Wednesday - July 21, 2010
What a Joke
New US sanctions against North Korea: stop selling them weapons, and no more caviar.
The Obama administration moved Wednesday to push new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates showed solidarity with South Korea during a visit to the area that separates it from the North.
Clinton announced the new measures — targeting the sale or purchase of arms and related goods used to fund the communist regime’s nuclear activities, and the acquisition of luxury items to reward its elite — after she and Gates toured the heavily fortified border in a symbolic trip four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North.
The penalties are intended to further isolate the already hermetic North and persuade its leaders to return to talks aimed at getting it to abandon atomic weapons. The U.S. is also trying to forestall future provocative acts like the torpedoing of the Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
With specifics of the sanctions still being worked out, the more striking demonstration of U.S. resolve came when Clinton and Gates — in a first for America’s top two cabinet members — together toured the demilitarized zone in the village of Panmunjom.
A photo-op at the DMZ is a “striking demonstration”? Oh please.
At one point, in the Military Armistice Commission building where officials from North Korea and the U.N. Command meet for talks, Clinton and Gates stood briefly on North Korean soil while a North Korean solider peered at them through a window.
I’m sure this will go into Hillary’s memoirs as another suicidal dash, running to avoid sniper fire. BFD.
Presenting the outlines of the fresh sanctions, Clinton said the North could win “the security and international respect it seeks” by stopping its provocative behavior, halting threats towards its neighbors and returning to denuclearization talks.
Details of the sanctions are being finalized, but Clinton and other U.S. officials said they would enhance and expand on existing international financial and travel sanctions. The U.S. will freeze additional assets, prevent more individuals from traveling abroad and collaborate with banks to stop suspect transactions, they said.
The U.S. will also seek to stop North Korea’s abuse of diplomatic privileges to carry out illegal activities, notably cigarette and currency counterfeiting and money laundering, they said.
Yeah right. You want sanctions against the NorKs, make them real. No food, no fuel, no sales of nothing. And we sic our own captive gang of Somali pirates on every one of your ships that goes into international waters. This latest effort is nonsense.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/21/2010 at 08:13 AM
Filed Under: • Commies • International •
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Permalink • Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me
Jonathon Pollard is serving a life sentence in US jail for spying for our ally Israel. He was born in Texas; his parents are American citizens. Pollard was caught on video passing documents he’d taken from the NIS. Soon after capture he admitted to the spying. His wife was also charged, and eventually served 3 1/2 years. What makes the Pollard case interesting is that he had cut a plea deal with the government; in return for cooperation and his silence, he would get a lesser sentence and his wife would walk. 3 weeks before sentencing, a very young Wolfgang Blitzer interviewed him in his cell and captured headlines with his scoop. After that story broke his wife kicked up a fuss in the media, claiming that as Jews they were serving a higher good by obtaining secrets for Israel.The government saw this as a breaking of the agreement, so when it came time to bang the gavel he was given the maximum sentence.
It’s annoying as hell that our best allies spy on us, even though the information they snagged was only used for their own defense (military maps, recon photos, and assessments of Israel’s neighbors). It’s even more annoying that the spy was one of our own, who chose the nation of his religion over the nation of his life. Take it up a notch when his wife makes public statements that tries to religiously justify his acts. Embarrassing. But the real bottom line is that Pollard was shopped by pre-CNN Wolf Blitzer; he’s in jail for life so Wolfy could get the story. Which was published in the Jerusalem Post. Go figure ... you’d think the Jerusalem Post would know better, yes?
So as much as I despise Bill Clinton and his empty promises ("our troops in Kosovo will be home by Christmas!” [12 years ago]), the level of chutzpah here is just too much, then and now. I expect Pollard to serve at least another decade, but maybe Bibi can talk Obambi into letting him go. After all, it’s really just injured American pride that is keeping him in jail, and Obama don’t have none of that in the first place, so WTF.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/21/2010 at 07:25 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - July 20, 2010
Took Six
Another bowling miracle. We won every game tonight. Mostly. Actually, we tied the first game. That’s fairly rare, so in tying both teams get half the points. So we got 1+2+2+1=6.
I gave up on the out & back line, and just went down and in, and threw a 195 and a 203. The oil was strange again tonight. People were leaving splits all over the place. And not the usual splits. Weird stuff, like 1-2-7-9. I think a long even pattern will do that, with a very clean and dry back end. Balls were going too fast, breaking late but really hard. The edges weren’t as grabby as they usually are. I was playing the 5 and 6 boards without any early breaking.
So this will move us up a little, but it won’t close the gap on the leaders. They took 7, against the team that tromped us last week. TANJ.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/20/2010 at 08:53 PM
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Permalink • Monday - July 19, 2010
Letters From Littleton
So I got another letter from Peiper. He’s prolific! A whole handful of tiny little notepad pages, because it’s the only paper he can find right now.
They flew in 11 days ago, one damn long flight from California to UK. And promptly got sick. Son of a bitch. He wrote that people were coughing and hacking on the plane the whole time until it sounded like a TB ward.
Isn’t there something that could be done to sanitize the endlessly recycled small volume HVAC on airliners? Maybe pull the air through and electrostatic percipitator filter, run it across some UV lights, use a humidifier filled with antibacterials, then compress the air, run it through a recuperative dryer like those on air compressors, back through another electrostatic, and give it a misting of sterile steam on the way back to the cabin? Beats me. But being on a flight that lasts more than just a few hours is almost a guarantee of getting sick. And that’s exactly what happened to Jay and his wife. 3 months in sunny California, not a bit of illness. Fly back to soggy old England, back into their moldy mildew ridden old house, and within 3 days they’re sick as dogs.
Peiper is getting medical care over the telephone. That’s British Health Care. Coming soon to an Obama near you. All you have to do is wait on Hold. Forever.
And of course he sends the usual newspaper snippings, showing that nothing has changed a bit since he’s been away. Crazy muslim hook-handed preachers still getting a fortune from the gov, refugees from flyspeck corners of Africa given mansions to live in for free, PC making companies put in squat toilets in public locations to appease the Turd Worlders who only know how to shit in a ditch. Oh, and dig this. The EU is going to get representation as a new country at the UN. Without losing any of the votes of any of the member nations! Maybe the US should partner up with Canada, and then with The Bahamas, and then with BVI, The Cayman Islands, etc., etc. Get ourselves another 2 dozen votes, but we only pay in as the one country we already are. And let’s fall a few years behind in those payments! (yeah, about 50 years should do it)
Posted by Drew458
on 07/19/2010 at 08:20 PM
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Permalink • drip drip drip
The scroll of fear was running like mad on all channels on TV. Severe Weather Alert, We’re All Gonna Die!! I even had people calling me up on the phone to tell me how bad the weather was about to become.
“Killer Storm” came thru here at 8:20. Rain rain rain, a bit of thunder and L. Half an hour later it’s all over. Big yip.
But a cloud went briskly west to east from north NJ over NYC and across Lpng Island. So it was the end of the world on TV. And now a cloud is approaching Boston, so the Campaign of Weather Terror continues.
3 or 4 people hit by lightning from this storm, 2 in St. Louis, 2 in taxachussets I think. Sorry guys, but life is risky.
Yes, you have to be aware of the weather. Try looking outside, that usually works. And lightning can mess you up, so when it starts raining the smart set lets go of the copper flagpole at the top of the lonely hill and stops cursing the gods! Duh.
It rained this morning too, just in time to make rush hour a mess. Now after Storm Two, with a chance of Storm Three later on, the lovely NJ humidity has gone up while the temperature has dropped 10 degrees. Soak a sponge, wring it out, and hold it over your face and mouth. Now try to breath. That’s about what it’s like outside right now. I think I’ll turn the A/C another notch colder.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/19/2010 at 08:03 PM
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Permalink • Sunday - July 18, 2010
So Tired
Damn, I am worn out. Today was one of those Work Your Husband days, the game every wife loves to play from time to time. Today’s version was called rotate the living room because the furniture was boring. So I had to move the stereo system, which is a full-on audiophile setup with really heavy components, speakers that weigh more than I do, and a mare’s nest of thick cables. All on special stands, filled with lead birdshot to resist vibration. Oh, and it’s integrated into a home theater system as well, with a wide screen regular tube TV that is lead heavy and massively imbalanced. I took the time to Static Guard all the cables and apply a fresh coat of Pro-Gold to all the contacts. Put it all together, keeping the signal cables far away from the power cables, and got no ground loop. Yay!
Then the other sofa and the other 2 tables and the leather chair and the other coffee table had to come up out of the garage, while several pieces had to go down to the garage. We live in an upstairs condo. Oh, and let’s use that other area rug too! Thank God she didn’t want the other set of drapes.
Many hours later, and it’s done. Almost. I haven’t hooked up the bi-wire cables to the amplifiers yet, just the first set. But everything is in place, cleaned, vacuumed, and polished. I even shined the little naval bronze tube hats on my headphone amplifier’ tubes. Oh, and all the furniture is what she wants and where she wants it.
Lunch was a frozen pot pie and dinner was a frozen pizza. I think I drank about a gallon of iced tea and sweated off most of it.
But to be fair, it looks great, and the new furniture arrangement opens up the room a bit more. Dishes done, last load of laundry in the dryer, garbage and recycling out. And I’m wiped, it’s late, and there ain’t no beer. And I have to get up at 5:30 for a job. Shower now, then sleep as quickly as I can.
Oh here’s a good one for ya: the shutoff valve (blowout preventer) that blew out on BP’s oil rig and caused this oil spill mess? It was a refurbished part. They saved some money and had the job done in China instead of having it done locally. Figures. Now everyone involved is going to blame it on shoddy Chicom workmanship, and skate. What a pile of crap.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/18/2010 at 09:02 PM
Filed Under: • Daily Life •
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Permalink • Today’s Literary Quote
If you haven’t read any of Simon R. Green’s books you are missing some serious entertainment. His stuff is so good that GraphicAudio has done ‘Blue Moon Rising’.
Simon R. Green does not respect formula. In Blue Moon Rising, our hero is sent off on his unicorn…to save a princess from a dragon…
My first clue that this was not normal fantasy was that our hero was riding a unicorn. You do remember who can ride a unicorn? Gets even better after he rescues the dragon from the princess…(bet you didn’t see that coming either). Turns out that the princess can’t ride the unicorn. 
It turns out well. After much fighting and bloodshed, our hero can no longer ride a unicorn at the end of the book!
Well, I’m not reading that book. I’m in book 3 of the Secret Histories: The Spy Who Haunted Me. Get this quote:
While the water was boiling to make us a second cup, Honey produced a large knife from somewhere and slipped off into the darkness. Her white cat-suited figure glimmered briefly here and there in the darkness like a ghost that couldn’t make up its mind whether or not to materialise. There was a certain amount of crashing about, followed by some loud splashing, and then Honey returned triumphantly with a large dead beaver she’d caught and killed on the riverbank. She skinned and prepared the thing with expert skill, and soon enough there was meat roasting on pointed sticks over the fire. It actually smelled pretty good. One beaver doesn’t go all that far between five people, and the taste was…interesting, but we were all hungry, and no one turned up their nose. Walker ate his with great enthusiasm and actually licked the grease from his fingers when he’d finished. The Blue Fairy started to smirk.
“Don’t,” Honey said sternly. “I have already worked out every possible permutation of any joke involving the words eat and beaver. Also, I have a gun, and I will shoot you.”
I do so love possibly fatal humor like that.
Posted by Christopher
on 07/18/2010 at 03:10 PM
Filed Under: • Humor • Literature •
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Permalink • The American Minute
A new (to me) site I stumbled across today. I particularly liked the subject. I’ve read three bios of George Washington in the past year. I was mostly impressed by his character. He was not a military genius. Competent, yes, but no genius. It was his honor and personal integrity that made men follow him. Several times during the Revolution he led the troops into battle. No, I mean he was at the front! Not waiting back at the staff tent for updates.
Anyway, today’s American Minute says of George Washington:
American Minute for July 18th:
Prior to the Revolution, British troops were marching toward Fort Duquesne when they were ambushed by the French and Indians. Not accustomed to fighting unless in an open field, the British soldiers were annihilated.
23-year-old Colonel George Washington rode back and forth during the battle delivering orders for General Edward Braddock. Eventually, Braddock was killed and every officer on horseback was shot, except Washington.
George Washington wrote of the Battle of Monongahela to his younger brother John, JULY 18, 1755:
“As I have heard, since my arrival at this place, a circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter. But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!”
An Indian warrior later declared: “Washington was never born to be killed by a bullet! I had seventeen fair fires at him with my rifle and after all could not bring him to the ground!”
H/T American Minute
Posted by Christopher
on 07/18/2010 at 10:25 AM
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Permalink • Saturday - July 17, 2010
Here’s one you don’t see very often
Glasswing Butterfly(Greta Oto) is a brush-footed butterfly where its wings are transparent. The tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass. They are found in the range which extends throughout Central America into Mexico.
A butterfly with transparent wings is rare and beautiful. As delicate as finely blown glass, the presence of this rare tropical gem is used by rain forest ecologists as an indication of high habitat quality and its demise alerts them of ecological change. Rivaling the refined beauty of a stained glass window, the translucent wings of the Glasswing butterfly shimmer in the sunlight like polished panes of turquoise, orange, green, and red.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/17/2010 at 09:56 PM
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Permalink • A Post Gone Awry
Spending far too many hours in front of the computer again, looking stuff up, reading, learning. I’ve dug down into the Tea Party movement, delved into the Tenth Amendment folks, read the history and studied to my eyes crossed. I’ve concluded that the vast majority of issues we have with government today all started with a deliberate misinterpretation of one word in our Constitution. I was inspired. I saw the whole post in my head and how I’d make my points and so forth. Even the title:
And that word is “regulate”.
reg·u·late –verb (used with object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.
1. to control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.: to regulate household expenses.
2. to adjust to some standard or requirement, as amount, degree, etc.: to regulate the temperature.
3. to adjust so as to ensure accuracy of operation: to regulate a watch.
4. to put in good order: to regulate the digestion.
[definitions 2 - 4 all mean to normalize]Do not confuse “regulate” with “regulation”, though the definitions can be quite similar at times.
reg·u·la·tion –noun
1. a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, esp. to regulate conduct.
2. the act of regulating or the state of being regulated.
3. re: Machinery . the percentage difference in some quantity related to the operation of an apparatus or machine, as the voltage output of a transformer or the speed of a motor, between the value of the quantity at no-load operation and its value at full-load operation. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits)
4. re: Electronics . the difference between maximum and minimum voltage drops between the anode and the cathode of a gas tube for a specified range of values of the anode current. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits)
5. re: Sports . the normal, prescribed duration of a game according to the sport’s regulations, exclusive of any extra innings, overtime period, etc.: The Knicks tied the score in the final seconds of regulation, sending the game into overtime. (setting a nominal value and the accepted tolerance limits [in this case the limits are +/- 0])reg-u-lation –adjective
6.prescribed by or conforming to regulation: regulation army equipment.
7. usual; normal; customary: the regulation decorations for a halloween party.
Regulate and regulation appear just 8 times in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights:
The Constitution of the United States
Article 1
Section 4 - Elections, MeetingsThe Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Place of Chusing Senators.
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
Section 9 - Limits on Congress
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.Article III, The Judicial Branch
Section 2 - trial by jury, original jurisdiction, jury trials
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.Article IV - The States
Section 2 - state citizens, extradition
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.(This clause is superseded by the 13th Amendment.)Amendment 2 - Right to Bear Arms
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
I looked into case law, trying to determine when things started to go bad and of course the answer was FDR. Of course. Obama the First, a power mad Socialist. While the Progressive movement had started in the late 19th century, it wasn’t until the turnover of the Supreme Court that began in 1937, shortly after many parts of the New Deal legislation had been shot down and FDR’s attempt at packing the court with sympathetic justices (he wanted 15 Supremes!) failed, that the first federal power grab started with NLRB vs Jones. Up to that point, the word “regulate” in the Commerce Clause had clearly meant “to normalize”. From that point forward it began to mean “to control through rules”, and thus the Legislative Branch managed an end run around the 10th Amendment and achieved nearly unlimited power. And FDR eventually got to pack the court anyway, since he was President For Life. He put 6 robes on that bench. That new usage of the word is still with us, and it only gets worse as the years go by. And from it all modern federal power flows at the expense of the states. But we’re used to it. It’s been around since the time my parents were born. It isn’t right, but it’s normal to us; we don’t know any different. You and I would not even recognize the limited federal government that existed in 1927. We live in the nanny state and have never known another world.
From there I was going to go into the more recent deliberate misuse of the word, the “regulate” involved in the Second Amendment ... and how it took 71 years to get to McDonald v. Chicago, and we still aren’t out of the woods yet on that one.
But along the way, and it was a long way, from legal formalism (conservative originalism) vs. legal realism (proto-progressivism) to US v. Darby to Wickard v. Filburn, recent usurpations of the Commerce Clause like ObamaCare and many readings at The Tenth Amendment Center, that I ran across a prolific writer and constitutional scholar named Robert Greenslade, and through him I found the website The Price of Liberty. Nearly all of Greenslade’s writings are archived there, and every one is worth reading. Price of Liberty may be a Libertarian blog, and I’m fine with that if it is. Many of the hundreds and hundreds of essays there are very thought provoking; I’m hooked.
The road to taking back our nation is going to be long and difficult. It’s going to have to be piecemeal sometimes, because once in a while something good came out of this wrong definition. But I think I’ve located the very core, the one single word, that the Tea Party movement is all about. I’m not claiming ownership, just a shared epiphany: dozens of other folks have made the same conclusion and written extensively about it. And now I want to try and read all of them ... including every opinion that justice Clarence Thomas - who should be one of the saints of the movement - has written. Antonin Scalia too. God bless them both.
No, the word regulate isn’t bad in and of itself. The way the Constitution was written, it’s meaning is very clear. It’s the deliberate misconstruing of that one word that has caused the problems, and up until very recently, each and every single law based on that lie has been put in place by the left. And if by chance you don’t think that this rape of the word and the consequences of that is nearly universal, allow me to quote Robert Greenslade quoting Alfred Clark:
Today, in a very real sense, law no longer governs the American people. They are governed by regulations, orders and directives issued by one or the other of our multiple Federal bureaus. I am not now referring to war regulation and the like, but to conditions existing before the war, and which, unless the trend is checked, are likely to continue and to intensify after the war is over.
This has been accomplished, to a very large extent, through a new and, in many aspects, a startling interpretation of the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, which is now being used to obliterate the States and convert our system into a highly centralized form of government, exercising uncontrolled police power in every State, over all, or nearly all, local affairs and industries.
...
This may sound to you like a soporific nursery rhyme. Not so. On the contrary it is modern judicial logic…Indeed, if Junior decides to emulate Popeye and insists upon a double portion of spinach at the dinner table, thus increasing the demand on the market, and lessening the supply to meet the demand, his act may so affect interstate commerce as to bring him within the ambit of Federal control.
And it’s true; the federal government has unlimited powers over everyone and everything. And it’s far worse now than what Clark saw in his day: the above quote is from 1943. So much for limited government; the very concept Clark held out as an extreme example then is current politics and policy today (see Bloomberg and trans-fats, Michelle Obama’s campaign against obesity, Obamacare and diet, pending legislation to outlaw Happy Meals, et al).
Posted by Drew458
on 07/17/2010 at 06:25 PM
Filed Under: • FREEDOM •
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Permalink • Friday - July 16, 2010
My Hero
Oklahoma candidate turns down CAIR money because they are no different from the Klan. Morally at any rate.
Holy cow. An American. Running for office. Extra, extra, read all about it! At Weasel Zippers.
Laurels to Vilmar for reminding us that the Clintons are still a bunch of schnooks. Their big fund raiser guy just got sent off to prison. 12 years. For fraud. Same guy was a big money playa for Obama. So we won’t be hearing anything from Hassan Nemazee for a long long time.
Sweet payback: FBI catches commie spies, Obama swaps them out of the country in less than 2 weeks. All gone, goodbye. No time to ask them about Russki influence on his or the Clinton’s White House. Same post as above, and Vilmar completes the circle with another link back to Weasel Zippers.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/16/2010 at 09:12 PM
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Permalink • exZAKly
Grand Old Partisan’s Michael Zak reminds us that the renewal of the 1865 Freedman’s Bureau Act, (a forerunner of the 1866 Civil Rights Act that I wrote about the other day), was vetoed by Democrat President Andrew Johnson, and had it’s veto overridden by the Radical Republicans who controlled Congress, 144 years ago today. Thanks Mike! The Freedmen’s Bureau brought education and medical care to the former slaves across the South. Johnson’s veto of this Act, his veto of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, and his generally racist views and pro-ante bellum attitudes would later culminate in his impeachment in 1868.
He also takes the opportunity to speak truth to power and schools Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), [link to speech right here] who clamored for a seat on the racism bandwagon at the NAACP meeting the other day and said that the Tea Party has ties to the KKK.
Silly Sheila. The Klan is a Democrat institution, not a Conservative/Independent one.
It would have been far more truthful for the congresswoman to have admitted the fact that all those who wore sheets a long time ago lifted them to wear Democratic Party clothing. Yes, the Ku Klux Klan was established by the Democratic Party. Yes, the Ku Klux Klan murdered thousands of Republicans — African-American and white – in the years following the Civil War. Yes, the Republican Party and a Republican President, Ulysses Grant, destroyed the KKK with their Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
...
Starting in the 1980s, the Democratic Party elevated a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), to third-in-line for the presidency.
Yes Sheila, it was your party that put a Klansman that close to the big chair.
No wonder the dems don’t want straight up history taught in schools anymore. If any black kid ever learned the truth, she’d realize quickly her people have sold their souls for 30 slices of government cheese.
I own a copy of Zak’s book, Back to basics for the Republican party. It’s a good concise read and covers a lot of history. Alright, I knew most of it already, but that’s only because I read a lot of history. I was surprised at just how anti-black Woodrow Wilson was. A real hater. They never told me that in school.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/16/2010 at 07:36 PM
Filed Under: • Racism and race relations • Republicans •
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Permalink • The Sky IS Falling!
Horry Clap, the atmosphere just collapsed! Well, last year anyway. Did you notice? No, neither did I. My ears didn’t even pop. But NASA noticed! And like every other kind of New that impacts Science, experts are baffled!!
NASA-funded researchers are monitoring a big event in our planet’s atmosphere. High above Earth’s surface where the atmosphere meets space, a rarefied layer of gas called “the thermosphere” recently collapsed and now is rebounding again.
“This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years,” says John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL). “It’s a Space Age record.”
The collapse happened during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009—a fact which comes as little surprise to researchers. The thermosphere always cools and contracts when solar activity is low. In this case, however, the magnitude of the collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.
“Something is going on that we do not understand,” says Emmert.
The thermosphere ranges in altitude from 90 km to 600+ km. It is a realm of meteors, auroras and satellites, which skim through the thermosphere as they circle Earth. It is also where solar radiation makes first contact with our planet. The thermosphere intercepts extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photons from the sun before they can reach the ground. When solar activity is high, solar EUV warms the thermosphere, causing it to puff up like a marshmallow held over a camp fire. (This heating can raise temperatures as high as 1400 K—hence the name thermosphere.) When solar activity is low, the opposite happens.
Lately, solar activity has been very low. In 2008 and 2009, the sun plunged into a century-class solar minimum. Sunspots were scarce, solar flares almost non-existent, and solar EUV radiation was at a low ebb. Researchers immediately turned their attention to the thermosphere to see what would happen.
Emmert uses a clever technique: Because satellites feel aerodynamic drag when they move through the thermosphere, it is possible to monitor conditions there by watching satellites decay. He analyzed the decay rates of more than 5000 satellites ranging in altitude between 200 and 600 km and ranging in time between 1967 and 2010. This provided a unique space-time sampling of thermospheric density, temperature, and pressure covering almost the entire Space Age. In this way he discovered that the thermospheric collapse of 2008-2009 was not only bigger than any previous collapse, but also bigger than the sun alone could explain.
One possible explanation is carbon dioxide (CO2).
When carbon dioxide gets into the thermosphere, it acts as a coolant, shedding heat via infrared radiation. It is widely-known that CO2 levels have been increasing in Earth’s atmosphere. Extra CO2 in the thermosphere could have magnified the cooling action of solar minimum.
“But the numbers don’t quite add up,” says Emmert. “Even when we take CO2 into account using our best understanding of how it operates as a coolant, we cannot fully explain the thermosphere’s collapse.”
According to Emmert and colleagues, low solar EUV accounts for about 30% of the collapse. Extra CO2 accounts for at least another 10%. That leaves as much as 60% unaccounted for.
So now what? Are we going to have AGC? Now it’s carbon dioxide causes atmospheric COOLING?? The boy who cried wolf, much?
Here’s a link to a NASA video that smells like bullshit to me. CO2 catches IR rays from the earth. That causes it to get hot, and that means the molecules vibrate faster, causing them to collide with more other molecules and thus shedding the heat. But as it rises into the higher parts of the atmosphere, where there are exponentially less other molecules around, the CO2 gets heated up by colliding with those other molecules, and then sheds the heat via plain old radiation. But dear old PV=NRT is still the law even in the thermosphere, so this cooling effect causes the thermoshere to contract. And pretty much by definition, that means it’s density has to increase. Which means more molecules in closer proximity, which means a minimization of the upper atmospheric behavior of the gas. It seems to me NASA is saying the density decreases as the layer cools. Personally, I think they are even more unwilling to stop blaming carbon for all their problems then Obama is unwilling to stop blaming Bush for all of his.
Hey, maybe they should bring sunspots into their equation. Why not? The sun continues to be at or very near the minimum point in the opening years of Solar Cycle 24, currently still below even the revised sunspot predictionsmade last year. Right now we have a grand total of ONE visible sunspot. Does that help or hurt? Who knows? I’m baffled, which implies that I am an expert!
Posted by Drew458
on 07/16/2010 at 01:43 PM
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Climate-Weather •
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Permalink • ‘Must Reads’ for 7/16/10
From the American Spectator:
If, for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, Harvard professor of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can “write” your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and the other parts are found to be verbatim or paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was “inadvertent,” and you can count on the Law School’s dean, Elena Kagan, to appoint a committee including former and future Harvard president Derek Bok that issues a secret report that “closes” the incident. Incidentally, Kagan ends up a justice of the Supreme Court. Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded. By contrast, for example, learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about “global warming” to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps.
Incestuous, isn’t it?
From The American Thinker:
Taxes, taxes, and more taxes on BMEWS…
Under the proposed changes, government would have the right to impose taxes on selected media (including internet service providers and internet sites) and redistribute funds to traditional liberal news media. Government could impose a fairness doctrine on the internet as well as on radio—thus forcing conservative media to “balance” their programming by including liberal commentary. Government would also be granted a wide range of options for subsidizing liberal media, including perpetual grants of taxpayer money to left-leaning publications like the New York Times and to increase funding for “progressive” media such as National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. No wonder the Nation magazine has lavished praise on the FTC and FCC proposals: Based on its longstanding liberal bias, the Nation might qualify for a generous handout.
From the National Review:
The Jobs Americans Should Not Have To Do
The second reason the administration’s internship-killing policies got my attention is that my own princess, aged 17-and-a-half, has just begun her first-ever internship, as a trading-floor clerk at a Wall Street firm. Since she still has a year of high school to go, it’s a real plum of an opportunity, and we are everlastingly obliged to the firm that made the offer. It is also Ms. Derbyshire’s first real job of any kind, other than dog-walking gigs. Onward and upward, Nellie.
According to that New York Times report, though, the summer internship may become an endangered species; according to the CIS report, lower-level summer jobs already have, thanks to reckless immigration policies.
What seems to be going on here is a war against the notion that any American citizen should do any kind of non-academic work before the age of 25 — before, that is, a college degree and a couple of years of law school have been completed.
I wrote about this before, though I think it was in a comment. By the time I was 25 I’d flipped burgers for McDonald’s, made pizza’s for Pizza Hut, sold beer and liquor at a carry-out, and done any number of ‘degrading’ house-keeping jobs in the Navy. (you know, swabbed the decks, cleaned the heads, painted, etc. Despite being a E-5/nuke-ET/qualified RO/SRO, we still had to keep our living spaces clean.) Exactly ‘non-academic’ work.
Posted by Christopher
on 07/16/2010 at 08:14 AM
Filed Under: • Daily Life • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Economics • Government •
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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