Free Republic

Unknown to most people except those with an interest in solar science, the sun is about to shut down. Well, not completely – we’ll still have plenty of sunlight and heat, but the small dark blotches on the sun’s surface called sunspots, visible in the figure below, are on the verge of disappearing. According to some climate scientists, this heralds a prolonged cold stretch of maybe 35 years starting in 2020, despite global warming.How could that happen? Because sunspots, which are caused by magnetic turbulence in the sun’s interior, signal subtle changes in solar output or activity – changes that...

The Maunder Minimum (also known as the prolonged sunspot minimum) is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time. Like the Dalton Minimum and Spörer Minimum, the Maunder Minimum coincided with a period of lower-than-average global temperatures. During one 30-year period within the Maunder Minimum, astronomers observed only about 50 sunspots, as opposed to a more typical 40,000-50,000 spots. (Source) Climatologist John Casey, a former space shuttle engineer and NASA consultant, thinks that last year’s winter, described by USA Today as “one of...