The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports scientists think we may be headed for another "Maunder Minimum," a period when the sun goes quiet and the earth gets cold - a so-called "mini-Ice Age." The solar predictive model was presented recently at the U.K.'s National Astronomy Meeting in Wales.
As the Mail notes, during the last such cold period the Thames froze over, not a common occurrence. In Europe these were the "years without summer," crops failed.
COTTonLINE believes it likely the sun plays a greater role in climate than human activities ever will. As a gargantuan thermonuclear furnace its power output so dwarfs anything of which humans are collectively capable as to be orders of magnitude greater in scale. And solar output definitely varies.
In the words of NPR's Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, we may need the notorious Bronco Nagurski long underwear to get through the cold spell. The mere thought of it makes me itch.
