Trump Keeps Winning

[Raev]

A really interesting video on solar activity. I don't expect any of you mongoloids to actually watch it, so I will attempt to summarize:

• Zharkova (and her graduate students who did the real work) was originally involved in sunspot and magnetic field measurements of the Sun.
• They built a oscillatory model for this data using PCA that predicts 93% of the variance of the solar cycle.
• They found a reasonable physical interpretation of this model: the gases in the sun circulate up and down, generating magnetic fields. There are multiple layers, and the outer two are the most important. When they reinforce each other, we get a solar maximum, and when they cancel each other, we get a solar maximum.
• The solar cycle is a cos^2(x) wave where the first period is about 22 years and the second is about 375 years. We are due for a Grand Minimum soon.
• Solar magnetic activity protects the entire system from cosmic rays, which tend to destroy clouds. Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas, not CO2, and all big warming models rely on more clouds, which isn't likely to happen for the next 20 years.

TLDR: even if anthropogenic global warming is correct, we are likely to see global temperatures fall over the next 20-30 years. Just as it's very unclear that global warming is bad, it's not clear that global cooling is good. Lower sunlight means lower food production, and as resources become scarcer competition will increase. So you will see more of this (Caravan migrant talked shit on Facebook; Tijuanans tortured him to death).

Also extremely interesting: you can build a computer to generate controversial topics, and it works: the company was destroyed and they may have randomly destroyed Mozambique (correlation/causation warnings apply). Among the other topics generated by the 'Scissor': both Kaepernick (NFL player against police violence) and Kavanaugh (SC appointee accused of sexual harassment). The author believes it is likely that someone is running a program like this.

Finally, Hillary is now against illegal immigration as she quite correctly claims it stokes right-wing populism. It's still a very strange stance as it is a perfect scissor to split the Democratic party. We know that contributions to the Clinton Foundation have collapsed by 80% or so (no one wants to pay when they can't play). Are the big players shuffling some pieces behind the scenes?