Oct 1 1949

 

Oct. 1, 1949 was one of the most monumental days in history but nobody notices. Just one week before, President Truman announced “We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR.”So how did they get the secrets of atomic bomb?  Ask the Rosenburgs. Or maybe ask the 1527 communists who had infiltrated the federal government.  Our cryptologist women of the Venona Project would later discover 406 of them as Soviet operatives.  (McCarthy’s estimate of 51 was far too low.)  The opening of the Soviet Union’s KGB files provided the rest of the names.  On Oct. 14, 11 communist leaders were found by federal court to have conspired to overthrow of USA. Lesson: This is what happens when you aren’t guarded about communist and fascist fanatics.  Nations such as China can destroy us. So can clever  socialist rioters in cahoots with sympathetic government officials.

Oct. 1 began a nation-wide steel strike that didn’t end until Nov. 11.  No wages agreed to but the union managed to get a massive increase in pensions, thus setting the stage for future contract agreements by unions.  Hence, part of the financial disasters in many manufacturers we have seen recently played out. They were due to the fact that current management kicked the can down the road, letting their company become pension providers in such extremum that they could no longer remain solvent in some future date.  Lesson: the same can be true of a country which promises more than it can deliver. On Oct. 26, 1949, the Minimum Wage Act was voted into perpetual continuance raising from 40 cents per hour to 75.

Sept. 7- Oct. 1 most of the Pacific Islands were transferred from military control to the US Interior Dept. as Territories. The month before Congress passed a program to encourage Alaska development and future statehood. USA was never colonial-minded and already plans were being made for these tiny populations to choose whether to remain territories or commonwealths or some other arrangement. Lesson: a wise move. By January we would be involved in arguments about protection of Taiwan-Formosa. Truman didn’t want it; R’s did. A colleague who was born there and immigrated declared that the R’s made a helluva wise move.

Finally, a couple days later, Congress appropriated funds for reforestation and revegetation of national forests and range lands—some argue, the first true environmental legislation.

Climate change numbers

I try to explain climate arguments leaving out numbers.  But they are the lifeblood of any science so here are a few very interesting measures.  The #1 greenhouse gas isn’t CO2 but H2O vapor.  There is 540 times as much water vapor as CO2 (only .00039 of the atmosphere) in the atmosphere and it is 10 times as effective in greenhouse entrapment.  So why aren’t manmade global warming advocates screaming about irrigation and over-forestation? Methane is an even smaller trace element and accounts for less than 1% of greenhouse warming (water =90%, CO2= 3.5%).  Atmospheric composition is roughly 390 parts per million of CO2 up from 270ppm  in 1600AD before the industrial revolution.  Sometime around the year 2100 CO2 will reach double the pre-industrial revolution output.  (These are all numbers from the andogenitive global warming advocates.)  The global warming models are very complex concerning how air of various temperatures and pressures variously absorbs radiation of varying wavelengths.  So if we double CO2 the average computer model says the rate of reduction of Earth’s cooling will be about 3.7 watts per square meter. This compares to satellite measurements of  total lost to space power of 235-245 watts/ sq. m (inexact).  3.7 watts/sq. m. works out to global warming of about a degree Celsius. But atmospheric convection at high altitudes lowers this to about 0.5 degrees.  James Hansen of NASA, a manmade warming advocate also estimates that there are other factors lowering the 3.7W/m2 to about 0.8 W/m2.  That’s just a fraction of a degree, not nearly enough to create the 2 to 4.5 degree estimates of warming they are predicting.

            So how do the modelers get 2 to 4.5 degree temp increases? They propose that the warming amplifies itself. Some propose an almost runaway warming with even larger than 4.5 degree increases.  But no one knows for sure if a little warming leads to a lot.  It’s a problem of estimating the feedback. 

            One of these feedback effects involves glaciation.  If warming melts glaciers, but increases snowfall atop them, they actually will grow during a warm era. Negative feedback. (There has been a huge discussion of this and conclusion is that the expansion or contraction of glaciers, both occurring around the world, is unknown and probably not related to CO2.) Another folly was the hockey stick graph, which showed flat temps for the last 2000 years but then suddenly rising since 1900.  This counters all the old anecdotal evidence of Europe’s Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming.  The hockey stick temperature graph was derived from tree ring data that tried to link tree growth with temperature in arid western N. America.  But we know that desert trees care far less about temp than water.  So it was a bad non-causal correlation.  The hockey stick graph is history. 

            Think of clouds.  If we get less clouds, it is reasoned, the sun beats down the earth warms.  But counter-intuitively this isn’t so.  Think of a cooling of the oceans.  The wind blows and cools the oceans like wind blowing across your wet skin.  But this increases the moisture in the atmosphere which makes clouds and rain, which in turn releases the heat into the atmosphere.  So the earth might seem to have a temp regulator in water vapor—cool the ocean and you get warmer atmosphere.  Warm the ocean and you get a cooler atmosphere.  There are other natural effects.  Some may produce positive feedback while oceans and clouds may produce negative feedback. 

            We know a bit about some big ones.  There is a prominent oscillation of current and wind patterns in the northern Pacific called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO.  The negative cycle produces much more cloud cover worldwide.  Sometimes warm air from the south invades Alaska, sometimes polar air.  And the PDO goes back and forth about every 30 years.  [other oscillations in the Atlantic with hundred year cycles]  The PDO brings different cloud cover and factoring this into a model, it almost perfectly fits the temperature data that suggest 0.7 degree increase since about 1900.  This is especially interesting since there was a big temperature run-up before 1940, then an abatement until the mid seventies.  If you accept standard global warming via CO2, you are forced to ask why was there so much temperature increase prior to 1940 when CO2 emissions were slight but just as they really kicked in about 1945, we got cooling for 30 years?  Recently, there has also been research that proves that increasing CO2 increases upper atmosphere clouds that deflect sunlight in the tropic regions.  This is a huge negative feedback that has the research camps now divided into the CO2 only models versus the scientists who argue that we can’t neglect natural forcings and feedbacks.

            Complicating all this is money.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, is a big benefactor of research money that has kept the CO2 modelers in vogue, while shutting out the natural effects folks.  This is a rare situation in science, akin to the scholastic school of medieval scholars who shut out Kepler and Galileo.  But ultimately science is about truth and not where government money goes.  We’ll just have to see where truth leads. 

Leftist religion and BLM

            So when did Vladimir Putin take over the BLM?   The scenes of a BLM army trying to raid Bundy and the ranchers reminded me of Crimea.  And you tell me, what kind of cowboy rounds up 400 head of Bundy’s cattle and manages to kill 130 of them?  Cattle are tough!  I could take a bunch kids from some inner city who have never seen a cow and get them to run around hooting at a herd and we wouldn’t lose 130 head.  Oh, you say the BLM guys simply shot and killed 130 head?  But then I would remind you that a calf can bring $1000 these days.  130 head of cattle is worth $130,000+.  They should have been sold and the proceeds gone to the government account in behalf of the taxpayers.  If the BLM  guys just destroyed $130,000 of value that legitimately belonged to taxpayers, take it out of their pay!
             I know, I know.  Putin has done much work to create an image of shirtless superman, conquering warrior, hunter par excellence, shrewd saboteur and taker of other country's lands, and KGB director who is watching everyone.  None of this threatens Obama.  Because Obama is only threatened by the American Cowboy.

            I guess it is no secret that I started working politically because of my Christian faith.  What scares me about government these days is that it is being taken over by Leftism, the country’s fastest growing religion.  Anca Landwer and Nadia Comeneche (former Romanians) tried to tell me that they had a hard time convincing Americans that communism is first and foremost a religion.   Americans think it is just an economic system.  They would tell about how you can’t be a communist (they won’t allow you in the party) if you aren’t an atheist.  That they swear to a lifetime allegiance to the party. That you must swear to stamp out the Christian and Jewish faiths to be a communist. That the May Day rallies mimic the Eastern Orthodox faith in carrying large icons (considered highly sacred presences of the saints for prayer) of past and present Soviet and Eastern leaders.  But it is as if the Americans want to be blind to the religious aspect.

            Why do I say that Leftism is a religion?  Here’s yet another proof.   In Judaism and Christianity, it is held that we are “to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth.”  There is a direct relationship between the believer and God and all nature is subject to the stewardship of mankind and that is ordained by God.  But in justifying the Bundy takeover attempt, the feds alleged that a turtle was endangered.  If cows didn’t watch where they were walking they would tromp out the desert tortoises.  Somehow in Leftism, nature takes precedent over man.  It is like paganism, as if the spirits of the gods inhabit the earth and animals.  Humans are no more worth than any other worm or insect. We are just subject to nature.  And if a few humans have to be sacrificed for the ultimate goals, so what?  They are just animals.

            Instead of being fruitful and multiplying, Leftists must grab power and control over people and live off the taxpayer.

            By raiding the ranch and killing the cattle in a deliberate act, it shows that BLM didn’t just make an honest mistake or were overzealous about the court order they had in hand.  (The usual solution is for the government to quietly file a lien on the property.) It showed a disregard for property, a contempt for ranchers and their way of life, and a violation of unreasonable seizure--Amendment IV.  To me this is an inverted concept of governance than the one we have, where the government is supposed to be servant of the people—whether ‘the people’ be of a turtle-loving public or of the ranchers who have tended the land for 150 years. 

            And so it looks to me like the tactics, the tyranny, and belief system of a religion of nature-over-man.  In short, an old communist. Vladimir Putin?       

Know your lib friends IV

            Ever daydream about paradise?  I know, if you work hard this is not common, because your nose is so close to the grindstone. Maybe you dream more about meeting your goals and what to get the grandkids for Christmas.  But liberals are very much into dreaming about the world.  An idyllic pristine mother nature, untrodden by man, is one of those daydreams. Never mind that reality is dog-eat-dog.  Just watch the nature shows.  Who kills most of the cute little baby seals?  It is not fur-hunting humans.  It’s polar bears.  For someone who grew up on a farm and ranch, the idyllic environmental model of environmentalists confused me for a long time.  Were all these environmentalists talking about the dust and droughts, the chinch bugs and grasshoppers devastating crops, the dead animals you find unexpectedly just about every week?  I guess I grew up too close to nature to think about it being so benevolent and benign. 

            But libs are found (tellingly) in urban areas.  They miss the wilds from their concrete jungle.  And so they developed the theory that human greed ruined nature, and absent government restraint, we will kill our environment and die.  Of course, when we are all dead, it goes back to nature, doesn’t it? Ah, but they weep for the animals and have to rescue nature from those evil people who are still work the land, like farmers who vote 90% Republican. (convenient enemy, hunh.)  It’s very simple to a lib.  If you want to protect the elephants, ban elephant hunting.  Oh, wait.  They tried that in Africa.  All the big game preserves saw terrible decimation of animals because of poachers.  Then Zimbabwe decided to give the tribes ownership of the elephants.  Since the tribes could farm the animals for tusks, charge tourists and safaris, they took darned good care of the elephants and the population thrived.  It’s the old lesson, “the tragedy of the commons”, that when something’s public, nobody respects it and everyone abuses it.  And so what happened to Zimbabwe’s poaching problem?   The tribes caught ‘em, beat the bejabbers out of them, and they went home to their villages never to return. (Quick justice.  Same reason that ‘bloody Kansas’ logged about 1/10 the murders per capita in the 1870s as modern Chicago does today.) This private ownership solution has been played out many times in many parts of the world in wildlife conservation.

            So why don’t libs believe it?  It violates two issues they hold close to their heart—evils of capitalism and dreamy theorizing about remaking the world via big government.  Environmental issues seem like a choice between cute animals living the way God intended and greedy capitalists destroying them.  Government only gets judged by libs on motive, not performance.  If the motive is ‘nice’ then the liberal identifies with it and feels good about himself.  And so governments around the world banned DDT based on Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”.  Many scientists were quite disturbed by Carson’s radicalism, but evidently couldn’t write as well.  DDT was banned. As a result, tens of millions of people died in tropical climates. Did this mass murder bother rich environmentalists in their penthouses?  Not in the least.  They reflexively condemned the use of chemicals, amid diatribes against development of the rainforests. 

            And the guys in the rainforest probably said, “Rats! What happened to my job?  My family’s health?” Green cloaks itself in lots of compassionate moral and frugal sanctimoniousness.  In reality it kills. 

            The fact that libs are such theorizers about an imaginary world is why environmentalism is so faddish and superficial yet is held by seemingly brainy people.  That is because theorizing is their hobby.  The demand to remake the world is why they say stuff like, “America needs a national energy policy!” Gosh, I thought we already had one called the free market.  When gasoline gets too high in price, the incentive to drill gets better and we find more oil.  But unlike conservatives who see the world as a sinful mess where one must do one’s best, libs live in their dream world where they are all-powerful to change things.  (Alas, physics and human nature always ruin their policies!)  It also explains why they hang onto things like global warming when scientific evidence suggests climate change may be due to a variety of causes.  Libs hold onto the CO2-alone model because all the other causes are natural and can’t be changed by big government schemes. 

            That clinging to a failed theory leads to an almost cult-religious fervor by some liberals.  If you believe in something you can’t see and can’t even demonstrate as effective in your life, your leader makes boo-koos of bucks, while followers fervently try to proselytize converts and attack all else—is that not a cult?

            So here’s my suggestions when talking to an environmentalist.  Be prepared for anger. Use terms like ‘the real world’ where appropriate.   If global warming comes up, say, “What about the sun? Isn’t that what caused past eras of climate change?”  If politically correct energy comes up (they want solar, wind, ethanol, not wood, oil, and coal) say, “Yeah the laws of thermodynamics often mug our ideas.  Oil and coal contain so darned many btu’s per pound that hardly anything else can compete in the real world.” They use expressions like ‘there is a scientific consensus’ or ‘all scientists agree’ as a mantra.  Ask them, “if all scientists agreed, then wouldn’t all scientists be out of work?”