Monthly Archives: January 2011

The Ike Nobody Mentions

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In a few short days, it will be 50 years since President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (Jan 17, 1961), truly world-famous for its criticism of the “military-industrial complex“. However, a few moments later Ike moved on to a different “complex“, eerily predicting the rise of organizations like the IPCC, and of scientists just too eager to be useful to politicians:

[...] The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.[...]

As expected, he had no time for those that put science/technology/whatever else ahead of the democratic system:

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

President Eisenhower even mentions the problem of dwindling resources (Andy Revkin must have heard him as a toddler)

As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

One should note though, that the currently fashionable scaremongering had no space in Ike’s worldview either

this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect

Finally, what were the enemies to be fought? Why, “scourges of poverty, disease, and ignorance“. Perhaps one day a former NYT journalist will recognize how fundamental these are…

Climate "Extremes" In 410AD

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Curiously, St Augustine of Hippo‘s Sermon 25 “Sermon on the verse of Psalm 94: Blessed the one whom You instruct, Lord, and whom You teach from Your law” is available online in Latin and Italian, but only inside a Google Book in English (p. 82).

Anyway, just in case anybody was wondering if anything were new under the sun (p. 83):

“Practically every year when we feel the cold we say ‘It’s never been so cold!”. ‘It’s never been so hot!’“

Good (Unrecognized) News From American Scientist

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In their weekly “Science in the News” e-mail, the folks at American Scientist have just managed to include a series of good news about the climate, without much of an acknowledgment. So here they are:

  1. “scientists have been drilling beneath the Dead Sea to extract a record of climate change and earthquake history stretching back half a million years. So far, their findings include a wood fragment that’s roughly 400,000 years old“: linked NYT article also includes news about the Dead Sea’s water levels increasing by 300m between 50,000 years ago and now, and “wildly varying layers of salt and mud [representing] dry periods and wet ones” indicating how big local climate changes have been in the past, and how many of them there have been, without much human intervention
  2. “researchers have found an ancient mummified forest in a nearly treeless section of the Canadian Arctic that is now surrounded by glaciers“: indeed, linked National Geographic article mentions a time in the past when “the Earth’s climate was drastically changing“, and mentions another NGS article yet, showing how forests contain in-built mechanisms to quickly expand to new areas when the conditions are warm enough. Hopefully nobody’s suggesting those mechanisms haven’t evolved in the remote past..
  3. “the White House has issued guidelines to insulate government scientific research from political meddling and to base policy decisions on solid data. Under the guidelines, government scientists are free to speak to journalists and the public about their work“: actually, there is more, as mentioned in the linked NYT article, e.g. with clear wordings that would have hit hard the “hide the decline” Team: “the agencies are instructed that when communicating a scientific finding to the public, they should describe its underlying assumptions. For instance, they are told to describe “probabilities associated with both optimistic and pessimistic projections”“

I do expect AS to come out against current mainstream AGW theory sooner rather than later (sooner than the hopeless critical-thinking-free Scientific American, at least). One little chip at a time, even the strongest wall will come down.