Recently some people have claimed that the Sun
is entering a new Maunder Minimum—a decades-long period
of few sunspots—and that this will cause the Earth's
atmosphere to cool.  The Sun is certainly quiet in 2008,
but this is the normal quiet of a minimum in the 11 year
sunspot cycle.  Clearly the tendency to interpret normal
variations as fundamental changes is not confined to the
global warming alarmists.