Two articles that suggest the global cooling proponents of the 70's might have been right. Unfortunately.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...nspot-mys.html
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com...-dives-in-may/
If we get a little ice age, that is really going to suck. A buddy of mine is going to get a fully automatic, self feeding, coal fired boiler this summer, his payback on the heating cost will be about 1.5 years.
I went with him to look at it, it feeds the coal up from underneath with a worm screw like a meat grinder, and burns it on the top surface. Amazing. It is called an "underfeed retort" type burner. Made by EFM. I looked up the patents for "underfeed retort" on google patents and they go back to 1909. The last patent is 1945.
I use so little heating oil a year (due to air sealing and insulating) that the payback period for me would be a long, long time...