Obama Hears it from Jack Webb

Obama Hears it from Jack Webb

No Europeanization Here

No Europeanization Here

By Europeanization I mean that we Americansare not European in makeup or outlook. Europe is a huge area that was, until recently, a collection of culturally and racially homogeneous countries that hated each other with passions so deep that most modern Americans do not understand them. They kept killing each other on such a vicious and massive scale that they took the step of outlawing war itself, with the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928. After WWII they really started to take the idea of central government power as the "cure" to the outbreak of warfare seriously. They began providing welfare on a massive scale, and even tried to outlaw nations, instead constructing an undemocratic super state called European Union. They even outlawed sovereign currencies (with some notable exceptions).

All that seems to have failed, mostly because they seem to have forgotten that humans would be involved in their brave new world. They still seethe with nationalist hatreds there, they still have their moments of warfare and "ethnic cleansing," but they have granted their governments a level of power that is anathema to most Americans. Their governments use twice as much of their GDP and vitality, and their people have little of the personal liberty that Americans have.

I mention Europeanization in response to the idea that since European governments have succeeded in taking far higher levels of taxing and spending power than the U.S. has, that we are not taxed enough. I submit that there is no chance that we will go down the route that Europe has, mostly because all Americans believe that they can, one day and with enough hard work and luck, become the next Bill Gates or Barack Obama. We are used to the idea of personal freedom, and we have not had a war on our territory in living memory.

In short (very short - too short) it appears that our flirtation with European ideas of overbearing government is coming to an end, or is at least running out of steam. People are beginning to push back against the political juggernaut of ever expanding government. We will make our stand on taxing authority. The elites - an oligarchy of politicians, academics, and big corporations, is not powerful enough to beat an idea - the idea that we are a free people. Members of that elite might reject all of this. On November 6, 2012, you they well find themselves within the minority.

Letter to a Democrat

Letter to a Democrat

Dear Democrat,

It pains me to inform you that the quandry this great nation faces can not be solved by increasing taxes on "The Rich." It is not taxes that we need to raise - we need to bring spending down to a level commensurate with our means.

I hear what you say, over and over. Republicans are devils and all bad is caused by them, and democrats are angels and all good comes from them. Wake up. The taxes paid by Americans to all governmental entities have always been less than a quarter of income (GDP). Nothing the government has ever figured out, rates, deductions, and reforms, have ever been able to get more revenue from the American citizens. Politicians of all stripes play rhetorical games, all designed to pander to their electoral bases, but the only way to end deficits is to stop spending so much. Clinton has a "surplus" (which was nothing of the sort, but he gets credit for one) because the economy was roaring, so tax collections went up with income.

Because our last few roaring economies were mostly caused by government inflating a bubble, and the bubbles got ever larger, we are now at a point where they can no longer inflate another bubble. While it is possible for private citizens to spend less, we are told that government cannot. Therefore they have spent trillions in "stimulus" and two trillion dollar rounds of "quantitative easing" which is merely printing trillions of dollars, and things still suck.

Every government that has ever had the power to print money has debased their currency, going back to the ancient Romans, who added lead to their gold coins. Our government is currently doing the same thing to the dollar. This does not end well.

We either reduce spending or we will see a great and real tragedy. Professional pols have their reason to pretend that no crisis looms, but there is no reason for citizens to parrot political talking points designed to fool the rubes, when we are the rubes being fooled. Politicians are insulated from the tragedy they are causing, so long as they can get themselves reelected. If you are not an elected official or a member of their patronage circle, you have got to wake up.

Sincerely,

A concerned citizen, neither a democrat nor a republican. A citizen who actually cares about his country, not any political party.

The "Anti-Science" Trope

The "Anti-Science" Trope

Everywhere I go, I see that those who resist the global warming movement are always called "anti-science." I object to the sobriquet, a reversal of reality actually, of "anti-science." I was a physics major, and have followed climate and weather for fifty years. The science is in, and we have no idea what drives our climate, because there is no consensus among scientists.

There is a bunch of so-called "climate scientists" who make their living by ginning up hysteria, but in the real, peer-reviewed world of science, there is no agreement. The planet (the biosphere really) may or may not be warming, but it is historically colder than long term proxy studies suggest is normal for an interglacial period, and no warming has factually been seen for over a decade. We have much better ways to observe these things now, and the better we get at it, the less "warming" can be detected.

IF there is warming, and that's a big IF, there is no scientific consensus of what might be causing it.

If humans are causing it by carbon dioxide emissions, no possible way to reduce these emissions currently exists.

No matter which political stripe you come from, no matter how many times you scream "Bullshit!" (as Al Gore did last week) these are the scientific facts. Anyone who says differently is misinformed.

Now, that being said, there is some validity to adopting clean air and water policy. The hysterical claims of Gore et al make sensible environmental regulation almost impossible, as pols try to ride the hysteria to even bigger budgets and ever more power.

The "anti-science" group is the warming alarmists who claim that policy can alter weather and climate, and that is incontrovertible fact. The republicans like Rick Perry who see that there is no consensus, and no actual understanding of the drivers of climate changes, are the ones who follow the science where it has led us.

Further Thoughts, the Following Morning

Further Thoughts, the Following Morning

While many of us will vote for the republican nominee no matter what, that will not do the trick on election day. Obama will be a formidable candidate. It is demoralizing to see that the only sparkling candidate in last night's panel was Gingrich, who can never get the nomination IMO, nor should he - way too much baggage. In the politics of personal destruction the liberals are gonna use, baggage is far worse than silly positions.

Rick Perry was a democrat, being an Al Gore guy in 1988, He delivers the evangelicals big time. While the libs will attack the religion of any candidate, mainstream Christian is a far better place to be than Mormon under that type of fire.

No doubt Perry has a plethora of things in his record that we'd rather he did not. It is easy to choose the prize behind the curtain over the prizes we can see. The curtain is about to be revealed on Perry. I hope that he can stand up under the glare the liberals will put him under. Ever watch MSNBC? The hate there is ferocious.

In any event, I look forward to the campaign. No matter the nominee, ferocious libs getting crazy over their decline from power, especially after their big win in 2008 and their predictions of a long term dominance of the political scene, will be delicious to watch.

Tonight's Republican Debate, IMHO

Tonight's Republican Debate, IMHO

Allow me to veer from pure Zero Base thinking, into my personal opinions of what happened tonight in the debate broadcast On Fox News from Ames Iowa:

Today's news carried some item that Texas Governor Perry was soft on Shariah, and certain quarters of the interwebs called him out on that. After tonight's debate, He'd have to convert to Islam before he would look worse that the crew we watched. Ron Paul was old and tired, no matter how great his ideas. Bachmann looked flighty, defending the indefensible on debt and government spending. Romney looked damn presidential, if only you didn't listen too hard to what he was really saying. Pawlenty, my favorite, looked plain small and indecisive. Santorum is a sweet man, but his train left the station when he failed to win reelection in Pennsylvania. Cain, wow what a president he would be. The only problem is that he would need some votes before they will let him be one, and tonight he didn't earn any. Gingrich looked fresh and uncanned, but he has already disqualified himself a couple months ago. Why proceed with a nominee with such baggage?

Unless you believe that a ham sandwich can beat Obama, we better hope that Perry has more pizzazz than this group!

Thoughts on the Debt Ceiling

Thoughts on the Debt Ceiling

Make no mistake, both sides are being equally dishonest in this thing. Pretending that "deficit reduction" or "balanced budget amendment" are what we are talking about is a fraud that both parties are playing with. The fact is that neither side wants to talk about the real end game - tax increases on the middle class and benefit reductions in medicare and social security. We pretend that these are not the real issues, but a balanced budget could never be accomplished without these things.

Face it, We the People have been hosed, our representatives have betrayed us, and now they play games in the hopes that we never figure it out. The Ponzi scheme is crashed, and tax increases are in store for all of us, as is the diminution of our "entitlements." I say, bring it on! But the rest of the electorate will feel betrayed, and they were.

Science was better in the 60s

Science was better in the 60s

I was reading Luboš Motl's fine physics blog and came across this fine post about stratospheric aerosols. These substances have lately come into the news since they are the most recent excuse that warmists have come up with in their attempt to explain away the lack of warming the last decade and a half. First Luboš points out that the last actual science that addressed this phenomenon without the taint of warmism was done in 1965. Then Luboš makes some very strong points about where modern climate science has gone wrong, and, as he does, he goes on to prove it.

Some of the greatest commentary on the status of modern climate science is in this post. A little bit:

Their science resembles the science of the chieftain of a terrorist training camp. He believes in the Tooth Fairy and designs an amazing method to earn some money for his terrorist hobby. He punches away the teeth of all the mujahideens in his group, puts the teeth under the pillow, and expects that the Tooth Fairy will replace them by millions of dollars during the night, when he sleeps.

Instead, he still finds the teeth in the morning. So he is totally puzzled: what miraculous, unexpected, supernatural power could have prevented the Tooth Fairy from replacing the teeth by the money? Of course, he is as clever a chieftain as the IPCC scientists so he finds an explanation that satisfies him: the Tooth Fairy asked the Bone Fairy for a permission and didn't get it.

So the chieftain breaks all the bones of his men and puts them under the pillow. It must be different this time, he is confident, and he is waiting for the Tooth Fairy to replace the teeth and bones by millions of dollars. His belief in these laws of physics remains perfect - well, up to the moment when this man is finally shot by a NATO soldier.

It's very similar with the global warming nuts. Instead of admitting that their could have made a wrong assumption, they always prefer to add dozens of other wrong assumptions.

Read the whole thing. It is refreshing to read a young physicist who is not concerned with the career consequences of telling it like it is. I am grateful that he finds the time to write about warmism, especially after a week in which so much other news came out in his field of physics.

Thoughts on TSA and Airline Security

Thoughts on TSA and Airline Security

I remember the days when anyone could get on a plane with a pistol and nobody cared. I remember the days when planes were actually hijacked and/or blown up fairly frequently, and the proud American people did not cower in fear, or submit to indignities and loss of basic personal freedoms in the hope of a morsel of additional safety.

Our government has lost its respect for the people, and the people acquiesce. We have lost our honor as a people, our moral code, and all we seem to care about is having the wherewithal to make the lease payments on the Lexus.

Electric Cars And The Future

Electric Cars And The Future

In the 50s the Soviet Union made Thorium reactors and put them in buoys and lighthouses that provided electricity for years with no maintenance. It is inconceivable to me that, if the current hysteria against nuclear power were to subside that there could not be a superior technology developed. I noticed in today’s news two items. One, there are going to be brownouts in the middle and east of the country due to air conditioning use in the current heat wave. Two, I noted that Mayor Bloomberg of NYC contributed 50 million dollars to a group whose goal is to stop electric power generation from coal, which is currently our major energy source for electric generation. I can not be sanguine about current trends and technologies resulting in not having enough power to recharge millions of inefficient car batteries.

The answers to our problems are technological. We are currently in thrall to a political movement that threatens to cause shortages in electric power generation. If new technologies are retarded by political action, I fear that electric automobiles will not be successful now, any more than they failed to provide mass transportation in the last century.

Electric automobiles are an older technology than gasoline or diesel. We need something new. While projecting current technologies as the answer to our future transportation needs is all fine and well, it is entirely too pessimistic for this optimistic, ever more wealthy society, it seems to me that, rather than societal poverty, our tremendous wealth will continue to increase, once our modern Luddite political movement towards energy poverty will be circumvented. If America does not step forward into the future, China will surely continue development of new technological answers to our current problems.

Environmentalists are Cargo Cultists

Environmentalists are Cargo Cultists

Cargo Cults were belief systems developed by primitive tribes to make sense of parachute resupply pallets that missed their mark in World War 2. They found the bounty, had no easy explanation for how the goods arrived, and so designed a religion that ascribed these things to God. Environmentalists suffer from a similar misunderstanding about what they see in the world today. The actual explanation is easy to see, if we look at what is happening with open eyes.

The planet has changed, and it will continue to do so. Humanity has emerged as the apex predator in recent years, and we hope to remain at the top of the food chain for a long time to come. We humans need food and energy, and are fantastically gifted with the ability to provide it for ourselves. The Cargo Cultists and their ilk believe humanity to be vermin in a formerly "pristine" environment, who have ruined the optimum environment that existed before we ascended to primacy. There are too many of us, they believe, and we live too well, devouring too much food and energy for the planet's good, or something.

That is fatuous nonsense. We humans are here to stay, and our numbers are bound to increase. Pretending that yesterday's fish species or yesterday's climate is somehow "optimum" is merely a political talking point with no basis in fact or science. The political class wields these ideas to amass great power and wealth. I understand and respect where they are coming from. They know exactly what they are doing, and have no compunctions, or conscience, about it.

What I cannot respect is otherwise intelligent people buying in to these notions of peak oil, global warming, or endangered species. These changes are all natural, they have been happening for more than four billion years. There is no reason to believe that the earth will mot survive for billions years more as a fecund environment for whatever species have the hardiness and will to cling to life here.

Me? I'm betting on humanity. If the wild salmon can't make it in the real world, we will just have to find a better fish to eat. I see no danger in a warmer climate, even as I doubt that we shall see one. We are not that lucky - we may well have to deal with the cold. Air is cleaner every year, even as gas, oil, and coal are more abundant today than ever before. Victory will go to the bold, which pretty well describes humanity. Those who would cower in cold drafty caves instead of gleaming edifices because they fear the unknown can do it without me. Al Gore apparently agrees with me on that last point, for himself, at least.

Science, or "Science?"

Science, or "Science?"

Science has no place for consensus. "Science" does. In science, one puts forth a hypothesis and then experiments and observations are designed and collated to see if the result fits the predictions made in the hypothesis. In the case of climate science, the IPCC put forth a detailed vision of the future of earth's climate in 1990 and 1995. Those predictions failed. They changed the goalposts in 2001 and again in 2007, yet the conditions still will not conform to the new predictions.

The science that is settled is the physical behavior of CO2 in the laboratory. The "science" that says that we shall see this behavior in world climate is demonstrably false. We have lofted satellites and loosed buoys and balloons in order to get a finer understanding of climate, and the better observational tools have uncovered more failure of the theory. Oceans refuse to heat up, proof that global warming has not been happening for the last decade or so. Storms are way down, again not in compliance with prediction. Corals, sea level, none of these phenomena have acted in line with the predictions. That, in science, means that something is wrong with the hypothesis. It means we need more study.

Since 1988 the global warming movement, in the UN, through the IPCC, and some governments, have been demanding a policy prescription that is nothing short of reducing the expansion of industrial development worldwide. CO2 is a proxy for energy and manufacturing. It is unclear if it would be possible to reduce the amount of this trace gas in any significant way, since this has not been determined. Enforcing CO2 emission reductions will not only require the first world to reduce its standard of living, but, if it were to be effective, it would damn people in the third world to poverty, heating their food with animal dung and wood. For such a draconian regime to be put in place, the science better be right - we had better be confident. We are not confident, in fact we have become less so with better science.

My background in science makes me agnostic about what is happening. I am willing to believe that human activities are having an effect, but there is no way to know today, with the best science we can do, whether humanity is making it warmer or cooler. It has been much colder and hotter on earth in the past - on that there is no debate. Whether or not the climate of the 20th or the 19th century is an optimum that we must strive, at any expense, to maintain, is also something I do not believe that we know.

By all means keep funding research. We need to understand our world better if at all possible. And, once we know what is happening, then we should decide what to do. The true believers in the "science" are practicing a religion, where belief can not be questioned. That is not science.

The Climate Conundrum

The Climate Conundrum

All the solar energy (insolation) that hits the planet is known, about 1366 watts per square meter. That sounds like a lot, but it is all used or otherwise accounted for in natural processes. It makes the rain fall, the wind blow, and the plants grow. It makes the planetary surface warmer than the deep cold of outer space. We can play with it, and so long as we do not extract a very large amount of power from it, we will be fine. But if we would actually attempt to extract enough solar power to make a real difference, there would be consequences in weather and climate that we do not know much about, since we have such a paltry understanding of the dynamics of climate.

I am always amused when I read one of these climate studies - not the executive summaries that science journalists read, but the studies themselves - there is so much that they admit that they do not understand. It does not stop them from reaching sweeping conclusions though, ofter covered with weasel words like "we believe" or "likely" with no backup or calculation. Climate science is unique that way - no calculation is needed, just a well written exec summary to fool the rubes.

Early indications are that wind farms on land tend to create a warmer microclimate nearby and offshore wind farms cause onshore cooling. The reasons are unclear, but the folly of extensive deployment of wind extracting mechanisms will definitely have unintended, and largely unknown, consequences. Large solar electric or heat extraction similarly prevents the sunlight from reaching the ground, thus upsetting the ecosystem in ways both known and unknown. Hydro - well, nobody is gonna let us build any more hydro plants, so that does not matter. The little fishies would protest.

The real conundrum is that we use an enormous amount of power in the first world, and the third world wishes to join us in this endeavor. There is no known way to produce this power without upsetting a preexisting balance of ecology. It may well be that petroleum is the cleanest and safest, but that depends on the yet unknown danger of CO2, the last emittant, the one that we can not remove the way we removed the actual pollutants. But all these alternatives also change the ecology in ways both known and unknown.

That is why the green movement is against every single one of them. They have sued to stop photovoltaic and wind projects, and they are just getting started. Their answer they seek (just ask them, or read their blogs) is a Malthusian die-off of about half the world human population. The global warming scare is just a single manifestation of their desire to achieve this Brave New World of theirs, where humanity lives in harmony with the little piggies and fishies, and everyone is happy. They have banded together with the end of the worlders, and combined with careerists in academia and industry to formulate their scare. They probably believe their own bullshit. The fact is that earthly climate history is a story of ice ages interspersed with interglacial periods. We are currently deep into an interglacial. The sentient people in the physics community believe that, to the extent that something humanity is doing is extending the interglacial, that is a Good Thing, since humanity cannot survive another ice age.

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Update - In response to a question, I will add this bit:
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Hydro power is solar power in that the sun evaporates the water that falls as rain in the reservoir that spins the turbines. Wind power is solar power in that it is the heat of the sun that provides the convection that results in wind blowing. There is a finite amount of insolation delivered at the planet's surface, and it all does SOMETHING. We can capture it on a limited basis, but do you really think the greens will let us cover a desert area the size of Arizona plus New Mexico? The little salamanders will stop that one every time, so there is never gonna be enough power from solar to replace more than a fraction of the energy we use currently, and the third world wants to use energy like we do. The "Greens" want us to use energy like the third world does. All known practical energy sources must be exploited, and all leads pursued, but I fear that the profoundly unserious way humanity appears to be dealing with this impending problem will continue to take us in exactly the wrong direction. We need energy in increasing amounts. A sizable proportion of powerful humans (the greens) want us to use less energy, but they know we will never agree, so they put up spurious limits on energy generation expansion, backed up by religious dogma, which they label "science." Science is a process, while Warmist greens claim that "The science is settled," which is a profoundly unscientific statement. Science marches on, but inconvenient findings are scorned and ignored by the academic and media Warmist community. Meanwhile more and more scientists who formerly believed the orthodox position are changing their views. There are powerful career and social consequences for a scientist deviating from academic orthodoxy - just ask any physicist who questions string theory how his career fared after submitting that contrarian paper. But. Over time, the data and the reality will become clear - whatever it is.

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Update #2 Better insolation numbers
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Above I posted that total energy from the sun was 1366 watts per square meter. That number applies to a total of solar energy, much of which energy never reaches the ground. Clouds soak it up, "greenhouse" gases soak it up (yes Virginia, actual CO2 absorbs energy from both directions, which is why global warming can not be caused by CO2) and a large amount is reflected back into space (albedo). The maximum solar energy that does reach the ground is 746 watts per square meter in optimum conditions, which is, in the U.S.A. limited to relatively small area in the south west between about 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM for about 300 days a year. all other places in the United States see less than that. Then the efficiency of collection must be considered. Right now we are doing well at 10%, but even assuming huge strides in this area you must factor in that this is only possible during times when most people are not home. Storage of electricity is also woefully inefficient, so add it all up and you can easily see that covering every roof with photo-voltaic cells and filling every basement with next generation electric storage batteries will still not keep any modern home off the grid for more than a few hours at a time.

Greens are running out of solutions

Greens are running out of solutions

The religion of Thomas Malthus is running out of steam. A few of the adherents to this incoherent religion are beginning to scramble for ways to salvage their movement, and make it compatible with rational thought. The true believers have hijacked science and have called us, all of us, self destructive idiots, and thus lost most of the popular support they once had.

Walter Russel Meade has a nice essay on this, borrowing liberally from a recent piece on the dead end their movement has run into by George Monbiot in The Guardian. Money quote:

All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess. None of our chosen solutions break the atomising, planet-wrecking project. I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront. But even that could be a tall order.

But Mead goes much further than Monbiot. He deconstructs the failures of the movement and gets to their causes.

Malthusianism is a religious conviction that desperately needs to think of itself as a science. From Thomas Malthus and his mathematical certainties to Paul Ehrlich with his famine timetables and the Club of Rome with its ‘scientific’ predictions of resource exhaustion, Malthusians have made confident predictions about the future and claimed scientific authority for statements that turned out to be contemptibly silly. That is the brutal fate that often awaits people who can’t keep the boundaries between science and religion straight.

We can only hope that a soft landing awaits the movement, if only because humanity has actual challenges to meet, and having a fringe religion that claims to own the issue places itself in opposition to all the rest of us. This is entirely counterproductive, as we face a burgeoning population, all of whom require food, fuel, and housing, and few of whom will embrace a Malthusian solution that requires most of them to die.

Malthusian Fears are Baseless

Malthusian Fears are Baseless

The New York Times has a piece out today that explores a human future that is projected to surpass ten billion souls in a few decades time, or by 2100. The comments are illuminating, replete as they are with believers in the Malthusian idea, promulgated in 1799, that humans will outgrow our environment the way fungi and rats do. Not surprising, but these comments betray a strait jacket in their thinking. They insist that we can not adapt to the future with the techniques and technologies of the past.

It is amazing the lack of imagination shown by the naysayers of a successful humanity. In 1950 the world had no way to support a doubling of the population, yet in 2000 we did, with a higher standard of living in every way it could be measured for everyone. The Malthusian believers make no attempt to support their point of view, they just assume it and repeat it, and get angry that their point of view is not accepted by all.

Personally, I have no desire to live in a world of contracting population, with houses and schools becoming empty and technology declining, and I have no reason to believe that this is our fate. What the Malthusian believers forget is that we are not rats, we each bring more to the world than we take from it. We are tool users and builders, innovators and problem solvers. More population will result in more specialization, more advancement, more luxury, and a higher standard of living for all, as it always has. We have no fresh water shortage, we have a water collection problem caused by central planning and allowing "experts" to decide how to allocate resources. I am certain that humanity will thrive, and that means expand. There is no limit to how much food we can grow, no shortages of any important commodity that can not be accounted for in the pricing mechanism. This is not ideology, it the only valid conclusion one could draw from the last ten thousand (or two million) years of human improvement.


UPDATE: Becker and Posner agree with me. (No surprise there)

Never Again

Never Again

Caroline Glick at a meeting of (mostly) Jews on the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, Yom ha Shoah. This something every Jew should listen to, as well as any non-Jew who wishes to understand the Jews. This is personal, this is not intended for outsiders. But it should be required listening for anyone who desires to understand.

Thoughts on climate alarmism

Thoughts on climate alarmism

The movement called AGW, or Anthropogenic Global Warming, is basically an anti-modern or Malthusian belief in the finite availability of resources and a religion that believes that humans have soiled the planet due to our hubris and unquenchable greed. Believers in this religion can be called Warmists. Their redemption or solution to this "problem" is to back off of modernity by decreasing living standards and consumption to assuage the anger of the God Gaia. But they have their facts wrong. Since they base their religion on their claim that their religion is based on science and their belief in certain scientific "facts," the truth of those facts are a central to the understanding of that movement, and their view of where humanity stands here at the beginning of the 21st century. Those facts are not nearly on their side.

Life expectancy and health are on the increase world wide, as are personal income and living standards. Air and water pollution is similarly getting better every year. We have more resources of every type, as can be easily seen by commodity prices, whether steel or lumber, copper or wheat, or the availability of potable water to the poor. How can one reconcile Warmist beliefs in the face of these incontrovertible and easily proven facts? The only major threat our environment may be about to have to deal with is either global war or the appearance of the next ice age or a meteor strike, none of which is central to Warmist theology. Everything else they believe is faltering keeps getting better. We are so wealthy as a species, and getting more wealthy every day, that we can have this debate even as we make good money and live at a standard that our parents could not even dream of.

Our "addiction" is not to oil and coal, it is to wealth and modernity, and that requires immense amounts of energy. The discovery of hydrocarbon energy was the thing that brought us out of the middle ages, into the industrial age, and will bear us into the future. Until and unless we discover and build out a reliable source of energy to replace it, we will be "addicted" to oil and coal for decades. Windmills and sunshine ain't gonna cut it, because the wind and sunshine are not reliable energy sources. Malthusian fears of an impending die-off are no reason to impoverish our wealthiest societies or end our energy intensive ways unless or until the worst fears of the warmists become clearly true. Right now they are at the end of at least two years of being wrong about just about everything.

The planet continues to cool, as seen in measurements of heat in the oceans and weather on the ground. Even sea level has begun a small decline. The "Ozone Hole" has been shown to be a natural phenomenon, and banning chloro-fluorocarbons has had no effect on it. In any event the lack of ozone has initiated no increase skin cancers in affected areas, a central tenet of "Ozone Holism." In the face of unprecedented expansions of windmills and solar electric generation, no way to slow the growth of the thermal generation of electricity has proven effective, as these "green" technologies have no effect on the need for base load capacity. The same Warmists who decry carbon dioxide generation from hydrocarbon stand against expansion of nuclear electric generation capacity. Computer models that have been predicting melting ice caps and hotter climate have been universally unable to predict these non-events.

There is nothing new about religions that predict the end of the world. The difference here is that this religion is based on observable conditions. Their predictions have not been observed. That is how we know that this is a religion. No fact can withstand that portion of the human brain that insists on blind belief in a supernatural prediction. In this case the Jedi mind trick is correct. There is really nothing to see here, and we should really move along.

Arguing with Democrats

Arguing with Democrats

I spend way too much time on Facebook arguing with ideologues of the left - I don't know why. Yesterday I made a few points that looked good enough to post here. You can fill in the blanks, since I have no intention to memorialize the statist argument of the other side, but rest assured that it is the typical hackneyed dross about the importance of government power.

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Remember that Bush was an idiot but Kerry was brilliant, then when their records came to light it was shown that Bush had slightly better grades and it had no effect on their opinion. To the left, it is not enough to have the better argument, they must dehumanize their opponents. That is the only semi-coherent they can demand statist solution to our challenges. We the People are idiots, thus only the "experts" in Washington and academia are qualified to exercise and limit the freedoms that the fools will abuse.

It is an evil movement, whether you call it statism, progressivism, socialism, communism, or the democrat party platform, it is all about control, and usurpation of constitutional freedoms. To a leftist, those who oppose them are stupid and evil, which we prove to them with every policy position we take. Our challenge is to convince a supermajority of voters to see it. Right now we seem to have a bare majority, which will not ensure victory, given all the dead leftists who will vote against America, again.

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Without respect for the four walls of the agreement [the constitution] there will be chaos. You people are in the midst of a grand experiment of replacing the family with the government. The failure of that experiment is obvious for anyone with eyes. None so blind as those who refuse to see.

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You are deluded. Social security and Medicare, while founded on high principles, have had the direct effect of the destruction of the extended family. When our parents get old and infirm we abandon them to the state. When my mother could no longer live alone we took her in, and the amount of pressure we received to abandon her was atrocious. Mothers on welfare are forced by the state to put their menfolk out or lose their benefits. You guys can either recognize this, or you are dishonest. Bad enough to lie to me, you are lying to yourself. Making allusions to Calicutta is fraudulent argument. We have never had anything like that type of poverty here, but screaming about that bogeyman is the only way you can hide your shame at what you have wrought.

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Prosperity is what happened in the South Bronx, and you guys want to take credit for it. I know the South Bronx. Urban renewal destroyed it, now gentrification is reviving it. You need to get out more before you pick a place that makes my point perfectly. Wealth is the engine of American success, and government programs and needless regulation are a drag on it.

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Very Obamunistic, your argument. Take a false choice, in this case an unjustified defense of the indefensible system we have today, and whine that the only alternative is doing nothing, or worse. That is not the position of the right, and you know it. Shame on you. There will be no solution to our intractable deficits and debt unless and until intelligent people on your side become willing to view things as they are, not through a prism where your opponent's argument is both evil and stupid. Allen West said it best - we either end Social Security and Medicare as we know it or we end America. Democrat leaders refuse to change a jot or a tittle, according to democrat senate majority leader Reid. Which side is being stupid and evil? All for power, and we the People can all go to hell. You people make me sick.

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This is not about tone. This nation is currently borrowing in excess of three million dollars per minute, 188 million per hour, over four billion dollars per day to support your "Great Society." That is not great, that is pathetic. Supporting the continuation of this charade is profoundly unserious at best, so excuse me for suspecting your motives. You are not stupid enough to believe your position. If you are, I apologise. Meanwhile you keep pointing to examples that make my point, which at least shows you to be confused.

Has the green movement been a miserable flop?

Has the green movement been a miserable flop?

That's not my question, it is the headline of an article in The New Republic. No global warming skeptic in sight there. They wonder why their demand for the hobbling of capitalism and individual freedom has failed, and, as usual, they blame all the wrong things. Being statists, they are mired in process, since using the tools of government to change human behavior is the highest calling of a statist. They never ask if their message is wrong down to its fundament. They never question why, if "the science is settled" we are living in undeniably colder world every year for the last five. They never blame the fact that none of the models they made public have correctly predicted, well, anything, correctly. Especially the last two years of record cold in both Northern and Southern hemispheres of the planet. No, they decry the way some people argue against their received truths.

No matter what drivers humanity may have introduced into the environment, the real questions (that are never asked) are, 1) What would be the effect on climate if we followed all the greenie prescriptions? The simple answer to that one is at best a 10% increase in the rate of increase of CO2, with unknown effect on climate or temperature, because of 2) Why is the "scientific method" not applied to the climate policy debate? Since there is NO theory of global warming, and no theory of "greenhouse" effect on an open system, there is no way to quantify what is happening. There is only a feeling that we have soiled our nest, so we must suffer for it. But, like happens with flaggelist movements everywhere, recruitment numbers are down.

But what they never seem to notice is that their singular concentration on massive changes in the way humans interact puts people off to their message. Their prescription is all pain, no gain. Not gonna happen as long as humans have a say in what their government does, which is why statists are against democratic institutions in general, and the U.S. constitution in particular. And then we get to see just what they are about, like this bit on the electric vehicle front, and you have perfect conditions for the gestation of AGW skeptics, and even republicans.

Obamas pay 26% federal income tax

Obamas pay 26% federal income tax

President Obama has released his 2010 tax returns today. On an adjusted gross income of $1,728,096 the Obamas paid $453,770. They donated $245,075 to charities, and deducted $49,945 in mortgage interest.

That amounts to paying about 26% in tax. Add in the charitable deductions, and they gave away about 40%. Is there a single sentient being who believes that, if they remove the charitable deduction, and raise the rates to, say, 40% on "The Rich" the Obamas would still give away a quarter of a million dollars.

Didn't think so.