Solar Cycle 25 Will Be Quiet
As I have said before, once scientists have made predictions ahead of time, and then consequently got them right, for a few cycles in a row, then we might trust their forecasts. So far that hasn’t looked like happening, so take these new predictions with a grain of salt:
Three different measurements of solar activity, reported by scientists at a press conference today, suggest that the next 11-year-long solar cycle will be far quieter than the current one. In fact, it may not happen at all: Sunspots, the enormous magnetic storms that erupt on the sun’s surface as the cycle builds, might disappear entirely for the first time in approximately 400 years.
Although they say there will only be a slight cooling effect on climate, they have to say that, or else they would be admitting that climate change is not man-made. Yet the only recorded minimum anything like what they are predicting, the Maunder Minimum, coincided with the Little Ice Age, where the effect on humans was substantial. Just one example is that the Thames River froze over.
Keep in mind, the current solar cycle (#24) was going to have a large number of sunspots, but as time went by scientists kept revising their numbers:
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximum in March 2006: 145
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximum in October 2008: 137
Hathaway’s predicted Cycle 24 maximum in January 2009: 104
http://survive2012.com/news/2009/02/solar-cycle-24-revised-prediction-says-269.html
While the current cycle is still running late, and is still quiet, I don’t think we can ignore the threat of dangerous solar storms in 2012. They can happen in quiet cycles just as easily as in more active cycles, there’s just less likelihood.
