Voting in the 21st century

The 20th century is over and it left a long, blood-stained path behind it.  Unfortunately our political class is married to it, still, and continue to campaign like the 20th century is still going on.  The politics of division such as 'The War on Women' or wanting to put a huge, government led system down for 'health care' ignore the realities of the 21st century.  These realities I've talked about before in Dawn of a New Era, and those drivers are the ones that are currently shifting the basis for what we know as our modern civilization.  Yet the 20th century, for all its problems, has also blessed us with an infrastructure that is vital for the immediate continuance of civilization in the 21st century: electricity, potable water, sewage systems, paved roads, airports, and a vast web of pipelines.  Without this infrastructure in all of its parts modern civilization quickly decays.  A major disruption of the pipeline system crossing the Mississippi River would cripple the entire Nation.  I outlined five major events that are either cyclic (meaning they happen on a regular basis due to forces of nature) or a singular event that has its now understood predecessors so that it is not cyclic, as such, but part of an understood and ongoing process, and all will happen at some point in time to North America.

I will add to those yet another: solar weather.  In testimony on 12 SEP 2012 to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies, the head of the National Protection and Programs Director gave us this on the topic of solar weather:

Solar Weather is created as a result of massive explosions on the sun that may shoot radiation towards the Earth. These effects can reach the Earth in as little as eight minutes with Solar Flare X-rays or over 14 hours later with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) plasma hurricane. An extreme CME is the Department’s biggest Solar Weather concern. It could create low-frequency EMP similar to a megaton-class nuclear HEMP detonation over the United States, which could disrupt or damage the power grid, undersea cables, and other critical infrastructures. The United States experiences many solar weather events each year, but major storms that could significantly impact today’s infrastructures are not common but have previously occurred in 1921 and 1859 and possibly in several other years prior to the establishment of the modern power grid. The U.S. Department of Energy and utility owners and operators have been focusing on potential threats and steps that utilities can take to reduce possible impacts.⁶ Work is underway in cooperation with a number of federal agencies including the: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Nation Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Geological Survey, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and DHS with industry support and participation to ensure this threat is understood.

The concept of 'ensuring the threat is understood' for a known threat that is understood is verbiage for 'we want to get a few bureaucrats to hold meetings and write reports that might have some conclusions in a decade'.  Just so you know what that means.

The 1921 storm fed power into the nascent grid and took the telegraph service down with blown fuses and damaged equipment and lasted from 13-15 MAY 1921.  Over at Space Weather there is a somewhat longer look at the effects of the 1921 event:

May 13, 1921 - The New York Railroad Storm - At 7:04 AM on May 15, the entire signal and switching system of the New York Central Railroad below 125th street was put out of operation, followed by a fire in the control tower at 57th Street and Park Avenue. Railroad officials formally assigned blame for a fire destroyed the Central New England Railroad station, to the aurora. Telegraph Operator Hatch said that he was actually driven away from his telegraph instrument by a flame that enveloped his switchboard and ignited the entire building at a loss of $6,000. Over seas, in Sweden a telephone station was 'burned out', and the storm interfered with telephone, telegraph and cable traffic over most of Europe. Aurora were visable in the Eastern United States, with additional reports from Pasadena California where the aurora reached zenith.

Such storms originate from a sunspot and can last for hours, days or even weeks.  They have two distinct parts to them when they happen on the orbital plane of Earth and intersect with the planet as the Sun rotates.  First is the initial wave of particles and lightweight radiation: gamma rays, x-rays, along with UV.  Transit time from the sunspot to Earth is just a bit over 8 minutes as they are going at the speed of light.  These interact with the Earth's magnetic field and are deflected by it to the north and south magnetic polar regions.  These particles give the first real taste of the storm and if it isn't much of storm that is all you will get and have some aurora effects a bit further from the poles than normal.  Larger storms send particles along that path and they also interact with the Earth's magnetic field, but due to their mass they also start to push it lower.  This brings the aurora effects to lower latitudes and can make them quite spectacular, and also bring down more in the way of heavier particles to cause secondary radiation effects when they interact with the atmosphere.

This is the stuff that also starts to effect satellites, and if it isn't hardened against this sort of radiation that can be the end of the satellite.  The major problem with this part of the storm is first the pushing in of the magnetic field, which causes ripples that cause long wave ground currents which travel through anything conductive at or just below the Earth's surface, but then as the storm passes, the magnetic field springs back and oscillates, causing more of these currents.  How much current is induced is effected by the wavelength of the magnetic oscillation, which can induce a current down to half the wave length of the oscillation.  What this effectively does is puts a current into things like transmission wires (above and below ground) and into any pipe made of conductive material.  Thus a water system with metal pipes will have an electrical charge going through them. 

Also power plants will have an electrical current fed into them via long-line transmission wires, usually taking out transformer stations, but those may not fail fast enough to protect the power station, itself.  Grounding out a plant does no good as the ground wire is most likely 'live' with current.  In your home if you are grounding out through water mains made of metal pipe, then you will also experience this effect, particularly if the ground wire is not going through the central fuse box or circuit breaker box.  Even killing the main switch to the grid from your home won't stop this unless the ground is centralized through there.  It is much better to have a local ground that is only a few feet long instead of one that is the equivalent of miles long.

A solar storm like this is known as a Carrington Super Flare and one like that was responsible for the Solar storm of 1859.  At Space Weather there is a collection of newspaper articles and I'll give a few excerpts to give an idea of what this sort of ground current means:

Singular Effect of the Uarora Borealis on the Telegraph Wires. New York. August 29, The Superintendent of the Canadian Telegraph Company's line telegraphs as follows in relation to the effect of the Aurora Borealis last night: '…so completely were the wires under the influence of the Aurora Borealis, that it was found utterly impossible to communicate between the telegraph stations, and the line had to be closed.' The same difficulty prevailed as far South as Washington. [Chicago Tribune, p.4]

.…The French telegraph communications at Paris were greatly affected, and on interrupting the circuit of the conducting wire strong sparks were observed. The same thing occurred at the same time at all the telegraphic station in France…[The Illustrated London News, September 24, 1859].

…Lousiville KY, August 31-The telegraph wires between this city and New York, as also throughout Canada, were interrupted by the unusual overcharge of electricity which always pervades the atmosphere during the continuance of this phenomenon…[The New Orleans Bee, September 1, 1859].

…During the auroral display on Thursday night in Boston some curious phenomena were witnessed in connection with the telegraph wires. The following conversation, says the Boston Traveler, between the Boston and Portland operators on the American telegraph line, will give an idea of the effect of the Aurora Borealis, on the working of the telegraph wires: Boston operator, (to Portland operator)--"Please cut off your battery entirely from the line for fifteen minutes." Portland operator-"Will do so. It is now disconnected." Boston-"Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?" Portland-Better than with our batteries on. -Current comes and goes gradually." Boston-"My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the Aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets. Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble."
Portland-"Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?" Boston-"Yes. Go ahead."
The wire was then worked for about two hours without the usual batteries, on the auroral current, working better than with the batteries connected. The current varied, increasing and decreasing alternately, but by graduating the adjustment to the current, a sufficiently steady effect was obtained to work the line very well. This is the first instance on record of more than a word or two having been transmitted with the auroral current. The usual effects of the electric storm were manifested, such as reversing the poles of the batteries, etc…[The Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, Augusta, Georgia, Thursday AM, September 8, 1859].

In addition to the technological issues posed by these 'earth currents' entering the telegraph lines, was the very real potential for direct human injury. The most spectacular, and now legendary, story is told by Frederick Royce: a telegraph operator working in Washington DC. at his station between 8 and 10 PM. " I did not know that the Aurora had made its appearance until 8 or 81/2 o'clock. I had been working 'combination' to Richmond, and had great difficulty from the changing of the current. It seemed as if there was a storm at 'Richmond'. Concluding that this was the case, I abandoned that wire and tried to work the Northern wire, but met with the same difficulty. For five or ten minutes I would have no trouble, then the current would change and become so weak that it could hardly be felt. It would then gradually change to a 'ground' so strong that I could not lift the magnet. While the Aurora lasted the same phenomena were observable. There was no rattling or cracking of the magnet, as is the case in a thunder storm. I looked at the paper between the arrestors, but found no holes. Philadelphia divided the circuit at the request of New York, and we succeeded in getting off what business we had. The Aurora disappeared a little after 10 o'clock - after which we had no difficulty, and we worked through to New York. During the display I was calling Richmond, and had one hand on the iron plate. Happening to lean towards the sounder, which is against the wall, my forehead grazed a ground-wire which runs down the wall near the sounder. Immediately, I received a very severe electric shock, which stunned me for an instant. An old man who was sitting facing me, and but a few feet distant, said that he saw a spark of fire jump from my forehead to the sounder. The Morse line experienced the same difficulty in working." [New York Times, Sept. 5, 1859]

Do remember this is with the telegraph system at the period, and it tells us of the problems of induced ground currents under that pushing down of the magnetic field, during the event which lasted from 28 AUG – 2 SEP 1859.  This all with equipment made of simple coils of wire and batteries.  Now put that sort of electrical charge into the entire power grid of every Nation on Earth in this, the early part of the 21st century.

Unlike a nuclear EMP you probably won't have much of your personal electronics effected by this sort of event unless you are far north of the aurora and getting a lot of that secondary radiation bouncing around: then you might get some of that sort of thing.  What most nuclear EMPs don't do all that well is induce ground currents across the surface of the planet like a CME.  No, the problems aren't from that, but that other part: the induced ground current.  The 1921 event saw transformers explode from a relatively minor solar storm without much of an electrical grid to do that.  Modern electrical grids have orders of magnitude more transformer stations than were on the entire planet in 1921.  Large Nations may utilize some very large transformers for their long-haul lines, and the US has about 6 of these which are vital in connecting up some of the major hydro-electric generation systems into the rest of the grid, and no one really makes those things any more.  Even worse there is at least one of them that took a special rail line to put in place and that has since been removed, and as geomorphology and geography dictate where these things go, it was and is in an ideally situated spot for its function.

Now this effects my voting... I mean this is what the article is about, no?

I've read a bit about what it would take to put in isolation systems for power plants, and it is about $1M per power plant, which comes out to $0.03/month for an individual customer for about 5-10 years to get the project done for existing plants of all sorts: coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar.  You name it and if it isn't built with this sort of protection to start with, it needs a retrofit if it is slated to stay online longer than the life of the retrofit project.

This does not need to happen at the National level: individual States can do this on their lonesome and even coordinate efforts if they want.  No law against it and nothing in the Constitution prohibits it so long as it doesn't tread on federal power grants from the people.

Now find a politician who even KNOWS this stuff.

Go ahead, try and find one that puts SURVIVAL first.  Because if we get a CME from a Carrington Event, then modern civilization is toasty.

'War on women'?  Without electrical power you don't get potable water.  You don't get a sewage system.  You don't get fuels transported via pipelines (and how the induced currents will hit them is anyone's guess).  A good part of the satellites will be dead, although you might still have GPS, but that depends on the size and strength of the event... and taking into account that the Earth's magnetic field has been declining for a few decades since it looks like it is time for a pole reversal in the next few thousand years.  So which is more important: birth control/abortion or survival?

Your choice in the voting booth decides your fate in the future.

More locally the regular geophysical disasters have some very grave implications, like the New Madrid Fault Zone letting slip for a few months.  That will most likely take out bridges, pipelines and a good number of long-haul electrical lines, plus damage or destroy some dams close to the event.  That St. Louis to Memphis region hasn't experienced anything like that since the quake events from 25 DEC 1811 to 7 FEB 1812, which was three major quakes and so many small quakes that it was hard to ensure one's footing during the time it happened.  As so much of the Nation's goods flow north and south along the Mississippi, a sudden onslaught of debris flows going through the river system will cause damage.  For some hours the Mississippi River ran backwards near New Madrid, and the river shifted its course in a few places, drained one lake and created another, as well as causing sand geysers... you tell me what this means for the flow of goods, services and power throughout North America.

And being close to the East Coast means that the island of La Palma's Cumbre Vieja having an earthquake causing a massive landslide will have dire consequences for the entire Eastern Seaboard of the US, Canada, and the entire Caribbean, not to speak of the reflected and refracted tsunami events hitting Europe, Western Africa and Eastern South America.

So how does the 'War on women' play out when National and probably international trade is effected by a large portion of the US going off-line?  Devastation from the NMFZ to the Mid-West and the lower Mississippi River will probably take out a few refineries and pipelines from the Gulf, too, so getting back up and running with those might take a few years.  And as for the Cumbre Vieja landslide event for the Eastern Seaboard, well, there are major population centers and the tsunami will travel across the ocean as a wave at about the speed of a jet liner so you get 6 hours of warning if it can be identified and detected.  A wave form coming in that tops the Empire State Building when it hits NYC isn't something to sneeze at, and similar will hit across the entire coast.

Can we find a politician that puts basic survival first?

Or at least encouraging citizens to prepare because our government is so woefully inadequate that it can't figure out if cheap disaster preparation is more important than birth control when the survival of civilized life is at stake?

Or how about decentralization and disintermediation of government services from the federal to the State and local levels?  The federal government has proven incapable of keeping unguarded memorials open during a government furlough... I mean that is worse than lackluster, it is criminal to prevent the people from seeing public memorials due to a funding fight.  That is piss poor stewardship of sites entrusted to that government and the States really do need to step in and intervene by rescinding permission for the federal government to hold lands in their state for public use.  Eminent domain those babies to get rid of the awful steward in charge of them: we can get more accountable buffoons, cheaper than the federal government can.  On the State level strange functions like 'liquor control boards' are buggy-whip deals and need to go.  And for roads that aren't Interstates and don't really go beyond a couple of counties in a State, why aren't those handed over for purely local control?  Hardening the electrical grid takes State level initiative and waiting for the federal government to study it to death is a recipe for disaster.  And that disaster WILL effect you if the right event hits with NO preparation.

You, at least, can prepare.

A few days of food, potable water, and some method of dealing with physical waste products goes a long way towards dealing with the small problems.  At a month you are at least buying time to take good stock of a much larger disaster.  You can and should prepare beyond that, but when you are in that mode then the problem OF GOVERNMENT comes to the forefront.

It isn't serious about anything.

Politicians care more about dividing electorates than serving them.

Politicians and their parties want political and polarizing fights, ignoring survival level problems that should be the domain of government: self-government, local government, State government and last and least is the federal government.  Yet all we get are top-down solutions for bottom-up problems.

That is the 20th century mindset and it is a recipe for disaster.  It was in the 20th century and it is worse now because we have spent zero time preparing for anything larger than heavy wind storm... and even those don't get any preparation and days of power going out.  Super Storm Sandy gave us the time from civilized behavior to barbarism in the 21st century: 72 hours.  And the supplies to 'deal' with it were so far away that it took a week or more to get them to the disaster... that is a guarantee of a bad disaster going barbarous.  And yet simple decentralization of goods to local management would have alleviated the immediate problems long enough to allow a better regional response.

Didn't happen.

Now with that in mind, picture a Carrington Event in the 21st century.

Not the destruction of Super Storm Sandy, yes, and even gets you a pretty light show for a few days.  The lack of all infrastructure, however, gets you the same decay rate, everywhere that is not prepared.  And we don't have Interstellar friends to bail us out of a global CME.  Yet with some basic preparation for the power plants, getting a decent set of replacement transformers in storage in a salt mine or other safe place, a basic grid can start to reappear in days.  With distributed food and water, plus some localized systems for processing same, you can keep civilization going and get it back on its feet.  Birth control and abortions will be in short supply, I'm afraid, but then having food to eat, water to drink and a safe place to bed down for the night will rise far above any 'War on women' sort of deal as we try to stave off barbarism and a war of Each For His Own.

Thus I have a list of things that politicians must be willing to talk about or they do not get my vote at all.  Period.

Decentralization of services along with an understanding of disaster preparation at all levels of government.  That means FEMA can go away and have its stores divided up by the States and distributed locally.  They suck at disaster response.

This goes double for the State level.

Prioritization of threats so that mere lifestyle 'threats' come long, long, long after basic survival threats.  Yes, nothing is going to save us from Yellowstone if it goes through one of its major eruptive events, unless we have a viable way to get off this planet.  Preparation right up TO that for ANYTHING ELSE should be a priority of all governments starting with self-government.  It isn't costly to be prepared.  A bit of extra canned food stored away after each shopping trip does wonders over a few months to a year.  Stored containers of water with basic additives to allow them to stay potable for up to 5 years is cheap, so is bleach or compounds for swimming pools to make bleach.  A bucket and plastic bags to deal with human waste, plus knowing where to dispose of it doesn't cost much at all.  Each locale has its own other requirements, but getting the basics in place means you won't be a victim of a disaster unless it directly takes you out with its direct damage. If you don't want to take care of yourself, then you have only yourself to blame for the consequences.

If you have read this article: you have been warned.  Nature doesn't care much about you, about me, about our civilization and isn't all that nice, come right down to it.  Don't bother me with 'climate change' if you are unwilling to face realities of Carrington Events that seem to get to us about every century or so.  Oh, its heading on towards a century since the last one... aren't we lucky?  And New Madrid is hitting its readiness for an event in its cycle.  Ditto the Cascadia Thrust Fault.  And who knows when just the right quake will hit La Palma?

I'm looking for a politician willing to address the realities of infrastructure repair (not just 'jobs bills' or that Interstate stuff but the REAL INFRASTRUCTURE) and hardening, along with disaster preparedness.  Because if we don't get serious about these things then civilized life as you and I know it will be cut off with a real disaster.  And the more we let politicians divide us and try to centralize power, the more certain that the first disaster we get will also be ending our civilization increases.

So far, no luck.

Brought to you by A Citizen of the Republic

And then the power went out...

Preparing for disaster includes such things as having the power go out, like it did in my location with a storm system that went from 'Chance of Rain 10%' to sudden downpour, and very high winds.  At 10:20pm on Friday night the power went out... at 6:00pm on Sunday afternoon it came back on.  The high temps during the day was in the 90's to 100's, and the evenings featured hot, still air which meant that you could have the windows open but nothing really moved through them.  At night there were no artificial lights to be seen anywhere, save for the rare car driving by or aircraft overhead at night.

For powering equipment I have a number of short-term UPS back-ups for computer systems.  These are the 'give me 10 minutes to close everything down gracefully' sorts of back-ups, not long-term ones.  For a bit more power I also have a Universal Power Group Eco 1800S solar generator system.  These systems are, I suspect, rebranded to a lot of different names and basically looks like this:

The solar panel is of the folding type and the battery system is basically a large UPS with a 12v input to supplement a 120v input.  Fully charged it ran my refrigerator (a basic Frigidaire model, no frills) for about 6 hours supplemented with the solar panel.  My back deck situation gets me about 80% direct sunlight from dawn to dusk if you reposition the panel every hour to hour and half, and takes about 4 hours to bet to a 50% charge.

If you are getting this to run a refrigerator, it would be best to have the most energy efficient refrigerator on the market.  Or a small cube type that is also energy efficient. A basic full size no-frills refrigerator is a short term stop-gap with this unit.  If you want it for powering up electronics, a simple cell-phone charger can take a decent chunk from its battery reserve.  For 5-6 hours of uptime for a refrigerator it is decent, but for anything more than that or for more than a laptop, you are going to have to look at your current draw rate for the item vs. storage capacity in the batteries.  The refrigerator took between 0.15 to 0.17 kWh draw during the uptime of the device.

Trying to get a refrigerator chilled down is an energy intensive task and once the refrigerator starts to get warmer, the ability to do more than put a slight chill back into it via such a system is minimal.  The lesson: when you get a power outage of more than a few minutes and time is unknown to restoration, put on the battery pack immediately to keep the refrigerator as cold for as long as possible.

Also tested was a Kaito radio KA600:

This comes without a transformer block.  Your choices for energy sources are AA batteries, that cute little solar panel or the hand crank.  It has an on-board little LiON battery for holding a minimal charge so that after 1.5 minutes of using the hand crank you get about 10 minutes of radio time.  As the amount of radio time is limited by battery size and input source, you can go a bit longer with the LiON if you have pretty intense sunlight to put the radio in while running it.  A set of 3 AA batteries lasts about 3 hours.  In other words an energy sipper this isn't.  It is amazing it has so many functions built-in, but that really hits the LiON battery use for the main display and TEMP/HUMIDITY display.  Radio reception in the great outdoors is good, from the great indoors it depends on how close you are to a window.  With that same 80% sunshine the radio shuts off after about a minute of use.  For a bit longer the hand crank and sunlight to supplement the battery gets about 15 minutes of use.  The antenna is uni-directional.

Based on your needs this may do fine, but it isn't recommended for an extended power outage.  If a better LiON battery were on-board to get at least 1-2 hours of use or a low energy system put in with options for turning off other functions like the displays and such and just go to radio, then it would be a better option for longer-term use.

One neighbor had a gasoline back-up generator but hadn't done basic maintenance and monthly start-ups on it, so it didn't work.  If you get a liquid or multi-fuel generator, do the maintenance and any recommended check-ups, and get gasoline from a marine or boating station as they tend not to have ethanol in them.

Coming from the Western NY area there are some things I can say about the NoVA power grid: it is fragile.

Very fragile.

Mind you, living near the Niagara Power Project meant (back when I lived in that region) that power line situations tended to get addressed rapidly.  Since bad snow and ice storms happened every couple of years, trees tended to get cut back from the lines in a severe manner so as to limit the number of winter outages.

A few years ago, here in NoVA, we had a 5 day power outage.  With no storms.  Power outages of the 3-5 hour variety are of the 1-2 year amount.

Growing up in WNY I experienced the Great Blackout, the '77 storm and an early '80s ice storm with power lost for a week.  Basically, over two decades there were three outages of any real length and the 3-5 hour types were rare, about once every 2-3 years due to lightning.

One of the local radio stations was asking people for input on who they blame for this.  My answer is simple: customers who are unwilling to tell the power company to harden their infrastructure are to blame.  There is lots of other blame to go around at the local, State and federal level with make-work money hand-outs that don't do a thing to get better power grids and only get some cosmetic work done to the existing infrastructure.  This outage is a wake-up call to the region: if you aren't willing to complain about this sort of thing, expect to get more of it as you reward bad behavior.

I will be complaining more.

I'm also getting two SUNRNR units with four solar panels and will look to take my refrigerator and freezers off the grid entirely. Trying to live off-grid in a Built-Up Area is difficult, but since the population at large isn't getting the hint that infrastructure needs to be maintained, that is about the only solution until there is enough of an economic recovery to leave the region and make an off-grid home somewhere with a better climate.  I would prefer someplace where the people take having a hardened infrastructure seriously, but so far, no luck on that.

Ending the era of politics of scarcity

There is a stark difference between the economical foundations of capitalism and that of Marxism (which is to say socialism, communism, progressivism and modern day liberalism) and that difference in foundation is rooted in the view of individuals.  Within the capitalist system individuals are seen as actors in the economy, they have the ability to deal with each other under a common set of laws that are applied equally and upheld for contracts.  This is not 'pure' capitalism, but one that is formulated under the Law of Nations which provides the social context for delineations between the individual, the State (which is to say the governmental system of laws) and the Nation.  It is a system that can easily be corrupted by the State in the Name of the Nation (Nationalization) which leads to impoverishment of individuals who are then targeted by State laws so as to drive them out of business in favor of the State.  Further the business sectors that are Nationalized are then under no impetus to improve the type, quality, nor amount of goods and services they produce as their business model is completely under control of the State.  Typically this sort of corrupt capitalism is seen in modern day China, Russia, Iran, France, UK, Argentina and anywhere a business sector has been Nationalized either in name (directly via law) or indirectly by a form of State based mandates, price controls, and limitations on individual choices to conform to a State set of laws that restricts decisions on price optimization or goods provider. 

Another formulation of corrupt capitalism is crony capitalism in which business sectors get in bed with politicians of any stripe to get preferential treatment under the law and taxpayer subsidies.  This form of corrupt capitalism is a variant of State owned corrupt capitalism as it seeks to use State power to create divisions amongst companies in a given sector, reward those that follow government strictures and punish those that do not.  It is a form of control that ends, however, at the same point as horrifically inefficient capitalist companies survive because of government aid and intervention yielding the same restricted marketplace, the same high costs and the same lack of incentives to do well that a directly government controlled or Nationalized set of companies.  Crony capitalism is corrupt capitalism of the direct sort seeking only indirection to persuade people of a Nation that overt and covert regulation is good for them while it is, in fact, good for those companies that play ball with politicization and then utilize corporate money (enhanced by government subsidies) to back politicians.  That interim period gives a patina to the longer-term government control and rewards actors who invest in political ends through the means of regulatory schemes. No matter the means of corrupt capitalism, its ends are the same as Nationalized corrupt capitalism.  Any business that gets 'regulated' then has an interest in changing such regulation via politics, and in this arena the larger amounts of cash are held by the larger companies that are also less efficient due to their very size and overhead.

Marxism is a form of collectivism in which the individual is seen as a dependent actor that is not able (or allowed) to operate outside of a collective based economic view of capitalism.  This world view posits that humans are unable to cope or compete with the legal systems that allow corporations many of the same set of rights as individuals.  A corporation is seen as stronger, wealthier and more exploitative of individuals and those individuals then fall into classes: owners of businesses, the bourgeoisie (small business owners and the middle class) and the proletariat (working class).  This division by classes is seen as imposed by the top (the business owners) upon the rest of society and the bourgeoisie is seen as a 'rump' class in that it is barely more numerous than the owning class of corporations and barely more prosperous than the working class.  In this world view individuals in the proletariat are seen as a collective of individuals in that they are not able to have access to the bourgeois lifestyle and can take no meaningful part in the business ownership realm.  Capitalism is seen as corrupt and requires a proletarian uprising to get rid of the private ownership of business and collectively own all means of production by the State.

Do note that the end-state of corrupt capitalism and Marxism are little different: State ownership of the means of production (either major business sectors under corrupt capitalist schemes or complete ownership under Marxist schemes), which is run by an elite class via the State.  That elite class is either the corrupt politicians in the capitalist system or 'The Party' leaders in the Marxist view, both with a patina of 'democracy' that delimits choices for the mass of the population (usually well over 95%) to those few that are dictated by the elite.

There are stark problems with State ownership, however, as it has no need to be 'liberal' in the old school sense of teaching people to read, write, and think for themselves so as to be inventive.  All incentive and rewards to be better at one's job, to find new ways to do work, to develop new products to sell to help better the life of the common man are all crushed under the requirement of the State to have a workforce that enriches the tiny minority at the top and leaves the majority without the thinking capability to protest or say that there must be a better way.  This process of indoctrination and elimination of those who refuse to conform to the new State based edicts (be they in a corrupt capitalist system or a Marxist system)  is the movement from an authoritarian government to a totalitarian one.  Authoritarian States can still tolerate some work done outside of State control, although that is heavily controlled it is not extinguished.  Thus religion exists outside of the authoritarian State as well as some things like music and art.  Moving to a totalitarian State means that nothing is left outside the State's purview and every part of life must conform to State based edicts.  These latter systems are noted as being tyrannical, repressive and requiring large levels of internal repressions and external distractions to keep the population under control.  This final phase of totalitarian State is known as the Imperial State as it must be expansionistic to distract of the lack of living standards inside the State and to utilize the few bonds of Nationalism to create support for the State.  When the State cannot do this latter, it must start to give away much of its wealth in order to stay in control via entertainment and social services so as to mollify a population that sees the State as no longer doing its duty towards society, as a whole.  In both corrupt capitalist, Marxist and ancient regimes the giveaways start early in the process: 'land reform', redistribution of wealth, social services and entertainment are all venues for these forms of systems to distract and mollify the population.

When this process is performed there is a problem in State ownership (either the regulatory process of corrupt capitalism dictating what businesses can do or the take over in a Marxist system) because there are no real custodians of property to look out for it and maintain it.  Sociologically, this becomes known as 'The Tragedy of the Commons': when property rights are seen as not being held or able to be utilized by those directly involved in business, then there is no basis of stewardship for it.  Communally held land (or collectivized land) is over-utilized for grazing or crops because no individual sees a requirement to maintain it for the community, which lowers the productivity of the land for everyone. In an industrialized system this extends to quality of workmanship, timeliness of work and amount of work, which yields scarce and sub-par products in an insufficient amount to be distributed to those who need it.  The joke in the old USSR was 'we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us': there is no direct ownership of the process or the product and working that can be avoided is avoided.  This happens in a corrupt capitalist system when stewardship is so controlled by the owner of a business or property that they feel they have little say in its use, as well.  These are functional equivalents of State control and State ownership via law and regulation between corrupt capitalism and Marxism.

Marxists will always point to the requirement for a suitably industrialized basis for there to be socialism-communism, but no follow up is ever done on why people would want to actually work with no incentive other than altruism.  Altruism comes from prosperity and seeking to make the lives of others better in a material or moral way through the process of contributing to their welfare via a sense of charity.  There is no incentive in either the end-state corrupt capitalist or Marxist system for altruism to exist as there is no way to better one's fellow man's position as there is no prosperity and no means to perform charity that has any meaningful impact on the lives of anyone.  From this Marxism and corrupt capitalism both fail because of the leveling effect of production and distribution: when all get equally no matter how much work they do, the incentive to work declines and so does the living standard of not just the mass of the population but of the elites as well, albeit more slowly.

There is a common predicate to the way that corrupt capitalism and Marxism are sold, however, and it is an unstated one as a predicate, but one that is stated as part of the world-view of those involved in promoting them.  This common predicate is telling because it is used by both corrupt capitalist elites and Marxists to push their views forward and it is the same predicate for both: that goods and raw materials are scarce, the economy is a set size and that this requires a 'fair' division of goods due to scarcity of them.  This is the politics of scarcity, and it is telling that whenever one hears discussion of economic classes (or any other form of internal division amongst society, come to think of it) it is always couched in the terms of those who 'have' and those who 'have not'.  This language can be couched in terms of pay, living standards, or 'rights' and yet it is always the same world view of scarcity: there are not enough of these things to go around.  And yes, those who push this mean your rights that are born with you as not having enough of them to go around.  If it weren't for this being a political outlook, it would be classed as a psychological derangement. But I digress.

What is amazing is that the last two centuries of industrialization, post-industrialization and the rise of modern communications have created ever expanding economic systems which have raised the physical welfare of large sections of humanity out of abject poverty, lowered the cost to do so, and continually pushes the cost of production down so that the number of people able to afford products can increase.  Even under a system of slowly worsening of corruption of capitalism, the basis for capitalism demonstrates that it does more to provide goods and services to more people at a lower cost than any other system devised.  The attraction to control such spread of wealth and material well being is too enticing to those wishing power over their fellow man, and the only way to get this system corrupted is to convince enough people that it is biased, concentrates wealth and needs to be controlled by State power.

Are there abuses in capitalism?  Yes, undoubtedly.

Are they particular to capitalism?  No, they are part of human nature, as abuses can be seen in any human institution ranging from religious organizations to political organizations and everything in-between.  Man cannot get away from the desire to utilize power against his fellow man without the agreed-upon restrictions necessary to form society.  The agreement between individuals on self-governance and self-restriction also forms the basis for the codification of those things to create an organ of society to enforce them: government.  Marriage forms the basis for the Nation, and that self-made Nation comes from the family and our agreement to stay our negative liberties and rights towards our offspring, save as needed for minor and necessary correctives on their understanding of self-governance and why it is necessary.  Amongst families we create society and, from that, the need for the State via government, and it is this need for agreement upon set standards enforcement for all individuals that creates a system for laws that can be equally administered for all.  Corruption can and does start at this very lowest level, that of the individual agreeing that State power is to be equally administered and it is this point that is utilized by politicians who wish to further corrupt the economic system that is overseen (but not controlled) by laws.

The ability of politicians and their backers to convince people that there is scarcity, that someone having something means that they cannot have it (or an equivalent) is based on envy and greed.  Yet capitalism has been about increasing wealth, increasing the amount of goods, and lowering costs so that, today, being poor in the US doesn't mean you have outdoor plumbing and one pair of shoes, but can afford a refrigerator, washer, dryer, television, microwave, cellphone, and that sweet pair of Nikes that cost $150.  And still get overweight due to the cheapness of food.  By any objective standard of all of mankind's history, the poor in the modern industrialized world are living like royalty and the main threat to that prosperity and material wealth is cronyism that seeks to deprive you of it.  The trick is not to those pointing out to the disparity between a poor man with an old rust bucket Ford against a relatively well off person with a BMW roadster, but to point out that the person with the roadster is trying to convince the person with the Ford to vote for a politician that will hand more perks and carve-outs to the person with the BMW, at the expense of tax dollars.  If you want greater disparity between rich and poor, then vote for those trying to 'equalize' the system so that everyone can be made poor.  If you want to get out of the mess, vote for the person seeking to cut out all the biases and advantages due to ANY class or ownership division so that everyone is liable for their own actions and everyone must pay into the maintenance of government which is a benefit to ALL in the Nation.

This article is entitled 'Ending the era of politics of scarcity' and the reason I entitled it that is that there is another way to free up the system of scarcity politics that has little to do with politics.

Growing up in the 1970's meant many things, and as a reader of SF and Fantasy it also meant understanding the drivers behind things like space exploration.  Prior to modern economic analysis, it was hard to make a case for why space exploration is viable, other than it being a frontier arrangement promising much if you worked to keep yourself alive.  One book came out from Gerard K. O'neill called The High Frontier, which was a culmination of work done in Princeton in the late 1960's and early 1970's analyzing the utilization of space materials for space based industry.  Systemically the work is used to look at space colonization, but that is a byproduct of space industrialization.  Looking at space materials as resources that can be owned, utilized and put into a manufacturing system yields up a system that is well suited to capitalism and is actually a destroyer of the economics of scarcity for tens if not hundreds of generations and, possibly, forever.  This is not due to altruism or having items being 'the property of all mankind', which is a meaningless phrase, but due to the fact that things like moons, moonlets, asteroids and comets are akin to islands in an ocean and islands can be found, explored, inhabited and have their resources utilized.  What that means is that uninhabited resources can be claimed, owned and become something that will gain a steward for it so that it is utilized to the best interests of the steward.

The greatest resource base for the planet Earth's population is its Moon.  Once you can get past the gravitational hold of the Earth-Moon system the next closest things (by energy use, not distance) are asteroids as they have little gravity and can be exploited for productive purposes with minimal energy (financial and energy) costs.  This is an open-ended system, by and large, and while some things may be in short supply, that is only a signal for someone to find and bring back more of it, not to ration it or use it as a political football for, as soon as you do, then an even higher premium is put on that material and you will get independent actors seeking it in greater number.  Do remember that the Nation is based on the family, the State based in society, and that those who place down on an asteroid, create it into hospitable living space, and then inhabit it are then qualified to be their own Nation and have their own State.  That is all it takes to do this: fine uninhabited land, make habitation on it, declare the Nation and create the State to run it.  That is how it works on Earth and the vacuum of space can have no owners just as the free seas cannot, either.

Corrupt capitalism and Marxism both play upon scarcity and State power and require that there is no real way for individuals to escape the grasp of the State.  Usually there are death threats involved at some point.  Space is a great leveler between the individual and the State as, to keep everyone alive, everyone must agree to running it, even when there is private property everyone loses if there is one person who seeks to kill them by interrupting the system that keeps everyone alive.  Exercising police power in space is fraught with much more danger to the enforcers, as well as those it is enforced upon, with ultimate and terminal consequences for its misuse to all.  You cannot be both authoritarian and drive down basic education to political dogma as it gets you killed.  Not indirectly, mind you, but directly as the very incompetence that politicized politics inculcates is also its doom in a direct fashion as there is no ready biosphere to fall back upon to get a 'dark age'.  The dark of space is absolute, ultimate and terminal in short order.

Beyond the SF community, energy sector, and general non-crony capitalists who aren't State controlled, who else is a backer of space exploration for the good of mankind?

You would think that, by their anti-pollution rhetoric, that environmentalists would fit that bill.

Why?

It moves energy gathering and industries out of the biosphere both reducing pollution, increasing productivity and utilizing solar fusion power without the wasteful intermediary of an atmosphere and slowly rotating planetary mass which limits the amount of sunshine you can gather.  Earth based solar energy has high overhead, low amounts of energy per square meter, and high costs to produce (both energy-wise and in raw materials as silica requires high heat to be reformed into something useful).  If you know or are an environmentalist, then space exploration is a touchstone issue: if you claim no harm to your fellow man and just want a cleaner environment, then space exploration will yield that as a long-term end.  The same is with planetary bound nuclear power from Gen III and Gen IV reactor types that are inherently safe by design.  Any environmentalist that is not pro-space or pro-nuclear is one that is seeking government control over energy resources and industry with its high overhead and concentration of power in the political realm via the State.  To put it bluntly: environmentalists who seek huge regulatory schemes to control the energy sector and industry are Marxists or corrupt/crony capitalists.  The goal of reducing pollution of all sorts is one that should be over-riding to all environmentalists and it should drive to the conclusion that the most efficient means of production with the lowest overhead cost and greatest yield for human freedom is space exploration done by corporations and individuals.

Who else should be in the pro-space movement?  The high tech sector.

Why?

Space resources offer low overhead, low cost to gather raw materials on a scale unheard of at any point in Earth's history for anything.  And not just silica and rare earth elements used for semi-conductors, but iron, nickel, platinum, iridium, helium-3 (produced by the sun and a good resource for fusion), water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon... not just the building blocks of industry but via asteroids with high light element content with CHON, the building blocks of life itself.  Everything that is necessary to not just create a remotely operated vehicle system for mining and exploration, but to build the necessary human habitations is cheaply available once you get to orbit.  A system of lunar materials gathering with mass driver to send materials into Earth orbit to be utilized by a set of refineries that would capture all of the materials from the lunar regolith would then yield all the necessary materials for life and to build more refineries and the first space factory.  The input cost is an orbiting refinery to melt regolith and capture materials and a small scale factory to fashion new parts.  New parts that can be for a human habitation.  New parts for a solar collection system to beam low energy density to a rectenna array on Earth for low cost solar power.  New parts for a new refinery.  New parts for another mining system.  New parts for another and larger factory.  All of it run on solar power directly from the sun as that includes heat that can be simply concentrated by mirrors as thin as a sheet of mylar to do the melting of lunar materials.

Environmentalists are proving out not to be backers of cleaning up the environment but of controlling mankind via government, by and large.  No one can point to an environmentalist space movement.

You can, however, point to a high tech space movement.

Blue Origin started up by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com.

SpaceX formed up by Elon Musk of Paypal.

Scaled Composites formed up by Burt Rutan pioneer of aviation and avionics for long-term sustained flight working with Virgin Galactic founded by Sir Richard Branson founder of Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Records and Virgin Megastores.

Armadillo Aerospace with John Carmack software game designer.

Space Adventures started up by Eric C. Anderson of Analytic Graphics.

To name a few.  Of most interest is the next one, Planetary Resources in which Eric C. Anderson is a co-founder as they have established themselves with a press release that starts out with the following:

Seattle, Wash. – April 24, 2012 — Planetary Resources, Inc. announced today its plan to mine Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) for raw materials, ranging from water to precious metals. Through the development of cost-effective exploration technologies, the company is poised to initiate prospecting missions targeting resource-rich asteroids that are easily accessible.

Resource extraction from asteroids will deliver multiple benefits to humanity and grow to be valued at tens of billions of dollars annually. The effort will tap into the high concentration of precious metals found on asteroids and provide a sustainable supply to the ever-growing population on Earth.

A single 500-meter platinum-rich asteroid contains the equivalent of all the Platinum Group Metals mined in history. “Many of the scarce metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel applications,” said Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc.

In the midst of our economic doldrums started and perpetuated by the move towards the regulatory State, the stepping stone between capitalism and Marxism, the death-knell of Marxism is being clearly proposed.

Space exploration is that death as it offers the pathway to the most efficient means to create a new platform for humanity that is unlimited in scope and impossible to control via the regulatory State.

It offers the way forward towards demolishing scarcity economics by offering the pathway towards cheap and affordable energy, the lowering of the cost per item for hardened electronics (electronics immune to EMP and CME as that is a pre-requisite for space flight), and a way to uplift all of mankind's material wealth at the lowest possible cost to the greatest possible benefit.  Will some people get enormously rich from this?  I damned well hope so!  For if you thought the modern age of micro-electronics has expanded the cellphone out to the Bushmen of the Kalihari as a neat thing, just wait to you see what happens when this is done for energy production, distribution, and goods production on a solar system scale.

Marxism is all about scarcity, power and control concentrated into the hands of the very few elites.

Capitalism is about freedom, unlimited boundaries, and making things to benefit the greatest number at the lowest cost so you can sell a lot of it.

Space Capitalism is the future of mankind.

Because Marxism is its death and I think a good whiff of the grave it has intended for all of humanity will be sobering enough to force us to step away from it not just for ourselves but our children.

Got a debt greater than all the economies of the planet, combined?

Want a way to pay it off?

Then its time to get more resources flowing into the economy than the entire planet has, now, isn't it?

It's either that or death.

Unbounded freedom for all with everyone picking up their part of the workload and profiting from their liberty.

Or tyranny leading to the extinguishment of mankind as a species via Marxism.

Its a scary universe out there.

But nothing so scary as the grave of tyrannical utopia.

The choice is yours.

Best choose quickly as your time and life are running very short now and the choice between the stars of forever or the bars of final imprisonment for all of mankind is your choice to make.  The future can be yours and freedom for mankind perpetual if you dare to grasp it. 

The way forward is already mapped out by Gerard K. O'neill, the hard work is left up to us.

Global Warming – fraud in search of marks

Found at Anthony Watts' site, Wattsupwiththat on 24 NOV 2011, is an interesting link to an email that is part of the Climategate 2.0 FOIA 2011 releases done by Gail Combs.  The one of interest is #4678 on 30 JAN 2001 which Rob Swarts who is at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands (his latest paper about a third of the page down in the 2009 articles section is here) is an email sent to Robert Watson while he was at the World Bank.  As is pointed out it is a strange thing when a scientist is being told to change the summary of his work at behest of a non-science based institution (and, no, it doesn't matter that it is another scientist telling him to do so, as that isn't kosher, either).  With that said it is even more unusual to agree to it (and throughout I will use downloaded source copies, not those reformatted for easier searching and putting in a bit of anti-spam to stop people from being flooded, but the necessity for the address is the organizations the people work for):

date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:15:15 +0100

from: Rob Swart <Rob.SwartATrivm.nl>

subject: Re: Synthesis Report (SYR): Summary for Policymakers

to: RwatsonATworldbank.org

Dear Bob,

Thanks for giving us the opportunity to react to your thinking. It forces us to think more clearly about the main messages. I must admit that I am somewhat confused about the 26 page summary, since this comes very close to (although it is different from) the full-scale document the various teams are currently writing. My view would be that those teams take their own text as the starting point and try to improve/shorten it on the basis of your text. Here, I only respond to your main messages in italics and mainly focus on WG3 issues.

You know, if this were one of those dreaded oil companies doing this to a researcher, I am sure that some Leftist would be up in arms about it. But since it is someone in the cozy Anthropomorphic Global Warming community, I am sure they can get all warm and fuzzy about scientists cozying up to the World Bank. Right?

So how is this scientist reacting to this stuff, beyond suggesting people on his team 'improve' their work along the lines of the paper sent to them from the World Bank? Probably got all huffy, right? I mean, scientific integrity and all that is at stake.

Right?

I mean if scientists started taking talking points from non-scientific organizations and were re-wording their findings to better fit that of an outside organization, that would be a pretty nasty thing to have happen.

Beyond that comes the more interesting part in which the scientific becomes the political:

Most points made may be introducing the rest of the SYR, but they do not address the question. I think the chapter should do both. In my view, in addition to your 6 paragraphs, one or more paragraphs could be related to five key aspects of Article 2: (a) dangerous interference, (b) stabilization, (c) natural adaptation, (d) food security, and (e) sustainable economic development. Three of these words (b), (c), (d) are not even mentioned. Two of your paragraphs now do hardly relate to the question (the 4th and 6th) but could be linked (see below).

The first italics could be positively relating to the question rather than negatively; e.g. take the 2nd and 3rd sentence as italics: "Scientific, technical and economic knowledge provides indispensable information needed to arrive at an informed judgement as to what level of anthropogenic interference would be dangerous, taking equity and social considerations into account. However, that judgement is a political, not scientific, one." An initial attempt to address my 1st comment, integrating some of Bob's italics but linking them to Artcile 2 issues: "Article 2 relates dangerous anthropogenic interference to the level and the time-frame of stabilization of concentrations of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, which would be required to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. Although many uncertainties remain, scientific, technical and socio-economic analysis as assessment in IPCC's Third Assessment Report provides information which can be used to arrive at the above mentioned political judgement about what constitutes dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

[..]

Question 2:I would not include a WG3 paragraph, like "The Kyoto Protocol has led to the creation of new market mechanisms"; apart from the question if this statement is very relevant as such, I don't think it is "evidence of the consequence of changes in the Earth's climate since the pre-industrial era."

There is a question that needs to be asked at this point: when was the climate ever stable?

It is a serious question because, geologically speaking, the times when climate regimes are relatively stable coincide with periods of large agglomerations of continental plates into one or two major continents that do not obstruct circumpolar and global oceanic water flow. Those periods of slow plate movement within a large assemblage can give rise to volcanic activity, but the predominant system is stabilized by a single large oceanic expanse that moves without much obstruction around the large continental masses and from pole to pole.

When this does not happen, or when a large continental mass drifts into a polar region, or there are dispersed continents that break up global oceanic flows by creating separated oceans, the planetary climate stability declines (becomes less stable). This latter scenario is the one we currently live in, and through recent history there have been multiple ice age events with large ice sheets covering expanses of the northern hemisphere and, to a lesser extent, the southern hemisphere. Currently we are experiencing warming after a 500 year period known as the Little Ice Age and still shifting through the post-glacial period of the last major Ice Age that ended approximately 10-11,000 years ago. Major post-glacial periods are marked by rapid changes in climate both up and down, trending higher for some thousands of years before hitting an inflection point after which they trend downwards until another Ice Age starts. This current inter-glacial period in no way appears to vary from other, prior, inter-glacial periods in this respect. Rapid climate shifts on the scale of sub-1,000 year periods are the norm for such periods, not the exception.

Thus, the question: what is a 'stable' climate for our current time?

There can be no absolute mile-marker put on that, save for those long periods of slow continental motion after multiple continents assemble into one or two major land masses. These see much warmer temps and climates, as a result, and as the speed of the continents slow they shift downwards on the mantle. As the crust subsides ocean water goes over land and warms in shallow seas, and the ice caps shrink. Then you get a long lasting climate, which continues on often for millions of years.

Now, given that information, and that those periods see at least a 20 degree C higher average global temperature, how can the impact of man be measured on the global climate? Is a percent or two change in carbon dioxide, seen in other inter-glacial periods that experience a major eruption, say, going to change the over-all course of the global climate? Even if it did would the direction of change be towards warming or cooling? Would plant growth increase or decrease? Would there be more cloud formation or less? In fact, a major question of 'what is the overall heat budget of the planet based on what it gains via sunlight, what sunlight is reflected and what is lost via IR and other radiation at night?' actually needs to be answered not in a partial way but in a systematic way examining all aspects of the planet's distance from the sun (which varies over a year and over tens of thousands of years), types of clouds and other aerosols in the atmosphere, heat transfer between air and other surfaces, heat loss from air and other masses, reflected energy that prevents loss... what is the heat budget of planet Earth?

This is a simple question that, as yet, remains unanswered in any meaningful way. Until it can be answered and all the factors that lead to that budget known, there is no way to single out any one factor (beyond sunlight) as a driving force for climate. Yet that is what those pushing AGW wish you to believe, and they push a political agenda for it that is helpfully worded by large scale, unaccountable institutions. You can't get to the political/social questions without first answering the very basic questions that rely not upon just sunlight, wind, and water, but upon a host of factors that have not been completely or even incompletely examined. This is a cart/horse order arrangement problem, because if you don't know what the drivers of the climate actually are in an unstable climactic period, then you can't accurately say which of them is controllable and which of them aren't. Yet such political questions are being pushed without knowing the fundamentals.

In an effort to push such political and economic ends (because there is a profit to be made by changing the investment in energy production sources) one can expect other players to become interested in that effort. Here Anthony Watts takes a look at how to get 'committed environmental activism' as part of the UNFCCC process and I will excerpt a bit from the email 340.txt in question and leave in some of the interesting names and entities this is being sent to:

date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:13:20 -0500

from: "Tom Jacob" <Tom.JacobATUSA.dupont.com>

subject: REFLECTIONS ON THE HAGUE...

to: climatepolicyATic.ac.uk. . .hadiATcmu.edu. . .eduschellnhuberATpik-potsdam.de. . .jonathan.pershingATiea.org. . .RKinleyATunfccc.int. . .m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk. . .jaeATpnl.gov. . .kchomitzATworldbank.org. . .dlashofATnrdc.org. . .pachuriATteri.res.in. . .munasingheATworldbank.org. . .

[..]

The two weeks were not without significant developments, though. The Hague was a melange of ceremonial formality, tedious negotiation, high-stakes back-room dealing, protests, and a seemingly endless stream of open side-events and closed outside meetings. On the surface, the affair was distinctly lacking in coherence. Beneath that surface, though, there were threads emerging that, woven together, begin to fashion a most intriguing tapestry. Following are a few of the observations that may have important implications as the process moves tentatively forward from last week's session:· Tightening The Scientific Noose· Beyond Environment· Reactionary Protests· Ever-Widening Embrace Of Mechanisms· The "Sinks" Thing· Markets Finding A Way· Keeping The U.S. Honest Comments and disagreement more than welcome...

TIGHTENING THE SCIENTIFIC NOOSE: Amid the pomp and circumstance of the opening of the negotiation, the voice most keenly attended to was that of one of the least-pretentious people on the planet, Bob Watson, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the global scientific effort supporting the work of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. While the IPCC's Third Assessment Report (TAR) has not yet been completed (scheduled for release next year), Watson previewed some of its likely themes by noting that: "The weight of scientific evidence suggests that the observed changes in the Earth's climate are, at least in part, due to human activity." He also concluded that: "If actions are not taken to reduce the projected increase in greenhouse gas emissions, the Earthe climate is projected to change at a rate unprecedented in the last 10,000 years with adverse consequences for society, undermining the very foundation of sustainable development."

It is significant that, while there is still uncertainty in the science and still sniping from the margins, the voices challenging the fundamental premises of the Framework Convention and its Kyoto Protocol (particularly in the US) have diminished in both their number and their pitch in the past several years. More and more, even those that continue to challenge the Protocol as a strategy, acknowledge concern regarding climate change as warranting attention. Similarly, even the countries that seemed most at odds with the sense of the negotiation on many points (Saudi Arabia and some OPEC allies) have not challenged the fundamental legitimacy of the concerns driving the effort.

Here is the science end of the cooption of science: a global 'panel' put together by the UN of selected scientists deciding what is and is not 'settled' science.  This was way back in 2000 and yet it would be the drumbeat heard thereafter.  The method of coordinating the drumbeat between the selected scientists, the UN, NGOs and industry is a meeting in the Hague.

The next point is, as Mr. Watts points out, a vital one, and I'll take it out in full:

REACTIONARY PROTESTS: It is perhaps not coincidental that as economic concerns have begun to rise, both in the increasingly serious consideration to market mechanisms and the emerging dialogue about economic impacts of climate action, we have begun to see an increase in traditional, confrontational environmental protests. Even in Kyoto, demonstrations were small and relatively non-confrontational reminders of the environmental concerns. In The Hague, we saw for the first time organized disruption of the conduct of negotiation and publicly staged confrontations. While organized and deeply committed environmental activism has long been an important part of the UNFCCC process through major groups such as NRDC, EDF/ED, WWF and Greenpeace, they have operated within the structure as constructive participants in the policy-setting process, along with industry. At The Hague, this "inside" role was supplemented by hundreds of young, relatively naïve demonstrators brought in specifically to energize the environmental presence and confront the process. Even some within the ranks of the more established participants -- while disavowing the takeover of the negotiating room -- saw fit to publicly offer Minister Pronk and the UNFCCC Secretariate a veiled threat of "Seattle" if the process failed to deliver.In the context of this resurgence of "environmental fundamentalism" it is also interesting to contrast the dynamics of the final give-and-take between the US and the EU in The Hague. The US has always approached major treaty negotiations such as this from a policy process that brings each of the potentially involved agencies (ministries) together to jointly frame priorities and strategy, with the process in the field managed by the State Department (foreign service) and the White House -- not, typically, by any particular agency "minister" (Carol Browner, head of US EPA, for example, has not represented the US in these sessions). In contrast, EU policy and representation in "environmental" forums such as The Hague is vested more narrowly in the Council of Environment Ministers -- opting to give priority to providing each country an opportunity to participate through their environment minister, but in the processes constraining the range of perspectives such that all the key players are answerable to the similar constituencies. Obviously, there are limits to the implications one can draw from this, but it may be significant that it was one of those Ministers for whom the portfolio is most broadly drawn (Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott) that was central in shaping the initial deal with the US, while those implicated by public accounts in turning down the deal (Voyner, and Trittin in particular) are among those with closest ties to their more activist constituencies.

Here is DuPont looking with favor upon the role of 'activists' of the 'established' sort playing a game of dealing one game with the policy makers (those negotiating) while putting on another face (that of vocal, naïve activists) outside the meeting so as to pressure those doing negotiations.  That allows them to be 'constructive participants' in the negotiating process.  Isn't that lovely?  Leftist, environmentalist organizations playing with governments and large corporations and using young and naïve 'activists' as useful idiots to protest? Makes you wonder how it feels, as a Leftist, to be co-opted for an agenda that you aren't being told about by organizations you support, doesn't it?  All that blather about how tainted oil based research on climate is gets washed away in the beautiful world of transnational global politics in which you, as a 'protestor', get used not just for environmentalism but for agreements between the organizations you support, large industrial outfits and then pressuring governments to help out BOTH.  I'm sure these protestors are just fine with it, though, as their usefulness to the Greater Cause means that they, too, can participate in the corruption of their very own ethics in agreements with companies they would otherwise despise since they are so handy to both the 'activist' organizations and the corporations, BOTH.  Isn't that swell?  I'm so sure that is what they signed up for as 'activists' and 'protestors'.

Mind you, the science still can't point to what a 'stable' climate looks like or what the actual parts of the heat equation are drivers and which are backseat children that make a loud noise, but don't mean very much in the way of direction.  That was true in 2000 and is still lamentably true in 2011.

So far we have:

1) Large, transnational banking institutions (World Bank, IMF) having input into the output of the verbiage of scientific reports.

2) Large, transnational corporations and NGOs utilizing a two-faced system to 'work' within the system on the inside while providing useful idiot protestors on the outside to pressure negotiators to come to an agreement that might satisfy the corporations and NGOs, but not, necessarily, the Nations involved or the useful idiots.  That is how you keep them 'useful': you never satisfy them.

Now going back to the first post by Gail Combs looking at 5003.txt to examine the other people contacting the World Bank, this via an email sent via an Adjunct Faculty member at the Engineering and Public Policy part of CMU:

date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 13:28:08 -0400

from: Hadi Dowlatabadi <hadiATcmu.edu>

subject: Re: [New] Editorial for Climate Policy, Issue 2.

to: <KchomitzATworldbank.org>, Climate Policy <climatepolicyATic.ac.uk>

Dear Ken,

I agree with your perspective, but why not set a realistic target? The editorial columns at Science, Nature and New Scientist have rarely hidden their subjective perspectives. I think there are shades to this, and Michael can be a shade grayer, but the passion is also important.The dialogue approach allows him to be editor, hold strong opinions, but still be viewed as someone who is willing to listen. This is how Steve Schneider has conducted his reign at Climatic Change and I believe despite his well known personal perspectives he has been able to draw on many in the community to contribute to the dialogue that defines the differences in perspectives permeating this subject.

Hadion

4/20/01 1:15 PM, KchomitzATworldbank.org at KchomitzATworldbank.org wrote:

>> Dear Michael,

> I really like the solution of presenting view and counterview articles. I

> retain some reservations about your proposed editorial. It seems to me that

> you

> have the difficult problem of wearing two hats: one as the advocate of

> particular policies and viewpoints, and the other as an editor of a journal

> which aspires to be a neutral forum for policy discussion. I appreciate and

> sympathize with the depth and grounding of your personal views. However, as

> editor, it seems to me, you have to bend over backwards to be neutral. The

> editorial uses charged words like 'demonize' and could easily spark the war of

> words you wish to avoid. A strongly worded editorial risks associating the

> journal with a particular viewpoint, and hence reducing the journal's value

> and> reputation as a neutral forum.

> > Maybe this just reflects a parochial American viewpoint of what an editor

> does,> or perhaps the hypersensitivities of someone working at an international

> organization. I'd be interested in others' views.

> > > regards

> Ken

> > > > ___________________

> Kenneth M. Chomitz

> Development Research Group

> World Bank

Yes, here you have a member of the World Bank telling an editor of a peer-reviewed scientific journal that he should be toning down his language so he can appear 'neutral' or at least open to discussion, while actually not stating his true perspective on science and scientific affairs.  Indeed the editorial perspective of some publications is well known and that then goes beyond their perspective and into the various articles, themselves, thus those journals slowly lose readers, over time, as the editorial perspective seeps into the decision-making for articles and who reviews them.  Here the advice is to mask the bias on the public side (that is published editorially) but not one word of retaining that beyond that portion of the journal.  If an editor strongly backs an opinion the rest of the journal tends to get associated with it.  With that said if there are multiple editors, this can be diluted by having multiple viewpoints on the editorial staff and to openly present bias on an article (pro/con) via editorials from different staff members.

Bias is something to be open about so that others can judge if you can set your bias aside to actually do and review scientific work or if your bias is persistent to the point where it slants the even-handed assessment of data and derived results.  It also allows for open criticism of editors so that a journal may select other editors or reviewers if there is input that on certain topics an editor is suspect due to the bias being shown and discussed.  Here we see the two-faced approach being taken not by organizations and protestors, but taken to an editor via a member of an organization that seeks to have the rhetoric toned down but the bias remain.  That is deceitful not just towards those submitting articles (on if they can get an even-handed review process) but to the readers who deserve to know of any inherent bias in the publication, itself.

To 1 and 2 above, we can now add:

3) Large, transnational financial institution seeking to change editorial policy of an editor at a scientific journal with regards to how editorials are written.

I'm sure Leftists are all just warm and fuzzy with that thought!

Who else is on the Transnational financial list?  There is always your favorite and that of the Democratic Party's, Goldman-Sachs.  In 4092.txt (h/t Buffy Minton in the thread at WUWT) we can see what sort of cup rattling goes on behind the scenes with the AGW crowd:

date: Mon, 18 May 1998 10:00:38 +0100

from: Trevor Davies <t.d.daviesATuea.ac.uk>

subject: goldman-sachsto: j.palutikofATuea,p.jonesATuea,m.hulmeATuea

Jean,

We (Mike H) have done a modest amount of work on degree-days for G-S. They now want to extend this. They are involved in dealing in the developing energy futures market.G-S is the sort of company that we might be looking for a 'strategic alliance' with. I suggest the four of us meet with ?? (forgotten his name) for an hour on the afternoon of Friday 12 June (best guess for Phil & Jean - he needs a date from us).

Thanks.

Trevor

+++++++++++++

+++++++++++++

Professor Trevor D. Davies

Climatic Research Unit

University of East Anglia

Isn't this so sweet?  Scientists looking to help Goldman-Sachs develop a 'strategic alliance' with them in pushing issues in the 'developing energy futures market' is just so cuddly you can't even begin to use words to express it.  Yes, these climate scientists must be wizards to be able to know about such things as energy production and developing markets... do they ever get any time to do any real science?

Speaking of energy interests, here is Mike Hulme setting up a meeting with BP and Shell in 2000 from 0296.txt (another H/T to the comments section this time to Jimbo):

date: Tue Feb 1 13:34:27 2000

from: Mike Hulme <m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk>

subject: BP

to: shackley

Simon,

Have talked with Tim O about BP and he knows Paul Rutter but reckons he is junior to his two contacts Charlotte grezo (who is on our Panel!) and Simon Worthington.Tim is meeting Charlotte next week and will do some lobbying and we will also make contact with Simon Worthington.So I guess there is no necessity to follow up on Paul right now (I'll wait for Tim's feedback), but if you feel there is a strong enough UMIST angle then by all means do so (but bear in mind that we will be talking to some other parts of BP).We're getting a few letters back from people here too which I will copy onto you - two water companies, Shell and the Foreign Office (the latter is not really business though).

All for now,

Mike

Say, if you criticize the critics for working with the likes of BP and Shell, can you criticize those pushing AGW for doing the same?  And does this make their science suspect, as well?  Because if you think any contact for funding with an oil company is a reason to be shunned, then what will you do when those who have been pushing AGW are found to have been doing the exact, same thing as those doing work with them on other research?

How about a bit later in 2002, in 0736.txt putting a program schedule together for the ECF Autumn Conference:

cc: "Klaus Hasselmann" <klaus.hasselmannATdkrz.de>, "Mike Hulme" <m.hulmeATuea.ac.uk>

date: Thu, 16 May 2002 14:47:51 +0100

from: "Elaine Jones" <E.L.JonesATuea.ac.uk>

subject: ECF Autumn Conference

to: "Martin Welp" <martin.welpATpik-potsdam.de>

Martin, Just to confirm and clarify a few of our views expressed in Monday's telecom (I listened with interest alongside Mike) on the ECF Autumn Conference Preliminary Programme. The programme looks very good so far. We don't think that Tom Delay would be the best dinner speaker, but it would be useful to perhaps invite him to speak in the Technology Transition session on e.g. Key challenges for the UK's Carbon Trust or, (the title of their glossy ) "Making Business Sense of Climate Change" ? . However, he has appeared in the same session as Mark MS on a few occasions already.

In case Mark MS cannot accept an invite (he would also be an excellent dinner speaker) you could consider Phil Watts, who is actually Mark's replacement as Chairman of the CMD of Royal Dutch/Shell Group, (and a Yorkshire Geophysicist) but rather for his other role as chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development ( a coalition of 160 International companies from >30 countries and 20 sectors and a global network of 35 national and regional business councils) , which he took on in November 2001, succeeding Charles Holliday, DUPONT Chair and CEO. Of course, he's incredibly busy but would be an excellent dinner speaker if he couldn't manage day-time - and with an attractive letter invite may be tempted (e.g. building on his "I am honoured to become chairman of the WBCSD, it plays a vital role in helping both to challenge and encourage business, governments and institutions to address the issue of sustainable development"). As an alternative, and not to be to Shell biased, Rodney Chase deputy group chief exec. of BP (former Exploration Head) is also on the WBCSD Exec. Committee. I don't know him - but I'm sure he would be good... he gave a Pew Centre presentation in 2000 - Innovative Policy Solutions to Global Climate Change www.pewclimate.org/media/rchase_speech.pdf - one might consider inviting him to "reflect on the subsequent 2 years track record of innovative solutions" ! he may be most useful for session 4, given the BP-Amoco (Arco) transatlantic make-up ! (and they are also a PEW member). He's also a non-exec. director of DIAGEO plc (Europe's largest Beverages co.).

Isn't this lovely?  Look at the people they would want as a dinner speaker at their event:

I) Tom Delay – This is Tom Delay of the UK Carbon Trust, not the US Tom DeLay.

II) Sir Mark Moody-Stewart – Appointed non-executive chairman of Anglo American PLC, ex-chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, director of HSBC holdings and Accenture.  Chairman of the Foundation for Global Compact, member of the Global Reporting Initiative up to 2007, member of the Board of Directors for Saudi Aramco.

III) Sir Philip Watts – Chairman of Shell 2001-2004 in addition to what is in the text.

IV) Rodney Chase – As stated in the text, a BP man in addition to other hats.

What isn't to like in this group? I mean you have organizations working on the entire carbon problem thingy, huge multinational oil companies, plus a slew of feel good NGOs... just the sort of people you want addressing the European Climate Forum. No, really, it is! I mean if you are going to have AGW/Climate Change/Climate Chaos or whatever the tagline du jour is, then you really, and for true, need the people ready to make a profit off of it as speakers at conferences.

Thus comes the next rule:

4) Always seek to get the heads of large organizations that make a profit off of 'climate change', either on the causing or the carbon trading side, at major conferences as dinner speakers so they can tell you what they see as the future of the direction of the 'movement'.

The idea that affiliation is grounds for denouncement and demonization is a Leftist cant, not one with a basis in reality.  Science, if done properly, is about repeatable results not about who funds you.  It doesn't matter if a government funds you, an oil company, a university, or that rich old coot down the street: if you get repeatable results and accurately describe and characterize them then it is science.  When those doing the funding try to tell you what to say, then it is intellectual, ethical and moral prostitution of oneself to the highest bidder or at least the one willing to help 'the cause'.  If you demonize based on fund source, then you must demonize the AGW crowd just as much as their critics as they are not adverse to chasing, begging, taking and using funds from such organizations.

This should be worrying to the 'street activists', 'protestors' and even those just willing to sing from the same hymnal as 'fellow travelers'.  To date no one has demonstrated that the critics of AGW have had what they write directed by their funders.  So far, to date, we now have evidence that those writing in support of AGW 'science' are not only willing to do so, but are willing to have the heads of such organizations show up at conferences or actually run such conferences as supports the goal of AGW followers.

The problem here isn't in the science of AGW: there isn't any.

Show me the data.

Not the interpretations, not the graphs, not the conclusions, but the raw, unadulterated data and let ME work through it so I can see if I can come up with the same results, plus cross-validate that any conclusions have something to do with OTHER datasets from OTHER sources so that the data can have a cross-check on it.

You can't make me a 'believer' but you can give me the data to see if I can agree with the conclusions drawn from it.  That is science.  No 'belief' needed.

Until the original datasets are made publicly available, and this was publicly funded research at the start of this entire mess, for public scrutiny and open scrutiny by the scientific community as a WHOLE and IN PART, there is no science being done in AGW.

When there is: obfuscation of the data, refusal to release publicly funded data(and thus held for the public by researchers), attempts to hide scientific criticism in secret but never speak of it in public, no safeguarding information exchanges that are the lifeblood of science, attempts no to be honest about the scientific process so as to intimidate editors or reviewers of papers and to not be open about what the people who are seeking to influence you are trying to do, then you do not have the performing of science to the public good but a conspiracy to defraud the public as a whole at a multi-national level.  And not small fraud, either, when you consider the attempts to curb fossil fuel production and use, impoverish millions if not billions via economic stagnation through crony capitalism, and otherwise jack up energy prices with no valid science as a rationale... that may go into the trillions of dollars on a global scale.  That is fraudulent science in search of a Great Cause which is then backed by other institutions that have their own agenda which are not accountable to any public of any Nation, so as to force National governments to create new agendas to support transnational corporations via schemes to divert money from productive energy jobs to ones that show no immediate value.  Because if they were worthwhile to do they would be profitable and sustainable without a single penny from any government other than as a customer for a product.

I have said it before and I will say it again: science is a full body contact sport done without benefit of any padding, no handicaps and having the necessary requirement of being done out in the open to hold yourself accountable to your peers.  Science is one of the nastiest endeavors of all mankind because to do it you must be open to criticism, must accept criticism (as old man Alvarez showed us with a smile and open arms) and then say that ANYONE CAN DUPLICATE YOUR RESULTS.   Those who are perpetrating this fraud are not DOING THAT but are running a rigged con game and in that universe you are either the con man, a plant or a mark, and on something of this scale nearly every single plant will find out that they are the mark.