Thursday, February 10, 2011

Oft-right Soothsayer: Ice Age Coming

Of course, this prediction could be as flawed as all the recent warming predictions and the 1970s ice age predictions. But this person isn't the first to utter an antithetical prediction of late, and it certainly is cold outside.

He seems to get it right about 85 per cent of the time and serious business people - notably in farming - are starting to invest in his forecasts. In the eyes of many punters, he puts the taxpayer-funded Met Office to shame. How on earth does he do it? He studies the Sun.

He looks at the flow of particles from the Sun, and how they interact with the upper atmosphere, especially air currents such as the jet stream, and he looks at how the Moon and other factors influence those streaming particles.

He takes a snapshot of what the Sun is doing at any given moment, and then he looks back at the record to see when it last did something similar. Then he checks what the weather was like on Earth at the time - and he makes a prophecy.

[From There's a mini ice age coming, says man who beats weather experts]