I’m no expert, but it is my understanding that a prolonged period of fewer or no sunspots results in a cooler climate on Earth. At least according to the nearest astronomy textbook.

Low sunspot activity was connected with the Little Ice Age.
Well, maybe the friendly neighborhood star will give us a break on the global warming front by cooling off a bit and buying us a couple centuries to transition to non CO2 energy sources.

Low sunspot activity may mean a reduction in the solar magnetic field. This then allows more cosmic rays to enter the solar system. Many of those cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, causing high altitude cloud formation which shades the planet and leaads to global cooling. Anyway that is one theory. If true, then we are entering an age of global cooling and we need to burn MORE carbon.

This is my best understanding of sunspots.
The Sun has a magnetic field caused by currents of plasma in its interior. Unlike a mostly solid planet (which has a magnetic field more like a bar magnet) a plasma results in a more chaotic magnetic field. This is compounded by the fact that the Sun’s equator rotates faster than its polar regions.
So sunspots are thought to be places where the field lines are essentially getting tangled up and this effects the flows of plasma within the Sun as well as the ejection of charged particles from the Sun. But the field lines eventually untangle and the number of sunspots declines.
While these changes are chaotic, they are also approximately periodic. But there are smaller cycles within bigger cycles. For example there is an 11 year cycle embedded within a 22 year one. Now humans haven’t been at this long enough to really grok the complete periodicity of these cycles. But the idea of their being a longer cycle (a harmonic) underlying the 11 year one which delays the 11 year one seems totally possible to me.
So in the short term things look a little irregular, but cosmic man probably sets the eon hand of his watch to these kinds of changes.

Or perhaps my whole impersonal natural forces take is wrong, and we’ve angered the Sun God by failing to worship it! The withholding of heat is divine retribution and we must repent.
Perhaps some local pagans can make amends for the rest of us?
recaptcha: the saviors – is it an omen?

Hmm…
So we’ve got one sea turning to a ‘bloody’ dead zone, and a sun that might not be casting as much light soon.
Okay, if I see four horsemen, I’m heading for the bomb shelter.

My pet theory is that, in 10-15 years, we’ll be hearing about the need to fight global cooling, but that the remedies will be precisely the same as those used to combat global warming.
captcha: Economic expand
Nope.

“Or perhaps my whole impersonal natural forces take is wrong, and we’ve angered the Sun God by failing to worship it! The withholding of heat is divine retribution and we must repent.
Perhaps some local pagans can make amends for the rest of us?”
Well, we’ve kind of lost our stomach for Aztec-type sacrifice. It really does make a frightful mess and heart removal with an obsidian knife is more work than it sounds. Still, if it’s for the public good, we could probably dump a few oil executives off the pyramids….

I just read an article that said that in a few years we can expect large solar storms of the sort that could disrupt all satellite activities on the planet. Y2K only worse. The oil crisis has reminded me of how dependent we are on plastics and other oil-based products – all I have to do is look around me in my cubical to be reminded of that fact.
And we are also dependent upon the “relatively narrow range” that makes life on this planet go on in the accustomed fashion. Kind of a sobering thought.

It’s clear that the only way out of this is to sacrifice some virgins. Pity we’re all out.

For the record – the sun problems began with the Bush Administration.

“But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.”
2 years? 100 years? Given the life span of the sun and how gradually it changes, I’m hard pressed to invest much worry at this point.

The same magnetic field instabilities and loops are what cause sunspots and solar flares (looking at the sun in the UV range is pretty cool, check it: http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/sun_worldbook.html)
Dealing with an object like that… doesn’t seem like two years of data will really be able to account for all its chaotic behavior.
Doesn’t make sense that the sun would be shrinking… that doesn’t fit into the lifecycle of stars as I learned it, unless you’re talking red giant phase, but it expands first in that case (which would obliterate Earth’s entire orbit actually). Even if it were changing somehow, the timelines on these things are in the millions of years. I think we’ll be pretty safe.

totally posted the wrong link… meant to post the link to this youtube video of SOHO footage… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiSiu8hHTNI

Jam, cool video. That one and the solar flare videos show how the Sun’s magnetic field clusters in weird lumps around sunspots as they are the location of the solar prominences as well.

few sun spots =solar minimum lotsa sun spots=solar maximum. We are in a solar minimum now – ergo – should be cooler. Theory is solar minimum is mitigating global heating – making it less hot. Seems global warming would actually get a lot worse when we hit solar maximum – which – if the sun behaves as we expect – should be right about now.
So – keep those sun spots quiet – we don’t need to get hotter nor do we need all that solar flare stuff. Cab you imagine what it would do to all the cell phones ?
Don’t the northern lights show up further south during solar maximums?
That would be a sight to see.