I've read this morning that the solar activity is the lowest since 55 years and that spots on the Sun are disappearing... Some scientiscts belive that means cold, cold, very cold. It happened three times in the past: Sporer minimum (1420-1570), Maunder minimum (1645-1715) and Dalton minimum (1790-1830).
The question is do we need to prepare for the Little Ice Age?
The solar minimum was last year. While it's certainly been a very quiet cycle so far, there
have been sunspots in the new cycle, as evidenced by their reversed magnetic polarity. The first sunspot of the new cycle was sighted several months ago (the 4th of January to be precise).
There is no correlation between variations in total solar irradiance and average global temperature over the last 50 years.
The "Little Ice Age" was almost certainly a regional, rather than global, phenomenon, most likely caused by variations in ocean currents in the North Atlantic.
Never trust anything you read in the papers about science (well, except Ben Goldacre's
Bad Science column) - they tend to get it horribly,
horribly wrong.