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Other scientists, such as Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg and the author of the 2016 study, “The New Little Ice Age Has Started,” believes the Little Ice Age will last longer — about 100 years. The reliability of Abdussamatov’s model — informed by Earth’s 18 earlier little ice ages over the past 7,500 years, six of them in the last thousand years — have been repeatedly affirmed by real events, such as irradiance measurements from the Sun. The robustness of Abdussamatov’s model allowed him to predict in 2003 the advent of a new ice age by 2015. The models of all the scientists predicting warming, in contrast, have been proven by real events to be abject failures.

Economists who today propose a carbon tax to prevent global warming do so in the belief that the science on global warming is settled, and that a tax is required to mitigate the damage from carbon dioxide emissions. But if the science on global warming gets settled differently — with a new consensus that we face a protracted period of global cooling — these economists would want to change the incentives to encourage the carbon dioxide emissions believed needed to offset harm.

The bounties could come in the form of subsidies to the tar sands and coal mining industries, to pipelines and fracking operations, to encourage the production needed to fossil-fuel the factories and steel mills of tomorrow. Punitive taxes at the gasoline pump would be dropped, as would mileage standards on cars. Rather than the “cash for clunkers” programs of old, governments might incent the scrapping of fuel-efficient compact cars while subsidizing the purchase of SUVs. Rather than banning the incandescent light bulb, governments on the advice of economists might ban compact fluorescents.