March 12, 2007 by mr_flood.

Via the Financial Post, Max Plank Institute scientist Sami Solanki says:

Dr. Solanki gives cold comfort to those who claim that global warming took off with the Industrial Revolution, and that the warming we’ve seen over the last century is mostly man-made. To demonstrate how unlikely this is, Dr. Solanki shows an almost perfect correlation between solar cycles and air temperatures over the land masses in the Northern hemisphere, going back to the mid 19th century.

For example, when the length of solar cycle increased dramatically, as it did in from 1910 to 1940, so did the temperature on Earth; when it decreased, as it did from the 1940s to the 1960s, so too did Earth temperatures. Dr. Solanki’s startling correlation marked a pivotal point in the climate change debate: Its publication, more than any other single event, caused researchers around the world to examine the role that the sun plays in heating and cooling our planet.

He makes a reasonable recommendation that has zero chance of being implemented:

Dr. Solanki’s recommendation: more research, and lots of it. To uncover a possible connection between solar irradiance and magnetic-field variations and climate, he thinks it necessary to extend the irradiance record to earlier times with the help of models. To understand the mechanisms responsible for variations in solar brightness, it is necessary to study solar variability on time scales of days to centuries.

Until the research is in, he believes, the story of what drives climate change remains unknown.

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March 12, 2007 by mr_flood.

David Write opines in today’s Washington Times about the sad state of government schools.

“What kind of person could you get to run a small business,” he asked, comparing school principals to CEOs, “if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?” Unfortunately for America’s schoolchildren, Mr. Jobs’ criticisms are just scraping the surface.

The article goes on to highlight many, but not all, of the abuses of power, and outright fascism, that is displayed by the teacher’s unions. An example:

In cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, a teacher who decides against joining the local union is required by contract to pay a fee to that union.
Most large school districts also offer paid leave for teachers to conduct union business. For example, San Diego’s contract gives union members an “unlimited number of workdays per fiscal year of leave to use for association business.” And in Providence, teachers selected by their union to serve as delegates to any AFL-CIO meeting are eligible for five paid days of leave. This places a double cost burden on schools. In addition to paying the absent teachers their full salary, many districts are also responsible for finding and paying substitute teachers.
Shockingly, in some cities, teachers on paid leave can be hired as substitute teachers without terminating their leave. In other words, a teacher could take time off but continue working as a substitute teacher collecting two paychecks, at the same time, from the same school. In many districts, schools must give unions free use of equipment like copy machines, telephones and computers. Some districts are even contractually obligated to provide union presidents with free office space and time at faculty meetings.

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