Monthly Archives: July 2015

Chaos Manor View, Saturday, July 11, 2015

“Thus the average person in the world of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 100,000 BC. Indeed in 1800 the bulk of the world’s population was poorer than their remote ancestors. The lucky denizens of wealthy societies such as eighteenth century England or the Netherlands managed a material lifestyle equivalent to that of the Stone Age. But the vast swath of humanity in East and South Asia, particularly in China and Japan, eked out a living under conditions probably significantly poorer than those of cavemen.”

A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

The 4 O’clock Time Warner net slowdown is in effect.

We have more on climate modeling. Apparently we spent billions modeling the wrong thing. We modeled Earth and validated the models by how well predictions from the newest models fit with those from the existing ones, since none of them were worth much in predicting actual weather or climate. They should have been working to model solar output: apparently we are due for another minimum solar output period similar to the Maunder Minimum that produced the Little Ice Age.

Possibly not; but it seems to be a matter of concern for some smart people while being ignored by the Warming Believers.

When we wrote Fallen Angels http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Angels-Larry-Niven/dp/0743471814 it was meant as a satirical satire and a tribute to Science Fiction Fandom.  We didn’t know we were predicting.

Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to ‘mini ice age’ levels: Sun driven by double dynamo

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm
Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”
http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Is a mini ICE AGE on the way? Scientists warn the sun will ‘go to sleep’ in 2030 and could cause temperatures to plummet

• New study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles
• Says that between 2030 and 2040 solar cycles will cancel each other out
• Could lead to ‘Maunder minimum’ effect that saw River Thames freeze over

The Earth could be headed for a ‘mini ice age’ researchers have warned.

A new study claims to have cracked predicting solar cycles – and says that between 2020 and 2030 solar cycles will cancel each other out.

This, they say, will lead to a phenomenon known as the ‘Maunder minimum’ – which has previously been known as a mini ice age when it hit between 1646 and 1715, even causing London’s River Thames to freeze over.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

The Daily Mail is not what I call a totally reliable source. Science Daily is closer, but still likes drama. They cite much more reliable sources; it seems to be serious. I am not surprised that the Believers have ignored this. Their jobs are at stake. We can rejoice that it gets attention, although whether it will make any True Believers reconsider is another matter.

There is also a publication by the Royal Astronomical Society:

Irregular heartbeat of the Sun driven by double dynamo

A new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645. Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

It is 172 years since a scientist first spotted that the Sun’s activity varies over a cycle lasting around 10 to 12 years. But every cycle is a little different and none of the models of causes to date have fully explained fluctuations. Many solar physicists have put the cause of the solar cycle down to a dynamo caused by convecting fluid deep within the Sun. Now, Zharkova and her colleagues have found that adding a second dynamo, close to the surface, completes the picture with surprising accuracy.

http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo

It is worth your attention.  Apparently there has been serious modeling effort.

…If I had to say, I think they may need one more dynamo layer in there, to account for the slight irregularities in when the extended minima show up. I think that’d take ’em past 97% matching observations.

And that this offset between the dynamos has already begun to a limited extent, because of the decreasing activity for the last couple of cycles.

(But again, this is just what I’ve been saying at conventions all over the southeast — solar astronomers are not in agreement about the AGW science. Note that the Daily Mail is blatant about it, but that the article in Science Daily tapdances around it and references not only the Maunder Minimum but the Little Ice Age. Quote: “Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645.” So direct, and yet not direct.)

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Jerry,

Incidentally Stephanie and I are working through

http://www.amazon.com/Atmospheric-Electrodynamics-Physics-Chemistry-Space/dp/3642698158/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1436631696&sr=8-2&keywords=atmospheric+electrodynamics

Apparently all atmospheric electrodynamics is fundamentally driven by charging due to the combination of ionizing radiation from radioactive decay in the soil, and cosmic radiation.  (That should be fundamental, but I don’t recall seeing it before.) That would suggest, though I haven’t seen any studies, increased thunderstorm activity during solar minimum because of the increased cosmic ray flux under the reduced solar wind conditions at solar minimum. It certainly ties to the Swedish research suggesting increased cloud cover under solar minimum increased cosmic ray flux.

J

Fortunately it has the attention of some of my friends who are more capable of assimilating the evidence than I am. You will understand that a Little Ice Age would be extremely expensive, and carbon taxes would be no help at all.

I have always wondered if the models can possibly take account of the radiation to interstellar space on cloud free nights, and the consequent warming effects of night time clouds; I have not seen the modelers discuss it, but of course it is not my area of expertise.  Still, experiments with a globe thermometer on cloudy and cloud free nights can be educational.

Holly Lisle is an old and dear friend.

Hi, Jerry,

This is my assessment of the state of being human and facing the hard stuff in life, posted right before I go offline for the next two weeks. I hope you’ll find this heartening.

http://hollylisle.com/life-pain-fear-and-the-whole-wide-world-breathe-in-breathe-out/

I appreciate your kindness and good thoughts in my direction, and wanted to let you know that I’m in good shape physically and mentally for what is to come.

And I’ll let you know what the results of this mess are when I have them.

Hugs,

Holly

Ad Astra

Hello Jerry,

Got this from my son.

If you haven’t received it from a couple hundred of your other readers already I suspect that you will appreciate it:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/plutos-discoverers-ashes-will-be-the-first-human-remains-to-leave-the-solar-system-%e2%80%94-glued-to-the-side-of-a-space-probe/ar-AAcLEUk?ocid=iehp

Bob Ludwick

I knew Clyde Tombaugh. Had dinner with him and Harry Stine and met him several times when I was on the board of the Lowell observatory.

More on this another time, but note the date on this report, and the lack of mention of it in popular press.  We can model the sun’s variability much better that we model the annual average temperature of the Earth, but no one pays attention.

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

Jan. 8, 2013:  In the galactic scheme of things, the Sun is a remarkably constant star.  While some stars exhibit dramatic pulsations, wildly yo-yoing in size and brightness, and sometimes even exploding, the luminosity of our own sun varies a measly 0.1% over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. 

There is, however, a dawning realization among researchers that even these apparently tiny variations can have a significant effect on terrestrial climate. A new report issued by the National Research Council (NRC), “The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth’s Climate,” lays out some of the surprisingly complex ways that solar activity can make itself felt on our planet.

<snip>

One of the participants, Greg Kopp of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, pointed out that while the variations in luminosity over the 11-year solar cycle amount to only a tenth of a percent of the sun’s total output, such a small fraction is still important.  “Even typical short term variations of 0.1% in incident irradiance exceed all other energy sources (such as natural radioactivity in Earth’s core) combined,” he says.

<snip>

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Friday, July 10, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

Wednesday Steve Barnes was out of town, but Larry Niven and I had a SKYPE conference with Dr. Jack Cohen in England. His laptop was dying so he used his companion’s, which worked, and the conference confirmed that my MacBook Pro, approaching seven years age, works just fine; we got the SKYPE conference going while the Pro was still on the Ethernet, then unplugged it – it doesn’t have a docking station although one would have been very handy – and it immediately went to Wi-Fi and the conference continued without a hitch. Jack will go buy a new laptop; it’s about time anyway.

We continue to work on the Encyclopedia Avalonica, the master book for the series, and we now have 50,000 or so words of text, which I have been busily rewriting. I am also making a Dramatis Personnae of The Secret of Black Ship Island, http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Island-novella-Avalon-Series-ebook/dp/B007MSK4HM , a novella that fits between The Legacy of Heorot http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=The+Legacy+of+heorot and Beowulf’s Children http://www.amazon.com/Beowulfs-Children-Heorot-Book-2-ebook/dp/B005AZ533O/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1436570472&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Legacy+of+heorot . Our next work is a sequel to Beowulf’s Children with a story that has its roots in The Secret of Black Ship Island, even though the events of the novella don’t appear in the books. There’s a reason for that, and it’s important to the story line.

Then Larry and I went to lunch. Back before I had the stroke last December, Larry wrote a short story sequel to Lucifer’s Hammer http://www.amazon.com/Lucifers-Hammer-Larry-Niven-ebook/dp/B004478DOU and it has been waiting all this time for my input. I hadn’t even seen it since the stroke – and it’s time and past time we finished it and got it off to our agent. I went home from lunch and started in on it, and Thursday night I finished it. Larry approved of my additions, and it’s on the way to our agent. I don’t know what she’ll do with it.

I’ve been playing, cautiously, with the Surface Pro 3, and it’s like the little girl who had a little curl; when she’s good she is very very good, and fun to use; and sometimes she is horrid. But in her defense. Sometimes the problem is me and my understanding of Windows 10. I can say categorically that Windows 10 is better than Windows 8.1; whether it’s better than Windows 7 is still in question, although I will say that 10 makes use of the touchscreen features, and often does that well. I’ll keep working on it.

today’s consensus?

Dr. Pournelle,
Models can be crafted to predict anything. This one predicts a new ice age: http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/2680-irregular-heartbeat-of-the-sun-driven-by-double-dynamo
Climate science predictions are like the weather, wait around a little and they’ll change.
-d

A new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645. Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.

As we’ve said all along we don’t know; but ice may be more probable than warm in the next hundred years. I’d rather be warm with larger crops than cold.

Omar Sharif, RIP.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-actor-omar-sharif-dies-20150710-story.html>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Dr Pournelle

Have you read the latest Fred? http://fredoneverything.org/paybacks-a-bitch-rural-wisdom-and-the-gathering-storm/

I shall be grateful for your thoughts on his essay.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

“Payback’s a Bitch”: Rural Wisdom and the Gathering Storm

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Fred Reed 

The furor over the Confederate flag, think I, has little to do with the Confederate flag, which is a pretext, an uninvolved bystander. Rather it is about a seething anger in the United States that we must not mention. It is the anger of people who see everything they are and believe under attack by people they aren’t and do not want to be—their heritage, their religion, their values and way of life all mocked and even made criminal.

The talking heads inside Washington’s beltway, in editorial suites in New York, do not know of this anger. They do not talk to people in Joe’s Bar in Chicago or in barbecue joints in Wheeling. They are cloistered, smug, sure of themselves. And they are asking for it.

We are dealing with things visceral, not rational. Confusing the two is dangerous. Hatreds can boil over as syllogisms cannot. The banning of the flag infuriates, for example, me. Why? Although a Southerner by raising, I would far prefer to live in New York City than in Memphis. Yet I value my boyhood in Virginia and Alabama. My ancestors go back to the house of Burgesses, and I remember long slow summer days on the Rappahannock and in the limestone of Athens, Alabama.

When the federal government and the talking heads want to ban my past—here, permit me to exit momentarily the fraudulent objectivity of literature—I hate the sonsofbitches.

A lot of people quietly hate the sonsofbitches.

To them, to us, the Confederate flag stands for resistance to control from afar, to meddling and instruction from people we detest. It is the flag of “Leave me the hell alone.” And this Washington, Boston, and New York will…not…do.

As usual, Fred has far more to say. As usual I agree with a lot of it.

I grew up in the Old South. I never had a slave, I never met anyone who had owned a slave, and I never so far as I know met anyone who had been a slave. When we learned of the Civil War, tariff was as much a reason for the war as slavery, which all my teachers agreed was an economically unviable institution doomed to be ending; and I never knew any religious people who justified slavery. I wasn’t raised to hate Negroes.

The Confederate Flag – and the battle banner – were symbols of state’s rights in a state where it was rare to know a Republican (joke was the Republican candidate got two votes, which were cancelled because it was obvious he voted twice). As Fred says, it was the flag of “Leave us the hell alone.”

We were taught critical reading of:

Oh, I’m a good old Rebel,
Now that’s just what I am;
For this “fair land of Freedom”
I do not care a damn.
I’m glad I fit against it-
I only wish we’d won.
And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I’ve done.

I hates the Constitution,
This great Republic too;
I hates the Freedmen’s Buro,
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle,
‘Tis dripping with our blood,
And I hates the Yankees that come here,
I fought them all I could.

Now I followed Ol Marse Robert,
For four years thereabout.
Got wounded in three places,
And starved on Mount Lookout.
I cotched the rheumatism,
From camping in the snow,
But I killed a chanc’t of Yankees,
And I wish I’d killed some mo.

Three hundred thousand Yankees
Lie stiff in Southern dust,
We got three hundred thousand
Befo’ they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever
And Southern steel and shot;
And I wish it was three million
Instead of what we got.

I can’t take up my musket
And fight’ em now no mo’,
But I ain’t a-goin’ to love’ em,
Now that is sartin sho’;
And I don’t want no pardon
For what I was and am;
And I won’t be reconstructed,
And I do not give a damn.

We read it critically, and we didn’t hate the United States, or even Yankees. I remember in third grade wishing I could find Sherman still alive, but I knew that was a dream.

And a lot of my classmates carried Zippo cigarette lighters showing an old rebel dragging his battle banner behind him as he retreated muttering “Forget, hell!” And they carried those lighters as they volunteered for the US Army in late June 1950, and all through their tour in the Korean War, because we were Americans as well as Southernors.

stars and bars 
Dr. Pournelle,
Agree with you on the confederate battle flag, even though I suppose that I’m not a southerner. The idea that it symbolizes racism is a new thing, promulgated through a poor grounding in American history and what Dr. Jack Cohen, Ian Steward, and Terry Pratchett have referred to as “lies to children”: oversimplification taught in schools because complex causes are thought to be too difficult for them. The danger comes when this is the last thing the children ever learn on the subject.
The Lies to Children are that the Confederacy and Civil War were only about slavery, that black slavery is the sole source and cause (and extent) of racism, and that white southern racism is the sole source of white violence against blacks.
The South that you and I remember, and that Fred writes about, was re-popularized in the ’70s, and personified by Jimmy Carter. It was only later that the confederate flag as a symbol was co-opted by the white supremacist movement in the U.S. prison system — giving the only credence to the simpleton’s viewpoint.
There are a host of tragedies here — the violent act that set this off, the loss of the real legacy of the Confederacy, and the failure of removal of the misunderstood symbol to eradicate racism are only a few. I consider your post of 7 July under the heading “I reckon…” to be perhaps the only positive.
-d

The actual Klan was disbanded by its founder as part of the Hayes/Tilden election compromise.  The original Klan was largely Confederate officers who during Reconstruction were forbidden from holding any public office. Think resistance to occupation.  The modern Klan never thrived in much of the South and was considered very lower class when I was growing up. And I never met anyone who actually hated Blacks to the point of violence until my father had a radio station in Ohio. After visiting I didn’t want to live there and ended up in a Memphis boarding house so I could continue high school at Christian Brothers College in Memphis.  Of course I was thought weird because I thought the law ought to be colorblind, but that’s another story, and it never got me in trouble.

State’s rights and the right to leave the state seemed fair to me. The world is never going to be perfect; but you can sometimes live under laws you consent to.  I left Memphis for the Army and never came back, but that’s where I grew up.

See also http://www.unz.com/pgottfried/the-neocons-confederate-problem-and-americas/ for political implications of the anti-Southern movement. and some on who’s behind it.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, July 07, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

I am hard at work on the excellent text Steve Barnes has made out of our story conferences and notes, but I continue to experiment with the Surface Pro 3 and the prelease work on Windows 10. Here’s some of the latest installment:

This morning I tried to use the Surface Pro 3 with Build 10162 of the pre-release Windows 10 at the breakfast table with mixed results.

Took Precious, the Surface Pro 3, out of the docking station thus severing the Ethernet question. It had been working fine there although I am still a bit antsy about Networking with Windows 10. Network worked fine now that I have discovered some magic tricks. One is that at least one of my machines expects a user named NetName\jerryp and a password, although I cannot ever remember giving it that name. Also that NetName/jerryp doesn’t work…

Wi-Fi came on automatically and immediately when I removed Precious from the docking station. I then used her as a laptop on the breakfast table and read a couple of the Wall Street Journal articles — easier to read on the laptop, but easier to find what I want to read by reading the printed paper. All this went well. Then removed the keyboard and used her as a tablet.

Things didn’t work so well. First, she was stuck in landscape mode.

Eventually I discovered that there is a setting you get at by swiping from

the left; I already knew that made a bunch of settings visible; it’s redundant to the old Control Panel, which I am pleased to say is still there. One command in the new block is “Rotation Lock” and it’s grayed out if the machine is in the dock — and doesn’t automatically come alive when you remove the machine from the dock, or when you remove the key from the system. I don’t know what turns it live. I did a lot of experiments with One Note, some dreadful, but that’s partly my fault. When I was thoroughly disgusted I swiped from the left, and saw “Rotation Lock” for the first time — when it’s grayed out it is almost invisible to me. It’s easy to see when it’s on, and turning it off fixes that problem. Nice to know it’s there.

But somewhere in there I lost Wi-Fi. My iPhone had Wi-Fi so it wasn’t the Wi-Fi system; it was that it was turned off in Precious, and it would not turn on.

Going to all settings \ Network and Internet \ Wi-Fi revealed that Wi-Fi was off. I turned it on. Still no joy. Did more things and got the troubleshooter dialogue. Told it to troubleshoot the Internet connection.

It did, and told me I didn’t have Wi-Fi, Turn it on? Yes, said I. Then it kept on troubleshooting, said it was fixing the problem, verifying that the problem was fixed, all done, and Lo! there was joy, and all was well.

My loss of memory on how OneNote works may have resulted in some antic that turned off Wi-Fi, although it’s hard to know how. I think not, though.

The good news is that while I write slow with the stylus, the system turned my handwriting into print. Of course even two fingers looking at keyboard is faster than handwriting. Not a lot faster, and of course I’m looking at what I have written and have fewer mistakes to correct. I managed to get some work done, so it wasn’t an entire waste of time.

As I said, mixed results; but progress.

I am editing Steve’s text of Call of Cthulhu (SF not fantasy) and adding stuff, and even new scenes, and doing well. Mostly I work on my main machine but I could do it on the Surface or the ThinkPad; all of the computers talk to each other with Wi-Fi or Ethernet now (when Wi-Fi has not turned itself off!). Anyway, Progress.

Eric adds:

One of the big features, and one that is bound to have a lot of teething issues, of Windows 10 is Continuum. This is intended to answer the primary complaint users had with Windows 8.x, that they were having a touch-oriented UI forced on them for desktop use. This feature can only really be appreciated on dual role systems like the Surface, and so the Surface is the showcase for it. Like a lot of clever automagic features, it can be bewildering and confusing if the user doesn’t understand what is going on.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-use-new-continuum-feature-in-windows-10-3618849/

This doesn’t necessarily relate to the Wi-Fi problems on the Surface but it may relate to the Rotation Lock issue.
Eric Pobirs

So that’s where we are at Chaos Manor

This is very long, but the bottom line is that things are not warming just now, and even some of the True Believers are becoming doubtful. My own position is that we just don’t know. The models don’t understand clouds well, nor do they understand solar output. No one understands them: but they are among the largest forcing factors, and in my judgment prediction is impossible if you don’t know about them.

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/07/06/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-who-endorsed-obama-now-says-prez-is-ridiculous-dead-wrong-on-global-warming/

Nobel Prize-Winning Scientist Who Endorsed Obama Now Says Prez. is ‘Ridiculous’ & ‘Dead Wrong’ on ‘Global Warming’

Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘Global warming is a non-problem’

‘I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong.’

‘Global warming really has become a new religion.’

“I am worried very much about the [UN] conference in Paris in November…I think that the people who are alarmist are in a very strong position.’

‘We have to stop wasting huge, I mean huge amounts of money on global warming.’

By: Marc Morano – Climate DepotJuly 6, 2015 8:34 PM

Climate Depot Exclusive

Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-Winner for physics in 1973, declared his dissent on man-made global warming claims at a Nobel forum on July 1, 2015.

“I would say that basically global warming is a non-problem,” Dr. Giaever announced during his speech titled “Global Warming Revisited.”

Giaever, a former professor at the School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, received the 1973 physics Nobel for his work on quantum tunneling. Giaever delivered his remarks at the 65th Nobel Laureate Conference in Lindau, Germany, which drew 65 recipients of the prize. Giaever is also featured in the new documentary “Climate Hustle”, set for release in Fall 2015.

Giaever was one of President Obama’s key scientific supporters in 2008 when he joined over 70 Nobel Science Laureates in endorsing Obama in an October 29, 2008 open letter. Giaever signed his name to the letter which read in part: “The country urgently needs a visionary leader…We are convinced that Senator Barack Obama is such a leader, and we urge you to join us in supporting him.”

But seven years after signing the letter, Giaever now mocks President Obama for warning that “no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change”. Giaever called it a “ridiculous statement.”

“That is what he said. That is a ridiculous statement,” Giaever explained.

“I say this to Obama: Excuse me, Mr. President, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” Giaever said. (Watch Giaever’s full 30-minute July 1 speech here.)

“How can he say that? I think Obama is a clever person, but he gets bad advice. Global warming is all wet,” he added.

“Obama said last year that 2014 is hottest year ever. But it’s not true. It’s not the hottest,” Giaever noted. [Note: Other scientists have reversed themselves on climate change. See: Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming]
The Nobel physicist questioned the basis for rising carbon dioxide fears.

“When you have a theory and the theory does not agree with the experiment then you have to cut out the theory. You were wrong with the theory,” Giaever explained.

Global Warming ‘a new religion’

Giaever said his climate research was eye opening. “I was horrified by what I found” after researching the issue in 2012, he noted.

“Global warming really has become a new religion. Because you cannot discuss it. It’s not proper. It is like the Catholic Church.”

Concern Over ‘Successful’ UN Climate Treaty

“I am worried very much about the [UN] conference in Paris in November. I really worry about that. Because the [2009 UN] conference was in Copenhagen and that almost became a disaster but nothing got decided. But now I think that the people who are alarmist are in a very strong position,” Giaever said.

“The facts are that in the last 100 years we have measured the temperatures it has gone up .8 degrees and everything in the world has gotten better. So how can they say it’s going to get worse when we have the evidence? We live longer, better health, and better everything. But if it goes up another .8 degrees we are going to die I guess,” he noted.

“I would say that the global warming is basically a non-problem. Just leave it alone and it will take care of itself. It is almost very hard for me to understand why almost every government in Europe — except for Polish government — is worried about global warming. It must be politics.”

“So far we have left the world in better shape than when we arrived, and this will continue with one exception — we have to stop wasting huge, I mean huge amounts of money on global warming. We have to do that or that may take us backwards. People think that is sustainable but it is not sustainable.

On Global Temperatures & CO2

Giaever noted that global temperatures have halted for the past 18 plus years. [Editor’s Note: Climate Depot is honored that Giaever used an exclusive Climate Depot graph showing the RSS satellite data of an 18 year plus standstill in temperatures at 8:48 min. into video.]

Giaever accused NASA and federal scientists of “fiddling” with temperatures.

“They can fiddle with the data. That is what NASA does.”

“You cannot believe the people — the alarmists — who say CO2 is a terrible thing. Its not true, its absolutely not true,” Giaever continued while showing a slide asking: ‘Do you believe CO2 is a major climate gas?’

“I think the temperature has been amazingly stable. What is the optimum temperature of the earth? Is that the temperature we have right now? That would be a miracle. No one has told me what the optimal temperature of the earth should be,” he said.

“How can you possibly measure the average temperature for the whole earth and come up with a fraction of a degree. I think the average temperature of earth is equal to the emperor’s new clothes. How can you think it can measure this to a fraction of a degree? It’s ridiculous,” he added.

Silencing Debate

Giaever accused Nature Magazine of “wanting to cash in on the [climate] fad.”

“My friends said I should not make fun of Nature because then they won’t publish my papers,” he explained.

“No one mentions how important CO2 is for plant growth. It’s a wonderful thing. Plants are really starving. They don’t talk about how good it is for agriculture that CO2 is increasing,” he added.

Extreme Weather claims

“The other thing that amazes me is that when you talk about climate change it is always going to be the worst. It’s got to be better someplace for heaven’s sake. It can’t always be to the worse,” he said.

“Then comes the clincher. If climate change does not scare people we can scare people talking about the extreme weather,” Giaever said.

“For the last hundred years, the ocean has risen 20 cm — but for the previous hundred years the ocean also has risen 20 cm and for the last 300 years, the ocean has also risen 20 cm per 100 years. So there is no unusual rise in sea level. And to be sure you understand that I will repeat it. There is no unusual rise in sea level,” Giaever said.

“If anything we have entered period of low hurricanes. These are the facts,” he continued.

“You don’t’ have to even be a scientist to look at these figures and you understand what it says,” he added.

“Same thing is for tornadoes. We are in a low period on in U.S.” (See: Extreme weather failing to follow ‘global warming’ predictions: Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Droughts, Floods, Wildfires, all see no trend or declining trends)

Media Hype

“What people say is not true. I spoke to a journalist with [German newspaper Die Welt yesterday…and I asked how many articles he published that says global warming is a good thing. He said I probably don’t publish them at all. Its always a negative. Always,” Giever said.

Energy Poverty

“They say refugees are trying to cross the Mediterranean. These people are not fleeing global warming, they are fleeing poverty,” he noted.

“If you want to help Africa, help them out of poverty, do not try to build solar cells and windmills,” he added.

“Are you wasting money on solar cells and windmills rather than helping people? These people have been misled. It costs money in the end to that. Windmills cost money.”

“Cheap energy is what made us so rich and now suddenly people don’t want it anymore.”

“People say oil companies are the big bad people. I don’t understand why they are worse than the windmill companies. General Electric makes windmills. They don’t tell you that they are not economical because they make money on it. But nobody protests GE, but they protest Exxon who makes oil,” he noted.

#

Dr. Ivar Giaever resigned as a Fellow from the American Physical Society (APS) on September 13, 2011 in disgust over the group’s promotion of man-made global warming fears.

In addition to Giaever, other prominent scientists have resigned from APS over its stance on man-made global warming. See: Prominent Physicist Hal Lewis Resigns from APS: ‘Climategate was a fraud on a scale I have never seen…Effect on APS position: None. None at all. This is not science’

Other prominent scientists are speaking up skeptically about man-made global warming claims. See: Prominent Scientist Dissents: Renowned glaciologist declares global warming is ‘going to be a big plus’ – Fears ‘Frightening’ Cooling – Warns scientists are ‘prostituting their science’

Giaever has become a vocal dissenter from the alleged “consensus” regarding man-made climate fears. He was featured prominently in the 2009 U.S. Senate Report of (then) Over 700 Dissenting International Scientists from Man-made global warming. Giaever, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics. (Watch news coveragehere.)

Giaever was also one of more than 100 co-signers in a March 30, 2009 letter to President Obama that was critical of his stance on global warming. See: More than 100 scientists rebuke Obama as ‘simply incorrect’ on global warming: ‘We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated’

Giaever is featured on page 89 of the 321 page of Climate Depot’s more than 1000 dissenting scientist report (updated from U.S. Senate Report). Dr. Giaever was quoted declaring himself a man-made global warming dissenter. “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion,” Giaever declared. “I am Norwegian, should I really worry about a little bit of warming? I am unfortunately becoming an old man. We have heard many similar warnings about the acid rain 30 years ago and the ozone hole 10 years ago or deforestation but the humanity is still around,” Giaever explained. “Global warming has become a new religion. We frequently hear about the number of scientists who support it. But the number is not important: only whether they are correct is important. We don’t really know what the actual effect on the global temperature is. There are better ways to spend the money,” he concluded.

Giaever also told the New York Times in 2010 that global warming “can’t be discussed — just like religion…there is NO unusual rise in the ocean level, so what where and what is the big problem?”

Related Links:

Exclusive: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Who Endorsed Obama Dissents! Resigns from American Physical Society Over Group’s Promotion of Man-Made Global Warming – Nobel Laureate Dr. Ivar Giaever: ‘The temperature (of the Earth) has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.’

2012: Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Ivar Giaever: ‘Is climate change pseudoscience?…the answer is: absolutely’ — Derides global warming as a ‘religion’ – ‘He derided the Nobel committees for awarding Al Gore and R.K. Pachauri a peace prize, and called agreement with the evidence of climate change a ‘religion’… the measurement of the global average temperature rise of 0.8 degrees over 150 years remarkably unlikely to be accurate, because of the difficulties with precision for such measurements—and small enough not to matter in any case: “What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees? Probably nothing.”

When Science IS Fiction: Nobel Physics laureate Ivar Giaever has called global warming (aka. climate change) a ‘new religion’ -When scientists emulate spiritual prophets, they overstep all ethical bounds. In doing so, they forfeit our confidence’

American Physical Society Statement on Climate Change: No Longer ‘Incontrovertible,’ But Still Unacceptable

Skeptic win… American Physical Society removes ‘incontrovertible’ from climate change position

Politically Left Scientist Dissents – Calls President Obama ‘delusional’ on global warming

SPECIAL REPORT: More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore – Climate Depot Exclusive: 321-page ‘Consensus Buster’ Report

Another Prominent Scientist Dissents! Fmr. NASA Scientist Dr. Les Woodcock ‘Laughs’ at Global Warming – ‘Global warming is nonsense’ Top Prof. Declares

Green Guru James Lovelock on Climate Change: ‘I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess’ – Lovelock Reverses Himself on Global Warming

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims – Challenge UN IPCC & Gore

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ – Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified’

‘High Priestess of Global Warming’ No More! Former Warmist Climate Scientist Judith Curry Admits To Being ‘Duped Into Supporting IPCC’ – ‘If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic’

German Meteorologist reverses belief in man-made global warming: Now calls idea that CO2 Can Regulate Climate ‘Sheer Absurdity’ — ‘Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us’

UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC & Man-Made Climate Fears — A Climate Depot Flashback Report – Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock — ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’

Thought experiment: Aliens vow to destroy U.S. if it doesn’t quickly build the world’s best schools. What would we do? – The Washington Post

Jeremy Adams is a good friend and a great teacher.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/07/thought-experiment-aliens-vow-to-destroy-u-s-if-it-doesnt-quickly-build-the-worlds-best-schools-what-would-we-do/

Interesting and worth discussion. Of course it depends on your definition of best schools; it is not true that offering a world class university prep education to all is :best” od even good – or possible.

Troop Reductions

……

<.>

The Pentagon’s budget, released in February, envisioned the reduction to 450,000 would occur by Sept. 30, 2018.

Some of the cuts were expected. During the peak of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army swelled to about 570,000 soldiers to ensure that deployments could be limited to one year. After most troops came home from those wars, the Army planned to shrink.

The Army should bottom out at 450,000 soldiers, said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Cutting “more would make me quite nervous,” he said.

The Army declined to comment on the proposed reductions in its forces.

If the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, set to begin in October, take place the Army would have to slash another 30,000 soldiers, according to the document. At that level, the Army would not be able to meet its current deployments and respond to demands for troops in other regions.

Among the proposed changes, brigades at Fort Benning, Ga., and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska will be downsized from units of about 4,000 soldiers to battalion task forces of 1,050 soldiers.

Downsizing Army forces in Alaska “makes no strategic sense,” said Sen.

Dan Sullivan, a Republican member of the Armed Services committee from Alaska. The White House emphasis on shifting military assets to the Asia-Pacific region and concerns about Russian aggression in the Arctic require strong forces in Alaska.

“One person who’s going to be very pleased with this is Vladimir Putin,” Sullivan said.

The Army overall will require more than 450,000 soldiers because the number of national security challenges around the world have “risen dramatically” in the past few years.

In 2013, the Army maintained in budget documents that dipping below

450,000 soldiers could prevent it from prevailing in a war.

</>

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/07/army-plans-to-cut-40000-troops/29826423/

…..

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Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

How big an Army do we need? And what part should be Regular Army, immediately deployable, and what part can be reserves which can be called up – i.e. mobilized?

Red China –

I think it is somehow fitting that the Ultra-Welfare State should appear in a country that is already Socialist!

Mack Reynolds; we salute you!

For my take on Automation

Of course this hardly politically correct:

I reckon there is a positive side to just about anything…

  This is one case where I would agree with removing the Confederate Flag

I reckon there is a positive side to just about anything…

But I recall a lot of my classmates volunteered for the Army when Truman took us to war in Korea. Southernors were like that back then.

And we have this:

<.>

As the threat from ISIS extremists grows, the European Union’s head of foreign affairs and security policy Federica Mogherini has caused consternation by asserting that “political Islam” is a firm part of Europe’s future.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/eu-security-head-political-islam-is-the-future-of-europe/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Greece and Singapore

Phillip Greenspun suggests that Greece and Singapore are similar, and if Greece were to adopt the others laws wholesale they could copy Singapore’s economic success. I doubt a country in which fraud is a popularly accepted pastime could replicate the results of a country that abhors such crime. Just as individuals have attitudes, viewpoints, morals that strongly influence their lives, so do cultures.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2015/07/02/could-greece-simply-adopt-the-laws-and-policies-of-singapore/

David Smallwood

However this plays out, no one in Greece seems to have read Kipling.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

Iraq falls apart

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/iraq-falls-apart-as-iran-backed-forces-keep-islamic-state-at-bay/story-e6frg6z6-1227427592125

Baghdad in the early northern summer has the atmosphere of a city under siege. Armoured vehicles carrying heavy machineguns are patrolling the area surrounding the international airport. The nearest positions of Islamic State are just 65km away. The atmosphere is fervid. The 40C summer heat adds to the effect.

The Islamic State threat pervades everything here. It is there in the muscular armed men deployed outside the luxury hotels. In the barbed-wire fences and heavy iron gates protecting the residences of the remaining foreigners. In the quick and suspicious glances passing between strangers.

Islamic State is surely already organising in the city, unseen. As it did in Ramadi and in Mosul, in Fallujah and all the way to Raqqa far to the west long before that. The mysterious explosions have already begun. Car bombings hit the parking lots of the Cristal and Babil hotels on May 28: 15 killed, 42 injured. No one thinks these will be the last.

The form that the defence against the Sunni jihadists is taking is also plain. At every intersection, on every wall, on every corner, the banners of Iraq’s Shia militias blare out their allegiance. The slogan “At your service, O Hussein” — referring to the greatest martyr of the Shi’ites, killed by the Sunni Ummayads at the battle of Karbala in AD680 — is everywhere. It is there next to the countless banners and posters of Hussein’s serene, bearded visage that one sees all around. It is there, too, amid the ubiquitous militia billboards, alongside pictures of ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei, Mohammed al-Sadr and Ali al-Sistani

The same Shia sectarian slogan can be glimpsed on the wall of the Iraqi Army checkpoint on the road from the airport. At your service, o Hussein. That is to say, the defence of Baghdad against Islamic State is not taking place in the name of Iraq. The men doing the fighting and dying are there as Shi’ites. This applies even to many or most of those wearing the uniforms of the official Iraqi Security Forces.

But it applies a hundred-fold more clearly to the organisations that are bearing the brunt of the actual fight against the Sunni jihadists — in Baiji, in Anbar province and elsewhere. These are the Shia militias.

The militias are irregular political-military formations, organised on openly sectarian lines and flying openly sectarian banners. The most significant of them are supported by Iran. Their field commander is a man who may very well be a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And it is they, under the collective banner of what is called the Popular Mobilisation in Iraq, who today form the key armed force in the government-controlled areas of central and southern Iraq, including the capital Baghdad.

The entire article is worth reading. According to this Australian news account, the Coalition of the Willing is helping ISIS.  You need not believe that to believe that the Shia do.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, July 06, 2015

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded—here and there, now and then—are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

“This is known as ‘bad luck’.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

Entrepreneurs are fleeing Greece. Some Greek politicos are threatening to turn Greece into a way station for Near East refugees fleeing to Germany and Belgium. The result should be interesting,

China’s Hunger for Robots Marks Significant Shift   

Country’s emergence as automation hub contradicts assumptions about robots, global economy

By

Timothy Aeppel and

Mark Magnier

July 5, 2015 2:26 p.m. ET

http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-hunger-for-robots-marks-significant-shift-1436118228 

Having devoured many of the world’s factory jobs, China is now handing them over to robots.

China already ranks as the world’s largest market for robotic machines. Sales last year grew 54% from a year earlier, and the boom shows every sign of increasing. China is projected to have more installed industrial robots than any other country by next year, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

China’s emergence as an automation hub contradicts many assumptions about robots and the global economy.

Economists often view automation as a way for advanced economies to keep industries that might otherwise move offshore, or even to win them back through reshoring, since the focus is on ways to reduce costly labor. That motivation hasn’t gone away. But increasingly, robots are taking over work in developing countries, reducing the potential job creation associated with building new factories in the frontier markets of Asia, Africa or Latin America.

A confluence of economic forces is behind the trend in China. Labor costs, while low relative to advanced economies like the U.S.’s, have soared. That has undermined the calculus that brought many of those jobs there in the first place. And new robot technology is cheaper and easier to use than ever before. In addition, many of China’s fastest-growing industries, such as vehicle-making, tend to rely on automation regardless of where the factories are. Some jobs, such as delicate operations in electronics plants, can only be done with machines.

“We think of [the Chinese as] producing cheap widgets,” but that is not what they’re focused on, said Adams Nager, an economic research analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. China, he said, is letting industries that rely on lots of manual labor, such as clothing and shoe production, shift out of the country to focus on capital-intensive industries such as steel and electronics where automation is a driving force.

In this sense, what’s happening in China is no different than what has occurred in many other parts of the world.

The fact that it is happening in China, though, underscores a significant shift. Some economists believe China may be one of the last places where industrialization spawns the kind of massive job growth that allows a country to leapfrog into the ranks of the wealthier nations. If the automation trend continues, it will mean slower job growth, though that isn’t apparent yet in China.

The International Federation of Robotics estimates about 225,000 industrial robots were sold world-wide last year—a record number and up 27% from the year before. Robot sales grew in all the major markets, with over half the growth in Asia. But China is the rising star, with about 56,000 robots sold there in 2014.

One reason China will continue booming is because it has relatively low “robot density,” the trade group says. China has about 30 robots for every 10,000 factory workers. In Germany, the density is 10 times that amount.

“China has explosive growth [in robots],” said Henrik Christensen, head of Georgia Institute of Technology’s robotics lab, adding that all the world’s biggest automation companies are rushing to build factories there to supply demand for new machines.

Terry Hannon, chief business development and strategy officer for Adept Technology Inc., a U.S. robotics maker based near Silicon Valley, said he was startled to see 400 new domestic robotics makers at a Chinese trade show last year. Among those jumping in: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.—better known as Foxconn—which has announced plans to build and install thousands of robots to assemble Apple Inc.iPhones and other products.

There is a pride factor at work in China’s rapid adoption of robots, whether made by domestic companies or manufactured in China by Western firms. “When the Chinese started to export, they often got pushback about what kind of quality they could deliver,” said Steven Wyatt, head of marketing and sales for ABB Robotics in Zurich. “They want to be able to say, ‘We use the same robots as you guys use in Western Europe and North America.’ ”

That is one reason the Chinese government is pushing the trend. In 2013, Beijing outlined a 2020 goal of having at least three globally competitive robot makers, eight subcontractor clusters, a 45% domestic market share for Chinese high-end robots and a tripling of robot penetration to 100 per 10,000 workers.

Some say this top-down approach can create something of a herd mentality and spur misdirected spending. “If you give funds to the wrong companies, you can crowd out those who will be the most productive,” said Gan Jie, a professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and a longtime board member of DJI, a Shenzhen, China-based drone maker.

Meanwhile, there is little evidence so far that robots are having a big impact on employment. Average urban wages in China rose more than 10% in 2014, even as the country remains on target to create at least 10 million new jobs this year.

Also important in spurring broader use of robotics, say factory owners, is their growing difficulty finding young Chinese willing to do often mind-numbing assembly-line work. Some electronics makers say they are battling turnover rates of up to 20% a month.

The job impact may be felt instead by other developing countries, since jobs that might have migrated out of China in search of lower-cost labor will remain rooted there.

Chen Zhengxiao, manager of Ruian Carbide Tool Co. in eastern Zhejiang province, a maker of parts for lathes and milling machines, said labor costs weren’t a factor in the company’s decision to use more robots. “Touching a product by hand causes quality problems,” said Mr. Chen. “The precision can’t be guaranteed. The process is also faster with robots.”

More than half of present jobs can be done by robots within ten years…

An Econ Lesson in a Shanghai Market

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10587845965603524902004581051862200079074

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.