| Monday,
June 29, 2009
SCOTUS and the Firefighter
Case
Jerry,
The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of the passed
over firefighters, and I quote:
"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify the city's
reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations
and qualified for promotions,"
http://www.nytimes.com/
2009/06/30/us/30scotus.html?hp
Mark
Note that this was a 5-4 decision. I have only read the news accounts of
the opinions, but my interpretation is that this does establish that one can
devise a test that is racially neutral, and it remains racially neutral if
it causes a racial disparity in outcomes. That would be an important
precedent.
================
The quiet Sun continues:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
Some climate theorists believe that periods of no sunspots
bring about a lower solar constant -- the energy that the Earth gets from
the Sun -- and thus lower Earth temperatures. The longest period of no
sunspots coincided with the coldest period of the Little Ice Age. Note,
though, that the Little Ice Age had been under way since the early 1300's.
The Little Ice Age began at a time when solar activity was falling rapidly,
but no one was recording sunspots so solar activity has to be inferred from
other measurements. I know of no proof that lack of sunspots is a reliable
predictor of colder Earth temperatures, but it is an hypothesis held by some
qualified climate theorists.
My view is that the Earth has been both considerably warmer
(dairy farms in Greenland, vineyards in Scotland) and colder (Hudson frozen
over hard enough to haul cannon across it to Harlem, skaters on the Zuyder
Zee during the William the Silent insurgency against Spain) in
historical times, and most of the current warming took place well before any
rise in CO2.
It may be irrelevant now. The House has passed an enormous
energy tax bill. We don't know what it will do because no one has read it,
but by all accounts it's pretty drastic. We can only hope that the Senate
comes to its senses and rejects this.
The Global Warming Alarmists, including Waxman, continue to
say that this bill is required, the Earth is warming because of CO2, and
without this energy tax humanity is headed for disaster. Meanwhile, the
international consensus on measures like this has fallen apart. Even if one
accepts the CO2 caused global warming hypothesis, there is no indication
that this bill would reduce total world CO2 emission by any significant
amount; while it would certainly do enormous damage to the American economy.
Of course I have a stake in this: according to this bill I
would not be able to sell my house without putting huge investments in
replacing my appliances. Regulators get to intervene in housing sales. That
should do wonders for the housing market. The implications for political
pressures are enormous, of course. Who gets to appoint the regulators?
All internal dissent on the CO2 Global Warming hypothesis
have been suppressed. This is not the way of science.
The report
is large, and I haven't read it. Summaries I have seen suggest it is a
reasonable critique of the "consensus" position.
One can hope that Congress will come back into a sensible
state of mind, but the prospects don't look good.
==============
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