Is our Sun falling silent?

[FarCenter]

"I've been a solar physicist for 30 years, and I've never seen anything quite like this," says Richard Harrison, head of space physics at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

He shows me recent footage captured by spacecraft that have their sights trained on our star. The Sun is revealed in exquisite detail, but its face is strangely featureless.

"If you want to go back to see when the Sun was this inactive... you've got to go back about 100 years," he says.

This solar lull is baffling scientists, because right now the Sun should be awash with activity.
...

During the latter half of the 17th Century, the Sun went through an extremely quiet phase - a period called the Maunder Minimum.

Historical records reveal that sunspots virtually disappeared during this time.

Dr Green says: "There is a very strong hint that the Sun is acting in the same way now as it did in the run-up to the Maunder Minimum."

Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics, from the University of Reading, thinks there is a significant chance that the Sun could become increasingly quiet.

"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions."

The era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.

Londoners enjoyed frost fairs on the Thames after it froze over, snow cover across the continent increased, the Baltic Sea iced over - the conditions were so harsh, some describe it as a mini-Ice Age.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25743806

[Warpy]

1. It would be nice if this were true

because having another solar minimum and resultant chilling could buy us some more time to get carbon emissions under better control.

[RC]

2. What will actually happen is that carbon emissions will increase to counter the cooling.

The next bottom line is always more important than whats down the road in the long haul, donchakno?

[FarCenter]

3. The Sporer Minimum and the Maunder Minimum together lasted for about 250 years

Which is the same order as the half life of CO2 in the atmosphere. So half of the current CO2 would be out of the atmosphere before the end of such a minimum.

[aristocles]

5. God always takes care of the planet, doesn't He?

[FarCenter]

7. The Siberian Traps, the Deccan Traps, and the Chicxulub crater would seem to be counter examples

Even a nice blow of the Yellowstone Caldera would make current calculations of climate change totally irrelevant.

[aristocles]

8. Remember His perspective is at least 15 billion years.

And He gave us beer and bacon.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. I don't see that

it seems that cooling due to reduced solar activity would be more likely to make the need to mitigate carbon emissions seem less pressing. I can hear the talking heads on Fox News and the WSJ editorial page now: "What global warming?"

[NutmegYankee]

6. Well, we would probably have used up much of our fossil fuels by then.

So an event of this nature would be a great thing.

[Fumesucker]

9. The self aware computers will be making all the decisions by then

Pointless to speculate what happens after that.

[KittyWampus]

10. Maybe we are in for another mini-Ice Age as Nature tries to self-correct.