3. FORECASTING: 'Farmer's Almanac' predicts 'global cooling' (ClimateWire, 10/14/2008)

Evan Lehmann, ClimateWire reporter

DUBLIN, New Hampshire -- Americans once learned to smear ear wax on chapped lips and to discern the varying levels of acidity in chicken poop, from sticky to the crumbly kind, by reading "The Old Farmer's Almanac."

The 2009 edition is filled with more folksy advice: the best days to cut hair for slow growth (or fast), how to catch a trout and the exact minute of every full moon's arrival.

But now the iconic handbook, 217 years after its inaugural publication, is stepping into the heated debate over climate change. What it forecasts is "global cooling." It's coming not just for next year, but for the following 50, give or take.

"Absent from most headlines about global warming is a discussion of measures suggesting that the warming has ceased and a cooling may have begun," climatologist Joseph D'Aleo writes in the newest edition.

For two centuries now, almanac editors have relied on celestial signs to fill the book's newsprint pages. And with as many as 3 million readers, their views may have something to do with what polls show to be a continuing skepticism about climate change among some Americans.

Jud Hale working with Janice Stillman in the almanac's office. Photo by Evan Lehmann.

Almanacs -- there were once many -- see themselves as a "calendar of the heavens." That's how "The Old Farmer's" predicts that fewer solar eruptions -- or sunspots -- could activate a cooling period on Earth.

Sunspots and superstition

Sunspot cycles last 11 years on average, but no one knows when a new cycle will begin. That can only be decided by the sun -- begun when a violent solar burp suddenly blasts off from the opposite pole. That wayward belch occurred in January, beginning the sun's 24th sunspot cycle since Galileo first observed them in 1612.

"And there's been virtually no sunspots since," notes Janice Stillman, who bears what some consider the disconcerting position of the almanac's 13th editor.

When she accepted the role in 2000, Stillman shook off suggestions that she quit temporarily or be succeeded for a short time (stories vary) so she could resume as the 14th editor.

"I have no triskaidekaphobia," she said smiling, her vocabulary informed by an earlier article in the almanac. "You gotta know these things. Fear of thirteen."

Stillman, a machine-gun talker with a dying plant in her office, wasn't fearful, either, of assuming what could be a sprawling stint as the almanac's first woman editor. Since Robert Thomas launched "The Old Farmer's Almanac" in 1792, editors have remained aboard for 16.7 years on average.

Jud Hale has lasted much longer. Marking his neighborly friendliness, the current editor-in-chief informs folks who reach his voice mail that "Jud with one d" will get back to them promptly.

No one doubts it. He's been with the almanac since 1958. To this day, he continues the tradition of his uncle, Rob, who bought the publication in 1939, of carrying a woven picnic basket to work every day. Easier than a briefcase, he says.

A tradition of chilly forecasts

"It's not the first time we've done this cooling thing," Hale noted. The almanac printed a story in the 1970s titled "The Ice Age is coming, The Ice Age is coming," he recalls.

"My favorite piece has nothing to do with the weather," Hale added. "It was how to hypnotize a chicken."

Everybody around these woodsy mountains knows of the almanac. Its office sits atop a hill in this town of 1,500, right across from the white clapboard town hall building and 44 miles west of Manchester.

Not everybody reads it. Nancy Salmon, a gardener at Rosaly's Garden, the largest organic farm in New Hampshire, explained that she gets her forecasts from online weather sites.

Rosaly Bass, the farm's owner, said this summer was especially cool and wet. Her squash harvest was about half the size of last year's.

But that's unusual, she noted, saying killing frosts have been arriving later in the season for about 20 years. This year, the frost came on Oct. 6, almost three weeks after the average date of Sept. 20. "I think we're seeing more extremes," she added.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), who's concerned that climate change could degrade his state's skiing and syrup industries, seemed hopeful that the almanac's predictions could bring more snow.

"That's a double-edged sword," Douglas added, noting that families would pay more to heat their homes.

Betting on nature, humans unreliable

About 3.2 million copies of the 2009 edition of the almanac were printed. Yankee Publishing, the small company that owns "The Old Farmer's Almanac," started a Canadian version of the handbook in the 1980s.

And in September, the almanac's Web site logged 928,000 visitors, a 28 percent increase over the same period last year. Excited fans can view the Dublin office via a live Web cam, maybe even catch a glimpse of Hale carrying his basket.

The global cooling story has generated much of that attention, conceded Stillman, though she acknowledged that the forecast might not be as controversial as people anticipate.

The almanac's prediction does not account for greenhouse gases, Hale said, noting that a solar slowdown could offset some of the heating attributed to man-made pollution.

"So who's going to win? Us or Mother Nature?" said Hale, before lowering his voice to a whisper. "I'm gonna go with Mother Nature."

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