The Gore Minimum

Anticipating The Gore Minimum

First posts are always the hardest! There are so many jumbled thoughts and concepts, all bottled up and waiting to escape.

Increasing I believe we, as a society, a civilization, a species, are headed to a conjunction of paths willingly and unwillingly taken which will challenge all nations and peoples of the world.

First and foremost – Why the ‘Gore Minimum’?

It is my belief that our planet is headed into a protracted cooling period with serious consequences for human species. Unlike a warm world, a cold world is a much harsher place to live. It takes more energy to grow food, stay warm and generally survive. And at the very bottom of this cooling trend looms the threat of peak oil.

During the warm phase between glacial periods, the planet has cycled through several warming and cooling trends of varying duration, arguably the most well known is the 17th century’s Maunder-minimum which is often referred to as the ‘little ice age.’ There are lesser known periods of deep cooling including a more recent Dalton-minimum of the early 19th century. ‘Minimum’ refers to the number of sunspots appearing on the surface of the sun. The more sunspots, the more energy the sun is pumping into the climate of the Earth.

As of today, there is an unusually long period without any significant sunspot activity and there are an increasing number of predictions of unusually low sunspot activity for the coming decades. This pattern is similar to the cold periods of the 17th and 19th centuries. Many observers have tongue-in-cheek called the looming lull in solar activity the ‘Gore Minimum’ in honor of the chief promoter of man-made global warming.

Ultimately, the purpose of this blog is to explore the evidence of the possibility of another extended solar minimum, the associated cooling of the planet and the impact on the ecology and on human civilization.