain in Sussex, I notice that my roof is starting to leak.