In my earlier post about the solar minimum, I jumped the gun in summarizing July's activity, forgetting there are of course 31 days in the month. Doh. This means that I was incorrect in saying that July was in equal-10th position with May 2008. Since July in fact had 24 days spotless days, that means it was 9th equal (for lack of sunspots) with November 2007. It's also worth noting that at the time, October 2007 (28 days spotless) and November 2007 (24 days) were considered to be the peak of the minimum. It wasn't until July 2008 that we had any months with less activity. Nobody ever dreamed that more than 20 months later we'd still be seeing an equally quiet sun.
To continue playing with the statistics, the average number of spotless days per month in 2008 was 22.4, and in the first seven months of 2009, that average is 20.9. Yes, it's a little lower ... but hardly enough to declare that the minimum is approaching its end. The simple truth is that no prediction concerning the sun has proved accurate, and we just don't know what it's going to do next.
Exactly how this is going to affect the Earth, again, no one knows ... but if the primary source of energy for the whole freakin' planet is doing something weird, only a fool would consider that it won't have any impact. Of course, there are a lot of fools out there who won't for a minute acknowledge that anything other than human activity could play a role in climate change, despite the fact that there was actually rather a lot of it on this planet before mankind came along. But anyone who points that out must (of course) be in the pay of the evil oil and gas industries. (Speaking of which, where do you sign up? I'm sick of doing their work without pay. I want my wages of sin.) The gospel of Global Warming cannot be denied.
