Freezing in the dark

Scientists are warning that the sun may be about to "go to sleep" for a few decades. The disappearance of sun spots during a so-called "Maunder minimum" will result in a reduction in the amount of solar energy reaching the earth. Will this cause a fall in temperatures? This story, from The Guardian, says no, but a report in the Sunday Times drawing on the same academic study draws a comparison with the last Maunder minimum, from 1645 to 1715, the so-called "Little Ice Age". What a treat that sounds: frost fairs on the Thames, sleighrides on the Baltic, strolls from Manhattan to Staten Island....and crop failures mass starvation in Scotland and Scandinavia, among other places. According to the story in the Sunday Times (behind the paywall), there's a 10 percent chance of a repeat.

Unsurprisingly, climate change lobbyists have been quick to argue that the expected impact of a Maunder minimum (a 0.5 degree temperature drop globally, a scarier 2 degrees in Northern Europe) will do no more than partially offset the confidently-predicted 1.5-4.5 degree temperature rise resulting from man-made climate change. However, we may be about to get some fresh insights into the reliability of those predictions, which are heavily dependent on detailed temperature data collated by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

UEA has steadfastly refused to allow outside experts sight of this data, and there have been reports that some of it has been destroyed, which has been grist to the mill of climate change sceptics (and agnostics such as myself): what are they hiding? Now a court has ruled that an Oxford academic must be granted access to the data. No doubt it will take years for anyone to prove or disprove the UEA's original findings, and in the meantime the Maunder minimum may well get fully cranked up (or down, if you prefer).

Still, if it does start to get colder, we can always fire up the heating, right? Maybe not. Another Sunday Times story today warns that coal plants in the UK supplying up to 15% of the nation's power may have to be decommissioned in 2015 to meet EU anti-pollution rules. Because of the high wholesale cost of gas lately, the plants have been running flat out, which rather perversely means they may have to be shut off sooner than expected, leading to a generation gap (sorry!) as replacement plants will not come onstream in time.

We can't rely on wind power either. A story in the Telegraph this week says the Government has been warned that 17 gas-fired plants will have to be built simply to provide backup for all the times that the big blades stop revolving due to a pesky lack of wind.

It's not just the UK, of course. A large proportion of Japan's nuclear capacity may be mothballed, and Germany has decided to close down all of its nuclear plants by 2022 -- this despite the fact that the number of deaths directly attributable to the meltdown at Fukushima remains remarkably stable, at zero. (Did you know that the Fukushima plant was built to an American design? Thinking back to last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, how do you suppose the US would have reacted if there had been an accident at a Japanese-designed nuke on American soil? Just asking.)

It's all enough to make a man glad he has two passports. Where better than Canada to sit out a mini Ice Age?