You might have missed the announcement in the media yesterday, what with more important things happening like a football match.

The climate usually rates a mention on the ABC if nowhere else, especially when the "models" predict warming trends.

So it was surprising that nowhere in the media was there mention of possibly the most important climate news for several year.

So here it is in simple terms. Earth gets all of its heat from the sun, not from burning coal. If the sun burns hotter there is a chance that the earth will warm. When the sun burns cooler there is a chance that the earth will get cooler- other things being equal.

Sun spots are indicators of increased solar activity.

Normally the sun goes through 11 year cycles.  The intensity of the cycles can vary quite a bit.

Yesterday's news was that three different strands of research show that the sun is now entering a cooler phase where the usual 11 year cycle is suspended.

The last time this is known to happen is called the Maunder Minimum and occurred from 1645 to 17145 which coincides with the Little Ice Age. At that time the climate in Europe at least switched quite abruptly from the Medieval Warming Period to  very much cooler weather.

The ABC, true to form, did manage to report on this on their science news web site. They did not interview the scicentists involved in the research but managed to find the required "climate scientist" who stuck to the script and denied that this would affect global temperatures significantly.

I guess any politician who found out about this might wonder whether we need to rush into a carbon dioxide tax. If we follow the previous pattern we could have oh about 70 years to ponder whether human activity has any significant impact on the climate.

Or maybe they will say "Oh no! Carbon dioxide is now threatening the sun's temperature!"

 I suspect that we will still be having the argument as the ice sheets creep towards the tropics.