Tuesday marked the 16th straight day without a sunspot.  According to spaceweather it marked the 259th sunspotless day this year and the 770th spotless day this minimum.  During the day Wednesday, a few small spots emerged from a newly visible plage, an area of enhanced magnetic flux. This moves 2009 into a tie for 5th place with 1856 in the top 20 spotless years since 1849, when that kind of assessment became reasonable. See the enlarged image here.

See how the sunspot number has not recovered from the expect minimum (declared by NASA first in December 2006!!!). See the enlarged image here.

This long cycle and the last 3 suggest that the phasing of the 213 year and 106 low solar cycles may be at work as it was in the late 1700s and the early 1800s, the so-called Dalton Minimum (below, enlarged here), the age of Dickens. Those days, snow was common in London. Ironically last winter was one of the snowiest in London in many a decade. Snow will fall next week in England (and Copenhagen). More later.

Enlarged here.

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See Dr. John Christy debate Gavin Schmidt on CNN below:

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Minnesotans For Global Warming announces our new Christmas Album “It’s A Climate Gate Christmas”. Actually there is no album all we have is the commercial. 

This follows their parody for “Draggin the Line” by Tommy James and the Shondells about Climategate.

and their famous Minnesotans for Global Warming