I know this isn't as much fun as laughing at

the whacked Eurocrats of the worthless Nobel Peace prize, but seeing as how we now understand that temperatures on earth are driven by the sun, maybe we should take a look at it.



Link

What this means is that we can expect cold weather. Maybe you remember the winter of 2008 with its late spring followed by the past late spring and a cool wet summer.

The mother of all spotless runs was of course the Maunder Minimum. This was a period from October 15, 1661 to August 2, 1671.

It totaled 3579 consecutive spotless days. That puts our current run at 17.5% of that of the Maunder Minimum.

By the standard of spotless days, the ongoing solar minimum is the deepest in a century: NASA report. In 2008, no sunspots were observed on 266 of the year’s 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days (85%):

Lay in an extra cord, dear chums. The cold is about to expose the fools.