Climate Change: It Is Not the Sun
Posted by Kevin

The “evidence” for this was always rather weak and now the very mechanism by which it was supposed to happen has been pretty strongly shown to be incorrect:

The Svensmark hypothesis is that when the solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays penetrate to Earth.

That creates more charged particles in the atmosphere, which in turn induces more clouds to form, cooling the climate.

The planet warms up when the Sun’s output is strong.

Professor Sloan’s team investigated the link by looking for periods in time and for places on the Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times.

“For example; sometimes the Sun ‘burps’ - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles,” he explained to BBC News.

“So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing.”

Over the course of one of the Sun’s natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness.

And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.

The kicker? It never made any bloody sense to begin with:

The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory.He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been slowly declining, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.

New rationalization for ignoring human created climate change coming in 5 ..4 …3 …

April 3rd, 2008 | General, Politics, Climate Change | 26 comments

An Elected Dictator, Part II
Posted by Kevin

The Bush Administration apparently believed that the 4th amendment did not apply to military operations inside the country:

“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,” the footnote states, referring to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.”

So, once again, the Bush Administration decided that they could ignore the Constitution as long as they took some minor, cosmetic step. Here is the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I don’t notice any qualification about which branch of the government people are supposed to be secure in their persons from. Again, the Bush Administration has chosen to steal powers from another branch of the government for the express purpose of making you less free. They hold democracy in contempt and seem to truly believe that they were elected as a Royal Court, able to do whatever struck their fancy. Defending them is simply not possible if one actually cares about things like liberty and democracy and personal freedom.

Someone should ask McCain exactly what he thinks of these memos. Let’s find out if his “National Greatness” means a monarch in the White House.

April 3rd, 2008 | Politics, Legal Issues | 3 comments