Gaia gone in 96 months

That's what the Prince of Whales claims. Mark Steyn takes on the warm-mongers:

"Environmentalism opposes that kind of mobility. It seeks to return us to the age of kings when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite. Sometimes they will be hereditary monarchs, such as the Prince of Wales. Sometimes they will be merely the gilded princelings of the government apparatus – Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi. In the old days, they were endowed with absolute authority by God. Today, they're endowed by Mother Nature, empowered by Gaia to act on her behalf. But the object remains control – to constrain you in a million ways, most of which would never have occurred to Henry VIII, who, unlike the new cap-and-trade bill, was entirely indifferent as to whether your hovel was "energy efficient." The old rationale for absolute monarchy – Divine Right – is a tough sell in a democratic age. But the new rationale – Gaia's Right – has proved surprisingly plausible."

Read the article.

Climate Change Truth

What happens when the scientists have excessive belief in their ideas?

These men are not only ill prepared for making discoveries; they also make very poor observations. Of necessity, they observe with a preconceived idea, and when they devise an experiment, they can see, in its results, only a confirmation of their theory. In this way they distort observation and often neglect very important facts because they do not further their aim....But it happens further quite naturally that men who believe too firmly in their theories, do not believe enough in the theories of others. So the dominant idea of these despisers of their fellows is to find others' theories faulty and try to contradict them. The difficulty, for science is still the same.

CLAUDE BERNARD, An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, 1865
From Good Calories, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes

Certain things never change. 144 years after the above article was written, we are still plagued by the irrational scientists. Bill Brown talks about this lot in his article "Climate Change Truth" and the way it scientists should operate:

Scientists generally operate like the rational person described above. They work according to the scientific method, which enshrines the inductive approach. Publishing their findings in a scientific journal is supposed to be the beginning of the journey to knowledge as other scientists test the results and publish their own findings. This emerging consensus is then grist for causal explanation, which is then itself tested in new scenarios and experiments. This process is more rigorous and formal than the rational person’s due to its inherently social nature: the rational person really only needs to understand an issue in his own mind whereas a scientist must cast his understanding in precise, objective terms that are available to others.

At odds with both the rational person and the scientist is the man of faith. For him, knowledge once obtained is sacrosanct; his certainty is absolute and unshakeable. In contrast, the process by which he acquires such certainty is relatively effortless: he is told what to believe and he accepts it wholesale. His mind is literally closed off to contradictory information as he resolutely refuses to consider it.

Bill Brown talks about the episodes of shouting down of earnest dissenters by the proponents of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). He points to a need for resurgence of reason and rational people and some positive signs on that front. Read his whole article for an informed and rational viewpoint of the issue.

Cap and Trade and Save the Earth?

YouTube - Cap and Trade: Will It Save the Earth?

Earth Day present

A special present for the people celebrating the Earth Day. These words of Howard Roark:

"He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. to be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky.

These rocks, he thought, are here waiting for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them."
"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand.

Happy Exploit-the-Earth Day

Principles in Practice: "On April 22, Celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day
Posted by Craig Biddle at 2:51 PM
Because Earth Day is intended to further the cause of environmentalism—and because environmentalism is an anti-human ideology—on April 22, those who care about human life should not celebrate Earth Day; they should celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day.
Exploiting the Earth—using the raw materials of nature for one’s life-serving purposes—is a basic requirement of human life. Either man takes the Earth’s raw materials—such as trees, petroleum, aluminum, and atoms—and transforms them into the requirements of his life, or he dies. To live, man must produce the goods on which his life depends; he must produce homes, automobiles, computers, electricity, and the like; he must seize nature and use it to his advantage. There is no escaping this fact. Even the allegedly “noble” savage must pick or perish. Indeed, even if a person produces nothing, insofar as he remains alive he indirectly exploits the Earth by parasitically surviving off the exploitative efforts of others." Read more.

Green, mean and anti-capitalist

What Ayn Rand said is so true that " Within every category of goods and
services offered on a free market, it is the purveyor of the best
product at the cheapest price who wins the greatest financial rewards
in that field-not automatically nor immediately nor by fiat.."(Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal).
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Green Trade Wars
Forbes Magazine dated April 27, 2009

While the world has had its eye on tariffs and quotas, another trade
war has been simmering, over dumping. This month, U.S. Steel and other
American manufacturers filed suit against China, alleging the dumping
of $2.6 billion worth of welded and seamless steel pipes...

What makes this fight different is that steelmakers have a curious
ally: the environmental crowd. Steel is a polluting industry, slurping
up lots of coal for smelting and spitting carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere. If the U.S. puts a cost on domestic CO2 (in the form of a
tax or an expensive emission permit), and if China doesn't impose a
similar burden on its smokestacks, then Chinese steel companies have
an unfair advantage. The enviros propose to make the contest fair by
imposing a pollution equalization tax at the border. This tariff idea
gets a loud "amen" from the U.S. steel industry.
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Carbon footprint-bigger the better

President Obama in his recent Town hall meet in Germany said India's carbon footprint is much smaller then America's. He also mentioned that the America is rich and India poor. Now the key question is that can he see the obvious that "bigger carbon footprint = rich" and "small carbon footprint = poor"? Does he is realise that what he is saying is that he wants to reduce the greatest, most prosperous country in the world to the level of a country barely coming out of abject poverty.

Freeman Dyson said at Tragedy Is Not Freeman Dyson’s Business
“The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms.”

With the reverse of socialism in India we have seen unprecedented prosperity and rise of people above the poverty line. It is only due to the opening up of the markets and giving people freedom to choose their destiny that this has been possible. Now the dubious science of global warming threatens to undo all that. When people in first world sit and sermonise and talk about curbing progress in name of dubious computer generated models, it amazes me.

What Ayn Rand said so many years ago still holds true:
Ecology as a social principle . . . condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to “nature,” to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.
“The Lessons of Vietnam,” The Ayn Rand Letter, III, 25

There are so many ifs and buts in these theories but there are no doubts about the rise in living standards and the unleashing of the entrepreneurial energy in countries like India and China. Hopefully people can escape the devil with twin horns of socialism and environmentalism long enough to achieve decent standards of living.

Lets hope that the view “Humans, have a duty to restructure nature for their survival” prevails for the sake of billions who are finally getting to see glimpses of life as it should be - a celebration of human achievement and not a struggle for survival.

The Unearthly Earth Hour

What happens to a society when it is abandoned by or ignores it's intellectuals? It celebrates the Earth hour. When Sydney did that by switching off its light, I was dumbstruck. When you see the picture of the Earth's city lights- you see civilization, life, progress. In comparison the darkness hides the human misery. It is a living memory of the dark ages. Suddenly for a moment the darkness returned, winning a battle after a century of spreading lights.

The agents of dark ages have now come to America- to the birth place of the inventor of electricity. The stakes are raised now. America, which has been a beacon of Enlightenment to the rest of the world has to decide. Will it surrender to the collectivists or tell them to go back to their dark hell holes. Let this a warning of things to come. I felt like yelling out what L-C said on The New Clarion - For every light you turn off, I’m going to turn on three.

Today if you switch the lights off voluntarily, tomorrow there might not be an option to turn them back on. I will tell you what happens when the lights are switched off. I work on a poultry farm on the outskirts of New Delhi, India and we get an average of less then three hour's of electricity everyday. We spend a fortune on generators, diesel and maintenance. Every month someone from the farm has to go to the government run electricity office to ask for our bill. We get one day to pay the billed amount.

Our jet pumps and water motors keep developing problems due to poor quality of electricity. We have to repair local transformer our self if something goes wrong. The linemen will not come without a bribe although others will drop by to threaten us with disconnection or worse due to some imagined misconduct on our part (pay up or else). Because of electricity or lack of it we can't expand easily, install electronic security without expensive backup and it makes life hell in temp. of 110 deg. Fahrenheit in the summers.

Some of my favourite pictures have been night shots of American cities shinning with lights. It makes me feel like they are celebrating civilization's birthday everyday. So when somebody talks about switching lights off voluntarily and celebrating the Earth hour I feel like telling them- don't be a fool, that's the unearthly hour- which from where I come from, we are always trying to escape.

Go green, just don't do it here

The title of the post is from one of the comments posted on foxnews in response to article Feinstein: Don't Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels
California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.

Aesthetics of a barren desert? Tortoise population is more important then human population? Although I am no fan of solar energy -which would be not exist in a free market- the point is that this story shows us that for environmentalists and their ilk it's not really about clean energy, environment or anything else. It's really about being anti-man in the sense that everything else (a tortoise, spotted owl, some fish, insect, tree or an insect) is preferable over human beings. Ayn Rand said almost 40 years ago:
"The worst fears of land conservationists concern not the accidental spoilage of land by waste. but its exploitation by man to build mines, roads and cities. In time he may encroach so far on his greenery that he reduces the amount of air he has breathe."
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution

Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.

An empty barren desert as a national monument for America? You've got to be kidding me. Lets declare New York skyline as a national monument and restore it to it's pre-9/11 glory. Even better, let people build a new city in the desert. Allow people to flourish in it without hindrance and then declare it a national monument. Lets tell the good senator that there is no place in American politics for people who want to prevent future development.

The Wildlands Conservancy orchestrated the government's purchase of the land between 1999-2004. It negotiated a discount sale from the real estate arm of the former Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroad and then contributed $40 million to help pay for the purchase.

During early days the government saw wisdom in letting people stake claims to newly discovered lands and let them flourish. Now it is buying it back to prevent development. When will majority of Americans see through these people? When will development not be a dirty word? They are using money taken as taxes from productive people to help finance there anti-productive ventures. The irony is that the land was bought from Santa Fe Railroad which built its railway over the legendary Santa Fe trail ruts. It was Santa Fe trail which conquered the prairie with its commerce. The story of the Santa Fe Trail is a story of trade and the railroad further enhanced that story.

"If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it," Schwarzenegger said at Yale University.

Even the Governor who became green in effort to fulfill his political goals is going green in the face with frustration.

"The opportunity we see in the Feinstein bill is to jump-start our own efforts to find the best sites for development and to come up with a broader conservation plan that mitigates the impact of the development," Douglas said.

Ayn Rand said in the "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" that there is no such thing as a "restrained progress". Mitigated development is a contradiction in terms. As for the conservation, it is clear that they want to conserve anything, except man.

"There's plenty of room in America's deserts for the bold expansion of renewable energy projects," Duran said.

I hope there is room in America's mind for the bold expansion of reason and enlightment else we are headed for the new dark ages.

Maruti Suzuki wants to sell less cars

Few days back I went to the Maruti's (Nariana, Delhi) car service outlet. There were signs all over the place wanting people to avoid using their cars once a week and instead use the public transport. I asked a couple of officials who were around the reason for it and they said that the company was pro-environment and they wanted me to admire the various measures like their compost pit etc. (you get the idea). When I explained that I thought that the sign was illogical and if they thought that their cars were damaging the environment wouldn't it make more sense to simply use public transport everyday and completely do away with the cars. He had no answer and he explained that it was their GM's idea and since he was standing just behind us why didn't I talk to him.

He introduced me to the GM (who comes to work on a bicycle) who was flabbergasted when he heard about my objection to his sign. He just blurted that this was the first time someone had any problems with the environmental message of his. When I explained that it was illogical for a business to want it's customers to use less of it's product and that it made no sense, he became outright hostile and said that I was entitled to my opinion and that he didn't want to argue with me. He softened a little when I patiently explained that I was a big admirer of the company (first modern car maker in India) and that I assumed that his message was for welfare of his customers and people in general. If that was so then it made more sense for company to sell more cars, build more plants, establish more dealerships and continue to bring prosperity as it had been doing in the past (and not go back to riding bicycles).

The guy first refused to acknowledge that using less of a product means selling lesser amounts of it and tried to bluster his way out by asking me if I had been to Australia and if knew how things worked there? (made no sense at all). I said I was very well informed (didn't go to Moon to know about the terrain on it) but I was more interested in his reasons for his action here in India. He just said a thing can't be wrong if so many intellectuals had come together and decided that this was what was right. Ah! the consensus thing again. I reminded him that just a few centuries ago only one man on the planet said that it was spherical and the rest believed it was flat and that it didn't change the fact that it was round just because millions said it wasn't so.

Reality, reason and logic are not decided by a popularity contest. Needless to say that the conversation didn't go anywhere but I made my point and objection heard (had an audience of three junior officers). The GM who I believe is a IIT and management school product was less open to reason then his lesser educated juniors. The so called institutes of higher learning have become places of non-reason and anti-intellect. These people who should be proud flag-bearers of capitalism have turned suicidal and instead embraced all sorts of irrational and anti-man ideologies. All we can do is object to these stupid things and try to get our point across using reason as our primary tool.

Delhi government's anti-business ban on plastic bags

Couple of days back I saw a notice posted at our local grocery store saying "please get your own bags" beginning the start of the plastic bag ban. It will make things very difficult for retailers and will have a negative effect on the sales.

The environmentalist win another round in their battle at the local level against progress, business, lively hoods, families, children' pocket money, happiness and mankind in general.
Read the post on a similar ban in a US city. http://sparkasynapse.blogspot.com/2009/02/plastic-bags-illegal.html