Hello, Sunshine

Sunspots affect the weather; Ronald Bailey at Reason tells us about it.

Comments

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Setting a new record, I'm going off topic in a first post. Susan Estrich's column about Ted Kennedy is very interesting.

[bgates]

I didn't find that interesting at all.

[Captain Hate]

Me neither; why did you find it interesting, Chaco? Maybe that a rape victim like Estrich is so strangely non-judgemental on such a lecherous prick?

[bishop]

If anyone is surprised about that, the sunspots, not Susan Estrich, then this will provoke global outrage:(sarc)

[PD]

re: Estrich article, isn't it rather poor phrasing to end an article on a known womanizer with "Keep the rudder true"?

[Ignatz]

Jeez, I knew Estrich was an irritating speaker but her gravel filled craw can't hold a candle to her ineptitude as a writer.
That column of machine gun burst sentence fragments reads like a love smitten high school sophomore who just discovered Hemingway.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

why did you find it interesting, Chaco?

Because it's almost entirely a list of Kennedy's flaws and failings?

Because the anecdote with Rose seems very informative ("treated him like he was 13 years old")?

Because I think it's good for one's soul to occasionally see what someone outside one's own bubble thinks?

[MayBee]

Because I think it's good for one's soul to occasionally see what someone outside one's own bubble thinks?

help me! help me!
I'm trapped in a bubble!

[MayBee]

I don't know, Charlie. It seemed like a fair question to ask what you found interesting about it, considering you posted and said it was interesting.

[bishop]

I guess it's more candid than one would expect so soon, BTW, is Ed Klein, just starting to creep everyone out, I thought
it was just with Hillary, and Katie, but he's becoming the upscale David Heymann
and Christopher Anderson.

[Jim Ryan]

It was interesting. You peer in and see human beings conducting themselves as if normal under the burden of their own indecency. I experienced a similar voyeurism when my grandfather would tell me about our cousin Sheldon Harte, the nutty New York commie who hurried down to Mexico when he heard Trotsky was there, became Trotsky's personal secretary, and was killed in the first attempt to assassinate Trotsky.

This reminiscence was also interesting, in the same vein.

[matt]

global warming is caused by the sun.

[bgates]

help me! help me!
I'm trapped in a bubble!

Punch line to one of Saint Teddy's favorite jokes, right there.

[bgates]

I think it's good for one's soul to occasionally see what someone outside one's own bubble thinks

That hadn't occurred to me, but I suppose that is a good idea. I know this is a long shot, but if you come across anybody else who has a published column, blog, newspaper story, or tv segment broadly favorable to Ted Kennedy, could you let us know?

[Pofarmer]

In a funny way we should thank the CO2 warmerists. Due to them shoving AGW down our throats, we are probably going to figure out the ACTUAL mechanism regulating climate years earlier than we otherwise would have.

[Jack is Back!]

Oh goody, it only effects the "weather", I can still believe in global warming and climate change. Better yet we need those idiots in Congress to look at those sunspot for about 10 minutes without wearing a welder's hood.

I wonder how many cigarettes a day Estrich smokes? If she keeps it up she becomes a candidate for an interview with Ezekiel Emmanuel on end of life care. From reading her column she is darn close to dementia and Ezy doesn't want to give you any health care to extend your life if you can't remember what you had for breakfast that day.

If you don't think medicine meets politics in "health care reform" than read Ezy's bio at the LUN. Note he obtained a MD PHd with a dissertation that won the Toppan Award for best dissertation in political science. Then scroll down and read the titles of his writings. "Regulating the End of Life"? Really, I will now have to pass a test and get a license to kick the bucket - probably have to pay and arm and leg (which the doctor will make a lot of money taking off) for the license.

[Jack is Back!]

Sorry about that wrong LUN. Why does the URL stay there all the time even after you have used another one?

[PD]

JiB, it's a test of your cognitive awareness. Ezy will use the results to assess your fitness to live.

[Fresh Air]

JiB--

Off to the meat grinder with you. Take Estrichen with you.

[bishop]

"Carousel, renew,"no 'sanctuary' for you. Is
Death Race '2000 (of which they did a horrible remake, next on the list

[Original MikeS]

I find this theory, that the Sun could be effecting Earth's climate, highly dubious. After all the Sun is millions of miles from Earth.

[gmax]

Its climate change folks, that AGW stuff is so passe. That way, if its hot, cold or rainy or drought, does not matter. More the better actually for trying to mandate shivering in a cave in the dark.

[gmax]

What TM not a word about the magnificent beatdown the Rangers put on the Yanks? Must be cuz your 401 K is tanking...

[centralcal]

You Hoo, Sue . . . Cheney will be on Fox News Sunday this weekend.

[Fresh Air]

OM--

Yeah, the sun is 92 million miles away from the earth. How could that possibly affect Al Gore's picnic?

[PD]

I find this theory, that the Sun could be effecting Earth's climate, highly dubious. After all the Sun is millions of miles from Earth.

Yeah, and besides, it's not shining during the night!

[sylvia]

"The puzzle has been how fluctuations in the sun's energy of about 0.1 percent over the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle could affect the weather"

I know that has been a puzzle before- but why? Who ever said that the sun's rays equals a direct correlation to the earth's temp? I think to ever think that, was naive. There is obviously some sort of more complex thing going on with the atmosphere, the oceans etc.

And who ever thought that we could measure the sun's output completely accurately? We can barely measure the earth's temperature. How are they so sure it's only a 0.1% fluctuation?

[Boatbuilder]

Looks like Estrich got herself in the appropriate frame of mind to eulogize Teddy by drinking heroic quantities of his favotite brand of scotch.

[sylvia]

One thing I noticed for a while now in lots of media is that warming threads are one of the most conducive for humor. What are we going to joke about after we actually figure warming all out?

[Pops]

HEADLINE:
Big Liberal Teddy Kennedys' will gives all his money to the poor and downtrodden!

HA Ha Ha Ha

[Captain Hate]

Because I think it's good for one's soul to occasionally see what someone outside one's own bubble thinks?

My soul's doing just fine despite having to deal with insults of my willingness to be open to other ideas by smart but arrogant assholes. Let me know if you ever pass up an opportunity to be a prick to anybody in the future so I can check who wins the pool.

[Janet]

I just sent off an email to the ombudsman at the WaPo asking..."where's the story?". This time it is about Charlie Rangel. They aren't even reporting things anymore...not even in a crappy, biased way.

It was funny when they wrote about the fishy email site, flag@whitehouse, being taken down - because they had never written about it to begin with.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

It seemed like a fair question to ask what you found interesting about it, considering you posted and said it was interesting.

Had the question been "what did you find interesting?" I'd agree.

When you add "Maybe that a rape victim like Estrich is so strangely non-judgemental on such a lecherous prick?" it looks more like yet another reprimand for failing to participate in the Two Minute Hate.

Look, I don't like Teddy any more than anyone else. He did several horrible things, and a number of bad things; on the other hand, he had a pretty horrible life, and a truly horrific death — remember, I watched a lover die that way, and frankly it'd be kinder to be gut-shot and staked out by the Apache.

So remember the Duke of Venice: "How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?"

[Charlie (Colorado)]

How are they so sure it's only a 0.1% fluctuation?

It's a small percentage, but the magnitude of the change in absolute terms is pretty big, Sylvia: that's around 1 W/m², which is seven or eight orders of magnitude bigger than the limits on that kind of sensor.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Yeah, and besides, it's not shining during the night!

But that gives such a marvelous opportunity for research. We could land a probe....

[Captain Hate]

it looks more like yet another reprimand for failing to participate in the Two Minute Hate.

Zing

[bishop]

I put it to you, that there maybe some warming, although the evidence is unclear.
But I don't presume to think, that a)we are the main driver in it and b)that we should
be in 'sack cloth and ashes' over it, as the cap n trade bill mandates.

As to the earlier point, one cannot avoid the bubble, that not only imposes a certain certain of facts, but a certain world view
'embedded' within. To whit, Michael Jackson was a talented entertainer, so all his eccentricities are to be accepted, and rationalized. Ted Kennedy was tormented by
the all too tragic demise of his brothers, so his personal and professional foibles are to be excused.

[MayBee]

it looks more like yet another reprimand for failing to participate in the Two Minute Hate.

I don't know. I said I found it fitting he be buried with his brothers in Arlington, and I made it out alive.

[Fresh Air]

There was a Two-Minute Hate...and I missed it? Damn! Where do you find out about these things?

[Jim Ryan]

It takes the rays of sunlight 8 minutes to reach earth from the sun, traveling through frigid space.

That's 8 minutes. In frigid space.

If anyone thinks the rays are even barely warm by the time they get to earth, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

It's got nothing to do with the sun, people.

[bishop]

So the fact that the chairman of the House Tax writing commission, just found he had 800K in extra taxable income, along with the overseer of the IRS, and his Turbo Tax follies, isn't a subject anymore. Well it is Chicago, right. Yet this doesn't mean
certain person's PAC's cannot be infinitely scoured for any kind of technical error. They have all the time in the world for that.

[Janet]

Yeah bishop - we are living in THEIR bubble narrative. We can't get away from it. Heaven forbid they ever check out OUR views. My kids must be strong enough to hear every loonie idea in school. It is as though the left fears that if some ever hear the ideas of conservatism they might "fall away", and become "believers" in liberty!

[Extraneus]

That's in the running for world's funniest physics joke, Jim. :-)

[bgates]

I don't know...I made it out alive.

Punch line to one of Saint Teddy's favorite jokes, right there.

[Jim Ryan]

Ex, you want physics joke? It's inside baseball, and the payoff isn't that great, but here goes. A physicist goes with his wife to the mall. They shop for a while and - you know husbands - he get's very bored. They agree to split up so she can finish her shopping and to meet back at the mall entrance in half an hour. Shortly thereafter, the physicist meets a pretty girl and they go to her apartment and have sex. He returns to the mall. His wife is there at the entrance, fuming mad, having waited two hours.

"Where were you?!" she says.

The physicist decides to fess up and says, "I, um, I -- I met a pretty girl and we went to her apartment and had sex."

The wife says, "Don't lie to me!! You were in your lab!!"

See? Very, very inside baseball, payoff mediocre.

[paul hogue]

And in other news, that same sun rises in the East only to set in the West 12 hours later.

Who knew!!?

[matt]

Capt;

did you see my post on the new 2 minute hate? No offense, of course.

[Captain Hate]

Thanks for pointing it out matt; no offense taken, of course.

[matt]

The solar constant is @ 1360 watts/meter squared across the spectrum. In other words it is a s**tload of energy.

[Extraneus]

If nothing else, that's a great idea, Jim.

[Extraneus]

According to Wikipedia

The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.[11] In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year.[12][13] Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass.[14] The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined.[15]

[bgates]

In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year.

Actually, I was using that energy to make sure I could travel to most parts of the earth's surface without freezing to death.

[daddy]

Well sure it answers questions about Ice Ages and Snowball Earth and Global Warming and Maunder minimum's and Solar Polarity reversals, but what about the freakin' HoneyBee's? Until it gives me that, I ain't buying it. I'm sticking with the theory that in UK HoneyBee's die the closer they are to Haggis, and in the States they die because of having unprotected sex with visiting Aussie HoneyBee's.

[Jim Ryan]

The physics jokes are going way, way inside now. You have to have two semesters of thermodynamics to get them. I've had one semester of it, so I know bgates's joke was funny, but I don't know why.

[centralcal]

Golly, I seem to miss everything. Wasn't here for the 2 minute hate, but did make it time for the homily.

Matt - enjoy your blog and can always relate to your California perspective.

[hit and run]

I had the distinct honor and great pleasure of having lunch with Soylent today.

I love him.

There. I said it. I don't care who hears it.

[daddy]

Yeah Hit, but trust me, if you tell him you don't like Sarah Palin, consider it over.

Apologies. I should be shot.

[bad s##t]

I want to have lunch with Soylent..... [[[whine]]]

[bgates]

I know bgates's joke was funny

Not sure if I should respond "duh" or "huh?"

I was just saying that you can't really say energy absorbed by "the oceans, atmosphere, and land masses" isn't being "used", because if it weren't for all that absorption, it would be really cold.

[Porchlight]

Awesome, hit (and Soylent)!

[centralcal]

lol, daddy!

[daddy]

Just for fun,

This Sunspot stuff got me thinking about a recent read of Isaac Newton. The story is repeated in many of his Bio's, but while still at school and trying to get to the bottom of Optic's and sunlight, the young undergrad did 2 things I've always thought amazing in his pursuit of scientific truth.

1) To test Descarte's theory that light was a "pressure" pulsating thru the either, he inserted a "bodkin" or large needle (probably like a popsickle stick) "betwixt my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could." He did this in order to alter the curve of his retina and observe the results...he nearly blinded himself.

2) After reading Boyle's experiments, he decided to do one concerning the Sun. This story is written up different ways in different books in terms of what they think he was trying to do, but basically he stared at the Sun unblinking, with 1 eye, for a very extended period, either to see the effect it would have on his eye or to burn a picture of it on his retina so that at leisure time he could sit with eye's closed, and still study the image of the sun basically burned into his eyeball. For this last experiment the books say Isaac had to sit in a darkened room for 3 days with with a cloth tied over his eyes in order to recover. Then thank goodness the Plague hit so he could take a break from courses and go home and invent gravity, Optics and Calculus.

Cool stuff aye? How can you not love the guy? Makes me ashamed that during my undergrad days, all I experimented with was trying to do 360's on a skateboard.

[centralcal]

Hit and Soylent having lunch, reminds me - where's Clarice today? Is she off traveling again?

[boris]

"because if it weren't for all that absorption, it would be really cold"

That's Not Funny! Shame on you.

[pagar]

O/T of the sun, but if you thought you were looking at the sun in America, this guy says:

"It ain't America No More"!

LUN

[Dave (in MA)]

Anthropogenic sunspots. I think somehow that Bush is to blame, but I'm still working on proving it.

[Original MikeS]

I am totally pissed off that I wasn't notified that there would be a 2 minute hate! Why the hell wasn't I notified? Damn it. I hate when that happens!

[matt]

and here I thought for all those years they were giant solar zits....

[Pofarmer]

Yeah, and besides, it's not shining during the night!

But that gives such a marvelous opportunity for research. We could land a probe....

That's funny stuff right there.

[Jane]

Hit, we want more. How rude to hit and run.

[Extraneus]

"It ain't America No More"!

You have to admit, that's a great line. Kind of recalls the wonderful turn of phrase by the Black Panther at the Philly voting place who warned "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker," or the post-racial black SEIU thug beating up a black traitor over "Don't Tread On Me" flags. Sotomayor's racist preachings about wise minorities being better able to rule us than whites. Van Jones, the boycotting environmental czar. The HuffPo lawyer musing about whether Mary Jo Kopechne might have felt her sacrificed life well worth it after considering Teddy's towering Senate career. Obama and Holder and Wright and Rangle and Conyors leading us into the future.

If you haven't seen the Steven Crowder CALPIRG job interview, I'd recommend it as a further illustration of the latest trend in our culture.

[We're only the scum on a very large pond.]

Well, yes and no on the sunspots. First off, it's not the sunspots this article is talking about but the slight increase of sun's energy which happens at the same time as peak production of sunspots. It's a small difference, but the correlation does not imply causation by sunspots.

But that's practically a digression from the main point that this is a lot of handwaving from the sad likes of Science and the heavy but unfruitfal hand of the alarmists. This highly speculative analysis, based more on modeling than on empirical data guesses, and probably badly, at the sort of effect a 0.5% difference in total solar energy between minimum and maximum can have. The main arguing point, not settled here except somewhat negatively, is how does such a small change in solar phenomenon create such a large change in climate, such as is suggested by the great coolings during the last two grand minimums, the Daulton and the Maunder. It is intriguing that they talk about UV, which does vary more than by a half percent, but then they get into the clouds, and the convections, which are far too complex to be successfully modeled today. They may be on the track to one mechanism among many, or maybe they are not.

The problem is that cooling then, during the grand minimums when sunspots were absent, scarce, or bizarre, was also associated with a series of volcanic eruptions, which clearly also cool the earth. In other words, this article doesn't help with that question, because it appears to be speculating about an effect that is too small to cause the great climate swings we see over the last couple of millenia.

I'm sorry to be so skeptical as to trash the name of the journal 'Science', but it and 'Nature' will publish anything supporting the dominant paradigm that CO2=AGW, and nothing skeptical of it. This is another in a series of analyses trying to show that the sun has minimal effect on climate, thereby supposedly proving that CO2 has a great one.

The trouble is that the models have failed, and they've failed because they assume that the warming recently had to be anthropogenic and thus they assumed a minimal contribution by the sun. Well, that is obviously not a valid assumption, though its opposite is not proven. The warming before, and the present cooling are from the natural cycling of the great oceanic oscillations, and how and if they are driven by the sun is presently unknown.

Now, separately, but perhaps quite meaningfully, the sunspots themselves will actually disappear, around 2017 by latest measurement, a phenomenon noticed and monitored by Livingston and Penn. It'll be very interesting if the sunspots disappear, and we cool, and we still not know why.
====================================

[PeterUK]

OBAMA BILL TO TAKE OVER THE INTERNET> Emergency powers.

[hit and run]

Jane:
Hit, we want more. How rude to hit and run.

Sorry. But it was "Chicks Drinking in the Driveway Friday" time in the neighborhood, and, well, I'm now Treasurer of that group and they didn't have a quorum without me and I was running late.

But. Soylent and I, like the smart, diabolical rethuglikkkans that we are, sketched out the path for sure overthrow of the Obama administration and the complete destruction of the Democratic party on a cocktail napkin.

However, like the evil, profiteering free-marketers that we are, decided not to divulge the contents of that cocktail napkin.

Without compensation.

[I trust my wings, though; they've brought me this far.]

By the way, Watt's Up, at the link under my name, has a nice discussion of this paper. Hmmm. Maybe I ought to read the discussion.

[daddy]

A Convenient Inconvenient Truth:

Wishing to know if the BBC had a different perspective on this Sunspot Report than our American papers (ala Honeybee Deaths) I googled them. Seems pretty similar; ">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8224543.stm"> Sunspots linked to Pacific rain.

But of more interest was this follow on story ">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8223611.stm"> Climate Hijack, where environmentalists are angry at AGW because it garners all the headlines and political chatter at the expense of other less popular world-wide Eco-Threats:

"Has climate change hijacked the wider environmental agenda? "

"...climate change is seductive to politicians because it is a long-term issue - so decisive action is always posited for some time in the future, at a time that can always be made yet more distant - and someone else can always be blamed."

"...in contradiction to Al Gore's famous phrase - climate change has acquired its huge profile largely because it is a far more convenient truth than poor air quality or biodiversity loss or fisheries decline, where the actions needed are more likely to be national or local - and certainly more convenient than tackling the issues that underpin everything else, the size of the human population and our unsustainable consumption of the Earth's resources."

I post all this just so that you know that if by chance this new study does strangle the snakehead of Al Gore's AGW agenda, plenty of other Enviro-political agendas are waiting in the wings like the other hundred heads of the Hydra, which can easily be co-opted to continue the assault on freedom towards the ultimate imposition of a One World Government.

[Extraneus]

Mark Steyn laments the dearth of Canadian sperm donors, among other things.

Apparently, the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act makes it illegal to pay donors for sperm. I mean, it wasn’t even the usual Canadian Wheat Board-type racket whereby you’d only be able to sell your seed to the Canadian Sperm Board at a price agreed upon by representatives of the federal-provincial Semen Commissions. Instead, they just nixed the whole deal, and, once Johnny Canuck found out he wasn’t going to be remunerated, virtually the entire supply dried up.

As a result, this once proud Dominion now has to import sperm. According to CTV, 80 per cent of Canadian women who conceive through donor sperm are getting it from the United States, mainly from men in Georgia and northern Florida. Canada’s future is now in American hands.

[Extraneus]

Sorry I didn't use “Keep your legislation off my ejaculation!” as the link text. If I had it to do over again, I would.

[centralcal]

Oh, Lord . . . the Kennedy "wake" is on the telly.

[Extraneus]

And then there's this...

[matt]

are they all drunk and puking in the potted plants yet, central? Cuz it would have been what Uncle Teddy would have done.

[centralcal]

Give it some time, matt - (well, not too much time, grin).

[hit and run]

"Kennedy Lies in Repose"

It's how I'll remember him.

[daddy]

I thought in general the way it worked was that Sperm Doner's paid members of the world's oldest profession for the privilege of donating sperm. Do the Canuck's have it backwards?

"Hey honey, a physicist friend of mine just called and we need to immediately go to his Laboratory...It's in Toronto...Don't wait up for me!"

[centralcal]

judging by what I have seen so far . . . Camelot died long ago, and now, some are trying to exhume it. It ain't working.

[Jane]

Now Hit you will be very easy to buy. Soylent I'm not so sure about.

[Extraneus]

Just 33 native donors in the whole of Canada, you'd think they could spawn a new progeny rivaling Niall of the Nine Hostages, huh daddy?

[daddy]

Fascinating to watch Dem spokesperson Julian Epstein on Kudlow's CNBC say that Charlie Rangel should be congratulated for cheating on his taxes, because after being caught the first time it was Rangel who supposedly hired the Forensic Analyst who then uncovered that Rangel didn't report the 500 grand bank account or the million dollar property in New Jersey, etc. Nothing to see here folks, simply give Charlie a hi-five for astounding personal integrity, and move along.

[daddy]

Extraneus,

I need a Lab partner, you interested? Also bring along Hit and Soylent---I'm sure they're good for research.

[bishop]

Thinking of Julian Epstein, inpeachment era enabler, makes me a bit ill, daddy. We need
a synonym for chutzpah in another language.
Here's a sign, that even the 9th Circuit has some sense, every once in a while, in the LUN

[PD]

Deval Patrick's speaking: "Teddy Kennedy was never mean."

I'm guessing he didn't focus-test that with R. Bork before getting up to give his speech.

[PD]

Alert! John McCain's getting up to speak.

[PD]

That was to warn you not to turn on the TV.

[PD]

Naughty Johnnie Mac uttered a swear word.

[daddy]

That's good news Bishop, but I expect that it'll be legislated illegal next week after Begich teaches Bab's Boxer and Stabenow about Global Warming.

BTW, ">http://www.adn.com/palin/story/913839.html"> new hate Sarah vendetta underway, so it must be Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday. Rangal's faux-pas's were all accidental, but Sarah's DC computers were intentional. Any bets on which gets more airtime on MSNBC?

[matt]

can we get an audit of Obama's PAC's?

[Dave in OC]

OT,

General Honore (USA Ret.) is seriously thinking about challenging Vitter in LA for the senate in 2010 per Ace. While I agree Vitter has issues but is a good conservatie generally (no pun) having a black REPUBLICAN senator would not be a bad thing. I think Edward Brooke (who banged babawawa) was the only black Republican senator since reconstruction. LUN

[PD]

having a black REPUBLICAN senator would not be a bad thing.

I'm guessing he wouldn't take it lying down should the libs throw their usual "not black because he's not liberal" garbage at him. That'd be fun to watch.

[Extraneus]

Really, a hate Sarah Palin vendetta? Then here's from Ron Rosenbaum via HotAir:

How Sarah Palin Rope-a-Doped All-Too-Many Liberals

[PD]

Alert! Most-inspiring-speaker-ever John F. Kerry has gotten up to speak. This is one time his hang-dog puss serves him well.