Bundy, I don't seriously think the Mayan calendar has anything to do with anything, that was just sarcasm. Yes the sun is important, but they can measure the amount of energy coming from the sun and the changes are not significant enough to cause the warming we are seeing.
You're the one who brought up the other planets, so why is it that Venus is hotter than Mercury, when Venus is further from the sun??? The reason is due to the atmsophere of Venus which is mostly nitrogen and CO2!
It just goes to show that the two papers published in Nature (is there a more credible scientific journal anywhere?) may have taken years of research, modelling and obtaining peer reviews, yet people can still wallow in some other hare-brained explanation because the subject is controversial and the scientific conclusions don't agree with their own world view.
Yes solar variation may have added a small contribution to recent warming, but the bulk of it has been attributed to man-made greenhouse gases. Here is what Wikipedia says:
