SH
I think it does not have potential to help but it will make things worse.
While the article says the current drop of in solar activity is the fastest in 10,000 years the scientists quoted say that this will have no permanent effect on AGW. Just that it 'may' delay reaching a specific temperature by five years or so.
...An analysis of ice-cores, which hold a long-term record of solar activity, suggests the decline in activity is the fastest that has been seen in 10,000 years.
"It's an unusually rapid decline," explains Prof Lockwood.
"We estimate that within about 40 years or so there is a 10% to 20% - nearer 20% - probability that we'll be back in Maunder Minimum conditions." ...
..."I've done a number of studies that show at the very most it might buy you about five years before you reach a certain global average temperature level. But that's not to say, on a more regional basis there aren't changes to the patterns of our weather that we'll have to get used to."....
But the big take away for me is
the 20% chance of being in a minimum in 40 years.IF this happens (1 chance in 5) it 'might' delay the rise in temps by 5 years 40 years from now. This minimum if it happens will actually make things worse not better.
The article says that it could cause increasingly difficult winters in North America and Europe as happened during the Maunder Minimum. Imagine the difficulty of convincing the public in the OECD countries to initiate massive civilizational change in the face of years of continuing severe winters. It would never fly here in the US is my guess. The denial industry would have excellent ammunition to fight you with and the "common sense", which is normally wrong, would tell the public it is more like it used to be with bad winters and hot summers. I note the recent bad winter storms in the US which garnered so much attention would have been considered typical winter weather in 1965.
Another factor which occurs to me is that adapting to bad winters costs a lot of money. That would bleed resources from other potential efforts which are going to become increasingly critical as time goes on (if there is even any point in trying to make a difference at this late date).
A third, and by far the most important issue, is that if we do get increasingly difficult winters in North America and Europe this will dramatically impact agriculture. In a very bad way. During the period of the Maunder Minimum there were huge problems growing crops in the high latitudes. This resulted in the complete loss of settlers in Greenland, the loss of 50% of the population of Iceland, severe food production problems for Native Americans, famines all over Europe with population losses in Northern Europe of 20-30%. When we consider that the effects of this solar minimum do not extend to the whole planet but are concentrated in areas where we are going to need to increase yields, but would not be able to do so, and that the low latitude areas are still going to be heating and yields there will be dropping at the same time. This is a recipe for disaster and agricultural collapse. And I note it times out to be right in line with my estimate of 2050 for the collapse of industrial agriculture
Go figure.
