In today’s climate news, those crazy people who are sometimes called “climate skeptics” have from time to time pointed at the bright yellow thing in the sky during the daytime and suggested that maybe it has something to do with the earth’s climate.  Noooooo, say the climatistas—it’s SUV emissions all the way down.  Shut up.  Because 97 percent!

The Los Angeles Times, which proudly announced it would publish no more letters to the editor from climate skeptics (because 97 percent!), today reports on a current puzzle that hitherto only climate skeptics have been asking about: the sun goes through fairly regular epicycles that typically feature a lot of sunspot activity at the peak of the cycle.  And sunspots are thought to play some role in climate variation, albeit probably very small.  But the current “solar maximum” of this epicycle is showing very little sunspot activity.  The Times reports:

So what’s going on here? Is the “All Quiet Event” as solar physicist Tony Phillips dubbed it, a big deal or not?

“It is weird, but it’s not super weird,” said Phillips, who writes about solar activity on his website SpaceWeather.com. “To have a spotless day during solar maximum is odd, but then again, this solar maximum we are in has been very wimpy.”

Phillips notes this is the weakest solar maximum to have been observed in the space age, and it is shaking out to be the weakest one in the past 100 years, so the spotless day was not so out of left field.

“It all underlines that solar physicists really don’t know what the heck is happening on the sun,” Phillips said. “We just don’t know how to predict the sun, that is the take away message of this event.” . . .

“You just can’t predict the sun,” Phillips said.

Yeah, but the sunshine minds of the climatistas can predict the climate 50 and 100 years from now.  Because 97 percent!