From the “I hope to God they are flat wrong department”, here is the abstract of a short paper on recent solar trends by William Livingston and Matthew Penn of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson.
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Let us all hope that they are wrong, for a solar epoch period like the Maunder Minimum inducing a Little Ice Age will be a worldwide catastrophe economically, socially, environmentally, and morally.
Livingston said their projections were based on observations of a trend in decreasingly powerful sunspots but reviewers felt it was merely a statistical argument.
i agree with the reviewers. just because there's not much sun-spot activity at present doesn't mean there won't be any in the future. might as well predict the outcome of penny tossing.
Penny tossing has two outcomes, sunspot prediction is harder [impossible as you say] than that - there might be some or there might not, but its as much a question of how many/what size etc too as I understand it.
