| This
week:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
TOP |
Thursday,
May 21, 2009 Bjorn Lomborg sums it all
up nicely in today's Wall Street Journal essay on The Climate Industrial
Complex.
http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB124286145192740987.html
He draws that title from Eisenhower's prescient speech on the Military
Industrial Complex. ("there is a recurring temptation to feel that some
spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all
current difficulties.") Both are, to some extent, inevitable consequences of
Pournelle's
Iron Law of Bureaucracy. (I don't really claim discovery, but I will
claim to have put it succinctly and promoted the principle to a "law" of
human behavior.)
In any event, if you have not read this editorial it is worth your time.
The Climate Industrial Complex is the most dangerous organization in the
world, and in my judgment is up there with Fascism and Marxism as dangers to
Western Civilization. Those latter two are still around and still a danger
-- indeed, some Greens use tactics they could well have learned from the
Brown, Black, and Red terrors; and note that most of the Climate Industrial
Complex program (which will transfer a trillion dollars and more to the
Greens without any noticeable benefit to the civilization) is also the
agenda of powerful factions of the US Congress and the Administration. It is
hard to discern what Obama really believes, but he appears to be a convert
to the "consensus".
Nature isn't cooperating and it's getting harder and harder to support
parts of the "Climate Change" belief system, but the movement is so far
advanced that it may not matter. When Roosevelt tried to end The Great
Depression, one of his tools was TVA and the generation of energy. Without
lower energy costs we will not climb out of our depression. It is important
to make it clear that the debate is not over, there is no real scientific
consensus on man-caused global warming, and destroying the economy in order
to reduce CO2 output in the United States is all cost with almost no
benefit. That debate must continue; and you may be certain, absolutely
certain, that those who try to keep this a debate will be labeled "deniers"
and denigrated as fools.
===================
The California election is done and although our
clueless Speaker is saying that the voters were confused -- they must have
been confused else they could never have voted this way -- it's pretty clear
that even California voters, including some of those who benefit from the
crazy economy, have had about enough of taxes. Now the government will go to
the Feds. We're too big to fail. And the beat goes on. There is no money,
but the state government, which grew nearly 50% in size in the past 5 years,
can't cut expenses. To do so would destroy the schools...
All nonsense, of course. There are no more students in the California
schools now than there were when the California education budget was
considerably smaller than it is now -- and the schools are certainly no
better now than they were then. In fact, the schools (with the exception of
a few horrible inner city schools; those are best remedied with vouchers to
the students who want to escape those horrors) in California are probably
about as good as they are going to be, and cutting their budgets in half,
while terribly painful to those working for the school districts, would
probably not make a lot of difference in what is learned by the lower half
of the bell curve -- in other words, wouldn't show up in our No Child Left
Behind evaluations. We certainly could improve education for the students
who ought to be headed for college; but that would first require that we
recognize that a total of 25% or so ought to be going to "university level"
educational institutions, looking into what that segment of the student
population needs, and finding ways to provide it. Since we cannot
politically recognize that half our pupils are below average, how can we
possible recognize that 3/4 and more of out children are Not Gifted?
Public education should have two goals: education of those who should be
going to university; and skill training including work habits and
citizenship for all the rest. That's impossible so long as we don't
recognize that not all need or can use a "world class university prep
education", even if Bill Gates apparently believes that giving everyone in
school a "world class university prep education" ought to be the goal of the
school system. I haven't seen Mr. Gates for a decade, and while I used to
have discussions with him on various matters the subject of education never
came up, so I can't purport to speak for him; but it's my guess that his
view is based on the premise that there are some undiscovered bright minds
among those trapped in the school system, and they ought to be rescued. If
everyone gets a world class university prep education, the we won't leave
anyone valuable behind -- and after all, won't everyone profit from a good
education?
It doesn't work that way, of course. By attempting to give everyone a
proper university prep education we see to it that almost no one will get
that. It's simply not possible to teach algebra to students who cannot
answer the question "A company has 90 employees. They increase the work
force by 10 %. How many employees will they now have?" The truth is, though,
that 62% of eighth graders give the wrong answer, this on a multiple choice
test giving 9, 81, 91, 99, and 100 as possible answers. Requiring students
who can't answer questions like that to take algebra is cruel. It is also
unproductive. Yet we require algebra for graduation from high school, and
are upset by a 50% dropout rate. I am astonished that the dropout rate isn't
more like 62%...
California could survive massive budget cuts. That won't be good for the
economy here, of course, but it's a lot better than raising taxes. The
California economy can't recover with present taxes, much less tax
increases. Of course this isn't news. But the good news is that California
could balance its budgets with across the board spending cuts, and still
have the state services we had in say, the year 2000 and during the
dot-bust.
===============
Meanwhile, I spent the morning at the eye doctors. The big burn -- the
50,000 rad hard x-ray treatments I got last year to kill off the Lump in my
head (successful, Deo gratia) -- seem to have done a number on my eyesight.
I am about to get the most drastic change in my spectacle prescription I
have ever had, and go to tri-focals. Expensive little buggers, too.
Tomorrow I get to the dermatologist, just to be sure that a blotch isn't
dangerous.
The good news is that everyone thinks I am healthy. I don't have the
energy I would like to have, but I am getting some work done, and as soon as
I get this up I'll go up to the Monk's Cell and work on Mamelukes.
Thanks again to all those who have recently subscribed or renewed.
For those who haven't seen it, the essay on
How To Get My Job
is a bit out of date but still has some relevance.
Thursday TOP
Current Mail
|
