We might as well be panicking over comets in the sky as taking these news stories seriously.
If the astronomers said that a comet was going to hit the earth in a few months, it might actually *be* time to panic.
These are real scientists, just like those astronomers. In fact they are a sort of astronomer, or astrophysicist anyway. The scary thing about this particular Maunder minimum, it that what it turns out to be, is that we are also overdue, a little, for the next real, as opposed to mini, ice age. Do these sort of solar events trigger a bigger true "ice age" if conditions are otherwise right? That is something we probably don't know. 'Course we might get a chance to find out, maybe even in the lifetime of us old dudes. More likely our grandchildren will get to find out, and curse the name of Al Gore, who got the "powers that were" stampeding in the wrong direction. (even though he really just attempted to look like he was leading the herd).