Category Archives: View

View 829, Thursday, June 19, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

John Quincy Adams on American Policy:

Whenever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

Fourth of July, 1821

I had to get the bills paid this week and yesterday I had to go to the bank and do some shopping and errands. None of that would have been worth reporting a few years ago, but such activities tend to use up the day. Getting older beats the daylights out of the alternatives, but it’s not for sissies…

The news from the Middle East isn’t very informative. The ISIS drive on Baghdad seems to have been halted, but the civil war in Iraq continues. Iran hopes to come out of this with domination of the Shiite areas of Iraq and a solid path to Syria. Apparently the Kurds have cut a neutrality deal with the Sunni. They don’t have congruent interests, and it’s really unlikely that the Kurds will be interested in a true alliance. There are also stories of a Kurdish/Turkish modus vivendum, which is interesting. The President, having a bit of time between his golf games and fund raisers, yesterday indicated that the US will not be sending in air power to defend Baghdad. We did send in some forces to help evacuate Americans, but the schedule for US final evacuation from Iraq hasn’t changed. Last night he decided to reconsider.

This morning the President is still contemplating assistance to Baghdad. Likely he offered some air power, and Maliki said “Is that all you will do for us?” This infuriated Obama. The results of that will be apparent.  He’s about to come out now.

And the Sunni ISIS warriors are threatening, not Baghdad which is a cosmopolitan city, but Najif and Karbala, which are nearly all Shiite as well as important holy cities for Shiites.

And meanwhile we are now fighting American trained Arabs who, thanks to McCain’s gullibility, were given American training and equipment and sent back to be absorbed by ISIS, which McCain had probably never heard of by that time. He thought we were training moderates, but then he can always be sold a bill of goods by those pretending that stance. Mostly these trickled back into the regions and were incorporated into the ISIS ranks whether they liked the idea or not. A bit of equipment and some training doesn’t set you up to resist the biggest dog on the block. Alas, those who tried to warn of this were not listened to.

The President will announce just what he will do in Iraq presently. He’s back from his fund raisers and golf and ready to go to work as the President of the United States.

The Press conference is going on now.  Apparently we are sending intelligence assets.  If we decide we need to take military action we will—

Bryan Suits says this is the girl calling her ex boy friend to come kill a big spider in her kitchen.  Apparently the President isn’t all that interested. He also notes there are no military people in the President’s announcement party. There will be no air strikes. No more blood and treasure to Iraq. Someone in the national security organization understands that if our enemies are killing each other, it is probably better not to intervene.

Listening: the President says that the US will not choose sides in this civil war. His closing remarks are well considered. We’re not going to shed more blood into the desert.  When asked about the Kurds he had nothing to say.

Understand that overall Sunni outnumber Shia about 8 to one (including Kurds as Sunni “Compared to infidels, Kurds are Moslem”).

Reflections:  an established corridor controlled by Iran from Iran to Syria is not in any western interest, and not in the interests of Jordan or any other Sunni. ISIS is not our friend, but it is not much of a friend to Iran either. 

Baghdad:

Iraq crisis: sectarian tensions mount in Baghdad as Shia militias prowl Sunni areas

Neighbourhoods riven by past sectarian bloodshed on edge as Shia militias mount shows of force

By Colin Freeman

12:14PM BST 18 Jun 2014

Waving rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, the convoy of Shia militiamen rolled down the Baghdad street, a 30-vehicle column of vans, pick-ups and battered saloon cars.

Above the roar of their combined engines, they chanted how they were now crushing the “terrorists” of Isis, the Sunni extremists who have seized much of northern Iraq.

This particular victory parade, however, was nowhere near the frontline – nor was it welcomed by those for whom it was put on. The main battleground against Isis’s advance is currently some 50 miles north of the capital, where Shia militiamen have stepped into the breach left by the Iraqi army.

But while some militiamen are busy in frontline combat, others have taken to driving through Sunni neighbourhoods of Baghdad in mass shows of force.

Their message is unspoken, but as loud and clear as the chants – any Sunni who is thinking of supporting Isis can expect Shia gunmen at his door.

“Ever since last week, not a day has gone past without them coming down the street, shouting and yelling and waving rifles and pistols,” said Imad Ahmed, a shopkeeper in the Sunni district of Adel in west Baghdad.

“They say they will crush the Isis terrorists and anyone who stands in the way of the Shia, but these guys are nowhere near the frontline. This is just designed to intimidate us.”

The United States will send a Kabuki force to defend Americans in Baghdad.  Maliki hopes that this will serve as a tripwire to keep Baghdad safe for his Shiite regime.  He is not likely to retake the territory lost to the Sunni.  Do understand that the Sunni, not Shiites,  brought off 9/11, although we chose to attack Sunni dominated Iraq for Bush family reasons. Now that we are out  It would not be very much in US interest to join the 10% Shiite minority in a religious war. 

The overthrow of Saddam made the partition of Iraq inevitable. We came out of it with the Kurds as something like allies.  The Shiites we liberated did not love us for doing so, as witness the Mahdi Army (which will now get its chance to show how invincible it is when it defends Baghdad against ISIS). It might be well to have a way of convincing ISIS to consolidate their holdings rather than taking Baghdad.  But the political map of Mesopotamia is changing permanently; we can influence that, but not stop the process.  We stopped having that power when we sent Bremer to disband Saddam’s army.  Now I note that Bremer has the gall to lecture the nation on what to do next.  It’s a mad world.

And all this shows and shows clearly how important it is to keep the A-10 Warthogs; we are not done in the desert, and those are among our best and most easily deployed weapons for that kind of war. We also need helicopter carriers with Marines.  Had we had one of those off the shores of Tripoli (well, Benghazi), Mrs. Clinton would be in a lot less political trouble. So it goes.

Subj: Iraq: Are you sure "The Sunni Arabs" are monolithic?

The way I heard it, ISIS are the heirs of the late, un-lamented Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His bunch were famous for lording it over and assassinating Sunni Arab tribal elders, to the point where the Sunni Arab tribes, with a little stimulation from Petraeus, held an Awakening, allied with the Americans, and threw them out.

ISIS are *more* extreme than al-Qaida: Zawahiri issued a fatwa that al-Qaida are not to kill "innocent" Muslims, and even the Somali terrorists in Kenya have been trying to abide by that, but ISIS gleefully kill anyone.

Does it matter? Maybe not. Al-Maliki has evidently gone out of his way to antagonize the Sunni Arab tribes, since the Americans left. But I see no reason to expect that the only Sunni Arab fragment of a disintegrated Iraq is going to be ISIS.

Who knows? There may even be a politician — probably not al-Maliki — who could put Iraq back together, sorta-kinda, making concessions to the Sunni Arab tribes.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

I had not intended to imply that all Sunni are alike in beliefs or fervor, apologies for being misleading.  And just as Catholic France could ally with the Turks against the Holy Roman Empire, one’s brand of Islam isn’t definitive in determining which cause one jihads for.

I do not believe anyone can put Iraq back together again.  Saddam did so for a while, and we had an opportunity to continue that policy without its brutality (and without Saddam’s sons acting like the sons of Septimius Severus). It was possible to continue Western rule of Iraq through the tried and proven practices of client rulers.  Saddam’s generals had control of the army; the army knew it could not defeat the United States, but it could control the populace; the elements of client rulers were in place.  Were, until Bremer disbanded the armies that could control the population.

From the Times of India

I have had this for some time and have seen no follow up.  Obviously if you can manage to convert light into matter, which can then be expelled as reaction mass, you are onto a technology of some use in interplanetary travel. You can send light to a moving spacecraft…

Now, convert light into matter

LONDON: Scientists have for the first time discovered a revolutionary technique to turn light into matter, a feat thought impossible when the idea was first theorized 80 years ago. Three physicists at the Imperial College London’s Blackett Physics Laboratory worked out a relatively simple way to physically prove a theory first devised by scientists Breit and Wheeler in 1934.
Breit and Wheeler suggested that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two particles of light (photons), to create an electron and a positron – the simplest method of turning light into matter ever predicted. The calculation was found to be theoretically sound but Breit and Wheeler said that they never expected anybody to physically demonstrate their prediction. It has never been observed in the laboratory and past experiments to test it have required the addition of massive high-energy particles.
The new research, published in Nature Photonics, shows how Breit and Wheeler’s theory could be proven in practice. This ‘photon-photon collider’, which would convert light directly into matter using technology that is already available, would be a new type of high-energy experiment.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Home/Science/Now-convert-light-into-matter/articleshow/35362973.cms

Now, convert light into matter

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

It was my understanding that evidence of anti matter has been found during lightning strikes. I am not sure what all the excitement is about. I still recall the picture of an electron and positron spinning off in opposing spirals in an old physics textbook.

Sincerely,

David P. Zimmerman

I tend to agree, but I have been hoping to find someone with more expertise to persuade me that this has implications for a spacefaring nation.

Global Warming, oops, climate change…

June Snow: Winter Storm in Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Flooding in Glacier National Park As Summer Approaches

http://www.weather.com/safety/winter/montana-snow-june-20140616

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

View 829, Monday, June 16, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.

Barrack Obama, famously.

Niven will be here presently and we will attempt the hill; I hope to make it to the top this time. I’ve had to turn back about ¾ of the way before, but we had others with us, and that always slows me down as I try to keep up with younger hikers. Niven and I know how to pace each other well, and he’ll be the only one here today. So I hope to make it.

I’ll try writing a bit before he gets here, but probably not much will happen, so I’ll post this stub and be back later this evening.

We haven’t reached the end of history. There is no evidence that liberal democracy – even of the EU variety that was such a vogue not long ago – is sweeping the world inexorably, bound to prevail. It isn’t even sweeping the United States, which is becoming more and more bureaucratic and political, with centralization of power and suppression of contrary thought. The President’s speech over the weekend left it clear that you have to be stupid and nearly criminally selfish not to believe in not only the theory of manmade global warming, but that the United States can unilaterally do something about it: we can bankrupt ourselves converting into sustainable energy and that will somehow induce China and India not to continue pouring out CO2 from coal and oil; we can abandon nuclear power, which does produce energy without producing CO2, for other schemes, and still be able to compete in a world economy. And if you don’t believe that, it’s because you are selfish and think the moon is made of cheese.

This is known as rational political debate in this age of reason, this last stage of history.

Meanwhile in Iraq the ISIS is shooting down its prisoners. This has far reaching implications.

The Kurds are being sucked into the war, even if they have not already been by the fall of Mosul to their enemies: the Kurds reluctantly allowed the central Iraq government – Maliki’s Shiites who have busily purged the Iraqi army of all the US trained Sunni and all the former Saddam officers – to take control of Mosul, which the Kurds believe is actually theirs. Now the Kurdish militia, which is better trained than the Iraqi army and has taken better care of its weapons, is free to counterattack and take Mosul as its own. Good luck to Maliki on getting it back.

One result of this Iraqi civil war will probably be the expansion of Iraqi Kurds in the entire northern region. This begins to sound a bit like Saladin’s consolidation of the Kurds prior to his conquest of the Christian Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the era of Richard Coeur de Lion. Perhaps not the end of history after all.

And I see that Bremer – Bremer!! – has a Wall Street Journal editorial piece on what we ought to do about Iraq now. Here is the most incompetent proconsul since Roman times telling us what strategy we ought to have.

Iraqi Kurds maneuver between Maliki and Mosul

The swift attack on Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and relatively bloodless withdrawal of US-trained Iraqi security forces has further weakened Baghdad’s influence over northern territories. The political vacuum has enabled the Kurds to expand their land claims and leverage Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for concessions on their oil exports. Yet, the role of radical Baathist military officials in the Mosul coup and their links to ISIS also exposes the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to important security and political challenges. The KRG will not only have to secure greater territories and populations from extremist groups on its borders, but also maneuver its nationalist agenda through radicalized Sunni Arab populations that may be even more resistant than Maliki and Shiite groups.

In some ways, the Mosul attack is a coup for the Kurds. It occurred just as the KRG was locked in another battle with Maliki over oil exports and revenues, and as its Turkish energy partner was subjected to international litigation. The ISIS attack shifted media attention, at least temporarily, from an embarrassing situation of a wandering ship unable to offload contentious Kurdish crude to a scenario of KRG strength; assisting refugees, securing borders, and taking Kirkuk in the midst of a serious political crisis.

The attack has also gained the KRG time in its energy gamble with Baghdad. The instability caused by the Mosul attack has prevented the Iraqi government from moving forward with planned repairs on the Iraqi-Turkish Pipeline (ITP) on the Mosul side. This delay technically enables the KRG to continue exporting its crude through the part of the line it has taken over since January 2014. Although Kurdish pipeline exports are still small-scale and subject to international litigation if sold, local and Turkish buyers of trucked Kurdish crude can at least benefit from a rise in international oil prices — now at about $106 per barrel — that followed the Mosul crisis.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/kurds-isis-mosul-maliki-krg-gains-leverage.html##ixzz34pLTVlT4

Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq

Without U.S. help, the civil war may spiral into a regional conflict as other countries, including Iran, intervene.

By

L. Paul Bremer

June 15, 2014 6:04 p.m. ET

http://online.wsj.com/articles/l-paul-bremer-only-america-can-prevent-a-disaster-in-iraq-1402869886

Of course there wouldn’t be any such disaster if Bremer hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi army as one of his first acts of building a liberal democracy in Iraq.

ISIS ‘execute’ 1,700 Iraqi soldiers, post gruesome pictures

Radical Sunni militants who have been capturing cities in northwest Iraq claimed on Twitter that they executed 1,700 Iraqi soldiers. The radicals posted graphic photos as evidence.

http://rt.com/news/166092-iraq-militants-mass-executions/

New terror video emerges of ISIS monster lining up and taunting Iraqi soldiers in the desert before appearing to execute them as yet another town falls into jihadists’ hands

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2658858/ISIS-jihadists-tighten-grip-Iraq-capture-Tal-Afar-UN-hits-deeply-disturbing-soldier-massacre-pictures-shocking-world.html#ixzz34qRj7gdE

This should have the effect of making the Sunni militants fight harder in defense of Baghdad, but that isn’t certain. This is Arabs fighting Arabs, and Arab armies seldom stand and fight to the death either historically, when the tactics of the Prophet were to skirmish his Persian enemies to death, or in more modern times in the wars with Israel. The Iraqi regular army has been purged of its officers, who have been replaced by Shiite Maliki supporters; the notion of a national army neither Shiite nor Sunni was abandoned as soon as US troops were withdrawn. The notion of a unified Iraq as a federation of Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd (“Compared to infidels Kurds are Moslem”) states also vanished when the US ceased to insist on it and withdrew the means to enforce that will. So it goes.

One thing about this: If the enemy of your enemy makes war on your enemy, the only people killed are your enemies. Perhaps this was the Obama strategy after all. One hopes there could have been a better strategy, and possibly there was before Bremer. Mine would have been to pay the Iraqi generals to pay their soldiers, and have each keep the peace in his own district. Insubordination would be met by unleashing the Legions. This rule by auxiliaries and client generals and kings has been effective since Roman days, and if we insisted on staying in Iraq was probably the only formula for success; but no one seemed interested in that at the time. By the time Obama came to power we had few options. There were some, but they would have taken considerable skill: the Legions were tired of the war, the administration had no enthusiasm for it, and there were few theories on what could be done about it. There was little sentiment for partition to be enforced by American air power, and a Status of Forces dictated in Washington and signed by the Iraqis as a condition to taking any kind of political office, but that was never an option for the Obama/Biden/Clinton team. They had no one to implement it.

Our options now are rather few, and are shrinking fast. If we had a lot of Warthogs in the region ready to deploy, and a regiment of Marines ready to land from helicopters with A-10 support, a lot could be done toward of goal of a reasonably stable partition, with a pro-American Kurdish faction –

Niven is here and we are about to hike. More later.

We had a very productive hike and lunch, and came up with a number of scenes for our new work.  I feel like a writer again. Continuing today’s news commentaries:

I expect nearly everyone knows about Uber?

Uber is a venture-funded startup and transportation network company based in San Francisco, California, that makes mobile apps that connect passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services.^[1] The company arranges pickups in dozens of cities around the world.^[2]

Uber has been accused in several jurisdictions of illegal taxicab operation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_%28company%29

There is an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal that tells me something I neither knew nor suspected:

Uber Shocks the Regulators

Digital technology has undermined the old idea that taxis need close government supervision.

By

L. Gordon Crovitz

 

. . .

Recent investments put an $18 billion valuation on Uber, which launched in 2010—more than the combined market value of Hertz and Avis. CAR +0.69% That $18 billion can be understood as a market estimate of the waste caused by taxi regulations around the world.

Taxi and limousine commissioners limit new entrants and suppress competition between taxis and car services. They micromanage the manner of hailing rides, the number of licenses issued, and how many cars a company may own. These rules protect existing owners at the cost of better service for consumers and more flexibility for drivers

Uber uses technology to create efficiency by enabling supply to match demand. It’s closing the gap between what taxis and car services have been allowed to provide and what consumers want. Its success undermines the long-held idea that the taxi industry requires close government regulation.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/gordon-crovitz-uber-shocks-the-regulators-1402869510

Eighteen Billion Dollars is a lot of money. It may not be true that every dime of that is a result of waste caused by taxi regulations, but surely half of it is?  If taxi regulations made sense instead of being crafted to make as much for the city as possible, Uber would still be valuable, but not $18 billion valuable.  Sensible taxi regulations would include registration, criminal background check, filing picture of the driver with the police as well as issuing a picture ID to be hung in the transporting car, and some scheduled inspection by private companies to insure the proper operability of the auto.  None of this need cost more than a couple of hundred dollars, and much of the problem of in city transport would be solved.  Of course in our liberal democracy that won’t happen because sane taxi regulations are only of use to the people, not a means of income to the bity bureaucrats.  So it goes.

So of course the taxi companies and similar interests are spending like crazy to lobby for the suppression of Uber. So far they have not succeeded, but it’s early times.

High-Frequency Trading Needs One Quick Fix

Change Reg NMS Rule 611 to read ‘best execution’ instead of ‘best price.’

by Andy Kessler

June 15, 2014 5:54 p.m. ET

In the "state your conclusion upfront department," the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has scheduled a hearing for June 17 titled "Conflicts of Interest, Investor Loss of Confidence, and High Speed Trading in U.S. Stock Markets." They join the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, the Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and, inevitably, Eric Schneiderman in uncovering what the New York attorney general calls "this new breed of predatory behavior."

Too bad none of the investigations will figure out that changing one word in a federal regulation can fix all this. Because none of them understands the old Wall Street adage: "On Wall Street, everybody gets paid."

http://online.wsj.com/articles/andy-kessler-high-frequency-trading-needs-one-quick-fix-1402869253

 

If you don’t understand the problems in “high frequency trading” – and few of us reading this do, nor do the vast majority of the Congresscritters and their staffers – you can’t really be blamed, but this article will at least give you a picture of what the problem is.  His suggestion as to what can be done about it is, in my judgment, naïve, but I quickly admit he knows more about it than I do.  My guess, though, is that the situation exists because it’s in the interests of a number of influential Congresscritters that it exist, and until it is better explained to the public and a legitimate public interest is expressed, nothing will be done. On Wall Street, one way or another, everybody gets paid. I doubt there’s a quick fix for that.

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

View 828, Saturday, June 14, 2014

John Quincy Adams on American Policy:

Whenever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

Fourth of July, 1821

It’s Roberta’s birthday and I got her the newest version Kindle Fire. It’s more advanced than my Kindle Fire and while I am sure it’s better, I haven’t figured it all out yet. I have got it running and it is registered as hers with her Amazon account. There was no book of instructions but there are supposed to be all kinds of instructions on the machine, and we are connected to the house Wi-Fi network. We’ll see but I am now going to go look for books on the new Kindle, because my experience with my older Fire doesn’t seem at all relevant. Maybe Alex can help.

The President has said that anyone who doesn’t believe in man caused global warming, and that we can do unilaterally something about it by curbing the carbon emissions of the United States, is putting partisanship over national interest, and is ignoring the indisputable scientific evidence. In his speech he was a bit short on the evidence, and had nothing to say about the obvious questions. Alas, I haven’t heard any discussion of the obvious questions from the True Believers – and oddly enough, the few who do now talk about the obvious questions have left the ranks of True Believers and have become Deniers. You can hear this speech.

President Obama Urges Action on Climate Change During UC Irvine Address

http://time.com/2875807/obama-uc-irvine-climate-change/

This is not science or any pretense of it. It is certainly not rational discussion. We seem to have degenerated to the point that important decisions are now made by partisan debating tactics, and to have no one in the decision making process who is actually interested in understanding what is actually going on with Earth’s climate.

Of course it gets boring to continue to ask the questions, only to be ignored – then after a while the opposition pretends the obvious questions do not exist, or that they have been answered to the satisfaction of any rational person.

The questions remain.

First, there needs to be a discussion about methods of measurement, and comparing temperatures from one year to another. In the real world, in the late 1960’s, I found it difficult to come up with the average skin temperature of an astronaut in a full pressure suit to a one degree F accuracy. I used dime sized thin copper disks with thermocouples soldered to them; we taped them to the astronaut’s skin. We chose back of hand, mid back, mid abdomen, and other such places so that we would have some comparability: the point of the tests was to measure the ventilation systems in the suit. We could measure the air flow of the controlled temperature air we used for ventilation, and the input temperature of that air, so that got another thermocouple from the harness. One of the thermocouples in the 12 thermocouple set went into a carafe of melting ice; the ice had been frozen from distilled water. That gave us a reference temperature accurate to 0.1° F. The thermocouple machine printed what it could see at one minute intervals; when we consolidated the data we sampled those one-minute readings since we didn’t have the data entry capability to use them all for average. In the modern world that would not be a problem.

But I do not know how to get the average temperature of my city block to any 0.1 ° F accuracy: where would I take the measurements so they would be comparable from day to day? Assuming I can answer that question, how would I do it for the City of LA? California? USA? But we want an average temperature of the entire Earth to that accuracy, and average all that over a year. We need 0.1° accuracy because that is what we find we need to describe the warming. Now I understand how we could come up with the measurements now, and take the same measurements year after year: but we were not doing that fifty years ago, much less 100 years ago, or 200 years ago. In the 1800’s the way we got sea temperatures was to pull up a bucket of sea water from some depth, put a mercury thermometer into the bucket, wait a bit, and read the thermometer. I think we can safely assume that these readings were not accurate to any 0.1 degree and probably not to 1 degree.

The same is true of most of the other measurements in the 19^th Century. We have measurements from many places, but from the same place every year. We know that in 1800 the Thames froze over solid enough to allow merchants to set up market stalls on the frozen river, and this practice continued until sometime into the century. The climate was certainly changing, but we don’t have a very good picture of how it changed. On Christmas Eve 1776 the cannon captured by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga were taken to General George Washington on Haarlem Heights, saving his army from Howe who was working up the nerve to storm Washington’s position and end this rebellion once and for all. When he heard that Washington had cannon he called off the attack, and Washington escaped to fight another day. There was a time when every American school child knew this. The point being it was very cold in New York in 1776 although it was considered a warmer than usual winter. No one was astonished that the Hudson was frozen hard enough to cross with cannon. By 1850 the Hudson did not freeze so hard.

As The Hudson River Freezes, Classic Ice Yachts Emerge

It’s a rare sight of a sport that drew thousands of spectators in the late 1800s, when Hudson Valley gentry like the Roosevelts and brewer and New York Yankees owner Jacob Rupert raced their yachts on lengthy courses up and down the river north of Poughkeepsie. Commodore John E. Roosevelt — FDR’s uncle — built the 69-foot Icicle and formed the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club in 1869. A 46-foot version of the yacht was later clocked at more than 100 m.p.h. FDR so loved his own iceboat Hawk – a gift from his mother in 1901 — that he included it in the collection at his presidential library.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2014/03/07/as-the-hudson-river-freezes-over-classic-ice-yachts-emerge/

I cannot find a reference to the time when the Hudson froze so hard that you could bring cannon across to Haarlem Heights, but it doesn’t seem to have happened in this century. Sometime back in the days when the Vanderbilts and the Roosevelts raced ice boats.

My point is that the climate has been warming since 1800; exactly when the warming trend began to accelerate doesn’t seem to have been determined; yet isn’t that important if you are doing climate models?

Clearly the Earth has been colder, and it is now warming, and has been since 1800 or so.

But we also know that it has been warmer. We don’t have any good numbers for the average global temperature in Viking times, but it used to be that every schoolchild knew that Leif the Lucky discovered Vinland, which was either Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. The name Vinland is interesting: certainly no place it could possibly have been grows grapes now. Leif sailed from the dairy farms his father, Eric the Red, had founded in Greenland. There are no dairy farms in Greenland now, although some of the old settlements are now emerging from the ice.

In the same time period (Leif the Lucky 970 – 1020 AD) we have records from Scotland and northern England: they grew grapes and made wine there. We have records from continental monasteries where they recorded planting and harvest dates: the growing seasons were longer than at present. We have records from eastern Europe. Same message, and also from China. The obvious conclusion is that the Earth was warmer than it had been in the earlier period after Marcus Aurelius when the growing seasons began to shorten, northern climates were colder, and the great migrations that wiped out the Western Roman Empire began in full force.

In other words, the Earth has been both warmer and cooler than it is now, and this in historical times. Clearly this was not a consequence of human industry. Something else happened. The best guess is solar activity, but there is some evidence of volcanic activities as well. Benjamin Franklin on passage to England observed the thick volcanic clouds streaming downwind from Iceland and wondered if enough of those would not cause an age of ice: evidence that the Great Lakes and much of Canada and New England had been covered with ice at one time was being gathered and discussed, and Franklin read everything.

I note that none of the climate models that predict the climate for a hundred years from now have any explanation of the Viking Warm or the 1400—1800 Little Ice Age. Indeed they don’t really account for the period in which annual average temperature fell after 1960 to after 1980.

Extreme Weather In The 1960’s & 1970’s

We are all familiar with the “ice age “scare of the early 1970’s. Science News ran a report at the time, with an interview with C C Wallen, chief of the Special Environmental Applications Division, at the World Meteorological Organization.

According to the article,

By contrast, (with the Little Ice Age), the weather in the first part of this century has been the warmest and best for world agriculture in over a millennium, and, partly as a result, the world’s population has more than doubled. Since 1940, however, the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has been steadily falling: Having risen about 1.1 degrees C. between 1885 and 1940, according to one estimation, the temperature has already fallen back some 0.6 degrees, and shows no signs of reversal.

Extreme Weather In The 1960’s & 1970’s

There are no climate models that can take the initial conditions of 1900 and show the actual climate patterns that took place from 1900 to present.

I do not see these questions being addressed by the True Believers, or any indication that President Obama even knows they exist.

There are other questions never addressed.

Antarctic Glacier Melt Due To Volcanoes, Not Global Warming

Jerry

“A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing due to geothermal heat, not man-made global warming:”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/11/study-west-antarctic-glacier-melt-due-to-volcanoes-not-global-warming/

“Researchers from the UTA’s Institute for Geophysics found that the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica is being eroded by the ocean as well as geothermal heat from magma and subaerial volcanoes. Thwaites is considered a key glacier for understanding future sea level rise. UTA researchers used radar techniques to map water flows under ice sheets and estimate the rate of ice melt in the glacier. As it turns out, geothermal heat from magma and volcanoes under the glacier is much hotter and covers a much wider area than was previously thought.

“Geothermal flux is one of the most dynamically critical ice sheet boundary conditions but is extremely difficult to constrain at the scale required to understand and predict the behavior of rapidly changing glaciers,” UTA researchers wrote in their study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The geothermal heat under the glaciers is likely a key factor in why the ice sheet is currently collapsing. Before this study, it was assumed that heat flow under the glacier was evenly distributed throughout, but UTA’s study shows this is not the case. Heat levels under the glacier are uneven, with some areas being much hotter than others.

“The combination of variable subglacial geothermal heat flow and the interacting subglacial water system could threaten the stability of Thwaites Glacier in ways that we never before imagined,” lead researcher David Schroeder said in a press release.

And volcanoes are a significant source of CO2 as well.

Ed

Volcanoes can cool by putting up articulate matter. Underwater volcanoes can heat the seas and trigger El Nino and La Nina events. None of this is well understood. It is certainly not general purpose “global warming” or even “climate change” that has caused the change in Antarctic Ice; indeed, this latest cold period has produced more ice in polar regions that has been normal in the past few years. There appears to be a cycle at work here. It is apparently not well understood or perhaps not understood at all.

Another question not addressed:

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global.

Freeman Dyson, American physicist.

http://noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman_dyson.php

President Obama told us today that CO2 traps heat. He said in a way that implies that no one can question that, and everyone must know it, and there is nothing else to discuss. Dyson points out that water vapor traps heat much better than CO2: indeed, anywhere there is high humidity, CO2 is irrelevant because there is no heat escaping for CO2 to trap. The water vapor has got it all. Therefore the effects of CO2 will mostly be on cold dry places. Most of the Earth is covered with water.

Methane is also a much better greenhouse gas than CO2, and any place that has methane in the atmosphere – above certain evergreen forests, and near large herds of cattle, as an example – CO2 will be irrelevant because all the heat escaping through the atmosphere will already be absorbed.

We could continue but there is no need to break a butterfly on the wheel: these are questions that are seldom addressed by the Climate Change True Believers, and when they are it is generally with condescension, as if everyone knows what brought about the Greenland farms. When pressed for a bit more specific information one usually is told “Gulf Stream” as if the Gulf Stream could simultaneously affect the temperature of Greenland, the Western Scottish Islands, Northumberland, York, Denmark, Saxony, Lithuania, and China, all of which recorded warmer weather and longer growing seasons. I have never had any of the True Believers offer to go beyond that condescension.

The President apparently is going to make Climate Change a big and important driver of his policies for the next few years. He seems quite positive that he knows all that anyone needs to know about the subject, and the topic is closed. Anyone who does not understand this believes that the Moon is made of cheese. There is nothing to discuss.

President Obama on Iraq: extract from Speech in 2008

When you have no overarching strategy, there is no clear definition of success. Success comes to be defined as the ability to maintain a flawed policy indefinitely. Here is the truth: fighting a war without end will not force the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. And fighting in a war without end will not make the American people safer.

So when I am Commander-in-Chief, I will set a new goal on Day One: I will end this war. Not because politics compels it. Not because our troops cannot bear the burden– as heavy as it is. But because it is the right thing to do for our national security, and it will ultimately make us safer.

In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq.

http://www.cfr.org/elections/obamas-speech-iraq-march-2008/p15761

We can’t say he didn’t warn us.

Meanwhile the collapse of the Shiite Iraqi government we left behind continues. Sunni jihadists kill Shia heretics. The Kurds continue to consolidate. Since there are as many Kurds in Iran as in Iraq, and as many in Turkey as in Iraq, a consolidated independent Kurdish state on their borders is a major threat. Turkey is predominantly Sunni and Sufi. Iran is of course Shiite. Kurds are considered Sunni, sort of (“Compared to infidels, Kurds are Moslems”) but are closer to the West’s notion of “moderate Islamics” than almost any other powerful group. As I have noted, Saladin (1139 – 1193), the conqueror of Crusader Jerusalem in 1187, was a Kurd.

The latest news shows that the ISIS Sunni conquests continue as the government forces run away, but there is vigorous recruiting in Baghdad, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is said to be sending help to the Iraqi Shiites. No one is calling this civil war yet, but it certainly looks a lot like one.

Obama to Iraq: Your Problem Now

In his State of the Union address, in January, President Obama said, “When I took office, nearly a hundred and eighty thousand Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, all our troops are out of Iraq.” It was a boast, not an apology. The descent of Iraq into open civil war in the past week has not, to judge from his remarks on Friday, fundamentally changed that view. He did grant that it was alarming that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, “a terrorist organization that operates in both Iraq and in Syria,” had made what he delicately called “significant gains” in Iraq. (That is, it has taken control of more than one city.) He said that he wasn’t entirely surprised—things hadn’t been looking good in Iraq for a while, and we’d been giving the government there more help. “Now Iraq needs additional support to break the momentum of extremist groups and bolster the capabilities of Iraqi security forces,” he said. After all, as he put it, “Nobody has an interest in seeing terrorists gain a foothold inside of Iraq.” But there were limits: “We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq.”

Speaking from the South Lawn, Obama argued that this was not just a matter of what the American people would accept, or the limits of our capacity to make sacrifices for humanitarian goals. It’s more that he doesn’t see the point. As he sees it, after all our investment of lives and money—“extraordinary sacrifices”—the Iraqis have not been willing to treat each other decently, and until they do our air strikes won’t help. “This is not solely, or even primarily, a military challenge,” he said, and went on:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2014/06/obama-to-iraq-your-problem-now.html

We await the news from Baghdad with abated breath. Note that the Russians are inclined to support Bashar Assad in Syria, because he is the only major leader there who has religious tolerance as a policy. Given the substantial number of Druze in northern Syria and Lebanon this may be important.  Only Israel and Lebanon seem aware of the Druze; I see no evidence that the State Department has ever heard of them.

Of course that isn’t the only reason for Russian support of Assad in Syria. His father had the support of the USSR; but not all former allies of the USSR are now allies of Russia.  The issue is complex, and Russia’s interests in that part of the world are not all in synch.

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

View 828, Friday, June 13, 2014

John Quincy Adams on American Policy:

Whenever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

Fourth of July, 1821

Home safe.  A few excitements over weather in Carolina, but US Air handled it all well, and despite several hours delay in getting off Hilton Head Island I got to Charlotte just in time for my regularly scheduled flight to LAX, the limousine service met me at the proper time and place, and LA freeways were working, and I got home tired but safe.  The conference was well worth going to. These are the people who are doing the work in advancing nanotech, mostly working at micron levels now,  building tools, testing materials, polishing surface, developing lithography at micron and smaller scales, and in general implementing the technology.  Think early days of the computer revolution.

In my talk to the conference I said that I could predict with confidence that everything I saw at this conference would be available as an app on whatever equivalent of an iPhone we will be carrying in 2044; that the smart phone we carried would have 10 terabytes of information storage  — on reflection I am sure it will be closer to 100 TB – and be able to Skype with anyone in the world who had one, and that would be a large fraction of the human race. Presumably we will be able to filter out unwanted calls, but it’s not clear how.  “Siri, call whoever is at the GPS location…”  We will not be at a singularity caused by self-replicating self-aware macro, micro, or nanotech robots doing Lamarckian evolution.  We will be building things that all of us will say “I should have thought of that!”.  Some of those in the room listening to this will be billionaires.  Most will not be, but nearly all will be well employed.  You went into the right field.  It was worth the cost of your education.

More on that another time.

The situation in Iraq is terrible. Predictable and predicted, of course. Now the Sunni al-Qaida are running amok killing heretic Shia, and the Shia Iranians are getting nervous, and as I understand it the super-Shia Iranian Republican Guard are now intervening. Meanwhile the pro-western Kurds seem secure and have used this opportunity to seize Kirkuk and some oil fields, and generally to consolidate their hold on their Kurdistan; and of course this all strengthens their independence from Baghdad. As to religion, the saying among Arabs is “Compared to infidels, Kurds are Moslem”. Since the time of the Saladin sultanate (Saladin was a Kurd and his shock troops which took Jerusalem from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem were Kurds), the Kurds have been comparatively and sometimes extraordinarily tolerant of all branches of the Moslem religion, and have made deals with the Christians. The Third Crusade ended when Richard Lionheart concluded that he could not retake Jerusalem, but was able to negotiate an acceptable truce with Saladin allowing Christian pilgrims to visit the Holy City, and even allowed some of the Christian hospitaler orders to operate.

The enemy of my enemy may or may not be my friend. Sometimes the enemy of my enemy remains my enemy. Between the Iranian Republican Guard and the al-Qaida jihadists there is little difference in their intensity of hatred for much of the west, and each time one of them kills his enemy perhaps we should applaud.

When we first decided to play the conquest game in Mesopotamia, I urged the powers to consider breaking Iraq – an artificial state created from provinces of the disintegrating Turkish empire and invented largely to create a kingdom for the oldest of the Hashemite brothers (his younger brother got Trans-Jordan) – into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite states, drawing borders so that all got some oil, and all would be reasonably stable.

Note that Jordan is Sunni and more or less pro western, and far more tolerant of Jews and Christians than their Sunni relatives in Arabia. Note also that most Palestinian Arabs – over 90% — are Sunni, although they accept support from the Shiite Iranians.

Syria was Sunni, and tolerant of Christians, Sunni, Druze, Baha’i, and even some Jewish communities. This was because the rulers were Alawite, a minority within the Shia minority, and really needed a national policy of religious tolerance.  There are also Druze in Syria, and Druze are heretics to both Sunni and Shia. Tolerance has ended in all the areas taken from the Syrian government, and the usual first act of the taking of an area by insurgents is to chase the heretics and infidels out.

The Iraqi civil war was predictable and predicted – we predicted it here. The outcome is serious. When we went into Iraq the costs estimate was $300 billion. That was laughable but I pointed out that for that much money we could make the United States energy independent and tell the Arabs to drink their oil; we would not longer have any great interests there. Of course that was never considered; many say “and no wonder, there were too many oil interests involved”; to which I could only nod. Then we went in and Iraq fell. We promised the Iraqi generals that they “would have an honorable place in rebuilding Iraq”. There was a chance then to rebuild a state with regional armies; probably three states, Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd, with a loose federal government and a rigidly tolerant constitution. For a time it appeared that could be done.

Then Came Bremer.

 

Britain’s failure to intervene in Syria sparked Iraq chaos, No10 aide says

Nadhim Zahawi says al-Qaeda-aligned fighters "thrived" in Syria after Britain’s failure to strike created a "vacuum"

 

Britain’s failure to intervene in Syria has led to Iraq’s descent into civil war, a Downing Street adviser has said.

Al-Qaeda aligned militants have overrun a string of Iraq’s major cities because Britain created a “vacuum” in Syria, Nadhim Zahawi, a member of the No 10 policy board said.

He blamed the United States’ governance of Iraq following the 2003 invasion for the country’s seizure by Islamist terrorists.

The decision of Paul Bremer, the head of the occupational authority in Iraq, to disband the 700,000-man Iraqi Army eleven years ago is the root cause of the crisis, Mr. Zahawi, who was born in Iraq, said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10894255/Britains-failure-to-intervene-in-Syria-sparked-Iraq-chaos-No10-aide-says.html

It’s hard to say what policy the US should have now. Since this civil war was predictable and predicted, one hopes that President Obama (or VP Biden) have been thinking about this and have a policy ready to implement.

I have seen no evidence that this is more than a hope.

And now we wait and see. Al-Qaida will kill Shiites. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard will kill Sunni. The Kurds will consolidate and continue their policy of tolerance. At least the Kurds are better off than they were under Saddam.

I have this which needs comment:

Constitution

Your view column on 6/13/2014 includes a section from Roland Dobbins that you seem to agree with. He is saying that an amendment to the constitution is "unconstitutional". A clearly incorrect statement. Your seeming agreement with this makes all of your points suspect. Had He/You stated that you didn’t like the 14th amendment or various SCOTUS rulings, that would be fine and would not call in to question your logic. Please understand, I believe that the SCOTUS has made many questionable rulings, but amendments aren’t their responsibility, other than to rule on the application of the amendments.

Respectfully,

Jose Tenembaum

What Roland said was:

I applaud the ends, but deplore the means.

<http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-teacher-lawsuit-20140611-story.html#page=1>

This is not a Federal issue, yet the legal reasoning rests upon the specious ‘disparate impact’ penumbra of the (unconstitutional, in my view) ‘equal protection’ clause of the (again, unconstitutional, in my view) Fourteenth Amendment.

That is not an assertion that the Constitution cannot be amended – there are a couple of very specific things that cannot be amended:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no state, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate

What Roland asserts, and I tend to agree, is that the majority opinion expressed by Douglas in Griswold v. Connecticut, which stated that cases can be decided by “emanations and penumbras” from other amendments, was improper, and thus “unconstitutional”. Of course it is not unconstitutional in that the court made the decision and it is the law of the land; the proper way for him to have said it, I suppose, would have been to say “in my judgment” or some such, and perhaps to explain the reasoning, but that would have detracted from the point which had to do with teacher tenure – another “constitutional right” found in emanations and penumbras.

It is also possible to make the case that the 14^th Amendment was not properly accepted by sufficient state governments, since the former Confederate states were governed by Union occupation forces and the legislators and executives imposed by the Union army of occupation; and thus the amendment was not constitution because not adopted constitutionally.

I tend to agree with that, provided that we understand that it is an academic argument: I conceive of no plausible way that the 14^th Amendment will ever be declared invalid. It is not so certain that the interpretation of the Constitution holding that the Bill of Rights (and its emanations and penumbras) is now to be applied against the States will prevail forever. Until the 1920’s the Courts held that was not the case. It is unlikely that the modern interpretation will be overturned but it is not impossible, and one can conceive of plausible scenarios in which a Supreme Court might in fact get rid of all that, emanations and penumbras and all.

And I certainly agree that the vague ‘disparate impact’ penumbra is subject to reinterpretation and may well be cast out by a subsequent majority. If that makes everything I say suspect, I have no reply: I do not believe that the USSC is always correct, and I have considerable evidence that it has in fact reversed itself on many key constitution points. To hold that it is infallible is in my judgment a mistake. It is also unlikely that we will return to the older Jacksonian interpretation of the Constitution, in which each branch – legislative, judicial and executive – is charged to obey its own interpretation of the constitution, because it is good to have an agreed on final authority on that subject. Jackson’s answer in one famous case was “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Or so we were taught in Tennessee history in 5^th grade; I understand it is now said to be apocryphal. Perhaps so, but the sentiment appears from time to time in other Presidents. USSC is a curb on imperial power.

In any event, I did not have time to write a long comment on the case, and I do agree that the result is good, but the reasoning is appalling. The court says that teachers cannot have tenure in any school ( a good thing, in my judgment) not because it has a deleterious effect on education (which many and perhaps a majority of educational theorists believe) but because it has a deleterious effect on minority students, who tend to be sent more teachers who would have been fired if it were not for tenure. I think that’s the reasoning; it’s not obvious.

Of course it may be a case of finding any stick to beat tenure with, since it is so strongly defended by the teachers unions, and so clearly to the disadvantage of everyone seeking a good education…

Warning: the following is politically incorrect.

ISIS, the naughty boys running over Iraq, are bad medicine. Too radical for Al-Qaeda: better off dead. I haven’t seen this mentioned in the news media, likely because nobody (including the Administration) really understands it, but they’d be easy to squash (with air strikes) . Easy to beat. They were more-or-less pushed out of parts of Syria (fighting against both Assad and most of the other rebel groups). They aren’t able to deal with the Kurds, but they may have to face them. And they’re working at irritating Turkey: big mistake. They’ve only got a few thousand soldiers, tops. Maliki’s army is not running away because ISIS are such demon fighters – they’d probably run away from Mickey Mouse.

A friend and I were talking about this: we were trying to estimate how many 1942 Germans it would take, using WWII weapons, to exterminate these weasels. He guessed a battalion: I was holding out for a regiment. Of course, if you did that you might get some unpleasant side effects..

G

The proper way to have an empire is to have local troops to provide the blood, while you provide the Legion if needed; and if your proconsul is any use you will not need much in the way of legions.  Herod had more soldiers than Pilate. 

The Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum is trying to raise money with a kind of kickstarter program.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/newstarship/hollywood-sci-fi-science-fiction-museum If you have any thoughts on donating, go find out about it.  The site is worth a few minutes to begin with.  It might become something important.

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