GET YOUR FURNACE CHECKED: What Happened to Spot? A Solar Update By Stephanie Osborn. “I have been following sunspot numbers for many years now. And while sunspot numbers have been decreasing steadily for several cycles to date, the current dearth is very unusual — especially for this point in the cycle.”

Plus: “The ‘Little Ice Age’ was actually a significantly extended cool period lasting several centuries, and no less than FOUR extended minima occurred during its ‘tenure.’ These include, in order, the Wolf, the Spörer, the Maunder, and the Dalton minima. These extended minima were not all of the same ‘depth,’ in that the minimum numbers of sunspots were not the same across all of them — the Maunder was far deeper than the rest — but there are indications that we are hitting numbers in the range of the Dalton already. . . . The fact that, as sunspot numbers go down, the overall energies output by the Sun also go down is an indication that, in this instance, correlation may well equal causation, at least to some degree. Add in a few large (or many small) volcanic eruptions to complicate matters — and there usually ARE such concatenations of volcanic eruptions in such multi-decadal timeframes, as a matter of course — and it may well prove interesting times ahead, as well as in the past.”

I don’t want to live in a John Ringo novel.