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For a while now, for decades, and especially in the 1990s and into the 2000s, earth has encountered almost exactly the kind of climate fluctuation -- a warming trend -- that was witnessed during the Middle Ages. Back then, too, glaciers melted. Arctic ice disappeared. By the 1300s A.D. there was farming in parts of England and even Greenland that had never grown certain crops before. Corn was harvested as far north as Norway. 

The global warming, in medieval times, was followed, after several centuries, by a sudden reversal to a cooler climate with severe effects, including droughts, floods, storms, food shortages, and eventually plague. Some believe the cooling occurred due to what is now called the Maunder Minimum: a precipitous drop in the number of sunspots (solar "storms") around 1645 and into the 1700s. After a period of recovery there was another dip. It was in this cool period that we think of George Washington fighting the elements as well as the enemy at Valley Forge; it was not uncommon for the Hudson to freeze over.

After gradually coming out of that, about 150 years ago, we began to enter another warming trend, one that stepped into full throttle during the past several decades, but one that someday will be followed by an extended period of global cooling (whatever the impacts of industry and other human components).

These are not subjects up for radio debate. They are simple facts -- put forward by the National Climactic Data Center under both conservative and liberal presidents. The warming has come during what they call the Modern Solar Maximum, which may have begun to wane around 2000.

So far, there is scant evidence of a new period of cold. But could we be seeing the first glimmerings of a longer cooling trend? Is this year's early winter -- reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s -- a harbinger? Was last year's cold in Europe?

This month (12/13), the snowpack in North America is the biggest in a decade. Meanwhile, the Arctic ice pack -- which had substantially dwindled during the past several years, to the point where vessels could navigate through what once were ice-blocked channels -- seems to be building up again. There was snow this week in Cairo -- and Jerusalem.

While there can always be fluctuations (dips and spikes) within larger trends, while the current cold is from an unusual pattern bringing down bitterly cold Arctic air, and while warming can actually cause more snow (because there is more moisture in the atmosphere), right now it's at least a cooling blip.

It is at least worthy of glancing note that we see reports suddenly of sunspots disappearing, as during the Maunder Minimum.

Currently the space-weather cycle is the weakest in a hundred years (weaker than any living researchers have ever seen, according to one Stanford University expert). It may be simply a brief dip, as occurred in what was known as Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s. It is not even certain whether unusual cold will continue through the winter (which hasn't even started yet). Right now it is a little "big" chill. Consider that November was one of the top five warmest on record.

At the same time -- in this realm where there is so much guesswork (for only in recent times have close observances been possible) -- it could be another extended "minimum."

We reduce it all to climate  "gyration": circumstances and swerves in nature that seem to reflect moral, cultural, and spiritual extremes and can contribute (up and down, short and long range) to coming change (and what many may see as "chastisement").

[resources: see Sent To Earth]