The Bigger Problem

"Miseducation is harder to overcome than ignorance." 
             -- Francis W. Porretto

Once again I run across a tidbit from Liberty's Torch that becomes the seed for a post here. Francis managed to encapsulate an idea in just seven words.  Sometimes, really great quotes don't get the appreciation they deserve. Maybe this one little sentence struck me so significantly because I have enough worldly experience.

Maybe it set off bells and whistles in my head because I've had to deal with the truth of that statement so much lately.

At the risk of boring my more intelligent readers, I feel like expounding on the quote above. I guess another reason for this is that I've got several decades of experience that growing older does not guarantee growing wiser; at least not in a society that coddles ignorance and stupidity.  Recently I've had to encounter the most egregious sin of stupidity.  Willful ignorance.  While lately I have seen this attitude most irritatingly in people quite older than myself, I try to mitigate my angst by seeing an underlying attitude of: "I'm old, I've paid my dues, and I'm not long for this world anyway."

Believe it or not, I've spent enough time thinking about this that I now have two categories of willful ignorance. In the first kind, the subject is confronted with facts that are so upsetting to his worldview, that he dismisses the new information and quickly moves on to something else that distracts him from having to really ruminate on it.  It may be in the back of his mind, able to resurface later if brought about by another event.  But the subject sort of subconsciously suppresses it because the cognitive dissonance is just too uncomfortable to deal with presently.  In this primary level, at least there is hope that the subject will accept the truth in the future.  When I encounter this in an individual, I can easily smile and drop the subject, thinking to myself, "It's okay, he/she's just not ready yet."

But the second level of willful ignorance is where I have to fight the demons that set my blood to boiling. It's when the subject makes clear and very declarative statements to the effect of: "I don't WANT to know." And more importantly, the statements are made with a smile and a smugness as if delivering divine wisdom from on high.  This is where I DO need grace from the Almighty, because I feel like slapping the ever-loving shit out of the jerk.

Getting back to the main idea; both of the levels of ignorance above are most often born out of miseducation.  Ignorance in its pure form simply means that you don't know, but you have not been indoctrinated in any particular direction, like a juror in a fresh venue with no prior knowledge of the case.  The problem comes from being purposely "educated" to believe things that seem very plausible, have been seemingly accepted by the vast majority, and are typically very difficult and time consuming to falsify or prove on one's own. Amusement of all kinds is the modern American sport. Ignorance is bliss. "I'll take the blue pill."

Why?  Well, as much as I don't like leftist/progressives, I'll quote one here.  Gloria Steinem said, "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."  Of course, truth won't piss you off until you are forced to come to grips with it.  It's like the child of any age who's parents finally throw him out of the house to go fend for his self. The Eastern Airlines employee or air traffic controller who finds out that the union doesn't really have his best interests at heart. The college graduate who finds out that there is no one looking to hire someone with a masters degree in "Graffiti's Social Importance."
So many more examples I would like to give here, but I'll move on.

People don't cling to false things they believe to be true because of evidence or logic.  They cling to those things because of their emotions.  Kevin Baker over at The Smallest Minority has many uberposts on his blog, along with some long-running exchanges with hoplophobes that help prove this point.  I remember sifting through long threads on his site as well as others, and being dumbfounded at the extremes to which anti-gunners will go to defend their position against all evidence and logic which demonstrates their position to be blatantly stupid.

One reason emotion is such a big issue is because nobody likes to find out they've fallen for a lie.  Short-term lies on the personal level are one thing. Someone in your personal world lies to you, but you eventually find out. Most of your anger can be righteously directed at them, and once you've calmed down you can at least feel good about yourself for discovering the truth.  But the big lies that will really rock your world are just too painful to deal with for a lot of people. Big lies that you find out you actually talked yourself into because they sounded so good.  But it was wrong.  And in the realization it was wrong you become angry. You are angry because it made you feel stupid.

The bigger the lie, the more stupid you feel, and thus the angrier you get.  The force multiplier to the tune of 10X is the fact that you have no one to blame but yourself.  There's not one individual you can blame for knowingly defrauding you.  If you got taken in by Bernie Madoff, you've got someone you can focus your anger on.  But who are you going to take to court or see in shackles over the Social Security Ponzi scheme?

Nothing perpetuates and protects ignorance as much as believing that you already know the truth. Oh, I believe that there are indeed absolute truths. But they are the things which I am always willing to put to the test.  Any test. Over and over.  But when you've come to the conclusion that "the argument/debate is over," then the only thing you have proven is your ignorance. 



Minor Rabbit Trail:  It's so easy to be like one of the sheep in this parade.  It's cool to feel like you are connected with a popular movie star.  It's so easy to let people like Leo and Algore and Bernie the Commie Sanders do your thinking for you, instead of asking the epistemological question: Are they right? How do they know?  What are the arguments on the other side?  If the argument is over, why the need for the march?  Back to my screed.

The things I am willing to argue passionately for are the things I am sure are true, with the caveat that I know I am human and that there may be information yet that I do not have.  But show me someone who is unwilling to entertain a reasonable and intelligent argument, and I'll show you a willfully ignorant and downright stupid fool.

Bad Model! Bad, Bad Model!

I've been saying this for many years now, and it's especially important when it comes to water vapor.

This video is well worth your six minutes.

Hat Tip to Maggie's Farm.

Just Getting Started

That's right, almost nine inches

If we are only six days into the official start of winter, what do we have to look forward to in the middle of winter?  I mean, seriously, I've lived in the southeastern United States, Georgia and Florida almost all my life, and the worst months are typically February (I like the name Febu-ugly), and March.  The real cold and nasty kind of precipitation usually didn't occur until then.

So what do we have to look forward to come the end of January?  I have been looking at the weather reports in England and our own Eastern Seaboard.  Florida citrus growers look to be in for a really hard time if this trend continues.  The combination of cold and drastic increases in fuel prices will make trying to save their trees nearly impossible without going into bankruptcy.

I would imagine right now that the vast majority of people living in the flyover country of these United States would like to see some very sudden evidence of global warming. Even people who have been conned into believing the idiotic notion that carbon dioxide has anything to do with increasing atmospheric temperature would be happy to build enough fires to pump as much CO2 into the air as possible if it would give us some relief from this cold.  Alas, that's not the problem.  What we need is for our sun to increase solar flare activity, which it hasn't done for over a year now.

I had kinda figured, based on all my previous years, that I had at least through the month of January to cut and stack wood, albeit in some cold and with some occasional rain.  But I did not count on the idea that I would be spending so much time clearing nine to twelve inches of snow just to get at the wood to cut it.

It never got above 24° F yesterday, and there were occasional flurries all day long.  The low this morning was 17° and the forecast calls for 12° overnight.  This snow isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

"Beau" the new stray we sorta adopted. He's very shy.

I know that if you are visiting this blog and you live somewhere like Minnesota or latitudes farther north or south of the equator than mine, you probably think I'm a wimp.  I don't care.  I'm sure that I could adapt to living in the gloriously beautiful State of Alaska if I thought it was necessary or that's where God wanted me, but since He hasn't made that clear, I think the idea of living in any climate other than the South Pacific Islands or the Caribbean is crazy if you don't have to.

Beau is starting to come a little closer to us each time we come outside.  I watched from the corner of the house well up above the yard as he and Moxie played in the snow. They are just the best of friends.  But the closest he is to being ours is that we put a bowl of food out for him and he sleeps in a nest of hay up under the front porch where it's dry and relatively well sheltered. He seems less afraid of Twyla, so because I hung back behind her and waited for him to get a little closer, I was able to get this shot.

I look like an extra from Lord of the Rings

I'm trying not to exert myself too much or do anything stupid to hurt myself further.  I do seem to be healing as well as can be expected.  I move slowly and carefully outside in the snow.  I couldn't help myself when it came to plucking a long icicle off the eave of the house and bringing it onto the porch to show Twyla.  I'm not dressed to impress anybody as if I'm heading to town.  I've got on the abdominal brace that limits my movement and gives me enough support to not end up so sore, but dang it, the thing makes me look like I'm pregnant with a baby elephant.  I look like a candidate for that "People of Wal-Mart" photo site.  Must remember to stay on the back side of the camera.

It's The Sun, Stupid

Back in about the mid 1980s the crap was starting about CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons destroying the ozone.  In spite of my incredibly boring high school classes, I was fascinated by chemistry and physics and biology, so I had done a lot of self-study in those areas.  At that time I still believed in evolution as well, but that's another story.  The point is, I sought out good sources that really made clear in my mind how these things worked and why they were important. Pretty much the opposite of what went on in the government school, memorizing a lot of abstract facts and formulas long enough to pass a test so you can forget about it the following week or semester.  BTW, it was in my high school years in the late 70s I think, that we were being warned in the papers and magazines about a coming ice age.  I seem to recall a TIME magazine cover to that effect.

Then came that period where I learned to be a mechanic, learning all I could about everything from brakes to engine rebuild, electrical systems and air conditioning. In order to understand and diagnose HVAC systems, you need to understand at least some basics of chemistry and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.  A thorough understanding of the 2nd Law will seriously mess up any belief in evolution, unless you can fool yourself into thinking that the two things can somehow exist in the same universe.  But I digress.  Let me just insert this quote from the British media that I found via BMEWS, and then I'll explain what I'm getting at.

Throughout the 20th century the sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Recently sunspot activity has all but disappeared.

Gavin said: “It is the sun’s energy which keeps the earth warm and the amount of energy the earth receives isn’t always the same. I’ve looked at the evidence for global warming and while I understand and agree with a lot of it, there has been a lot missed out. A major factor is the activity of the sun.”

There is also solar wind – streams of particles from the sun – which are at their weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted at an unusual degree. This is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on earth and force what for many is unthinkable – a reappraisal of the science behind global warming.

It was thought that carbon dioxide emissions rather than the sun was the bigger effect on climate change. Now a major re-think is taking place.

The upshot is that Gavin is not alone in predicting we face another 30 frozen years, each getting progressively colder than the last.

You can read more about it here.

What first got me questioning the "management by crisis" stuff going on in the world, was that I had learned about earth science in general.  I was working on my private pilot license when I was sixteen, and you have to really learn about weather and navigation.  In navigation you discover that the earth wobbles on its axis. That magnetic North doesn't stay in the same spot from year to year.  You discover that solar activity can play havoc with radio equipment.  You learn all kinds of things that you just won't learn to be a cog in the average labor force.  So when I first heard the nonsense about CFCs destroying the ozone layer, I said, "You have got to be kidding."  First of all, the little ozone layer is but a small part of protecting us from various forms of cosmic radiation.  The magnetic field and water vapor play a much greater role.  Secondly, CFCs are complex and denser molecules that are heavier than air.  In order to successfully find a freon leak in an air conditioning system, you had to keep the sensing probe below any possible slow seeping leaks or you would miss them, so how in the world could CFC be finding it's way up to the upper atmosphere where the ozone is?  I smelled a rat.  Then I find out that the patent that DuPont had on standard R12 and R22 freon was running out.  We must invent a new formula to patent on the premise that "something's gotta be done."   Anybody want to guess who funded studies to show that CFCs are harmful to the environment?  Anyone?  Beuller?

What really irritates me is how many people, and a lot of them with college degrees can be so foolish.  Let's just take this one statement:

“It is the sun’s energy which keeps the earth warm and the amount of energy the earth receives isn’t always the same. I’ve looked at the evidence for global warming and while I understand and agree with a lot of it, there has been a lot missed out.

First question:  What evidence?  Computer models that have failed dramatically?  Mitigating evidence that has purposely been suppressed by East Anglia University and others who have a vested interest in not looking stupid, or worse, deceptive?  Second: You understand and agree with it, and then you say that a lot  -- not a little, not a piece or two -- has been missed out.  Wow.  In the scientific world, I mean the real scientific world as opposed to the one of consensus, where people with Ph.D.s vote on what they want to believe is true, it only takes one piece of evidence to falsify a theory and cause it to be thrown out.  Tell me again WHY I should take anything you say seriously?

I suppose the unwashed masses just need to understand that critical thinking has become as extinct as the dodo bird in the halls of academe.  Thou shalt not question the keepers of the faith in "science."  To do so makes you a, a, **GASP**  "DENIER."  You shall be cast down with the xenophobes, homophobes, racists, bigots, and all manner of subhuman life forms.  "Evidence?  We don't need no stinking evidence!"

Sorry, dude, but it really is the sun.  And because of the fact that we know the sun is shrinking, and because of the laws of physics, and especially the 2nd law of thermodynamics.  It is a lot more likely that we are going to experience more cold.  We should be hoping that solar flares start kicking in again.

Here's a little experiment that you can do at home.  Get yourself a couple of mason jars, quart or half gallon size, with lids.  The bigger the better.  Get a little dry ice; sold at many grocery stores.  You'll need a couple of small non-electronic thermometers, alcohol or mercury type.  In the first one, put in one thermometer and put in the dry ice and put on the lid LOOSELY enough that the sublimating gas can escape as it expands until you don't see any more solid dry ice.  The expanding CO2 should displace most all of the standard air in the jar.  You can then tighten the lid.  In the other jar, put a thermometer and about a teaspoon or tablespoon of water. Screw the lid on tight.  Set both jars out in the sun in the morning.  By about 3:PM local time, check the temperature in the jars.  Then write to me and tell me how much you think that carbon dioxide can contribute to "global warming."

My Solar/CO2 Heater

Back in the mid 1800s, an experiment was performed. They took a 5 lb. willow tree and planted it in a pot of 150 lbs of oven dried soil.  It received only sunlight and water for about 5 years. No extra fertilizer or food of any kind. At the end of the experiment, they carefully separated out all of the soil from the roots and weighed the tree and the soil separately.  The soil weight was about 149.75 lbs. and the tree was around 60 lbs or so.  What is the significance?  Over 99% of the gained weight of that tree came from the carbon dioxide that was absorbed by that tree.  It's chloroplasts used the energy from the sun to convert the atmospheric carbon dioxide into sugars that the plant used to grow.  That kind of amazing efficiency is just one of the small testaments to intellect of the Creator.

First fire in the new stove

We can use wood for so many wonderful things. We can build beautiful and strong structures, the finest musical instruments.  It is the most easily re-cycleable thing on the planet.  If it dies and falls to the ground, insects, bacteria, and fungi will decompose it rapidly into food for other plants.  If we cut it down or collect it and burn it, most of the "waste" product is carbon dioxide and water vapor, which are also food for more plants.  None of the paper products that come to the Ben-David house go out in the trash.  Any paper that doesn't have wax or plastic coatings or laminates becomes mulch and compost or can now be used as kindling.

This is a good thing.

I finished putting all the pieces in place yesterday, and by 17:00 there was a little fire roaring in the stove and producing a mild warmth that was soothing. It was nice to know that the weather report called for cloudless skies for Monday through Thursday, which means that had I run into any snags, I wouldn't have had to worry about rain, but I'm glad I didn't need the extra time.  I also feel blessed that it is a shallow roof. I think it's stupid to live in the South and have a 45° pitch roof as if you live where snow is an issue.  The gap between the original shingle roof and the new metal roof meant that I need to make a trip to HD for a longer composite blade for the jigsaw, but it was no big deal.  I needed a different type of cap for the stack, and we had forgotten to get a metal bucket for ash collection anyway.

It's a wonderful coincidence that where we wanted the stove is pretty much centered in the house. It would be a bummer to have one end of the house end up extremely cold.  It's also nice that it's on the North side of the house where there are fewer windows.  It's amazing how much solar energy on the south face of the house makes that side warmer.

It lit up fast and easy with some crumpled paper and twigs and the way the stove "breathes" there was only the tiniest amount of smoke.  However, if you've never had a wood burning stove before, there is an initial break-in period where the paint and sealants will smoke off.  The flat black stove paint, as well as the silicone joint sealing compound that I used on the exhaust system all smoked off for about 30 minutes, so we opened a window at one end of the house and used a box fan to exhaust at the other until it was all evacuated.  Now there is only the slightest smell of a wood fire.

Twyla's decorating skills are second to none.  She can take practically nothing and make it beautiful.  We will need to either find another rocking chair or I will have to convert one of the old chairs into one, but the scene in our extended kitchen is now cozy and comfortable.

This is not my first wood burning stove, so I have no illusions about the work involved in cutting, splitting, and storing wood.  No doubt many people think it's crazy to create that much work for yourself.  But those are the same people who think that everything will keep working fine in this country as we keep doing everything as we have for the last 50 years.

Sure it's more work, but I'll look forward to the absolutely necessary exercise program. Funny how that works.  The exercise you get from maintaining your fuel increases your metabolism which means you need less external heat to stay warm, and being in better physical shape increases your tolerance for cold even when you are at rest.

And to cap it all off . . .

The greatest thing about all of this is knowing that if the electrical grid suffered a major failure, and propane was unavailable or prohibitively expensive, we will be fine.  At the end of last winter, we had a final bill for propane of over $1,600.00.  That was with keeping the thermostat at 64° F and supplementing with small electric heaters.  I can't wait to see how well we do this year. If you've been keeping up with this blog, and the more intelligent information sources out there, you know that energy costs are about to rise even more dramatically in the coming months.

 The front porch is now a greenhouse. The temperature out there has gone from 33 at dawn to now 74 at 09:30.  I re-routed the dryer exhaust into the hallway, and Twyla runs the dryer either early in the morning or late evening. We are going to have a much better second winter compared to the first.  Baruch HaShem.

Now I have to work on that big stationary chicken coup.  Shalom.

Integrity In Science

More than fifteen years ago, I was calling BS on the idea that CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) could possibly be hurting, let alone destroying the ozone layer.  Most people who bought into that nonsense wouldn't know a triple oxygen molecule from dihydrogen monoxide.  By the way, there are tremendous amounts of dihydrogen monoxide in pretty much all of the tap water around the world.  This chemical is so deadly that if you inhale enough of it, you could die.

Today, I had the fortune of running into the post below.  All the necessary links are contained within.  I have to say that I am just a bit proud to have been on the cutting edge of reality and truth on this subject years ago.

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society – an important moment in science history

Posted on October 8, 2010 by Anthony Watts

Hal Lewis

We’ve previously covered the APS here, when I wrote:

While Copenhagen and its excesses rage, a quiet revolution is starting.

Indeed, not so quiet now. It looks like it is getting ugly inside with the public airing of the resignation of a very prominent member who writes:

I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
…
In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.- Hal Lewis

Below is his resignation letter made public today, via the GWPF.
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
What I would really like to see though, is this public resignation letter given the same editorial space as Michael Mann in today’s Washington Post.
Readers, we can do this. Here’s the place at WaPo to ask for it.  For anyone writing to the WaPo, the  national@washpost.com, is the national news editorial desk. Spread the word on other blogs. Let’s see if they have enough integrity to provide a counterpoint. – Anthony
======================================
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal
==========================================================
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making) 

One Man's Trash . . .

is another man's treasure.

But seriously, here is a link about a Japanese man and his invention that converts plastic back into oil. Or mostly does so. It is a video that is only about 5 minutes. It is well worth watching even with the English subtitles.  Now, greenies and tree huggers will probably find this to be an onanistic delight.  But me, being my analytical and skeptical self --  well, I've got several questions.  First, the video seems to be produced by some United Nations University, ostensibly a subsidiary of that vile organization.  That makes the whole thing suspect right there.

For a brief moment you can see the temperature gauges on the machine and the readings are around 350° C, which is about 660° F.  It takes a considerable amount of fuel to create and maintain that level of heat.  The video never tells us what the fuel is or how long it takes or how much fuel or BTUs or joules it takes to convert how many pounds or ounces into oil.  This is important.  Would you ever buy such a machine and run it at your house if it cost you $30 worth of propane or gas or whatever to convert a couple of bags of your plastic garbage into $3 worth of oil?

If after the initial conversion of an amount of oil, that oil could be used to power the unit for subsequent conversions and then the garbage itself provided all the fuel, that would make a bit more sense.  But if that's all the machine did, you'd be pretty crazy to spend several thousand dollars on a machine that doesn't pay for itself, let alone make money.  You see, if the machine was cost effective, some private company would market it in a heartbeat.  Due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the machine would need maintenance, and a whole big money making market would grow exponentially out of that.

But the video unfortunately focuses on the global warming hoax.  The ridiculous idea that we need to reduce CO2 emissions.  In case you missed my previous post mentioning this; the current estimated CO2 level is about .0385% of our atmosphere.  That's very low.  We would have much better plant growth and crop yields if the level were closer to a full 4 percent.  Shoot, it doesn't even begin to get difficult to breathe until you exceed 7 percent.  The price of corn has shot up again in the past month due to this insane idea of making ethanol.  This is an extremely inefficient use of a food product which is hurting the poor people who rely on corn as a staple of their diet.

Am I against the machine?  Of course not, if it can be made cost efficient. If all it did was pay for itself it would be worth it to drastically reduce landfill space.  I'm all for reduce, re-use, re-cycle.  Twyla and I save every scrap of paper and cardboard because it becomes weed-barrier mulch in the garden.  I don't use those plastic bags in the produce section of the grocery store, I just put the unpackaged produce in my cart and carry it home.  Every scrap of organic material goes into the compost bin.  We strive to have as little trash as possible.

We have more oil sitting under the plains States here in the USA, than what exists under the entire Arabian peninsula, according to expert testimony before the US Senate.  Yet we will continue to buy oil from a regime that funds Wahabi extremist Muslim terrorism because of a lie, and because of environmental nutjobs and "progressives".  Ignorance is bliss only until you see the train bearing down on you. Ignorance is actually a dangerous thing.

That is all.