Author claims we're in the grip of a mini ice age

Dec 5 2010 by Mike Kelly, Sunday Sun

AFTER nearly two weeks of snow and sub zero temperatures rivaling those of Siberia, the old joke about global warming being a good thing has had a new lease of life. So what has happened to doom-laden predictions of the world heating up as glaciers melt? Mike Kelly reports.

FIRST the good news. These bitter winters aren’t going to last forever. The bad news is that they will go on for the next 30 years as we have entered a mini ice age.

So says author Gavin Cooke in his book Frozen Britain. He began writing it in 2008 and it was published last year when experts were scratching their heads at the cause of the bitter winter of 2009/10 which brought England to a standstill. Some said it was a one-off event, with experts predicting snowfall becoming increasingly rare.

Now, 12 months on, the current sub zero spell makes last year look just a bit chilly. Just like kids enjoying ‘snow days’ off school, Gavin ought to be delighted with the cold snap. After all, he can justifiably say ‘I told you so’. But he’s as glum as the rest of us.

“I’m getting sick of it myself,” he said.

When Gavin, 48, of Monkseaton, North Tyneside, began writing the book the acclaimed documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by former US Vice President Al Gore about global warming, was still fresh in the memory. It detailed how carbon emissions were contributing towards the melting of the polar ice caps causing the world to heat up.

Like Gore, Gavin’s interest in climate change went back to college when he studied energy and environment at what was then Newcastle Polytechnic.

He said: “The more I’ve looked into it the more fascinating it has become.”

He is quick to admit that he hasn’t got the scientific background of those who have spent a lifetime studying climate change. What he has brought to the table is his enthusiasm for the subject, his tracking of the arguments and a desire to make sense of a blizzard of information, so to speak.

To simplify, the basis of his theory seems to be sunspot activity, or rather the lack of it. Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the sun’s surface that come and go in cycles.

They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” named after the scientist, Edward Maunder, who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age.