This is a plot of solar flare activity over the last 30 years. No doubt you will spot a pattern, that is because the human brain is particularly adept at spotting patterns, even when there isn't one, but that's another story. In this case there is a legitimate pattern and it is an 11 year cyclical pattern.

The really interesting part about this pattern is that in 2005 we should be experiencing much less sun spot activity than we actually are. Whilst the solar minimum is not due until 2006, it was expected that sun spot activity would be diminishing in the lead up. The exact opposite has been occuring, the level of X-Class solar flares this year is more typical of a period approaching a solar maximum.

One of the major influences of sun spots on the earths ecology is that they are a major contributor to the warmth of the earth. Periods of extended absense of sun spots are the trigger for an ice age. Conversely excessive sunspot activity contributes significantly to the global warming of the earth.

If we are entering a period of extended sun spot activity then all the self-flagellation that has been occuring over the use of fossil fuels and their contribution to global warming may be unnecesary. It may be that not matter how responsible we could have been in the past the global warming would have happened anyway.

Read more on sunspot cycles here.

Putting aside the cause of global warming for a moment and moving to one of the most dramatic results of global warming, it seems that hurricanes and typhoons (which are essentially the same thing but in different oceans) are getting fewer but stronger. Nature reports on research by Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta which shows that ,whilst the number of "stormy days" has decrease by 25% since 1995, the number of category-4 and -5 storms have risen by 30% over the same period. Most of these storms are at sea and do not impact human communities but clearly experiencing storms such as huricane Katrina will be more common in the future and communities in the danger zones will need to alter their approach to coping with these phenonemia.