Weekend open thread

Hope everyone’s enjoying theirÂ holiday weekend.Â I’ll be back later this evening.

9 Responses to "Weekend open thread"

Mwalimu Daudi says:

August 30, 2008 at 6:00 pm

John McCain and the GOP are considering scrapping political speeches and turning their St. Paul/Minneapolis convention into a “service” program to help victims of Storm Gustav.

I hope so. Coming on the heels of Howard “I hate Republicans and everything they stand for” Dean’s Democrat convention, it would be a welcome change of pace.
Sister Toldjah says:

August 30, 2008 at 7:20 pm

MD – thanks for the link. That is a great idea, I think. It would help out people in need in our country, and make the Dems furious at the same time. I love it.
Trish says:

August 30, 2008 at 7:44 pm

Contrast that with Michael Moore and the Democrat’s attitude:
Trish says:

August 30, 2008 at 7:47 pm

Oops. Looks like the link didn’t work. Let me try that again.
Trish says:

August 30, 2008 at 7:50 pm

Well, it looks as if I can’t get the link to work, but this is the URL:
LINK
Sister Toldjah says:

August 30, 2008 at 7:59 pm

Hi Trish – just posted about this story here.
Lorica says:

September 1, 2008 at 11:08 am

Interesting stuff here kids!!!

LINK

I guess we can expect a pretty cold winter, unless we get some solar activity. If this doesn’t change, I hope someone duct tapes Al’s head. – Lorica
Severian says:

September 1, 2008 at 11:20 am

It gets even worse Lorica:

Sunspots May Disappear by 2015

All three measurements show consistent trends in which the darkest parts of the sunspot umbra have become warmer (45K per year) and their magnetic field strengths have decreased (77 Gauss per year), independently of the normal 11-year sunspot cycle. A linear extrapolation of these trends suggests that few sunspots will be visible after 2015.

…

The number of sunspots visible on the Sun normally shows an 11-year periodicity, and the current sunspot cycle (cycle 23) had a maximum in 2001, and is entering a minimum phase with few sunspots currently visible. Our data show that there are additional changes occurring in sunspots, independent of the sunspot cycle, and these trends suggest that sunspots will disappear completely. Such an event would not be unprecedented, since during a famous episode from 1645-1715, known as the Maunder Minimum, the normal 11-year periodicity vanished and there were virtually no sunspots visible on the solar surface (Eddy 1976). Recent studies of the appearance rate and latitudinal drift of sunspots (Hathaway et al., 2004) and of the solar magnetic field (Svalgard etal, 2005) predict that the number of sunspots visible in future cycles will be significantly reduced. Finally the occurrence of prolonged periods with no sunspots is important to climate studies, since the Maunder Minimum was shown to correspond with the reduced average global temperatures on the Earth (Foukal et al., 1990).

This could be very bad. Unlike the BS predictions of CO2 induced warming, based on poorly designed computer simulations, the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age were real, and if we are indeed heading into such a minima, the resulting cooling will not be pleasant. During the LIA, human population numbers were about 1/10th of what they are today, and famine and starvation occurred. We have 10 times as many people now, and they depend on a lot of agriculture done in places like the Northern US, Canada, and Northern Russia. Places that will be severely hurt by a cooler climate.

I hope, when the cooling does really hit, people remember the idiots who were beating the AGW drum so hard, and take them out and tar and feather them. Their ideas of energy restriction and increasing energy costs will not serve us well no matter whether the temp goes up or down, but will be particularly onerous in a colder world. And I’d point out that the Maunder Minimum led to cold temperatures, the LIA, that lasted from the mid 1600’s to the mid 1800’s. One of the reasons Washington and the Colonial troops suffered so badly in Valley Forge was due to the horrendously cold winters during this period. The Thames even froze over regularly.

But, I expect people like Gore and Hansen and the other fanatics to state, with a perfectly straight face, that they always said it would get cold!
Great White Rat says:

September 1, 2008 at 12:13 pm

I hope, when the cooling does really hit, people remember the idiots who were beating the AGW drum so hard, and take them out and tar and feather them.

And it appears that the current energy crunch might have one good side-effect, namely forcing government agencies to take a second look at some of the dumber AGW restrictions. In Europe, that’s already happening.

LINK

Granted, it’s only a start. Much more is needed. But at least, even in nanny-state Europe, the AGW gospel is receiving some long overdue deliberate scrutiny.

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