Alan Henderson has some thoughts about sunspots, climate change, and space colonization. I have to say, though, that I don't think it's an urgent issue.

Rand

Good link! I did read an article a couple of years ago of a study of 240 G class stars (similar to the sun) and it is possible to study their sunspot cycles. All G class stars have sunspot cycles (which has to do with the rate of turnover in the internal convection currents in the star). An interesting finding was that many of these stars are in Maunder Minimums, suggesting that this is a cyclical activity of this type star.

Couple this with the predictions of the solar scientists that solar cycle 25 will be one of the weakest in centuries (we are about to start cycle 24 soon) and it will be interesting to see if we are talking about a new ice age in a couple of decades.

Rand

Here is a link to a paper on the study of "starspots"

http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2005-8/download/lrsp-2005-8Color.pdf

Dennis

Except that there is no correlation between the solar activity cycles and temperature when viewed in a significantly long timespan...
http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr.jpg

It's just the latest "muddling of the waters" about global warming so far by the interested agents. (Like people who have invested a lot of their ego to the claims that AGW is not true.)

Incidentally, Dennis Wingo claimed on realclimate comments that solar irradiance has increased too, including a link to a short timespan graph. But when you look at a somewhat longer timespan you can see that it's going in cycles and has no real correlation for steady rise of the temperatures.
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant

A lot of stuff circulates in the "blogosphere". A big portion of it has very little value, and some even negative.

laf

I guess all those tree ring studies, C14 studies, physical chemistry studies, solar physics, etc.... are all full of crap huh.

Sorry that dog don't hunt anymore.

Frohlich is wrong.

I read his paper on the subject. He stated that a systematic error in the SOHO TSI instrument meant that the instrument on Nimbus (which uses a similar technology) has the same systematic error.

What Frohlich did not reveal is that the self calibration feature on SOHO is broken, rendering any comparison moot.

Sorry Charlie.

www.acrim.com for the real story.

More nails.

http://members.chello.(replacethis)be/j.janssens/SC24Clilverd.pdf

Lower solar activity in cycle 24 will produce a range
of effects in the Earth’s atmosphere. It should reduce the
solar UV forcing of the upper stratosphere and thereby
reduce the solar cycle variations in geopotential height,
ozone, and temperature at tropical and subtropical latitudes....

The caveat here is that there are two divergent predictions for cycle 24. The one based on the Earth's magnetic field predicts a big one but the one referenced in this paper and many others, based on cyclic varations in solar output predict a weak cycle 24 and 25, corresponding to the Sporer minimum of the early 1800's.