Common Sense with Paul Jacob

The Climate Cassandra

Global warming, climate change, illustration

Thirty years ago, in June, 1986, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met to consider the problems of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change.

Present at those hearings was today’s climate Cassandra, James Hansen, then of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. And he was predicting that “global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years,” according to Associated Press reporting at that time.

There was some sloppiness either in Hansen’s account, or the AP’s, for in one part of his testimony Hansen claimed that his institute’s climate models projected, for “the region of the United States, the warming 30 years from now is about 1 1/2 degrees C, which is about 3 F.”

Ronald Bailey, the science writer over at Reason, tries to make sense of this mess of numbers, models, and predictions.

Oh, and actual, tabulated results.

Hansen’s predictions went, as Bailey put it, “definitively off the rails when tracking the temperature trend for the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2016. Since 2000, according to the NOAA calculator, the average temperature trend has been downward at -0.06 F degree per decade.”

That’s not the whole picture, though: “global temperatures have increased by 0.51 C degree since 1986, so perhaps the man-made global warming signal has finally emerged.”

No matter, though, as Bailey notes, “the United States and the Earth have warmed at considerably slower pace than Hansen predicted 30 years ago.”

Which suggests that Hansen’s models may be inspired more by wish, fear, and ideology than genuine science.

So, to those who wish to rush to “do something” (anything?) to combat “climate change,” take it slow. Follow the pace of the Earth itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags climate change, global warming, James Hansen, prediction

Today

Giants

Post author By Redactor
Post date June 22, 2016
No Comments on Giants

On June 22, 1633, astronomer Galileo Galilei recanted his belief in heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. He didn’t do this based on scientific research, but under pressure from the Holy Office in Rome.

Three hundred forty-five years later, to the date, American astronomer James W. Christy discovered Charon, a moon for what was then called “the ninth planet,” Pluto. This put Christy in an august company of satellite discovers, including Galileo, who had discovered four of Jupiter’s moons in 1610.

When Pluto was later “demoted” to “dwarf planet” status, in 2006, no one was put under house arrest for objecting, or for not changing his or her mind, as had Galileo been centuries before.

Thought

Galileo Galilei

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).

free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Hysteria, Assassination, and Big Government

Post author By CS Admin
Post date June 21, 2016
5 Comments on Hysteria, Assassination, and Big Government

Brexit, EU, European Union, independence, democracy, illustration

The biggest political story of the month? Brexit.

The people of Great Britain will vote, this week, whether to remain in, or exit, the European Union. (Britain+exit=“Brexit,” you see.)

Establishment forces in Britain have engaged in hysterical, hyperbolic overkill, warning of grave disaster were Britain to leave the union. America’s President Barack Obama contributed to this, recently, when he warned that an independent Britain might find itself placed “at the back of the queue” in trade talks.

Tragically, things got more troubling last week when anti-Brexit, pro-union campaigner Jo Cox, a Member of Parliament and prominent Labour Party activist, was brutally slain last week in front of her local library. The man had just left a mental health facility, after requesting help.

At first, major media reported that the killer had shouted “Britain First,” an old patriotic motto as well as the name of a pro-Brexit political party, while shooting and stabbing her. Of the several eyewitnesses to have allegedly testified to this murderous shout, only one is sticking to the story . . . a member of the British Nationalist Party, which is antagonistic to Britain First. Other eyewitnesses deny the story.

Next, both sides promised to cease campaigning, out of good taste. Still, polls fluctuated, while remaining close.

Much of the furor has risen over immigration policy, especially fears about EU laxity towards Muslim refugees.

But the bedrock issue is Big Government. The EU is not effectively controlled by citizens; indeed, membership representation is mostly show, a mockery of republican government.

That is why, if I were British, I’d vote to Brexit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Tags Brexit, democracy, EU, Europe, European Union, immigration, independence, vote

Thought

Arthur Kenyon Rogers

“Anything whatever can be made ridiculous; to see this side of it, and nothing more, is to become the mere jester, whose claim to be regarded as the ideal moralist is cer tainly very slight. But between a too solemn sense of high importance, and that conviction of the intrinsic smallness of everything in particular which some of our satirists have displayed, there is a middle ground.”

Arthur Kenyon Rogers, The Theory of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922).

Today

Grandfather clauses

On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.

Common Sense responsibility

Fatherlessness

father, father's day, dad, Paul Jacob, role model, illustration, photo

Yesterday was Father’s Day; tomorrow, I’ll attend my father’s funeral.

Ample opportunity to reflect on missing Dad . . . and dads.

My father was two months shy of 85 years. He lived a long, full life with a loving wife of more than 60 years, six children he adored and who felt likewise about him, 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

He started his own small business and achieved his version of the American Dream: to be his own boss.

More than a decade ago, when my pop was fighting through open heart surgery, I wrote in this space that he was, in the words of one of his favorite movies, “the richest man in town.” Sadly, he’s no longer in town.

Except that he still is . . . in me. And in my kids and their kids.

As an adult, admittedly I haven’t often asked my dad for advice. Why? Because I already know exactly what he would say. I like that. And thankfully that voice remains.

Moons ago, I also acknowledged that I was privileged, but argued “My Privilege Isn’t White.” Instead, my advantages mostly came from growing up in a home with two loving parents.

We Homo sapiens learn by imitating others. Hence the term “role model.”

Nowadays we often hear about poor role models when some spoiled-brat sports celebrity or narcissistic rock star behaves badly. As a teenager, I had their posters on my wall. But my dad served as my 24/7 role model.

He still does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Tags Father's Day, obituary, privilege, responsibility

Today

A Federation

On this date in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, it was moved and debated to confine legislative powers to two distinct branches, and to strike the word “national” from the document.

The final wording eventually became “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

And, yes, the word “national” does not occur anywhere in the Constitution.

Thought

Alexis de Tocqueville

As long as the democratic revolution was glowing with heat, the men who were bent upon the destruction of old aristocratic powers hostile to that revolution displayed a strong spirit of independence; but as the victory of the principle of equality became more complete, they gradually surrendered themselves to the propensities natural to that condition of equality, and they strengthened and centralized their governments. They had sought to be free in order to make themselves equal; but in proportion as equality was more established by the aid of freedom, freedom itself was thereby rendered of more difficult attainment.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2 (1840).

links