another little ice age in the works? probably not…

Are we about to see another short ice age as solar activity plummets?

The Sun has been quiet lately. Too quiet. Some solar physicists are thinking that we might be seeing signs of another Maunder Minimum, an unusually long period of reduced sunspot activity between 1645 to 1717, the time of a dip in global temperatures known as the Little Ice Age.

Global warming skeptics have long used this period in history to say that the Sun has a much greater effect on Earth's temperatures than anything we may be pumping out into the atmosphere and now, a number of people are getting concerned that a new period of reduced solar activity will bring bitterly cold winters and a new micro-Ice Age to the modern world.

However, there's not indication that we really are about to slip into decades of solar stillness. And there's also a very tenuous connection between climate and solar activity that's not fully understood.

There are theories as to how it may be possible for a sun with significantly diminished activity to cool the Earth but so far, they're not fully fleshed out and the exact degree to which sunlight fluctuations influence our global temperatures is still a matter of debate. And there's another important note scientists want us to consider…

The… Little Ice Age occurred before the Industrial Revolution, and may also have been influenced by volcanoes, which tend to lower temperatures. This time around, Earth's atmosphere is packed with carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The warming effects of these heat-trapping gases will probably dwarf any slight cooling that occurs because of a lull in the solar cycle.

In fact, our atmosphere has about twice the amount of carbon dioxide than it had just 200 years ago and we need to keep in mind that a CO₂ concentration of just 387 parts per million keeps our planet from being a big, frozen slush ball. And according to NOAA, that's an increase of 73 ppm, or 23% since 1958. That should be more than enough to stave of a degree or two of potential cooling…