Apocalypse Sun?

Strange Signs in the Sun. From IBD

It's the sort of news that makes one's eyes glaze over. "If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," said Doug Biesecker of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center.

Yes, space has weather, in the form of solar radiation that varies with solar activity in the form of sunspots and solar flares. Biesecker heads an NOAA panel that keeps an eye on such things and released this latest report.

But this dry statistic has more significance for the earth and its climate than all of Al Gore's gloom and doom about tailpipe emissions and rising sea levels. Whether the warm-mongers like it or not, the sun rules earth's climate — always has and always will.

First noticed in the 1800s, solar activity runs in roughly 11-year cycles. Some are as short as nine years or as long as 14. The valleys are usually brief, a couple of years, but sometimes, for reasons not fully understood, they stretch out for decades.

In the 17th century, a 70-year period of little or no sunspot activity known as the Maunder Minimum spawned what has become known as the Little Ice Age, which extended from roughly the 16th century to the 19th.

Washington's famous winter at Valley Forge was part of that natural phenomenon. So was Napoleon's bitter retreat from Moscow. During the winter of 1779-1780, the Hudson River was solid ice for five weeks. Early settlers going West crossed a frozen Mississippi near present-day St. Louis in 1799.

Global warming, you may have noticed, seemingly stopped dead in its tracks in 1998. Solar activity is in a valley right now, the deepest of the past century. NOAA reports that in 2008 and 2009, the sun set Space Age records for low sunspot counts, weak solar wind and low solar radiance. The sun has gone more than two years without a significant solar flare.

"The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "In our professional careers, we've never seen anything like it. Solar minimum has lasted far beyond the date we predicted in 2007."

If the sun stays this quiet, is another Little Ice Age possible? NASA says it has detected a tiny uptick in solar radio emissions. This may be a sign of a return to normalcy, something similar to a dormant volcano returning to life.

"Even a below-average cycle is capable of producing severe space weather," says Biesecker. "The great geomagnetic storm of 1859, for instance, occurred during a solar cycle of about the same size we're predicting for 2013."

That 1859 event electrified transmission cables, started fires in telegraph offices and produced Northern Lights bright enough to read a newspaper by. A recent report by by the National Academy of Sciences found that if such a storm occurred today, it could cause up to $2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure.

The National Research Council has estimated that such a storm would play havoc with our power grid, resulting in "large-scale blackouts affecting more than 130 million people (in the U.S.) and (exposing) more than 350 major transformers to the risk of permanent damage."

NASA says this solar cycle will peak in 2013. The Mayan calendar identifies Dec. 12, 2012, as the end of the world as we know it. Seems to us we might better spend our money protecting our power grid and high-tech infrastructure against such a possibility rather than worrying about the emission standards for our cars.

That, and stock up on sunscreen.

American Capitalism gone with a Whimper

From Matt Rodina:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Comic for the Evening

Taken from a great blog run by Alan Caruba