I'm afraid that NASA and the NOAA aren't going to be able to successfully B.S. the public about this for too much longer.
Thats true. After July, we have had the coolest summer in years. I live in the southeast where it is usually very hot. Its been sweater weather since the end of July.
I know! I check the numbers almost daily and chant No Maunder No Maunder No Maunder...
Cooling is far worse than warming.
As I write today, the current solar cycle #23 has been in progress for 147 months, since May’96.
Global temperatures have been shown to be strongly correlated with solar cycle length. A cycle that is 4 months longer can be expected to yield a temperature lower by 0.1C .
The previous five cycles, from 1944 to 1996, had a cycle length of 125mo - shorter (and therefore hotter) than the average cycle of the last 200 years, which was about 133mo.
Given that this cycle has been about 22 months longer than the previous 5 cycles, we should expect that this is putting into place at present, a -0.55C difference from the last couple decades.
See: http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html for the study.