Global Warming Beliefs

Recently I read that public opinion has shifted away from Global Warming. What happened?

Here is an article from February in the Globe and Mail by Margaret Wente

Public opinion is important in the global warming debate, because without it, nothing will be done. The more public support, the more can be done. In the unlikely event every single person on earth changing their lifestyles, we might even be able to avoid the problem altogether. It isn't going to happen, but it would be fun to see everybody in North America riding a bike to work.

The scientific truth about global warming has nothing to do with public opinion, so let's keep that in mind, too. Whether or not people "believe in it" will not change the facts, either way.

Although I happen to believe that global warming is real, I want to put aside my own beliefs for a moment to consider how the vast majority of people think. Let's say we had an extreme event like, for example half of San Francisco burned in a forest fire, or all of Kansas ended up under ten feet of water. I can almost guarantee that many more people would start believing in global warming. That is how people think, they need to see extremely scary weather events. On the other hand, if we get a cold winter in Washington DC, it may spell the end of any serious concern about global warming until the next weather disaster.

Here is another more recent article on Global Warming that I found in the Montreal Gazette.

Weather events are always shifting public perception. We have had a few disasters recently, and we may get more in the future. Who can say how big a disaster will have to be before the majority of ordinary people get panicked into doing something?

People change their minds in the face of once-in-a-lifetime floods, forest fires, heat waves, droughts, hailstorms, hurricanes etc. Even if there was no connection at all between global warming and some hypothetical unprecedented extreme events, the effect of weather disasters is to stampede the masses into some kind of belief.

Scientists are just now coming to grips with the problem of fickle public opinion. First they must understand that they actually may need to promote their theories to the public. And then, the need to figure out what strategies are to be used, and who is going to direct and pay for the publicity campaign. Science is up against a well organized and funded propaganda machine that fights against scientists with fully owned TV networks and newspapers, and a budget probably in the billions (judging by the size of ordinary ad campaigns). As scientists are not really that well organized, or funded to fight a PR campaign, they become somewhat frustrated and occasionally use cynical language, and a few come off as being not-nice people. Also there are some genuine scientists who are genuinely not-nice people, and maybe are kind of greedy too and seek fame and status. None of these scientists are helping the cause. Even Al Gore himself drives in a big car and takes airplane rides to the far corners of the Earth.

You can get some idea of what people believe when they deny global warming from reading the comments at the bottom of the Gazette article. I listed a few here with my opinions in brackets

Weather is not constant (true)
Global warming was invented by Al Gore (False, that was the Internet)
Fear of climate change is akin to ancient superstition and human sacrifice (true, though it does not change the facts)
Global warming is caused by changing tilt of the Earth (I suspect this is just plain stupid)
It is "Agenda 21" and "The Club of Rome" (This may be delusional)
Global Warming is a scheme to make the rich get richer through Green Industries (true and false i.e the assertion makes no sense)
CO2 is only 1% of greenhouse gasses therefore it couldn't possibly have any global effect. (Flawed logic)
We deserve to be wiped out (Semi religious point of view)
It was predicted by the Mayans and Aztecs in the film 2012 (Some people are more affected by movies than actual weather)

Picture: Do I need to say that this picture proves nothing scientific about global warming? But it does have some propaganda value to some people, apparently.

Two More Pet Peeves with the Media

Some of my most frequent pet peeves are people in the media "explaining" an issue in a completely ass-backwards way. So part of the fun of writing a blog is to put out my own take on an issue that has been poorly explained to the public by the TV and newspaper media. Two such stories come to mind today.

First is Canada's new rules for mortgages, tightening up the requirements for obtaining and keeping a mortgage. I didn't keep track of which news person said this, but I'll bet she was not alone. She was talking to an expert, and asked "This probably means that the average home buyer will have to be paying more for their house. How much more will we have to pay?". If you spotted the error already, good for you! The error is this: By tightening up the credit rules, home buyers will pay LESS for their homes, not more. You heard that right. Most people buy homes on credit, that's what a mortgage is all about. They usually buy the most expensive house that they can afford. The person who tells them what they can afford is the banker who approves the mortgage, and the bankers do the calculation according to set rules, based on the buyer's financial position. When you tighten up the rules, you are effectively saying "You cannot afford this $500,000 house, therefore we reject your mortgage request. However, we would be able to approve of a mortgage for $350,000". The numbers here are just an example, but it gives you the idea that people will be spending less. Even for people who buy a smaller house than their limit, they will pay less because they will not be extended as much credit, therefore less interest to pay.

My second complaint was stirred up by a comment by one or more meteorologists, that they are better able to predict global warming than climatologists. (March 29, 2010 New York Times). I know this story is almost a month old, but I'm actually focusing on a problem with the entire meteorological business, that has been going on for a while. The weathermen and women on TV keep pounding us with the message that "warm is good" and "sunshine is good". It sounds something like this "We have some good news for the weekend, sunny and warm with no chance of rain." Listen to the weather forecasts yourself, and in about 99% of them, the meteorologist attaches the words "good news" to any report of sunny and warm, and some variation of "bad news" to any rain, snow or cold.

The one exception is when a forest fire is destroying million dollar homes in California. Then they switch around the good to bad.

This attitude is not scientific, which confirms my opinion that most of these weather girls and men are more announcers than scientists. But for heaven's sake, do not make your pretty faces even redder by claiming to have greater scientific knowledge of climate change than climatologists. Meteorologists have a hard time predicting 5 days ahead, and have been totally brainwashed into thinking warmer is better. These are not the people to be deciding if it is good or bad that the climate gets 5 degrees warmer in the next hundred years.

Picture: It looks like a Spanish language station, so just to be clear, I didn't choose the picture because their forecasts are worse, but because their forecasters are better looking.

Little Ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence for the Seals

A story about the annual seal hunt was briefly mentioned on Radio Canada news on TV (in French). Just to recap: 30% of the annual eastern seal hunt in Canada is in the Gulf of St Lawrence, a large sea area bounded by Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Usually the seals have their pups on pack ice which is always plentiful in the gulf at this time of year.


But in 2010, the Gulf of St Lawrence for the first time has little or no ice for the birth season and the seals are either having their pups in the water, or some are having them on the beaches or rocks. In either case, the survival rate is quite low, although it may take some time to figure out the true effect of the lack of ice on the seals. http://www.harpseals.org/resources/news_and_press/2010/seal_hunt_10.html

This comes at a bad time once again for the hunters. Although they have seen prices drop from $100 to $16 per seal pup since Europe banned the import of seal fur, medical research has indicated that baby seal heart valves may be superior to any existing heart valves used for transplants to humans. If this proves to be true, the seal hunt would be set to stage a comeback.

I would like to see this whole seal/ice story get more coverage for two reasons. First, to show that the seal hunt is really not that cruel, if you compare it to the hardship and suffering in nature, rather than the coddled life of human pets. And second to offset the anti-global warming stories that multiplied as the Eastern USA had a bad winter. Environmentalists could have a propaganda windfall with this, if they used it like they did the stories of polar bears drowning.

Also, for people who happen to think that an ice-free Gulf of St Lawrence is a good thing, the Magdalen Islands are suffering a major amount of erosion this year, and it's going be expensive to save some of their exposed real estate. Pack ice along the shore usually acts as a barrier to the waves from spring storms.

The Propaganda of Climate Change

Last week I came across an article about the Anti-Global Warming campaign on a website called Common Dreams. Originally it was posted on Tomdispatch.com on February 25, 2010, by Bill McKibben.

The reason I write this today, is because the Kitchener Record just printed the article. So thumbs up to the Kitchener Record!

And the original story

I was especially interested in the article because it is about the propaganda aspect of the debate, not the scientific aspect. I'm actually pretty much burned out on the science of Climate Change. Even though I studied science at University, I am nowhere near qualified to calculated the rise in global temperature from fossil fuels. I imagine the formula is something like this: iT = (Bob + CB + NGB + MCF)*x*Fe - Pwcu * Lopd

Where
iT = Increase in Temperature of Earth due to human related activity
Bob = Barrels of oil burned
CB = coal burned
NGB = natural gas burned
MCF = Methane from Cow Farts
x = constant to be figured out when it's too late by computer modeling
Fe = feedback effect
Pwcu = people who can't understand
Lopd = Loudness of pseudoscientific deniers.

I admit it, I do not have the scientific training to work through it and come up with the answer. So I have stopped taking the bait of arguments like "You are aware, aren't you, that Carbon Dioxide is only 4% of the total greenhouse gas effect?"

I don't mean to make a personal attack here, this applies to everyone. If anyone knows something about calculating the temperature of the Earth, they should take their case to a peer reviewed scientific process. Do not bring the argument to me. True, the scientific community may laugh at you and ignore you because you do not have a PhD. But I don't have too much sympathy for that. You get a PhD by working hard in university, and I happen to know many people do not work that hard and end up destroying their brain cells on beer and end up like George W. Bush.

Although I admit that I no longer have the brain cells required to calculate iT in the above formula, I can handle the math in the next formula, which is the Pottery Barn version of global warming. Simply stated, the premise is "We only have one planet to fool around with, and if we break it we all still have to live on it." The scientific formula goes something like this

NPE = 1 - Afabd

Where
NPE = Number of planet Earths that can support life
1 = Number of planet Earths in the known universe
Afabg = Any fooling around by deniers that results in destruction of biosphere whether inadvertent or intentional

That formula I can still work out for myself.

Picture: This is a picture where NPE = 1. I was not able to locate a picture where NPE was zero.

Why has the Global Warming Debate Turned Political?

Why has Global Warming become a political issue more than a scientific issue?

Before going in to this, I want to say that recently, political parties on both sides have admitted that global warming is a man made problem. In the last US election, Democrats and Republicans both pledged to do something about Global Warming. However, the rank-and file conservatives, and the conservative political commentators on TV and in the press, have generally continued to call global warming a hoax.

With very few exceptions, global warming deniers are conservative. Those few liberals who deny global warming would need to be looked at on a case by case basis, but I suspect that most of them would turn out to be false liberals, or somewhat confused about what liberals stand for.

So why do conservatives call global warming a hoax?

Conservatives in the USA tend to be more religious than liberals, and are guided more by the bible than by scientists, especially when those scientists deny God's creations and deny the literal truth of every word of the bible. Conservatives sometimes refer to Global Warming as an alternate form of religion.

In the USA, conservative has come to mean "opposed to governmental control and opposed to taxes", especially since the rich are taxed more heavily than the poor. One of the most obvious solutions to global warming would be to use government regulations, oversight and taxation. So Conservatives would prefer that global warming be a hoax.


From an article by Richard S. Lindzen 1992, who is one of the most respected global warming skeptics, (and coincidentally a "smoking causes lung cancer" skeptic and heavy smoker)

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html

"As Aaron Wildavsky, professor of political science at Berkeley, has quipped, "global warming'' is the mother of all environmental scares. Wildavsky's view is worth quoting. "Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist's dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population's eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.'' In many ways Wildavsky's observation does not go far enough. The point is that carbon dioxide is vitally central to industry, transportation, modern life, and life in general. It has been joked that carbon dioxide controls would permit us to inhale as much as we wish; only exhaling would be controlled. The remarkable centrality of carbon dioxide means that dealing with the threat of warming fits in with a great variety of preexisting agendas--some legitimate, some less so: energy efficiency, reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dissatisfaction with industrial society (neopastoralism), international competition, governmental desires for enhanced revenues (carbon taxes), and bureaucratic desires for enhanced power."

Conservatives have realized that any money put into global warming may be withdrawn from military budgets.

American conservatives have a negative view of the UN and of international cooperation. International cooperation is almost a necessity in combating global warming. And some transfer of wealth to developing nations may be required, which is generally opposed by conservatives.

Conservatives understand that to combat global warming, we must conserve energy, meaning reducing wasteful consumption and wretched excess. This would obviously impact rich conservatives far more than middle class liberals.

Conservatives, almost by definition, do not like to change, like to keep things the way they are. If we are going to do something about global warming, big changes are needed. Conservatives will generally oppose big changes.

Liberals tend to have the opposite view of conservatives. Here are some general views that liberals and progressives would not be opposed to.

• Taxing the rich and profitable corporations is necessary
• Scientists can tell us more about climate change than the bible or religious prophesies
• We should live more frugally, conserve more, reduce waste
• The gap between rich and poor, between rich countries and poor countries should be decreased
• Reduced military spending, other than what is strictly needed for home defence
• Making the world a better place
• Reduced dependence on foreign oil (hence foreign military invasions)
• More government oversight of corporations
• Saving the environment

So, inside the scientific community, global warming is debated along scientific lines, but in the press and on TV the debate generally falls into a political alignment, with conservatives far more likely to call the threat of Global Warming a hoax.

Pictures: I photoshopped two pictures to illustrate the impact of global warming at the North Pole. Can you tell if it is winter or summer? (Hint, the sun is up) And what time of day it is? All time zones converge at this point, so take your pick.

A Lesson from The Flat Earth Wager of 1870

Once again I want to call into question whether debating should be used as a technique to settle arguments about the validity science. For example, Creation vs Evolution, or whether global warming is real or a scientific hoax.

I have been reading the book "Flat Earth, the history of an infamous idea" by Christine Garwood. There is a historical precedent that we might be able to learn from that we can generalize to all science vs. non-science arguments.

This historical debate was about the flat earth in 1870. It involved AR Wallace, who was coincidentally the co-discoverer of evolution.

A. R. Wallace took up a monetary wager against flat Earth promoter John Hampden. To win the wager, Wallace had to prove, to the satisfaction of a third party referee, that the Bedford Canal had a curve to its surface.

Wallace set two markers at a height of 13 feet above the water, one was at 5 km., the other at 10 km. He then used a professional surveyor's telescope with cross hairs, also at thirteen feet height and observed that the furthest marker was lower than the middle marker, by about 4 feet. The previously agreed impartial observer, William Carpenter, was then allowed to look through the telescope, at which point he joyously declared the points lined up therefore the canal was flat. No amount of persuasion could convince the observer that the middle marker was higher than the furthest marker.

Finally after days of wrangling, another judge, Walsh, was chosen, and he said that the difference in height of the markers clearly indicated curvature of the canal water surface. Furthermore, Walsh discovered that William Carpenter, the previous referee, was a close associate of John Hampden, and Walsh issued a statement in which he included the comment "The deception was, to say the least of it, 'unscientific'." (speaking of the choosing of William Carpenter who did not disclose his close collaboration with Hampton)

As a result of this comment by Walsh, John Hampden claimed that he was being libelled, and also accused the new referee of colluding with Wallace. Hampden took legal action to prevent the wager money being given to Wallace. After years of fighting in court, A.R. Wallace won the money, but ended up no further ahead after lawyers fees, and had done nothing to stop the spread of the "Flat Earth" philosophy.

What we can learn from this, is that scientists and anti-scientists do not have the same standards of fairness. Why would I say that, and how could I ever confirm it? Of course it can never be confirmed that anti-scientists are all cheats, and it does not even seem to be a reasonable statement. I would go further, and say it makes me sound like a lunatic that I would even propose that all anti-scientific people are liars and cheats. Therein lies the paradox that prevents a debate from being a good way to settle the matter.

For any debate to succeed, you need to have both sides willing to listen to reason, to abide by observed facts. But that very idea is at the heart of "The scientific method". If you can show me two people willing to listen to reason, and abide by observed facts, I will show you two scientists.

But the world at large, observing this debate, sees only two equally earnest sides, pro science vs. science deniers. If the pro science side ever at any time in exasperation, insults the science deniers for their lack of logic, for their hardball tactics, for their deceit, a whole new argument is launched. This new argument is about personal honour. In the new argument, the scientists were the first to insult the other. And they lose.

Is This an Audubon Society Payoff Scandal?

Recently I received a chain email that the Audubon Society accepted millions of dollars to change their anti-wind farm stance and allow the erection of wind turbines to destroy bird populations. It was explained in the header:

"The Massachusetts Audubon Society ("MA Audubon") has been opposing the project from the beginning. They estimated that the turbines may kill up to 6,600 birds per year.

The controversy arose when MA Audubon changed their minds. They announced they would support the project on the condition that millions of dollars be spent to mitigate the ecological impact. As mitigation includes the monitoring of bird mortality and bird behaviour by ornithologists, this immediately led to suspicions of a conflict of interest."

If this were true it would be a little like CUSO taking a payoff to endorse the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's policy of chopping off of hands of civilians in Sierra Leone. Or endorsing the bombing of native villages in the Sudan to clear the way for oil drilling. The Audubon payoff was not debunked on Snopes (as far as I could tell) so I had to investigate on my own.

First, to clear up a position. The Audubon Society has determined that while wind farms may kill some wildlife, they are a net benefit, based on our need to produce electricity in a way that does not promote global warming. And the Audubon Society also believes that global warming is a real threat, not a gigantic hoax cooked up by tree huggers. Which happens to match my own views, and those of my local Field Naturalists Club.

The timing of this "change of mind" and Payoff is not clear. But as of July 2005 (after the Feb. 2005 estimate of 6,600), the Massachusetts Audubon Society supported wind power. (I have the link below) As far as I know, all field naturalists clubs support the use of wind power.

http://www.massaudubon.org/news/index.php?id=200&type=editorial

In my opinion it is actually Exxon and the other oil companies that are fighting wind power with a well funded PR campaign, supported by conservative interests (for example, Harper, the PM from Canada's oil province, and Bush, the president from Texas). Here is a link to an article about the payoffs to climate change deniers.

This allegation about the Mass Audubon Society is illogical. It is based on the false assumption that Mass Audubon is a for-profit organization, with the power to grant or deny permits for wind turbines. It is actually a non-profit organization of enthusiasts that was asked to do studies on wind projects. The reason they get asked is because of their credibility as a non-profit organization, with a huge membership of people who know a lot about nature.

Mary Ann is an active member in the Kitchener-Waterloo field Naturalists club, which is similar to the Audubon society, in other words, a non-profit organization dedicated to birdwatching, and observing nature. Similar to the Audubon Society, they have no regulatory authority to stop wind turbines, but they are often asked to do environmental studies for a wide variety of reasons, including building and road construction. As a non-profit organization, they are not even allowed to make money (as in a profit), or they would lose their non-profit status. Greed and desire for money is totally absent in field naturalists clubs, from what I have seen. (While greed is the driving force of corporations, as they endlessly remind us)

The Audubon society is obviously concerned about bird deaths, but they are also concerned about global warming.

If we go back to about 2003 or so, there was a debate among all field naturalist groups, Audubon included, who were concerned about the impact of the new wind farms on bird population. That debate has long been resolved, and as far as I know, all field naturalists are pretty much in agreement, that although the turbines may kill some birds, it has to be balanced against global warming, which is already making entire species (of animals/birds/insects etc.) extinct. They are looking at the long term species survival. They are more aware than most people that lots of birds die all the time from cars, hunting, predators, cats, disease, tall buildings, starvation, even natural death.

The location of the first wind turbines caused a severe problem killing hawks because the towers were located on bluffs. The way hawks travel is by seeking out thermals (upward wind currents), then circling repeatedly gaining height each time, until they reach enough height that they can glide to the next thermal. So hawks will actually migrate along ridges, (which create thermal up currents) stopping to circle each time they need to gain height. If the turbines are placed right where the hawks stop to circle, the blades will kill a lot of them as they migrate. Hawks migrate in a very narrow flight path, and they circle where the winds are strongest. As long as the blades are not placed right in a migratory thermal updraft, the number of kills is acceptable.

There is a place called Hawk Cliff near Port Stanley on Lake Erie, where thousands of hawks can be seen circling at migration times. It is a spectacular sight, well known to local birdwatchers. If you place a turbine right there, it will cause a major slaughter in the spring and the fall. Yet new turbines have gone up on the lake Erie shore, placed in such a way that the hawks will not be circling around the blades, and very few are killed. Less than by local car traffic, for example.

Bird watchers are well aware of the behaviours of various birds, and are an excellent resource to advise on the location of wind turbines.

The killing of bats is another issue, which I do not have the current answer for. Apparently turbines kill a lot of bats, and it may be either where they roost, or how they hunt insects by sonar. I know a lot of people are looking in to the problem. And our local field naturalists club does watch bats, and in fact they own a bat detector which is used for outings to observe bats.

I don't have any proof that the Massachusetts Audubon Society did not take a payoff of millions of dollars to support the wind farms. But from what I know already about non-profit organizations, and the fact that the Audubon society early on decided to support wind turbines, and specifically, the Massachusetts Audubon was supporting wind turbines in 2005, I would say this story sounds false.

Picture: I took it this this morning along the Grand River. It's a hawk sitting really near, but I have a cheap point and shoot camera, not one of those monster zoom lenses. I was on an outing with the KW Field Naturalists, and they said it was a one year old Red-Tailed hawk, and they spotted it way on the other side of the river and waited for it to come over.

Global Warming Without the Hysteria

Global warming seems to be on the retreat, if you were to judge by how many clothes I wear when I go out for a walk. Of course everybody knows by now that there is a controversy. The Global Warming Industry is pitted against the oil industry to win the hearts and minds of the SUV drivers.

Who to believe? It seems to me that you can't just poke your nose outside to get the truth. And can you really trust the news? I'm not talking about Fox news, of course, they are clearly biased. And Tiger Woods, you don't believe them either, just stick with your Buddhist religion no matter what Fox News tells you to do.

There is really no trusted independent source of news any more. Well I might be tempted to say this blog is trusted and independent, but I have an obvious bias toward my own blog, so my journalistic integrity stops me from making that claim. I will leave that to others.

Also, studying the science is impossible for most people who do not have the training to analyse the data. So you end up having to trust competing conclusions.

Some pictures that might be worth looking at, that I believe are free of bias, are pictures of the arctic ocean ice cover changing with time, which many people believe is indicative of the current change in our climate. Some think there is more ice now, or that the ice was receding, and now its advancing. You don't need to trust them, you can look at the pictures of Arctic Sea Ice for yourself. And you don't have to look at the dates that are chose by biased sources to prove their own point. Fill in your own two dates and click on "submit". It is "do it yourself science".

What will this prove to you? Maybe nothing. Maybe it will get you thinking that this is a complicated question. Maybe you don't even care if the ice cap is expanding or shrinking. But at least here is one source that I hope we can all agree is unbiased, and maybe we can get away from charges of lying and deception.

Now my own observations are this, and hopefully these are unbiased in any way (except that as Mary Ann says I always look at the "cup half empty").

• There is a claim being made by many respected scientists, that drilling and burning petroleum is causing high levels of CO2 which is suspected of warming the atmosphere. They may be right or wrong, of course.
• We have only one planet. It would be nice to have another just in case, but we don't.
• It would be very easy for people to waste less gas if they just put their minds to it. Back in the sixties, we used a lot less than now, was that so bad? And I see a lot of people being wasteful in their energy use. Sometimes it's even me.
• We need oil for many vital things, for food production, for fuel, to make plastics, and who knows what else. We may very well invent some new thing in the future that uses even more oil.
  
• I don't know if we are running out, but for sure nobody is putting any back in. To claim that we have another 100 years supply at least is pure conjecture.
• The price of oil can go up very suddenly, while our wealth can also drop very suddenly. Really bad things happen if we can't afford oil any more.

So based on those hopefully correct and unbiased assumptions, I would suggest we start cutting back on oil use. Leave more oil for the future just in case our descendants need it. At the same time, this is playing it safe with our climate. In my opinion, it is the responsible thing to do, when you strip away all the hysteria.

Please leave a comment below if you think there is anything in this post that is biased or incorrect. All comments are treated with respect, as my only interest is the truth. Personally, I would prefer that global warming was either a hoax or benign. And if global warming did turned out to be a hoax, it would certainly increase my admiration and respect for the oil companies, because that's what many of them have been saying all along.

What Happened to Jerry Pournelle?

Back in the eighties, I used to read a computer magazine called Byte. In it was a column I also often read by Jerry Pournelle. I still remember his frequent use of the expression "Sigh.", as a complete sentence to indicate exasperation yet acceptance of computer glitches. I first heard of Jerry Pournelle as a science fiction writer, and one of his more famous science fiction novels was "A Mote in God's Eye" co-written with Larry Niven.

So what happened to Jerry since then? Byte magazine went under in 1997 and Jerry since then has been writing a blog.

Apparently, like a lot of people in the last decade he has become even more conservative. Back in the eighties, the term conservative had almost no meaning for me, when the political divide was much less distinct than it was today. The distinctions could be partly because I can recognize it easier now, and partly because people were not as polarized by inflammatory newspapers, TV and radio in the eighties. And the "War on Terror" had not yet begun with all its attendant propaganda.

The signs of Jerry being conservative were there to see in the eighties, if I had cared. The book "Mote in God's Eye" had a racist and colonial theme, with Earth colonizing a planet whose indigenous (and intelligent) species was called the Moties. In fact a similar theme to the recent movie "Avatar" about Earth colonizing the moon of Pandora.

However, Pournelle and Niven's book has a theme of racism, discussions of the need to exterminate the Moties, fear of the Moties' high birth rate, unlike the movie Avatar whose theme is more the preservation of nature, and the evils of greed-driven colonization.

Since the book came out in 1974, there have been a lot of changes in the world. So how has Jerry adapted his ideas to the realities of today? He has written recently in his blog about education, about the terrorist attack (the underwear bomber), about Afghanistan, and about global warming. In the first three, he seemed to be against racial integration in schools, and in favour of racial profiling in airports, and in favour of more troops for Afghanistan. That, in my mind confirmed that he was leaning heavily to the conservative side of the spectrum. And so when I came to read his take on global warming, I was not surprised that he came out as a denier . I wonder why so often people who are racist, also happen to be in favour of war, and to top it off also deny global warming? Just a coincidence. Or could it be a result of political propaganda rather than logical thought influencing their conclusions?

So in "Musings on Climate Change", January 2, 2010, we get the summary statement:

"And I am far more afraid of ice than a couple of degrees warming. I fear shorter growing seasons more than I fear longer growing seasons. If the climate must change -- and stasis is unlikely -- I'd rather be warmer than colder. I'd also rather be richer than poorer. Enough. It's bed time."

Every statement he makes in this summary, taken by itself is true, in fact nobody ever disputed them. He seems to have completely missed or ignored the points that are being made in the Global Warming issue. Considering the negative impacts that scientists have suggested such as flooding, massive human refugee populations, runaway temperature feedback, extreme weather effects, migrating diseases and pests, and species extinctions.

But to me this is intellectual dishonesty, as he should know that every scientist on Earth agrees with his final concluding points, I myself would prefer a couple of more degrees this fine January morning in Canada.

Not really changing the subject here, but it's a similar technique in his article " The Truth about Afghanistan, and its meaning for US policy" December 2, 2009.

Here is Jerry's version of truth:

"The obvious truth about Afghanistan is that there are two conditions for an American victory, assuming victory means building a democratic republic in the territory we call Afghanistan. One has to do with the number of troops. The other is the length of the commitment: how long will we stay?"

I think it's the same kind of conservative logic that we get from "Mote in God's Eye". He follows up his supposed military logic with a comment that Obama's policy will meet neither condition. But what Jerry is really talking about is his (incorrect) assumption that a victory is needed to establishing a democratic republic in Afghanistan. Which nobody in Washington is thinking about any more. What they are thinking about, in case Jerry has not noticed, is the stability of the neighbours, specifically Russia and Pakistan that are dealing currently with Muslim extremists uprisings. And planning for the withdrawal of US troops without creating total chaos. Obviously the war is hopeless with Jerry's assumption of victory. I think most people are long past caring about a democratic and corruption free Afghanistan where everybody can fly their kites and listen to Western music. They probably just want the killing to end, and recognize that genocide is not an option. Unlike "A Mote in God's Eye", where it was inevitable.

Then without reading more, I can see catchphrases in his titles that make me think Jerry is getting quite extreme in his Republican right wingism. Titles like "Big science strikes back" and "Breathtaking arrogance of the EPA". Words like "tyranny" (Google counted 168 uses) and phrases like "There is no better term for the ObamaCare Bill than Despotism. ."

So that's what happened to Jerry Pournelle. From being a respected science fiction writer to being a Teabagger. He has gone from writing a book titled "The Mote in God's Eye" to being the mote in God's eye. As Jerry used to say ... "Sigh."

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/index.html

Story of Noah's Ark Compared to Global Warming

I like a fairy tale as much as the next guy. But I don't actually believe that Cinderella is the literal truth. I draw the line at making an imaginary friend out of my Fairy Godmother. And no amount of therapy can help me if I start killing and torturing people based on what my Fairy Godmother tells me.

Of course I'm partly kidding, in that the good Fairy Godmother would not actually tell me to kill or torture someone. Realistically, my fairy Godmother would limit herself to telling me that something is mine, even though the law does not agree. Then when I try to regain the imaginary "rightful possession of my property", and the owner fights back, well then the Fairy Godmother cannot be held responsible for what I do.

These fairy tales I am referring to are Evangelical religion that believes in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, and believes global warming is a fairy tale. Let me explain with the story of Noah, why bible stories are like fairy tales to me.

It is apparent to me that the story of Noah was substantially made up by people who had no knowledge of the world as we know it today. They did not know how big the world was, no clue how many species of animals there were in the world, and probably also had little concept of the balance of nature. If there was an original true story of Noah, it could have been a local flood where Noah took a couple of goats, a pair of camels, maybe cows, his wife and kids, the dogs and cats and some food and floated around for a while till the water went down. But then, I think some religious fanatics got hold of this simple story and tried to make it into something bigger than it was. They exaggerated the story to the point where it included the whole world, all the animals and every living human. I'm sure those story tellers were thinking that no one will ever question them, as nobody will ever know how big the world is, nobody will ever know how many animals there are. But just to be on the safe side they didn't actually say which animals are on the boat, or how many, so that on the off chance that somebody finds a new animal, they could reply "Oh yeah, that one was on the ark too!"

In the artist's conceptions of Noah's ark , you regularly see elephants, tigers, giraffes, and hippos (and for the most extreme groups, dinosaurs too), we should remember that almost none of these animals were known to the writers of the story of the flood. They probably imagined no more than 20 pairs of animals on the boat. They also didn't know how high the highest mountain on earth was, when they innocently wrote that the flood would cover it. Nor were they aware that oxygen masks would be required at that height.

The problems with this fairy tale are almost too many to count. But while nobody really believes in Sleeping Beauty or Peter Pan, which are both more believable, many people are fanatically trying to prove the fairy tale of Noah's Arc is true, and that global warming is false.

If it were not bad enough that the Story of the Flood is so comical, the point being made by the writers is that everyone on Earth has to believe in their God, or they are condemned to hell and drowning. It stops being comical for me at that point.

It is discouraging that some highly educated people also believe the story of Noah as the literal truth. By educated I mean they apparently paid tuition, took notes and regurgitated facts. But if "educated" people cannot be convinced that the story of Noah is false, with it's unending array of comical impossibilities, how would you ever explain the importance of alternate energy sources to the world economy and environment?

Here is a fairly elaborate attempt at explaining all the myriad holes in the Ark story, just to give an idea of how much thought has gone into it.



Picture: Noah's ark scaled-down replica being built on Mt Ararat by Greenpeace activists, I'm pretty sure they don't believe in the literal truth of the story, but they are using it in a figurative way to warn of potential flooding from climate change.

The Myth of Limitless High Priced Oil

Here is a comment off the Internet about why we should not invest in alternate energy right now.

"Crude oil, next to water, is the most plentiful liquid in our globe. We are not in danger of running out of crude for at least 100 years — probably much longer. The supply during this period would be limited by the price, not by any metaphysical limit of the amount of crude oil. A higher price will produce massive amounts of crude. There is no reason, at this point, to impoverish our nation with a new system of expensive, unproven “sustainable energy.” Does anyone have any doubt that by 2100 we will have found new ways of tapping nature for our energy needs?"
by derekcrane

To me it does not matter whether we have more or less oil than water, or whether oil is second or tenth on the list of earth liquids, or even if oil is a liquid, gas or solid. However, an estimate of the number of years left is worth knowing, and although 100 years seems to have been picked out of the air, I'm going to go with it, as I have nothing better to offer.

Derek is quite right in stating that the price will dictate the amount of oil available. But is he aware that there are two sides to the price issue? Side 1. How much it costs. Side 2. How much you can afford to pay. Derek seems to ignore the affordability, probably thinking that America will always have enough money to pay for the oil no matter how much it costs.

It is very complicated calculating the real cost of oil. It's not just the cost per barrel on the market alone. It's how much more money was wasted, either in trying to obtain oil (whether successful or not), transporting and extracting the oil, in protecting your oil supplies, defending supply routes, or in trying to deny other people access to oil that you want for yourself. Also in trying to fight an evil dictator who happens to be sitting on top of the world's richest oil reserves. All these problems get worse as the oil gets more scarce, and more valuable. For example, the more an oil tanker is worth, the harder pirates will try to capture it.

Was the war in Iraq priced into the cost of oil in the US? Then oil would cost a lot more, but instead the cost of the war was largely assigned to a military budget, and paid for out of the general tax pool. Which means basically money was borrowed from China, because the US tax pool does not want to pay for anything. If an unlimited supply of oil was available in the US, maybe the war would not have taken place. If oil was cheap, Saddam would be no threat.

Another cost that is not being calculated is the cost of global warming. Maybe that cost will turn out to be zero, but it would be prudent to budget for it anyway, starting now. Lets say the US military is right in it's estimate that global warming is going to cause a big (and expensive) security threat. That cost is not being assigned to oil right now, but it probably should be.

As oil gets harder to find, it takes more oil to produce the oil, so the price does not go up linearly, it goes up exponentially. In Canada's tar sands, we may already be operating at less than 50% efficiency, where two barrels of crude are burned to extract one barrel.

Not only is the price of oil going up, but your buying power is decreasing. In fact, already America does not have enough money to pay cash any imports, including oil, imports are financed by borrowing. It takes years to build up a debt but the lender (mostly China) can pull the plug in minutes when they think they no longer need you. At the point where your loans are called in, you no longer have enough credit to continue importing oil. When that happens, do you really care whether or not there is any oil left?

The world used to have lots of alternate sources of energy, but the exploitation of oil has just about eliminated any competing energy source. That's because oil has more bang for the buck than anything but atomic energy. Other energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, wind power are at least ten times as dilute, which makes them expensive and non-competitive. Especially so when so much of the secondary cost of oil is being hidden in military budgets and government subsidies.

Why should we invest in alternate energy starting right now? Because if we do nothing now, we are wasting time we will need to develop new technologies. Waiting till the last minute (even if it is more than a hundred years from now) and hoping for the best is not a good plan. Right now we can afford to do the research, and we have unemployment since all our manufacturing process has gone to China. We would not really miss the money invested in developing alternate energy sources, or in reducing our energy consumption. Using a word like "impoverish" is quite an overstatement for a country that spends billions of dollars a year in useless doodads from China, that get tossed in the landfill within weeks for some new toy.

Picture: from http://earthfirst.com/oil-about-to-run-out-leading-energy-expert-says/

The BBC Looks at America

Can Obama Save the Planet?

"the savvy and often humorous BBC journalist Justin Rowlatt takes an ambitious 6,500 mile 'low carbon' journey around the United States"

Justin Rowlatt's blog

I happened to catch the middle of this show last night, on the "Passionate Eye" on CBC. I was immediately interested by this travelogue style documentary, by British journalist Justin Rowlatt as he was travelling around the USA looking at their accomplishments (or lack thereof) in combatting greenhouse gasses.

While the topic was serious, Justin makes it go down easy with humour and observations. When it comes from a foreigner, it is like the show Mork and Mindy, except this time Mork is from England instead of outer space.

I first tuned in when Justin was looking at the wind farms of Texas, near Sweetwater. These are truly gigantic farms, with thousands of turbines, where here in Ontario, we may have only a hundred in one wind farm. I actually drove through these a few years ago on the way back from Mexico.

Justin was being driven around by one of the maintenance crew for the wind power company. I guess because Justin comes from England, he seemed to not notice the irony of driving around in a Hummer with the name of a wind power company on the door. Anyway, in North America it might be considered a bit odd, because the Hummer is the vehicle of choice for the anti-global warming people.

The next bit was in California, with movie star Darryl Hannah (The mermaid in Splash!) showing her veggie powered Chevrolet El Camino. Here's where the picture comes from. So far, I find this an entertaining TV show.

But then it shockingly followed the El Camino bit with a segment from West Virginia. Justin went on a radio show as a guest, and was yelled at, laughed at, and interrupted for saying even the most moderate things on the subject of greenhouse gasses. Then he followed it up with other snippets where various locals were explaining to him how it was going to come to bloodshed, and another about how Obama was like Big Brother in 1984.

To me this was a bit like watching the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry uses a chainsaw to remove Elaine, Kramer, and George's heads right near the end. OK so maybe there was never a episode like that, but at least you get the idea of how disturbing the change of pace was. Normally I would switch channels, but Mary Ann was watching and I think it is rude to change channels on a show unless I'm alone, even though I have the remote in my hand.

To Justin Rowland, and to the British audience, of course all this is just fun and games. The British take for granted American stupidity, and like Steve said as a comment on my blog "When is too much mud enough?" he said "Makes me glad to be English". But I have friends and relatives who actually think along the same lines, and they feel free to tell me about their ideas. So this documentary was as shocking to me as the imaginary Seinfeld episode.

A Climate Change Debate

On December 1st, there was a debate about climate change pitting Elizabeth May and George Monbiot against Bjorn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson, at the Munk Centre.

The debate was on this point “Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis, and demands a commensurate international response.”

One blogger followed up this debate with the title "May and Monbiot narrowly lose Munk Debate"

One of my favourite debating techniques is "Reductio ad absurdam", meaning to take a proposition and show that it leads to an absurd conclusion. I am not a debater in the formal sense, nor do I speak Latin, but this is my attempt to reduce a proposition to absurdity. The proposition is: "Be it resolved that that it is useful to debate climate change publicly". The absurdity is that we need another debate to decide who won the first debate.

Scientific method seems to always be at odds with debating methods. The scientific method has probably led to every technological advance humans have ever made, from fire and agriculture to walking on the moon. But debate has been dominant over scientific methods for a long time.

The problem with debate is that it favours the rich and powerful, it favours the status quo, it favours ignorance over knowledge. Debate has allowed religion and superstition to flourish. Debate has held back scientific advances.

In this Munk debate, the definition of the win (used by Contrarian) was based on the before and after surveys of the audience, indicating that more people were swayed by the opposition to believe their side. So, May and Monbiot started with 61% on their side and ended the two hour debate with only 53% support. Although it is still more than half, apparently the erosion of support is the key factor. So now we can hold a debate on whether this is a significant trend or not.

Secondly, the original resolution made the whole debate about whether climate change is mankind's defining crisis. If I had the choice of sides, and wanted to win the debate, I would choose the con side against May and Monbiot. Bjorn Lomborg took advantage of the resolution to argue that while climate change was bad, that it would be more efficient to simply feed starving people than to diversify our energy policy. I think that tactic persuaded several people to change their view, especially when you think of poor starving people compared to a warmer climate, and you compare the cost of feeding them to the cost of building wind turbines. I think it's a short sighted way to look at things, but that is the way most people seem to think.

If I was debating, all I would need to do is bring up any other crisis that overshadows climate change. How about this? Since mankind's stupidity is making climate change worse, I would argue that stupidity is mankind's defining crisis. That way I win the debate outright with something everyone can agree on.

Canada's Image is in for Another Beating

Apparently Alberta's environment minister is going to Copenhagen to defend Canada's honour internationally.

This is like throwing water on a gasoline fire. Could it be that Albertans really think that global warming is a hoax, and that environmentalists are idiots? The last thing we need is an Albertan "environment" minister presenting an argument on an international stage, for why we need to continue spewing CO2. I just heard him on CKCO news, and he is going with the argument that the tar sands are only a tiny fraction of the CO2 production in the world. That is not going to help our image one bit.

My advice to Rob Renner. Please stay home and save a few tons of CO2. Your presence is not required, for one thing. Alberta is not even recognized as a nation. And your argument is basically saying "we don't care what you think, we're telling you this is no problem" If you are not bringing any solution, then all you are going to do is make Canada look even more stupid than Harper has done already. The only way you could make the situation worse is if you brought a live baby seal on stage and skinned it alive while the audience watched in horror.

The best you could do if you go there, is keep quiet and just listen to some people.

Propaganda: Stolen Emails and Climate Change

Global Warming, or as I sometimes call it "Extended Motorcycle Season", or alternate title "Shortening the Motorcycle Trip to the Beach" is back in the headlines. Now Mark Steyn and Sarah Palin are weighing in on the topic again.

Here are some comments by Sarah Palin, ex-Governor of Alaska on Facebook (I sure hope it's not a spoof site, it's so hard to tell though).

"The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures"

and on the same page Sarah asserts

"I’ve never denied the reality of climate change; in fact, I was the first governor to create a subcabinet position to deal specifically with the issue. I saw the impact of changing weather patterns firsthand while serving as governor of our only Arctic state. But while we recognize the effects of changing water levels, erosion patterns, and glacial ice melt, .... "

I wonder if she sees that there is an inconsistency in her position. She accuses the scientists of "Hiding the decline of temperatures", but acknowledges the reality of climate change with glacial ice melt. Doesn't glacial ice melt suggest there is actually no need to hide a "decline in global temperatures"? I'm a little disappointed Sarah does not also admit the water is rising (not just "changing"), and that she neglects to mention the disappearing Arctic sea ice, which is close to Alaska, but then I shouldn't expect too much from Sarah.

So we all agree that global temperatures are warming, but the scientists are being accused of trying to "hide the decline" of something. Exactly what was supposedly declining is not mentioned, but all the critics assure us it is referring to a decline in global temperatures. I don't get it. What decline is there to hide if everyone already agrees the the temperatures are actually going up?

Now here is a paragraph from Mark Steyn. Mark is not a climatologist, and never claimed to be one. Mark's main interests these days are free speech and Muslim procreation levels. But he can take time out to harangue scientists who are looking at climate change data, based on some of their emails from ten years ago that were stolen and then made public. I'll tell you one thing, I would pay good money if I could get my hands on all Mark Steyn's personal emails for the last ten years. But that sadly did not happen, I guess the scientists had better things to do.

So this gives Mark the opening he needs to have a go at them:

Mark Steyn:

"The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it's that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the "peer-review" process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The "science" of the CRU dominates the "science" behind the UN IPCC, which dominates the "science" behind the Congressional cap-&-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it's President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet. But don't worry, it's all "peer-reviewed"."

Mark starts off with the accusation that I have outsourced my marbles to the "Peer reviewed set". Well to be fair, not just me, but anyone who has a tendency to believe the climate scientists over the opinion writers.

In response to Mark, I will say that I would rather outsource my marbles to somebody with an education, who is working on the climate change issue, than to a popular writer whose appeal is based on mindless fearmongering, and insults. Wait, I forgot to mention that I have not "outsourced my marbles". That's why I can still think for myself, and why I can figure out in other ways (not just me, but even the likes of Sarah Palin and George W. Bush) that global warming is not a hoax. Although I'm almost tempted to outsource my marbles to Mark Steyn after reading the soaring prose of "gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell".

Picture is my photoshop of my Honda CD175 on the moon, parked where it is safe from climate change. Here is a link to some information on the stolen emails that provides far more insight than Mark Steyn, Sarah Palin or Fox News.

http://mind.ofdan.ca/?p=2650

Propaganda: The Climate Debate Warms Up

The climate may not be heating up, but the war between pro-climate change people and the deniers certainly is.

A severe blow to the climate change movement was several recent winters and summers in the US northeast have not been scarily warm. This is an area where many people important to the debate on climate change live. Including the government of the United States of America.

Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, who years ago called Global Warming the greatest hoax ever, recently declared "We won, you lost, now get a life!"

Now another PR disaster. An email server at the University of East Anglia in England's Climate Change Unit, has been hacked, and hundreds or thousands of scientists emails stolen. One of those emails dated 1999, contained these damaging words:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Unfortunately for the global warming people, this comes in the middle of a prolonged propaganda campaign to discredit scientists. I find it frankly appalling that any scientist would freely use the words "trick" and "hide the decline" when discussing climate data, even in private. Of course I understand that some scientists think themselves very witty and sometimes use words in ways that other people find very unfunny. I can think of several examples in the computer world, where programming geeks are very fond of telling their users that programs have "blown up" or "died" when they merely stopped operation until a forgotten jcl card could be inserted. But users are accustomed to this kind of language from computer geeks and even use it themselves.

The problem with scientists is that although they may be very clever dealing with test tubes and such, they are often lacking in personal communication skills. Most people make allowances for this. I believe Einstein has made some embarrassing statements too. That is OK when they are not involved in politics and when they are not being attacked for propaganda purposes.

Scientists are also under attack by right wing Christians over evolution. As usual, they are simply incapable of taking the threat seriously. A movie was made called "Expelled: No intelligence allowed" that dug up a lot of dirt to make scientists look bad, and it looked like they were suppressing scientific data which might have proved that God (if not Adam and Eve) existed.

The propaganda attacks on scientists use every trick, every media outlet, in a well funded, coordinated, no-holds barred attacks. But scientists still have the public's confidence because they never (almost never) lie deliberately, and they have no ulterior motive in their findings. Or hardly ever. The propaganda battle is not fought scientifically, it is fought in the media, the political arena, in fudged figures, or in public debates. Most scientists by their training and nature are incapable of the kind truth-bending needed to manipulate people's emotions. The public knows this and allow extra credit for it. The most damaging thing you could ever do to a scientist is make public their private communications, where they don't even know enough to avoid words like "trick" or "hide".

George Monbiot has written a column on this, I'm not sure his attempt at witty irony is going to fare well.

The picture is stolen from this website. Obviously it is photoshopped, as Polar bears live at the north pole, and penguins at the south pole, and this very lack of land based predators is the reason penguins don't need to fly, and so evolved into a flightless species, and why you would never find flightless birds at the north pole. And the ipods of course.

Some Ideas on Ethical Investing

Ethical investing for some people is an oxymoron, but not for me.

Years ago I saw an article in a financial section of a newspaper that argued the only way to invest money profitably was amorally (without regard to ethics), and then suggested if you wanted to ease your conscience, give some of your gains to charity. My feeling is that this argument mindless nonsense. First there is no guarantee that investing in something unethical is going to make money, any more than investing ethically will lose money. If we could predict the future that way, we might all be rich and evil. (Can it actually be true that all rich people are evil?) Let's take an example of a classical "bad boy" investment, tobacco companies. You invest in a tobacco company, then make a lot of money (the basic assumption of investing in evil), and take part of that money to give to anti-tobacco charities. Now your conscience is clear, I suppose, as you attempt to shoot yourself in the financial foot. Sorry, this is just a ridiculous situation to illustrate the contradictions of the "evil investing/nice charity" school of thought.

But to address the fears of new investors, who are somewhat idealistic in their ethics. Often their concerns go far beyond avoiding tobacco, alcohol and armaments industries. They seem to challenge the entire idea of any company being truly ethical. How would you know, for example that a wind turbine investment isn't hiring slave child labour in China to make blades for the turbines? How do you know they aren't killing bats with the blades as they spin in the wind? How can you be sure that they aren't cheating on their taxes? Well, seriously I don't know, and really I cannot account for every single act of every employee of any company.

Ethical investing comes down to this important question. Do you believe that there is any good anywhere in our entire economic system? For people who deny there is any good in the economic system, are you doing that as just a rationalisation because you want to convince yourself that investing unethically is OK? Because I don't agree.

When it comes to making investment, there are varying degrees of buying into a certain industry. For example buying shares in an armaments company could make you money in times of war, but lose money in times of peace. Thus you are basically betting on, and profiting from human misery. But if you buy a bond with an armaments company, you do not make any more or less money during a war, and so are profiting less from human misery. And there is even a way to bet on peace, by "shorting" the armaments company stock, you make money when the war profiteers lose, and vice versa. That almost makes it the opposite of an unethical investment doesn't it? Meaning it could be way to profit from peace.

There are far worse ways to invest money than looking for ethical investment. For example, the popular method of investing in any "hot" stock, meaning a stock that has recently had a sudden price increase. Usually these investors chase the hot stocks and buy with the intent to protect their investment by selling if it drops a certain amount. This is a recipe for losing money. (Buy high sell low) Not always of course, but stock chasers do have a dismal record on the average.

It is generally a more profitable strategy to think ahead about how world needs to go in the future, given what we know about population increases, limited oil supplies, environmental degradation etc. Choose a stock that is going to help answer those problems in the long term, and stick with it through highs and lows. I don't see any worse financial return with this strategy than in chasing hot investments to make a quick buck.

A Perspective on Fuel Economy

Let's compare fuel economy in methods of transportation. In these measurements, the lower numbers are for less fuel.















First comparison in kJ per Km., as we are not always using gasoline as fuel.

• Walking 330 kJ per km (the fuel is food, in case you were wondering)
• Bicycling 120 kJ per km
• Toyota Prius 1600 kJ per km (Calculated from 5.1 L/100 km at 32,000 kJ per Litre)

Second comparison, switching to L/100 Km., but I included a Toyota Prius in both comparisons for a benchmark.

• Toyota Prius 5.1 L/100 Km (55 mpg US)
• Jet Aircraft 4.8 L/100 km (this is per passenger)
• Ocean Liner Ship 16.9 L/100 km (per passenger)
• Diesel Electric train 1.2 L/100 km (per passenger) (I got this from another site, as wikipedia was unclear about the units and passengers, also seemed unrealistic at 12 mpg for the whole train?)

Note that for two people to go across the country, the Prius would be more efficient than flying. But with only one person in the car and a full airplane, it is close to a tie. Again, if the aircraft is half empty, the Prius wins.

In this website Matti proves he can run his car for a year with less fuel than to fly two people from Toronto to Acapulco and back on a winter vacation. Part of the secret is that he has a VW Golf with only 12,000 km in one year. In this case it is appropriate to say YMMV.

New Ways to Measure Gas Mileage

Any article that starts with "Americans aren't stupid." that is written by an American, is sure to attract my attention. But this article is interesting to me because it is about fuel efficiency, one of my favourite topics.

The article really has nothing much to say directly about how intelligent Americans are. But apparently it would be better for Americans if they measured fuel consumption in gallons/100 miles instead of miles per gallon. And that if they did, they could make better decisions about purchasing vehicles to get good fuel consumption.

A reasonable start, but then somehow everything gets fouled up. In the end you are left with the impression that you save more gas in a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid than in a Toyota Prius. Is this another propaganda piece complicating things, with the aim of convincing you to buy a big useless vehicle instead of a Prius?

So here is an analysis of the points of article:

- A question is asked, which saves more gas, going from 10 mpg to 20 mpg, or going from 33 mpg to 50 mpg? The answer is going from 10 mpg to 20 mpg will save 5 times as much gas.

- Next, we learn that 20 mpg is the mileage of a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, and 50 mpg is the mileage of a Toyota Prius.

- This in *no way* is meant to imply that the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid saves 5 times as much gas as a Prius. Of course not! It only means that the Tahoe saves 5 times as much as a vehicle that consumes one fifth of the amount of a Tahoe. And that a Prius saves hardly any gas compared to a Toyota Echo. But I'm pretty sure that some people, OK maybe only stupid people, are going to come away with the impression that the Tahoe saves 5 times as much gas as a Prius, even though right in the article he states:

"Yes, the Prius uses less gasoline overall, and that's absolutely greener. But like it or not, lots and lots and lots of Americans need large vehicles for their jobs, their families, and their lives."

My comment is that I see lots and lots of Americans who get a big SUV for 1. safety against other SUV's 2. To not get stuck in snow. 3. (and least of all) to carry lots of stuff. My estimate is that 99% of the time, an SUV is not doing anything that say a Toyota Matrix could not do. And the other 1% of the time, you really don't need that stuff anyway. The other two reasons are also debatable. So if a person was not stupid, and actually wanted to save gas instead of rearranging numbers, they might start by re-examining the faulty assumptions about needing the big vehicles.

But this is not about being smart or stupid is it? Americans are not worried about being called stupid, but they are really worried about being called something else for driving in a tiny car. And never in a million years is that kind of thinking going to change just by measuring gal/100 miles instead of miles/gallon.


This opinion piece is also being discussed in a 4x4 forum. Granted, they are not talking about how it proves the Tahoe has better gas mileage than a Prius. Also they are not Americans. But I can safely assume that "Road Dawg" would never consider driving a Prius.

Buggywhips and the Green Car Challenge

Jay Leno is back on the air, and I'll admit I usually like listening to him. Last night, though, his guest was Rush Limbaugh, one of the most widely listened to radio hosts in the USA, who also (in my opinion) is an ignorant right-wing ass. OK now I got that out of the way, I will make my own comment on the appearance, as I finally decided to watch, in a very close decision.

Jay took issue with Rush's criticism of Obama for bailing out the auto industry. Jay's point was that he wanted cars to be made in the USA. Rush's point was that you had to let the market take its course, and Rush was certain that whatever the market did would be good. I am not sure that sending all the manufacturing jobs to China would be the best outcome, which is exactly what Jay was worried about too. Jay Leno represents the average American with general knowledge who can also use reason. The Rush came back with an analogy of the type that I love because it is so easy to turn around against the perpetrator.

Rush said that the car industry today is like the buggy whip industry of a hundred years ago. Let it fail, something better will come along if you just leave the free market alone. What Rush appears to not understand about this analogy is that buggy whips are not like cars. Buggy whips are so easy to make that even I could make one. And if you really need to hit a horse, maybe a long stick would do in a pinch. The buggy whip industry died a natural death. But manufacturing a car is complicated, and involves many different processes. From making steel to developing electronics. If manufacturing moves away from the USA, all that will be left is an unskilled and almost defenseless country with no domestic manufacturing. When the factories have gone, they do not come back.

Rush's highly paid job is not a productive one. Rush is more like a parasitic disease on America society - destroying knowledge with disinformation, building up senseless fear and promoting class warfare. If the free market had any say, Rush would be broadcasting only to some county of Oklahoma where nobody knows the name of the first president of the USA. It is the lack of free market competition that allowed Clear Channel Communications to buy out all the competitive radio stations and replace them with the sea-to-sea drone of Rush Limbaugh's ignorant rants.

What Rush has done to radio, he wants to do to the American car industry - destroy it.

But nothing illustrates Rush's lack of character more than the "Green Car Challenge" Jay has set up a race track with obstacles, and he wants some of his guests to drive an electric Ford Focus around the track as fast as possible. Last week, Drew Barrymore was a good sport and did a nice job, missing the cutouts of Al Gore on the second lap. Rush seemed quite a poor driver to me, and refused to wear the helmet. He gave up on the last lap and simply ran back and forth over the cutout of Al Gore, then said he lost on purpose. Jay kept up his cheerful demeanor, but I think I know how he felt.