The fur solution

Comment is free: Bear to hear the truth you've spoken

George Monbiot finally gets really serious about climate change issues:

I am sitting on top of an excavator the size of a house, dressed as a polar bear. In a world that's gone mad this is the only sane thing left to do.

It impresses the kiddies, at any rate.

Meanwhile, one of the comments following that post points to another reasonable sounding report that the sun's sunspot activity cycle really may be at the start of the same protracted low which happened during the "little ice age":

Astronomers are watching the Sun, hoping to see the first stirrings of cycle 24. It should have arrived last December. The United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted it would start in March 2007. Now they estimate March 2008, but they will soon have to make that even later. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven't appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.

It would indeed be a nice co-incidence if the sun's reduced activity gave civilisation a century or so to move to low greenhouse energy, and perhaps even remove some of what is already there.