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This story is a significant exageration.

Solar flux is low, of course, like it always is at the bottom of the solar cycle but the current figures are not that unusual.

This cycle is a long one. There is definitely some correlation with declining global temperatures and longer solar cycles so that makes it important. But it isn’t significantly longer than the average yet.

Before articles like this appear, the lack of a new cycle starting would have to be played out for another 6 months or more.

If that does happen, however, then we should start worrying because there will likely be crop failures and colder temperatures like the last drops in solar activity in the early 1800s and Maunder Minimum in the 17th century.

But solar cycle 24 will probably start in a few more months.

JustDoItAlways ... I understand and you are right, it isn’t –yet– time to invest in a portfolio entirely of canned beans and shotgun shells. Not by a long shot.

But rummaging around in Kozak’s link produced some interesting comments by those posters (aside from calling any possible minimum the “Gore Minimum” ... which would be choice).

“For instance, the first spotless day after solar maximum occurred in January 2004. Since that day, 46 months have elapsed and there is still no minimum at hand. This is an unusually long period (from first spotless day to minimum) compared to the last eight cycles, SC16-23. The average period for those cycles was 33 months with a standard deviation of +/- 5 months.” Harold Vance 10/27/07

John A had written earlier: “DR if that was supposed to be the start of the new cycle all the way back in 2006, then someone turned the machine back off.”

So it would seem that it isn’t just that cycle 24 is slow starting but that we’ve been extra slow getting here.

If indeed the observed normal maximum duration has been 38 months before now (33 +/- 5), it’s the length of the extra time that is “unusual” (now at 49 and sputtering according to our own Robert Cook). And since this is sunspot activity they are talking about here we have a few more than 50 years worth of data we are dealing with ... about just enough so any conclusions we might draw are NOT ENTIRELY SPURIOUS. –.^

Still, it could be bad if the cycles are getting longer.

I got the rope, we have already seen some unexpected weather (seriously, snow in Bagdad of all places?) and it only has to continue into late spring to seriously hurt some population groups (especially those poor saps around the world living without the benefits of liberty ... they always seem to be living closer to the edge).

And dpweiner, we must not forget that it was the little ice age that helped to inspire all this socialist lunacy in the first place. While we might hope for some sanity in relief of AGW politics in the short term, if things do get bad I can hardly imagine anything worse than a new minimum in a world already ravaged by socialism, communism and relativism.

It reminds this Christian be a bit too much of a story where world government gains power amidst terrible famine.