Lou Shornick's letter to the New York Times [via email]

...The current "Extreme Cold" that is being experienced by most of the country could be entirely due to the lack of Sunspot Activity.

The cost of complying with what the new administration plans for the reduction of "greenhouse gases" could cost Billions, and could bankrupt some industries now of the verge of going out of business due to the Financial Crisis, the worst in about 70 years.

Dana Longcope, a solar physicist at MSU, said that the sun usually operates on an 11-year cycle with maximum activity occurring in the middle of the cycle. The last cycle reached its peak in 2001 and is believed to be just ending now. The next cycle is just beginning and is expected to reach its peak around 2012. But so far nothing is happening. Sunspot period for some time has been ZERO. Geophysicist Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become an astronaut with NASA, said that pictures from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory also show that there are currently no spots on the sun. He also noted that the Earth cooled quickly from January 2007 to January 2008 by about 0.7 degrees C.

If this continues, we may be facing a little ice age instead of "Global Warming"

Lou Shornick [graduate of RPI Class of '39 with a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering]