| Wednesday,
May 28, 2008 Remarks
on Dyson's article
Dear Dr Pournelle:
Reading Dr Dyson's thoughts on matters has always been
worthwhile but I fear he has gone daft with his remarks on what he rightly
calls "a worldwide secular religion." Contrary to what he says, the ethics
of environmentalism are not fundamentally sound. What nonsense it is to say
that "ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful
preservation of birds and butterflies is good." It is nonsense because, as a
guideline for behaviour it is amorphous, vague and indeterminate. What is
"ruthless destruction"? The phrase evokes images of wicked capitalists
cackling evilly, rubbing their hands together, as they plan to pave over a
pristine forest just for the pleasure of committing so nefarious an act. Is
destruction of habitat to clear an area for the construction of a power
plant "evil?" Is a farmer being "ruthless" when he clears land for a field?
I could continue in this vein, but this "religion" falls apart under even
rudimentary consideration.
Environmentalism is the religion for the intellectual
classes. It holds great appeal for guilt-ridden Obama supporters whose
penance for committing the environmental sin of buying an SUV is to burden
themselves with the task of forcing others, far less affluent than they are,
to go "green."
Oleg Panczenko
Well now, I wouldn't quite say that... What Freeman
Dyson is doing is paying tribute to the generalized "don't be beastly"
philosophy of the Enlightenment. I agree there's not a lot of philosophical
stuffing underneath that. Yet it seems intuitive that we ought not be
beastly to the animals, and that a pristine wilderness is more attractive to
more people than a polluted waste heap. (Of course archeologists love to
find a kitchen midden.)
In any event, one need one subscribe to Dyson's
generalized enlightenment secular religion to appreciate his logic on other
matters.
==
Am I the only one that finds this a bit unsettling?
Dr. P,
I read Freeman Dyson’s “review”, and I’ll keep most of
what I thought about that out of this. There was one thing in particular
though that grabbed my attention:
“Carbon-eating trees could convert most of
the carbon that they absorb from the atmosphere into some chemically
stable form and bury it underground. Or they could convert the carbon
into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals. Biotechnology is
enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any molecule of
carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling's wiggles prove that a
big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes within the
grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the world's
forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same species,
the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as habitats
for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be reduced
by half in about fifty years.”
I’m not one of those scared by “Frankenfoods” or most
products of genetic engineering; something I should get out in the open so
you understand that I am not easily frightened by this sort of thing. That
said, the concept of replanting large swathes of the Earth with trees that
don’t behave like trees evolved to do bothers me some.
I don’t know if they’d take over, but enough of them
could push the CO2 concentration low enough to cause some sort of trouble if
they were successful and really effective. Plants need CO2, so removing too
much of it can’t be a good thing. Biologists can feel free to correct me on
that, but it was my gut reaction to this whole idea.
That sort of biotech would be well-intentioned, and we
know what road is paved in that fashion. Freeman Dyson is undoubtedly much
cleverer than I, but the tree idea on that scale seems a bit too clever to
me.
Steve.
I think you have gone beyond his point, but I
understand your concerns. Me, I wouldn't plant a lot of such trees until I
had some handle on control; but then I have always said we first need to
understand the situation before we start looking for remedies.
I think Dyson's main point was that we ought to be
looking for technologies to use in case things go badly, not that we ought
to rush out to Do Something Now.
=========
Flex fuel?
Concerning Flex Fuel vehicles, perhaps my own
experience would be helpful in explaining the problem. My experience began
in the mid 1960's with propane fuel systems used by a farm company for which
I worked. My experience with propane systems reveled that propane has less
energy content than gasoline. This could be compensated for by increasing
the compression ratio of the engine to take advantage of the much higher
octane rating of Propane (105 octane or better). The engines running
Methanol/Ethanol can also run much higher compression which helps to
compensate for the lack of energy content in the alcohol. Alcohol still
can't begin to compete with clean, electronic, diesel engines running diesel
fuel when it comes to efficiency. Unfortunately, there appears to be an
inequity when it comes to trucks owned by corporations and the trucks owned
by people with Mexican surnames. The latter regularly spill out vast
quantities of smoke. I suppose this will bring howls of protest. This has
been, however my observation. Gasification of coal might be viable at some
time in the future, though it is quite expensive, and is also of a lower
energy content, as is natural gas.
Jim Cook
==
Dear Jerry,
The problem with currently available FFVs is that they
are used by manufacturers as a way to lower their fleet averages for larger
vehicles. In other words, they are mostly trucks, SUVs and larger cars
which, of course, get lower gas mileage. Any particular FFV operating on gas
should get mileage no worse than the gas only variant of that model. If the
USPS bought vehicles that were larger than what they had previously used, of
course they got worse fuel mileage.
If we are going to go the FFV route, then we need FFV
Focuses and not just FFV Excursions.
Dave
==
The simple fact is that 10% ethanol put in place of
ether dropped the mass of the gasoline enought to lose about 5% to 8% MPG.
This raises ton mile pollution levels.
The Flex fuel thing is the result of Brazil mandating
GM and the other domestic manufacturers that E 85 and FLEX were "required"
to build cars in Brazil. Cheap labor and an integrated design to use all of
the cane sugar plant (begasse is the fuel for the alcohol plants located
close to the cane).
-- Allan Smalley P E
============
Subject: The Endless Frontier
Jerry,
I have recently picked up an old paperback called The
Endless Frontier that was edited by you. Your point of view has clearly been
stated several times in the book and it actually had me really excited about
the prospects that we Earthlings have and how close we are to seeing those
prospects. However, the book was first published in November of 1979. That
made me all of one and 5/6 years old at the time of print.
So my question to you is this: After some 30 years,
what are your point of views concerning the possibilities of space colonies?
As of this writing, "we" have just gotten new images from a newly landed
probe at the Mars polar cap. There has been GREAT discussion of which
direction NASA will be heading in the coming years. There is talk of China's
space program getting off the ground and possibly becoming a space giant
(Just rumors? Well, it's China, right? When have they ever failed to
surprise us?) We have a possible Commercial Space Port in New Mexico being
built. The list goes on and on and on.
Yet in reality, when it comes down to whether or not
we are living in space, it seems that we are WAY behind schedule. Political
hazards, as well as economical hazards, continue to hold us back. In the
book, the general view of most of the authors, as well as the editor, was
that we should have made substantial progress toward space colonies and be
well on our way to the next step by the end of the 1990s. We are at the end
of the next decade and the only talk I hear that actually sounds likely to
happen is the United States dropping the ISS and heading in another
direction. Several statements state several different directions and
everyone's opinion differs. With the state of the economy we are in, will
the United States even have a space program in 20 years?
And what about our resources? Fuel prices continue to
rise and the world continues to pay them with the exception of very few
smaller countries turning completely to alternative sources. Every other
year there is talk about using hydrogen powered vehicles, soy powered
vehicles, electric powered vehicles, or even hybrids. Well, the hybrids are
getting more popular in the United States, but really, why are we being held
back so much? Well, the answer to that is more complicated and political
than either of us would even want to bother to get into, but the point
remains that we are stuck in a rut and it will be some time before we get
out of this one. With as many resources available as space could provide,
why is no one looking up? It seems that instead, we will just complain about
the prices and point figures at those we dislike.
Substantial progress has been made as far as our space
exploration goes, but my questions are these: Are we really where we should
be? If not, what's been holding us back? And most importantly, are these
barriers going to keep us trapped on this planet until mankind obliterates
itself, either through poisoning the planet in almost every way that we can
imagine (and even some that we can't), or consuming our resources until we
end up with a real resource problem, or even through our political/religious
wars that continue to kill thousands of humans every year?
On a closing note, I've been reading Pournelle and
Niven for years. There just doesn't seem any way possible to say what a
difference you both have made, not just to me, but to the entire SF
community.
Thanks for all the writings.
Jared Glasshoff
We're working on getting Endless Frontier back in
print. Alas, since it came out, not much did happen; the book is still
pretty current in terms of what needs to be done. As to what's holding us
back, I have been writing about that for a long time. Mostly what is holding
us back is political greed and
Pournelle's
Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
I have said often what it would take to get us into
space. One
such was here. Of course that is only good for the country, not for the
election of public officials.
==========
The real reason why Bill Clinton should have been
Impeached
A large part of America's energy dependence on foreign
sources can be traced to Sept. 18, 1996, when President Bill Clinton stood
on the edge of the Grand Canyon on the Arizona side and signed an executive
proclamation making 1.7 million acres of Utah a new national monument.
Why would he dedicate a Utah monument while standing
in Arizona? Well, this federal land grab was done without any consultation
with the governor of Utah or any member of the Utah congressional delegation
or any elected official in the state. The unfriendly Utah natives might have
spoiled his photo-op.
The state already had six national monuments, two
national recreation areas and all or part of five national forests.
Three-quarters of Utah already was in federal hands. Still, the land grab
was sold as a move to protect the environment. . . .
In fact, the declaration of 1.7 million Utah acres as
a national monument, thereby depriving an energy-starved U.S. up to 62
billion tons of environmentally safe low-sulfur coal worth $1.2 trillion and
able to be mined with minimal surface impact, was a political payoff to the
family of James Riady.
He's the son of Lippo Group owner Mochtar Riady. James
was found guilty of — and paid a multimillion dollar fine for — funneling
more than $1 million in illegal political contributions through Lippo Bank
into various American political campaigns, including Bill Clinton's
presidential run in 1992.
Clinton took off the world market the largest known
deposit of clean-burning coal. And who owned and controlled the
second-largest deposit in the world of this clean coal? The Indonesian Lippo
Group of James Riady. It is found and strip-mined on the Indonesian island
of Kalimantan.
The Utah reserve contains a kind of low-sulfur,
low-ash and therefore low-polluting coal that can be found in only a couple
of places in the world. It burns so cleanly that it meets the requirements
of the Clean Air Act without additional technology.
"The mother of all land grabs," Sen. Orrin Hatch,
R-Utah, said at the time. He has called what was designated as the Grande
Staircase of the Escalante National Monument the "Saudi Arabia of coal." . .
.
Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah, pointed out that a large
portion of the coal-rich Kaiparowits Plateau within the monument belonged to
the children of Utah. When Utah became a state in 1896, about 220,000 acres
were set aside for development, and a trust fund was created to collect and
hold all the revenues directly for the benefit of schools.
Margaret Bird, trust officer for the fund, said that
because the land will not be developed, the schools stand to lose as much as
$1 billion over the next 50 years.
===========
Changing times
Dear Jerry, I sincerely hope this reaches you and
finds you in good spirits with a fair amount of energy. This came the other
day and after reading the article about UC Irvine, I thought you might enjoy
it's lighter, though no less relevant vein. Darrell
Subject: Changing times
High School
1957 vs. 2007
Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls
into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.
1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car
and gets his shotgun to show Jack.
2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and
never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized
students and teachers.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fistfight after
school.
1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up
buddies.
2007 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge
them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts
other students.
1957 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by the Principal.
Returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.
2007 - Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. Tested for
ADD. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
Scenario: Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car
and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college,
and becomes a successful businessman.
2007 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy removed to foster care
and joins a gang. State psychologist tells Billy's sister that she remembers
being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has affair
with psychologist.
Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin
to school.
1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.
2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car
searched for drugs and weapons.
Scenario: A foreign student fails high school English.
1957 - He goes to summer school, passes English, goes to college.
2007 - His cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally
explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist.
ACLU files class action lawsuit against state school system and his English
teacher. English banned from core curriculum. He is given a diploma anyway.
Scenario: Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers
from 4th of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle, blows up a red
ant bed.
1957 - Ants die.
2007 - BATF, Homeland Security, FBI called. Johnny charged with domestic
terrorism, FBI investigates parents, siblings removed from home, computers
confiscated, Johnny's Dad goes on a terror watch list and is never allowed
to fly again.
Scenario: Johnny falls while running during recess and
scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary. Mary hugs him to
comfort him.
1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.
2007 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She
faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.
Darrell
No comment. None at all...
==========
FLDS vs CPS
Dear Jerry:
We are all very glad to see from your reports that you
are definitely healing. Like almost everyone else, we support you doing what
you can, and don’t worry about what you can not do. Rest, heal, and grow
healthy again.
Fortunately for us, your mind was never affected. :)
So on the subject of the Texas CPS removing 400+
children from the FDLS compound, I am quite conflicted. I clearly see why
you might think the children were “kidnapped”, in so many words. But I also
do see that those children were in real, serious, and non-trivial danger
too.
Granted, the CPS here is Texas is often used by
vindictive spouses, lovers, and neighbors to plague perfectly innocent
people, they also do remove children from perfectly horrendous situations.
In other words, while CPS is without a doubt a perfect example of
Pournelle’s Iron Law, they also serve a necessary service.
In the case of the FLDS, there is no question at all
that the young girls were being raised to be the slaves of a clique of older
men; physically, mentally, socially, and sexually. The children’s mothers do
indeed love them. But they are incapable of protecting them.
It is not a simple matter of the parents having the
right to raise the children “as they see fit.” Children are not and should
not be treated as property, but rather under our law, must be considered as
independent beings, with inherent rights.
Granted, children are often treated like property, and
their rights re often subsumed or ignored. But in this case, I think CPS did
right, even if perhaps the right action in this case was also very
beneficial to the entrenched PowersThatBe at CPS.
So the question to you is, what would have been a
better or more appropriate action? All the other alternatives to removing
the children I can theorize have pretty bad results as well, at least from
the the point of view of giving those children a chance to grow up free from
the very real abuse they were subjected to.
-Paul
Of course you have mixed emotions. We all do.
But first, it is not at all clear to me that the
foster homes they hastily stuffed these kids into are less dangerous than
where they were. Sure: from your view -- and mine -- they are being
subordinated to a wild religious view unsupportable by our modern
intellectual enlightened lives. They are being taught that polygamy is
acceptable and glorious in the sight of God. And to leave them for another
two months in that environment -- to leave them long enough to actually
bring any charges and have trials -- is simply unacceptable.
And yet:
Polygamy has probably been with us a lot longer
than the state of Texas. As to what is a child, Roman boys were conscripted
into the Legions in the Republic at age 14, and at 16 could become
pater familias household heads. Roman matrons married soon after puberty:
typically at 14. Female maturity at puberty was the standard for humanity
for a long time; and I would bet that most of my readers have, within a
couple of generations, a 15 year old mother in their ancestry. If you want
to think about dangers, think of 14 year old boys being told that it is
sweet and fitting to die for your country, and being sent off to learn use
of the gladius hispanicus. I would think that fairly dangerous. We don't do
that now; but you know, we did allow drummer boy recruits into the Union
Army, and we know of at least one 14 year old Minuteman in 1776.
As to the alternatives, what about showing there
was some damage to each child being removed? What about treating them as
individuals rather than treating them all at once? Many of them were
arbitrarily taken away for no reason and with no charge. Not only were
neither parents nor children confronted with their accusers, they were not
given any specifications or charges against them.
Punishing people without charging them with any
crime or allowing them any defense is a pretty serious thing. I would say
that protection from that kind of arbitrary authority is more important than
the alleged protection of no more than a dozen kids among the 400 from the
allegations of sexual abuse -- allegations, by the way, that now turn out to
have been made by an anonymous accuser who may not even exist. It may have
been a malicious neighbor.
If we are going to establish that precedent -- that
I can call the police and allege that you are abusing me and your children
-- and never come forward to confront you, or give any real specifications,
but they will come and take your children for their own protection, I have
the power to ruin your life.
Look up Titus Oates to find out why the Framers
were concerned about such matters.
Hard cases make bad law. This is a hard case. It
has a basic conflict between religious freedom and our desire to protect
children -- but then our justification for protecting children is based on
our concept of norm, and that is a RELIGIOUS BASED preference. What is the
non-religious justification for saying that girls should not marry at
puberty? That men ought not marry many women? That marriages ought or ought
not to be arranged by families? That children ought not be conscripted into
the Army at age 14?
Well, we have laws, and this is a republic.
To the extent that specific laws of the state of
Texas were broken, that should have been alleged and the individuals
charged; to the extent that there were real victims of real crimes, they
should have been "protected"; but to remove screaming children from their
mothers when it was never alleged that this particular child was in any
imminent danger of being abused is an arrogant abuse of authority on the
part of people who really don't believe in absolute right and wrong, but are
satisfied with what they are doing because they are that kind of people.
Hard cases make bad law, but in the case of a 4
year old child who is terrified because she has been taken from her mother
and put in a house of strangers, I don't even see a hard case unless you can
show that at least one 4 year old child was abused -- in the legal
definition of abuse -- in that church. And so far that has not even been
alleged. The allegations are mostly concerned with a few kids, particularly
some 16 year old mothers who must have conceived when they were 15 or
younger. Fine: if Texas had confined its attentions to girls between puberty
and legal marriage age, they would have a better case. They did not. They
took all the children, of all sexes, and sent them to -- foster homes.
To live with strangers.
But the authorities have spoken, and must not be
opposed. The children will remain with the foster homes. Incidentally,
statistics show that children in foster homes are more than twice as likely
to be abused as those in households with their natural parents. But it is
for us to obey. The authorities have spoken.
SALVE, SCLAVE!
(discussion below)
==========
Postal FFV comparisons
Jerry, Regarding the discussion over whether we should
mandate all new gasoline vehicles be built with FFV engines. As alcohol has
a higher octane rating than gasoline, I've been confused as to why postal
FFV vehicles would consume more oil (as E85) than the same vehicles with
regular engines - more fluid perhaps, because the gasoline has been diluted
with alcohol, but not more gasoline. An engine modified for FFV use might
have many changes in the fuel injection system and the computers, but the
compression ratio and the valve timing ought to be the same, resulting in
the same power when burning 100% gasoline.
At a party over the weekend, I talked to a postman and
got part of the answer. Their FFV vehicles with 200+ HP engines replaced
vehicles that had about 62 HP. The vehicles are also larger than the old
postal Jeeps, and being made largely of aluminum doesn't mitigate the fact
that they're carrying much larger loads, partly because other efficiencies
have resulted in each carrier delivering more mail daily. So we have a
larger vehicle carrying heavier loads and using more power to do it - not
exactly a fair comparison.
Hopefully someone out there will publish documentation
comparing the same vehicles (in the same role) using FFV & regular engines.
My thinking is that the FFV vehicles should reduce gasoline consumption by
nearly as much as they increase alcohol consumption. While this isn't an
ideal final solution, it should provide more "flexibility", and might ease
the demand for imported oil, particularly if we eliminate tariffs on
imported alcohol (for fuel).
I'm glad you're feeling better each day.
Take care of yourself & have fun,
Adrian in Phoenix
"The surest way to civil war is to begin
prosecuting policy differences as criminal. There is no faster way to
destroy a republic than to give the loser great fear of losing the
election." - Jerry Pournelle
==========
Subject: The monster and the sausages
From last Saturday:
>The pseudonymous Spengler has come up with the most
understandable overall explanation of the sub-prime mortgage mess I have yet
seen.
I've heard a marvelous and understandable explanation
from an improbable source: NPR / Chicago Public Radio, an episode of "This
American Life": (5/9/08) Episode 355 "The Giant Pool of Money"
You can listen to it free at:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355
Unfortunately, the one week period in which they offer
a free download has expired, but you can listen free if you can take
streaming audio, or buy a download for 95 cents or a CD for a few bucks.
About an hour long.
-- Cecil Rose
=========
"I'm happy they are being killed because their lives
are full of crime."
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/26/
AR2008052601727_pf.html >
- Roland Dobbins
==========
'Calling someone a demon from the 13th realm would not
be a compliment.'
<http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38b00601.htm>
-- Roland Dobbins
=========
Subject: APOD: 2008 May 23 - Jupiter s Three Red Spots
and climate change,
Jerry
Seems that Jupiter is getting warmer. Who would have
thunk it?
Anyway, here's a pretty picture of Jupiter's three red
spots, from NASA:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080523.html
Yup, that's right - THREE red spots, thanks to global
warming.
Ed
That Earth carbon sure is powerful!
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