A Grand Solar Minimum

It may be happening:

The policy significance of this issue is clear: if we are headed to a mid-20th century solar minimum, or a Grand Solar Minimum for the next two centuries, this will offset greenhouse warming to some extent. The extent of the offset depends on whether climate sensitivity to CO2 is on the larger or smaller end of the range of estimates, and the magnitude of the solar impact. But the sign of the solar offset is becoming increasingly clear: towards cooling.

One of the reasons I’ve been skeptical about claims that carbon will be catastrophic is the willful insistence on ignoring the sun, and I can’t think of any reason to do it than because we don’t understand it, and therefore it can’t be included in the hysterical modeling, and it can’t fit the narrative. I continue to believe that what we don’t understand about climate is much greater than what we do.

[Update a few minutes later]

Is the dam bursting? Climate researchers who have previously denigrated solar activity as being insignificant are now warning of a new mini ice age.

I really have trouble taking any of this seriously.

ULA

I’d been aware of their plans for large-scale activity in cislunar space (and even talk about it in the monograph), but this is the first I’d heard that they are offering to purchase water in space, with a price for various locations.

[Thursday-morning update]

Sort of related: Seeing on Twitter that they’re laying people off today. Not sure what that means.

[Afternoon update]

Here’s the story at the Denver Post. Looks like about 10% company wide. A literal decimation.

The Future Of Rockets

Thoughts from Eric Berger, which I missed last week due to the funeral and the conference.

From my monograph:

NASA gave up on reusability a decade ago, when Mike Griffin selected Constellation, with its expendable launch systems, capsule, insertion stages and landers. It could in fact be argued that Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) gave up on it after it was given responsibility for it in the 1990s, which it turned into the failed X-33 program, which failure the center then used as an excuse to illogically claim that reusability didn’t work.

The Left

…is angry at democracy.

Again.

This is all to distract from the fact that the EU is a failure.

[Update a few minutes later]

If the EU ends, Merkel will have herself to blame.

[Update a few more minutes later]

“Vote properly, you virulent racist!”

Call me crazy, but I’ve never found being called a racist or a xenophobe or a homophobe or an Islamaphobe or an anythingphobe a very compelling argument.

Lois Lerner

New documents show she almost certainly broke the law.

But the laws are apparently only for enemies of the state.

[Update a while later]

Related: Benghazi lies were just standard procedure under Obama. Lies in general are standard procedure under Obama. And there’s never any accountability or consequence. They got him re-elected.

[Update a few minutes later]

Also related: Hillary’s email story continues to get more and more difficult to believe. Because it’s lies all the way down.

The latest batch of emails suggest that Clinton’s filter to decide between the personal and the professional was far from foolproof. That these emails never saw the light of day before Monday — or before a conservative legal advocacy group petitioned for their release — opens up the possibility that there are plenty more like them that Clinton chose to delete but shouldn’t have. And it provides more fodder for the Republican argument that Clinton appointing herself as judge, jury and executioner for her emails was, at best, a very, very bad decision and, at worst, something more nefarious than just bad judgment.

Gee, ya think?

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