Category: Essays And Commentaries

Long essays or op-ed length commentaries on the issues of the day or on topics of special interest.

Off to Israel

1:00 pm

Posting for the rest of February will be spotty. I am heading to New York to give a lecture the Long Island section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on Thursday night, then on to Israel for 10 days to visit family.

For an idea of what it was like to visit Israel last February, check out my earlier posts below, listed in chronological order. In each case, I think you will get a more accurate portrayal of the reality on the ground, in contrast to the political antisemitism of today’s modern intellectual culture.

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The uncertainty of knowledge

1:28 pm

NOAA this week posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in January. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.

Back in October the Sun’s sunspot activity had plummeted, following almost two years of very weak activity. At that time, I wrote, “It appears the solar maximum has ended. The only question now is how long and deep the upcoming solar minimum will be.”

Well, talk about foolish predictions. I should shake hands with Al Gore and James Hansen for making the mistake of announcing the future as if I know what will happen. The truth is that no one truly understands the Sun’s sunspot cycle.

In January the Sun continued the high sunspot activity of the previous three months, once again producing sunspots in numbers close to the actual predictions of the solar science community. And while all their predictions remain generally high when compared to the actual numbers, they can now feel reassured that the overall length and strength of this solar maximum is beginning to resemble the prediction of the solar scientists who thought this would be a weak maximum.
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Congress hovers over commercial space like a vulture

9:34 am

We’re here to help you: A House subcommittee held hearings yesterday to consider updating the Commercial Space Launch Act that regulates the commercial space tourism industry.

Forgive me if I am pessimistic about anything Congress might do. So far, every time they have updated the law Congress has increased the regulatory regimen, making it harder and more expensive for these companies to get started. Consider these words from Donna Edwards (D-Maryland), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee:
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The 2014 Birthday Bleg

10:00 am

I really dislike doing this, but someone has to pay the bills, and this website is one way I do it. February 5 will be my sixty-first birthday. As I have done the past two years, I am posting a birthday bleg, requesting donations to help fund the existence of Behind the Black. If you like my webpage and want to support it in any way, please consider donating something. I would be grateful for anything you can give.. Some people have even subscribed, sending as little as $2 per month.

The tip jar can be found in the right column, below the search box.

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Better medicine through engineering

3:26 pm

For me, the last eight months have been very interesting when it comes to medical treatment. I have had my left hand rebuilt to eliminate chronic pain, I had my heart inspected to make sure it was working properly, and this week I had the retina in my right eye re-attached using some very clever engineering.

For once, this essay will not be about the politics of medicine and the disaster of Obamacare, which is still ongoing. Instead, I will outline how freedom and human creativity has now made possible a whole range of modern medical techniques that are either improving the quality of life for patients or literally saving their lives.
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The fraud in global warming science

10:56 am

You might have noticed a plethora of stories in the last couple of days, reporting claims by NASA and NOAA that 2013 was one of the hottest years ever on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday released its global temperature figures for 2013. The average world temperature was 58.12 degrees (14.52 Celsius) tying with 2003 for the fourth warmest since 1880. NASA, which calculates records in a different manner, said Tuesday that 2013 was the seventh warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.3 degrees (14.6 Celsius).

How can this be, if there has been a pause in global warming for the past 17 years, as has been admitted by the UN’s IPCC and climate scientists everywhere?

The answer, in my opinion: outright fraud.
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To environmentalists no warming and more bears means global warming and an endangered species

9:20 am

A U.S. Geological Survey science team has determined that the grizzly bear population has recovered enough that the bear can be taken off the endangered species list.

A report delivered in November by the US Geological Survey’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team describes a resilient and healthy bear population that has adapted to the loss of pine nuts by eating more elk and bison, keeping fat stores at levels that allow the bears to survive and reproduce. For Christopher Servheen, a biologist who oversees grizzly-bear recovery efforts at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula, Montana, that is not surprising. “Bears are flexible,” he says. “It’s easier to say what they don’t eat than what they do eat.”

Not surprisingly, environmental activists don’t like this decision. They claim that, wait for it, global warming threatens the bear enough that it should not be delisted.
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Another law, another squelched dream

9:28 am

Surprise, surprise! Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by federal regulations.

Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough. The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February. Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection. “An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely remains uncertain exactly when it will happen,” says Dirk Gibson, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and author of multiple books on space tourism. “This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It’s space travel. AST has to be very prudent,” he says. “They don’t want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can’t let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public.” [emphasis mine]

As I predicted ten years ago, the 2004 revision to the Commercial Space Act puts bureaucrats in charge of the exploration of space by private citizens, a fact that can have no good consequences.
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Yippee! Solar scientists finally get it right

11:39 am

Earlier this week NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in December. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.

December was an active month for sunspots, so much so that for only the second time during this solar maximum has the Sun’s activity actually met and exceeded the predictions of the solar science community. In fact, the Sun’s high activity in both November and December has made this second peak in solar maximum almost as strong as the first peak in October 2011. Normally, the second peak of a double-peaked maximum is relatively weak. Not so this time.

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Scientists so good they can predict things after it happens

1:57 pm

Normally I would post this tidbit when I do my monthly update of the Sun’s solar cycle, due out in sometime in the next week. However, this piece of news is so ridiculous that I have got to post it now, just so everyone can see how far science in the modern world has declined.

For the past three years I have documented the number of times the solar scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have changed their prediction for the number of sunspots during this solar maximum. They have revised their prediction so many times with such a large range that it appears that they really don’t have any real system or theory for making this prediction, but are merely guessing based on instinct, opinion, or tea leaves. Moreover, they do not archive their earlier predictions. If I wasn’t documenting them here monthly, there would be no way to know that while today they predict one thing (very close to what is the right number), two years ago their prediction was way off, In recent months, because the changes have become so absurd, I have been making screen captures of each change.

For the past two months they have been stating that the sunspot maximum had occurred during the summer of 2013 with an average daily sunspot number of 65. Below is my screen capture from when they made this change in November.
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An upbeat wimpy maximum holds on

8:00 pm

Today NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in November. As I do every month, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations.

As in October, the Sun was more active than it has been for this entire solar maximum. November’s numbers dropped slightly from October, but still remained high, though as has been typical for this solar maximum they remained below prediction.
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Exciting Times in Space

7:00 am

Tonight I will make another of my many appearances on the Space Show with David Livingston. What makes this particular appearance special is that it will be the tenth anniversary of my first appearance on the show. Ten years ago tonight, on December 3, 2003, I appeared with David to discuss both the history of space exploration as well as its future — as we saw it then. (If you want to listen to that first appearance simply go to this link.)

For the first half of the show our discussion mostly focused on history, the 1960s space race, and my book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 (now available as an ebook).

During the second half, our conversation began to range far and wide, speculating about the future of manned space exploration and what would be the best ways to jump start the American effort. Though I did not get everything right, what I said then has turned out to have been a remarkably accurate prediction of what has happened since.

To set the context, this appearance occurred only six weeks before George Bush’s January 14, 2004 speech where he announced his vision for space exploration. At the time we did not know what Bush would say, or even if he would propose anything, though there had been a lot of rumors that Bush was about to make a Kennedy-like speech proposing another Kennedy-like NASA mission to explore the solar system. David Livingston asked me what I thought would happen.
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