There is a tiny war of words in Nature this week about reconstructions of solar influences on climate. Muscheler et.al. (2005) claim that current solar activity is not particularly unusual in a criticism of Solanki et.al. (2004) (who themselves claim that the last few decades are unusual with respect to the previous 11,000 years). There is a reply by Solanki et.al which essentially states that Muscheler et al have used an inappropriate normalisation to get large amounts of historical activity. It’s only a tiny war though, because all parties agree with Solanki and Krivova (2003) who demonstrate that even if the last few decades are unusual, they can’t explain the recent warming.