"A Few Short, Random Thoughts"

 

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

March 17, 2024

“A Few Short, Random Thoughts”

 

“Listen to your hunches, pay attention to your intuition, do not dismiss your random

thoughts, inspirations or ideas…They could be giving you the best advice you ever had.”

                                                                                                                Neale Donald Walsch (1943-)

                                                                                                                Conversations with God, Book 3, 1998

 

American values, which have been denigrated, evolved over two hundred years. It has become common to debase history and belittle capitalism, Certainly, one can find faults in both. One thing that is often forgotten is how rare have been revolutions that produced positive change. The French Revolution of 1789 eliminated a king and produced an Emperor. The Haiti slave rebellion of 1791 got rid of the French and eliminated slavery, but the nation has never had an honest and fair government. The Russian Revolution of 1917 exchanged autocratic Tsars for totalitarian Communists. Other examples: China in 1949, Cuba in 1959, and Iran in 1979. But the American revolution produced a government that evolved into the world’s fairest representative democracy. Capitalism, which creates winners and losers, is antithetical to today’s devotees of DEI, with its focus on equal outcomes. Yet, it is capitalism that encourages competition and offers choices to consumers. Free market capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system. It provides people opportunities, to strive to do their best in whatever field they choose. 

 

A few other thoughts: 

 

• Democracy – a form of government close to the center of a spectrum that stretches from anarchy to autocracy. It is not perfect, as Churchill said in a speech before the House of Commons on November 11, 1947: “…the worse form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Our democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It is rare. Despite its visible success, according to ourworldindata.org, twice as many people live in “closed autocracies” as live in “liberal democracies.” Yet, we cannot forget that while our government is beneficent, dependency on government, unless it is absolutely necessary, leads to a loss of freedom. 

 

• Capitalism/Climate/Environment – It was free-market capitalism that produced the Industrial Revolution, a revolution that defoliated forests, polluted rivers, and eroded the landscape. But it also raised living standards, gave people access to healthier diets, better housing and medicines, and cheaper goods. It did increase wealth for merchants and bankers, but while we complain today about income and wealth disparities, those differences are less than they were at the end of the 19^th Century and substantially below what they were when the world was composed of a few kings and aristocrats and millions of serfs and slaves – and those wealth disparities are far less in capitalist societies than in totalitarian regimes like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And it was capitalism that gave us the means to clean up the environment – our forests, rivers, and landscapes.

 

As for climate, there is little doubt that man affects its change. But the planet’s climate has been changing long before man arrived on the scene. During the Mesozoic Era, when dinosaurs roamed the earth 100 million years ago, the planet’s average temperature is estimated to have been forty-five degrees warmer than it is today. A few million years later, during the Pleistocene Era with its Ice Age, the earth’s temperature averaged fifty-three degrees colder than today. About ten thousand years ago, the climate became warm enough to begin to melt the Ice Age’s glaciers. 

 

When one cleanses the environment, one positively affects climate. Confronting climate change and improving the environment began to be addressed long before the advent of the EPA and John Kerry. As Bjorn Lomborg wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal: “The data show that climate-related deaths from droughts, storms, floods, and fires have declined by more than 97% over the past century.” We need to calculate costs – both societal and economic of climate-change measures – against expected benefits. While there is more we can do, we have come a long way. But governments should not use climate as an excuse to pick winners and losers. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand is fairer and better suited. In the meantime, governments, agencies, and the media should drop the hysteria.

 

• Immigration – Common sense tells us that when a country’s birth rates fall below replacement and economic growth is still the goal it must raise birth rates or increase migration. When people are admitted legally, authorities know who has entered. When migrants enter illegally, they arrive unknown. In my opinion, we should increase the number of legal immigrants, simplify immigration laws, allow for more seasonal workers, and, at the same time, tighten the border against illegal and unwanted migration. The country needs new workers and consumers. 

 

• Education – Thomas Jefferson believed that only educated citizens would allow the American experiment in self-government to succeed. We all know that women and blacks, despite education, were denied the right to vote in 1789. Nevertheless, his ideas were radical for the time. His founding of the University of Virginia in 1819 partially achieved his goal. Youth today should have an understanding and appreciation of what the founders accomplished: limited government of the people, consisting of three separate but equal branches – legislative, executive, and judicial, based on the rule of law. They should read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They should be taught how rights have evolved, and they should know history, to understand how the nation’s values have also evolved over time. Youth needs a clear understanding of geography, math/economics, philosophy, science, and religion; they should develop a sense of decorum and personal responsibility, and they need to be able to articulately express themselves.

 

These short takes are not definitive or all-inclusive. I have neither the time nor the ability to make them so, and you do not have the time (or desire) to read what may be obvious and repetitive. But I worry that we have lost a sense of what it means to be an American, that our differences rather than our commonalities define who we are. To live in this country, with all its faults, is to live among the world’s most fortunate people. We must not be arrogant about our luck. We need to recognize that there may come a time, as it did for past generations, when it will be necessary to defend what we have. We should never forget the blessings of individual freedom, and the benefits of living in a free and democratic republic, amid free-market capitalism – all of which we inherited and which it is our duty to pass on to those who follow.

"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"

 Two lessons come with Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia: One, Republicans should stick to issues, such as education, which are more important to voters than personalities, and two, endorsements by Donald Trump are fine, as long as he does not campaign in the candidate’s district.

 

New Jersey, as I write, is still too close to call.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”

November 3, 2021

 

“Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you

start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.”

                                                                                                       Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

                                                                                                       American author & filmmaker

                                                                                                       Michelin Lecture, Caltech, January 17, 2003

 

The moral of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf is that false cries for help mean real calls for help will be ignored. A climate apocalypse has been forecast for years, sometimes by the well-intentioned but naïve looking to do good, but often by the cynical seeking political or personal advantage. 

 

Two years ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, recognizing that global temperatures are indeed rising, compiled a list of dire climate predictions that did not happen. Here is a sample: In 1969, the Nobel winning German scientist, Paul Ehrlich predicted that everybody would “disappear in a cloud of blue steam.” In 1974 Time Magazine warned that “space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” The New York Times in 1978 reported that an “international team of specialists” feared the world would experience a never-ending “cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere.” Over the next ten years, Cassandras changed their forecasts from cooling to warming: An Associated Press headline from 1989 read, quoting UN officials: “Rising seas could obliterate nations.” And who could forget Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he predicted that Artic ice would be gone in seven years. Today, doomsayers blame every forest fire, drought and hurricane on anthropological-caused climate change.

 

I am not a climate change denier. In fact, I know of no one who is. The term is used by climate disciples to belittle heretics who dare question the dogma that man alone is at fault for a warming planet. They are ruthless in their treatment of those skeptical of their professed causes of a changing climate. In National Geographic’s film Before the Flood, Bjørn Lomborg is listed as one of the ten most prominent “climate deniers.” Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and, in my opinion, the most reasonable voice on the subject. He begins every interview by repeating that he believes the Earth is warming. His sin is that he uses empirical evidence, logic and common sense to demonstrate that claimed apocalyptic consequences are more hyperbole than factual, which he explains in his 2020 book False Alarm. Fostering panic over climate change gets Progressives elected, sells books and movies and abets corporate welfare for renewable sources of energy. But for the rest of us, it does more harm than good.

 

Nobody really knows the costs of climate change, but it is not cheap. “Analysts,” according to an article in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, “say as much as $150 trillion is likely needed over the next three decades to fund renewable energy projects, upgrade electric grids, mothball fossil fuel plants, seed new agricultural technologies, and pay for damages tied to climate change.” The questions have always been: What are the economic and social costs of doing nothing versus the economic and social costs of holding the rise in temperature below two degrees Celsius? And, is that possible? Regardless, funds will be needed. The job of convincing the world’s banks of the urgency of adjusting their loan portfolios to accommodate what politicians are calling for has fallen to Mark Carney, former head of central banks in Canada and the UK, and now the United Nation’s point man on climate-change finance.

 

It was the Industrial Revolution, which raised living standards for all fortunate to live in countries affected, that caused man-made emissions of CO2. And it has been that wealth over the years that has enabled the problem to be addressed. Assuring future economic growth is the best antidote to the problems of climate change (and of poverty). Policies that hinder growth, such as raising the cost of energy, whether in developing or developed nations, will harm living standards. We should all take responsibility for how we live our lives, which means being environmentally sensitive. But leaders must avoid fomenting a class war. We must recognize that the poor, whether individuals or nations, need affordable sources of energy to improve lives. Feel-good corporate welfare, in contrast, funds favored businesses in exchange for political support and boondoggles that are more spectacle than substance. 

 

A meeting of the G-20 in Rome last weekend preceded the United Nations’ 26^th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. Leaders of five countries (China, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia) failed to show up. Those five countries represent just over 40% of all CO2 emissions, according to worldometer. The meeting in Glasgow brought together between 20,000 and 25,000 politicians, officials and businesspeople from about 140 nations, fifty fewer than met in Paris in 2015. Nevertheless, London’s Daily Record estimated on Sunday that “more than 400 private jets will blast 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere…which will produce more global warming gas than 1600 Scots burn through in a year.” 

 

In Rome, President Biden brought with him seven cabinet officers, including Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior and Transportation. He traveled in an 85-car motorcade for a one-on-one meeting with the Pope. All vehicles had been shipped to Italy, with some shipped on to Scotland before heading back to the U.S. Perhaps such grandeur was felt necessary, but it seemed excessive and insensitive when the subject was man-caused climate change. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would have united in condemning such a monarchial display by the President.

 

With the exception of a trade agreement with the EU on steel and aluminum, most news reports said the Rome meetings failed to live up to expectations. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa said of the G20 meeting in Rome: “The world’s biggest economies comprehensively failed to put climate change on the top of the agenda ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.”

 

On the Glasgow conference’s opening day, Jeremiah’s continued with dire predictions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the meeting, likened the challenge to a James Bond “doomsday,” saying time was running out to save the world from global warming: “this is not a movie – and the doomsday device is real.” He warned that, in the worst-case predictions, cities like Miami, Alexandria and Shanghai could be lost “beneath the waves.” Johnson was followed by Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN. He said we are “digging our own grave.” The Prince of Wales, told the world leaders that “time has quite literally run out.” At some point, doomsayers will be right. The Earth had a beginning. It will have an end. Scientists have estimated that that time is probably a billion or two billion years in the future, based on a six or seven-billion-year life.  A changing climate is a prospect for which we must be prepared. But rather than giving a false sense of hope that we can forestall the inevitable, we should focus on adaption. What happens if we hit net zero in terms of CO2 emissions and climate continues to warm…or cool? Those who issue calls of doom would be wise to re-read the story of the boy who cried wolf.

"Fear"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Fear”

October 6, 2021

 

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,

alien philosophies, and competitive values; for a nation that is afraid to let its people

judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          February 26, 1962

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Speech at HEW

 

How far ago it was when a Democrat President could speak of open markets and of trusting the American people. Fear has become a tool of American politicians, especially those on the left, to help control the people they are supposed to serve. In a recent issue of The Spectator, regarding the United States’ handling of the COVID-19 virus, Karol Markowicz wrote: “We are in a moment of profound fear in the U.S…We cannot continue to succumb to a fear of life. We must not continue to be scared of each other.” Yet, politicians used fear to place the sick in nursing homes, and to close places of worship, schools and businesses, and to issue mask and vaccine mandates. 

 

As well, fear of climate change infects our youth. Writing in February 2020 in The Washington Post, Jason Plautz wrote: “Kids are terrified, anxious and depressed about climate change,” while academics, politicians and certain businesses thrive on this fear. Michael Moore and Al Gore made millions out of scaring people about climate change. Thomas P. Gloria, managing director of Industrial Ecology Solutions and Program Director, Sustainability, Harvard Extension School, wrote in the April 22, 2020, edition of the Harvard Gazette: “My fear is, despite the science and the early warning signals that we bear witness to – record temperatures, 1000-year storms, glacial retreat, coral reefs dying on a continental scale – global society may finally wake up, but it may be too late.” 

 

Fear of expressing non-conventional ideas has become pervasive. Many will not speak out for fear of financial retaliation. Ted Rall, author of The Stringer, wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “What meaningful difference is there between an authoritarian state, where saying the wrong thing can get you arrested, and a regime of economic censorship, in which the consequence of unpopular expression results in unemployment, potentially followed by eviction and destitution?” A culture that cancels history and opinions is one that denies free speech. How many students fear expressing opinions that depart from a progressive narrative that has become ubiquitous? How many junior executives question their senior managers? Do members of Congress let demands of Party out-weigh their own consciences? Fear of failing grades, loss of job and political retribution are used to suppress speech and control people. 

 

Yet is this fear justified? COVID-19, is likely to soon become endemic, as Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease physician and professor at the University of California San Francisco, wrote a week ago in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “…no virus in history has ever continued to evolve to higher pathogenicity…An endemic virus doesn’t require continuing isolation and other restrictions.” And was Mr. Gloria injecting fear of climate change to encourage funding for his management consulting firm? Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Danish think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center, spoke in March of this year on Fox News: “Yes, climate change is a real problem. However, it is typically vastly exaggerated, and the resulting alarmism is exploited to justify the spending of trillions.” He added: “They claim that ‘countless lives’ are being lost to climate related disasters worldwide. Yet, the International Data Base (maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau) shows that in the 2010s 18,357 people died each year (on average) from climate-related impacts such as floods, droughts, storms, wildfire and extreme temperatures. That is the lowest count in the past century, a 96% decline from the 1920s, despite a larger global population. And 2020 had an even lower death count of 8,086.” As for fear of speaking out, Ted Rall concluded his op-ed referenced above: “When two-thirds of self-identified moderates are scared to express their views in public for fear of losing their jobs, America has ceased to be a free society.” It is this fear that should be our primary concern.

 

Fear is a natural human emotion, which alerts us to the presence of danger. It helps us prepare for, avoid, or survive threats to our safety. But the instillation of fear is also a weapon long used by governments to control their citizens. In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote of how quickly – less than ten years – Germany went from a functioning democracy to operating concentration camps. Fear is what keeps such movements alive, where lies are claimed as gospel, where history is changed to suit the narrative, where the line between truth and falsehoods becomes blurred, and where opinions are expressed as empirical facts. 

 

In such an environment, independent thinkers are excised, and bureaucracies are expanded. It is not necessarily the rise of new totalitarian governments that concerned Ms. Arendt. She wrote: “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations, which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.” We, as a people, should worry when government harnesses fear to perpetuate itself through special powers. We should be concerned when people fear expressing opinions contrary to convention – conventional dogmas, institutionalized by progressive politicians and bureaucrats and abetted by a sycophantic press and monopoly-like social media companies. 

 

COVID-19 has been a threat, which is being addressed by drugs and vaccines. Climate change is real, but it always has been and is also being addressed. What should concern us most are infringements on free speech, the cancellation of history and censorship. We should be alert to ubiquitous government and monopolistic social media companies. Facebook and Twitter have powers that Hitler, Stalin and Mao could only dream of. According to Statista, Facebook has over 200 million users in the United States and 1.7 billion worldwide. Twitter has an estimated 77 million American users and over 200 million worldwide. The ability to manipulate people, which these companies possess, is something that the world has never-before faced. And now they have become platforms for political advocacy, and they censor people and ideas that do not conform to their preferred narrative.

 

Warren Buffett once said that no one should bet against the United States. But the challenge we face today is unlike any we faced before – a cultural war, which divides people by race, gender and religion for the benefit of certain businesses, activists, progressive politicians and government bureaucrats. Unlike a civil war, this one suppresses personal initiative. It elevates the tribe, race or gender over the individual. It focuses on equality of outcomes at the expense of equal opportunity. Merit has surrendered to inclusivity. Work has lost its dignity. Personal responsibility and independence have been abandoned for dependency on government. Fear is a weapon of choice of those who prosecute this war.

 

As President Kennedy said in 1962, “…a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” Democracy only works when citizens are without fear to express opinions, and when the marketplace for ideas is free and open. The loss of that freedom, which this war on traditional, western culture is provoking, is something we should all fear.

"Common Sense - Where Has It Gone?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Common Sense – Where Has It Gone?”

September 29, 2021

 

“Common sense is seeing things as they are,

and doing things as they ought to be.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

 

Common sense: noun – sound and prudent judgement. Its best antonym: unreasonable – without reason.

 

Common sense is a phrase we all know but rarely practice. So why is it called common? In A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote: “Common sense is not so common.” It does not appear to exist among our cultural and political elite, where reason has given way to ideology. Ralph Waldo Emerson is alleged to have said: “Common Sense is genius dressed in working clothes.” That is, perhaps, what William Buckley meant when he said he would rather be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty? Today, politicians, professors, CEOs, the media and many in the world of entertainment dress more informally, which may be sensible in terms of personal comfort, but a lack of common sense pulsates through their daily activities and commentaries. 

 

Common sense has been banished by the self-righteous. This part of Connecticut is not immune. Last week, in my local paper The Day, appeared an article about the sensible (my word) refusal of Old Lyme’s First Selectman (a Republican) to bring to a vote a resolution proposed by the Democratic Selectwoman which would identify racism as a public health crisis. His refusal was based, first, on the question: What does racism have to do with public health? Secondly, he pointed out such a resolution would imply the town has a race problem. Even the Democratic Selectwoman has said that she does not believe the people in Old Lyme are racist, yet she wants this resolution. Admittedly, the town of 7,000 is estimated to be 97.4% white, but that does not mean the community is racist. Certainly, the Republican First Selectman is not. His daughter is married to a black man whom, with his wife and children, we often see at our beach club. And Old Lyme is among a handful of Connecticut towns that welcome refugees.

 

So, why does she insist on such a resolution? Does she feel pangs of “white” guilt because of who she is and where she lives? Does she believe systemic racism infests Old Lyme? Or does she expect that accusations of racism will help Democrats’ cause? The answer seems obvious. She is motivated by politics and a lack of common sense. Social justice, systemic racism and anthropological-caused climate change are lightning rods, which activate the juices of hypocritical progressives. Common sense be damned.

 

We see this lack of common sense everywhere. Does it make sense to say that the “rich” should pay their “fair share,” and then say you want to reinstate SALT (state and local taxes) deductions, when 95% of the benefit accrues to the top one percent of wage earners? Or is that simply hypocrisy?  Corporations have adopted to this new world by claiming support for all “stakeholders.” It is a feel-good word, but does it say anything new? Years ago, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) observed: “He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.” In Iacocca: An Autobiography (1984), Lee Iacocca wrote: “In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, products, profit.” Over four million businesses were created in 2020, with about 600,000 failing. According to the Center for M.I.T. Entrepreneurship, most new businesses are not cash flow positive for 3-5 years. If a business is not profitable, no one is served – not the employees, customers, suppliers, tax agencies or owners. Consider, when the Left decries the inequities of capitalism, the words of Thomas Sowell in Controversial Essays: “No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk, but the free market walks the walk.”

 

Bjorn Lomborg, in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, wrote that according to a forthcoming Lancet study: “More than 45% of people 16 to 25 in the ten countries surveyed are so worried (about climate change) that it affects their daily life and functioning.” Does that reflect sensible behavior on the part of their teachers? Was it common sense that allowed an uncompromising focus on renewables to cause electricity prices in Connecticut to rise by 14% last June? Regarding the stalled $3.5 trillion spending bill, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently tweeted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Childcare is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Common sense tells us they are not. Bridges, tunnels and roads are infrastructure, not entitlements. Her comments are part of a narrative that lacks reason and truth. It was “virtue-signaling that led to pride flags, gender studies and George Floyd murals in Kabul,” as Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote, when common sense would have had the U.S. maintain Bagram Airfield until the last American, ally, and Afghani who had assisted allied forces had left Afghanistan. Did General Mark A. Milley show common sense when he made those Dr. Strangelove-like calls to General Li Zuocheng? Do calls for defunding the police, despite rising murder rates in inner cities, reflect common sense? What about the discrimination exhibited in schools and colleges in setting different standards for students based on race? Is not that sanctimonious discrimination? Does it make common sense to mandate masks and vaccinations for university students and business employees, yet let in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, without requiring either masks or vaccines? 

 

It is not as though the U.S. is not faced with real problems, which common sense would address. To name four: Debt and deficits: The ratio of federal debt to GDP is approaching what it was in World War II, and that does not include unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In 1960, mandatory spending (entitlements, like Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid, etc.) accounted for about 25% of the federal budget. Today, that number is close to 70%. Education: We spend more per student than most any other country. Yet, we are failing many, mostly in Democrat-controlled, inner cities. In the 2018 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which tests 15-year-olds around the world, the United States ranks below the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average. As well, college costs have become untethered from reality. Families: It is well understood that children raised in two-parent households fare better economically and emotionally. Yet, family formations have been in decline in the U.S. for sixty years. In 1960, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, 73% of children were raised in two-parent households. By 2014, that had declined to 46%. Culture: As a nation, we have descended into a morass of multiculturalism, political correctness and wokeism, which has left us bereft of a national moral compass.

 

Common sense is looking at the world through clear lenses. It sees the world as it is, as Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, not as one would like it to be. Like classical liberalism, common sense is based on empiricism, experience and research.; it is skeptical of fashion. It recognizes differences in people, not in races. It acknowledges there are two biological genders, not the 57 that OpenLearn suggests. It adheres to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you; it is learning right from wrong and practicing the civilities once taught by parents, and in schools, Synagogues and Churches. Common sense allows us to focus on the individual, rather than the collective.

 

Horse sense is a synonym for common sense. The former was once defined by the comedian and actor W.C. Fields: “Horse sense is a thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” Yet we, with people-sense and with government encouragement, bet on everything, from Lotteries to sports to horses – which common sense tells us is a loser’s game and regressive taxation. Common sense, where have you gone? 

"Climate Change and the Importance of Skepticism"

 

Those Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Climate Change and the Importance of Skepticism”

August 28, 2021

 

“The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought.”

                                                                                                                     Walter Gilbert (1932-)

                                                                                                                     Molecular Biologist, Harvard Univ., retired

 

We live in strange times. We don’t think through the consequences of ending “endless wars.” We don’t debate what it means for our children and grandchildren to add trillions of dollars to a national debt that already, as a percent of GDP, is the highest since the Second World War. We permit hundreds of thousands of immigrants, many of whom are infected with COVID-19, to enter our country illegally through our southern border, while limiting the number of legal immigrants. We have replaced free-thinking skeptics with acolytes for big government. The dark arm of progressivism is aimed at increasing the power of government and decreasing the role of the individual. When it comes to climate change, progressives borrow from George W. Bush: Either you are with us, or you are against us. There is no room for debate.    

 

In part, this is because of the leisure time we have gained through economic success. The technological advances and the increased wealth of our nation and its people – results of free market capitalism operating under the rule of law – would be unimaginable to our grandparents. Included in our well-being is the environment, which is far healthier than it was twenty, fifty and a hundred years ago. It was individuals, not government agencies, that led that change – through eleemosynary organizations like the Sierra Club and Audubon Societies. New York City began to migrate from coal to oil in the 1930s and Los Angeles recognized the problem of smog in the 1940s, both long before the advent of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December 1970. Government regulations have hastened the move to a healthier environment, but they were not the instigator. It is the wealth produced through capitalism, operating in a society that encourages individual initiative, which has afforded us the ability to focus on climate. It is ignorance of that past that helps feed the myth that it is government, not free market capitalism, that has been the principal force for the good of our environment. In seeking political power, progressives pander to the electorate on soft issues – “wokeness,” inclusion, identity, equity, critical race theory and hurtful words – while they fail to encourage those traits that historically led to success: merit, aspiration, competition, diligence and hard work.

 

On August 10, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on climate and projections for the future. How many people have read its 4,000 pages? Not many, I suspect. I, for one, have not. According to summaries, the Earth has experienced a two-degree Fahrenheit rise in temperature since industrialization began about two hundred years ago. We know man has been responsible for some of that increase, but the exact level remains in question. Nevertheless, a recent lead editorial in my local paper, The Day, expressed no doubt as to the cause: “Humans have heated the planet about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the dawn of the industrial age.” The next day Steven Koonin, director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “As is now customary, the report emphasizes climate change in recent decades but obscures, or fails to mention, historical precedents that weaken the case that humanity’s influence on the climate has been catastrophic.”

 

The recent storm, Henri, was a reminder that climate and weather, while related, are inherently different. When then President Donald Trump, on a cold day, joked he could do with more global warming, Anthony Leiserowitz, director of Yale University’s project on climate change, denounced the comment as “scientifically ridiculous,” and added: “There is a fundamental difference in scale between what weather is and what climate is.” Yet the liberal media cites anthropological causes for today’s “extreme” weather. Predictors of climate doom have been with us for decades. In an August 10, 2021 op-ed in the New York Post, Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center (and in my opinion the most rational voice in the climate wars), wrote: “The first U.N. environment director claimed half a century ago that we had just ten years left, and the then head of the IPCC insisted in 2007 that we had just five years left.” Nevertheless, here we are, with climate Cassandras still shouting from rooftops.  

 

Progressives like to tell us to follow the science. But science is (or should be) innately skeptical of scientific “facts.” The motto for the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences founded in 1660, is nullus in verba, which translates as “take nobody’s word for it.” The qualities of skepticism and independence of thought that Professor Gilbert ascribed to scientists, in the rubric that heads this essay, should also apply to journalists who too often display a religious-like devotion to their favorite politicians and policies. Too many are deficient in curiosity, behaving like acolytes for narratives they accept on faith. This indifference by Leftists to facts is not new. In his 1970 book, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote: “Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.” Little has changed in fifty years.

 

Yet, much has changed for the better, in terms of carbon emissions, at least here in the United States. Using numbers from Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data, The United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 30% between 2007 and 2020 (6.003 million metric tons to 4.571 million metric tons), while expanding its GDP by 48% ($14.45 trillion to $20.9 trillion). But you would not know that from reading the Washington Post or The New York Times. The real culprit, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions is China, the worlds largest producer of rare earth minerals, raw materials on which many “green” industries are dependent. Their carbon dioxide emissions increased 49% between 2007 and 2019 to a level 123% above that of the United States. However, during those years, China’s economy expanded 420% to $14.3 trillion; so even in China there has been improvement. The message from the media should be one of hope – political leaders should applaud what the U.S. has accomplished, while encouraging it to do more, and they should point out China’s opportunities. We have no need for scolds.

 

What we need is less hyperbole and more acknowledgment of what has been accomplished in terms of climate change. As well, we should talk about adaptability, which is the only option most species have, and which we tend to ignore. The single biggest factor in the U.S.’s reduction in greenhouse gasses over the past dozen years was the substitution of natural gas for coal. Again, free markets led the way. Today, in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewables (wind, solar and water) account for 19.8% of electricity generation, up 224% since 2007. In the same period, natural gas has increased by 180% and now accounts for 40.3% of electricity generation. Over those thirteen years, the use of coal in electricity generation declined from 40.5% to 19.3%. While we have further to go, we have come a long way. Our success should be hailed as a marker for other developed and emerging economies.

 

Human progress has always been most productive and most equitable when based on millions of individuals making tens of millions of decisions. It is always least productive and most inequitable when a few bureaucrats make decisions on behalf of the people. One has only to look at countries that have adopted central planning, from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to China, Cuba and Venezuela. The politicization of climate serves no one, other than those industries and individuals who benefit and the politicians who do their bidding. What is wanted are skeptics, not group-think conformists.

"Creating Problems to Secure Elections"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Creating Problems to Secure Elections”

April 28, 2021

 

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s

cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for

our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

                                                                                                                  C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

                                                                                                                  God in the Dock: Essays on Theology, 1970

                                                                                                                  Published posthumously

 

A problem endemic to successful countries is the need to create issues that get people excited when things are going relatively well. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, except for a few years following 9/11, the United States has not faced a major crisis that galvanized and unified the nation. In 2008, we faced a credit crisis. It could have undone the global financial system but, truth be told, the crisis was over by the end of calendar year 2008 when the TED spread – a calculation used to measure risk in financial markets – narrowed sharply from its October-November highs, and high-yield bonds began to rally. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 last year was seized by politicians and called a crisis. A (deliberate?) confusion of correlation with causation regarding reported deaths was used as an excuse to expand governmental power and curtail individual rights. Despite conventional opinion, however, we do not know if shutting down the economy did more harm than good. 

 

The United States has achieved high living standards and diminished poverty because of capitalism and individual freedom. Is everything perfect? No. Should we rest on our laurels? Of course not. There is always more to be done. But the world, and especially the West, is richer and more at peace than at any time in history, which is a problem for politicians whose campaigns are all about needed change. 

 

It is true that external problems lurk. China threatens peace in the western Pacific. Russia is flexing its muscles along borders of its old empire in Ukraine. Iran, an impoverished state with little to risk and much to gain, is disrupting the Middle East with a revival of its nuclear program. North Korea, another state so impoverished it has little to lose, is led by a man who in a normal country would be committed.

 

However, in this time of relative prosperity and peace, Progressives convert addressable issues into partisan crises. While there are several, two, in my opinion, are forefront: race and climate. Others include policing, guns and immigration, with the latter having become a serious problem on our southern border. Methods used to create and promote crises are insidious: claim the moral high ground, censor speech, disallow gender-specific pronouns and cancel history. A consequence is the intimidation (and worse) of those in academia, corporate offices, entertainment, and professional sports who do not hew to an approved narrative. 

 

There is no question that there are racists in the United States. A country of 330 million people harbors every conceivable type of good and bad individual. Has racial equality been achieved? No. Bias against race is embedded in all societies, including in parts of ours, and change always happens more slowly than proponents would like. But positive change has occurred. In 1970, according to U.S. Census data, 60% of all Americans had a high school education, while only 30% of blacks did. By 2020 those trends had almost converged, with 90% of all Americans having a high school diploma and 88% of blacks. Interracial marriages have increased. In the 1967 decision Loving versus Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that anti-miscegenation marriage laws were unconstitutional. It is hard to believe today, but 54 years ago such marriages were illegal in seventeen states. Since that decision there has been a five-fold increase in interracial marriages, so that today, according to a Pew Research study, one in six marriages is interracial. Race is still an issue, but the situation is miles from where it was half a century ago. We are not systemically racist, and Critical Race Theory is derisive to blacks and disruptive to society. The assumption that blacks are victims and cannot compete against whites is an insult to the black community. Consider the success of black Americans in every field, from finance, medicine, politics and law to literature, the media, sports and entertainment. The term “victim” is tossed out too freely, as when LeBron James (worth an estimated $500 million, according to Forbes), Tweeted “Your next,” beneath a picture of Columbus, Ohio police officer Nicholas Reardon, to his 50 million followers. When followers complained his message was inflammatory, he asserted he was a victim. What kind of a country do Progressives want? Do they believe Reverend Jeremiah Wright was on target to preach after 9/11: “No, no, no, not God bless America! God damn America!” No true American has ever claimed we have achieved perfection. But we should all be able to say we are a better Country today than we were 200, 100, even 50 years ago. We must take care that we continue to move forward, not backward. The teaching of Critical Race Theory is guaranteed to foment discrimination and segregation, pushing us backward into the Jim Crow era. 

 

The public debate over climate is another issue Progressives have cynically seized for political purposes. Their arguments ignore knowledge and promote advocacy, which was clear a few years ago when “global warming” became “climate change.” An apocalypse has been falsely predicted by many. In 2006 former Vice President Al Gore, who sold his cable channel company Current TV to Al Jazeera for $500 million in 2013, said that unless drastic measures were taken to reduce greenhouse gasses within ten years the world would reach a point of no return. Led by China and India, greenhouse gasses have continued to increase, yet no apocalypse has arrived. Nevertheless, like the problem of race, there is truth in the fact we face climate change. And there is no question that man has affected what has always been the case – that climate is in a constant state of flux. The Earth has warmed and cooled over the millennia and will continue to do so. In his new book, False Alarm, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economist who has been studying and writing about climate for twenty years, quoted the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that had studied flooding around the world and “found that it’s not clear whether it’s getting more or less frequent, [or whether] there is a human fingerprint involved.” Lomborg points out the value of wealth and adaption in addressing climate concerns. (Wealthy people prefer to live in a clean environment yet continue to build homes in flood-prone areas). A review of the book in Forbes noted: “In the 1920s, climate-related disasters killed almost 500,000 people each year. Today the number is lower than 20,000.”

 

President Obama’s Under Secretary for Science in the Department of Energy Dr. Steven Koonin recently published Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t and Why It Matters. In an op-ed about his book, published in the New York Post, Dr. Koonin made certain points that would shock those who believe we are headed for catastrophe: “…Heat waves in the U.S. are now no more common than they were in 1900…The warmest temperatures in the U.S. have not risen in the past fifty years…Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century…Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.” Man’s impact on climate has been real, but, despite claims by Progressives, it is unclear what exactly that impact has been. To add perspective, in his op-ed Dr. Koonin quoted a former colleague at Caltech, Professor Richard Feynman (1918-1988), a theoretical physicist known for his work on quantum mechanics who gave the 1974 commencement address: “Give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution, not just the information that leads to judgement in one particular direction or another.” Humility among politicians is a rare, but treasured, commodity. What is ignored is that, like the problem with race, we are moving in the right direction. With natural gas substituting for coal, U.S. per capita carbon dioxide emissions declined 24% between 2000 and 2017, while U.S. GDP rose 94 percent.  

 

A hundred and fifty years ago, in the December 1870 magazine, New and Old, James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888), an American theologian, penned words whose wisdom still applies: “A politician thinks about the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” “Woke” Progressives claim the moral high ground, but it is passion, not reason, that motivates them. Passion may help win elections, but thoughtfulness and reason help politicians become statesmen. In his poem “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats wrote: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” Bertrand Russell, in his 1945 book A History of Western Philosophy, expressed similar sentiments: “the whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always sure of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubt.” Beware politicians whose promises lead to the tyranny C.S. Lewis warned of in the rubric that heads this essay.  

 

Win at any costs has become the mantra of Progressives. In a recent interview with Mathias Döpfner of Germany’s Axel Springer, Henry Kissinger commented on the belief that American society has been immoral from its beginnings: “It’s a revolutionary view in the sense it aims for victory, not compromise.” The cost is societal division. A lack of civility has become common. People are not held accountable. Rules of behavior are not taught at home. Schools don’t demand respect from students. Great books are no longer required reading, and civics and history are no longer emphasized. Equity, as a goal, has replaced equality. Victimization has been substituted for personal responsibility. The crises Americans face are ones of behavior and epistemology, not structural racism or a climate apocalypse.