Bill Ackman: Why Exposing Harvard's President was a Step in the Right Direction (verbatim from X)

Bill Ackman

@BillAckman

In light of today’s news, I thought I would try to take a step back and provide perspective on what this is really all about. I first became concerned about

@Harvard

when 34 Harvard student organizations, early on the morning of October 8th before Israel had taken any military actions in Gaza, came out publicly in support of Hamas, a globally recognized terrorist organization, holding Israel ‘solely responsible’ for Hamas’ barbaric and heinous acts. How could this be? I wondered. When I saw President Gay’s initial statement about the massacre, it provided more context (!) for the student groups’ statement of support for terrorism. The protests began as pro-Palestine and then became anti-Israel. Shortly, thereafter, antisemitism exploded on campus as protesters who violated Harvard’s own codes of conduct were emboldened by the lack of enforcement of Harvard’s rules, and kept testing the limits on how aggressive, intimidating, and disruptive they could be to Jewish and Israeli students, and the student body at large. Sadly, antisemitism remains a simmering source of hate even at our best universities among a subset of students. A few weeks later, I went up to campus to see things with my own eyes, and listen and learn from students and faculty. I met with 15 or so members of the faculty and a few hundred students in small and large settings, and a clearer picture began to emerge. I ultimately concluded that antisemitism was not the core of the problem, it was simply a troubling warning sign – it was the “canary in the coal mine” – despite how destructive it was in impacting student life and learning on campus. I came to learn that the root cause of antisemitism at Harvard was an ideology that had been promulgated on campus, an oppressor/oppressed framework, that provided the intellectual bulwark behind the protests, helping to generate anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and harassment. Then I did more research. The more I learned, the more concerned I became, and the more ignorant I realized I had been about DEI, a powerful movement that has not only pervaded Harvard, but the educational system at large. I came to understand that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion was not what I had naively thought these words meant. I have always believed that diversity is an important feature of a successful organization, but by diversity I mean diversity in its broadest form: diversity of viewpoints, politics, ethnicity, race, age, religion, experience, socioeconomic background, sexual identity, gender, one’s upbringing, and more. What I learned, however, was that DEI was not about diversity in its purest form, but rather DEI was a political advocacy movement on behalf of certain groups that are deemed oppressed under DEI’s own methodology. Under DEI, one’s degree of oppression is determined based upon where one resides on a so-called intersectional pyramid of oppression where whites, Jews, and Asians are deemed oppressors, and a subset of people of color, LGBTQ people, and/or women are deemed to be oppressed. Under this ideology which is the philosophical underpinning of DEI as advanced by Ibram X. Kendi and others, one is either an anti-racist or a racist. There is no such thing as being “not racist.” Under DEI’s ideology, any policy, program, educational system, economic system, grading system, admission policy, (and even climate change due its disparate impact on geographies and the people that live there), etc. that leads to unequal outcomes among people of different skin colors is deemed racist. As a result, according to DEI, capitalism is racist, Advanced Placement exams are racist, IQ tests are racist, corporations are racist, or in other words, any merit-based program, system, or organization which has or generates outcomes for different races that are at variance with the proportion these different races represent in the population at large is by definition racist under DEI’s ideology. In order to be deemed anti-racist, one must personally take action to reverse any unequal outcomes in society. The DEI movement, which has permeated many universities, corporations, and state, local and federal governments, is designed to be the anti-racist engine to transform society from its currently structurally racist state to an anti-racist one. After the death of George Floyd, the already burgeoning DEI movement took off without any real challenge to its problematic ideology. Why, you might ask, was there so little pushback? The answer is that anyone who dared to raise a question which challenged DEI was deemed a racist, a label which could severely impact one’s employment, social status, reputation and more. Being called a racist got people cancelled, so those concerned about DEI and its societal and legal implications had no choice but to keep quiet in this new climate of fear. The techniques that DEI has used to squelch the opposition are found in the Red Scares and McCarthyism of decades past. If you challenge DEI, “justice” will be swift, and you may find yourself unemployed, shunned by colleagues, cancelled, and/or you will otherwise put your career and acceptance in society at risk. The DEI movement has also taken control of speech. Certain speech is no longer permitted. So-called “microaggressions” are treated like hate speech. “Trigger warnings” are required to protect students. “Safe spaces” are necessary to protect students from the trauma inflicted by words that are challenging to the students’ newly-acquired world views. Campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and cancelled. These speech codes have led to self-censorship by students and faculty of views privately held, but no longer shared. There is no commitment to free expression at Harvard other than for DEI-approved views. This has led to the quashing of conservative and other viewpoints from the Harvard campus and faculty, and contributed to Harvard’s having the lowest free speech ranking of 248 universities assessed by the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression. When one examines DEI and its ideological heritage, it does not take long to understand that the movement is inherently inconsistent with basic American values. Our country since its founding has been about creating and building a democracy with equality of opportunity for all. Millions of people have left behind socialism and communism to come to America to start again, as they have seen the destruction leveled by an equality of outcome society. The E for “equity” in DEI is about equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity. DEI is racist because reverse racism is racism, even if it is against white people (and it is remarkable that I even need to point this out). Racism against white people has become considered acceptable by many not to be racism, or alternatively, it is deemed acceptable racism. While this is, of course, absurd, it has become the prevailing view in many universities around the country. You can say things about white people today in universities, in business or otherwise, that if you switched the word ‘white’ to ‘black,’ the consequences to you would be costly and severe. To state what should otherwise be self-evident, whether or not a statement is racist should not depend upon whether the target of the racism is a group who currently represents a majority or minority of the country or those who have a lighter or darker skin color. Racism against whites is as reprehensible as it is against groups with darker skin colors. Martin Luther King’s most famous words are instructive: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” But here we are in 2024, being asked and in some cases required to use skin color to effect outcomes in admissions (recently deemed illegal by the Supreme Court), in business (likely illegal yet it happens nonetheless) and in government (also I believe in most cases to be illegal, except apparently in government contracting), rather than the content of one’s character. As such, a meritocracy is an anathema to the DEI movement. DEI is inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed. And DEI’s definition of oppressed is fundamentally flawed. I have always believed that the most fortunate should help the least fortunate, and that our system should be designed in such a way as to maximize the size of the overall pie so that it will enable us to provide an economic system which can offer quality of life, education, housing, and healthcare for all. America is a rich country and we have made massive progress over the decades toward achieving this goal, but we obviously have much more work to do. Steps taken on the path to socialism – another word for an equality of outcome system – will reverse this progress and ultimately impoverish us all. We have seen this movie many times. Having a darker skin color, a less common sexual identity, and/or being a woman doesn’t make one necessarily oppressed or even disadvantaged. While slavery remains a permanent stain on our country’s history – a fact which is used by DEI to label white people as oppressors – it doesn’t therefore hold that all white people generations after the abolishment of slavery should be held responsible for its evils. Similarly, the fact that Columbus discovered America doesn’t make all modern-day Italians colonialists. An ideology that portrays a bicameral world of oppressors and the oppressed based principally on race or sexual identity is a fundamentally racist ideology that will likely lead to more racism rather than less. A system where one obtains advantages by virtue of one’s skin color is a racist system, and one that will generate resentment and anger among the un-advantaged who will direct their anger at the favored groups. The country has seen burgeoning resentment and anger grow materially over the last few years, and the DEI movement is an important contributor to our growing divisiveness. Resentment is one of the most important drivers of racism. And it is the lack of equity, i.e, fairness, in how DEI operates, that contributes to this resentment. I was accused of being a racist from the President of the NAACP among others when I posted on

@X

that I had learned that the Harvard President search process excluded candidates that did not meet the DEI criteria. I didn’t say that former President Gay was hired because she was a black woman. I simply said that I had heard that the search process by its design excluded a large percentage of potential candidates due to the DEI limitations. My statement was not a racist one. It was simply the empirical truth about the Harvard search process that led to Gay’s hiring. When former President Gay was hired, I knew little about her, but I was instinctually happy for Harvard and the black community. Every minority community likes to see their representatives recognized in important leadership positions, and it is therefore an important moment for celebration. I too celebrated this achievement. I am inspired and moved by others’ success, and I thought of Gay’s hiring at the pinnacle leadership position at perhaps our most important and iconic university as an important and significant milestone for the black community. I have spent the majority of my life advocating on behalf of and supporting members of disadvantaged communities including by investing several hundreds of millions of dollars of philanthropic assets to help communities in need with economic development, sensible criminal justice reform, poverty reduction, healthcare, education, workforce housing, charter schools, and more. I have done the same at Pershing Square Capital Management when, for example, we completed one of the largest IPOs ever with the substantive assistance of a number of minority-owned, women-owned, and Veteran-owned investment banks. Prior to the Pershing Square Tontine, Ltd. IPO, it was standard practice for big corporations occasionally to name a few minority-owned banks in their equity and bond offerings, have these banks do no work and sell only a de minimis amount of stock or bonds, and allocate to them only 1% or less of the underwriting fees so that the issuers could virtue signal that they were helping minority communities. In our IPO, we invited the smaller banks into the deal from the beginning of the process so they could add real value. As a result, the Tontine IPO was one of the largest and most successful IPOs in history with $12 billion of demand for a $4 billion deal by the second day of the IPO, when we closed the books. The small banks earned their 20% share of the fees for delivering real and substantive value and for selling their share of the stock. Compare this approach to the traditional one where the small banks do effectively nothing to earn their fees – they aren’t given that opportunity – yet, they get a cut of the deal, albeit a tiny one. The traditional approach does not create value for anyone. It only creates resentment, and an uncomfortable feeling from the small banks who get a tiny piece of the deal in a particularly bad form of affirmative action. While I don’t think our approach to working with the smaller banks has yet achieved the significant traction it deserves, it will hopefully happen eventually as the smaller banks build their competencies and continue to earn their fees, and other issuers see the merit of this approach. We are going to need assistance with a large IPO soon so we are looking forward to working with our favored smaller banks. I have always believed in giving disadvantaged groups a helping hand. I signed the Giving Pledge for this reason. My life plan by the time I was 18 was to be successful and then return the favor to those less fortunate. This always seemed to the right thing to do, in particular, for someone as fortunate as I am. All of the above said, it is one thing to give disadvantaged people the opportunities and resources so that they can help themselves. It is another to select a candidate for admission or for a leadership role when they are not qualified to serve in that role. This appears to have been the case with former President Gay’s selection. She did not possess the leadership skills to serve as Harvard’s president, putting aside any questions about her academic credentials. This became apparent shortly after October 7th, but there were many signs before then when she was Dean of the faculty. The result was a disaster for Harvard and for Claudine Gay. The Harvard board should not have run a search process which had a predetermined objective of only hiring a DEI-approved candidate. In any case, there are many incredibly talented black men and women who could have been selected by Harvard to serve as its president so why did the Harvard Corporation board choose Gay? One can only speculate without knowing all of the facts, but it appears Gay’s leadership in the creation of Harvard’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging and the penetration of the DEI ideology into the Corporation board room perhaps made Gay the favored candidate. The search was also done at a time when many other top universities had similar DEI-favored candidate searches underway for their presidents, reducing the number of potential candidates available in light of the increased competition for talent. Unrelated to the DEI issue, as a side note, I would suggest that universities should broaden their searches to include capable business people for the role of president, as a university president requires more business skills than can be gleaned from even the most successful academic career with its hundreds of peer reviewed papers and many books. Universities have a Dean of the Faculty and a bureaucracy to oversee the faculty and academic environment of the university. It therefore does not make sense that the university president has to come through the ranks of academia, with a skill set unprepared for university management. The president’s job – managing thousands of employees, overseeing a $50 billion endowment, raising money, managing expenses, capital allocation, real estate acquisition, disposition, and construction, and reputation management – are responsibilities that few career academics are capable of executing. Broadening the recruitment of candidates to include top business executives would also create more opportunities for diverse talent for the office of the university president. Furthermore, Harvard is a massive business that has been mismanaged for a long time. The cost structure of the University is out of control due in large part to the fact that the administration has grown without bounds. Revenues are below what they should be because the endowment has generated a 4.5% annualized return for the last decade in one of the greatest bull markets in history, and that low return is not due to the endowment taking lower risks as the substantial majority of its assets are invested in illiquid and other high-risk assets. The price of the product, a Harvard education, has risen at a rate well in excess of inflation for decades, (I believe it has grown about 7-8% per annum) and it is now about $320,000 for four years of a liberal arts education at Harvard College. As a result, the only students who can now afford Harvard come from rich families and poor ones. The middle class can’t get enough financial aid other than by borrowing a lot of money, and it is hard to make the economics work in life after college when you graduate with large loan balances, particularly if you also attend graduate school. The best companies in the world grow at high rates over many decades. Harvard has grown at a de minimis rate. Since I graduated 35 years ago, the number of students in the Harvard class has grown by less than 20%. What other successful business do you know that has grown the number of customers it serves by less than 20% in 35 years, and where nearly all revenue growth has come from raising prices? In summary, there is a lot more work to be done to fix Harvard than just replacing its president. That said, the selection of Harvard’s next president is a critically important task, and the individuals principally responsible for that decision do not have a good track record for doing so based on their recent history, nor have they done a good job managing the other problems which I have identified above. The Corporation board led by Penny Pritzker selected the wrong president and did inadequate due diligence about her academic record despite Gay being in leadership roles at the University since 2015 when she became dean of the Social Studies department. The Board failed to create a discrimination-free environment on campus exposing the University to tremendous reputational damage, to large legal and financial liabilities, Congressional investigations and scrutiny, and to the potential loss of Federal funding, all while damaging the learning environment for all students. And when concerns were raised about plagiarism in Gay’s research, the Board said these claims were “demonstrably false” and it threatened the NY Post with “immense” liability if it published a story raising these issues. It was only after getting the story cancelled that the Board secretly launched a cursory, short-form investigation outside of the proper process for evaluating a member of the faculty’s potential plagiarism. When the Board finally publicly acknowledged some of Gay’s plagiarism, it characterized the plagiarism as “unintentional” and invented new euphemisms, i.e., “duplicative language” to describe plagiarism, a belittling of academic integrity that has caused grave damage to Harvard’s academic standards and credibility. The Board’s three-person panel of “political scientist experts” that to this day remain unnamed who evaluated Gay’s work failed to identify many examples of her plagiarism, leading to even greater reputational damage to the University and its reputation for academic integrity as the whistleblower and the media continued to identify additional problems with Gay’s work in the days and weeks thereafter. According to the NY Post, the Board also apparently sought to identify the whistleblower and seek retribution against him or her in contravention to the University’s whistleblower protection policies. Despite all of the above, the Board “unanimously” gave its full support for Gay during this nearly four-month crisis, until eventually being forced to accept her resignation earlier today, a grave and continuing reputational disaster to Harvard and to the Board. In a normal corporate context with the above set of facts, the full board would resign immediately to be replaced by a group nominated by shareholders. In the case of Harvard, however, the Board nominates itself and its new members. There is no shareholder vote mechanism to replace them. So what should happen? The Corporation Board should not remain in their seats protected by the unusual governance structure which enabled them to obtain their seats. The Board Chair, Penny Pritzker, should resign along with the other members of the board who led the campaign to keep Claudine Gay, orchestrated the strategy to threaten the media, bypassed the process for evaluating plagiarism, and otherwise greatly contributed to the damage that has been done. Then new Corporation board members should be identified who bring true diversity, viewpoint and otherwise, to the board. The Board should not be principally comprised of individuals who share the same politics and views about DEI. The new board members should be chosen in a transparent process with the assistance of the 30-person Board of Overseers. There is no reason the Harvard board of 12 independent trustees cannot be comprised of the most impressive, high integrity, intellectually and politically diverse members of our country and globe. We have plenty of remarkable people to choose from, and the job of being a director just got much more interesting and important. It is no longer, nor should it ever have been, an honorary and highly political sinecure. The ODEIB should be shut down, and the staff should be terminated. The ODEIB has already taken down much of the ideology and strategies that were on its website when I and others raised concerns about how the office operates and who it does and does not represent. Taking down portions of the website does not address the fundamentally flawed and racist ideology of this office, and calls into further question the ODEIB’s legitimacy. Why would the ODEIB take down portions of its website when an alum questioned its legitimacy unless the office was doing something fundamentally wrong or indefensible? Harvard must once again become a meritocratic institution which does not discriminate for or against faculty or students based on their skin color, and where diversity is understood in its broadest form so that students can learn in an environment which welcomes diverse viewpoints from faculty and students from truly diverse backgrounds and experiences. Harvard must create an academic environment with real academic freedom and free speech, where self-censoring, speech codes, and cancel culture are forever banished from campus. Harvard should become an environment where all students of all persuasions feel comfortable expressing their views and being themselves. In the business world, we call this creating a great corporate culture, which begins with new leadership and the right tone at the top. It does not require the creation of a massive administrative bureaucracy. These are the minimum changes necessary to begin to repair the damage that has been done. A number of faculty at the University of Pennsylvania have proposed a new constitution which can be found at http://pennforward.com, which has been signed by more than 1,200 faculty from Penn, Harvard, and other universities. Harvard would do well to adopt Penn’s proposed new constitution or a similar one before seeking to hire its next president. A condition of employment of the new Harvard president should be the requirement that the new president agrees to strictly abide by the new constitution. He or she should take an oath to that effect. Today was an important step forward for the University. It is time we restore Veritas to Harvard and again be an exemplar that graduates well-informed, highly-educated leaders of exemplary moral standing and good judgment who can help bring our country together, advance our democracy, and identify the important new discoveries that will help save us from ourselves. We have a lot more work to do. Let’s get at it.

12:03 AM · Jan 3, 2024

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Fact Check: Ted Cruz is Awesome - Part (I've lost count)

(The following is an Op Ed by Ted Cruz written 9 years ago about the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, which has been much in the news since Israel was attacked by Gaza on Oct 7th this year.) 

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Israel saves its enemies; Hamas endangers its friends

From The Washington Times:

If you want to judge a nation, look at how it treats its most vulnerable civilians. Hospitals are a good place to start.

Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, is housed in a converted British army barracks. Some 126 miles north is Israel’s Ziv Medical Center in Zefat.

Hamas, which controls Gaza, is using the civilian population as human shields. The terrorist group has placed its missiles in schools and mosques and, even more deplorably, burrowed its command center underneath the al-Shifa hospital.

Hamas‘ activities are taking place in plain sight. Just two weeks ago, The Washington Post described al-Shifa as “a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders.” These terrorist facilities are of course well known not only to the foreign journalists who interview Hamas fighters there, but also to the Israelis, who would by necessity consider such a location a legitimate target for any action against Hamas. However, the terrorist group has tried to immunize their headquarters by digging it under a hospital, leaving Israel no option but to target al-Shifa if they want to get rid of the Hamas terrorist leadership.

Hamas sees no downside in this arrangement. Knowing that Israel prioritizes protecting civilians, the terrorists can be reasonably confident that al-Shifa will not be targeted, and they can continue their murderous activities undisturbed. If the Israelis finally decide that these activities are intolerable and that to destroy Hamas they must target their headquarters, Hamas will have pictures of the quintessentially innocent martyrs — hospital patients unable to flee — to plaster across international media in their ongoing propaganda war to demonize the Jewish state.

The medical care and even survival of the Gazan people are of no concern to these terrorists, for whom casualties are not an unintended consequence of war, but rather a deliberate objective. Like the rest of the population stationed around the many civilian institutions militarized by Hamas, they must either make do with a substandard medical facility being exploited by a terrorist organization, or die in the service of that organization’s savage campaign to destroy Israel.

Meanwhile in Israel, Ziv is a center for pediatric and orthopedic medicine. Given its proximity to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Syria, Ziv has seen its share of violence, but despite taking direct rocket fire during the 2006 Lebanon war, it has remained in continuous operation.

During the past three years of the Syrian civil war, Ziv has treated more than 1,000 Syrians injured in that conflict — all free of charge.

In a visit to Ziv this spring, I met the social worker whose job it is to explain to the patients who wake up grievously injured and surrounded by Israelis that they are not in hell, but that the people who they have been told from birth are the devil are, in fact, working very hard to heal them.

I met a Syrian child who had lost three limbs but has been fitted with revolutionary prosthetics and will, God willing, walk again.

All of this means that many of Ziv’s hospital beds and a substantial portion of its funding are not available for Israelis, but the staff has concluded it is worth it if their work can start to reverse the intractable hate that has been relentlessly leveled at Israel by its neighbors.

The contrast in this tale of two hospitals could not be more clear: Hamas exploits their medical facilities as a human shield to launch terrorist operations against Israel, while Israel uses theirs to provide cutting-edge medical care to people whose government’s avowed goal is to destroy the Jewish state. Hamas‘ actions are a war crime. Israel’s are one of the great, unsung humanitarian missions on the planet.

Fact Check: Are Jews Occupying Israel?

At some point after 3000 years we can stop calling it an occupation, right?    

    

Fact Check: Why are Marines called Leathernecks?

Marines are called Leathernecks because they wore leather cuffs around their necks to keep from being beheaded by Muslim pirates.  

There will never be peace with Islam.  

Aggression is part of the religion and is written in their book.  

Peace is an illusion.  Yes, it's a proper goal, but it is impossible in the long run.  

The only way to end this violence is to end Islam. 

The people are not the problem, if they can be separated from Islam.  Or if Islam can be reformed.  

Good luck with that.

   

    

Fact Check: Could there be another Holocaust?

Watch this compelling speech by Columbia Professor Shai Davidai.  Yes, there are Nazis among us, but they no longer organize in beer halls:

  

 

Fact Check: The Hamas Attack on Israel 10/7/23 was Barack Hussein Obama's Dream Come True

[REPOSTED FROM 5/1/18 TO REMIND EVERYONE WHY IRAN AND HAMAS ARE KILLING ISRAELIS WITH IMPUNITY ON 10/7/23]

Now that Israel has obtained Iran's secret nuke plans and U.S. intelligence has confirmed their legitimacy, we know with certainty that Barack Obama's fake "nuke deal" with Iran was an atomic bomb of deception and duplicity.

Remember this was the deal where Barack Obama plus five other countries, which desperately wanted to resume trade with Iran, lifted sanctions on Iran, flew billions of dollars in cash on secret planes to Tehran, all in return for Iran's vague promise to put off their nuclear weapons program for... a whole decade.

Here's what I wrote at the time on, 4/2/15:      

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"Great liars are also great magicians." 

Barack Obama wants you to believe he is negotiating with Iran about nukes.  Pick up a paper, watch a news show, listen to the radio, wherever you are in the world, you will be told about an historic negotiation going on with the P5+1 talks, and it's all about Iran's nuclear program.

Truth is, these talks are nothing more than cover for lifting sanctions on Iran, many of which were preemptively lifted before the talks started.  The talks are Kabuki theatre, a magic trick, to distract you from seeing what's really going on.  This is a trade deal with the world's number one state sponsor of terrorism - a rogue nation bent on bringing about nuclear armageddon, wiping Israel off the map, and achieving regional Shiite hegemony.

If you have any doubts about whether or not this is about nukes, I advise you to read Dan Henninger's piece in The Wall Street Journal, "Why the Iran Deal is Irrelevant" from 4/2.   Mr Henninger chronicles the parallels between North Korea and Iran and the pursuit of nukes.  Iran cannot be stopped by talking.  Everyone knows this.  Talking had zero effect on North Korea over three presidencies.  Sanctions, and the perception that force is an option, are the only way to prevent a rogue nation from acquiring nukes.

Not only has Obama lifted sanctions and taken the threat of force off the table, he is guaranteeing Iran the right to spin centrifuges, enrich uranium, and follow through on their promise to nuke Israel off the map.  This trade deal does nothing but make Iran richer and accelerate their ability to achieve these goals.

Barack Hussein Obama, peace be upon him, apparently shares these goals.

(Incidentally, the quote at the top is often credited to Adolf Hitler.) 

Fact Check: The Truth About Global Warming [UPDATED]

A Socratic Guide To The Burning Question Of Our Time

Intro I

There's an old Jewish joke that goes something like this:

No matter what Shlomo did in bed, his wife could never achieve an orgasm. 

Since by Jewish law a wife is entitled to sexual pleasure, they decide to consult their Rabbi. 

The Rabbi listens to their story, strokes his beard, and makes the following suggestion: "Hire a strapping young man. While the two of you are making love, have the young man wave a towel over you. That will get God's attention and he will provide an orgasm."

They go home and follow the Rabbi's advice. They hire a handsome young man and he waves a towel over them as they make love. It does not help and the wife is still unsatisfied. Perplexed, they go back to the Rabbi.

"Okay,' he says to the husband, "Try it reversed. Have the young man make love to your wife and you wave the towel over them."

Once again, they follow the Rabbi's advice. They go home and hire the same strapping young man.

The young man gets into bed with the wife and the husband waves the towel. The young man gets to work with great enthusiasm and soon she has an enormous, room-shaking, ear-splitting, screaming orgasm.

The husband smiles, looks at the young man and says to him triumphantly, "See that, you schmuck? THAT'S how you wave a towel!"

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Intro II

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Michael Crichton, author of "Jurassic Park", "Andromeda Strain", "Westworld", and numerous other works of fiction and non-fiction. Crichton also held a medical degree from Harvard.
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A Brief History of the Theory of Global Warming (aka Climate Change)

It all began back in the 1700s when some rock stars - no, not that kind of rock star, geologists actually - were traipsing around Europe and noticed that some of the boulders in the valleys matched the rocks on distant peaks.  The only plausible explanation for how those boulders traveled so far was that they must have been carried by ice.  This idea was fleshed-out a few decades later by a scientist studying skeletons and frozen remains of large mammals in Siberia.  Thus was born the idea of The  Great Ice Age.  But that opened up a whole new can-o-worms; if ice once covered the Earth, what melted the ice?

In 1824, around the same time these ideas were percolating, a scientist named Joseph Fourier figured out that Earth would be much colder without its atmosphere.  Air was trapping heat from the sun and keeping us warm, he said.  Fourier had discovered the greenhouse effect.

Building on Fourier's work, other scientists found that about 70% of the greenhouse effect was due to water vapor, 20% was due to carbon dioxide (CO2), and the final 10% was due to methane, ozone, and other gasses.  A theory developed that maybe changes in the atmosphere had ended The Great Ice Age.

Water vapor was dismissed as a cause because excess water condenses and falls-out as precipitation.  CO2, methane, and ozone do not cycle as quickly, so the theory of melting ice focused primarily on CO2, which while only .04% of the atmosphere, accounts for 20% of the warming effect.

Two things were going on at the same time as all this.  One was the industrial revolution and the burning of coal in newly invented steam engines.  The other was the observation that the existing glaciers were continuing to melt!   Could they be related and tied back to changes in CO2?

Along came a Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius, who in 1898 calculated the hypothetical climate change that would result if atmospheric CO2 was cut in half.  He calculated that the Earth would be glaciated...as it was during The Great Ice Age!  He also calculated that if CO2 doubled, we'd have melting ice and ...global warming!  So, the "modern" CO2 theory of global warming dates back to the calculations Arrhenius did 120 years ago in an attempt to explain the onset and demise of The Great Ice Age.   

Meanwhile, we've been burning progressively more carbon fuels like coal, oil, and gas in the last 120 years.  Finally, in 1960, an American scientist named David Keeling began measuring CO2 levels at an observatory in Hawaii.  What he discovered was that CO2 was trending up at an alarming rate!  

So with Keeling showing CO2 skyrocketing, Arrhenius' saying we are going to fry if CO2 rises, and glaciers continuing to melt, that eventually leads to Al Gore, Kyoto, Paris, The UN IPCC, and a scientific "consensus" saying global warming is an "existential threat". (Meaning, the end is nigh!)

In 2009, the U.S. government under Barack Obama officially declared that CO2 emissions endangered life on Earth.  Whole generations now believe we are doomed.  Some have even stopped having children thinking there is no future.   

All from a gas that humans exhale, that plants inhale, that makes up only .04% of our atmosphere, and that formed the basis of a theory developed in the 1800s to try and explain the The Great Ice Age!

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Pop Quiz:

So, what really ended The Great Ice Age?

A. CO2

B. Mr. Milankovitch

Since this whole CO2 inquiry began as an attempt to explain The Great Ice Age, one of the first questions to ask is, was the premise right?  Have we learned anything new since Fourier, Arrhenius, Keeling, et al?  Do we now know what caused and ended The Great Ice Age?

You are probably certain it was CO2.  After all, you've been told for years that CO2  drives climate.  Since the 1800s and Arrhenius we've believed that changes in CO2 can have dramatic effects.  We still believe CO2 is melting glaciers today.  It's "settled science" after all.

Except, that's not what happened.  It turns out, Mr. Milankovitch did it.  (Yup, our climate has been hacked by the Russians! Actually, he was Serbian, just sounds Russian.)  Milutin Milankovitch was a scientist who figured out in the 1920s that the Earth has a cyclical relationship to the sun.  It tilts. It wobbles. It's orbit changes.  Some cycles take 100,000 years to complete.  Some take 41,000 years.  Some take 23,000 years.  The effect of all this is rather dramatic... ta da... climate change!

MILANKOVITCH CYCLES

Of course, Milankovitch was instantly dismissed as a kook.  Even today as I'm typing this, his name is unrecognized by the spell-check gremlins in my computer.  Fourier, Arrhenius, and Keeling, however, are spell-check VIPs.

Until 1998, Milankovitch got no respect.  But then a funny thing happened down in Antarctica.  Scientists drilled an ice core at a place called Vostok (more Russians!) that gave them a 420,000 year climate history, and voila, there were major ice ages and warmings every 100,000 years.  There were also shorter cycles in between.  Milankovitch could no longer be dismissed, except of course by spell-check.

           

Then in 2000 another Antarctic ice core was obtained at Dome C that goes back 800,000 years.  Again it confirmed Milankovitch.  The Great Ice Age now had a plausible explanation.  The Earth's relationship to the sun caused major climate change - global coolings and global warmings - going back as far as we can see.

Dome C Temperature Estimates

If major climate change happens at least every 100,000 years, as Milankovitch theorized, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, then there have been 45,000 of those alone.  The Great Ice Age was just the latest in a countless series of coolings and warmings!

Another name that should get mentioned at this point is Eddy, as in John A. Eddy.   Eddy was one of the most recent astronomers to study the cyclical output of the sun.  He published a groundbreaking study in 1976 and named the most recent solar minimums and maximums.   While Milankovitch cycles play out over tens of thousands of years, solar cycles can be as short as 11 years.  They are also closely correlated with...ta da...climate change!

Here are some of the solar minimums and maximums from recent Earth history that resulted in major global warmings and mini-ice ages:

You can see why glaciers are melting today by looking at the right side of the solar activity graph. We are also near a peak in the Milankovitch cycle.  Something would be horribly wrong if glaciers were NOT melting today!

So between Milankovitch's orbital cycles and Eddy's solar cycles, these are the bases for ice ages and their demise.  These are the bases for perpetual climate change.  In addition, one-time events like volcanoes and asteroids can also produce dramatic and sudden climate swings.

[UPDATE 7/31/23:  In addition to volcanoes and asteroids, undersea volcanoes and exothermic releases must be considered.  We are currently experiencing a dramatic and sudden rise in ocean temps which largely occurred over a 4 week period beginning in March, 2023.  The theory is that heat from the Earth's core did this.  An ocean cannot be rapidly heated from above due to marginally hotter air. But an exothermic release from the Earth's core (as hot as the surface of the sun!) could do that.  This theory has been brilliantly fleshed-out over a few years in a post on theethicalskeptic.com website.  https://theethicalskeptic.com/2020/02/16/the-climate-change-alternative-we-ignore-to-our-peril/ 

Moreover, in January, 2022, the largest undersea volcano ever recorded erupted and sent unprecedented amounts of water vapor into the stratosphere.  As we know, 70% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, and the amount from this undersea release is expected to take years if not decades to cycle through.  Unknown is the thermal footprint this had on deep Pacific Ocean temps because our measurements are largely based on surface temps.   https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere ]

So, CO2 did not cause either The Great Ice Age or any of the many tens of thousands of cyclical coolings and warmings that preceded it.  It's the fluctuating sun and our wonky orbit that cause climate change.

(A newer ice core at Allan Hills, Antarctica claims to go back over 1.2 million years, and it also confirms Milankovitch.)

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Pop quiz:

Still, within the Milankovitch and Eddy cycles, we know that:

A. CO2 drives climate change 

B. Climate drives CO2 change

Just because Arrhenius et al were wrong about The Great Ice Age doesn't mean they are also wrong about what will happen if we add massive amounts of CO2 to our atmosphere.  According to the CO2 theory of global warming, as CO2 increases, so will temperatures.

That's why you are probably certain that CO2 still drives climate change.  A consensus of scientists, academics, politicians, and celebrities have been telling you for years that higher CO2 concentrations will cause the Earth to get hotter.  As we burn more and more fossil fuels, that releases more CO2 into the air.  CO2 is a greenhouse gas, ergo the Earth gets hotter.  It's simple.

Except, that's not what happens.  Along with temperature records going back 800,000 years, we also got CO2 records for the same time span.

Here's the CO2 and temperature record from the Dome C ice core: 

Dome C Temperature and CO2 for 800,000 Years (Red = CO2, Blue = Temps)

At first glance temperature and CO2 appear to be closely correlated.  One might even conclude that Arrhenius was right and that CO2 caused the ice ages.      

But when zooming in on this graph, something interesting is revealed; CO2 trails temperature by 1200 years, + or - 700 years!  

Climate Change (blue) precedes CO2 Change by 1200, + or - 700 Years

CO2 and the other atmospheric gasses behave somewhat like water vapor, except over a longer timeframe.  We know that hotter air can retain water vapor in greater concentrations than colder air.  There is also a water cycle that is constantly moving water from vapor, to precipitation, to ground, to sea, and then back to vapor.  CO2 has a similar cycle, just not as quick. (See Henry's Law)  

A number of datasets from ice and sediment cores confirm this finding.  The hotter it gets on Earth, the more CO2 can be found in the atmosphere.  Contrary to what you've been told, CO2 does not drive climate.  Climate drives CO2!  The alleged cause is actually an effect.

         

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Pop Quiz:

Still, pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is a new thing, and that's what makes this an existential threat!

A. True

B. False 

As everyone since Keeling knows, CO2 levels are in-fact rising.  And who can forget Al Gore on the scissor lift in his movie showing CO2 going literally off the chart?  And as everyone knows since Arrhenius, more CO2 makes Earth hotter, right?

Except, that's not what's happening.  Yes, we are in a warm period due to both Milankovitch and Eddy, and accordingly, CO2 is rising.  That's to be expected.  But the question remains: is this time different because we are burning fossil fuels?  Can CO2 work both ways?  Can it both be driven by temperature and also drive temperatures up?

If greenhouse gasses both increase as temperatures go up, and then cause even more warming, why is the greenhouse effect not a runaway reaction? According to Arrhenius and modern global warming theory, the greenhouse effect should create a feedback loop.  Why isn't that visible in the ice core data? 

The answer has to do with the light spectrum and each gasses' role in trapping radiation in the troposphere.  

   

At the affected upgoing wavelengths, which are the ones involved in global warming, CO2 is already absorbing 100% of the radiation it is capable of absorbing.  Adding more CO2 into the atmosphere can not trap more than 100% of the affected radiation!  This is why the greenhouse effect is not a runaway reaction or a feedback loop.  It's a self-limiting reaction.

In the 1800s, when Arrhenius was doing his calculations, the instruments for measuring the light spectrum this accurately did not exist. (Then again, neither did antibiotics, airplanes, Model T Fords, transistors...)

Additionally, as CO2 increases, the CO2 cycle speeds up.  Here's an example of how the biosphere absorbs CO2 at faster rates:

So, adding more CO2 into the atmosphere will not effect climate, and any CO2 increases will just grow the biosphere.  

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Pop Quiz:

Still, there is a scientific consensus that says CO2 is uniquely warming our planet, and no one can prove otherwise.     

A.  True

B.  False

Anyone who's taken a middle school science class knows the value of a control group.  Luckily, scientists have the ability to track temperature and CO2 on some of the other bodies around Earth.  Venus, Mars, and the Moon are particularly close to us and have yielded some interesting data.  If global warming theory is right, temperatures on those bodies should be un-correlated to Earth temps because they are free from the effects of industrialization!

Except, that's not what's happening.  In an odd coincidence both Mars and the Moon are warming!  (Of course, it's still man's fault!)  Milankovitch is particularly relevant to the Moon, because as goes the Earth, so goes the Moon.  Eddy is particularly relevant to Mars, because as goes the Sun, so goes Mars.

But there's more.

In our solar system, only Venus, Earth, and Mars have atmospheres with CO2. Of the three, Venus is closest to the sun, has a dense atmosphere, is very hot, and has about 200,000 times the CO2 concentration of Earth.  Mars is furthest from the sun, has a very light atmosphere, is quite cold, and  still has about 14 times the CO2 concentration of Earth!  It appears that distance from the sun is what primarily drives climate on these three planets, not CO2. _________________________________________________________________________________

Pop Quiz:

Still, we know that global warming is true because all the predictions have been right!

A. True

B. False

Real science can accurately predict the future.  If a cannon ball with a known mass, is fired from a cannon with a known amount of force, at a known trajectory, etc., science can predict exactly where it will land.  That's how science works.

If global warming science is real and quantifiable, scientists would be able to similarly predict the future of climate.

Except that's not what has happened.  In fact, every single dire prediction has been proven wrong.  100% wrong.  Here's a brief summary of what the experts have predicted:

• Global famine by the year 2000 - Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Nobel Prize recipient, Professor 
• Entire nations wiped out by 1999 - Noel Brown, U.N. Environmental Director
• Ice caps will melt away and oceans will rise causing massive flooding by 2014 - Al Gore, VPOTUS, global warming evangelist
• End of snow in England by 2015 - Dr. David Viner,  climate scientist at The University of East Anglia
• Increased tornadoes and hurricanes - James Hanson, professor of climate at Columbia University & the high priest of global warming, and The U.N. IPCC
• New Ice Age in Europe - Dr. Paul Ehrlich
• Sub-Saharan Africa drying up - U.N. and World Bank
• Massive flooding in China and India - Asian Development Bank and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
• Polar Bear extinction - National Geographic, The New York Times, Guardian, among many.
• Drastic Temperature Increases - James Hanson
• The Earth will be in a “True Planetary Emergency” by 2016 unless greenhouse gasses are reduced - Al Gore

None of those predictions came true.  Not one.  And that is just a tiny sampling.   

And here are some of the bad predictions from just this past year!

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Pop Quiz:

Still, we are under an existential threat because the Earth is progressively getting:

A: Hotter 

B: Colder 

You are probably certain that the Earth is getting hotter.  The name global warming itself describes the danger.  You are probably familiar with the apocryphal "hockey stick" graph featured in "An Inconvenient Truth":

Except, that's not what's happening in the long run:
  

The Earth is actually getting cooler! 

Five million years is not much when you consider the Earth is 4.5 billion years old.  That would take 900 - five million year graphs!  So, here's another graph estimating 65 million years of global climate change, still only a fraction of Earth's life.  Again, it clearly shows Earth is cooling.  

    

The existential threat is that we will eventually freeze, not bake!

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Pop quiz:

Still, in the 200,000 year history of mankind:

A. It has never been this hot

B. It's been much hotter before 

No doubt you are sure it's never been this hot.  It says so on the "hockey stick" graph.  And just consider the melting glaciers!

Yet, we know that 1100 years ago, when the Vikings first went to Iceland, there were no glaciers there.  Today, glaciers cover much of Iceland.  Similarly, Vikings settled on Greenland around the same time and successfully farmed there for 500 years.  But they abandoned Greenland in the mid 15th century, presumably because it got too cold.  Those two events are known as the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age. Curiously, you won't find either of those events on Al Gore's graph.

Here's a graph that shows 10,000 years of climate change from ice cores on Greenland:

And here's a map of glacial retreat in Glacier Bay, Alaska going back 2 1/2 centuries.  As you can see, glaciers have been in retreat since long before your SUV!

We have enough data to know that this warm period is nothing new.   It's been hotter than this many times before, even in man's brief 200,000 year history.

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You are still free to believe in the CO2 theory of global warming.  Heck, you are free to believe in anything you want, including Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy!  But any serious person who looks into global warming must reflect long and hard before blindly waving a towel for the consensus.

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I was the founder of Kindzone.com, one of the first companies to test market retail carbon credits.  I've been closely following the science and consensus of global warming for over 20 years.

Ron Reich   

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Fact Check: Durham Was a Coverup

The Durham Report dropped last week, conveniently AFTER the statute of limitations expired on any crimes committed by the Democrat perpetrators.  The perps include Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and just about every member of the IC in the Obama and Biden administrations.  None can be charged, indicted, or held accountable due to the 5 year statute.  This was the purpose of the Durham affair; to run out the clock and tie it all up in an "investigation".  

I wrote about this Coup d'Etat 6 years ago and tied it back to Perkins Coie, the preferred Democrat lawfare front.  Here's what I wrote in October of 2017.  (Note the last 3 items on the list.  The Russia/Ukraine war was part of the plan!):    

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11/25/17

Almost everything that has happened in the last two years to damage Donald Trump stemmed from the infamous "dossier".  You remember, the one that triggered the whole Trump/Russia/Collusion meme?  Now we know it was a Hillary Clinton / DNC concoction.  According to The Washington Post, Marc Elias, counsel to the Clinton's and the DNC, paid for the "dossier".  It was then used as the basis for the investigations of the Trump campaign and transition by Barack Obama and his entire intelligence apparatus.  Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, et al all used a phony concocted dossier as their basis for wiretapping, unmasking, investigating, and sabotaging the Trump campaign and administration.

It was a conspiracy and a full-blown coup d'etat led by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  Here's a partial list of the events that have stemmed from the dirty "dossier":

The whole Russia/Collusion/Trump meme
FISA warrants for Trump associates
Massive (illegal) unmasking of private citizens
Firing of Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and others
Recusal of Jeff Sessions
The firing of James Comey
Appointment of Independent Counsel Robert Mueller by Rod Rosenstein
Buy-in from Obama's entire Intelligence Community, CIA, NSA, FBI, etc.
Ongoing Senate and House investigations
Stalling of the Trump agenda in Congress
Calls for Trump's impeachment
Calls for war on Russia
Expelling of Russian diplomats
U.S. Troops deployed near Russia by Obama

The other part of all this, of course, was the assessment that the DNC and John Podesta email hacks were the work of the Russians and Vladimir Putin himself.  This assessment came from none other than the Obama FBI under James Comey.  But the FBI famously didn't do their own assessment because the DNC refused them access to their servers.  The assessment came instead from a private company called Crowdstrike.  Crowdstrike is a Google funded company, and Google parent chairman Eric Schmidt was a key player on the Hillary Clinton campaign

Andrew McCarthy at National Review notes that the same law firm that funded the dossier also retained Crowdstrike.  And all of it was conveniently done behind a wall of attorney client privilege.  What are the odds this same firm is involved in Uranium One? 

This all looks like corruption and abuse of power unprecedented in our lifetimes.  Not funny. 

[UPDATE]  As suspected, Perkins Coie, the law firm involved in the dossier and Crowdstrike, is also involved in Uranium One.  At a minimum, Uranium One's trademark was handled by Perkins Coie. 

This is who is listed as "Correspondent" for the trademark:
PATCHEN M. HAGGERTY 
PERKINS COIE LLP 
1201 3RD AVE STE 4900 
SEATTLE WA 98101-3099

Indeed, all roads lead to Perkins Coie when it comes to Clinton/Obama/Democrat/Russia collusion.     

Fact Check: Why Are Whales Beaching in NJ?

As you may have heard, several whales have recently beached themselves in and around NJ.  Experts are baffled by this trend.  We like whales.  They're awesome.  So we want to know why this is happening.

One theory is that this is related to wind farm construction.  The claim is that high tech sonar is being used to prepare for large scale proposed wind farms off the NJ coast.  According to this theory, sonar is disorienting the whales and they are beaching themselves, or surfacing and getting hit by ships.  

This makes a certain amount of sense since whales are known to use a type of sonar to "see" in deep water, find prey, and communicate.  They are also known to flee from some kinds of manmade sonar.        

On the other hand, beached whales have been happening for all of recorded history!  Sometimes they occur for observable reasons: disease, starvation, injury, old age.  But mostly the reasons are unknown.   

The question is, are these recent strandings (beachings) part of the normal background, are they possibly due to sonar, or are they spiking because of something else?   

I believe it's the sun!

No, I'm not suggesting whales are sunning themselves on the beaches of NJ.  I am, however, suggesting that whales are being disoriented due to solar magnetic activity and geomagnetic storms.

Here's the gist of it:  Whales use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate long distances.  At least that's the current thinking.  Meanwhile, the sun has a powerful and dynamic influence on Earth's magnetic field.  There seems to be a correlation between solar magnetic influence and whale strandings.  

There are two times in the roughly 11 year solar cycle (technically half cycle) when this correlation appears to be strongest;  around both solar minimums and solar maximums.  Solar minimums are when the sun's magnetic field is at its strongest and that seems to correlate with more beached whales. Then, around solar maximums, the sun's magnetic field weakens, but solar flares and giant explosions (Coronal Mass Ejections, CMEs), etc. create powerful geomagnetic storms that again correlate with beached whales.  

The correlation can be seen in the following graphs:  

The above graph shows two things worth noting:

  

1.  The solar minimum occurred in 2019.  Around the minimum is roughly the period when whale strandings peak on this graph.  

2.  We are very early in 2023 and are on pace to exceed the other years, which is to be expected since we just had a very active solar period and are heading into a solar maximum. 

Meanwhile on the West coast, a similar dynamic is playing out:  

 The above graph again shows two things worth noting:  

1.  A similar pattern to the East Coast centered around the time of solar minimum.  (this graph shows both months and years, highlighting the seasonality of whale migration.)  

2.  This graph includes UMEs from 1999 and 2000 (UMEs are Unusual Mortality Events) Both years were heading into solar maximums during active cycles.

(Both graphs are c/o NOAA Fisheries:  

East Coast: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-life-distress/2016-2023-humpback-whale-unusual-mortality-event-along-atlantic-coast

West Coast: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-life-distress/2019-2023-gray-whale-unusual-mortality-event-along-west-coast-and )

Here's what happens with the sun's overall magnetic field during minimums and maximums:  

In the above graph, the A panel and the C panel show the inverse relationship between solar cycles and  magnetic field strength.  When the A panel (solar activity) is at minimum, the C panel (magnetic strength) is at maximum, and vice versa. 

(Graph is C/O https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.886670/full  "Deciphering Solar Magnetic Activity: The Solar Cycle Clock" ) 

Speaking of solar maximums, the largest solar geomagnetic storm in recorded history happened in 1859 and is known as the Carrington Event.  It occurred just as we were heading into a solar maximum.  The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, were visible as far south as Hawaii and Mexico.  The drawing at the top is of a beached whale in Long Island, NY, 1859.  Hmm.  

Now, if you're one of those, "correlation is not causation" types,  I get it.  I'm one too.  To be clear, I'm not presenting this as the be-all, end-all on this subject.  It's just some correlations and a theory.

       

That said, there are other solar/whale experts who also point to solar involvement, though they seem to be focused on geomagnetic storms.  My addition to this theory is that there is also a correlation with solar minimums when the sun's magnetic field strength is at its highest.

To recap:  there are two times in the roughly 11 year solar cycle that correspond to spikes in whale beachings.  The first is at minimum when the solar magnetic field is strongest, and the second is around the solar maximum when sun spots, solar flares, and CMEs create geomagnetic storms.   

So you may be asking, why is a blogger who writes mostly about politics and the economy writing about whales and the sun?

I became an amateur sun watcher after writing about global warming in 2019.  That piece is the most read thing on this blog.  If you're interested you can read it here:  Fact Check: The Truth About Global Warming

What I learned during my climate research is that the sun and stars are truly the most amazing objects around.  And we are just in the early stages of understanding them.  The first satellite devoted to the sun went up in the late 1970s.  Prior to satellites, we were limited in what we could observe from Earth's surface and from balloons.  Now we have dozens of satellites looking at all sorts of solar phenomena.  

And there's a lot to look at.  The sun is constantly spewing out atomic mass, radiation, protons, electrons, x-rays, charged plasma, magnetic fields, light, energy, heat, and on and on.  

And the sun is by no means constant.  It is incredibly dynamic, temperamental, and alive.  It's hard to overstate its impact.  It is the source of all life.  It is likely the source of all things non-living too.  If there's a God, the first item on the agenda had to be to create the sun and stars, for without them, nothing else could exist.

When the sun sneezes, the Earth catches cold.  Here's some fun facts about the scale of it all:  If the sun was a basketball on first base in Fenway Park, the Earth would be a tiny pea on home plate.  That basketball is so massive and powerful it is responsible for everything that happens in the entire Boston area.  The nearest star would be another basketball... in Honolulu.  The sun amounts to 99.86% of all the mass in our solar system.  Yeah, those giant planets Jupiter and Saturn combined with all the small ones like Earth together amount to a measly .0014 of the total mass in our solar system!  

In conclusion:  Could the sun mess with whales and cause them to beach in NJ?  I argue, yes.  Is this correlation proof?  No.  Could sonar still be the cause?  Possibly, but I see no evidence for that at all.  

(For the record, I'm not a fan of offshore wind farms.  Not because of what they might do to marine life, but because I've lived on the coast long enough to know that salt water and electricity make a bad combo. That, plus the dubious economics.)      

P.S. If you want to become an amateur sun watcher, here are some good sites to help you get started:

www.spaceweatherlive.com

www.spaceweather.com