WHAT'S THIS? –  AT 12:53 P.M. ET:  Apparently there's been a change in the weather forecast.  Please wake up Al Gore.  He might want to sell some stock in global-warming companies.  There's money on every side here.  From International Business Times: 

Remember the 1989 science fiction novel The Dying Sun by Gary Blackwood, where people were forced to migrate from the US to Mexico because of the freezing weather triggered by cooling down of the Sun? Scientists are now afraid that such a situation can become a reality in the near future. The question that now arises is, are we at all prepared for another ice age?

A study by the University of California San Diego has claimed that by 2050, the Sun is expected to become cool. You might think "what's the big deal," but remember that this means the solar activities that create the heat of the Sun to sustain life on Earth may diminish. And the last time it happened was in the 17th Century, when the Thames River froze. Scientists call this the "Maunder Minimum".

Physicist Dan Lubin at the university and his team studied the past event and concluded that were are in for a worse case. The Sun is expected to get much dimmer than last time and, in scientific terms, it is a "grand minimum" -- a time period in the 11-year solar cycle when the solar activities are at the lowest point.

According to the study, titled Ultraviolet Flux Decrease Under a Grand Minimum from IUE Short-wavelength Observation of Solar Analogs and published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters, this grand minimum will be 7 percent cooler than such periods from the past.

Scientists also said that the Sun might have another cooling period in a decade.

COMMENT:  Gee.  I guess I'll never be able to wear all that global-warming stuff I bought.  But, seriously, isn't it time we nailed down some of this "climate science"?  There have been so many contradictory predictions. 

I believe, as I've said here many times, that we need a transparent presidential commission, patterned after the Challenger commission, and led by a prominent scientist of unquestioned integrity, to examine 1) what we know, 2) what we don't know, and 3) what we must know about the changing climate.  We need this commission before we earmark trillions of dollars to chase a problem that may not exist. 

We also need an examination of exactly who profits from "scientific" predictions.  I think the results would be very interesting.

February 9, 2018