(There are also things like this, but it looks to me like the algae route is a better long-term bet.)

A few months ago, they may have found their answer. Our local stellar furnace seem to be headed into one of its cyclical periods of low activity:

According to a statement issued by the NSO, announcing the research:

An immediate question is whether this slowdown presages a second Maunder Minimum, a 70-year period with virtually no sunspots [which occurred] during 1645-1715.

As NASA notes:

Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past.

During the Maunder Minimum and for periods either side of it, many European rivers which are ice-free today – including the Thames – routinely froze over, allowing ice skating and even for armies to march across them in some cases.

If that’s the case, any human-made global warming may be irrelevant for the next few generations.

As it turns out, my doubts were well-founded, but wrong. And oddly enough, the thing that finally convinced me was “the Climategate affair.” That’s right: a bunch of scientists got together claiming expertise in global climate change, out-and-out lied about the science to convince people that it was an urgent reality, got caught doing it, and that actually convinced this former-doubter that it was really happening. How did that happen?

Simple. I doubted because I know how the scientific method is supposed to work, and it was painfully obvious that these scientists weren’t playing by it. Their results couldn’t be independently checked because they refused to provide the necessary data, which almost certainly meant that the data didn’t exist or didn’t indicate what they claimed that it did. If it had, they would have shared it. They claimed that they didn’t want to share it because skeptics would try to poke holes in it. HELLO! THAT’S WHAT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS ALL ABOUT! Other scientists are supposed to try to poke holes in your conclusions. It’s only when many try — and fail — to do so that those conclusions start to assume a mantle of legitimacy.

But when they were exposed, and the real science sorted out from their bogus stuff, the truth finally started to become visible. And the truth is that it’s happening, and human activity may or may not be responsible for it. Either way, it’s nowhere near as dire or as immediate as they were claiming that it was.

The investigation is still ongoing, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be done any time in the foreseeable future. And thanks to the lying scientists disgracing the entire field in the eyes of many, if it turns out that we are responsible for climate change, any real action on it may be delayed for years. Even if it’s 100% humanity’s fault, there’s still time to prevent it from becoming a catastrophe, according to the current (and real) science — but we may have to act pretty quickly, and on a large scale. We can only hope that the rogue scientists didn’t poison the public (and the politicians) against the idea too much.

(Yes, it does “unfairly” give renewable energy an advantage over coal powered energy — that’s the whole point to it. But if I read the law correctly, there’s nothing preventing that; Minnesota is perfectly within its rights. On the other hand, as everyone should know, strange things happen in courtrooms.)

I understand some of the reasons for it: if they had told the truth, intelligent people would have dismissed the problem, quite reasonably demanding more information before taking the problem seriously. And by the time the science could back up their assertions, it could well be too late to stop or reverse it. But as a long-time fan of science as a path to truth and understanding, I (for one) feel betrayed by the scientists involved.