Earth is gradually sliding into its next Ice Age, and has been doing so for the past 10,000 years — now modern civilization is on the cusp of a stratospheric fall, and it’s all to do with the sun.

Societies flourish during times of warmth and high solar activity — the periods of Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warming are evidence of this.

Civilizations are built on the presumed constant and predictable climate that comes with solar maximums, and man’s reliance on its own fragile infrastructures only grows as the decades of reliable climate pass.

But when the constant is broken, it’s broken fast and the system can’t adapt quickly enough to cope with the descending cold.

Overlaying the peak of past civilizations atop the GISP2 Ice Core data clearly illustrates the pattern:







Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire

If we look at the Roman Empire, it’s apparent the sun was at the heart of everything.

The period from 200 BC to 150 AD — when the Roman project was at its most healthy — also coincided with what is often referred to as the ‘Roman Climate Optimum’, when the weather warmed up due to high solar activity.

Pliny the Elder, writing in the first century AD, described how beech trees, which used to grow only in the lowlands, started climbing up mountains as the temperature rose. Olives and vines were grown further and further north. The Empire became a giant greenhouse.

But the weather drastically deteriorated in 150–400 AD when solar output dropped — the ‘Roman Transitional Period’ — and hit temperature lows in the ‘Late Antique Little Ice Age’ from 450–700 AD.

Growing seasons were shortened, food shortages ensued, disease became rampant, millions died and the Empire fell apart.



Medieval Warming

The Medieval Warm Period — from about 900 AD to 1300 AD — was a time when global temperatures were as much as 1.4C above present levels.

Oxygen isotope studies in Greenland, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Tibet, China, New Zealand, and elsewhere, plus tree-ring data from many sites around the world all confirm the presence of a global Medieval Warm period.

The period coincided with a Grand Solar Maximum, a time of prolonged high solar output, and humans were once again prospering.

Don J. Easterbrook writes in Evidence-Based Climate Science:

Its effects were evident in Europe where grain crops flourished, alpine tree lines rose, many new cities arose, and the population more than doubled.

The Vikings took advantage of the climatic amelioration to colonize Greenland, and wine grapes were grown as far north as England where growing grapes is now not feasible and about 500 km north of present vineyards in France and Germany.

Grapes are presently grown in Germany up to elevations of about 560 m, but from about 1100 A.D. to 1300 A.D., vineyards extended up to 780 m, implying temperatures warmer by about 1.0–1.4 °C (Oliver, 1973).

Wheat and oats were grown around Trondheim, Norway, suggesting climates about 1 °C warmer than present (Fagan, 2000).



The Little Ice Age

At the end of the Medieval Warm Period, ∼1300 AD, temperatures dropped dramatically and the cold period that followed is known as the Little Ice Age.

The population of Europe had become dependent on cereal grains as a food supply during the Medieval Warm Period, and the colder climate, early snows, violent storms, and recurrent flooding resulted in massive crop failure, widespread famine and disease (Fagan, 2000; Grove, 2004).

Don J. Easterbrook continues:

The Little Ice Age was not a time of continuous cold climate, but rather repeated periods of cooling and warming, each of which occurred during times of solar minima, characterized by low sunspot numbers, low total solar irradiance (TSI), decreased solar magnetism, increased cosmic ray intensity, and increased production of radiocarbon and beryllium in the upper atmosphere.

Centuries of observations of the sun have shown that sunspots, solar irradiance, and solar magnetism vary over time, and these phenomena correlate very well with global climate changes on Earth.

A number of solar Grand Minima, periods of reduced solar output, have been recognized:

The Wolf Minimum was a period of low sunspot numbers and TSI between about 1300 AD and 1320 AD.

It occurred during the cold period that marked the end of the Medieval Warm Period and the beginning of the Little Ice Age about 1300 AD.

The change from the warmth of the Medieval Warm Period to the cold of the Little Ice Age was abrupt and devastating, leading to the Great Famine from 1310 to 1322.

The winter of 1309–1310 AD was exceptionally cold. The Thames River froze over and poor people were especially affected.

The Sporer Minimum occurred from about 1410 to 1540 and like the Wolf Minimum, the Sporer coincided with a period of brutal cold.

During Maunder Minimum temperatures plummeted in Europe, the growing season became shorter by more than a month, the number of snowy days increased from a few to 20–30, the ground froze to several feet, alpine glaciers advanced all over the world, glaciers in the Swiss Alps encroached on farms and buried villages, tree-lines in the Alps dropped, sea ports were blocked by sea ice that surrounded Iceland and Holland for about 20 miles, wine grape harvests diminished, and cereal grain harvests failed, leading to mass famines (Fagan, 2007).

The Thames River and canals and rivers of the Netherlands froze over during the winter.

The population of Iceland decreased by about half.

In parts of China, warm-weather crops that had been grown for centuries were abandoned.

And in North America, early European settlers experienced exceptionally severe winters.



Modern Maximum and Looming Grand Solar Minimum

All signs point to same pattern unfolding, potentially within the next few years.

We’ve had our Grand Solar Maximum, our period of sustained warmth and predictable climate — and we’ve flourished.

But Total Solar Irradiance is now forecast to fall off a cliff.

And even the ‘mainstream’ agrees, albeit with their slightly more optimistic CMIP6 model:





Sunspots, a great barometer for solar activity, have been largely absent in 2018/19.

Analysis by Professor Valentina Zharkova has us entering the next Grand Solar Minimum in 2020, as all four of the sun’s magnetic fields go out of phase — click here for more on that.

While NASA has recently revealed this upcoming solar cycle (25) will be “the weakest of the past 200 years,” and they’ve correlated previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.







The resulting cold will throw modern society into chaos, just as it did with preceding GSMs.

Growing seasons will be drastically shortened, harvests will fail, millions will perish through starvation/disease, and The Empire will crumble.



A Great Crash Looms

Stock Markets are already creaking, with several noted economists and distinguished investors warning of a 70% stock market crash in the very near future.





The Modern Maximum is over, in every regard.

Great plays of the cosmos contribute to the rise and fall of empires.

In the end, man is eternally fallible — and no empire lasts forever.





Grand Solar Minimum + Pole Shift



