"I thought you might enjoy this site:

"The site author is Geoff Sharp, who strikes me as a really down to earth, pragmatic scientist who has found a fairly significant issue with modern counting methodology when trying to compare to the old Wolf sunspot numbers. His conclusion is that we are now significantly over counting, as compared to the old methods, which makes complete sense, given that our instruments are now CCD's and computers, and not human eyeballs with imperfect telescopes. He also argues that the methodology for counting has been modified enough in recent years to make direct comparisons with older data problematic. He explains his theory and data on the site. The site has updates for counts up through the most recent day. He has long argued that we are now in an analog to cycle 5, which started the Dalton Minimum. His numbers look quite convincing so far.

"I thought your analysis, referenced in the Comment, was excellent, and prophetic, by the way."

Eoin Treacy's view Thank you for your kind words and this informative email which I'm sure will be of interest to the Collective.