Some Thoughts on Global Warming Etc.

Being a relativist is a lot like being fat. It takes little effort; you just open your mouth and swallow whatever you want.

There are rules for controlling one’s weight and there are rules for avoiding flabbiness of mind and soul.

It must be hard to be a relativist and a scientist, but if you must, let me suggest:

1. Listen to everyone.

2. Examine all evidence.

3. Don’t pre-judge.

4. If the facts disagree with your hypothesis, accept the facts.

5. Argue:

a. Attack the position not the person.

b. State you beliefs firmly and listen to the response.

c. Argue the issue not the argument.

d. Don’t pull you punches and never run away.

We are always hungry or forever fat; we love the truth or are stuck with false opinion.

Let's Play Nice Mr. Chocolate!

I spend all summer with bears – although I almost never see them. Each night before I retire to my room of heavy logs, three stories above the forest floor, I kick the crew out of the lodge and send them out to their tents and tepees. Then I make my daring dash to the generator shed. It’s at that time that I think most about bears. I know they are out there just beyond the circle of light, with slobbering jaws, big empty stomachs and long, long claws. I flip the breaker, and wait a couple of minuets for the oil to settle out of the engine. I pull the door shut – just in case. Then I switch off the generator and make a mad dash back to the safety of the kitchen door; the giant grizzly of my imagination lumbering behind me.

Now let’s talk about Timothy Treadwell. For thirteen years this “fellow” spent his summers sitting a few feet from some Alaskan grizzly bears. He claimed to be protecting them from poachers – though the park authorities who had charge of them say they were never in danger. And for five years he filmed the entire idiocy; a kind of Crocodile Hunter of the tundra. I have not seen the movie so I must quote from Louis Witting of the National Review Online’s article “Grizzly Love” Aug 24, 2005:

“He [Treadwell] crouches in the bushes as two behemoths tear each other apart, then creeps up on the loser, within easy range of a paw swat, and gives it his post-fight analysis. He crawls within whispering distance of the bears, calls them by their names – Mr. Chocolate, Aunt Melissa, Sergeant Brown – and tells them how much he loves them . . . At the end of his 13th summer among the bears, federal park rangers found the majority of Treadwell, and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, in the gastrointestinal track of a male grizzly.”

Mr. Chocolate I believe – who had to be executed to retrieve the four garbage bags full of body parts.

I have four bears of my own, all dead. I love them – they make great decorations. Two are skulls; one at home the other on one of my classroom book shelves, and two are hides for hanging on the Lodge wall at camp. I also have a bear scalp, I souldn't forget that! I have eagerly contributed to the capture of two bears at Camp over the years. I enjoyed very much seeing them hauled off in traps made of chunks of culvert to parts of the forest where hunters would soon turn them into pot-roasts and wall hangings.

I spend a good deal of each summer keeping the bear attractants of 250 campers locked up in big steal boxes, and tamping bags of ash and rot into the bear resistant dumpsters a mile up the hill from my nice safe bed.

My point in all this – any eleven year old Boy Scout knows that bears are deadly dangerous – not cuddly friends for pet names and petting. Those who are dumb enough to make touchy-feely with grizzly bears will end up in garbage bags.

NOW THINK OF THIS – THERE ARE THOSE IN THIS COUNTRY WHO WOULD CONVINCE US THAT ISLAMIC FANATICISM IS SOMETHING WE COULD SNUGGL UP TO IF WE WOULD JUST BE NICE. GET OUT THE GARBAGE BAGS!!!!

Enviro-Jihad

Last Week's WSU class covered Environmental Revolution. I had "faced" the "instructor" before. In a seminar on Eco-terrorism she had justified spiking trees and burning down sky lodges by claiming that 100 species a day are going extinct. I had asked her to name the last species which had become extinct. She said she didn’t know. I asked her to name any species which had gone extinct since the passenger pigeon. She could not. She said these lists were kept somewhere. Where? I asked.. She sugested the web sittes of several activist groops. My son later explained to me how environmentalists come up with the estimated "100 species a day extinct" number. They dig through the ruins of a harvested rain forest tree and see how many creatures they can discover that they don’t have a name for. They then assume these were new and unique species and that now their tree is gone they are extinct. Multiply that number of species by the number of trees cut down a day and you come up with the per-day number of species becomeing extinct. Weard isn’t it!?!

This week the professor unleashed her assault on America and modernization. An attack which probably goes over wonderfully well with the entranced "tweens" of her WSU classes. There were many flashes in the running two hour battle that the “discussion” developed into. Here I note only the climax. She handed round a “quiz”. It was a Sierra Club survey from the January/February 2003 Sierra magazine. It claimed to be able to determine how many acres of land one requires to live. No effort was expended in explaining the rational behind any of the formulas: – vegens are scored at 0.46 while those who almost always eat meat get a 1.14, a person who eats unpackaged local food is graded at 0.69 while those who eat out of package imports rate a 1.1. Then these numbers are run through a mysterious formula Q1 X Q2 X 5.5 = the number of acres required to provide your food. Other factors including shelter and mobility are cranked through equally obscure formula and in the end one’s total “foot print” on the earth is established. Though no questions could get the professor to justify the math; she boldly claimed that the average American exploits 24 acres in living while there are only 5 acres of land per person in the world. Her conclusion: the rest of the world cannot develop the standard of living that Americans enjoy. Her implication: Americans use more than their fair share - therefore it is OK to hate them. The Sierra Club’s quiz culminates with this ominious perdiction: “Population growth will reduce resources available to each person in the future.” -- Oh yah, there was a special “TAKE ACTION note” “ . . . go to the Sierra Club’s Web site at www.sierraclub.org/footprint . . . A second section invites you to "become a member of the Sierra Club’s activist network. It’s one good way for busy people to work for changes that will reduce everyone’s footprint. – K. T.” The Professor went on to list a host of ecological disasters: deforestation, shortage of fresh water, global climate change, depletion of the ocean fisheries, the continued production of DDT. She said that it was impossible for the people of the Africa to ever live at the standard of living that “we here in the US enjoy.” I asked her how her predictions of gloom and doom differed from those of Malthus from the 19th century. She replied that Malthus may well have been right – that the earth will someday reach its carrying capacity. I pointed out the technology had trumped Malthus, She said she preferred the word postponed. I asked here if she was aware of the aqua farming that was producing the endless supply of seafood Americans now consume at the Sizzler’s all you can eat buffet. She said that there are reports that indicate there are higher levels of Mercury in Farm Razed fish. I replied if such was the case – surely that could be fixed. She said she didn’t want to live in a world were there were no wild salmon. I said if it came down to African people having a decent standard of living or maintaining populations of wild salmon; I was for the Africans. She said it didn’t have to come to that. I said, that I knew that and that people say these things just for political purposes. Realizing that the discussion had led her in the opposite direction from where she had intended the class to go, she ended her lecture. As you consider my “arrogant” rant against my professor please also consider these two articles available last week.


The Readers Digest (Not the most prestigious scientific journal but considered quite reliable) carried an article by Gregg Easterbrook (A visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Progress Paradox) He begins, “So here’s the good news: our air is cleaner, our lakes are purer, our forests are healthier, endangered species are recovering, toxic emissions are down, and acid rain has diminished dramatically.” (pg81) Easterbrook goes on to support these claims specifically. Among the arguments for good news no the environment is some pretty convincing impractical evidence. “Improved Air Quality – Los Angeles went from 150 days per year in violation of smog standards in 1990 to just 27 in 2004” (pg82); “Better Water Quality – just a generation ago, factories and municipal plants actually discharged untreated wastewater directly into rivers; today . . . almost all wastewater in the United States is treated before discharge.. . The Chicago River went from smelly and dirty to sparkling , and is now the setting for dinner cruises.” (pg 85); “Animals are Back – Only one animal species is know to have gone extinct in the United States in the last 15 years, the dusky seaside sparrow. During the same period, numerous other species once described as certain to become extinct – including the Arctic peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the gray whale, and the bald eagle. . . have recovered sufficiently enough that they are no longer classified as imperiled.” (pg 85) “Forests Are Growing - . . . early in the 19th century, the state of Connecticut was 25 percent forest; today, Connecticut is fully 59 percent forested, though its population has increased twelve fold, from 275,000 to 3.46 million” (pgs 85 – 86). Least anyone claim that these gains are not to be credited to Reagan and the Bush as well as Carter and Clinton; “ Steady environmental improvements have taken place across th4e board, regardless of which party is in the White house or controlling Congress. During the last four years air pollution has continued to decline improvements in technology have reduced emissions, the amount of protected lands is on the uptick . . .”(pg 86) Easterbrook goes on to paint a most hopeful and positive picture of the environment under the “1st world” control of the United States. It seems clear that giving Africans the same standard of living as we enjoy here in the US would probably greatly improve the world’s environment.
The Readers Digest is not alone in recognizing the success of technology and nature. Surprisingly, Nicholas D. Kristof, took a partial break from Bush Bashing in the New York Times to dedicate his March 12th column to debunking the “natural disaster on its way myth”. The following quotes are from “I Have a Nightmare”
1. Kristof begins by quoting Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus:’s web article “The Death of Environmentalism”. “. . . modern environmentalism, with all of its unexamined assumptions, out dated concepts and exhausted strategies, must die so that something new can live.”
2. “The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmist. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public.”
3. “In the 1970’s, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou heard. Since then, it has quintupled.
4. “When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: “Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend . . . but they are all most unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”
5. “Environmentalists were right about DDT’s threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.”
Unfortunately Kristof’s break from bashing the President couldn’t be sustained for a single page editorial. He claims in paragraph three of his piece that “Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, [It is now in the budget] and there’s been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.” He then ends his editorial with this self-contradictory claim. “ . . . irreversible changes are precisely what are at stake with the Bush administration’s plans to drill in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, to allow roads in virgin wilderness, and to do essentially nothing on global warming. “

Kristof can’t see that his fears about ANWR and global warming are just as “alarmist” and incredible as the promised devastation that was to have followed the Alaska pipeline or the Ice Age that was bearing down on us in the 70”s. Even as Kristof attempts to present objective truth his hate for Bush pulls him back into Lahlah land to make the same silly claims with which enviro-fanatics are embarrassed themselves out of existence. Kristof probably doesn’t expect his readers to finish his article or to see it in context of “The Death of Environmentalism”.

Oil exploration on ANWR will do almost no environmental damage. If the precedent of Connecticut and the Alaska Pipeline are accepted, it will no doubt improve the Alaskan environment. The resulting fuel supply might well power the wealth necessary to bring a higher and safer standard of living to millions in the US and around the world. But environmentalism has been co-opted by anti-American politics. The purpose of its propaganda is to fuel the hatred of America. By justifying the anger of the people of other nations against America, environmental alarmists join many others in their drive to destroy America and the freedom America seeks to spread throughout the world. Wheather these people are motivated by money, like the Sierra Club, or politics, like the New York Times; rather than channeling the world energy resources into solving the challenges of living on earth and improving the lives of all peoples, such fanatics stir up fear and hate that topples reason.

The Day of the Jackal and the Last Ice Age

All week long as I’ve slogged through the snow, froze as I scrape the ice off my windshield, and listened to the furnace rumble on again and again; I’ve wondered, “where is this global warming they’ve been promising?”

There have been a few warm winters, the snows in Siberia are a bit dryer than in the 80’s, and we are told there is an earth devistating warming trend on its way. Not only earth devastating, but man caused – specifically SUV sales and George W. Bush caused. I’m quite sure that if the Enviro-Nazis would have been around at the end of the last ice age their complaints against troglodyte campfires would have preempted human evolution.

“In August was the Jackal born;
The Rains fell in September;
Now such a fearful flood as this.’
Says he, ‘I can’t remember!’”

These lines from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books are given as a rebuke to a young jackal whose pretended wisdom amuses those wiser beasts who have “been around” a few more seasons. Environmental extremists, desperate for a cause capable of frightening the masses into accepting their demands, have latched onto a few warm winters as a club to bludgeon their agenda down the global craw. Fortunately there are a few of us who have been around. I say fortunately, because these self-serving fund raisers are capable of preempting our way of life. Perhaps the most pernicious manifestation of this falsehood is the environmental hammer lock on American Oil production. A situation made possible by the vilification of fossil fuel production as well as consumption. American is not allowed to utilize its oil and coal resources, and condemned for exploiting the foreign energy sources available to us. These agitators damage us all by hanging a theory of planetary disaster on a few decades of weather fluctuations and pasting the blame for this weather on American. Their harm is real and recognizable.

1. They damages our economy by giving advantage to foreign competitors and waists enormous time and recourses in frivolous law suits which clog our over burdened courts and put off necessary projects. (Think Legacy Highway!)

2. Anti - administration pundits exacerbate anti-American attitudes across the world. Giving America’s enemies propaganda weapons to use against this country. They entangle the Iraq war in false claims of oil greed; which emboldens terrorists.

3. They lock up American resources, increasing our dependency on “Arab Oil” and putting our nation at a strategic as well as economic disadvantage in a very competitive world.

4. They increase the suffering of the poor by:

a) Preempting economic growth and the jobs cheaper energy could stimulate into existence,

b) Increasing food production and transportation costs which, to use the sensational rhetoric of the left, forces the poor to choose between spending their money on food, medicine, or fuel. I wonder how many grandmas have frozen this “globally warmed winter” because there was no cheep American fuel to warm them.

5. They send up production prices, transportation prices, the cost of heating or cooling working places, school, and stores; increasing consumer prices as personal resources are wasted.

6. They force up airline cost and harm this valuable part of our economy and all its adjunct industries.

7. They increase the cost of auto production. These artificially forced up expenses are passed on to consumers who barley can afford the “guilty pleasure” of driving their own cars.

8. They encourage global methane production, which shoots up as the population of pooping Caribou skyrockets. (Alright – I admit I am kidding here, though I actually had a University Professor tell a class I was attending that beef cattle were causing global warming by relieving themselves. When I asked him why the same wasn’t true of the billions of buffalo that once roamed the Pre Columbian plains – he said I was being “too negative”.)

I remember the bitter winters of the 80’s when the environmentalists were predicting the beginning of an Ice Age. When the mountains of snow flooded over dams and sent the waters of the Great Salt Lake across Weber, Davis, and Salt Lake Counties. Then in 1988 a drought brought a summer of fire to Yellowstone. I can also remember the heat and the drought of the decade before that.

1977 was the last of several years of drought. I spent that summer in the Yellowstone backcountry at Camp Loll BSA. Some weekends I took the kids who worked for me on drives past Grassy and Jackson Lake. As the water in these man made reservoirs disappeared, my staff became concerned. They came to me one Saturday afternoon, after the scouts had left. They demanded they be allowed to spend the next two days building a dam across the end of Lake of the Woods – the natural lake on which our camp sits.

“Why?” I asked.

“To keep the Lake for running out.”

“How deep is Lake of the Woods were it runs into Cascade Creek?”

“About this deep,” one of the staffers said, holding his fingers about three inches apart.

“When the lake goes down three inches won’t it stop running out on its own?”

“Oh ya,” they said, and walked away without a word - no thanks for the wisdom that freed up their weekend.

The world needs to seek a little truth too. Phony science used to prop up attacks on America must be debunked. We must not listen to the yapping of the Jackals. We need to find some wiser heads.