Archive for March, 2008

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A Flat Earth Encore: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

Monday, March 31st, 2008

By David L. Brown

I had some fun yesterday writing about people who believe in a flat Earth and how their ideas compare with climate change deniers. As I reread my essay this morning I was reminded of the fact that one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, has made a career writing about a fictional flat planet. His Discworld fantasy-humor novels are set on just such a planet as Flat Earthers may envision for the Earth. Here is an illustration of the Discworld:

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Remember, this is fantasy, not reality. Do not plan trips for business or pleasure, especially ocean cruises, or attempt to follow world events by referring to this map. Discworld is a magical planet. Its Sun is about the size of a basketball and revolves around the flat planet. And, yes, the oceans flow off the edge into space in a continuous cascade. The fact that Discworld’s oceans never dry out is obviously due to magic rather than conventional physics.

What this illustration does not show is that the Discworld rides on the backs of four enormous elephants, which in turn are standing on the shell of Great A’Tuin the stellar tortoise. It would be best if you try not to imagine the Earth in that way, unless you are really comfortable with the idea of cosmic animals the size of continents.

Discworld is populated by an amusing collection of strangely familiar characters, including dwarves, trolls, vampires, werewolves, wizards and witches, not to mention dragons and even heroes such as Ghenghiz Cohen, commonly known as Cohen the Barbarian.

Despite its obvious differences, Discworld has many similarities to our own planet. In fact, as you will soon realize, it is high satire on the foibles of humanity. If you are intrigued by the idea of Discworld, Pratchett has written 20 or 30 vastly entertaining books set in this fantasy world. The first is called “The Color of Magic,” and the most recent is titled “Thud.” I can promise many hours of reading pleasure replete with chuckles and even the occasional guffaw.

Posted in Book Reviews, Essays and Opinion, Satire, Irony, and Humor | 1 Comment »

Navigating the Flat Earth of Climate Denial

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

By David L. Brown

Al Gore, in an interview with CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl scheduled to air today on 60 Minutes, has compared climate deniers with people who believe the Apollo Moon landings were staged on a Hollywood set and that the Earth is flat. He mentions Vice President Dick Cheney as one high-profile individual who doubts global warming is caused by human action. The story is reported on CBS.com here.

There are several possible reasons why someone like Dick Cheney would be a climate denier. To follow Al Gore’s lead, let’s view this from the point of view of an Apollo mission denying Flat Earther, and ask the question:

Why does a Flat Earther deny that the Earth is a sphere?

A Flat Earther looks around and concludes that what he or she personally observes in the immediate vicinity can serve as a fair sampling of the entire Universe. They notice that the area nearby appears to be flat, and deduce that the landscape stretching away into the distance must likewise be flat. Up to a point, of course, because all good things come to an end and here be monsters. It is plain common sense, no? And if that is the case there could be no such thing as astronauts flying to the Moon, could there? Of course not, therefore the only possible explanation is that the supposed Apollo landings were all part of a government plot to deceive the people. But Flat Earthers with their incisive two-dimensional logic are way too smart to fall for that.

And that raises a point I want to make: Let’s not simply write off these people as “stupid.” It would be rude and perhaps not even accurate, since many apparently very smart people believe some quite remarkable and implausible things. Let’s agree to agree that Flat Earthers are not deluded morons (although the temptation is certainly there!).

Well, if one were a bit more alert one might notice some disturbing evidence to contradict the Flat Earth Theory. For one thing, if you travel any great distance (something that Flat Earthers apparently tend not to do), you soon notice that at a given time the positions of the Sun, Moon and stars are different in relation to the spot on which the observer is standing than when they are at home. For instance, if the Sun rises at 7 a.m. wherever their home is, and the Flat Earther has traveled several thousand miles East or West without resetting their watch, the Sun will rise at quite a different time. That could be an important clue to the discerning analyst, but it is apparently possible for Flat Earthers to ignore this smoking gun.

Here is another clue the Flat Earthers miss: When the shadow of the Earth passes over the Moon during a Lunar eclipse, Yoicks!, the shadow is curved, something like what you would see if you shone a light on a spherical object. But a true Flat Earther would soon explain that away, because you see the Earth is not only flat, but also round like a pancake. Of course it would throw a shadow like that. And don’t ask questions about why if the Moon is low on the horizon and the Earth is a pancake the shadow still appears round. Flat Earthers are accustomed to hearing, and rejecting, spurious claims such as that.

And then we can look at the Moon itself, for it requires no telescope to see that it appears to be a round shape. But, aha! Once again the Flat Earther will trump your point by stating that the Moon, like the Earth, is a pancake-shaped object that just happens to always be face-on to the Earth. In fact, you can see that is true because the “Man in the Moon” is more or less fixed. And don’t bring up the changing phases of the Moon as evidence of its spherical nature3, because the Flat Earther just isn’t going to listen to your siren songs of doubt.

I myself have seen even more evidence that the Earth is round, not flat. For example, on no less than three occasions I have flown on business trips that have taken me completely around the globe, for example from Chicago, to Japan, to Singapore, to Bangkok, to Frankfurt, and back to Chicago. On another occasion, from Chicago to Osaka to Sydney to Bangkok to Frankfurt to Chicago. On a number of other trips I have crossed the Date Line to Asia or the South Pacific and returned, giving me ample opportunity to observe the changing time zones and even dates that result from the planet’s spherical nature. I have witnessed the constellation Orion upside down in the northern sky from interior Australia. Strong evidence, but not strong enough to sway a devoted Flat Earther.

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Posted in Climate Change, Politics | 1 Comment »

Climate Change Deniers Fiddle as Rome Burns

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

By David L. Brown

There has been a lot of scuttlebutt lately about how global warming isn’t real, climate change isn’t happening, that it is a “plot” by left-wing loonies, etc. So the news today from Antarctica that a huge ice shelf the size of Northern Ireland appears to be breaking up comes as a timely reminder that, yes, there really is something serious going on and it cannot be denied.

Here is a picture from the LiveScience.com web site which has the story. The photo shows a view of the Wilkins Ice Shelf taken from an airplane by the British Antarctic Survey:

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As reported by staff writer Andrea Thompson in the article on the LiveScience site:

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming’s impact on Earth’s southernmost continent.

Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers — about 10 times the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf — about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers — about the size of Northern Ireland)— was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

“Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread — we’ll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be.”

I have written here before about my suspicion that ice sheets and the Arctic ice cap will be melting faster than climate models predict. Last Summer’s surprising retreat of the Arctic ice provided evidence that my guess could be right. Now this latest news from Antarctica adds more weight to the argument. If it was predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins ice shelf could break up within 30 years, that would place the event in 2023, fifteen years from now. If the shelf does indeed proceed to break up now, in 2008, that would mean the rate of decline has accelerated by a large margin.

Natural events do not tend to take place gradually, but rather as tipping points are reached. In other words, suddenly and with little warning. The accelerating loss of ice sheets, ice shelves, sea ice and glaciers all over the world should be all the evidence anyone should need that global warming is taking place.

But of course, it snowed in Vermont last week so there cannot be any global warming. In fact, it was particularly cold, so global cooling is actually what we are experiencing. Yes, that is typical of the kind of claims I see every day from clueless global warming deniers. Like Nero fiddling as Rome burned, these people will continue to deny the truth no matter what facts may exist.

By the way, just to make the record clear, I am not a “left-wing looney,” far from it. Some might call me right-wing, but I have remained an Independent and consider myself to be a center right with more conservative economic views.

But when it comes to the subject at hand, climate change, I have made a study of this subject over many years by reading hundreds of books and thousands of articles. My opinions are based on a bit more than the fact that it might be cold outside my house at some particular time, which is the kind of thin gruel upon which many climate change deniers base their claims. Most reputable scientists, and especially those whose specialties lie within the appropriate fields, have been convinced of the truth of global warming and its effects. We need not pay attention to the opinions of those holding Ph.D. degrees in sociology, art appreciation or psychology.

Here is some additional information about the on-going breakup of the Wilkins ice sheet, again from LiveScience.com:

The region where the Wilkins Ice Shelf lies has experienced unprecedented warming in the past 50 years, with several ice shelves retreating in the past 30 years. Six of these ice shelves have collapsed completely: Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf was stable for most of the last century until it began retreating in the 1990s. A previous major breakout occurred there in 1998 when 390 square miles (1,000 square kilometers) of ice was lost in just a few months.

“We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years, but warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing it to break up,” Scambos said.

The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere; temperature records show that the region has warmed by nearly 3 degrees Celsius during the past 50 years — several times the global average and only matched in Alaska.

As mentioned, the breakup of the ice shelves surrounding Antarctica will not contribute to sea level rise because the ice is already floating in the sea. However, those shelves act like a cork in a bottle to flowing ice sheets coming down from the interior. As the ice sheets break up, the flow of ice into the sea speeds up and that does contribute to sea level increases. The same effect is being observed at the Earth’s other major ice sheet in Greenland, where rapid acceleration of melting is also taking place.

Posted in Climate Change, Melting Planet | 1 Comment »

More Evidence of Looming Food Crisis

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

By David L. Brown

We have written extensively about the looming specter of famine, and today an article by the Associated Press brings us up to date on what they term a “perfect storm” of factors that are pushing food prices inexorably higher.

An article in the current issue of The Economist (subscription required) covers some of the same ground and provides this somewhat gruesome illustration to drive home the point:

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The image of a food consumer being garroted by an enormous rate of inflation may seem over the top, but the rising cost of food is truly an enormous problem, especially in the Third World. Here’s an excerpt from the AP story as it begins to build its case for the perfect storm:

From subsistence farmers eating rice in Ecuador to gourmets feasting on escargot in France, consumers worldwide face rising food prices in what analysts call a perfect storm of conditions.
Freak weather is a factor. But so are dramatic changes in the global economy, including higher oil prices, lower food reserves and growing consumer demand in China and India.
The world’s poorest nations still harbor the greatest hunger risk. Clashes over bread in Egypt killed at least two people last week, and similar food riots broke out in Burkina Faso, Cameroon earlier this month.
But food protests now crop up even in Italy. And while the price of spaghetti has doubled in Haiti, the cost of miso is packing a hit in Japan.
“It’s not likely that prices will go back to as low as we’re used to,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, economist and secretary of the Intergovernmental Group for Grains for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO]. “Currently if you’re in Haiti, unless the government is subsidizing consumers, consumers have no choice but to cut consumption. It’s a very brutal scenario, but that’s what it is.”

Let’s take a look at this “perfect storm” and see if we could have seen this one coming. Hmm, it seems that “freak” weather is a factor. Well, umm, could that have something to do with “climate change” perhaps? Some of us have been warning about that for a long time, but few others wanted to listen.

And here’s the next point: changes in the economy including … gee, this one is going to be a big surprise for you … “higher oil prices.” Yes, we’ve seen that one coming for a really long time, ever since the 1950s when M. King Hubbert warned of an impending Peak Oil event that is finally upon us.

And “lower food reserves”. Well, gosh, didn’t Malthus warn about that well over 200 years ago. He did, and four decades ago Paul Ehrlich was ridiculed for reminding us of the problem in his classic book “The Population Bomb”. Even more recently, during the past couple of years we at Star Phoenix Base have written extensively about the coming crisis of world agriculture, and especially the misguided practice of turning food into ethanol or biodiesel. The facts have been out there for anyone to see, so yes, we sure could have seen that one coming, if anyone had been paying attention.

And yet again we see that “growing consumer demand” in runaway population regions such as China and India has contributed to this perfect storm. Again, refer to Malthus and Ehrlich for the answer to this one. Yes, we could have seen it coming down the road from way back that the human race has been in the process of expanding beyond the ability of the Earth to sustain. We have embarked on a classic example of overshoot-and-collapse, and on a worldwide scale. And whether Malthus, Ehrlich, the Club of Rome, or Star Phoenix Base, the messages have been generally ignored in preference for unbridled economic expansion.

(There are numerous articles here on Star Phoenix Base relating to these problems and more. Try entering these keywords in the search field at upper right: climate change, population, Peak Oil, Malthus, Ehrlich (there are reviews of each of their books), China, ethanol, and many others.)

So how is this a perfect storm? Says the AP: “What’s rare is that the spikes are hitting all major foods in most countries at once. Food prices rose 4% in the U.S. last year, the highest rise since 1990, and are expected to climb as much again this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

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Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Economics | 1 Comment »

Solving That Emissions Problem

Monday, March 24th, 2008

by Val Germann

Those ever-resourceful Japanese have finally figured out how to fix the world’s emissions problem. Yes, it’s true, and it was pretty easy to do, too, their “solution” featuring just about zero cost. The quote below, from an article appearing on today’s TERRADAILY web site, gives the general drift:

A senior Japanese official said Monday that 2005 would be fair for a base year in a new deal on slashing greenhouse gases . . .

Now, see there, look how easy that was! Yes, indeed, that IS “thinking outside the box” to the benefit of everyone. Who would have thought that all one had to do was change that pesky baseline and, voila, the problem instantly would become only a fading memory. What a concept!

I think that the EU will fall into line with this way of thinking pretty soon, too, because that would get them out of their current “fix” concerning emissions:

The European Union has set a self-binding target of cutting the bloc’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

As has been reported here at Star Phoenix Base, that requirement is going to chafe quite a bit if the EU actually intends to live up to it, which has always been doubtful. But with the Japanese showing the way there seems to be little problem with the Europeans changing a few digits in their mission statment and gaining almost instant compliance! After all, it is “self-binding.”

Finally, one hopes that this will at last put to rest all the doom and gloom over world emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases.” As the Japanese have shown, all of that is a matter of definition, something for the lawyers and bean counters to decide while the rest of us get on with business as usual.

It’s all going to work out fine after all, isn’t it?

Posted in Fossil Fuels, Politics, Pollution | 1 Comment »

Memories of Diesel Days Gone By

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

By David L. Brown

Yesterday I filled the tank of my Jeep Liberty and paid $3.199 for regular gas here in New Mexico. Always alert to the trends, I checked the price of other fuels and was amused to see that diesel fuel was going for $3.999 at the same pump, fully eighty cents more than I was paying for gasoline.

We have been warned that four dollar gas is likely to be coming soon this Spring, and there on the second day of Spring I was seeing, if not gas, at least diesel fuel priced at, well, a-l-m-o-s-t four dollars. (What’s one tenth of a cent worth these days?)

It never ceases to amaze me that oil companies presently price diesel fuel, which is a cruder form of refined petroleum and cheaper to make than gasoline, at even higher prices than gas. (At the Shell station yesterday where I buy my fuel, medium grade gasoline was $3.299 and top grade was $3.399, so the diesel was priced sixty cents a gallon higher even than premium gas.)

So what’s going on with that? Having been around for a while and with some relevant experience I think I can provide some perspective. Around 1970 I was doing a lot of road traveling. How much? Well, so much that I ran through a 36,000 mile lease on a 1989 Pontiac Bonneville in just 10 months and turned it in. With that many miles going beneath my tires, I decided to buy a Mercedes-Benz 220D diesel car. That lovely gem cost around $5000 and got a steady 30 mpg from its two liter, four cylinder diesel engine.

Here is a photo I found of a 1970 M-B 220D, this one outfitted as a taxi in Europe. Mine was dark green and did not have the amber fog lights, although it did boast a M-B badge on the grille that I picked up during a tour of the Mercedes factory near Stuttgart, Germany.

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At the time I was driving that car I quite clearly recall that at my home base in the west suburbs of Chicago diesel fuel was selling for 30 cents a gallon, compared with 40 cents for regular gasoline. Therefore, I was clocking one cent a mile for fuel costs, and since I was able to bill my clients at a dime a mile, my fuel costs were only ten percent of what I received. That was far and away enough to make payments, maintain, and insure the vehicle. (Diesel fuel was often even cheaper than in Illinois; I remember once filling up somewhere in Wyoming at 17 cents a gallon. Those were the days!)

Now note that at that time diesel fuel was priced at around 75 percent of the price of gasoline. If that were the case today, instead of four dollars diesel fuel should be selling for around $2.40 relative to regular gas at $3.20. So what happened?

Well, this is my theory on it: It is the result of cold, calculating greed on the part of the oil companies. Hmm, hard to believe isn’t it? But the evidence is there. It was in 1973 that the first oil shock took place, and Americans began to wake up to the benefits of high mpg vehicles. The Mercedes diesel cars were excellent if expensive (although they held their value remarkably well, as demonstrated by the fact that I sold that 1970 220D with 93,000 miles on it for just $600 less than I paid for it brand new.) More people became interested in diesel powered cars.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Essays and Opinion | 1 Comment »

Ugly Times Ahead as Death Spores Spread

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

By David L. Brown

Back in August, 2006 I wrote about the danger posed by an emerging plant disease called Ug99. This virulent form of wheat rust appeared in 1999 in Uganda from where it has slowly spread into Kenya and Ethiopia. It was expected to eventually cross the Red Sea, travel north, and at some future time reach the vast wheat growing areas of south Asia unless solutions could be found.

In my article, “A Looming Threat to World Food Supply?” (you can find it by using the search field at upper right), I warned of a potential plant pandemic that could destroy “the staff of life” in broad regions, leading to widespread famine and death by starvation.

In that article 19 months ago I quoted Dr. Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Prize and known as the “father of the Green Revolution,” who said: “Stem rusts like Ug99 are catastrophic diseases because they cause complete annihilation of wheat crops over wide areas. The prospect of this disease becoming an epidemic in Africa, Asia and the Americas is real and must be stopped before it causes untold human suffering.”

I also noted that “plant scientists and seed producers are running scared to find resistant varieties before a global pandemic can become a reality,” and quoted from a scientific report which concluded that “because Ug99 has broken down the source of stem rust resistance that has protected much of the world’s wheat for 30 years, the crop is poised for an epidemic to spread like wildfire.”

Well, Ug99 is on the move, and faster than predicted or expected by plant scientists. According to an article in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine:

A WHEAT disease that could destroy most of the world’s main wheat crops could strike south Asia’s vast wheat fields two years earlier than research had suggested, leaving millions to starve. The fungus, called Ug99, has spread from Africa to Iran, and may already be in Pakistan. If so, this is extremely bad news, as Pakistan is not only critically reliant on its wheat crop, it is also the gateway to the Asian breadbasket, including the vital Punjab region.

The sudden jump was the result of airborne spores being carried by a major cyclone last June. Here is a map showing the path that Ug99 has taken toward the heart of the Asian wheat regions:

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As the map shows, Ug99 was expected to take a roundabout path to south Asia, first traveling northward from Yemen before moving across Turkey into northern Iran. Instead, thanks to Cyclone Gonu last Summer it appears it has taken a fast track straight across the Arabian Peninsula into central Iran and possibly beyond. The inset shows the major wheat growing regions that stretch from France to central India, all now in the path of the spreading spores.

The New Scientist article continues:

Scientists met this week in Syria to decide on emergency measures to track Ug99′s progress. They hope to slow its spread by spraying fungicide or even stopping farmers from planting wheat in the spores’ path. The only real remedy will be new wheat varieties that resist Ug99, and they may not be ready for five years. The fungus has just pulled ahead in the race.

Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust (Puccinia graminis) was identified in Uganda in 1999. Since then it has invaded Kenya and Ethiopia and, last year, Yemen. From previous fungal invasions, scientists expected the prevailing winds to carry Ug99 spores to Egypt, Turkey and Syria, and then east to Iran, a major wheat-grower, buying them some time. But on 8 June 2007, Cyclone Gonu hit the Arabian peninsula, the worst storm there for 30 years.

“We know it changed the winds,” says Wafa Khoury of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, because desert locusts the FAO had been tracking in Yemen blew north towards Iran instead of north-west as expected (see Map). “We think it may have done that to the rust spores.” This means, she says, that Ug99 has reached Iran a year or two earlier than predicted. The fear is that the same winds could have blown the spores into Pakistan, which is also north of Yemen, and where surveillance of the fungus is limited.

Let’s be clear on this: Ug99 doesn’t just represent an inconvenient disease that might reduce yields somewhat. It is a fungus that totally destroys wheat wherever it appears, as surely as a wildfire or plague of locusts. And not only that, it seems that many varieties of barley and oats are also susceptible to being destroyed by Ug99. And as I reported in 2006, plant scientists warn that at least two other similar plant diseases called stripe rust and leaf rust “also loom large” as threats to the world’s grain supply.

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Posted in Agriculture Issues, Disease and Pandemics | 1 Comment »

Why Can’t the Chinese Be More Like Us?

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

By David L. Brown

The current issue of The Economist has a cover story about China’s insatiable and growing thirst for natural resources. The cover itself bears the title “The New Colonialists,” and features this picture (which I have cropped to show only the main subject without all the text and masthead:

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The picture strikes me as particularly amusing and symbolic because of several facts. One, it shows the proud Chinese explorer hobnobbing with Arabs in a scene that could be out of the 18th Century. (Point: They’re not exactly up-to-date.) And, it shows the symbolic Chinaman heading out in a desert wasteland something like the one that China itself is in danger of becoming. But let’s get to the story.

In this week’s editorial, or “leader” as they call it, The Economist makes the following remarks about China’s emergence as the world’s biggest resource hog:

THERE is no exaggerating China’s hunger for commodities. The country accounts for about a fifth of the world’s population, yet it gobbles up more than half of the world’s pork, half of its cement, a third of its steel and over a quarter of its aluminium. It is spending 35 times as much on imports of soya beans and crude oil as it did in 1999, and 23 times as much importing copper—indeed, China has swallowed over four-fifths of the increase in the world’s copper supply since 2000.

Hmm, sounds like we have a real problem here. Just as the developed parts of the world are beginning to ease up on the remaining resources of our planet, the Chinese are trying to recreate the Industrial Revolution on a gargantuan scale. That can’t be good, can it? Well, no, but in fact the worst of the pain might be felt by China itself. As The Economist explains:

Still, China’s hunger for natural resources is creating plenty of problems. Most of them, though, are in China, not abroad.

China is hoovering up ever more commodities not just because its economy is growing so quickly, but also because that growth is concentrated in industries that use lots of resources. Over the past few years, there has been a marked shift from light manufacturing to heavy industry. So for each unit of output, China now consumes more raw materials.

That may sound like a minor change, but the implications are dramatic. For one thing, it has encouraged the sort of foreign entanglements that are now causing China such embarrassment. More worryingly, it is compounding China’s already grim pollution. Heavy industry requires huge amounts of power. Steelmaking, for example, uses 16% of China’s power, compared with 10% for all the country’s households combined. By far the most common fuel for power generation is coal. So more steel mills and chemical plants mean more acid rain and smog, not to mention global warming.

These are not just inconveniences, but also an enormous drag on society. Each year, they make millions sick, cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, sap agricultural yields and so on. Pan Yue, a deputy minister at the government’s environmental watchdog, believes that the costs inflicted by pollution each year amount to some 10% of GDP.

The Economist editorial also states that the Chinese government is facing massive complaints from its own citizens, with pollution as “the cause of ever more protests and demonstrations. There were some 60,000 in 2006 alone, by the authorities’ own count,” according to the leader. Imagine that, 60,000 admitted protests and demonstrations against pollution!

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Posted in Economics, Resource Depletion | 1 Comment »

The EU’s “Ambitious Plan” on Climate Change

Friday, March 14th, 2008

By David L. Brown

It’s reported as positive news, but I have to wonder. According to this report on the BBC News online website, European leaders “have agreed to finish talks by the end of the year on an ambitious plan to fight climate change.”

Why am I skeptical? Well, partly because it is just my contrary nature, but also because endless talks, meetings, conferences, and “summits” are proven means of delaying real action, and Europe’s socialist politicians are past masters at that game. They tout how “ambitious” their eventual plan is going to be, while giving themselves another nine months to find new excuses for inaction, negotiate away potential core benefits, and seize every opportunity to place the blame for failure on, well, who- or whatever happens to be handy at the time.

According to the BBC article:

After a two-day summit in Brussels, leaders for the 27 nations said they hoped new legislation would be enacted in early 2009.

The bloc aims to implement a 20% cut in greenhouse gases by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

But EU leaders said they needed to look at the consequences for heavy industry and that could complicate negotiations.

The summit also discussed financial instability, as well as liberalisation of the bloc’s energy markets.

Some countries, like Germany and France, are worried about the international competitiveness of their businesses and the potential cost in jobs, the BBC’s Nick Childs in Brussels says.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU had “passed a reality test”.

The Slovenian Prime Minister, Janez Jansa, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters the EU leaders had taken “a huge step forward”.

“We are convinced that the costs of these measures will be much lower than if we don’t act,” he said.

Well, right there we see that there are some real problems ahead. Hmm, if Germany and France are worried about their business competitiveness, couldn’t that mean trouble for a commitment to the climate change agenda? What will those nations say when it turns out that other industrial countries such as China, India, and yes, even America fail to make equivalent commitments to the worldwide effort? I suspect in the end the Euro-nuts will use that as an excuse for inaction, just as the U.S. used it as a reason not to sign the Kyoto Accord.

Then there’s the statement about “liberalisation” of the EU’s energy markets. What does that mean during a period when both OPEC and Russia are holding Europe’s feet to the fire over energy? Could this be empty rhetoric, signifying nothing? Yeah, it sure can, but the BBC doesn’t explain.

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Posted in Climate Change, Default File, Politics | 1 Comment »

The Epic Battle Between Red and Blue

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

By David L. Brown

There is a fascinating graphic in the issue of Science magazine that arrived in my mailbox today (subscription required). It is a computer generated chart presented as an example of a means of tracking the effects of collaboration between individuals in groups, in an article titled Science 2.0.

The article deals with the growing power of networking, explaining:

The growth of the World Wide Web and the spread of cell phones and WiFi continues to reorder whole disciplines and industries. Entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and researchers have recognized that increased collaboration through these socio-technical systems offers compelling opportunities for business, education, national security, and beyond. It is time for researchers in science to take network collaboration to the next phase and reap the potential intellectual and societal payoffs.

The subject of the sample graphic used to illustrate the point might have been a poor choice, since it is the United States Senate. I had to almost do a double-take when I saw it because it so starkly demonstrates the almost utter lack of cooperation and collaboration between the “blue” Senators (the Democrats) and the “red” Senators. (There are also two “magenta” Senators, both independents.) The graphic was computer generated based on voting patterns during the period of the analysis.

Here is the image, so you can grasp what I am talking about. The colored icons represent individual Senators, and the gray lines reveal connections and collaborations between individuals, and their placement to left or right indicate their respective positions on the political spectrum.

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Now here are a few observations:

First, note how tightly the Democrat faction is appropriately clustered at the left side of the graphic. They are as tight as a hedgehog in defensive posture, and with the two independents safely embedded in the center-left. There are few signs of any willingness to collaborate, cooperate, or do anything else to create unanimity in the Senate body.

In contrast the Republican faction is at least somewhat looser, with several “red” Senators actually moving across toward the “blue” ball of the left, indicating at least attempted cross-aisle cooperation. The “red” group definitely holds the center ground with these outlying individuals.

Two major “red” Senators, McCain and Brownbeck, were excluded from the graphic because they were heavily engaged in campaigning for President at the time the study was made and did not participate in enough votes to provide meaningful data. Their icons are at the far upper and lower right and unconnected to the other Senators.

It is painful to note that there is one icon of the “blue” faction that is placed so far to the left that it actually stands outside of the Democrat “Death Star,” like the tail on a dog. Look closely and you can read the name “Obama” on that icon identifying the most liberal member of the Senate, the one with the least collaborative connections with any Senators other than those on the far left and who himself is even more liberal than any of his fellows.

Senator Clinton, located at about the two o’clock position in the “blue” orb, is placed well within the Democrat enclave, but leaning toward the center left. While remaining solidly in the “blue,” she does have some connections with center and left-leaning “red” Senators as well as center-leaning Democrats.

It seems to me that this graphic goes a long way toward illustrating what is wrong with our political system. It bears strong resemblance to a red giant star sucking matter from a companion, when what we should see is something more akin to a galaxy with complex interconnections and cooperative liaisons, all in the name of progress and the betterment of our nation.

Here is another analogy through which to view this graphic: as a diagram of some tragic battleground where much blood is about to be spilled. Thus we see two opposing forces tightly grouped and facing off against each other, perhaps the armies of King Henry V of England and Charles VI of France on the field of Agincourt. A few outriders from the “red” force are scouting the No Man’s Land of the political center, but neither side has yet made a decisive attack. Of all the participants in this developing war, one is quite obviously staying as far away from the front as possible, satisfied to shout inflammatory bromides about “change” from the far rear and perhaps prepared to flee. Two “red” captains are absent from the field (“for want of a horse…”), symptomatic of the fact that political campaigning has become an overwhelming burden on those who should be serving their nation full time.

This image of political divisiveness and polarization does not bode well for our nation, not well at all. And, it shows once again that a picture (in this case a computer graphic) is worth, well, a whole lot of empty rhetoric. I just wanted to share this visual experience with my readers. Make of it what you will.

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