Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
[...]
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Well, of course when it comes to most science/politics issues IBD publishes mostly nonsense. This fellow contacted Dr. Tapping about the real words behind this indirect quotation, and here is Mr. Tapping's response:
Thanks for the message. The stuff on the web came from a casual chat with someone who managed to misunderstand what I said and then put the result on the web, which is probably a big caution for me regarding the future.
It is true that the beginning of the next solar cycle is late, but not so late that we are getting worried, merely curious.
It is the opinion of scientists, including me, that global warming is a major issue, and that it might be too late to do anything about it already. If there is a cooling due to the solar activity cycle laying off for a bit, then the a period of solar cooling could be a much-needed respite giving us more time to attack the problem of greenhouse gases, with the caveat that if we do not, things will be far worse when things turn on again after a few decades. However, once again it is early days and we cannot at the moment conclude there is another minimum started.
Don't wait for a retraction from IBD, though. And the "someone who managed to misunderstand" sounds like well known Canadian Denier Tim Patterson.
