My Afternoon at Lafayette College

Professor Brandon Van Dyck and his student Abdul invited me to speak at Lafayette College as part of their Mill lecture series.   About fifty students and several faculty members attended my talk, and students both in favor of and opposed to political correctness were in the room and spoke reasonably and frankly.   It is to  Lafayette’s credit that it has allowed Professor Van Dyck to initiate the program, although I am told that some of the faculty have attacked it.  One of the points that Professor Van Dyck and others made during the discussion is that some professors at Lafayette have criticized the program and its speakers without attending any of the lectures.        

My topic covered a combination of the Langbert, Quain, and Klein article “Faculty Voter Registration in Economics, History, Journalism, Law, and Psychology,”  which appeared in Econ Journal Watch last year, as well as some recent findings on which I’ve been working.  The recent findings concern liberal arts colleges, which I’m starting to conclude have more variance in their partisanship than do research institutions but for the most part are as one sided as the social science departments of research institutions.

I found it gratifying to meet a number of conservative students at Lafayette who question the left orientation of their education, but I found it even more gratifying that several left-oriented students attended the talk and were willing to debate with me and with Professor Van Dyck.

Students who defended colleges’ left orientation raised these points:

                1. In research on faculty voter registration, nearly half the population is either not registered or not affiliated with a party, so nonresponse threatens the validity of the Langbert, Quain, and Klein findings.

                2. Students who protested Charles Murray’s appearance and other conservative speakers’ appearances at Middlebury College and elsewhere have the right to protest their institutions’ allowing such speakers to appear because the institutions are private, and the students have the right to see that their tuition money is used in ways of which they approve.  Moreover, Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve is racist.

                3. The one-sidedness of faculty voter registration does not matter because left-oriented professors can fairly depict both sides.

                4. Republicans are often opposed to science, and many question the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

Nonregistration as a Threat to Validity

First, although the research I’m doing is archival and not survey based, the problem of nonregistration parallels that of survey nonresponse. 

As this article by the American Academy of Political and Social Science says, nonresponse threatens the validity of most social science survey work. As I pointed out to the student,   left-oriented observers raise this issue with respect to this research more frequently than they do with studies done byNeil Gross, studies done to support left-oriented positions, or neutral studies, such as those of the US Census.  I have never heard a news reporter comment on the nonresponse rate for the unemployment statistic survey, which in most years is four or five times greater than the unemployment rate.  The nonresgistration rate in our research is less than the proportion that we have found to be registered.

That said, since all social science survey research is threatened by nonresponse, it is important to triangulate or to find multiple methods of measuring the same variable.  Studies of the left orientation of faculty have included opinion surveys, which of course also suffer from nonresponse but a different kind of nonresponse.  As well, both opinion surveys and voter registration studies of faculty political affiliation are being done on multiple kinds of samples.  The different forms of studies do not find appreciably different results. 

As results from different kinds of studies and from different kinds of samples accumulate, the results become more certain and better understood.  My point is that virtually no survey work ever done does not suffer from nonresponse, and nonresponse is important only if it correlates with the findings. If there is no correlation between nonresponse and partisan affiliation, then nonresponse has no importance to the study.  If there is a correlation that is strong enough to change the findings, then we may fairly ask why the findings do not appreciably change when different populations are surveyed and different methods are used.

Charles Murray

With respect to the second point, which concerns Charles Murray’s not being allowed to speak, colleges should be forums for open debate.  They are not ideological or political advocacy organizations that permit only one viewpoint.  The left protested the McCarthyism of conservative politicians because McCarthyism did not permit the views of communists to be openly expressed. It is telling that now left academics and students advocate that views of conservatives should not be allowed to be openly expressed. 

Religious institutions that permit only one religion to be advocated openly state that the religion is fundamental to their mission, but secular colleges do not claim to be political advocacy organizations in part because Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code predicates institutional tax exemption on not engaging in lobbying or ideological advocacy.  Political organizations are not entitled to tax exemptions.  Hence, if students wish to claim that their institutions are at root political advocacy organizations, they will need to pony up the difference in tuition cost between exempt and nonexempt institutions.

More importantly, the purpose of universities should be to teach citizenship, rational debate, and learning rather than closed minded advocacy.  If Middlebury and other colleges teach advocacy instead, then public support for them should be revisited.

I read Herrnstein and Murray twenty years ago. I do not recall any racist claims in their book, although I was once called to the carpet of a departmental chair because of a student’s claim that Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is racist. (I recount the incident here.) My recollection of Herrnstein and Murray is that they make the general point that IQ is important to a wide range of public policy issues.  In my own field, human resource management, IQ has been repeatedly shown to be a valid predictor of job performance.  

Merriam-Webster defines bigot as follows:

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :  one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

         

Although the racial variety is the most common application, one can be a bigot in a variety of ways, and students who, in the face of science, violently object to well-reasoned, scientifically supported findings because of obstinate commitment to their own prejudices are themselves bigots. Middlebury and all other educational institutions should encourage students to think scientifically and reasonably and to abhor bigotry of all kinds.

Teaching Both Sides

With respect to the third point, the ability of faculty to teach both sides of a question, I have worked in higher education for 26 years, and I have never had a departmental colleague who could give a fair exegesis of libertarian economic theories like those of Hayek and von Mises.  I have no doubt that many economists can, but many cannot.  The same is true of classical liberal ideas. The most influential economic writer was Adam Smith, but I have repeatedly heard his statement, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices,” misinterpreted to mean that Smith supported economic regulation.  The statement is made at the end of a chapter in Wealth of Nations that criticizes gilds and argues that regulation does not work.

A good example of the incompetence of many left-oriented academics with respect to (Lockean) liberal thinkers is a book I reviewed in 2012 for Frontpagemag, my Brooklyn College colleague Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Robin misunderstands, misconstrues, and appears not to have read the von Mises material that he claims to critique.  If a left-oriented professor like Robin who claims to be able to write a book on conservatism botches his understanding of von Mises, I doubt that many left faculty can do a good job. 

Global Warming

With respect to the last point, I am not enough of an expert in geology to comment on climate change, but I did say that the claim that “science is settled” is profoundly anti science.  As Popper points out in his Logic of Scientific Discovery, theories are never proven; they are only disproven or falsified. As I pointed out to the student who raised this point, those in the church who believed that the science was settled imprisoned Galileo.  The politicization of science, as the Democrats have done with respect to global warming theory, is more profoundly anti science than the doubts raised by global warming skeptics.  

                

One of the few professors in the room was a science professor who rejoined that he was a global warming denier.  He said that the evidence is not nearly strong enough to have policy implications. Amen. 

The Science Is Settled: What's Interesting about the American Media Is What It Doesn't Talk About

I was privileged this past Saturday to join Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell on Scott Harrington's Speak Out show on WKNY, Kingston, NY.  We discussed education and politics; I posted the interview here.  WKNY is a great local music station that plays close-to-nonstop soft rock.  Since they had me on the air, I've been listening to their programming. The soft-classic rock format is great, but the station is an affiliate of ABC News.  As a result, I've inadvertently heard a few of the ABC newscasts, which breaks one of my personal moral rules: Do not listen to the media.  Most of what ABC discusses is irrelevant.  What caught my attention was their blaring claim: "The debate is settled: There is global warming." Well, that's all well and good because there has been a global warming for the past 10,000 years, since the last Ice Age, as the chart below shows.

As I mentioned on the radio show, the useful information to be gained from listening to the media is to learn what it doesn't talk about.

Global Warming Fanaticism Is Junk Science

A couple of years ago I heard Al Gore on a radio program in New York City. On the program, the announcer and Gore engaged in hysteria as well as misapplication of the concept of science. The left has long claimed to represent the "educated" point of view but has consistently refused to face facts and has consistently avoided to apply the principles on which science is based to its own ideas. It is therefore accurate to say that the ideas that appear in the New York Times are not representative of the views of educated or enlightened people but rather of fanatical cranks.

Global warming well illustrates this principle, although the attitudes of the cranks toward socialism, urban renewal, centralized economic planning, economic regulation, welfare, taxation and a host of other issues on which they insist on views that contradict available evidence would serve equally well.

This morning a reader named B Van Gerven raised this question on my blog concerning global warming. I had blogged that the Al Gore/man-made global warming enthusiasts do not engage in science because they refuse to state a basis on which the claim that the world is getting warmer can be proven false. In fact, the world has not been getting warmer for the past couple of years, and a German scientist has offered a contending theory about the effects of oceanic phenomena on climate that would suggest a period of global cooling. The reader claims:

>The AGW theory is not falsifiable. Many perfectly valid scientific theories are not falsifiable, f.i. “Smoking increases the risk of getting lung cancer” is a statement that is not falsifiable, but I think few scientists – and ordinary people – will doubt that it is true.

>A scientific theory is is generally accepted by the scientific community, not because it hasn’t been falsified, but because it explains and predicts very well the phenomena that occur.

As I responded to the reader, the claim that (a) because scientists believe something then (b) they are engaging in science fails to accurately depict what science is. B Van Gerven is incorrect that the claim that smoking causes cancer is not falsifiable. It certainly is. Karl Popper's "Logic of Scientific Discovery" outlines the meaning of the term "falsifiable". Peter Blau, the famous Columbia University sociologist of the 1950s-1980s introduced me to this concept when I took his sociological theorizing course in 1988, right before he retired.

Van Gerven expresses a common misconception of how science ought to work. A scientific theory doesn't necessarily predict phenomena. For example, the astronomical theories of cosmology and cosmogony as well as archaeology and biology, anatomy and many other disciplines do not make predictions. Very little in the social sciences makes predictions. Economics, for instance, is incapable of making predictions beyond the most general and long term level. It can predict that more money will cause inflation, but it cannot predict how much inflation or when or whether given that all things are not held equal what will happen.

Popper defines falsifiability as the use of evidence to contradict theory. That is, in fact, how science works. Theories can never be proven true, they can only be proven false or falsified.

In the case of smoking, falsifiability works like this. A scientist states the hypothesis that smoking causes cancer. Data are collected. The data show that smokers, controlling for all other determinable variables, die sooner, have higher rates of heart attacks and the like. This is consistent with the hypothesis. But this evidence does not "prove" the hypothesis because the researcher may have omitted controls. Theories are never finally proven.

Let us say that a study found that if one controls for sun spots, then the significance of the smoking factor disappears. That would falsify the smoking hypothesis. Smoking-causes-cancer theorists then have to show that the sunspot factor does not dominate the smoking factor. If several studies found that sun spots dominate the smoking effect, then the smoking factor would be falsified.

As Thomas Kuhn shows in his classic "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" science moves to new paradigms not because of the absolute falsehood of the old paradigm but because of the old paradigm's inability to explain contradictions.

Knowledge in the layman's sense is not science. You know that when a sign says "Trenton" that if you take the exit you are likely to arrive at points south if you are leaving New York City. But that is not science. Aristotle believed that appearances lead to knowledge, and he was right, in my opinion, with respect to human decision making. It becomes evident as you examine data in depth that it is extraordinarily hazardous to say anything with certainty. The scientific mind is a questioning mind.

As Popper points out, science depends on falsifiability because scientists must always be open to the possibility that they are wrong. In true science, contradictions inevitability appear as data are adduced. Theories lend order to observed data, but are never complete. As contradictions accumulate, new models are proposed. If the process of academic science inhibits the introduction of new models excessively, then it is inhibiting science. It is true that "normal science" makes greater progress than revolutionary science, so it is generally the case that paradigm shifts are few and far between. But with respect to a theory like global warming that has little evidence, insisting on its accuracy without considerable review is not science.

The claim that science is "settled" is inherently anti-scientific, as a reading of Popper and Kuhn will clearly show. In the case of global warming, it is not merely anti-scientific but reflective of a displacement of science by politics. It is similar to the claim of Trofim Lysenko in the Sovient Union that acquired characteristics are inheritable. Although science has falsified this claim, the Soviet government enforced it, throwing into prison any who disagreed with it. American leftists follow a similar strategy of their Soviet role models and insist on the valididity of a theory that lacks credibility, saying that it is "settled".

The scientific community's acceptance of theory is meaningful only to a point. Unless contradictions are being reconciled to the theory, then the risk of scientism and fanaticism appears. This is the case of global warming theory, where scientists, eager for grants and political acceptance, have played to the mob, debasing their claim to legitimacy. The recent discovery of e-mails attesting to my claim made early last year, suggests that a large part of the geological community is a disgrace.

Al Gore Freezes to Death Due to Global Trend

Not really, but the truth is not far off. My former student and currently third year law student at Cardozo Law School, Pini Bohm, sent me this link to David Rose's article in the UK Daily Mail about the current trend toward GLOBAL COOLING. The article states:

"According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this."

Apparently, none of the political advocates of the global warming theory care whether the factual evidence supports or refutes their claims. The Mail article quotes Professor Mojib Latif, who has developed evidence that a cooling trend originating from oceanic depths will reduce temperatures. Latif finds that we are now in an incipient global cooling trend:

"Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was ‘settled’...

"Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany’s Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.

"He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September."

As I e-mailed Pinni, I was in the parking lot of the IGA Supermarket in Boiceville, New York this afternoon and someone said aloud "Where's global warming!?#?." It was 28 degrees Farenheit.

About a year ago I blogged that the global warming advocates had not outlined a means by which their theory could be falsified. Falsifiability is the basis of all science. If a theory is not falsifiable it is not science. Ordinarily, falling temperatures as we have seen in the past two years would evidence falsification of the global warming hypothesis, but as the article notes, global warming enthusiasts deny that the presence of global cooling contradicts the claim of global warming.

Perhaps global warming advocates practice a Keynesian version of geology, whereby it can be getting hotter and getting cooler at the same time. According to Keynesian economics we become wealthier by wasting money. There are actually strange people, crackpots, who read the New York Times and believe things like this.

Enviro-totalitarians Plato's Successors

Jim Crum writes

I happened to hear the NPR program on the "Climategate" or "Climaquiddick"- the scandal no one wants to mention in the old media. For them it is hardly an issue, an event only worth a brief mention as they barrel down the abyss by trying to fix an unproven planetary issue by taxing us into the stone age. It was very bizarre to listen to the report and it became quite clear that the denial tag is firmly in the court of those promoting global warming and all of its taxing and wealth redistribution programs.

If "consensus" has been reached by using falsified data, purposely distorting programming, and suppressing opposing views, then what type of consensus is that? If those with questions then find that the source data has been lost or dumped, what does that say about the scientific method being followed? It means that this endeavor has regressed from science to dogma.

It's my job to pay, their job to think. I am a moron who just works for a living to support these intellectual giants who set policy and national agenda.

Since HUGE money is involved, perhaps this is just Climatological Alchemy.

JJC.


My response

In Open Society and Its Enemies I-Plato Karl Popper shows that Plato advocated a strict totalitarian society divided among the "guardians" who had wisdom and could think, a warrior class who would enforce the guardians' views, and the workers, everyone else. Roughly, says Popper, these were equivalent to a shepherd (the guardian class), a sheep dog, the warrior class, and the sheep, the general public. Plato was reacting specifically to the change, progress, and individualism that had evolved under Athenian democracy. Plato was contemptuous of democracy and individual choice. To Plato, justice meant that the sheep should stay in their place. Plato's vision has served as a model for successive generations of totalitarians. In America, authoritarian socialists, following Plato, have used a scheme whereby they call themselves moderate or mainstream, advertise their brand of totalitarianism as "social democracy", and establish political correctness, clamp down on alternative speech, and train themselves to think in unison, guided by the Ochs Sulzbergers, their Wall Street friends, the guardian class, and, in universities.

The Democratic Party's vision of society is totalitarian but differs from Plato's in that he saw academics as comprising the guardian class, whereas the Ochs Sulzbergers and Wall Street, a business elite, comprise the guardian class in the Democratic Party's scheme. Academics and the Democratic Party media are part of the warrior class. Incidentally, much like today's Democrats, Plato strongly argued that weapons should only be in the hands of the warrior class.

The current enviro-totalitarians are one more in a long line of followers of Plato's reactionary vision of society as a single organism. Plato was interested in arresting change. His theory of forms is that an unchanging ideal is real, the changing phenomena of the sensual world are inferior, degraded versions of an unchanging reality that the forms constitute.

His prescription was to reinstate the world as it had existed in primitive times. This is the vision of the enviro-totalitarians. It is a totalitarian, reactionary and elitist position.

Mensa Expert Calls Global Warming "Junk Science"; Dr. Tim Ball Exposes Academic Fraud in the Global Warming Community

The leading advocate of global warming and unquestionably the next recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman has better scientific credentials than university advocates of global warming.

In January of this year I blogged about climate change. It seemed evident that those arguing for climate change were not functioning as scientists because they had not established criteria for the rejection or falsification of their claims.

Now it turns out that Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize for repeating the claims of frauds. This should put the credibility of the Norwegians and their preposterous "Peace Prize" to bed. Giving it to Barak Obama added concrete shoes to the dead victim of the Swedes' and Norwegians' politicized institution. Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman will probabaly get it next year. His scientific credentials are better than those of Benjamin Santer, Jonathan Overpeck, Ken Briffa, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Phil Jones.

First:

>A speaker for Mensa, the high-IQ-society, has called "global warming" "junk science" (h/t Jim Crum):

Sam’s Summary on the issue posted May 4th 2007

"However weak the argument for global warming, it does not diminish the need for intelligent protection of the environment. There are many things we can do to improve the environment without resorting to junk science. In the end I think the global warming hoax will hurt legitimate environmental causes."


Second

Jim also forwarded this article by Timothy Ball, adding that global warming is not a hoax, but a fraud. I added the bold.

>Hacked files of the Climatic Research Unit, Global Warming a deliberate fraud
The Death Blow to Climate Science
By Dr. Tim Ball

>Saturday, November 21, 2009

>Global Warming is often called a hoax. I disagree because a hoax has a humorous intent to puncture pomposity. In science, such as with the Piltdown Man hoax, it was done to expose those with fervent but blind belief. The argument that global warming is due to humans, known as the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) is a deliberate fraud. I can now make that statement without fear of contradiction because of a remarkable hacking of files that provided not just a smoking gun, but an entire battery of machine guns.

>Someone hacked in to the files of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) based at the University of East Anglia. A very large file (61 mb) was downloaded and posted to the web. Phil Jones Director of the CRU has acknowledged the files are theirs. They contain papers, documents letters and emails. The latter are the most damaging and contain blunt information about the degree of manipulation of climate science in general and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in particular.

>Climate science hijacked and corrupted by this small group of scientists

>Dominant names involved are ones I have followed throughout my career including, Phil Jones, Benjamin Santer, Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Jonathan Overpeck, Ken Briffa and Tom Wigley. I have watched climate science hijacked and corrupted by this small group of scientists. This small, elite, community was named by Professor Wegman in his report to the National Academy of Science (NAS).

>I had the pleasure of meeting the founder of CRU Professor Hubert Lamb, considered the Father of Modern Climatology, on a couple of occasions. He also peer reviewed one of my early publications. I know he would be mortified with what was disclosed in the last couple of days.

>Jones claims the files were obtained illegally as if that absolves the content. It doesn’t and it is enough to destroy all their careers. Jones gave a foretaste of his behavior in 2005. Warwick Hughes asked for the data and method he used for his claim of a 0.6°C temperature rise since the end of the nineteenth century. Jones responded, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” He has stonewalled ever since. The main reason was because it was used as a key argument in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Reports to convince the world humans caused rapid warming in the 20th century. The emails obtained are a frightening record of arrogance, and deception far beyond his 2005 effort.

>Another glimpse into what the files and emails reveal was the report by Professor Deming. He wrote, “ With publication of an article in Science (in 1995) I gained sufficient credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said. "We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” The person in question was Jonathan Overpeck and his even more revealing emails are part of those exposed by the hacker. It is now very clear that Deming’s charge was precise. They have perverted science in the service of social and political causes.

>Professor Wegman showed how this “community of scientists” published together and peer reviewed each other’s work. I was always suspicious about why peer review was such a big deal. Now all my suspicions are confirmed. The emails reveal how they controlled the process, including manipulating some of the major journals like Science and Nature. We know the editor of the Journal of Climate, Andrew Weaver, was one of the “community”. They organized lists of reviewers when required making sure they gave the editor only favorable names. They threatened to isolate and marginalize one editor who they believed was recalcitrant.

>Total Control

>These people controlled the global weather data used by the IPCC...Hadley and CRU and produced the HadCRUT data. They controlled the IPCC, especially crucial chapters and especially preparation of the Summary for PolicyMakers (SPM). Stephen Schneider was a prime mover there from the earliest reports to the most influential in 2001. They also had a left wing conduit to the New York Times. The emails between Andy Revkin and the community are very revealing and must place his journalistic integrity in serious jeopardy. Of course the IPCC Reports and especially the SPM Reports are the basis for Kyoto and the Copenhagen Accord, but now we know they are based on completely falsified and manipulated data and science. It is no longer a suspicion. Surely this is the death knell for the CRU, the IPCC, Kyoto and Copenhagen and the Carbon Credits shell game.

>CO2 never was a problem and all the machinations and deceptions exposed by these files prove that it was the greatest deception in history, but nobody is laughing. It is a very sad day for science and especially my chosen area of climate science. As I expected, now it is all exposed I find there is no pleasure in “I told you so.” ( emphasis added )

Is the Global Warming Theory Falsifiable?

One of the marks of science is falsifiability. If a theory cannot be proven false, it is not scientific. It is incumbent upon the advocates of the theory that the earth is warming to define how their theory can be proven false. If it cannot, it is not a scientific theory. I watched the Al Gore video and do not recall him mentioning how his theory could be proven false.

Bob Robbins just forwarded this from the Astute Blogger. The Astute Blogger quotes a number of articles suggesting that this winter is colder than usual in several places, including Wales, India, Sri Lanka and Alaska.

Global warming theorists might reply that the fact that there are swings in temperature is indeed evidence of global warming. If that is so but the swings in temperature fail to reject the null hypothesis of greater variability (this would involve an F test)then the theory of global warming is rejected. Otherwise, I am having trouble understanding how cooler temperatures in various countries can be consistent with "global" warming.

>FUNERAL directors in Swansea have revealed they are holding more services than usual following a rise in deaths.

They say there has been an increase in the death rate and Assembly-based health experts confirmed the freezing temperatures could be responsible.

... Latest provisional figures for winter 2007/08 reveal there were around 1,500 excess deaths in Wales — a seven per cent rise on the previous winter.

>At least 31 people have died in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh as severe cold weather continues in the region.

>A severe cold wave is hitting the Nuwara Eliya district, thus affecting tea and other plantations in the low lying areas.

>Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Obama v. Hyperion

In ancient Greece the Sun god was known as Helios or Hyperion and later associated with light and so called Apollo. The Anchoress (hat tip Larwyn)provides evidence that Hyperion is a Republican for, alas, he does not believe in global warming. According to Anchoress:

"Some scientists think the “warming trend” which (despite the fact that we’re having our usual early-June heatwaves) has stalled out over the past few years was helped along by sunspots. And lately, there aren’t any...It continues to be dead,” said Saku Tsuneta with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, program manager for the Hinode solar mission...Today’s sun, however, is as inactive as it was two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure why...In the past, they observed that the sun once went 50 years without producing sunspots. That period, from approximately 1650 to 1700, occurred during the middle of a little ice age on Earth that lasted from as early as the mid-15th century to as late as the mid-19th century."

The Anchoress wonders: "It’s not like we can do anything about it. Either old Sol will spot and flare or he won’t."

But the Democrats know what to do. Sue. Send the Trial Lawyers Association to civilly enforce global warming. I can see it now, Obama v. Hyperion, with Ron Kuby representing Obama.