As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, I am reading Patrick Moore's "can you play cricket on Mars and other questions". It is a thoroughly interesting book, which introduces alot of astronomical concepts in question and answer format. I now know about constellations, supernovas, red dwarves, black dwarves and beetlegeuse. The section which intrigued me the most was about sunspots. These are results of solar "storms" and are actually cooler than the surrounding area. Solar flares are linked to them. Indeed, each sunspot is a pair, one of each polarity. Like the weather, sunspots come in cycles. They appear in periods of high solar activity and when they do, they cause a warming effect on the Earth.
Scientists now know that previous periods of global warming - Roman warm period, Medieval warm period etc coincided with extra solar activity and more sun spots. And is includes the period we are in now. When there is low solar activity, we have a global cooling and this was evident in the little ice age a few centuries ago. We really need to question how much human activity can warm up the planet, or a much better question would be, how does human activity exacerbate this natural cyclical warming by the sun?
Personally I believe that man-made global warming is a hoax or rather a religion. In fact it takes our eyes off other eco problems like pollution and human overpopulation. But never mind, it gives the far left something to moan about.
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