Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

EPA will no longer quickly settle lawsuits with environmental activists

10:03 am

The Trump administration has decided that it will no longer quickly settle lawsuits from environmental activist groups, an Obama policy that not only provided these groups a significant amount of easy funding from the federal government but also allowed them control over the regulatory process.

This is a step in the right direction but the article suggests that EPA head Scott Pruitt set a limit on the number of lawsuits the EPA can settle. This means it can settle some suits. It also suggests that the EPA will be able to argue for settling additional suits on a case-by-case basis.

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Highlights from Elon Musk’s Reddit session yesterday

9:20 am

Link here. Musk focused a lot on the technical engineering stuff that the geeks love. The take-away is that development is proceeding on the big rocket that will make the Falcon Heavy seem small, and that they are definitely incorporating the idea of point-to-point Earth transportation into its design.

Let me add that Musk needs to come up with a usable name for his big new rocket. A name that includes an obscenity, as it does now, is not good marketing. And if it is, then we are closer to the coming dark age than I can possibly imagine.

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Recent CO2 increase comes from tropical jungles, not human activity

9:13 am

The uncertainty of science: Scientists using the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) have found that the bulk of carbon dioxide increase in recent years came from tropical jungles at the equator, not human activity located mostly in the northern hemisphere.

I guarantee the climate science community, dependent of government funds given based on the crisis mode of human-caused global warming, will spin this somehow to link it with human activity, but if they do they are either fooling themselves, or lying to everyone else. The models all assumed that OCO-2 would find the increase coming from the industrial regions where fossil fuels burn. That is not what they found, which means once again that the models are crap. We do not yet understand the climate.

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Astronomers detect neutron star merger in both light and gravitational waves

9:00 am

Big news! Astronomers from dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space have observed for the first time the light burst caused by the merger of two neutron stars because earlier observations of the merger’s gravitational wave and gamma ray burst told them where to look in the sky.

On 17 August 2017 the NSF’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, working with the Virgo Interferometer in Italy, detected gravitational waves passing the Earth. This event, the fifth ever detected, was named GW170817. About two seconds later, two space observatories, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and ESA’s INTErnational Gamma Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), detected a short gamma-ray burst from the same area of the sky.

The LIGO–Virgo observatory network positioned the source within a large region of the southern sky, the size of several hundred full Moons and containing millions of stars. As night fell in Chile many telescopes peered at this patch of sky, searching for new sources. These included ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory, the Italian Rapid Eye Mount (REM) telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, the LCO 0.4-meter telescope at Las Cumbres Observatory, and the American DECam at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The Swope 1-metre telescope was the first to announce a new point of light. It appeared very close to NGC 4993, a lenticular galaxy in the constellation of Hydra, and VISTA observations pinpointed this source at infrared wavelengths almost at the same time. As night marched west across the globe, the Hawaiian island telescopes Pan-STARRS and Subaru also picked it up and watched it evolve rapidly.

Press releases today from numerous other observatories are too numerous to link here, and most essentially say the same thing. The key facts so far gleaned however are intriguing:

Distance estimates from both the gravitational wave data and other observations agree that GW170817 was at the same distance as NGC 4993, about 130 million light-years from Earth. This makes the source both the closest gravitational wave event detected so far and also one of the closest gamma-ray burst sources ever seen

This event also highlights the advantages of observing the universe in as many ways as possible. Some phenomenon get to us sooner, and thus provide us clues on where to look with other tools. Without the gravitational wave and gamma ray burst detectors, on Earth and in space, the other optical and infrared telescopes would have almost certainly not have recorded this merger.

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Another critical look at new Republican gun control bill

10:17 pm

The video below the fold outlines in detail, from a gun expert, why the law gun control law proposed by Republicans is “the worst piece of gun control legislation … in our lifetime,” as noted by the narrator on the second video at this link.

Basically, the law is so vague that almost anything can be defined as the newly outlawed “rate-enhancing device,” including semi-automatic guns themselves. The gun expert also explains that there are numerous ways to enhance the fire rate of a semi-automatic, some as simple as using the belt loop on your pants. Worse, the law includes no grandfather provisions, so depending on how Washington bureaucrats interpret it, it could immediately make millions of Americans felons, merely for possessing something they purchased legally.

This what we get from our Republicans in Congress. A few weeks ago they were pushing for eliminating the restrictions on suppressors (to protect the hearing of hunters) and passing nationwide reciprocity of concealed carry laws (so that innocent gun carriers would no longer become felons merely for carrying their guns accidently over state lines). Like a house of cards, as soon as the press screams at them, however, the Republican leadership folded, abandoning those proposals (when this is the time they should push them) and changed sides, instead proposing laws that will restrict our freedoms and our constitutional rights.

Watch the video below. It makes it very clear how badly conceived the law is. If you are in any of the districts of the Republicans who have co-signed this bill, get on the phone and tell them what you think.

One more thing: If the Democrats in Congress think this new push for gun control is going to help them win votes, they are out of their minds. Watch the passion of the speaker in the video below. Note his contempt for Democrats. Note also his contempt for the “turncoat” Republicans (as he calls them) for proposing this bad legislation. He is not alone. The election of Donald Trump and Roy Moore prove this. With this legislation that rage and anger is only growing, and spreading to more people.

As many have said, you want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.
» Read more

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China’s first test space station, Tiangong-1, is out-of-control

4:00 pm

The orbit of China’s first test space station, Tiangong-1, is quickly decaying and the station is shut down with no way to bring it down in a controlled manner.

The Chinese space station is accelerating its fall towards us and will reach the ground in the coming months, Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Guardian. It is decaying quickly and he expects “expect it will come down a few months from now – late 2017 or early 2018”, he told the paper.

The Tiangong 1 station was launched in 2011 as one of the great hopes of the Chinese ambitions in space, and as part of a plan to show itself off as a global superpower. The country’s space agency referred to the station as the “Heavenly Palace” and conducted a range of missions, some of which included astronauts.

But last year scientists at Chinese’s CNSA space agency said that they had lost control of the lab, and that it would now be heading towards Earth. That put an end to months of speculation, as experts watching the path of the station suggested that it had been behaving strangely.

As with many other similar objects coming down from orbit, the odds of any pieces hitting anyone is quite small. Still, China is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, and that makes them liable for any damage done by their spacecraft when they return to Earth.

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The man who suited up astronauts during the 1960s passes away at 101

10:58 am

R.I.P. Joseph Schmitt, the man who suited up all the astronauts during the 1960s, has passed away at 101.

Schmitt put Alan Shepard into his Freedom 7 capsule for the United States’ first spaceflight in May 1961, and he was still suiting up astronauts more than 20 years later, making sure everything was sealed and connected properly. Before any flight, he would spend long hours in the testing laboratory with the astronauts, getting them accustomed to their suits and troubleshooting problems.

He wrangled suits through the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs and into the space shuttle era, a span during which spacesuits went from being, essentially, modified military gear to high-tech creations that could protect an astronaut on a spacewalk or on a stroll on the moon.

An important man, but invisible at the time. In Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 I included pictures of the three Apollo 8 astronauts getting suited up, with one picture including an unnamed technician in the background whom I now suspect was Schmtt. Until now, I had never even noticed the technician at all. The focus was the astronauts, which though reasonable is also not really thorough. Everyone should always be credited for what they do, especially when what they do is hard, historically significant, and has to be done right. What Schmitt did was all those things.

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School district dumps To Kill a Mockingbird because of complaints

10:23 am

The coming dark age: A Mississippi school district has removed To Kill a Mockingbird from its reading list because it “makes people uncomfortable.”

“To Kill a Mockingbird” has a long history atop banned books lists, but here’s a new reason: the 20th century classic about racism in small-town Alabama “makes people uncomfortable.”

The Biloxi School District in Mississippi removed the novel by Harper Lee from an eighth-grade reading list after receiving complaints about the book’s language, the Biloxi Sun Herald reported. “There were complaints about it. There is some language in the book that makes people uncomfortable, and we can teach the same lesson with other books,” school board vice president Kenny Holloway told the paper.

I suspect the complaints were because the book used the slang for blacks common at the time and historically correct but absolutely banned from use today. The people complaining probably never read the book, and also likely haven’t the faintest idea what it is about. Worse, for the school board VP to go along with this ignorance is shameful.

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Imran Awan improperly downloaded data from numerous Congressmen

10:13 am

Former Democratic IT specialist Imran Awan, now under arrest for bank fraud, apparently downloaded significant amounts of data, without permission or security clearance, from numerous Democratic elected officials.

On Tuesday, Fox News reported, Rep. Scott Perry said Awan had made “massive” data transfers that posed a “substantial security threat.” Awan and four of his associates made 5,400 unauthorized logins on a single government server that belonged to Xavier Becerra, then head of House Democratic Caucus and now attorney general of California.

On October 6, Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller reported that Awan’s attorney wants to bar authorities from recovering data off the hard drive from a laptop with the username “RepDWS.” Capitol police found that laptop in a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building after Imran Awan had been banned from the House network from which he made massive data transfers.

Xavier Becerra was one of five House Democratic Caucus members who hired Imran Awan in 2004 but Becerra made more payments to Awan than any other Caucus member. Awan had access to data from 45 House Democrats including members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs Committees. To access that kind of information requires a security clearance, and as Andrew McCarthy noted, Awan and his crew could not possibly have qualified for such a clearance.

The article is a nice summary of this scandal, and illustrates why it appears that Awan had dirt on these Democrats and might have been blackmailing them. It also makes clear that his actions appear to have been a significant security breach that was funneling information to foreign enemies, even as these Democrats knew it and apparently were allowing it to happen.

I should note that Xavier Becerra is also the same person that pro-Trump hecklers shouted down during an appearance last week.

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Victory for right in Austrian elections

9:44 am

The two parties in Austria that want to control immigration, reduce government, and are skeptical of the present policies of the European Union came in one and two in elections today, and will lead the government in a coalition.

The liberal party came in third, with its worst showing in a half century.

The article tries to associate the winning party with the Nazis, but to me that is absurd. The present hostility to immigration in Austria mirrors similar hostility throughout the west, and is fueled not by race hatred but by fury at the incompetent management by previous leaders, not just in the area of immigration but across the board. The leadership class in the past three decades has done a terrible job, and are now reaping the whirlwind they created for themselves.

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Scaled Composites flies experimental plane for mystery customer

9:24 am

Scaled Composites earlier this week completed the first maiden flight of a new experimental plane, the Model 401, for an unnamed customer.

Details of the first flight are sketchy, though Scaled posted a video on Facebook showing the takeoff of Vehicle Number 1. The Model 401 prototypes have an identical outer design with a 38-ft (11.6 m) wingspan and identical performance characteristics. Lightweight construction allows for an empty weight of 4,000 lb (1,814 kg) and a takeoff weight of 8,000 lb (3,628 kg).

The Model 401 uses a single Pratt & Whitney JTD-15D-5D engine punching 3,045 lb of thrust. This provides for a speed of Mach 0.6 (456 mph, 735 km/h) and a service ceiling of 30,000 ft (10,000 m) with a flight endurance of three hours.

Two of these have been built, so far. The picture of the plane at the link suggests it is stealth designed so that radar will have trouble detecting it. The specifications above suggest to me that it is possibly a military training plane. I would welcome the speculations of my many aviation readers

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Motor for ArianeGroup’s next generation rockets ready for testing

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: The first full scale solid rocket motor for ArianeGroup’s next generation rockets, the Ariane 6 and the Vega-C, is now ready for testing.

The P120C is the largest solid-propellant rocket motor ever built in one segment. Each P120C will hold over 140 tonnes of propellant in a carbon fibre casing almost 11.5 m long and about 3.4 m in diameter. It is derived from Vega’s current first stage motor, the P80, which holds 88 tonnes of propellant.

The design builds on existing expertise and lessons learned with Vega’s P80, and it increases Vega performance with Vega-C. Two or four P120Cs will be strapped onto Ariane 6 as boosters for liftoff.

The use of this solid rocket on both the upgraded Vega-C and the larger Ariane 6 illustrates how the privately controlled ArianeGroup is trying to reduce costs. In the past, Arianespace would have had different companies within the ESA build different solid rockets for Vega-C and Ariane 6 in order to distribute the work to different member countries, even though having two different development contracts would have increased costs.

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Mysterious SpaceX launch scheduled for November 10

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has a launch scheduled for November 10 in which nothing is known about its payload.

The mystery payload is intriguing, but the article revealed something more significant: This launch, set for November 10, will take place on launchpad 39-A, which means that the first Falcon Heavy launch cannot occur until January 10, at the earliest. According to SpaceX, they will need sixty days to reconfigure that launchpad to the Falcon Heavy after they switch launches back to launchpad 40. That reconfiguration thus cannot begin until after the November 10 launch.

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ULA’s Atlas 5 successfully launches surveillance satellite

8:56 am

Capitalism in space: ULA today successfully launched a reconnaissance satellite using its Atlas 5 rocket.

This was ULA’s seventh launch for the year, putting them behind the launch rate since the company’s formation of about a dozen launches per year. At the moment the seven launches matches 2008, the year with the fewest launches. With only two launches listed for the rest of the year, 2017 could be the first time since 2010 that ULA has not reached double digits in launches.

Whether this drop represents a long term drop in business is unclear. The company is definitely under price pressure from SpaceX and others, but that pressure had not significantly reduced their launch rate in the past four years. It will take a few more years to see.

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Morgan Stanley analysts see SpaceX value growing to $50 billion

7:29 am

Capitalism in space: A report from Morgan Stanley on Friday said that the value of SpaceX could grow to $50 billion, more than doubling its present value, if it successfully launches its proposed broadband satellite constellation.

I like this quote from the article:

Reducing the cost to launch a satellite to about $60 million, from the $200 million that United Launch Alliance charged through most of the last decade, was a monumental breakthrough. SpaceX is trying to reduce its cost to $5 million per mission, and Morgan Stanley says the launch business “generates limited operating income.”

As they say, the proof is in the pudding, and you might say that SpaceX in the past five years has launched a lot of pudding.

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Pro-Trump hecklers shout down California attorney general

10:53 pm

Fascism: A Q&A at Whittier College with California’s attorney general was shouted down and cut off prematurely by pro-Trump demonstrators.

The event ended early after pro-Trump hecklers, upset about Becerra’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over DACA, continuously shouted slogans and insults at Becerra and Calderon. A group affiliated with the hecklers later boasted that the speakers were “SHOUTED DOWN BY FED-UP CALIFORNIANS” and that the “meeting became so raucous that it ended about a half hour early.”

The event, held in Whittier College’s Shannon Center theater, was free and open to members of the community, and featured introductions from both Whittier’s president and student body president. Becerra and Calderon were to have an hour-long question-and-answer session using audience questions randomly selected from a basket. As soon as they began the discussion, however, hecklers decked in “Make America Great Again” hats began a continuous and persistent chorus of boos, slogans, and insults.

I am not surprised that we are now seeing people on the right doing this sort of thing, having seen leftists do it repeatedly during the past year and getting away with it, every single time. They are angry and frustrated, and want to return the favor.

Having said that, however, I also firmly consider this terribly wrong and an example of fascist behavior. If the only way we are going to behave is screaming at each other, we will soon see that screaming descend into utter violence, a process that will do no one any good, and solve nothing.

These hecklers should have been escorted out of the room, and arrested if they resisted in the slightest. That they weren’t speaks poorly of the security at Whittier College.

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Today in fascist academia

10:10 am

Here’s today’s new collection of articles illustrating the fascist movement that is growing and supported by college administrators nationwide.

The last story is a little complicated, but essentially a conservative group wanted to hold a debate on illegal immigration, and because some students complained (creating a petition opposing the debate) the dean of the law school sent out an email withdrawing school sponsorship of the event, expressing sympathy and support to those opposed to the event, and offering alternative events to go to. She didn’t cancel it, but she made it clear that she would do whatever she could to squelch its success.

Note too that in the first two stories above, the administrations have shown no interest in disciplining anyone for these acts of theft and public misbehavior.

The worst part of these stories is the amount of support for censorship and these disruptions by the students themselves. For example, the Princeton op-ed was written by a student. If this is what the next generation truly believes, the United States will not remain a free nation much longer.

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Language of bump stock ban could ban all semi-auto rifiles

9:06 am

We’re here to help you! The vague language of the Republican legislation to ban bump stocks actually could be interpreted by the courts as banning all semi-automatic rifles.

The legislation, which was drafted by Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican, never bans bump stocks by name. Instead, the proposal bans any person from possessing or making any part that could be used to increase the rate of fire in any semi-automatic rifle. The lead co-sponsor on the gun control bill is Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and U.S. Marines veteran who completed four tours of duty in Iraq.

“It shall be unlawful for any person … to manufacture, possess, or transfer any part or combination of parts that is designed to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle,” the bill states. At no point does the proposed legislation specify a base rate of fire against which any illegal increases would be judged, a potentially fatal flaw in the bill’s drafting. As a result, the proposal arguably institutes a federal ban on any and all parts that would allow the gun to fire at all, since the mere ability to fire a semi-automatic weapon by definition increases its rate of fire from zero.

The design of semi-automatic weapons uses the recoil of the weapon generated by the gas explosion in the chamber when a round is fired to automatically chamber a new round, and prepare the weapon to be fired again. Because of this, any parts used in that process would likely be subject to the federal ban proposed in the Curbelo/Moulton bill, since they serve to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic weapon. Gas tubes, gas blocks, buffer springs, magazines, charging handles, ejectors and extractors, and even triggers themselves could potentially be banned under the bipartisan bump stock ban language proposed by Curbelo and Moulton.

I am reminded of the old saying, “Marry in haste, regret in leisure.” This rush to pass any legislation here is misguided, foolish, and against the interests of everyone. It also once again demonstrates the servile stupidity of many Republicans in Congress, who seems always willing to bow to political pressure placed on them by the leftist press.

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NASA official hints at further SLS delays

8:53 am

In confirming that the first unmanned flight of SLS will not occur until 2019, Todd May, head of the Marshall Space Flight Center, also indicated today that the first manned flight cannot occur any sooner than 33 months after that.

May was speaking at an industry meeting in Washington, DC today. According to the article, May tried to sell the idea that the launch date for the first unmanned mission, while still officially December 2018, is going to be delayed into 2019 and a new date will be announced “soon.” This is false. NASA revealed weeks ago that the the first unmanned flight has been delayed until the fourth quarter of 2019, likely in December.

The important detail from May’s remarks, however, is this:

The first launch with a crew, EM-2, currently cannot take place for at least 33 months after the first because it will take that long to reconfigure the Mobile Transporter at Kennedy Space Center to accommodate an upgraded version of SLS with a new, taller, upper stage. [emphasis mine]

Thirty-three months after December 2019 places the first manned launch as taking place no earlier than September 2022. I have emphasized the words “at least” because we can all be certain that this work will take longer than 33 months. I predict once again that the first manned flight will not occur in 2022. It will take place in 2023, nineteen years after President George Bush proposed it.

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Russia’s Rockot launches ESA Earth resource satellite

8:33 am

Despite numerous political issues, including opposition from Canadian Inuit officials, Russia’s re-purposed ICBM Rockot today successfully launched a European Earth resource satellite.

The other problems were related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, since the avionics for the rocket were made by a Ukrainian company.

I must add that this launch puts Russia ahead of SpaceX once again in the race to launch the most in 2017, 16 to 15.

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Taxpayers paying millions for airfare for illegal immigrants

5:53 pm

Corruption. The State Department and other federal agencies have been providing millions in unsecured loans to illegal immigrants to pay their airfare into the United States.

The program is operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental group that assists refugees worldwide with hundreds of millions of dollars from Uncle Sam. The money is channeled through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). In fiscal year 2016 the State Department gave IOM $477,257,564, according to the agency’s report on contributions to international organizations. That doesn’t even include millions more that the State Department gives the IOM for special refugee resettlement “platforms” that pop up throughout the year.

…In a federal court document responding to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the State Department writes that its “search did not retrieve any records reflecting the number of refugee travel loans furnished per year using U.S. Government funds, the number of such travel loans defaulted on annually, nor the amount of money written off per defaulted loan.” In a footnote the agency writes that it did retrieve some records reflecting IOM’s “general reporting” on refugee travel loans, but none of it contained the “specific information sought” by Judicial Watch. This is outrageous because it suggests that the State Department can’t account for money American taxpayers are lending to foreigners to fly here to declare themselves refugees. A source with inside knowledge of the matter confirmed to Judicial Watch that the records exist and years ago a State Department insider provided figures that show only about half of the travel loans have been repaid since the program was launched in the 1950s, representing a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to American taxpayers. Judicial Watch viewed the records, which span from 1952 to 2002 and reveal that the IOM issued $1,020,803,910 in “transportation” loans and recovered only $584, 219,453.

This does not include a Health & Human Services program that gives illegals special loans up to $15,000, without keeping track on whether the loans are repaid or not.

Let’s make this very clear: Federal agencies have been providing money to illegal immigrants to make it easier for them to fly into the United States illegally. The program, set up in the 1950s, was likely created to aid refugees escaping from the Soviet bloc. Now it is used to encourage illegal immigration, against the interests of the United States and its citizens.

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Blue Origin considering military certification for New Glenn

4:44 pm

Capitlism in space: Blue Origin is in discussions with military and national security officials in order to find out what the company must do to get its New Glenn rocket, presently under development, certified to bid on military launches.

Only a few days ago I speculated that Blue Origin might have a chance to bid on the Air Force’s new request for proposals for launches after 2022. This story confirms that they are thinking the same thing.

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Hamas agrees to hand Gaza to Palestinian Authority

3:36 pm

Don’t count those chickens just yet: Hamas today agreed to a deal with the Palestinian Authority to hand over control of Gaza to their West Bank rivals.

Nothing is really agreed to yet. They now will form committees to determine exactly how control will be transferred.

A major sticking point has been the Hamas military wing and its arsenal. Abbas has said he would only return to Gaza if Hamas hands over power, while Hamas has said the military wing is not up for discussion. Hamas officials have assured the Fatah negotiators that the military wing would maintain a low profile as part of any deal.

I can’t imagine any deal here. The leaders of both groups come from terrorist organizations. The Hamas leadership would consider it literal suicide to give up control over its military force. Similarly, the leadership of the Palestinian Authority would consider it literal suicide to allow an independent military force to operate within it.

The link notes two key aspects to this deal. First, it was partly prompted by the Arab boycott of Qatar, which had been supporting Hamas. Second, it has been brokered by the Egyptian government led by al-Sisi.

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Storms on Titan dump a lot of liquid methane, quickly

3:16 pm

A new climate model for Titan that suggests the planet’s methane rainstorms occur about once a Saturn year (29.5 years) and at about 60 degree latitude correlates with Cassini surface data that found a high concentration of alluvial fans at that latitude.

“The most intense methane storms in our climate model dump at least a foot of rain a day, which comes close to what we saw in Houston from Hurricane Harvey this summer,” said Mitchell, the principal investigator of UCLA’s Titan climate modeling research group.

Sean Faulk, a UCLA graduate student and the study’s lead author said the study also found that the extreme methane rainstorms may imprint the moon’s icy surface in much the same way that extreme rainstorms shape Earth’s rocky surface. On Earth, intense storms can trigger large flows of sediment that spread into low lands and form cone-shaped features called alluvial fans. In the new study, the UCLA scientists found that regional patterns of extreme rainfall on Titan are correlated with recent detections of alluvial fans, suggesting that they were formed by intense rainstorms.

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United States to pull out from UNESCO

8:41 am

The United States has announced that it is exiting entirely from UNESCO due to its anti-Israel bias and the lack of any reform within the organization.

The U.S. stopped funding UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member in 2011, but the State Department has maintained a UNESCO office and sought to weigh on policy behind the scenes. The U.S. now owes about $550 million in back payments.

In a statement, the State Department said the decision will take effect Dec. 31, 2018, and that the U.S. will seek a “permanent observer” status instead. It cited U.S. belief in “the need for fundamental reform in the organization.”

…U.S. officials said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the decision and that it was not discussed with other countries but was the result of an internal U.S. government deliberation. The officials, who were not authorized to be publicly named discussing the issue, said the U.S. is notably angry over UNESCO resolutions denying Jewish connections to holy sites and references to Israel as an occupying power.

The article notes that this happened back in the 1980s, but fails to mention that it was President Reagan who did it, and faced harsh criticism from the usual liberal suspects in the mainstream press and academia. In the end, however, the 1980s pull out worked. UNESCO made reforms, and the U.S. rejoined in 2003.

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Trump appoints private sector businessman to head NOAA

8:22 am

President Trump today nominated Barry Myers, the head of the private company AccuWeather, to be chief of NOAA.

This pick will likely accelerate the shift at NOAA from government-built weather satellites to buying the product from the private sector, a shift that NOAA has strongly resisted so far. The article above illustrates that resistance, as it immediately gives space to the naysayers.

But some scientists worry that Myers’ ties to AccuWeather could present conflicts of interest, and note that Myers has no direct experience with the agency’s broader research portfolio, which includes the climate, oceans and fisheries. “I think the science community has real cause for concern,” says Andrew Rosenberg, head of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rosenberg notes that Myers was an early proponent of carving out a larger role for the private sector in providing weather services. And in 2005, while Myers served as executive vice president and general counsel, AccuWeather lobbied for legislation to prevent the National Weather Service from competing with private firms in providing products including basic weather forecasting. “Is he going to recuse himself from decisions which might potentially be of interest to his company down the road?” asks Rosenberg.

I am not surprised that the Union of Concerned Scientists opposes this shift. They have been a big government, centralized-control advocate for decades. The simple fact is, however, that a lot of money is made predicting the weather. There is no reason the government should be paying for these satellites and providing this service free. If the government didn’t do it, the private weather companies like AccuWeather and the Weather Channel would quickly take over, because — like television networks and communications companies — they need the satellites for their businesses.

Would the data be as available for scientists doing climate research? Maybe in the beginning the private companies would be reluctant to release what to them is proprietary data. As more competing companies got their satellites launched, however, the competition would force them all to make their data available for research, and researchers would end up with more data, not less.

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Surveys find major morale problems in Navy ship

6:59 pm

Despite three different surveys of the crews of a Navy ship that found significant morale problems pointing directly at its commander, the Navy did not remove him initially.

The Navy Times obtained three command climate surveys featuring hundreds of pages of anonymous comments from sailors revealing widespread morale issues aboard the USS Shiloh, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser based in Yokosuka, Japan. Two Navy officials told CNN that the information reported from the surveys was accurate.

According to the obtained surveys only 31% of the sailors who responded to the survey said yes to the prompt: “I trust that my organization’s leadership will treat me fairly,” compared to 63% under the previous commanding officer. Additionally, only 37% agreed with the statement “I feel motivated to give my best efforts to the mission of the organization,” compared to 69% agreeing to the statement under the previous leadership.

The Navy officials added that the poor results of one climate survey caused Navy leadership to increase the frequency of which such surveys were conducted to help prompt the commander, Capt. Adam Aycock, to improve his performance.

One of the officials said they could not explain how Aycock managed to retain command in the face of the poor survey results. Aycock served as the Shiloh’s commanding officer from June 2015 to August 2017 and is now at the US Naval War College. [emphasis mine]

That this guy was not relieved after the first survey suggests some significant rot in the higher Navy management above him.

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SpaceX launches another satellite, recovers 1st stage

4:06 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today has just successfully launched a commercial satellite, using a previously flown first stage, which it was able to successfully land and recover for the second time. I can’t wait for the first time they fly one of these first stages for the third time.

This was SpaceX’s 15th launch for the year, which ties them with the Russians for most launches so far in 2017. It also puts them one short of doubling their previous yearly launch record of 8, and also puts them only one behind the record for most launches by a U.S. company since 1986 (ULA launched 16 times in 2009).

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