On target

What’s new Today 

Story #1 tells of lottery winners holding on to their welfare checks.  #2 brings together Gasland with our crucifixion EPA official.  #3 show the inconsistency of the NY Times editorial pages.  Their position depends upon which way the left needs it to go.  #4 gives you more on cosmic rays vs CO2. 

Today’s thoughts

It appears a number of Hugo Chavez underlings are jockeying for position to succeed him even as certain government functions seem to have shut down without him. 

In regard to Osama bin Laden, we are seeing Obama and the Democrats bragging about how they killed a man. 

From the White House Correspondence Dinner and Jimmy Kimmel, “There’s a term for guys like President Obama. Probably not two terms, but there is.’

1.   Michigan’s examples of the Welfare State run Amok

Never has there been a clearer manifestation of the addictiveness of our entitlement culture than what occurred recently in the state of Michigan -- not once, but twice.

For several months after winning a $1 million state lottery jackpot, 25-year-old Michigan resident, Amanda Clayton, collected thousands of dollars in state assistance. Clayton reportedly received approximately $5,500 in food stamps and public medical benefits. She was exposed by a Detroit news station, WDIV-TV4, in March and has since been arrested for welfare fraud.

When confronted by the Detroit station and asked if she felt that she had a right to the money, Clayton replied, "I mean I kinda do." She further added, "I feel that it's okay because I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay. I have two houses." Clayton then declared that she intended to continue to use her benefits until she was cut off.

Perhaps Ms. Clayton learned her trade from 60-year-old Leroy Hick. In June of 2010 Hick won $2 million in a Michigan state lottery TV show. In May of 2011, the Detroit News noted that, according to Hick's attorney, Michigan's state "Department of Human Services determined he was still eligible for food stamps."

The News also noted that, "Eligibility for food stamps is based on gross income and follows federal guidelines; lottery winnings are considered liquid assets and don't count as income. As long as Fick's gross income stays below the eligibility requirement for food stamps, he can receive them, even if he has a million dollars in the bank."…

… Not only are Mr. Fick and Ms. Clayton guilty of defrauding the taxpayer, they are an example of the worst kind of greed. Other than get "lucky," neither of them did a thing to accumulate their wealth. Yet they continued unapologetically to seek more through other means that would again require them to do almost nothing. They are the poster children for an entitlement society….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/entitlement_addiction.html#ixzz1tQX9vZg3

Here’s an example of the 1% that are truly taking advantage of the system.  Do nothing but take everything.

2.  ‘Gasland’ and the EPA

…EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz, who became deservedly infamous last week when his public articulation of his "Crucify Them" philosophy towards enforcement of environmental laws and regulations in a speech a year ago was exposed, really loves the film, which industry officials have shown is riddled with deceptions and outright falsehoods. Not only that, he was also involved in making it:

Armendariz said in the same speech his proudest moment in his first year at EPA was to have its enforcers watch “Gasland,” an anti-fracking propaganda documentary financed by the government of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who also opposes all U.S. drilling. Armendariz collaborated with its makers, and got his name in the credits…

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/04/29/year-ago-ibd-noted-venezuelan-funding-flawed-gasland-documentary-which-e#ixzz1tQjzuXaT

So much for the left being ones who believe in science.  The movie was filled with scientific errors.  It was a propaganda piece pure and simple. 

3.   The NY Times flip flops

A few days after the Supreme Court finished hearing oral argument in the legal challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act last month, The New York Times ran an unsigned editorial denouncing the Court’s conservative justices for their apparent willingness to strike down President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. “For anyone who still thought legal conservatives are dedicated to judicial restraint,” the Times huffed, “the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the health care case should put that idea to rest. There has been no court less restrained in signaling its willingness to replace law made by Congress with law made by justices.”

Pretty forceful words.  In fact, they strongly echoed the arguments made by well-known legal conservative Robert Bork, the former federal appeals court judge who was unsuccessfully nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987. In his bestselling 1990 book The Tempting of America, Bork argued that the “first principle” of the American system wasn’t the protection of individual rights, it was majority rule. “In wide areas of life,” Bork wrote, “majorities are entitled to rule, if they wish, simply because they are majorities.” For the courts, this meant adopting a pro-government posture of judicial restraint—precisely what The New York Times wants the Supreme Court to do in the health care case.

Yet just two days ago the Times ran another unsigned editorial that offered a very different take on judicial restraint. In that piece, the paper attacked GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for asking Bork to head up his campaign’s Justice Advisory Committee. According to the Times, Romney's acceptance of Bork and his “extreme views” reveals the shortcomings of Romney’s own approach to the law. So what’s so bad about Bork? Here’s the Times again:

[T]he confirmation shed considerable light on Mr. Bork’s extreme views. As a critic of what he called the “imperial judiciary,” he contended that, except when the Constitution expressly says otherwise, the court must defer to the will of the majority. Otherwise, he said, it makes “corrupt constitutional law” that is constrained only by the personal values of justices, leaving government subject to the “tyranny of the minority.”

To recap: The New York Times attacks the current Supreme Court for abandoning judicial restraint and “signaling its willingness to replace law made by Congress,” then turns around less than a month later to attack Judge Bork for advocating judicial restraint and saying that “the court must defer to the will of the majority.”

http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/28/the-new-york-times-flip-flops-on-judicia

While both the left and the right seem to be guilty of changing their positions depending upon circumstances, this is just another example of how easily the left does it. 

4.  The Real Cause of Extreme Weather

…Meanwhile, the mainstream media has been largely hiding from the public the actual cause of recent extreme weather events -- big amplitude swings in the jet stream. In an April 2 YouTube video British astrophysicist Piers Corbyn explains why severe weather occurs regularly every 60 years, plus or minus 5 years:

Technically, they say, "Well, the big extremes are caused by changes in the track of low pressure systems as they go around the globe, and when there's big amplitude swings in this track, then you do get more extreme events." However, they don't know where these big amplitude swings come from.

However, we do understand the origin of these big amplitude swings in the jet stream, and these are caused by a mingling of solar-magnetic factors and lunar factors which is why the basic signal is the 60 year signal we've mentioned.

And for the last three years we have been in the middle of one of these peaks of big swings in the jet stream, and we are going to carry on like this for at least another year or so. And right now we are in, perhaps, the most exciting phase of this 60 year cycle.

Corbyn is a brilliant astrophysicist. He looks for repetitions of historic solar-magnetic factors (such as sunspots) and bases his long-range weather forecasts on what those patterns, when combined with moon factors, caused in the past. His long-range predictions have been correct about 85% of the time. He makes his money, mostly from British insurance companies and farmers, by successfully predicting extreme weather events.

We are fortunate that he is starting to make long-term predictions about U.S. weather. In the same YouTube video, he notes that he correctly predicted March's extreme weather in the U.S.:

The thirteenth to fifteenth of March, we specifically predicted this in our forecast in detail, we said there would be tornadoes and giant hail in the lower Midwest. That happened.

We also said, after that there would be a big heat wave in the central and eastern parts of the USA. That happened.

And then we said that would turn into or change into something more focused on Texas with intense heat in Texas. That happened.

And then, finally, there was a cold blast just coming down from Canada in the Northeast part of America at the end of March carrying into April which we predicted.

The theory that climate change, both global warming and cooling, is related to magnetic disturbances on the sun and cloud-creating cosmic rays is supported by a large number of scientists who have published their findings in refereed journals This theory has succeeded in explaining climate changes whether the scale is years or hundreds of millions of years. For example, it explains the colder climate from 2006-2010 as partly the result of reduced solar activity and the recent warmer climate as partly the result of solar activity rising throughout 2011.

Its adherents don't deny that global temperatures may be influenced by greenhouse gas concentrations, but they hold that the influence of greenhouse gases on the weather is probably small. Once the contributions of solar and cosmic rays to climate are precisely determined, it will be possible to determine what is left to be explained by other influences.

In contrast, the AGW theorists can't explain why earth temperatures stopped rising in 1998, despite the continuing rise in carbon dioxide concentrations. They are vicious toward those who oppose them, calling them "deniers" and unscientific. One could argue that it is they who are the deniers. It is scandalous that none of those involved in the East Anglia revelations of attempts to suppress publication of contrary findings has been punished by the universities employing them.

In short, there are two competing theories. The solar/cosmic ray theory successfully predicts weather and climate. The man-made global warming theory correctly predicts opinion polls….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/does_global_warming_cause_extreme_weather.html#ixzz1tQUfGYon

Certainly an 85% rate of correctly predicting the weather both long and short term is a lot better than the AGW crowd. 

An AGW alternative

What’s new Today 

Story #1 tells what really happened with the Osama bin Laden killing.  #2 tells of Obama’s problem with the economy.  Mediocre is not good enough.  #3 Is a story on a new study which puts the AGW hypothesis on its head. 

Today’s thoughts

With Obama still talking about green power and the jobs it will create has he noticed Spain which decided to take that route in Europe has an unemployment rate of 24.4%.

If the President and the Democrats are so eager to insure that the interest rate on college loans doesn’t increase, why is he threatening to veto the bill passed in the House?

1.   Obama’s Gutsy Call?

Today, Time magazine got hold of a memo written by then-CIA head Leon Panetta after he received orders from Barack Obama’s team to greenlight the bin Laden mission. Here’s the text, which summarized the situation:

Received phone call from Tom Donilon who stated that the President made a decision with regard to AC1 [Abbottabad Compound 1]. The decision is to proceed with the assault.

The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out. Those instructions were conveyed to Admiral McRaven at approximately 10:45 am….

…Only the memo doesn’t show a gutsy call. It doesn’t show a president willing to take the blame for a mission gone wrong. It shows a CYA maneuver by the White House….

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Get-bin-laden-memo-CYA

Talk about bad timing.  The DNC has just put out an ad that reiterates the “gutsy call” scenario and questions whether Romney would have made it.  It appears that the qualification of the “risk profile” was a perfect cover to blame the military if things went badly.

2.  Obama’s economic problem

Weak Growth, Weak Hiring

How weak was the economy's 2.2 percent growth rate from January through March? It depends.

Consider that a growth rate of 2.5 percent or higher is considered good when the economy is healthy.  But not at a time of high unemployment.

With 12.7 million people unemployed, today's economy needs much faster growth to boost hiring. Growth would have to be roughly 4 percent for a full year to lower the unemployment rate, now 8.2 percent, by 1 percentage point.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/04/28/US-growth-too-sluggish-to-drive-down-unemployment

This is a huge problem for Obama.  Even if the growth spurted now, the unemployment rate would most likely rise as there are 5 million people missing from the employment numbers and they would come back into the unemployed numbers. 

3.  Svensmark's cosmic Jackpot--a death knell for AGW?

Nigel Calder asks us to republish this post for maximum exposure. He writes:  

Today the Royal Astronomical Society in London publishes (online) Henrik Svensmark’s latest paper entitled “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth”. After years of effort Svensmark shows how the variable frequency of stellar explosions not far from our planet has ruled over the changing fortunes of living things throughout the past half billion years. Appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, it’s a giant of a paper, with 22 figures, 30 equations and about 15,000 words. See the RAS press release at http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2117-did-exploding-stars-help-life-on-earth-to-thrive

By taking me back to when I reported the victory of the pioneers of plate tectonics in their battle against the most eminent geophysicists of the day, it makes me feel 40 years younger. Shredding the textbooks, Tuzo Wilson, Dan McKenzie and Jason Morgan merrily explained earthquakes, volcanoes, mountain-building, and even the varying depth of the ocean, simply by the drift of fragments of the lithosphere in various directions around the globe.

In Svensmark’s new paper an equally concise theory, that cosmic rays from exploded stars cool the world by increasing the cloud cover, leads to amazing explanations, not least for why evolution sometimes was rampant and sometimes faltered. In both senses of the word, this is a stellar revision of the story of life.

Here are the main results:

·         The long-term diversity of life in the sea depends on the sea-level set by plate tectonics and the local supernova rate set by the astrophysics, and on virtually nothing else.

·         The long-term primary productivity of life in the sea – the net growth of photosynthetic microbes – depends on the supernova rate, and on virtually nothing else.

·         Exceptionally close supernovae account for short-lived falls in sea-level during the past 500 million years, long-known to geophysicists but never convincingly explained..

·         As the geological and astronomical records converge, the match between climate and supernova rates gets better and better, with high rates bringing icy times.

Presented with due caution as well as with consideration for the feelings of experts in several fields of research, a story unfolds in which everything meshes like well-made clockwork. Anyone who wishes to pooh-pooh any piece of it by saying “correlation is not necessarily causality” should offer some other mega-theory that says why several mutually supportive coincidences arise between events in our galactic neighbourhood and living conditions on the Earth.

An amusing point is that Svensmark stands the currently popular carbon dioxide story on its head. Some geoscientists want to blame the drastic alternations of hot and icy conditions during the past 500 million years on increases and decreases in carbon dioxide, which they explain in intricate ways. For Svensmark, the changes driven by the stars govern the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Climate and life control CO2, not the other way around.

By implication, supernovae also determine the amount of oxygen available for animals like you and me to breathe. So the inherently simple cosmic-ray/cloud hypothesis now has far-reaching consequences, which I’ve tried to sum up in this diagram.

Cosmic rays in action. The main findings in the new Svensmark paper concern the uppermost stellar band, the green band of living things and, on the right, atmospheric chemistry. Although solar modulation of galactic cosmic rays is important to us on short timescales, its effects are smaller and briefer than the major long-term changes controlled by the rate of formation of big stars in our vicinity, and their self-destruction as supernovae. Although copyrighted, this figure may be reproduced with due acknowledgement in the context of Henrik Svensmark's work.

By way of explanation

The text of “Evidence of nearby supernovae affecting life on Earth” is available via ftp://ftp2.space.dtu.dk/pub/Svensmark/MNRAS_Svensmark2012.pdf The paper is highly technical, as befits a professional journal, so to non-expert eyes even the illustrations may be a little puzzling. So I’ve enlisted the aid of Liz Calder to explain the way one of the most striking graphs, Svensmark’s Figure 20, was put together. That graph shows how, over the past 440 million years, the changing rates of supernova explosions relatively close to the Earth have strongly influenced the biodiversity of marine invertebrate animals, from trilobites of ancient times to lobsters of today. Svensmark’s published caption ends: “Evidently marine biodiversity is largely explained by a combination of sea-level and astrophysical activity.” To follow his argument you need to see how Figure 20 draws on information in Figure 19. That tells of the total diversity of the sea creatures in the fossil record, fluctuating between times of rapid evolution and times of recession….

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/24/svensmarks-cosmic-jackpot-evidence-of-nearby-supernovae-affecting-life-on-earth/

Poverty in America

Poverty in America

Each year for the past two decades, the U.S. Census Bureau has reported that over 30 million Americans were living in “poverty.” IN RECENT YEARS, THE CENSUS HAS REPORTED THAT ONE IN SEVEN AMERICANS ARE POOR. But what does it mean to be “poor” in America? How poor are America’s poor?

For most Americans, the word “poverty” suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. For example, THE POVERTY PULSE POLL TAKEN BY THE CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ASKED THE GENERAL PUBLIC: “HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE BEING POOR IN THE U.S.?” THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF RESPONSES FOCUSED ON HOMELESSNESS, HUNGER OR NOT BEING ABLE TO EAT PROPERLY, AND NOT BEING ABLE TO MEET BASIC NEEDS.[1] That perception is bolstered by news stories about poverty that routinely feature homelessness and hunger.

Yet if poverty means lacking nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, relatively few of the more than 30 million people identified as being “in poverty” by the Census Bureau could be characterized as poor.[2] While material hardship definitely exists in the United States, it is restricted in scope and severity. The average poor person, as defined by the government, has a living standard far higher than the public imagines.

AS SCHOLAR JAMES Q. WILSON HAS STATED, “THE POOREST AMERICANS TODAY LIVE A BETTER LIFE THAN ALL BUT THE RICHEST PERSONS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.”[3] In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation.[4] In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker….

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty

The chart at the left tells us globally what poverty in America is like and it appears to be a lot better than many would lead us to believe.

Obama says "willing to take spending down"

Something remarkable occurred in President Obama's press conference on Friday (July 15). It was so astonishing that I was not sure I had heard right, and had to wait until the press conference transcript was posted on the White House website to be sure. But there it is in the sixth paragraph. Here is the quote in full:
Now, what that would require would be some shared sacrifice and a balanced approach that says we're going to make significant cuts in domestic spending. AND I HAVE ALREADY SAID I AM WILLING TO TAKE DOWN DOMESTIC SPENDING TO THE LOWEST PERCENTAGE OF OUR OVERALL ECONOMY SINCE DWIGHT EISENHOWER.

I, at least, have never heard this before, but "before" is not really important; President Obama has said it now. Republican negotiators, the Tea Party, indeed the country must hold him to it. THIS IS THE ENTIRE GAME, THE ENTIRE PROBLEM, IN SPENDING AND THEREFORE THE DEBT CEILING QUESTION.
Spending has exploded to 25+% of GDP on president Obama's watch, six percentage points above where it "should" be at 19% of GDP! If the president is willing to take spending back to 19% of GDP, which is the level implied by the Eisenhower reference, the game is won.

THIS IS A STATEMENT THAT SPEAKER BOEHNER SHOULD GRAB ON TO AND HOLD ON TO FOR DEAR LIFE. EVERY DISCUSSION FROM NOW ON SHOULD BEGIN BY HOLDING THE PRESIDENT TO THIS DECLARATION. With this statement as the predicate for discussions, we can get a satisfactory agreement on the debt ceiling.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/an_astounding_turnabout_by_obama.html

What Obama has said (though I doubt he meant it) was that he is willing to decrease spending by 8.4 trillion dollars over 10 years. If he comes through with that, Republicans should agree to tax increases in the neighborhood of $2 trillion over 10 years.

Presidential flummery and questions left unasked

BRAVO, JAKE TAPPER.

Finally from a member of the increasingly supine White House press corps came a question that demanded of the president specificity as to his alleged willingness to "upset his base."
TAPPER ASKED THE PRESIDENT ON FRIDAY TO "TELL US ONE STRUCTURAL REFORM THAT YOU ARE WILLING TO MAKE TO ONE OF THESE ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS THAT WOULD HAVE A MAJOR IMPACT ON THE DEFICIT?"

The president spoke a long time in response but PROVIDED NO SUCH SPECIFICITY ABOUT EVEN ONE SUCH REFORM, revealing again that the would-be Emperor of the Big Deal has no plan beyond a political operation to assign blame for any unpleasant consequences of a collision with the existing debt ceiling.

Tapper prefaced his excellent question with the not-so-excellent statement that "we have an idea of the taxes that you would like to see raised on corporations and on Americans in the top two tax brackets," and that really isn't true. WE ACTUALLY DON'T KNOW THE SPECIFICS OF THE PRESIDENT'S TAX HIKE LIST AND WE DON'T KNOW WHAT SORT OF "REVENUES" HE THINKS THESE TAX HIKES WOULD BRING.

Most suspect that all of the president's tax agenda wouldn't raise anything close to the amount of money he implies it would, and the impact on economic growth of another round of tax hikes is never discussed by the president or pushed by the overwhelmingly left-of-center, recovering JournoList fraternity covering the debt crisis in detail.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/07/presidential-flummery-and-questions-left-unasked#ixzz1STOlnTCy

The question from the previous article is whether or not that comment is also just flummery.

The Daily Show: Unbiased?

It was contentious and dramatic. On Sunday, June 19, “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace grilled funnyman Jon Stewart on his obvious liberal bias and Stewart replied, “… THERE IS NOT A DESIGNED IDEOLOGICAL AGENDA ON MY PART TO AFFECT PARTISAN CHANGE ...”

The exchange got heated when Stewart held that line, telling Wallace, “You can’t understand, because of the world you live in, that there is not a designed, ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change, because that’s the soup you swim in.”

Well, “designed” or not, Comedy Central’s “THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART” MOCKS THE RIGHT FAR MORE THAN IT DOES THE LEFT, AND A SURVEY OF THE 16 BROADCASTS SINCE THE WALLACE-STEWART RUN-IN PROVES IT.

CMI found that Stewart went after Republicans and Fox News (which he labels “conservative”) almost FOUR TIMES AS OFTEN AS LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS IN JUST TWO WEEKS OF SHOWS. However the next eight broadcasts proved that Stewart just couldn’t help but show his true, partisan colors.

Whether he was poking fun at Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for her perceived Waterloo/John Wayne gaffe or calling Fox News a “lying dynasty,” Stewart’s ever-present bias comes awfully close to that of an “ideological, partisan activist.”

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/erin-r-brown/2011/07/18/numbers-dont-lie-daily-shows-stewart-hammers-right-nearly-4-times-more#ixzz1STGM6W51

If I know my liberals they would say it’s because the right deserves to be mocked four times as much as liberals.

Bill Maher: Liberal hatred on display

From everything I’ve read, the only factor remaining in Governor Palin’s decision-making process about a 2012 presidential run is the impact the campaign would have on her family — which is why I think Bill Maher went here:

Now, I’m not saying that sexism doesn’t exist and isn’t real. And we can’t, but we can’t throw around the word “sexist” just to stop people like me from pointing out that Michele Bachmann, now running second for the Republican presidential nomination, isn’t a dangerous nincompoop. And when I point out that SARAH PALIN IS A VAINGLORIOUS BRAGGART, A LIAR, a whiner, a professional victim, a scold, a know-it-all, a chiseler, a bully who sells patriotism like a pimp, AND THE LEADER OF A STRANGE FAMILY OF INBRED WEIRDOS STRAIGHT OUT OF “THE HILLS HAVE EYES,” THAT’S NOT SEXIST. I’M SAYING IT BECAUSE IT’S TRUE, NOT BECAUSE IT’S TRUE OF A WOMAN.

Really, Bill, this is “true?” Who has it in them to look at this photo of Tripp and Trig Palin, two beautiful and perfect children, and make jokes about “inbred weirdos?”

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/07/18/did-anyone-notice-bill-maher-trashing-sarah-palins-children-as-family-of-inbred-weirdos/

Maher’s slant is bigoted and misogynistic despite the rationalization he’s only saying it because it’s true. What self-delusional idiocy.

Climate change

Hints that CLOUD experiment supports cosmic ray climate impact

I have been following the results of the all the experments that infer cosmic rays have an implact on the earth climate ever since reading Chilling Stars by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark. The book was about his research into the effects that cosmic rays have on cloud formation and resulting inpact on climate change. Chilling Stars co-author was Nigel Calder.
HERE IS THE LATEST FROM CALDER ON THE STATUS OF THE CLOUD EXPERIMENT THAT WAS TO PROVE OR DISPROVE SVENSMARK'S THERORY ABOUT THE CONNECTION BETWEEN COSMIC RAYS AND THE EARTHS CLIMATE.
…Although still very busy with other work, I keep looking out for results from the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva, which is testing Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that cosmic rays help to make clouds. They are due for publication this summer. All I have just now is a startling remark by Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN, in an interview by Welt Online a few days ago.

Here is a tidied-up Google Translate version of the relevant exchange.
Welt Online: The results of the so-called CLOUD experiment, exploring the formation of clouds, are awaited with great excitement. COULD THESE RESULTS STILL BE IMPORTANT FOR UNDERSTANDING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE?

Heuer: This is indeed a matter of understanding better the formation of clouds. In nature there are many parameters at work – including temperature, humidity, impurities and also cosmic radiation. IN THE EXPERIMENT, CLOUD INVESTIGATES THE INFLUENCE OF COSMIC RAYS ON CLOUD FORMATION, USING RADIATION [MEANING PARTICLES] COMING FROM THE ACCELERATOR. And in an experimental chamber one can study, under controlled conditions, how the formation of droplets depends on the radiation and particulate matter. The results will be published shortly. I HAVE ASKED THE COLLEAGUES TO PRESENT THE RESULTS CLEARLY, BUT NOT TO INTERPRET THEM. That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate. ONE HAS TO MAKE CLEAR THAT COSMIC RADIATION IS ONLY ONE OF MANY PARAMETERS….

http://ncwatch.typepad.com/media/2011/07/hints-that-cloud-experiment-supports-cosmic-ray-climate-impact-.html

This is important. It may represent another nail in the global warming canard. The statement, “one has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters” certainly looks as if they have found that cosmic rays indeed seed cloud formation.