the storm is coming

The following article is taken from The Metro which is a free paper distributed on public transport 5 days a week in 11 major UK cities. It definitely seems to have a relatively open stance regarding the weird and wonderful times we are living through. This is exemplified by such things as a weekly feature on the paranormal covering topics such as alien abduction and chubacupras in a pretty truthful manner whilst still maintaining the necessary degree of scepticism. The article was accompanied by some helpful colour diagrams explaining how the solar cycle works.

It’s official – this week sees the arrival of solar minimum. At this time, sunspots can’t be spotted and solar flares have stopped flaring. The Sun is totally silent, like the calm before a storm.
But researchers say a storm is brewing – and it will be the most intense solar  maximum in 50 years.
‘The next sunspot cycle will be 30 to 50 per cent stronger than the previous one,’ said Mausumi Dikpati, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research. The next few years could see a burst of solar activity not witnessed since 1958, when the northen light were seen in as far south as Mexico.
A Similar level of activity now could knock out radio links, such as mobile phones , and hit GPS, weather and other satilites. Sunspot activity is also belived to affect the weather on Earth.
Ms Dikpati’s prediction is unprecedented. In almost 200 years since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have tried and failed to predict the size of future maxima.
The key to her prediction is a conveyer belt on the Sun.
Similar to the Earth’s Great Ocean Conveyer Belt that carries water and heat from ocean to ocean, the Sun’s is a current  - not of water but electrically conducting gas.
Just as our oceanic version controls weather on Earth, this controls the weather on the Sun or, more specifically, the sunspot cycle. The conveyer belt effectively recharges old sunspots – the faster the belt is moving, the faster the sunspots are recycled. The faster they are recycled, the greater the sunspot and subsequent solar flare acivity – and the belt is moving very fast at the moment.
‘I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle in late 2006 or 2007 and the solar max to be under way by 2010,’ said physicist David Hathaway.
The storm is coming.

As well as reminding me of some things I had read in brief about government cover-ups regarding the true nature of climate change and a suppression of the dangers posed by the state of our sun I found the correlation between the dates given and the much touted 2012 timescale to give pause for thought.