"IT'S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME"
We welcome your comments about our blurb "IT'S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME" concerning the rapid improvement in the environment, economy, longevity, and standard of living over the decades since the transcontinental railroad was built. Do you agree or disagree? Do you have any insights that you would be willing to contribute to the discussion of this controversial subject? We think that doom and gloom illustrated by murder and mayhem that passes for the "evening news" is utterly misleading. Have we drawn the correct lessons from history? Click on "POST A COMMENT" (First click on "COMMENTS" if you are on an index page) to add your thoughts.
Time Magazine Cover predicting Global Cooling, December 3, 1973.
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 10:54 AM
191 Comments:
"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning."
—Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Incompetent environmentalism has already resulted in millions of deaths and threatens to waste trillions of dollars to accomplish nothing useful.
In a week that the British High Court ruled that Al Gore's work is wrong, it is a supreme embarrassment to have the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded for work already thoroughly discredited.
" ... a judge this month instructed British teachers showing the film to tell their pupils that Gore makes at least 11 false or unsupported claims. ...
Gore presents Mt Kilimanjaro's melting snows as proof of global warming. In fact, the snows are vanishing thanks to local factors, including deforestation.
Gore suggests Antarctica's ice cover is melting. Most studies says it is increasing or stable.
Gore shows scary graphics of cities drowning in seas that rise 7m, causing millions of refugees. But the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the seas will rise at worst by 59cm this century.
Gore uses images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests it was caused by global warming. The Government's expert in this case admitted such one-off events can't be blamed on warming.
Gore suggests ice-core evidence shows rising CO2 caused temperature rises, which ended the past seven ice ages. In fact, the CO2 rises followed temperature rises by 800 to 2000 years.
Gore claims global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, causing an ice age in Europe. Recent studies deny it.
Gore blames global warming for species losses and coral reef bleaching. The Government couldn't show evidence to back this claim.
Gore claims a study showed polar bears had drowned because of vanishing ice. The study actually said just four polar bears drowned, and only because of a bad storm.
Gore suggests Greenland's ice could melt, causing a dangerous rise in sea levels. In fact, Greenland's ice won't melt for thousands of years.
Gore shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims this was caused by global warming. The Government's expert agreed this was not the case.
Gore claims rising seas have forced people to flee Pacific islands to New Zealand. There is no record of any such warming-caused evacuation."
The problem is that environmentalism which should be a science, has instead become misinformation promoted as the latest pagan religion. This grievous mistake is hardly a new issue, as the first two of the ten commandments prohibit worshiping earth gods.
Weather Channel founder John Coleman comments that "Global Warming ... is the greatest scam in history. ... In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. ... The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend."
Subject: 100 prominent scientists defy global warming consensus
"Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations
Dec. 13, 2007
His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
New York, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Secretary-General,
Re: UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction
It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis. While we understand the evidence that has led them to view CO2 emissions as harmful, the IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions. On top of which, because attempts to cut emissions will slow development, the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.
The IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers are the most widely read IPCC reports amongst politicians and non-scientists and are the basis for most climate change policy formulation. Yet these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by government representatives. The great majority of IPCC contributors and reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.
Contrary to the impression left by the IPCC Summary reports:
- Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.
- The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.
- Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.
In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed (see http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/wg1_timetable_2006-08-14.pdf) to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports; i.e., the IPCC assessment reports are already materially outdated.
The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Balanced cost/benefit analyses provide no support for the introduction of global measures to cap and reduce energy consumption for the purpose of restricting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the "precautionary principle" because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.
The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.
Yours faithfully,
Don Aitkin, PhD, Professor, social scientist, retired vice-chancellor and president, University of Canberra, Australia
William J.R. Alexander, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Member, UN Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000
Bjarne Andresen, PhD, physicist, Professor, The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Geoff L. Austin, PhD, FNZIP, FRSNZ, Professor, Dept. of Physics, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Timothy F. Ball, PhD, environmental consultant, former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol., Biologist, Merian-Schule Freiburg, Germany
Sonja A. Boehmer-Christiansen, PhD, Reader, Dept. of Geography, Hull University, U.K.; Editor, Energy & Environment journal
Chris C. Borel, PhD, remote sensing scientist, U.S.
Reid A. Bryson, PhD, DSc, DEngr, UNE P. Global 500 Laureate; Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research; Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography, and of Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin
Dan Carruthers, M.Sc., wildlife biology consultant specializing in animal ecology in Arctic and Subarctic regions, Alberta
R.M. Carter, PhD, Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Ian D. Clark, PhD, Professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Richard S. Courtney, PhD, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.
Willem de Lange, PhD, Dept. of Earth and Ocean Sciences, School of Science and Engineering, Waikato University, New Zealand
David Deming, PhD (Geophysics), Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Oklahoma
Freeman J. Dyson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.
Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Western Washington University
Lance Endersbee, Emeritus Professor, former dean of Engineering and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Monasy University, Australia
Hans Erren, Doctorandus, geophysicist and climate specialist, Sittard, The Netherlands
Robert H. Essenhigh, PhD, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University
Christopher Essex, PhD, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Associate Director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario
David Evans, PhD, mathematician, carbon accountant, computer and electrical engineer and head of 'Science Speak,' Australia
William Evans, PhD, editor, American Midland Naturalist; Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame
Stewart Franks, PhD, Professor, Hydroclimatologist, University of Newcastle, Australia
R. W. Gauldie, PhD, Research Professor, Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, School of Ocean Earth Sciences and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
Lee C. Gerhard, PhD, Senior Scientist Emeritus, University of Kansas; former director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey
Gerhard Gerlich, Professor for Mathematical and Theoretical Physics, Institut für Mathematische Physik der TU Braunschweig, Germany
Albrecht Glatzle, PhD, sc.agr., Agro-Biologist and Gerente ejecutivo, INTTAS, Paraguay
Fred Goldberg, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Stockholm, Sweden
Vincent Gray, PhD, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001, Wellington, New Zealand
William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University and Head of the Tropical Meteorology Project
Howard Hayden, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut
Louis Hissink MSc, M.A.I.G., editor, AIG News, and consulting geologist, Perth, Western Australia
Craig D. Idso, PhD, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Arizona
Sherwood B. Idso, PhD, President, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, AZ, USA
Andrei Illarionov, PhD, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity; founder and director of the Institute of Economic Analysis
Zbigniew Jaworowski, PhD, physicist, Chairman - Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland
Jon Jenkins, PhD, MD, computer modelling - virology, NSW, Australia
Wibjorn Karlen, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Olavi Kärner, Ph.D., Research Associate, Dept. of Atmospheric Physics, Institute of Astrophysics and Atmospheric Physics, Toravere, Estonia
Joel M. Kauffman, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
David Kear, PhD, FRSNZ, CMG, geologist, former Director-General of NZ Dept. of Scientific & Industrial Research, New Zealand
Madhav Khandekar, PhD, former research scientist, Environment Canada; editor, Climate Research (2003-05); editorial board member, Natural Hazards; IPCC expert reviewer 2007
William Kininmonth M.Sc., M.Admin., former head of Australia's National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological organization's Commission for Climatology Jan J.H. Kop, MSc Ceng FICE (Civil Engineer Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers), Emeritus Prof. of Public Health Engineering, Technical University Delft, The Netherlands
Prof. R.W.J. Kouffeld, Emeritus Professor, Energy Conversion, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Salomon Kroonenberg, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Geotechnology, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Hans H.J. Labohm, PhD, economist, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations), The Netherlands
The Rt. Hon. Lord Lawson of Blaby, economist; Chairman of the Central Europe Trust; former Chancellor of the Exchequer, U.K.
Douglas Leahey, PhD, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary
David R. Legates, PhD, Director, Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware
Marcel Leroux, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS
Bryan Leyland, International Climate Science Coalition, consultant and power engineer, Auckland, New Zealand
William Lindqvist, PhD, independent consulting geologist, Calif.
Richard S. Lindzen, PhD, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A.J. Tom van Loon, PhD, Professor of Geology (Quaternary Geology), Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; former President of the European Association of Science Editors
Anthony R. Lupo, PhD, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dept. of Soil, Environmental, and Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia
Richard Mackey, PhD, Statistician, Australia
Horst Malberg, PhD, Professor for Meteorology and Climatology, Institut für Meteorologie, Berlin, Germany
John Maunder, PhD, Climatologist, former President of the Commission for Climatology of the World Meteorological Organization (89-97), New Zealand
Alister McFarquhar, PhD, international economy, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.
Ross McKitrick, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph
John McLean, PhD, climate data analyst, computer scientist, Australia
Owen McShane, PhD, economist, head of the International Climate Science Coalition; Director, Centre for Resource Management Studies, New Zealand
Fred Michel, PhD, Director, Institute of Environmental Sciences and Associate Professor of Earth Sciences, Carleton University
Frank Milne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Queen's University
Asmunn Moene, PhD, former head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway
Alan Moran, PhD, Energy Economist, Director of the IPA's Deregulation Unit, Australia
Nils-Axel Morner, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden
Lubos Motl, PhD, Physicist, former Harvard string theorist, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
John Nicol, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia
David Nowell, M.Sc., Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, former chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa
James J. O'Brien, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Meteorology and Oceanography, Florida State University
Cliff Ollier, PhD, Professor Emeritus (Geology), Research Fellow, University of Western Australia
Garth W. Paltridge, PhD, atmospheric physicist, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania, Australia
R. Timothy Patterson, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University
Al Pekarek, PhD, Associate Professor of Geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, Minnesota
Ian Plimer, PhD, Professor of Geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia
Brian Pratt, PhD, Professor of Geology, Sedimentology, University of Saskatchewan
Harry N.A. Priem, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Planetary Geology and Isotope Geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences
Alex Robson, PhD, Economics, Australian National University Colonel F.P.M. Rombouts, Branch Chief - Safety, Quality and Environment, Royal Netherland Air Force
R.G. Roper, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
Arthur Rorsch, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Molecular Genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands
Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, B.C.
Tom V. Segalstad, PhD, (Geology/Geochemistry), Head of the Geological Museum and Associate Professor of Resource and Environmental Geology, University of Oslo, Norway
Gary D. Sharp, PhD, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, CA
S. Fred Singer, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia and former director Weather Satellite Service
L. Graham Smith, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario
Roy W. Spencer, PhD, climatologist, Principal Research Scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville
Peter Stilbs, TeknD, Professor of Physical Chemistry, Research Leader, School of Chemical Science and Engineering, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm, Sweden
Hendrik Tennekes, PhD, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Dick Thoenes, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Brian G Valentine, PhD, PE (Chem.), Technology Manager - Industrial Energy Efficiency, Adjunct Associate Professor of Engineering Science, University of Maryland at College Park; Dept of Energy, Washington, DC
Gerrit J. van der Lingen, PhD, geologist and paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand
Len Walker, PhD, Power Engineering, Australia
Edward J. Wegman, PhD, Department of Computational and Data Sciences, George Mason University, Virginia
Stephan Wilksch, PhD, Professor for Innovation and Technology Management, Production Management and Logistics, University of Technolgy and Economics Berlin, Germany
Boris Winterhalter, PhD, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland
David E. Wojick, PhD, P.Eng., energy consultant, Virginia
Raphael Wust, PhD, Lecturer, Marine Geology/Sedimentology, James Cook University, Australia
A. Zichichi, PhD, President of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva, Switzerland; Emeritus Professor of Advanced Physics, University of Bologna, Italy"
Subject: Gratitude owed to Maurice Hilleman
See: Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases, HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
"Maurice Hilleman, a longtime researcher at the pharmaceutical company Merck, may have saved more lives than any other scientist in history. A microbiologist trained at the University of Chicago, Hilleman's goal was the elimination of childhood disease through effective vaccines. And he very nearly succeeded. Chief among his accomplishments are nine vaccines that almost every child gets, rendering formerly dreaded diseases-including often devastating ones such as mumps and rubella-practically harmless. His measles vaccine alone saves several million lives around the globe every year."
Weather Channel founder John Coleman has posted more detailed comments that "Global Warming is a Scam."
EARTH DAY 2008: PREDICTIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER WERE WRONG
Washington Policy Center
“By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth by one half” – Life magazine, January 1970
Seattle – Another Earth Day is upon us. This is a good time to look back at predictions made on the original Earth Day about environmental disasters that were about to hit the planet.
Most Earth Day predictions turned out to be stunningly wrong. In 1970, environmentalists said there would soon be a new ice age and massive deaths from air pollution. The New York Times foresaw the extinction of the human race. Widely-quoted biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted worldwide starvation by 1975. Documented examples are below.
On this Earth Day 2008, new predictions will again be made about looming environmental disasters about to strike our planet. If past experience is any guide, most of these predictions are wrong. People concerned about our planet’s future should be wary of statements from activists and other interested groups, so we stay focused on real environmental concerns, and don’t waste time on fearsome predictions that will never happen.
• “...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.
• By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.
• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.
• The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.
• “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
• “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.
• “By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.
• “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• “...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.
• Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
• “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
• “By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.
Our purpose on Earth Day 2008 is not simply to point out how often environmental activists have been wrong, but to learn from the mistakes made during past Earth Days. Learning from the past will give us a better understanding of our world and the threats that face it.
By being skeptical about routine portents of doom, we can stay focused on the real threats that face our planet, and on the reasonable and achievable actions we as a society can take to meet them.
Article on Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, a simpler design for nuclear reactors that just might provide inexpensive safe electrical generation to replace fossil fuel.
A police chief explains how to easily further dramatically reduce crime and violence.
End U.S. oil imports by turning coal into gasoline and clean diesel fuel using the heat from a safe nuclear reactor to liquify the coal while also producing electricity, allowing an even smaller "carbon footprint" than with electric cars.
"Genome pioneer Craig Venter wants to make a bacterium that will eat CO2 and produce fuel."
"Some facts about greenhouse and global warming."
"Three ways to get the first new nuclear power plants built very quickly."
"If Stupidity Got Us Into this mess, Then Why Can’t it Get Us Out?" —Will Rogers
The Heaviest Element Known to Science
Scientists Discover New Element, the Heaviest Yet Known to Science
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet
known to science.
The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.
These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.
Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.
Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.
In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.
This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.
When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE
"Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake.
True, the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.
The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated."
—Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, February, 2009 warning the United States about the dangers of Socialism
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE:
THE SOLUTION TO AMERICAN'S DEPENDENCE ON IMPORTING FOREIGN ENERGY IS (1) MASS PRODUCTION OF (2) STANDARDIZED CONSTRUCTION (3) PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTORS (4) LOCATED IN MANY STORY UNDERGROUND
VAULTS (5) SITED AT U.S. MILTARY BASES – WHICH COMBINATION HAS THE ADVANTAGES OF LOW COST, SECURITY, DEFENSIBLE, PREVENTS AIR ATTACKS, MELTDOWN IMPOSSIBLE, SMALL, UNOBTRUSIVE, AND SCALABLE, RAPID DEPLOYMENT, AVOIDS THE NIMBY PROBLEM, IS AWAY FROM LARGE POPULATION CENTERS, TAKES ADVANTAGE OF THE EXISTING NUCLEAR NAVY'S ENGINEERING EXPERTISE AND LONG SAFETY RECORD.
Who could have predicted the current economic crisis?
The conclusion of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, 2008 is that "environmental improvement in the United States has been substantial and dramatic ... "
Environmentalists are causing another very dangerous fiasco by mandating lead free solder which now makes all electronics unreliable:
"Lead-free solders used today simply cannot make as reliable mechanical bonds or as reliable electrical interconnects as older eutectic solders with 100 years of proven reliability.
This makes virtually all electronic products vulnerable to early failure. The problem is ignorant legislators with no understanding of technology and manufacturing.
The electronics manufacturing industry is trying to overcome the lead-free directive but it will probably need a major catastrophe to change ignorant government officials' minds."
Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute, a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). last week in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."
See, Nuclear No-Contest by James P. Hogan.
See, Caught Green-Handed! Cold facts about the hot topic of global temperature change after the Climategate scandal by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, UK
Example of totally dishonest, highly offensive, utterly disgusting, moronic environmentalism.
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." —H. L. Mencken
Climategate admissions: "Phil Jones, who stepped down recently as head of the embattled Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, acknowledges that there's been no 'statistically significant' warming for 15 years, some of the temperatures records have been lost and the Medieval Warm Period may have been warmer than temperatures today."
BBC Q&A with Professor Phil Jones.
"The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades."
Have you seen "The Story of Stuff" video? Really evil anti-capitalist propaganda created to mislead and indoctrinate children. Virtually everything said is the opposite of the truth. It's truly astounding that they can make a fundamental error about every twenty seconds and keep doing this throughout the video! It would make a great course in economics for kids to understand each of the blunders and why what they are saying at each step is almost exactly wrong.
Have you noticed that earth day is held each year on Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's birthday, April 22nd?
A shocking video commercial by environmentalists reveals their sincere murderous fanaticism, in keeping with both the worst of German fascism and Carl Marx's admission that under socialism/communism 20% of the population would need to be liquidated.
'NO PRESSURE': NEW ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGN GLORIFIES ECO-FASCISM:
"The latest anti-global warming campaign aimed at getting people around the world to reduce their carbon footprint has backfired. Big time. ... "
If you want to understand the true mindset of progressives, don't miss viewing their disturbing video message. [For adult viewers only.]
Unbelievable! ... Here is that disgusting "believe as we environmentalists do or we will kill you" UK propaganda video on Youtube. [Yes, this is actually a real ad made by leading British environmentalists, not a spoof!] Surprising that they let their guard down to reveal their true beliefs. Unfortunately this is how they think. Frightening!
" ... the global warming scam ... is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist." —Harold Lewis, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
" ... we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. ... One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy ... " —Ottmar Edenhofer, Co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Working Group III, and lead author of the IPCC’s 2007 Report
"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for ... ethanol ... was a mistake." —Al Gore, Jr., former U.S. Vice President, 11/2010
History of health and wealth – A 4 minute, 200 year animation recommended by Bill Gates
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
"More than any other single person of this age, he helped to provide bread for a hungry world." —Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, 1970
Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives from starvation by inventing a more productive variety of wheat.
China 210 megawatt pebble bed nuclear reactor starts construction April, 2011.
[Courtesy Google Alerts.]
Technological progress has occurred so fast that today's handheld battery operated iPad 2 is the same speed as the fastest supercomputer in the world in 1985, the Cray 2. The iPad 2 would have remained on the list of the world's 500 fastest computers until 1994.
"Power corrupts; nuclear power corrupts absolutely. ... There is no contradiction between favouring the machines and opposing the machinations." —George Monbiot
Status report on China's High Temperature gas-cooled Pebble-
bed Modular Nuclear Reactor.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist resigns from American Physical Society over its exaggerated global warming claims
More wildly wrong predictions made by experts:
"[The telephone] has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. This device is inherently of no value to us." —Western Union executives, 1876
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." —Marshal Ferdinand, 1911 (later, Commander of French Military Forces in World War I)
"This concept [for Federal Express overnight package delivery] is interesting but not feasible." —Yale Economics Professor to his student, FEDEX founder, Fred Smith, on why his proposal was only worth a grade of "C," 1965
"The United States will not be a threat to us for decades ... at the earliest, 1970." —Adolph Hitler, 1940
"There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home." —Ken Olsen, Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
For prosperity, rules matter: Dubai to create a financial center took 110 acres and replaced Sharia law with more business friendly British common law just there to change an empty lot into the sixteenth most powerful financial center in the world in only eight years! —Michael Strong, Free Cities Project founder
"There's more gold in a pound of electronics than a pound of gold ore ... " —Ken Byer, CEO of recycler Cloud Blue
Adoption of new technologies: "the first internal combustion engine was (arguably) the Pyréolophore invented by Nicéphore and Claude Niépce in 1807, but car ownership wasn't really commonplace until the first decade of the 1900s. ... it took more than a century for the impact of the technology to become widespread. As technological revolutions go, that one was pretty slow. ... (the number of years required for various technologies to be adopted by one-quarter of the U.S. population) ... electricity transmission and use, which was developed in 1873, took 46 years to reach a mass market, while the telephone (1876) took only 35 years. The radio (1897) took only 31 years, television (1926) took 26, the PC (1975) just 16 years, the mobile phone (1983) a mere 13 years, and the Web (1991) a blisteringly fast seven years."
Professor Richard A. Muller and his physics colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley have reanalyzed the temperature data and concluded that despite having poor data that global warming is real. Unfortunately, even if correct that the world is warmer, it has been warmer and cooler in the past, and as he explains, they did not assess and did not answer the question of "How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects?"
The continued difficulty is that climate computer models are not reality, and playing with unverifiable computer code is not the same as science.
Actual science saying that human activity is causing global warming, to what extent, what the effects will result, and what would work at reasonable cost to reduce possible adverse consequences is all lacking, and is required before it is rational to do harmful things in an effort to mitigate against speculative future harms. Otherwise you are far more likely to do more harm than good, as there are an unlimited number of unverifiable possible future dangers against which you can do an unlimited amount of harm in a worthless attempt to prevent.
Not exactly what the "news" would lead you to expect:
United States "on track to be a net exporter of petroleum products in 2011 for the first time in 62 years ... According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration".
Small nuclear reactors and the US Energy Future.
Book: The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley.
"Insurance companies win because most people think bad things happen far more often than they actually do."
" ... a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed." —Wall Street Journal
Debunking the anti- free market nonsense, falsely claiming that Apple harms its workers:
Support the workers.
Buy Apple.
Radio's 'This American Life' retracts Apple story:
"The public radio program This American Life on Friday retracted a story about what [Mike Daisey] said he found while investigating Apple operations in China, citing 'numerous fabrications.' "
Truthiness, a new word that socialists use for lying:
"What, that thing about the exploited iPad workers in China? Didn’t they find out that was a hoax or something?"
Also see, RETRACTING "MR. DAISEY AND THE APPLE FACTORY".
See, Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again: The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with predictions by Professor William Happer, Princeton University, Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2012:
" ... lack of any statistically significant warming for over a decade ... CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated. ... The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions. ... "
A few guys in Florida concerned about environmental extremism made a Youtube video in a week expecting maybe a few hundred views, and were total blown away as millions of people have watched it.
We can help to save the earth from another catastrophic asteroid impact.
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission:
“What must be admitted, very painfully, is that this was a disaster ‘Made in Japan,’” ... “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the program;’ our groupism; and our insularity.”
When your car suddenly accelerates without you pressing on the gas pedal, you have just been killed by an environmentalist! (It is particularly stupid to remove the tiny amount of lead that keeps car electronics safe in a vehicle with a large lead battery.)
Just as incompetent environmentalists have made buildings unsafe in fires by removing the asbestos that prevents the steel beams from failing (why the World Trade Center buildings fell), they have also removed the lead from solder, rendering all electronics unsafe, unreliable, and of limited lifespan.
Read about this environmentalist created calamity of tin whiskers in this NASA report.
" ... If you also include state and local spending, the government will spend nearly a trillion dollars this year fighting poverty. ... All this welfare spending adds up to $20,610 for every poor man, woman and child in the [United States]. For a poor family of three, that's nearly $62,000 dollars. The poverty line for that family is just $18,500. With this kind of spending, poverty should be wiped out – instead it's growing. ... " —Gerri Willis
Predicting technology development ...
"Moore’s Law (1965). Time is the teacher. The cost of a unit decreases exponentially over time. ...
Wright’s Law (1936). We learn by doing. The cost of a unit decreases as a function of the cumulative production. ... "
As of yesterday, Apple, Inc. became the most valuable company in the history of the world, with a market capitalization of $624 billion.
It is illogical to attribute melting polar ice to human caused global warming because there is considerable evidence from multiple sources that this has happened many times in the past, prior to industrialized human society burning fossil fuels. For example,
1) The southern McMurdo Sound Antarctic core yielded clear evidence of some 74 cycles of ice sheet buildup and retreat during a 6-million-year stretch starting in the Miocene Epoch some 20 million years ago.
2) An 80-foot core that dates back about three million years is closely examined. It contains microfossils of single-celled animals ... the size of a grain of sand ... measuring the amount of two metals, magnesium and calcium, that are in the ocean and get incorporated into the shell of the foram when it’s growing in the ocean. And that process is dependent on the temperature of the ocean. ... during the Pliocene ... temperatures were three to four, perhaps five degrees above present. ... Even just one degree rise in ocean temperatures in the waters surrounding Antarctica will attack and begin to melt the ice shelves from below, very quickly. ... indicating that ice both froze and then melted many times ... There was ice and there was no ice.
3) Drilling a sediment core at Lake El'gygytgyn in the northeastern Russian Arctic found almost a dozen intervals in the core over the last 2.8 million years when the climate was naturally much warmer than the present.
4) Ice rafted debris found by drilling through marine sediments can distinguish six distinct events in cores of mud retrieved from the sea floor in the last 60,000 years.
"Bangladesh today is far wealthier than Holland was when it built its dikes." —Former British Cabinet Minister Peter Lilley
Avoidable misery is both hypocritical and immoral:
"Armchair environmentalists may romantically imagine us returning to the simple life without dependence on fossil fuels which they imagine poor people enjoy ... The reality is a lot grimmer: In fact, it means lives of grinding toil – where water is hauled every day rather than pumped through pipes; where fields are tilled and crops harvested by hand rather than with tractors and combine harvesters; where surplus crops – if any surplus can be produced without fertilisers - must be carried to market on your own or your animal’s back; where you have no light to read or study by in the evening; where you cannot run any of the domestic appliances, from fridge to TV, which we all take for granted; where you cannot buy cheap clothes, food, and mass-produced goods made elsewhere because there is no transport to bring it to local markets; where hospitals cannot run X-ray machines, sterilise equipment or keep drugs cool because they have no electricity."
—Peter Lilley
Apple's snarky Samsung post not good enough for British judge:
Samsung / Apple UK judgment
"On 9th July 2012 the High Court of Justice of England and Wales ruled that Samsung Electronic (UK) Limited’s Galaxy Tablet Computer, namely the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9 and Tab 7.7 do not infringe Apple’s registered design No. 0000181607-0001. A copy of the full judgment of the High court is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Patents/2012/1882.html.
In the ruling, the judge made several important points comparing the designs of the Apple and Samsung products:
"The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking. Overall it has undecorated flat surfaces with a plate of glass on the front all the way out to a very thin rim and a blank back. There is a crisp edge around the rim and a combination of curves, both at the corners and the sides. The design looks like an object the informed user would want to pick up and hold. It is an understated, smooth and simple product. It is a cool design."
"The informed user's overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following. From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool."
That Judgment has effect throughout the European Union and was upheld by the Court of Appeal on 18 October 2012. A copy of the Court of Appeal’s judgment is available on the following link www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/1339.html. There is no injunction in respect of the registered design in force anywhere in Europe.
However, in a case tried in Germany regarding the same patent, the court found that Samsung engaged in unfair competition by copying the iPad design. A U.S. jury also found Samsung guilty of infringing on Apple's design and utility patents, awarding over one billion U.S. dollars in damages to Apple Inc. So while the U.K. court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple's far more popular iPad."
Another example of irrational fears motivating stupidity that would kill children is the attempt to ban the safe multiple dose vaccine preservative Thimerosal. This almost certainly would result in third world children dying due to lack of inexpensive vaccinations.
Having children murdered in their school is terrible, but suicidal murders don't obey the law so passing gun laws has no effect. What seems totally inexcusable is passing laws requiring that schools must be defenseless against such attacks. If air marshals are a good idea that protects passengers, why are schools, colleges, and military bases left defenseless?
More about 'tin whiskers' (incompetent environmentalists have made electronics unreliable and unsafe).
"Tin whiskers are a deadly side-effect of malinformed do-gooders who are trying to ban lead. They often make electronic circuits go haywire, sometimes with deadly results, as in the Toyota unintended acceleration deaths." —Ken Rockwell
"New York Times Puts Story of Leaked Fracking Is Safe Report Covered Up for a Year on Page A19."
"The lives of the poorest have improved more rapidly in the past 15 years than ever before." —Bill Gates
"What If We Never Run Out of Oil?"
"Global warming 5 million years ago raised sea levels by 20 metres."
If it happened before naturally, why would anyone be confident that if the same thing happens again that it must be due to human activity?
Lightning starts the frequent small fires that are necessary to the health of forests. Incompetent environmentalists insist on putting out these fires, and prevent thinning forests and removal of dead trees. The result is forest fires with flames 90 feet high advancing at 12 mph instead of natural fires with flames 3 feet high advancing at 3 mph. This destroys the forests instead of the natural reinvigoration, and kills firefighters.
Another discovery showing (with ice penetrating radar) that it was much warmer in the past:
"a massive canyon – more than twice the size of Arizona's Grand Canyon – beneath an ice sheet in Greenland ... more than 460 miles long and nearly a half mile deep ... which has the features of a meandering river".
"the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ... says there was 60 per cent more Arctic sea ice this August than at the same time last year."
" ... by 2010 the 2000 prediction of the IPCC was wrong by well over a degree, and the gap was widening"
"The Correct US Poverty Rate Is Around and About Zero ... The US poverty numbers today do not measure the number of people still in poverty after the aid given: they measure the number of people in poverty before aid is given. ... the very poorest of the poor in the US, the bottom 5% (and thus very definitely below that poverty line) are in fact richer than 95% of all Indians. And 85% of all Chinese and 55% of all Brazilians."
"Row over IPCC report as nations 'try to hide lack of climate change' ... Documents seen by the Associated Press (AP) show attempts at political interference in the final report"
"World's top climate scientists told to 'cover up' the fact that the Earth's temperature hasn't risen for the last 15 years"
"World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong"
Climate "Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years. ... No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies. ... Most models simulate a small downward trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, albeit with large inter-model spread, in contrast to the small upward trend in observations." —IPCC 2013 Report
New York Times article recommends nuclear power as the most viable alternative energy.
Climate change likely due to variation in solar output discussed in an article about the sudden very cold climate in the 1600's when sunspots disappeared: Global cooling: When the climate changed astonishingly fast.
So which is it – is wind power required to save the planet or is building windmills an environmental crime?
Guilty plea is first in windmill bird kill by DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press, November 23, 2013:
"A major U.S. power company ... Duke Energy Corp. ... has pleaded guilty to ... killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at its Top of the World and Campbell Hill wind farms outside Casper, ... Wyoming ... and agreed to pay $1 million as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities."
The old joke is that 'under socialism everything that is not required is prohibited.' This latest environmental incompetence takes this one step further with wind power simultaneously being both subsidized by the government and prosecuted by them as a crime. No wonder the U.S. economy is in so much trouble.
"In 2012, there were an estimated 207 million cases of malaria, causing about 627 000 deaths ... mainly children in Africa ... 'The fact that so many people are infected and dying from mosquito bites is one of the greatest tragedies of the 21st century,' said ... World Health Organisation ... Director-General Margaret Chan. ... Death rates worldwide fell by 45 percent between 2000 and 2012 in all age groups, and by 51 percent in children under five. ... The main interventions for malaria are indoor spraying, diagnostic testing, artemisinin-based combination drug therapies, and bed nets treated with insecticides. However, malaria parasites are showing signs of resistance to insecticides in 64 countries."
"WHO said it has so little information it cannot tell if malaria cases are going up or down in the worst-hit countries ... "
Millions of lives have been saved by vaccinations, but when anti-vaccination fools endanger the lives of children, a map of "vaccine-preventable outbreaks" worldwide 2008-2014, shows the completely avoidable results.
The World's Resources Aren't Running Out By MATT RIDLEY
"Natural climate warming caused huge ice sheet collapses in Antarctica eight times in the past 20,000 years."
To understand just how fast life is getting better, read about retirement in the 1950's when most people (except factory workers) kept working until they became too disabled to continue, received an average Social Security benefit of $29 per month (equivalent to $280/month in 2012 dollars), died after an average of 8 years in retirement, and "doctors ... didn't go to heroic efforts to treat serious, chronic conditions such as heart disease or cancer."
"Researchers Find Major West Antarctic Glacier Melting from Geothermal Sources."
"There are more museums in the US than there are Starbucks and McDonalds – combined."
Over that 40-year stretch from 1972 to 2012, U.S. per capita disposable income more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation.
Climate change fixes are a fantasy:
What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change: Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us.
Halving of malaria deaths 'tremendous achievement'
" ... between 2001 and 2013, 4.3 million deaths were averted, 3.9 million of which were children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. ... In 2004, 3% of those at risk had access to mosquito nets, but now 50% do. ... "
Travel safety: Annual deaths per billion miles traveled has dropped about 95% since the 1920's.
"The Next Shale Revolution?: The astonishing promise of enhanced oil recovery."
Save Lives – Vaccinate your children!
The doctor, now barred from practicing medicine, who wrote the "utterly false" (according to the journal's editor) now redacted article claiming wrongly that vaccines cause autism took $670,000 from a lawyer who hoped to sue vaccine makers.
[as reported by Bob Schieffer, CBS Face the Nation]
"Homicide rates have fallen precipitously from over 100 murders per 100,000 people in the Middle Ages to less than 1 per 100,000 today in the Industrial West, and the chances of an individual dying violently is the lowest it has ever been in history."
"The results show a clear correlation between climate change in the North Atlantic and variations in solar activity during the last 4,000 years, both on a large time scale over periods of hundreds of years and right down to fluctuations over periods of 10-20 years."
Eli Whitney is credited with pioneering the American system of mass production. In 1798, he signed a contract for 10,000 muskets in two years, a quantity that had never been manufactured that fast. —History Channel
Whitney's conceptual breakthrough was in using interchangeable spare parts.
Climate related deaths are dropping dramatically over time, from 3.7 million in 1931 to less than 30 thousand in 2013.
About all that background radio noise which is all SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) has found so far, note that encrypted digital communications are indistinguishable from "noise":
"so as far as we know, we've been receiving encrypted alien communications since we started listening. ... We just don't know ... the password... Any sufficiently advanced civilization is going to send all its communications encrypted."
Hilarious!
"One ninth of all adult Americans will be in the top one percent at least for one year during their life." —Wilbur Ross
See John Bogle's graph of Adoption of a Great Idea: Market Penetration Rates.
"The entire population of the United States could fit into the state of Texas with more than one acre for each household. ("Space and the city," The Economist, April 4th-10th 2015, p. 11)." —Michael C. Johnston
History of health and wealth – A 4 minute, 200 year animation recommended by Bill Gates
Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
"If you had a daughter born in 2000, her life expectancy at birth was age 84, versus 58 for women born a century earlier, according to the Social Security Administration. If you had a son born in 2000, his life expectancy at birth was age 80, compared with 52 for men born in 1900. ... a 65-year-old woman today can expect to live until age 87, on average, while a 65-year-old man might live until 84. —JONATHAN CLEMENTS, Wall Street Journal
" ... During the Triassic period ... atmospheric carbon dioxide was four to six times modern levels."
Plummeting homicide rates (Manuel Eisner, 2003):
Per 100,000 people, per year –
1,000 Prehistoric Times + Modern Non-State Societies
100 Middle Ages (in Western societies)
10 Enlightenment Period
5 Today in the U.S.
< 1 Today in Europe
"The chances of you dying violently have gone done a thousand fold in the last thousand years. There has never been a safer time ... " —Michael Shermer
"recycling in recent years has become a money-sucking enterprise ... In fact, almost every facility ... in the country is running in the red. ... processing price for recyclables ... [is] 24 percent higher than if it trucked all of its recycling material, along with its trash, to [an] incinerator."
There are an estimated one billion earth like planets per galaxy.
There is a huge role for future autonomous vehicles, because today there are an annual 1.2 million deaths due to traffic accidents worldwide, with a loss of 3% of GDP. —Epic Engineering: The City Without Cars, Science Channel
"more photos will be taken this year than were taken on film in the entire history of the analogue camera business."
"There are 3.04 trillion trees on Earth"
"Eighty percent of the world’s worst poverty (people living on the income equivalent of less than a dollar a day) was eradicated in the past 40 years. Nothing like that has ever happened before." —John C. Goodman
Natural climate changes can occur very rapidly.
"The World Bank estimates that 9.6 percent of the world's population is living in extreme poverty this year, down from 12.8 percent in 2012."
"Between 1993 and 2013, China built 200 cities of a million people or more." —NY Times
"Antarctica has been adding more ice than it's been losing ... a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001 in the Antarctic ice sheet ... 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008."
"Nine jobs technology has destroyed
1. The Ice Cutter
2. The Plague Doctor
3. The Rag-Picker
4. The Scrivener
5. The Log Driver
6. The Knocker-Upper
7. The Switchboard Operator
8. The Gandy Dancer
9. The Leech Collector"
"inserted DNA ... creating mosquitoes with genes that prevent malaria transmission"
"Disk technology has improved at an exponential rate, just like integrated circuits. Nowadays, a typical drive holds 20,000 times as much data as it did in 1985, and on a per-byte basis, disks cost one-millionth of what they did then."
"It’s practically impossible to define 'genetically modified organisms.'"
"Familiar fruits and veggies didn't always look and taste this way. ... Genetically modified foods, or GMOs, inspire strong reactions nowadays, but humans have been tweaking the genetics of our favorite produce for millennia."
"China Used More Cement In The Last Three Years Than The US Used In The Entire 20th Century."
"If you eat a banana today, you’re eating a clone."
Milton Friedman v. Phil Donahue on Capitalism and Greed, 1979
PHIL DONAHUE: When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed's a good idea to run on?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Well, first of all, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
PHIL DONAHUE: But it seems to reward not virtue as much as ability to manipulate the system.
MILTON FRIEDMAN: And what does reward virtue? Do you think the communist commissar rewards virtue? Do you think Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you're taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.
PHIL DONAHUE: Well --
MILTON FRIEDMAN: I don't even trust you to do that.
Happy 40th birthday, Apple. (April 1, 1976)
"Walmart heirs are wealthier than bottom 40%" —Socialist Bernie Sanders
That's a good thing, because what this actually means is that the Walmart heirs only own some pieces of paper representing ownership of the stores that not they, but the bottom 40% get to use to save 15% on their purchases, making the lives of the bottom 40% much better.
"What Was the Greatest Era for Innovation?" —New York Times article
How the West (and the Rest) Got Rich: The Great Enrichment of the past two centuries has one primary source: the liberation of ordinary people to pursue their dreams of economic betterment. By Deirdre N. McCloskey, Wall Street Journal.
"Nothing like the Great Enrichment of the past two centuries had ever happened before ... A revolutionary betterment of 10,000% ... Why ... The answer, in a word, is “liberty.” Liberated people, it turns out, are ingenious. ... equality before the law and equality of social dignity ... made people bold to pursue betterments on their own account."
"The single most remarkable fact of human history from a technological standpoint is that there were only 65 years, seven months, and four days between the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk and human beings first walking on the moon." —Mike Johnston
Carbon dioxide in water pumped underground into basaltic rock turns into limestone in less than two years!
"Apple sold 75 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of calendar 2014. ... That's almost one million iPhones per day. 10 iPhones per second. Think about that."
"107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs."
Genetically Modified Organisms: "Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity."
"Some of the U.S. statistics for the Year 1906:
The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S., and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. ... "
[MORE]
"Prices of solar panels have been falling at more than 10 percent a year for the past 40 years ... the 'learning rate' of solar panels — the fall in their price for every doubling in their global installation — is 26 percent. And solar installations are doubling every year or two. At this rate, by 2030, solar capture could provide 100 percent of today’s energy; and by 2035, it could be almost free. ... The cost of battery technologies is falling at a rate similar to that of solar production ... the learning rate in electric-vehicle batteries is 21.6 percent, meaning we can expect that by the end of 2022, these too will cost less than half of what they do today." —Venturebeat
"In 1972 only 24 per cent of [Cancer] patients lived for ten years ... in 2011, however, 50 per cent are expected to live for at least ten years. ... Now at least half of patients will be cured."
There are now 1,810 billionaires!
The Air is Getting Cleaner: " ... Emissions of air pollutants peaked in their concentrations in the 1930's and 1940's. ... Roughly 70% of reductions occurred before the Federal Air Quality Act was passed." —Reed Watson
"Tin whiskers from lead-free solder alloys and no-clean fluxes are problematic – and have been for decades now. The lead-free solder 'environmental' demands by the EU may have been well intentioned but were disasters for critical military, communications and computer products. ...
Years ago, I personally saw tin whiskers grow and change the logic circuitry for a U.S. cruise missile's targeting in less than two minutes in a high humidity environment at DuPont's Chestnut Run lab, watching through an optical microscope. Those tin whiskers created new hard-wired logic paths that allowed the missiles to pick their own targets, which is not desirable for nuclear armed missiles. ... " —TT Glenview
The real heroes are scientists whose discoveries and inventions have saved billions of lives. For example, each of the following have saved more than a billion lives:
Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch who invented synthetic fertilizer
Karl Landsteiner who discovered blood groups
Richard Lewisohn who invented blood transfusions
"In many if not most cases, solar is a feel-good irrational non-solution for anyone looking for a reliable power supply." —Lloyd Chambers
Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard invented and patented three new types of refrigerators.
"The price of silicon-based solar cells has been falling off a cliff for years now. In 1977, each watt of capacity for a silicon solar panel would cost you around $76. By 1987, that had dropped to $10. In 2017, according to EnergyTrend, it was $0.22." —Thomas Hornigold
"Amazon offers free shipping on 100 million items." —Stuart Varney
Construction completed on paired 250Mw Chinese high-temperature pebble-bed modular nuclear reactors for electrical generation plus industrial process steam with commercial operation scheduled to begin in April, 2018.
Vaccine Fake News Kills Children: "In 1998, British researcher Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a paper in the medical journal Lancet suggesting a link between the combo measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine and autism. No other studies have found any connection. The paper was later retracted, 10 of its co-authors renounced its conclusions and Wakefield was stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K. after officials found him guilty of 'serious professional misconduct.'" —ABC News
"X-energy is developing an innovative nuclear power plant design solution. The Xe-100 is a 200MWt (75MWe) high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed modular reactor that requires less time to construct, uses factory-produced components, cannot melt down, and is 'walk-away' safe without operator intervention."
23 charts and maps that show the world is getting much, much better:
Extreme poverty has fallen
Hunger is falling
Child labor is on the decline
People in developed countries have more leisure time
The share of income spent on food has plummeted in the US
Life expectancy is rising
Child mortality is down
Death in childbirth is rarer
People have been getting taller for centuries
More people have access to malaria bednets
Guinea worm is almost eradicated
Teen births in the US are down
Smoking is down, too
In the long term, homicide rates have fallen dramatically
In the short term, they’re down in the US, too
Violent crime in the US is going down
We’ve rapidly reduced the supply of nuclear weapons
More people in the world live in a democracy now
More people are going to school for longer
And literacy is, predictably, up as well
Moore’s law isn’t quite over yet
Access to the internet is increasing
Solar energy is getting cheaper
The number of Employed Persons in the United States reached an all time high of 155,965,000 in 2018.
"The official NASA temperature figures show that from February 2016 to February 2018, global average temperatures dropped a half degree Celsius. That is the biggest two year drop in the last century. A stunner totally ignored by the media." —Stuart Varney
Also see, Industrial Progress
Climate change hoax admitted:
"The interesting thing about the Green New Deal is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing."
—Saikat Chakrabarti, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) NY, Chief of Staff and author of the Green New Deal
Also see, The Positive Impact of Human CO2 Emissions on the Survival of Life on Earth by Patrick Moore, PhD.
Here is more information about the disgusting "No Pressure" video.
"Most people have no idea that extreme poverty has declined from 90 percent to 9 percent. They have no idea that there’s been a reduction in the number of wars and deaths in wars. They don’t know that the majority of people are literate, when that wasn’t the case until fairly recently. I don’t consider it optimistic to point this out. I just consider people’s worldview to be incomplete if they don’t know these things—and many people don't. ... There's also a kind of political motivation at stake in the denial of progress. ... One thing to understand about progress is that it's not steady."
—Progress vs. Utopia, by Steven Pinker, Cato's Letters
Also see "The Allure of TRISO Nuclear Fuel Explained."
Scientists turning the desert green:
In China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick engineers want to do the same to the Sinai.
Also see the extremely important documentary, Green Gold - by John D. Liu.
Ways the world is getting better:
50 Ways The World is Getting Better, by Ben Carlson.
Human Progress.
40 Ways the World Is Getting Better.
Why The World Is Getting Better And Why Hardly Anyone Knows It.
Optimistic facts and charts that show the world is getting much, much better.
Why the World Is Better Than You Think in 10 Powerful Charts.
In 1800 "less than 60 percent of children saw their fifth birthday. Now, 95 percent do."
—The new malaria vaccine could save hundreds of thousands of lives.
See, "China starts up world’s first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor."
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
How to build a skyscraper in two weeks:
"[China's] Broad Sustainable Building, completed a six-story building, Broad Pavilion, at the Shanghai Expo in one day. He continued to challenge this feat by building two more structures at record paces—the 15-story Ark Hotel in less than one week and the 30-story T30 tower and hotel in 15 days. His latest ambition is to build the world’s tallest structure. Known as Sky City, the 202-story steel skyscraper is expected to be magnitude-9 earthquake resistant and energy efficient. Ninety percent of the structure is being built at a factory and just 10 percent assembled on site."
World's tallest building in 1931:
"Architect ... William Fredrick Lamb ... drew up the plans for The Empire State Building in two weeks. ... It was completed in one year and 45 days on May 1, 1931."
"The total cost to build the Empire State building was $41 million in 1931 ($24.7 million was for the construction and $16 million was for the land). This is $558 million in 2007 dollars."
"Project Pele: Why the DoD is Betting on Tiny Nuclear Reactors to Solve Its Power Woes." —Jessica Hall
"The 1800's were a very cold time (Little Ice Age) and the 1°C warming since then has coincided with the greatest improvement in human life in history—in large part due to fossil fuels." —Alex Epstein
"The second reactor of the High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor-Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan plant in China’s Shandong province has reached criticality for the first time, China Huaneng has announced. The first of the unit's twin reactors achieved first criticality in September. ... The first reactor of the HTR-PM, which reached first criticality on 12 September, has now completed zero-power physical tests under a helium atmosphere, and work is now under way towards first power ... "
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
" ... some 500 pebble bed reactors currently in use globally ... In addition, there are approximately 100 new Small Modular Reactor ... technologies currently in the research and development and commercialization phase." —MGX Minerals Announces Advancement of Accident Tolerant Nuclear Fuel Review
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
Also see, "The comic cries of climate apocalypse — 50 years of spurious scaremongering." —Bjorn Lomborg, November 30, 2021
"China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced on 20 December [2021] that the world's first pebble-bed modular high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear power plant had been connected to the grid."
"China Starts Up First Fourth-Generation Nuclear Reactor ... The first of two units at China's much-watched high-temperature gas-cooled modular pebble bed (HTR-PM) demonstration project was successfully connected to the grid ... " —Sonal Patel, February 1, 2022
" ... France ... to construct up to 14 new-generation reactors and a fleet of smaller nuclear plants. ... The time has come for a nuclear renaissance ... reducing carbon dioxide emissions ... Environmental groups ... are against building nuclear power plants ... " —Institute for Energy Research
Wireless power:
"Ossia Inc., the company that created Cota Real Wireless Power — the patented technology that delivers power over-the-air, at a distance, and without the need for line-of-sight — today announced that it has received another milestone FCC authorization for the Cota wireless power system." —Ossia
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
An amazing new Macintosh, the "Mac Studio" with breakthrough speed and low power using Apple's custom semiconductor chips.
Also see: Small modular reactors: what are the barriers to deployment?
"US nuclear regulator greenlights its first small modular reactor." —Loz Blain
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
Also see, Dow Chemical goes nuclear: chemical firm will install X-energy's pebble-bed helium gas cooled modular reactors at US chemicals complex.
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
Artificial Intelligence Imaging is here and it is Unreal.
"Thanks to today’s unprecedented availability of cost-effective energy (mostly fossil fuel) the world has never been a better place for human life. Life expectancy and income have been skyrocketing, with extreme poverty (<$2/day) plummeting from 42% in 1980 to <10% today." —Alex Epstein
"High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor-Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan site in Shandong province of China has reached its initial full power." –World Nuclear News
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
Japan Flips Nuclear Policy, Proposes Building New Plants:
"The new policy is two-pronged: Firstly, it aims to extend the lifespan of Japan's existing nuclear fleet beyond the current limit of 60 years. Its second object is to build new next-generation plants. These new nuclear plants – variously called 'generation 4' or 'small modular reactors' – are designed to be cheaper to build and incapable of melting down."
"International Atomic Energy Agency ups support for Small Modular Rectors."
"South Korean investment in X-energy."
Courtesy of Google Alerts.
"Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), based on Seattle, WA, has selected a site in Gadsen, Alabama, about 75 miles southeast of Huntsville, to build a factory to produce fourth-generation gas-cooled microreactors. The plant will be be a highly automated facility which will manufacture, assemble, test, and inspect the non-radiological modules needed to construct USNC's Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR)."
"Advanced Reactors ... that are closest to deployment." —The Breakthrough Institute
"Fueling high temperature Small Modular Reactors"
"China tests a nuclear power plant where the core can't melt ... If the power fails ... the core does not heat up, it cools down."
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