Settled Science

“Settled Science” is the great oxymoron of the politically correct movement.  I don’t say it belongs to the Environmentalists, or the Liberals, or the One-World Order folks, though most of them use the term.  It is a politically correct term because it it makes sense in no other realm.  The number of people and groups that accept Man-Caused Global Warming as “Settled Science” is very large and very disheartening.

.

Thanks to rezn8d.net

Science by its very nature is observation, experimental investigation, and above all, keeping an open mind to whatever might be the result of such observation and investigation.  Most scientists make their living by challenging what others before them have discovered or believed, not by running around saying, “Me, too.”  Saying that science is settled is just a political method to quell dissent.

400 years ago, Galaleo said, “Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?”  It was a great question then, and, is still a great one today.  Are we so conceited that we think we know everything?  Are we so conceited that we think that after millennia  of the earth warming and cooling in cycles effected by solar activity and natural cycles, that now, in the past century, man has changed the balance of all our ecosystems?

I would love to see the proof of  global warming as a long term phenomena caused by humans.  I would also love for humans to be humble enough to open their minds to believe that what they “Know” may not be so.

I’m not holding my breath for the Al Gores of the world to change their minds or their tune.  They have too much power and influence wrapped up in the myth that they have helped create by stifling all other voices on “climate change.”

Climate Change

I have no intention of discussing Al Gore, or weather, or perceptions of more or fewer storms this year or last.  Instead, I want to talk about change in business climate.  Specifically, I want to address what is happening in California as a microcosm of what is happening in the country as a whole.

.

Thanks to Fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com

First, personal experience, then, some statistics that I think are relevant and finally some conclusions:

Personal Experience – In 1966, our business was started by my step-father who bought a small welding and fabrication shop in San Jose, California that employed two.  He invested in new equipment, worked hard and by the time of his death, 8 years later, the business had grown to employ 13 people.  Eventually, by the late ’80s, it employed 35 and was housed in a building of about 25,000 square feet on two acres.  In 1990 the business was moved from Silicon Valley to the Central Valley of California.  It was becoming too difficult and too costly to manufacture in the San Francisco Bay area.  Proof of this was the fact that only 5 of the 25 large fruit and vegetable processing plants that existed in the San Jose area in 1966 were still there when we moved out in 1990.  The City of San Jose and the Bay Area Air Quality District were making and enforcing rules with the good intentions of preventing air and ground pollution.  Unfortunately they were working from book knowledge not hands-on knowledge and created a serious burden for manufacturers, except for the Silicon Valley Industries that created “clean jobs.”  This, to me, was an early example of government choosing winners and losers in private sector businesses.  But that is a tale for another day.

When we moved the business from San Jose in 1990, it cost over $50,000 to clean up ‘hazardous materials’ from our property before we could sell it.  The hazardous material was an unidentified (according to the member of the S.J. Fire Department given the job of inspecting our property) substance with a red color that in the inspector’s words, “… looks poisonous to me.”  The material was garnet sand.  We used it in our sandblasting operation, blasting rust off of steel to prep it for painting or welding.  We argued and complained but no official in the city would dream of overturning the ruling of a firefighter (who had taken a 3 month course in inspecting for ground pollution).  Long story short: we needed to money from the sale of the property to make the move – the City had to approve our ‘decommissioning of our permitted paint and sandblast operation – so we paid for the “clean-up” (we vacuumed up two 55 gallon barrels of sand and had it shipped to a hazardous storage area – yep, over $50,00 cost plus more paperwork than you would believe), got the City to approve the property sale, finalized the sale, and moved.

We moved into a much larger facility in Woodland, Yolo County, California.  It was within the territory of the Yolo-Solano Air Quality Management District.  In order to start up a paint and sandblast operation at our new site, I needed to get permits from the YSAQMD.  They employed 5 people and worked out of a leased office space of less than 1,000 square feet in Woodland.  Fourteen years later when we moved from Woodland to Oregon, we again had to get permission to close out our permits for paint and sandblast booths.  This time there was no (perceived) hazardous materials issue.  However, we had to drive to the town of Davis to find the YSAQMD which now leased a purpose-built 19,000 building to house their over 100 employees.  Twenty times the space and twenty times the employees in 14 years.  This was possible even with a declining manufacturing base and fewer painting booth permits because the AQMD was “self-funding” in the jargon of California government.  By “self-funding” that meant that each year, the AQMD would develop a budget of what they thought they would spend to do their job.  They would then divide that number by the number of permits and send out the bills.  You can imagine how fast and how high our permit costs rose.  And, each year the AQMD added restrictions as to how much and what we could spray in our booths.  By about 1999, we were only allowed to spray paint with super-low VOC (volatile organic compounds).  Our standard, legal industrial paint that we used on our products cost almost $100 per gallon.  We had a competitor in Texas who used an enamel that cost him under $10 per gallon, and it did a better job of protecting the surface.  Side note:  this and other government-induced costs led us to lose a product to the Texas company.  They essentially copied a water trailer that we made and were able to sell it at a profit for less than our cost of manufacture.  We had to walk away from the product because we could no longer compete.

Our inability to compete with non-California companies was the main reason for moving out of state.  If we were to stay in business, we could not remain in California.  We lost one product to a Texas Company (who could sell it for less than our cost to build it) while we watched our sales drop significantly in California and increase significantly in Texas.

Some Interesting Numbers:

Currently, California has a population of over 37,000,000 people but about 200,000 are leaving the state each year.  Texas has about two thirds as many people as California but has a net population inflow of about the same as California’s outflow.

Californians pay out 10.6% of their income to pay for state and local government.  For comparison, Texans pay less than 8%.

Californians pay for over 250 non-education bureaucrats per 10,000 people.  Texas has fewer than 200.

Yet, California has 252 Education Employees per 10,000.  Texas has 295.  It’s no mystery that Texas schools outperform national averages in education outcomes while California schools badly underperform the national averages.

California has a State personal income tax rate of 10.55%.  There is no personal Income Tax in Texas.

California has a sales tax rate that is 2% more than that of Texas.

Is it a wonder that Texas is the home of more Fortune 500 companies than any other state?  Or that Apple just announced that they would build a new facility in Austin, Texas to employ over 3,000 people?

My conclusions:  California is leading the way in taxing its people at new heights.  It has led, and continues to lead in advancing “diversity” while failing to assimilate most of these diverse populations.  California is driving investors to invest elsewhere and businesses to look for more fertile ground.  In the short term, California is living off the wealth created by its great climate and natural beauty, agriculture, silicon valley companies, and earlier policies which made the state attractive.  I think as its government gets more controlling, its attractiveness will diminish and it will suffer hard economic times sooner than most believe.

20 – 40 (Issue #8) – The Environment

The 20 – 40  series was intended to provide guidance  in choosing the correct candidate prior to the November Elections this year.  The idea was to cover 20 important issues in the 40 weeks until the election.  We are now down to just under 16 weeks to go.   So far we have addressed 8 of the 20 issues:

Health care was #1, Jobs was #2, Taxes was Issue #3, Agriculture was #4, Government Spending/National Debt was #5, Commerce was #6, Energy was #7.  We also did #20 – Your Issue goes here.  On that one we got one response that I want to pursue – Innovation, a subject near and dear to my heart and one that I think will be very significant for our future as a nation.  We also threw in an extra issue – Legalize Drugs.

Issue #8  is Environmental Policy.  This is a tough one for me.  I revel at the beauty of nature.  I love to wade a beautiful mountain trout stream and catch and release native fish.  A walk on the beach or a hike in a mountain meadow both restore my energy and reawaken something in me that is good.  I also know that a huge part of the Environmental lobby has little or nothing to do with protecting our environment from damage.  Much of the it is pure and simple power politics.

If you don’t want the new prison in your back yard, I am sure you can find an environmental group that will carry your banner to save the endangered purple stemmed ragweed that has been found on the site.  This silly weed  (that may have been introduced to the site for political purposes) is found all over the world but somehow was designated as endangered.  Is this really about protecting the purple stemmed ragweed or is it a NIMBY maneuver?

What I want to see in a candidate is a recognition of the fact that like most issues, the field is populated by both good and bad groups.  I want a candidate to differentiate and not grant the politically correct “pass” to every environmental cause and group.  Earth First, for example appears to be more about gaining publicity and taking (often violent) action than about caring for our natural treasures.  The same can be said about many factions within such groups as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Environmental Defense Fund and many others.

I remember well the lessons learned as a Boy Scout.  Among the most meaningful was the credo that you must always leave your site cleaner than you found it.  That works well in life in general.  A favorite piece of mine is the Oath of the Athenian Youth (the Ephebic Oath), the last line of which is traditionally translated to say, “Thus in all these ways we will transmit this City, not only not less, but greater and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”  I don’t think that was ever meant to mean “nothing will change” or “nothing will be torn down to build new.”  I do think it meant that we be mindful of what we have and think long and hard before we diminish one thing to build up another.

I also think a candidate must have both a healthy respect for all of the bureaucracy surrounding the ‘environmental movement’ today and a skepticism about the need for all of it.  For me, I would think our Environmental Impact Study procedures could be reduced by half and still fill the function they were originally intended to fill.

In my view, any ‘politician’ who campaigns primarily on “Environmental” issues is suspect.  Mr. Gore was a prime example.  In my view he was wrong on many things, but none so much as “Human Caused Climate Change”.  I do not believe that humans have no effect on our environment.  I do contend that radically limiting human activity in the name of “controlling” climate change is a huge power grab and makes a farce of science.

I want a candidate who is not afraid to say that not everything in our environment is sacrosanct.  Sometimes weeds need to be eradicated to allow crops to be grown to feed people.

Global Warming Mimics Y2K

Planestupid is a group dedicated to showing that human caused global warming is, in large part, caused by aircraft travel.

Where to start?

The revelations this week confirming many of the conspiratorial aspects of Al Gore’s Religion, Global Warming, raise a number of questions.

Should we trust scientists or the U.N.? —  It appears that many scientists were willing to shape experiments and data to fit their needs.  They also seems to be quite apt at using peer pressure to silence those who disagreed with their global warming mantra.  As such, many have proven to be untrustworthy.  It also appears that the U.N. did much the same thing by silencing descenters.  Trusting the U.N. has always been unwise but it now appears that to increase funding and gain more control over more people, the U.N. has again misled us.

Does Global Warming Exist? I don’t know.  I’m guessing that you don’t either.  It does appear that we all need to go back and actually study data and how it was obtained rather than choosing a political agenda and finding statistical data to support how we feel.

Is the use of carbon fuels by humans the cause of climate change? My guess is that it has an effect. I also guess that the effect is much smaller than we have been led to believe.  I continue to wonder about events like the Krakatoa Eruption o f ’83.  If scientific estimates of the 1883 eruption are correct, it was over 10,000 times the destructive force of the Nuclear bomb detonated at Hiroshima.  Did it have an effect on global warming?  How big an effect compared to today’s use of carbon fuels?

How similar are the results of the campaigns to promote the Y2K disasters and the Global Warming disaster? A lot of people made a lot of money on the Y2K scare.  They sold computer upgrades, new programs, insurance, and you-name-it.  Many of these people did what they could to stir the pot and create the panic preceding Y2K.  My guess is that Al Gore has made a lot of money on global warming.  I know he has done a lot to promote it.  I think the similarity is great.  The difference is that we learned the falsehoods of the fear mongers on Y2K at shortly after midnight on January 1, 2000.  If Human Caused Global Warming is real and is as bad as Mr. Gore would have you believe, it will be too late to change our ways by the time we find out the truth.

We could get much closer to the truth if the U.N., many “scientists”, and all those who benefit from the fear of global warming would be honest.   This week’s revelations may help move us to more of the truth.

What should we do?

“Global Warming” or Global WARNING?

 

First, I need to tell you where I stand on the issue of Global Warming or Global Climate Change or whatever is today’s politically correct term.

I find most Global Warming faithful to be very closed minded about the subject.  If you mention anything that does not fit their belief set, most ‘warmists’ will attack you as stupid or ‘right wing nutcase’ or similar.  I think name-calling usually masks their fear that something in which they are so invested may not be exactly as they have been led to believe.  Most seem afraid to let in any data that may not fit their world view.

I think that anyone who intentionally spoils his surroundings is stupid.  I think that anyone, given a choice between two options should choose the one that has the fewer negative impacts. We should look at our environment with a prejudice toward helping, not hindering natural balance.  In medical school, young doctors are taught “first,do no harm.”  Wikipedia states that “another way to state it is that ‘given an existing problem, it may be better to do nothing than to do something that risks causing more harm than good.'”  We need to consider the possible harm of our actions.

We also need to weigh the costs of the actions we take.  To accept Global Warming Theory and take all the actions recommended by Mr. Gore, is, in my view, acting without consideration of the costs or the facts (as often opposed to the current pop-science).  I think we need to strike a balance.  If we continue to pollute the earth, we will destroy much of what has sustained us for centuries/millennia.  If we destroy our economies to protect nature we will have no extra funds with which to protect nature.  It’s Catch 22.

Now, the question:  Is it Global Warming or should we see this as a Global Warning?  I will write more on this at a later date but thought the following links had some interesting data that you don’t see often in the press:

The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill? –  ““This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.”

The Artic  – concludes that “Global Warming” is not Global but Regional

Ice at the North Pole – Not So Thick  –  shows photos of thin ice at the north pole over the past 50 years (like the one at the top taken at the North Pole in 1959) .

I also thought this was interesting.  –  

The monthly Weather Review reported [http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf]: “The arctic seems to be warming up. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters, and explorers who sail the seas about Spitzbergen and the eastern Arctic, all point to a radical change in climatic conditions , and hitherto unheard-of high temperatures in that part of the earth’s surface. … Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. … In Arctic Norway… where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now often moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended far into the sea they have entirely disappeared.” But the year was 1922:

 My guess is that most of us think what we want to think and filter what we hear so that our beliefs are rarely challenged.  The severity of the reaction of most “Warmists” to anything that challenges their world view continues to make me believe their minds are closed more than those they accuse of “ignoring the facts.”  I would be much more comfortable if more people were open to the possibility that what we are now told is “Global Warming” might be a cycle over which we have little or no control.  Maybe we could all use this as a warning that regardless of “Warming” or not that we should “first, do no harm.”

This was written on April 27 for posting on May 13.  It was not posted until May 21.