In the past few years, we have had little to zero sunspots - now the sun seems to be waking up - lots of activity.
The “Little Ice Age impacted Asia and Europe - with devastating results. Some glaciers even buried villages. Crop failures, starvation, disease - 900,000 million dead.
The Little Ice Age is implicit in driving the Vikings from their communities in Greenland - (30,000 people) but no one knows where they went. However, there is evidence that they came down through the waterways - St. Lawrence/Great Lakes - to places like what is now upper NY state (the Indians there are known as the People of the Long House - the only tribes that built the Viking-like dwellings) - and that some may have gone further west - and integrated with the Mandans - who built yet another type of dwelling similar to another type of Viking structure. There were physical similarities as well.
However, at the time Europe and Asia were buried in cold, there wasn't much in the Americas, history wise - and not much if any, to say about such devastating weather. Indeed, the first winter that the Pilgrims spent in Massachusetts - arriving in Dec with no Holiday Inn down the road - they recorded only about 4 snow storms for the season, and none of any great depth - indeed, about the same as this season in Maine - we had 3 ‘plowable’ storms, and not much snow each time. We've had a, to me, wonderfully mild winter - while Europe and Asia have been devastated - buried in snow and severe cold - some villages totally cut off, trains unable to run, food had to be helicoptered in.
So - along with the evidence that the north pole has shifted, requiring recalibration in GPS systems - to keep planes - in Miami, for example - from landing in fields instead of the runways. Now if the pole has shifted - the earth warbled a bit ? and tilted our hemisphere a bit towards warmer seasons - then the other half of the world - Europe and Asia - it would follow, would, unfortunately, be on the colder side of the tilt?
That's my unqualified take on it - and I'm sticking to it - cause I don't have enough years left to wait for another warming period ;o)
BTW, the articles postulations come from studies in Norway - they are on ‘the other side.”
Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High [relates to low sunspot activity (and cooling trend on Earth?)] NASA.GOV ^ | September 29, 2009 Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High "We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age [i.e. past 50+ years or so -etl]."
Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are subatomic particles--mainly protons but also some heavy nuclei--accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. Cosmic rays cause "air showers" of secondary particles when they hit Earth's atmosphere; they pose a health hazard to astronauts; and a single cosmic ray can disable a satellite if it hits an unlucky integrated circuit.
The sun's magnetic field is our first line of defense against these highly-charged, energetic particles. The entire solar system from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is surrounded by a bubble of magnetism called "the heliosphere." It springs from the sun's inner magnetic dynamo and is inflated to gargantuan proportions by the solar wind. When a cosmic ray tries to enter the solar system, it must fight through the heliosphere's outer layers; and if it makes it inside, there is a thicket of magnetic fields waiting to scatter and deflect the intruder.
An artist's concept of the heliosphere, a magnetic bubble that partially protects the solar system from cosmic rays.
"At times of low solar activity, this natural shielding is weakened, and more cosmic rays are able to reach the inner solar system," explains Pesnell."
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29sep_cosmicrays.htm