
But even a mildly active sun could still generate its fair share of extreme storms that could knock out power grids and space satellites.
Solar activity waxes and wanes every 11 years. Cycles can vary widely in intensity, and there is no foolproof way to predict how the sun will behave in any given cycle.
In 2007, an international panel of 12 experts split evenly over whether the coming cycle of activity, dubbed Cycle 24, would be stronger or weaker than average.
The group did agree the sun would probably hit the lowest point in its activity in March 2008 before ramping up to a new cycle that would reach its maximum in late 2011 or mid-2012.
But the sun did not bear out those predictions. Instead, it entered an unexpectedly long lull in activity with few new sunspots. It is thought to have reached its minimum in December 2008, and now seems to be slowly waking up. One such sign is two new active regions captured this week by the ultraviolet camera on one of NASA's twin STEREO probes.
'Ready to burst out'
"There's a lot of indicators that Cycle 24 is ready to burst out," panel chair Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, told reporters on Friday.
The panel now expects the sun's activity will peak about a year late, in May 2013, when it will boast an average of 90 sunspots per day. That is below average for solar cycles, making the coming peak the weakest since 1928, when an average of 78 sunspots was seen daily.
Sunspots are Earth-sized blotches that coincide with knotty magnetic fields. They are a common measure of solar activity - the higher the number of sunspots, the higher the probability of a major storm that could wreak havoc on Earth (see Space storm alert: 90 minutes from catastrophe).
Not unanimous
A lower number of sunspots could mean space weather will be relatively mild in the coming years. But Beisecker cautions it may be too early to call. "As hard as it is to predict sunspot number, it's even harder to predict the actual level of solar activity that responds to those sunspots," he told reporters. If there are fewer storms, they could still be just as intense, he said.
But not everyone on the panel expects the coming cycle to be weaker than average. "The panel consensus is not my individual opinion," says panel member Mausumi Dikpati of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.
Dikpati and her colleagues have developed a solar model that predicts a bumper crop of sunspots and a cycle that is 30% to 50% stronger than the previous cycle, Cycle 23.
Because it is still early in the new cycle, it is too soon to say whether the sun will bear out this prediction, Dikpati says. "It's still in a quiet period," she told New Scientist. "As soon as it takes off it could be a completely different story."
No one is denying climate change. Climate changes everywhere and change is the constant. Climate has changed ever since the planet began having atmosphere 4.5 Billion years ago. Over that immense deep time, however, the planet has reached a stable equilibrium between glaciations and interglacial periods and the water vapour is part of the thermostat. Warm the planet and clouds form to cool the planet; it is just that simple. Cool the planet sufficiently and humidity drops and glaciers waste away. That is the cycle. The equilibrium position for the oceans is out at edge of the continental shelves. The last big thaw resulted in flood myths and global religions. Radical Environmentalism may be the latest, but it is built on the myths of all the rest.
I am objectively sceptical that any trace gas is anything but an effect. The inverse solubility of gasses in seawater is science the Goracle never knew. A slippery truth has circled around and bitten the true believers of the mass movement on the backside. CO2 trails warming and cannot be the cause.
The issue is now McCarthyism as a number of scientifically illiterate politicians have got onto a politically correct bandwagon and do not have an exit strategy whereby they can save face. While CO2 has risen, the global climate has cooled. The cause and effect has no correlation. It would be funny if it were not so serious. If they want to crater the economy, why don't they say so instead of hiding behind Tipper Gore's skirt?