Political Commentary, Science And Society

Coming Climate Change Attractions

24 Comments

Are you ready for a new glacial advance?

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

It might be a PITA to dike Florida and Bangladesh, but it would be a lot easier than staving off half a mile of encroaching ice in the upper midwest and Europe. Crank up your SUV and build some new coal plants before it’s too late!

[Update later afternoon]

Well, it’s good news in the near term at least, for those living out west, which has had a drought for the past few years. This year was the biggest snow pack in this millennium.

[Thursday morning update]

The criticism begins.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Whither VSE And ESAS?

3 Comments

Or should it be “wither VSE and ESAS”?

My analysis on what the presidential election could mean for NASA’s current plans for human spaceflight, over at Popular Mechanics.

Bottom line: don’t expect “steady as you go…”

[Update late evening]

Mark Whittington has his usual (i.e., idiotic) response:

The problem here is that without a lot of those billions being spent not only on technology development, but operational experience, it will be a long time before private business gets us to the Moon, if at all. And we they do get there, they may have to have visas signed by the Chinese who will have beaten everyone there.

Yes, [rolling eyes] having to have visas signed by the Chinese to land on the moon should be our biggest concern. Not the fact that NASA has chosen an architecture that is fundamentally incapable of establishing a fully-fledged lunar presence and is unlikely to survive politically (and ignoring the fact that the Chinese are on a track to get a human on the moon sometime in the next century, at their current rate…).

Political Commentary

Identity Politics

Stanley Kurtz says that it has driven the Democrat primary to an unprecedented degree. I agree that neither Obama or Hillary! would be front runners were he not black, and she not a woman. Of course, in her case, even being a woman wasn’t enough. She had to be a woman who married, and stuck by (including violating most of the premises of feminism) Bill Clinton.

General Science, Technology and Society

A Potential Breakthrough?

4 Comments

A new class of high-temperature superconductors:

According to Steven Kivelson, a theoretical physicist at Stanford, “[there exist] enough similarities that it’s a good working hypothesis that they’re parts of the same thing.” However, not everyone hopes the mechanism is the same. Philip Anderson, a Nobel Laureate and theoretical physicist at Princeton, says that an entirely new mechanism of superconductivity would be far more important than if they mimicked the current understanding of superconductivity. “If it’s really a new mechanism, God knows where it will go,” says Anderson.

Let’s hope.

Political Commentary

A Stalking Horse For McCain?

2 Comments

Rich Lowry wonders:

She’s preparing the demographic ground for McCain, by getting white working-class Democrats used to (if you will) not voting for Obama. And she’s softening Obama up for McCain, prodding at and exposing her fellow Democrats’ weaknesses.

The following is predicated on the assumptions (for which I think that there’s a ton of evidence) that: a) Hillary! is all about power for Hillary! and b) the fortunes of the Democrat Party come a distant second to that.

If Obama wins the election, even if his presidency is disastrous, it makes it very tough for her to run again in four years. Ted Kennedy tried it against Jimmy Carter, and it badly damaged the party in the 1980 election. And Hillary has nowhere near the reserve of goodwill among party regulars that Ted Kennedy does, so if she is perceived to be damaging the prospects for a reelection of a Democrat, it could be the end for her.

But when Obama loses (and particularly if he loses McGovern style, which is not at all unlikely), she’ll be able to say “I told you so,” and she’ll be positioned for another run at the nomination in 2012 (she’ll only be sixty four).

Thus, based on the above logic, Hillary!’s preferences are, in this order: a) to win the nomination, b) for McCain to win the election and c) for Obama to win the election.

So what she has to do (on the assumption that Obama is going to be the nominee) is to help McCain win without it being obvious that she’s doing so. Fortunately for her, the same things that she has to do to continue to fight for the nomination, all the way to the convention, are the things that will continue to strengthen McCain, and weaken Obama in the general. So she can maintain plausible deniability. And after the convention, most of the damage will have been done, so she can go through the motions of supporting Obama.

And if by some miracle, the stalking horse learns to sing, and she gets the nomination? Like what happens if she loses Super Tuesday, she’ll worry about that when it happens.

General Science, Science And Society

Caught In The Act?

8 Comments

Some rapidly evolving lizards have been discovered on an Adriatic island:

The transplanted lizards adapted to their new environment in ways that expedited their evolution physically, Irschick explained.

Pod Mrcaru, for example, had an abundance of plants for the primarily insect-eating lizards to munch on. Physically, however, the lizards were not built to digest a vegetarian diet.

Researchers found that the lizards developed cecal valves–muscles between the large and small intestine–that slowed down food digestion in fermenting chambers, which allowed their bodies to process the vegetation’s cellulose into volatile fatty acids.

“They evolved an expanded gut to allow them to process these leaves,” Irschick said, adding it was something that had not been documented before. “This was a brand-new structure.”

Along with the ability to digest plants came the ability to bite harder, powered by a head that had grown longer and wider.

It will be interesting to see not only if there is a genetic basis for this change, but if they can still interbreed with the original species. If not, that’s called a “new species,” folks.

Political Commentary

Waffling

6 Comments

Obama brings a whole new meaning to the term:

Democratic White House contender Barack Obama could not hide his irritation Monday when asked by a reporter what he thought about former president Jimmy Carter’s meeting with Hamas last week.

“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” the Illinois senator said as he ate breakfast in Scranton, Pennsylvania, according to MSNBC television pictures.

Pressed again for an answer, he replied: “Just let me eat my waffle.”

Hey, nobody held a gun and made you run for president, Barack. At least, as far as I know…

I hope that Jimmy Carter has as prominent a box at the convention as he did in 2004. And he invites Michael Moore again.

Space

Worse Than They Thought

14 Comments

Apparently, the Soyuz entered hatch first, instead of leading with the heat shield, and burned off an antenna. I hate when that happens.

Yi said during a news conference at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow that she was frightened. “At first I was really scared because it looked really, really hot and I thought we could burn,” she said.

I’ll bet it was some serious pucker in that capsule for all three of them.

As the article notes, this is the second time in a row they’ve had a non-nominal entry, and the third time in five years. Is their quality, in manufacturing or launch processing, declining? Not good news if we’re reliant on them for transportation after 2010. And no, I don’t think the problem was too many women aboard (what an idiot).

Faster please, Elon.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jim Oberg shares my concerns about Russian quality problems. And he’s in a lot better position to know.

Space

The Polls Open

2 Comments

No, not in Pennsylvania (though they’re having an election there as well today, so I hear). In New Mexico. Will Spaceport America get funded?

[8 PM EDT update]

We should know in a couple hours whether or not it passed, unless it’s very close, because polls close in less than an hour.

[9 PM EDT update]

The polls are closed now. This is probably the best place to track results. Folks in Las Cruces have a lot at stake in the vote. There are also a of related stories there.

[11 PM EDT update]

Looks like a big vote of confidence. Two to one for the tax (and the spaceport) is what I’m hearing. This is good news for Steve Landeen, who might have been out of a job had it gone the other way.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!