This is CBS on the world.

Behind the Black, Bob Zimmerman's website.

I'm John Baster.

It's time for a sunspot update, Bob?

Yes, we do this every month.

NOAA issues a graph, updates its graph, of the solar cycle.

The solar cycle of sunspots up and down has been going on now for 250 years, and

they measure it by looking at the sunspots visible on the Earth-facing hemisphere. And so they

published their graph, and then I repost it with annotations to give it some context, because they

leave the context out, usually. And mostly, I add the prediction, so you can see whether

they were right or wrong, no scientist.

And guess what?

For the last two cycles, they've been wrong, almost 100%.

And they continue to be wrong in this particular cycle.

It does appear that right now the sunspot activity continues to be high.

It's much higher than predicted.

It's much lower than other predictions. But right now,

it is lower than the peak that we had over the summer. But it's stable at this high level,

but lower than the summer. So I think what we're in now is the saddle between a double-peaked

maximum. That's my prediction, which is about as good as the predictions from the NOAA scientists,

which means you shouldn't trust what I say.

But I say, what I think is going to happen is it's going to be stable for the next six months or so.

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