I have been silent on climate mostly because it is a contentious issue with
true believers on both sides and plenty of science to back their
assumptions.

One thing both sides seem to agree on, at least those outside the UN IPCC
group who are having problems with their data, is we are in a period of
cooling, be it ten years or less, but we are cooling. I have wondered about
this as it effects our bees, as, here in Maine, we are moving to colder and
longer winters with lousy springs. This means things are different with my
bees and I have to plan for it.

Most of what I have done in the past reflects warm weather beekeeping. If
you are a proponent of the sun being the driver of weather, not CO2, then
the warming of the past is history for at least the next several years, if
we are lucky, and may be for the next 20+ if we are not. We could even be
moving toward an ice age, based on the historical record and the observation
that you have a sharp spike in temperatures before an ice age, and CO2
increase follows the temp increase, both of which we are observing now.

The sun goes through very poorly understood cycles and we are right at the
time a major minimum should occur. Everything is pointing toward it, but
that is just an observation with little science (also a problem with global
warming).

Even the coupling of sunspot activity with temperature is rightly discounted
by both sides as the change in solar temperature should not influence the
earth's temp as much as it seems to, which is why the sun was de-coupled
from GW.

 However, we are now learning that the sun's UV ouput has a greater effect
on the earths temp than just sun temperature and also cosmic rays increase
in solar minimums which increase low clouds that reflect sunlight, a double
whammy.

We have gone well beyond the highest recorded cosmic ray density, are at the
low sunspot activity for several years and still trending down (the solar
min should be about 2015). So, instead of warming over the next 20 or more
years, we may find ourselves much colder, as they are finding in Canada, the
Northern US, Asia, and Russia the past two years.

Is this the "end of the world as we know it"? It will mean temps that
reflect the time of Dickens, so we will have food problems but Monsanto and
GMO wheat will save us. And if we go into GW instead? Then look back to the
1100's when it was 2C warmer than now and was one of the most productive
times in our history. The following period, when temps dropped, we know as
the Dark Ages.

Bees survived. Beekeeper's may have had problems, but the bees did not care.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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