Funny

, oh well one note, if we don't start getting some good sun spot activity quickly we might be in for lots of very cold winters, and cooler summers. Look up info on our next solar cycle 24, which should have started in 2007. We have only had a hand full of feeble cycle 24 spots and still having cycle 23 spots, while this can be a normal transition it is very late and NASA has pushed back their
prediction twice now that I know of, (hearsay from ham buddies). There are two schools of though about this cycle, one it is slightly possible me might enter another long "mini ice age" as the maunder minimum, late 1600's to early 1700's, which we could exist through, or it could begin ramping up (the sooner the better), think of it this way... The Sun has X amount of energy that it releases within its 11 year cycles, mostly near or at the peak year of the solar cycle, year
2012 for cycle 24. The longer the Sun goes spotless the more energy it will eventually release. Back in the 1800's I think there was a similar cycle and when the Sun finally had huge X-Class flairs and mass ejection it burned up telegraph lines and set fields on fire. I we should have large flairs like that in this day of technology, well, just keep your board games for something to pass the time, haha...
Apologies if I am running over old info here, I am newbie and have not read back through many postings.
Scott
Some good search terms:
maunder minimum
solar cycle 24 +"x class"
solar cycle 24 +"power grid"
solar cycle 24 +spotless
solar cycle 24 +late