Phil Plait, who does the Bad Astronomy blog, did a well-calibrated and respectful job with that piece. Phil is well hooked in to the solar community, so he is

Phil Plait, who does the Bad Astronomy blog, did a well-calibrated and respectful job with that piece. Phil is well hooked in to the solar community, so he is a good person to be consulting. Thanks for linking to it. Basically, the uproar was caused by a very speculative theory [1] that solar magnetic activity might be decreasing in the coming decades. This concept is not well-established; in fact, it is better-described as a highly speculative theory coming from a data extrapolation by a very small group of solar researchers, at one institution, over the last year or so. But even if their solar claims turn out to be true -- very big if given their methodology -- they (A) can't (and don't) link their magnetic claims to irradiance, and (B) the irradiance effect of sunspot/magnetic change is strongly believed to be quite small relative to other effects anyway, especially anthropogenic ones. [1] It was published in ApJ, but here is a relatively open link: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/266799418_PREDICTION_OF_SOLAR_ACTIVITY_FROM_SOLAR_BACKGROUND_MAGNETIC_FIELD_VARIATIONS_IN_CYCLES_21-23 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/266799418_PREDICTION...