I've posted a number of times about the Solar Cycle, and the way the sun has been unusually quiet. I also posted a list of just a few of the hopelessly inaccurate solar climate models that had attempted to predict what would happen with the current solar minimum. All of them were hopelessly off target. Now, the New York Times publishes a story with an unbelievable piece of chutzpah inserted.

Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum.
What the hell? Consistent with what expectations? Go on ... show me a model that predicted the current pattern? I guess there is a truth that dare not be mentioned: all the predictions proved hopelessly inaccurate, and if we dare to admit it, then it forces us to recognize that all the predictions and models concerning the Earth's climate are also most likely to be just as hopelessly wrong. "No no no no no. We expected the sun the behave like this." Hah!
At least the story ends on a truthful note:
But no one can quite explain the current behavior or reliably predict the future. “We still don’t quite understand this beast,” Dr. Hathaway said. “The theories we had for how the sunspot cycle works have major problems.”
[Update] I just noticed that in my post (linked above) listing a few inaccurate predictions, the last one was from no one other than Dr Hathaway himself, the expert cited by the New York Times in this story. Hah. Here's his 2004 prediction:
The most recent solar maximum was in late 2000. The first spotless day after that was Jan 28, 2004. So, using Hathaway and Wilson's simple rule, solar minimum should arrive in late 2006. That's about a year earlier than previously thought. The next solar maximum might come early, too, says Hathaway. "Solar activity intensifies rapidly after solar minimum. In recent cycles, Solar Max has followed Solar Min by just 4 years." Do the math: 2006 + 4 years = 2010.
Hah.