Al Gore is wrong. So go ahead, pack up your things and move back to the coast.

Global warming might not happen. Not that we haven't tried our best to ruin the planet. We have. And we had a good run there with the ozone layer, the great pacific garbage patch and The Edge's planned Santa Monica Mountains mansions.

The thing is, scientists think the sun is checking out a little, like Mel Gibson after a bender. PC magazine:

Recent data collected from different groups of researchers suggests the sun may soon enter a particularly “quiet” period after the current active phase is finished, due to peak in 2013. Scientists have recorded both a decline in the magnitude of sunspots–cooler areas of the sun's surface that are easily visible from earth–and a delay in the “rush” of chunks of the sun's magnetic field toward the poles, which usually signals the beginning of a solar cycle (in the current one, they were late).

Yeah, basically sunspots and solar flair-ups are going to mellow out. Starting in 2013. Maybe. Some of the data appears to come from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory right here in SoCal.

Scientists say the sun's slumber could herald a “Little Ice Age” of the kind that hit North America in 1645. “These are times when they were ice skating on the Thames.” NASA's Dean Pesnell told PC.

The possibility of global cooling, however, is really only an inconvenient half-truth. Because the scientists aren't solid on this.

Another “solar cycle” could still bring the high-temperature pain and continue global warming and the rise in sea levels. So don't sell your surfboard just yet.

NASA's Michael Hesse exhibits puree honesty when he says, ” … We don't really understand this at all.”

Us either.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

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