[cogitator]

But will that really matter if Solar Cycle 24 stays at minimum levels?

Yes! The solar effect is not that big.

A mild summer in the northern hemisphere (much as Australia, for example, is apparently having now)

Australia's summer is still above normal for January.

Though the cold and snow and ice is getting the headlines (as usually is the case in winter), look at where it's been warm -- and how widespread. The reason this is a cold January, climatologically, is due to the cold in the Pacific Ocean (La Nina) and the cold in central Asia and northern Africa, primarily. That may be due to a near-average tropical Atlantic, which may be experiencing a cooling effect from the La Nina in the Pacific.

since it is the Sun’s output that is the underlaying fact behind global warmth no matter how it may be trending.

If we didn't have the Sun we wouldn't have global warming; we'd be near absolute zero. Global warming is not currently due to changes in the Sun.

And if this cold-snap isn’t just a cold-snap and goes on to cause problems

Wait until NH summer.

Warm periods (and there have been warmer periods than just recently in human history) have historically been good to human civilization

Warm, yes. Rapid and unpredictable changes, no.

[LiveFreeOrDie2001]

So will global cooling lead to shrinkage...?

[Old Professer]

Your map shows the St. Louis area at 3C above your base period; for the month of Feb so far, 22 days have been below average with over 12 being more than ten degrees F below.

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KSTL/2008/2/27/MonthlyHistory.html

An unusually high day near the 1st. of the month is the only convincing point.

Surrounding stations will concur.

Are they using real time raw observations or more of the corrected, adjusted stuff?

[avacado]

The map is wrong! The Houston, TX Area should have a blue dot. We had a below average temperature January.

[jwalsh07]

"The average temperature in January 2008 was 30.5 F. This was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 49th coolest January in 114 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade."NOAA

How you gonna square that circle with your anomaly graphic?

[palmer]

Yes! The solar effect is not that big.

We don't know that yet. The problem with determining the solar effect is that irradiance is opposite to the other effects. If the sunspots were just cooling, then it would be simple, but the sunspots are only a crude proxy for other effects that affect cosmic ray and UV flux.