NASA reported last year that “if anything,” the Sun contributed “a very slight overall cooling in the past 25 years.” Despite that many man-made global warming deniers will try tell you that it is because of sunspots that we are seeing so much global warming.
Another major 2007 study on the Sun found that “over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.”
Now, the Sun looks like we are just coming out of the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century, meaning it looks like the Sun is going to stop acting as a coolant and is going to start adding to the global heating we are seeing.
More on this can be read on Climate Progress.
Middle Image Credit: prepared by Robert A. Rohde as part of the Global Warming Art project