Hurricanes and Sunspots

There is about a 2-3 year lag from the peak of sunspot activity.



Guess when we will have our next hurricane cycle? That's right. After the sun starts it's next solar cycle.



Because sea surface temps follow the sun.

And You Only Thought This Happened In B-Movies

Two guys commit murder. One pleads out and testifies against his partner. In prison, they end up in the same cell and one of them ends up dead in 15 minutes.

McALESTER, Okla. — A 23-year-old inmate beaten to death at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary had been put in a cell with convicted killer he had testified against.

Prison spokesman Jerry Massie says Paul Duran Jr. fought with one cellmate and then was put in a cell with Jessie James Dalton.

Duran was found beaten to death about 15 minutes later.

Massie says the two were not supposed to be put in the same cell and prison officials are trying to determine how it happened.

I'll tell you how it happened. Duran pissed off the prison guards and they made a "mistake."

This makes Prison Break a little more believable. Well, except for season 3. And 4.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory Satellite: NASA, We Have A Problem

It was really a good idea. Get accurate data on green house gasses and spend a little quality time with "science" (as opposed to the usual hysterical fear mongering).

The OCO, orbiting carbon observatory, was set to start working this month, but the satellite shit the bed soon after liftoff. See NASA's explanation here.

Why do I have a feeling that Al Gore and Mark Serreze are secretly happy that this thing went bad? If the science debate is over (Al Gore) and we are in the "death spiral" (Mark Serreze), the new data would only be a distraction. Because they really like the current GHG-global warming hypothesis, and without a platform like the OCO we are back to having science standing on it's head trying to disprove an unproven hypothesis.

Obama Offers To Srap Missle Shield For A Handfull Of Magic Beans

:::Update Medvedev says go to hell:::

So who are we negotiating with here, the Russians or the Iranians? Aren't the Russians selling the Iranians their missile technology? Didn't the Russians help build the nuke plants? Aren't they one in the same?

President Obama offered to consider scrapping plans for a missile defense shield in Europe if Russia helps rein in Iran's nuclear program, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.

The article said Obama wrote to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell him Russia's aid in resolving the threat from Iran would make the missile shield plans unnecessary, according to an account from Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

A senior administration official told FOX News that Obama sent a letter to Medvedev but "we won't comment on the specifics."

So as long as Iran promises to be good we will drop our defenses... Seriously, it's not like Iran promotes the use of missiles anywhere.

Back to the fairy tale analogy. In Jack's fantasy, he really doesn't have much to lose in the first place. All he gives up is a broke cow and he ends up with a warm meal and a crack at the golden goose. That plus a couple of hours away from his bitchy mother.

In Obama's fantasy, he's betting an American city that the bad guys will stop hating us because we are no longer a threat to defend ourselves. ...And that Russia and Iran will tell him the truth.

Given those two scenarios, the fucking vine to the clouds and the gold-shitting goose takes less suspension of disbelief than honest self-reporting from the Iranian Mullahs.

The Russians and Iranians have to be laughing their asses off at Obama. So what is the fallback position here? You just offered up your most valuable negotiating asset in the first go-round.

Not to mention that Obama has spent the last 18 months signaling that he would scrap missle defense for NOTHING. So the Russians will pinch one of their best trading partners over something that has no value to you? I guess he assumes the Russians don't read newspapers. And in case you didn't notice, nobody fucking asked.

I never understood Jack's mom getting pissed off at the kid for not getting top dollar for that old cow. But if a promise is all Obama can get for our missile defense system after decades of development, we would have been better off having Jack as our Secretary of State.



Update: Medvedev says go to hell. AP translates as,

Russian President Medvedev has said he's willing to discuss the proposed US missile shield with Washington. But he added that any deal linking those talks with negotiations regarding Iran would not be productive.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev's comments came in response to a New York Times report that US President Barack Obama had written a secret letter to his Russian counterpart offering to halt the planned missile shield, which would be located mainly in Poland and the Czech Republic, in return for Moscow's help in stopping Iran from developing long-range nuclear weapons.

Japanese Scientists Compare Computer Climate Modelling To Ancient Astrology

It looks like kool-aid sales are down dramatically in Japan. From the people who practically invented doomsday movies, comes this (from the UK Register):

(they)compare computer climate modelling to ancient astrology. Others castigate the paucity of the US ground temperature data set used to support the hypothesis, and declare that the unambiguous warming trend from the mid-part of the 20th Century has ceased.

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change..

And this:

The report by Japan Society of Energy and Resources (JSER) is astonishing rebuke to international pressure, and a vote of confidence in Japan's native marine and astronomical research. Publicly-funded science in the West uniformly backs the hypothesis that industrial influence is primarily responsible for climate change, although fissures have appeared recently.

Leave it to a much older culture to take a "longer view" of our sketchy climate data.

Busted

This has not been a big story in the US, but the British papers have been covering Obama's Churchill snub all week. From the Telegraph.

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: "Thanks, but no thanks."

So it's not really a bust...more of a floating head, but it's the messages sent to the one ally we could count on in the last 7 years that is a bit disturbing. Does it signal an end to the wartime presidency or is it another of Obama's famous middle finger messages?

One clue was mentioned by the Telegraph.

Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr Obama than those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill's second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.

I'm willing to forgive the diplomatic faux pas, since the replacement is now the only Republican with any real power in Washington - Abe Lincoln.

If we keep moving towards socialism at the current pace, the bust in the White House during Obama's second term may look like this.

Sensor Drift, A New Weapon In The Green Scare Or Just Henny Penny Coming Home To Roost

Why is it that every time there is a malfunction of some kind in environmental science methods, the error is always on the side of global warming? I'm just saying, from the hockey stick graph to forgetting the role of the sun in the Earth's climate, a conspiracy-minded individual might start to get suspicious.

The problem is that it's not the environmental scientists that are catching the errors...it's everyday folks looking at the data. OK, by folks I mean science geeks who work in windowless rooms and can looks at thousands of fields of data without getting drunk first.

Case in point. The National Snow and Ice Data Center was forced to admit that the maps they have been making this year of Arctic sea ice were grossly underestimating actual sea ice. The problem, something called sensor drift. The really big problem. A 5-year old could draw the edge of the sea ice better than the NSIDC.

A statement from the NSIDC clears things up:

As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data. See below for more details.

We have removed the most recent data and are investigating alternative data sources that will provide correct results. It is not clear when we will have data back online, but we are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

So by quality control, you guys at the NSIDC mean the random chance that a reader catches your mistakes.

The money quote from NSIDC:

On February 16, 2009, as emails came in from puzzled readers, it became clear that there was a significant problem: sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean...Sensor drift is a perfect but unfortunate example of the problems encountered in near-real-time analysis.

In other words, real-time data is great when it is used to gin up end-of-the-earth stories in the New York Times, but real time data "is what is is" when it makes you look like Henny Penny.



Obviously environmental scientists just don't get the BIG PICTURE. Credibility is king for researchers. Eventually, eventually the truth wins out. Real science will win out. And if you are not willing to participate in the actual scientific process, someone else (probably with a lot less grant money and fewer Hollywood friends) will expose your research for what it is. And when that happens, sensor drift (and all of the other excuses) will be exposed for what it is.

Researcher bias.

And by Henny Penny, I mean Henny Penny. Check out Prof Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) and his "death spiral" - global warming hyperbole.

Subsidizing Irresponsibility

The old adage has never been more true: You want more of something, subsidize, it. Less of something, tax it. This country is subsidizing irresponsible behavior like a meteor is going to wipe out the earth in a matter of weeks.

Self reliance is dead. It's dead as a concept. It's dead as a romantic idea. It's dead dead.

Item. The oct-tot mom from California. The poster child of irresponsibility. She is the this generations' Alex DeLarge of aimless self gratification. A "disabled" worker using a phony settlement check and tons of government assistance who goes on plastic surgery trips so she can look like a fat and very poor man's version of Angelina Jolie. All the while sprinkling the hospitals with a score of her offspring. Which of course means we have to sell several more millions of dollars worth of t-bills to some nameless chi-com.

She has been walking around with her middle finger pointed at the country for years. Sure. Sure. We know you don't have time to read the meter, you are just here for a little invitro.

Maybe Kubrick was right. A sick society is responsible for creating the "little Alex's" and Nadya's of the world. But that really wasn't his point was it?

Maybe Nadya is doing exactly what the government wants her to do? I mean how many tax payers will it take in 20 years to pay for the social programs AND the next handfull of stimulus/bailout programs.

The only way this Ponzi scheme works is if we get hundreds of millions of new suckers to pay taxes. Nadya may just end up being the most patriotic woman in the country.

"White Male Worker" Is The New N Word And The New Segregation Era

Robert Riech had a Freudian slip and almost no one noticed. But for those of us in the struggle, we hear the code talk. We know what you mean when you say "white male." Because you say it like a dirty word and then say you "got nothin' aginst us."

Tell me Obama, is this stimulus plan separate but equal?

Instead of separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, "white male workers" get separate government programs. We have to ride in the back of the new economic bus.

As explained, there are many ways to keep that damned dirty white males from filthying up the stimulus plan. "We" can have conditions or criteria that will exclude those who have worked hard to become "skilled."



Maybe if I tell 'em that my Grandma was Ethiopian?

13 Sets Of Rules And One Outcome For The One

The Obama Administration announced they were going to support letting states go it alone when it comes to auto emission and mileage standards. From CNN.

President Obama signed a memorandum Monday requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider an application by California to set more stringent auto emissions and fuel efficiency standards than required by federal law.

If the EPA grants a waiver allowing California to set its own emissions standards, the nation's largest state will be allowed to require automakers to produce trucks and cars that get better mileage than what is required under the current national standard. Thirteen other states could take similar action.

A new era of States Rights!

No so fast.

Rather than take issues head-on and call them what they really are. Obama and his team play little Orwellian games with language to avoid a tough discussion.

Lets call this backdoor CAFE what it is. chickenshit. They know those controversial standards would not have passed without pissing off his blue-dogs who will lose more jobs to Japanese and Korean auto makers. Rather than make 13 or 14 different models of cars, the automakers will be forced to the toughest of the state standards. Presto, new CAFE without the headache of having to sell the nation on the idea.

Just like the chickenshit socialism being disguised as "stimulus" and chickenshit welfare being called "tax cuts," it seems this administration will be masters at the avoiding fights by selling things under new names.

It takes a willing media.

Of course it does. Without a lapdog White House Press Corps and every newsie gushing about Michelle's latest designer dress, none of this happens. Yeah, the same media that blasted Sarah Palin's nice threads during the campaign, are now praising Michelle's couture closet.

It takes a pretty damn stupid public too.

Of course all of this is obvious. Tax cuts for people who don't pay taxes. Energy independence by taxing energy producers. Stimulus via birth control. An infrastructure focused stimulus plan that spends 5% of it's moneyon infrastructure. If people are either too stupid to recognize the double talk or simply don't care anymore then we are truly fucked as a nation.

On the other hand. If the public is a mass of idiots and the media is in his back pocket, why resort to the games? Just say that paying $4 bucks for gas is good for them and let that be that. I'm not sure. Maybe there is a little nagging doubt about that middle 15% that really decides elections.

Obama is playing the cool kid saying you can do anything. That there is no limit to the money and the party will go on forever. Dissenting voices are being treated like the nerdy high school killjoy.

For now the answer is, print the money and sell the debt as fast as you can. We will all just take the blue pill and spend money in shopping malls until the government checks start to bounce.

You Can't Just Listen To Rush Limbaugh

At the end of an almost perfect week. A week that included more praise and adulation (bordering on worship) than any president in modern history, President Obama took time out of his busy schedule to notice that there was a person in the country not agreeing with him. The President warned Republicans that"You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." I think this very little incident gives us an interesting glimpse into the man.


Richard Nixon had thin skin too.


Being too aware of your critics is one of the many personality traits that lead Nixon down his path of paranoia and self-destruction. Clinton had his rapid response team. I guess President Obama has a zero-tolerance of disagreement policy. Bush didn't respond to anything. It seems amazing that a President could propose the most massive spending program in history and not expect some dissent. Especially after we learned that the second biggest (the bank bailout known as TARP) become a political slush fund and was used by banks to buy other banks...all without oversight or accountability. But I'm sure this one will be different.


You can't just listen to Barney Frank either.


Barney Frank looks at TARP and stimulus like all of the other incumbents: Fast cash for friends and an easy path to reelection. Barney has the same trouble all politicians have with unlimited funds. From the Wall Street Journal:

Troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston didn't look much like a candidate for aid from the Treasury Department's bank bailout fund last fall.

The Treasury had said it would give money only to healthy banks, to jump-start lending. But OneUnited had seen most of its capital evaporate. Moreover, it was under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use.

Nonetheless, in December OneUnited got a $12 million injection from the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. One apparent factor: the intercession of Rep. Barney Frank, the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Frank, by his own account, wrote into the TARP bill a provision specifically aimed at helping this particular home-state bank. And later, he acknowledges, he spoke to regulators urging that OneUnited be considered for a cash injection.

In other words. We are letting this congress pick winners and losers based on nothing more than political ties. More of the same old pay to play bullshit.


The answer is called the Resolution Trust Corporation.


The RTC liquidated "toxic" assets without a lot of political interference in the 80's and 90's...like the TARP was supposed to do, but didn't. Why? It's not so hard to figure, there wasn't any money in it for the politicians. When RTC was done, it was dissolved. No one left to lobby, no kickbacks. The damn thing was too fucking efficient. Fast forward 15 years and it became blindingly clear we needed RTC 2, but congress recalled the efficient and unprofitable (for them) way things went before and decide to take a new path, one that morphed a 2 page bill into thousands pages of pork.


Why not just give everyone a check for one million dollars?


Really, how different is that from the philosophy that government can spend it's way out of a recession. Hell, it would probably be cheaper in the long run because it would teach people about basic economics. I can only imagine what a new car would cost by the end of the first week.

Hayek had it right, this is the road to serfdom.

Writing About Killing President Bush Gets You A Movie Deal...Or Two

Do the same about the not-yet-inaugurated Obama. You get arrested. Even if you do it on a website dedicated to aliens and UFO's.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Actually, this rank hypocrisy was easily predicted, but it's nauseating nonetheless.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Authorities on Friday arrested a U.S. man on suspicion of threatening to kill President-elect Barack Obama based on statements he posted on a website about UFOs and aliens, the Justice Department said.

Steven Joseph Christopher, in three postings to www.alien-earth.org, said he planned to assassinate Obama in Washington "as a sacrificial lamb," the department said in a statement.

"It's really nothing personal about the man. He speaks well ... . But I know it's for the country's own good that I do this," Christopher reportedly wrote.

Here is a clip from the flick that fantasizes about the assassination of Bush.


For web postings that mention killing the Bush, just use google. From Nobel Prize winner Betty Williams to online games and t-shirts, the list is expansive with almost no arrests.

Try to imagine the scenario where a similar movie is made about Obama...not that I would care to see it. But the point is that even if Obama is the worst failure ever, this would never happen.

Either we live in a country where it's acceptable to call for the president's assassination or it's not. Unequal application of justice is not political correctness, it's a form tyranny. Tyranny that is particularly alarming at a time when the government is expanding at the fastest pace ever seen. How long before justice is solely driven by what is acceptable and not what is lawful or unlawful?

We Should All Have Wings

After seeing an article in the Jerusalem Post I got a chuckle over a term I have long found ridiculous.

IDF troops in the Gaza Strip on Saturday targeted Hamas operative Amir Mansi, a senior member of Izzadin Kassam, the group's military wing.

The implication is that Hamas has a peace loving political wing that seeks a mutually beneficial relationship with Israel. In truth, the political wing is probably made up of the smarter guys from the military wing who have a thing about getting shot.

Having a military wing means never having to say you are sorry.

What a great concept. You send in your guys to shoot rockets, strap bombs on their backs or whatever and when bad things happen. Boom. Instant deniability. For, you see, it was our militant wing. And for all good people in the political wing, we just can't control those darn military wing guys.

Yassir Arafat used that militant wing vs political wing game with the PLO movement to great effect for years. I remember the IRA had the same setup. In any case, it's a game played by organizations that don't want total war, but don't want total peace either

It's like it never happened.

Hamas has been sending out their militant wing to shoot something like 3000 rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip during this most recent Egyptian negotiated "cease fire." And peace is assured as long as Israel doesn't shoot back. In fact the constant barrage of rockets became a boring daily event and the media stopped reporting on them, unless there was a body count. It was only when the Israelis started making noise that Hamas was about to get punished, that the world took notice of this again. Obama famously said, "...if someone was shooting rockets into the apartment where my daughters were sleeping...you bet I would shoot back..."

And so Israel has finally responded. Responded against people who don't wear uniforms. Shoot rockets from hospital roofs and school yards and religious sites. Predictably the media starts their "Israel is overreacting" reporting within days because everyone knows these rockets are coming from the "militants" and not the innocent civilians of Gaza.

All kids play this game of proportional retaliation.

When a younger brother tweaks a big brother on the ear after being dominated on the Play Station, he is playing the same game. Little brothers know that big brothers get in trouble for hitting little brothers. Big brothers know that too. But little brothers hate getting beat all the time. So they do the equivalent of firing a few rockets into big brothers' territory.

Eventually big brother hits the little brother, who then runs screaming to mom. Dad is forced to intervene. No matter the punishment, it was worth it to the little brother because it's his only way to release his frustration.

Is it any wonder newspapers are dying?

The media will spend weeks finding out if Sarah Palin was really pregnant two years ago, while a ploy designed by 8 year olds is beyond their comprehension. And once again "world opinion" and editorial pages are insisting that Israel back off. One more time. So we can have a "cease fire" that now seems defined as Israel not shooting back.

This cycle is going to end in one of two ways. Little brother is going to mature and find other things to occupy him or there will be total war.

The question is, what could individuals do with their militant wings? Not pay taxes? Steal? Cheat on their spouses? What about those camera speed traps? We could say, I wasn't driving that day, it was my militant wing. That guy refuses to slow down and your ticket is a total overreaction to me...the law abiding political wing of me.

Emmanuel Jal - War Child

I just finished reviewing a first copy of this young man's life story for Amazon and it was an amazing journey. A real life Long Walk. He is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, a jenajesh, and was conscripted into the SPLA to fight the Muslim government army during the Sudanese civil war in the 1990's. Most of the 2 million dead were Christians from his home in southern Sudan. He was separated from his family at age 9 and survived countless military attacks, refugee camps and a prolonged military campaign...all before he was 18.

He is now a music artist and his story, detailed in the book War Child will be released in early February.


A sample.

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Whatever Happened To Acid Rain And Why Didn't It Have Any Staying Power

I saw some dead trees on the edge of a swamp the other day and recalled the iconic "acid rain" forest pictures in the 1980's. Back then, anywhere there was a patch of dead trees, people automatically thought...hmmm acid rain is killing the earth...making us sick.



Looking back, acid rain hysteria ended up as a footnote sandwiched between global cooling and the ozone hole. A lousy place historically if your job required research money. (Side note: An interesting bit of research would be finding out what those acid rain PhD's are publishing today...any guesses?)

I'll admit, I'm a child of the 80's. So looking back at that era can be tough sometimes. The clothes were awful. And now I have to admit that our attempts to terrorize the public through research were just as bad as the hair.

It started well enough with articles such as Likens (1984), "Acid rain: the smokestack is the smoking gun." That's good stuff on the face of it, Al Gore used the same imagery to great effect.



We had people out there chasing acid rain snowstorms and acid rain thunderstorms. We had tipping points, mass extinction predictions. Everything was in place. My generation was about to do something that would be remembered forever. Then...

The 1990's.

That first big Nirvana CD should have been a clue. The public was craving something more serious. We offered them the death of a salamander and the 1990's gave the public the whole damn world in peril.

I can't blame the public for taking to global warming the way they did. You are not going to make movies with acid rain showers chasing frogs. But ice hurricanes chasing actors! Whew. That's good stuff.

I guess acid rain never really stood a chance. Sure, the data never matched the claims. And the earth has natural balancing systems we didn't know about when we chose acid rain in the first place, but that has never stopped global warming. I'm not bitter (OK, a little). I just have to admit that global warming is a better product and we had a nice little run back in the day.

Just don't expect me to be sorry when you fail global warming.