"In the early 20th century there were periods of quiet lasting almost twice as long as the current spell."
"In summary, "the current minimum is not abnormally low or long.""
"Hathaway anticipates more spotless days, maybe even hundreds, followed by a return to Solar Max conditions in the years around 2012."
Along with some interesting graphs, it looks like everything is business as usual for the sun.
A google search on the author, Rebecca Sato, shows that she typically writes lots of "what if" and other fluff pieces.
Sounds like fear mongering to me.
Temperature peaked in 1998.
It is fair to say that solar dynamo modelling has not yet recovered from this four-way punch, in that nothing remotely resembling concensus currently exists as to the mode of operation of the solar dynamo
From the Brief historical survey, which is at least partly readable.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/11jul_solarcycleupda...
NASA solar physicist David Hathaway thinks that this is mostly alarmist nonsense, and after looking at his solar cycle graph, I'm inclined to agree with him. The Maunder Minimum was a huge departure from the cycle, and it's far too early to extrapolate and assume a similar departure.
http://www.spaceweather.com
Space Weather tracks daily sunspot activity, as well as lots of other cool tidbits of current astronomy.