The following is a link to a Wikipedia article that discusses the “Little Ice Age” which coincided with the Maunder minimum, solar cycle magnetic minimum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article is not familiar with the research that supports the solar magnetic cycle modulation of clouds. As noted above there are 170 papers that support the assertion that solar magnetic cycle changes modulate planetary clouds.
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The Little Ice Age brought bitterly cold winters to many parts of the world, but is most thoroughly documented in Europe and North America. It probably brought about the demise of the Norse settlements in Greenland, which had died out by the 1400s. In the mid-17th century, glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held frost fairs on the ice. The first Thames frost fair was in 1607…
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During the period 1645–1715, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, there was a period of low solar activity known as the Maunder Minimum. No physical link between low sunspot activity and cooling temperatures has been established, but the coincidence of the Maunder Minimum with the deepest trough of the Little Ice Age is suggestive of such a connection.[27] The Spörer Minimum has also been identified with a significant cooling period near the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Other indicators of low solar activity during this period are levels of the isotopes carbon-14 and beryllium-10.[28]
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The population of Iceland fell by half, but this was perhaps also due to fluorosis caused by the eruption of the volcano Laki in 1783.[7] The Viking colonies in Greenland died out (in the 15th century) because they could no longer grow enough food there. In North America, American Indians formed leagues in response to food shortages.[8]
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