This is how the NHL will become the No. 1 sport.

We're overdue for an ice age, and they can come on quickly. Like, say, 20 years.

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.
It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

I guess that qualifies as climate change. Looks like Zach's and my grand plan to relocate the families to the U.P. might be the very definition of a bad idea.

So, between global warming, the bee die-off, peak oil, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, antibiotic resistance, bird flu, the meltdown of the American financial system and now Ice Age 3: We're Screwed, any ideas?

With my big black boots and an old suitcase/
I do believe I'll find myself a new place/
I don't want to be the bad guy/
I don't want to do your sleepwalk dance anymore/
I just want to see some palm trees/
Go and try and shake away this disease/

We can live beside the ocean/
Leave the fire behind/
Swim out past the breakers/
Watch the world die

I think I'll play with the kids and hold my wife tonight. In fact, sounds like a good plan for the rest of my life. Which I suspect will not involve a front lawn glacier, no matter how long He sees fit to give me.