When I was a Boy Scout, we were taught the proper method of extinguishing a campfire: First, make sure you douse it completely with water to remove the heat and stop the combustion, then stir the ashes around with a green stick to make sure there are no remaining embers and separate any fuel sources from each other, and finally dump some dirt on top of the remains to choke off any possibility of oxygen seeping in and letting a stray coal ignite into flame.
If all you do is dump dirt or sand on the campfire, the flame will go out and the fire will appear to be extinguished. But the fire has not gone out – there are live coals still smoldering deep in the dirt, ready to awaken back into flame if uncovered. In some cases, hot coals can start an underground fire that works its way through tree and plant roots, exploding into flame at a point distant from the original campfire.
I’m belaboring this point because I want to make sure you follow my reasoning as I use fire as a metaphor for our current military involvement in Afghanistan (and, to a lesser extent, Iraq).
Our overt use of military power in Afghanistan is like a flame. Just as fire is a highly visible and powerful force that can provide warmth, generate power, and generally be of service to humans, overt military power can accomplish objectives that clearly serve humanity. However, without a clear and unambiguous mission for that military power, it can become as destructive as a fire that has jumped beyond the fire pit to spread uncontrollably to the surrounding forest. Support for this war is draining away as it drags into its tenth year without a clear sense of any overarching mission or progress.
Not only are we fighting the Taliban insurgency, now we’re having problems with our supposed ally. New revelations about the level of corruption within the Afghan government have surfaced. President Karzai himself is quoted acknowledging receiving payoffs from Iran, “They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this”. In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Fouad Ajami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University states, “The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land, and no patience for their sermons.
“In its wanderings through the Third World, from Korea and Vietnam to Iran and Egypt, it was America's fate to ride with all sorts of clients. We betrayed some of them, and they betrayed us in return. They passed off their phobias and privileges as lofty causes worthy of our blood and treasure. They snookered us at times, but there was always the pretense of a common purpose. The thing about Mr. Karzai is his sharp break with this history. It is the ways of the Afghan mountaineers that he wishes to teach us”.
The reason we went to Afghanistan in the first place – ten years ago this month – was to find Osama Bin Laden, capture or kill him, and as many of Al Qaeda as possible, and punish the Taliban for giving sanctuary to this organization. We supported the invasion because we were striking back at the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, and those who harbored them.
But now the mission is no longer clear, and the nation-building we thought we were attempting with Mr. Karzai’s support is being undermined by the very people we’re trying to help. We need to refocus on the original mission, but with a different strategy. To return to the campfire metaphor, we need to extinguish the “flames” of our overt military presence in Afghanistan – pull out all conventional and even special operations forces. Let the world think that the United States has had enough and is going to give in to the prevailing opinion that any military engagement in Afghanistan is unwinnable. Let our enemies think they have won.
Let the flames be smothered, but let the embers continue to burn deep underground. We should begin to wage a covert campaign against Al Qaeda similar to the patient but brutally effective campaign the Israelis launched to seek out and assassinate every member of the Black September organization that attacked the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. Such a strategy would be so low key and secretive that no one in the US government would even know enough to take credit for any success or place any blame for failure. The strategy would have to be plausibly deniable at the highest levels of government. Sure, it would be of questionable legality, but the Bush administration was accused all the time of waging an “illegal” war.
Such a strategy is effective because it is efficient: it will only take the disappearance and/or death of one or two key individuals to begin to frighten and confuse the remaining organization. A frightened and confused organization is an ineffective one. The military has known for years how effective and efficient a good sniper can be at demoralizing the enemy.
Just as the smoldering embers of a smothered campfire send out fingers of fire below the soil, a covert operation, based on the highest quality intelligence and meticulous analysis, will systematically spread fear and destruction among our enemies and achieve the results the flames never could.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Excluded Middle
The Constitution of the United States is such a fundamental and influential document that it is completely understandable that it would be the center of attention and controversy with respect to the nature of what we believe to be true and significant as a people. As such, the Constitution is subject to a scrutiny that suggests that its propositions and proscriptions are open to interpretation.
Over the last two centuries, there has arisen a concept of political ideology that appears to dispose itself along a spectrum from extreme to extreme – extreme right (facism) to extreme left (communism). Well meaning people from both “extremes” have attempted to make their case for the truth of their position. The so-called “moderate” individual might “split the difference”, and find a middle position that seems to be reasonable and truthful at the same time.
Thus, a common response to the daily back and forth of views on the left and the right is to think that the “Truth” lies somewhere in the “reasonable” middle; the centrist viewpoint. Such a position is considered unassailable and more than likely where the real answers to problems lie. That mode of thinking may pass the test of political correctness, but it doesn’t pass the test of philosophical scrutiny.
The Truth lies where it is – objectively – regardless of where we are positioned on the spectrum of political or ideological views. I’m reminded of the concept of statistical sampling: The mean of the population is a parameter one can never know exactly, but it is “true”. We take a random sample of that population and derive the statistic, the sample mean, which is an estimate of the “true” population mean. From there we can build a 95% confidence interval for the location of this true value. But this interval may or may not enclose the true population parameter. All this tells us is that if we were to construct 100 intervals from 100 random samples, that 95 of them would enclose the “true” population mean. It’s possible (with a 5% chance) that we’re wrong.
Therefore a search for Truth should not be driven to the center from the “extremes”; it should be undertaken objectively, without regard for what society deems far right or left. The Founders, in their wisdom, created a document that attempted to derive a basic set of laws for the nation based on the objectively true principles of liberty and justice as authored by God. But, since it is a creature of man, the Constitution is not perfect. So it allows for amendment. Even the Declaration suggests that a free people reserve the right to overthrow a government destructive of those basic God given rights and start over.
The notion of a “living” Constitution suggests to me that it is possible to ascribe more or less (or different) power and authority to the words of the document based on the exigencies of a particular societal problem. To return to my statistics analogy, this is like constructing a 100% confidence interval: we fit the “Truth” to a space between the extremes we have settled on. The problem with this is that there is no such thing as a 100% confidence interval (unless, of course, your “sample” is the entire population, in which case you would *know* the truth because you had perfect information).
Truth exists. It may actually lie outside the boundaries with which human beings have constrained it. The truly virtuous person will pursue it wherever it may lead, and will not be constrained by boundaries imposed by a fickle society.
Over the last two centuries, there has arisen a concept of political ideology that appears to dispose itself along a spectrum from extreme to extreme – extreme right (facism) to extreme left (communism). Well meaning people from both “extremes” have attempted to make their case for the truth of their position. The so-called “moderate” individual might “split the difference”, and find a middle position that seems to be reasonable and truthful at the same time.
Thus, a common response to the daily back and forth of views on the left and the right is to think that the “Truth” lies somewhere in the “reasonable” middle; the centrist viewpoint. Such a position is considered unassailable and more than likely where the real answers to problems lie. That mode of thinking may pass the test of political correctness, but it doesn’t pass the test of philosophical scrutiny.
The Truth lies where it is – objectively – regardless of where we are positioned on the spectrum of political or ideological views. I’m reminded of the concept of statistical sampling: The mean of the population is a parameter one can never know exactly, but it is “true”. We take a random sample of that population and derive the statistic, the sample mean, which is an estimate of the “true” population mean. From there we can build a 95% confidence interval for the location of this true value. But this interval may or may not enclose the true population parameter. All this tells us is that if we were to construct 100 intervals from 100 random samples, that 95 of them would enclose the “true” population mean. It’s possible (with a 5% chance) that we’re wrong.
Therefore a search for Truth should not be driven to the center from the “extremes”; it should be undertaken objectively, without regard for what society deems far right or left. The Founders, in their wisdom, created a document that attempted to derive a basic set of laws for the nation based on the objectively true principles of liberty and justice as authored by God. But, since it is a creature of man, the Constitution is not perfect. So it allows for amendment. Even the Declaration suggests that a free people reserve the right to overthrow a government destructive of those basic God given rights and start over.
The notion of a “living” Constitution suggests to me that it is possible to ascribe more or less (or different) power and authority to the words of the document based on the exigencies of a particular societal problem. To return to my statistics analogy, this is like constructing a 100% confidence interval: we fit the “Truth” to a space between the extremes we have settled on. The problem with this is that there is no such thing as a 100% confidence interval (unless, of course, your “sample” is the entire population, in which case you would *know* the truth because you had perfect information).
Truth exists. It may actually lie outside the boundaries with which human beings have constrained it. The truly virtuous person will pursue it wherever it may lead, and will not be constrained by boundaries imposed by a fickle society.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Is Denmark so Bad?
The other day I caught a portion of a story on NPR’s “All Things Considered” about tax rates in Denmark. It seems that every year there is a report issued that lists every country in decreasing order of tax rates, and apparently Denmark tops the list year after year as the nation with the highest tax rates.
I didn’t quite catch the percentage of income taxation, but the NPR story did point out that there is a 25% value added tax on all goods and services, and a 200% tax on new automobile purchases! Yes, you heard correctly. To buy a vehicle worth $20,000, a Dane would have to shell out $60,000! I suspect that most of what one earns in Denmark is paid to the government through either income taxes or VAT.
You might expect the Danish government to provide ample benefits and social services for this high rate of taxation, and you’d be right. In addition to free, universal health care, there is a retirement entitlement, and unemployment benefits are paid for up to four years. Most of the people interviewed for the NPR story were actually very happy to pay these high taxes because of all the benefits they received.
A Danish economist and university professor was interviewed who said that, on the whole, the Danish system of social welfare allows employers to be very agile in terms of hiring and firing. Employees can be let go (and rehired) very easily, but with generous unemployment benefits, they usually don’t worry about income. The only downside he suggested was that, “Some people will take the opportunity to stay unemployed because they're paid to stay unemployed”, leading to slower economic growth.
Having lived in Europe on three occasions, I really appreciate the orderliness and security one experiences there. You go to any café in Europe and you can expect a relatively high level of service. Roads and streets are well built and well maintained. Houses are constructed to last hundreds of years. The standard of living seems to be uniformly high.
So, did we get it wrong in the USA? Has Denmark in particular and Europe in general figured out the secret of the ideal utopian lifestyle?
Somehow, though I will be the first to admire all Europe has to offer, I don’t think their economic wonderland can last. In the years immediately following World War II, the Germans, and indeed all of Western Europe, worked feverishly to rebuild their devastated nations. Within only a decade or two, Western European countries had returned to a standard of living nearly on a par with that of the United States. Europeans, particularly the West Germans, worked very hard and productively, building an enviable economy and high living standards for her citizens. When I was first stationed in Germany in 1980, virtually no Germans used credit cards. But in the last three decades, the European worker through the agendas of social democracy, has seen his work week reduced to 35 hours, his vacation increased to more than six weeks per year (in addition to Christmas holiday break) and has acquired numerous other social benefits. Increasingly, Europeans want both the benefits of the welfare state and the income to choose a consumerist lifestyle – buying on credit, having the latest gadgets, better cars, etc.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ultimately, government cannot directly contribute to the growth of an economy. Only business activity can do that. Governments can only redistribute wealth, they cannot create it. To be sure, governmental policies can create an economic environment conducive to the creation of wealth, but they cannot by themselves “grow the pie” larger.
So, should we in the USA emulate the European style of social democracy? It is certainly tempting. However, it’s important to realize that the United States is orders of magnitude larger than Denmark, or even Germany, in terms of population and size of the economy. What might work for delivering services for taxes paid in Denmark would be utterly unworkable in the US. Our Constitution is structured in such a way that it only proscribes limited functions to the Federal government, and reserves the remainder to the States and the people. This suggests that our citizens would be better served if Federal taxation were minimized, with social services primarily provided at the State and local level, where there is more of a direct relationship between the people and the government.
I’m willing to be proved wrong, but I think that the best balance between government and the private sector in providing needed services is to default to minimum essential governmental services, particularly at the Federal level. This gives maximum freedom to individuals to choose their own destiny. It tends to foster a robust and resilient economy where localities are free to choose the degree to which they are taxed and receive local government benefits.
Ultimately, I believe that welfare states tend to stifle the individual initiative and innovation necessary for lasting economic development and the growth of living standards. It may be only a matter of time, but I think that the trend in Europe toward increasing reliance on the benevolence of the state will result in an ultimately unsustainable system in danger of collapse. My hope is that if and when that collapse comes, it will not be catastrophic.
I didn’t quite catch the percentage of income taxation, but the NPR story did point out that there is a 25% value added tax on all goods and services, and a 200% tax on new automobile purchases! Yes, you heard correctly. To buy a vehicle worth $20,000, a Dane would have to shell out $60,000! I suspect that most of what one earns in Denmark is paid to the government through either income taxes or VAT.
You might expect the Danish government to provide ample benefits and social services for this high rate of taxation, and you’d be right. In addition to free, universal health care, there is a retirement entitlement, and unemployment benefits are paid for up to four years. Most of the people interviewed for the NPR story were actually very happy to pay these high taxes because of all the benefits they received.
A Danish economist and university professor was interviewed who said that, on the whole, the Danish system of social welfare allows employers to be very agile in terms of hiring and firing. Employees can be let go (and rehired) very easily, but with generous unemployment benefits, they usually don’t worry about income. The only downside he suggested was that, “Some people will take the opportunity to stay unemployed because they're paid to stay unemployed”, leading to slower economic growth.
Having lived in Europe on three occasions, I really appreciate the orderliness and security one experiences there. You go to any café in Europe and you can expect a relatively high level of service. Roads and streets are well built and well maintained. Houses are constructed to last hundreds of years. The standard of living seems to be uniformly high.
So, did we get it wrong in the USA? Has Denmark in particular and Europe in general figured out the secret of the ideal utopian lifestyle?
Somehow, though I will be the first to admire all Europe has to offer, I don’t think their economic wonderland can last. In the years immediately following World War II, the Germans, and indeed all of Western Europe, worked feverishly to rebuild their devastated nations. Within only a decade or two, Western European countries had returned to a standard of living nearly on a par with that of the United States. Europeans, particularly the West Germans, worked very hard and productively, building an enviable economy and high living standards for her citizens. When I was first stationed in Germany in 1980, virtually no Germans used credit cards. But in the last three decades, the European worker through the agendas of social democracy, has seen his work week reduced to 35 hours, his vacation increased to more than six weeks per year (in addition to Christmas holiday break) and has acquired numerous other social benefits. Increasingly, Europeans want both the benefits of the welfare state and the income to choose a consumerist lifestyle – buying on credit, having the latest gadgets, better cars, etc.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ultimately, government cannot directly contribute to the growth of an economy. Only business activity can do that. Governments can only redistribute wealth, they cannot create it. To be sure, governmental policies can create an economic environment conducive to the creation of wealth, but they cannot by themselves “grow the pie” larger.
So, should we in the USA emulate the European style of social democracy? It is certainly tempting. However, it’s important to realize that the United States is orders of magnitude larger than Denmark, or even Germany, in terms of population and size of the economy. What might work for delivering services for taxes paid in Denmark would be utterly unworkable in the US. Our Constitution is structured in such a way that it only proscribes limited functions to the Federal government, and reserves the remainder to the States and the people. This suggests that our citizens would be better served if Federal taxation were minimized, with social services primarily provided at the State and local level, where there is more of a direct relationship between the people and the government.
I’m willing to be proved wrong, but I think that the best balance between government and the private sector in providing needed services is to default to minimum essential governmental services, particularly at the Federal level. This gives maximum freedom to individuals to choose their own destiny. It tends to foster a robust and resilient economy where localities are free to choose the degree to which they are taxed and receive local government benefits.
Ultimately, I believe that welfare states tend to stifle the individual initiative and innovation necessary for lasting economic development and the growth of living standards. It may be only a matter of time, but I think that the trend in Europe toward increasing reliance on the benevolence of the state will result in an ultimately unsustainable system in danger of collapse. My hope is that if and when that collapse comes, it will not be catastrophic.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
My Movie "Pitch"
For years, “Ben Hur” was my favorite movie of all time. I was too young to have seen it in the movie theater, but every year one of the broadcast networks would show it on TV around Easter. So I’d sit on the floor of my parents’ bedroom where the portable black and white television was, and allow myself to be caught up in the grandeur of Rome and the powerful story of the triumph of love and forgiveness over hate. I never failed to cry at the end when the powerful Miklos Rosza score swelled as Judah Ben Hur gazed upon the clear, healed faces of his mother and sister, who had been miraculously cured of leprosy following Christ’s crucifixion.
I love big blockbusters. Having been a fan of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy since I was a kid, I was overjoyed that it was brought to the screen so magically and yet still stayed faithful to the story. I was spellbound by the recreation of ancient Rome in “Gladiator”. But it’s the religious epic that has always captured my imagination. I can still remember Victor Mature as the Greek slave Demetrius in “The Robe”, or “Demetrius and the Gladiators”.
There have been dozens of movies about the life of Christ, some highly fictionalized and others more faithful to the Gospels. Cecil B. DeMille gave us the life of Moses in “The Ten Commandments”, there was “Brother Sun, Sister Moon”, about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. And there have always been the numerous “sword and sandal” flicks about ancient Rome or Greece.
But I don’t recall a movie ever having been made about the fascinating and intersecting lives of the two greatest Christian Apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul. So, here is my “pitch” for just such a motion picture.
The basis for the movie would be the Biblical book, “The Acts of the Apostles”, which takes up where the Gospel of Luke leaves off with the ascension of Jesus into Heaven. It records the birth of the Church at Pentecost, and follows the lives and ministries of Peter, James and the other Apostles during the earliest days of Christianity. It records the dramatic conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus and the beginning of his missionary journeys as Paul.
The movie would also weave into the narrative the “back story” behind many of the letters Paul and Peter wrote to the churches scattered throughout the ancient world.
But most significantly, it would illuminate (in a fictionalized way, of course) the tension between Peter and Paul. Both were Jews, but Paul clearly saw his mission as being the apostle to the Gentiles, whereas Peter, at least initially, still believed in the centrality of keeping the ancient Jewish Law as vital to the life of the church. I think this tension would make for a very compelling story, and the fact that Peter eventually had a vision in which it became clear to him that the good news of the Gospel of salvation was for all people, suggests a resolution of that tension in the sovereignty of God’s will for the church.
I tried to search for a book that might form the basis for a screen play for my movie (working title, “Apostle”) but the closest I could find was Taylor Caldwell’s classic 1974 bestselling novel, “Great Lion of God”, a fictionalized account of the life of Paul. There is also a new non-fiction book about the tension between Peter and Paul entitled, “St. Paul vs. St. Peter”, by Michael Goulder. It has received pretty good reviews, and could serve to provide some background material for a screenplay.
As for actors who would play the starring roles of Peter and Paul, I have no idea! Certainly not Tom Cruise or George Clooney! Maybe it would be better to hire relatively unknown actors so people can really focus on the beauty of the story.
So there you have my “pitch” for a big, religious blockbuster about the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul. It would be better, I’m sure, if I already had written a screenplay and was trying to persuade a movie studio to produce a film from it. But this is the blogosphere, and maybe someone out there reading this might take on this project. I certainly don’t have any financial interest in making this movie – I just want to see it!
Maybe a film like this is already in someone else’s head or is in the works. If so, I pray that it will bear fruit, and that one day we will see the drama of the early church and her greatest Apostles unfold on the big screen!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Denial of the Truth
The term “denier” is frequently used as a criticism of those who refuse to believe an apparent self-evident truth or fact. I think it first came into vogue when it was applied to Islamists and ultra-right wing neo-nazis who claimed that the Jewish holocaust of WWII was a fabrication. The evidence of history is clearly on the side of the truth claim that the genocidal extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime did, in fact, take place. But in recent years, the derisive term “denier” has been applied to anyone who is the least bit skeptical of the degree to which human activity is primarily responsible for global warming, or even if global warming is taking place. It’s disturbing to me that this would be the case, given that the body of evidence purporting to undergird the “truth” of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is still very much open to debate.
In fact, those who accuse AGW skeptics of being “global warming deniers” argue that the “debate is over”; that it is now time for radical action. What’s disturbing about this is that this is not how science is supposed to work. As an illustration, imagine there are 1000 reputable climate scientists in the world. If 600 of them are convinced of AGW and the remaining 400 are not, does that mean AGW is a fact? What if the ratio was 800 to 200? Does a so-called consensus have to be reached in order to arrive at scientific truth? Fortunately, science has never worked this way! If it had, we would still believe the earth was the center of the solar system and that all the matter in the universe had always existed (no big bang)! Very often, the most profound scientific revolutions come about because of the work of lone scientists working in fields sometimes outside of those in which the discovery is made (see the book by Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”).
Most of the time, the advancement of knowledge through the operation of the scientific method does not engender controversy. But the current state of global warming alarmism leads me to believe that science is being co-opted by political and social agendas. I will be blunt: I strongly believe that leftist, eco-socialists have been promoting AGW as a “hook” to advance a radical environmentalist agenda that is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-free market (it has to be man-made global warming or else their agenda doesn’t work). This agenda seeks to weaken industrialized nations, particularly the United States, and uses the manufactured world cataclysm of the hypothesized effects of global warming (rising sea levels, droughts, etc.) to shake down the “rich” nations and force the transfer of wealth directly to underdeveloped countries. That this is clearly a political and not a scientific issue is borne out by the fact that opinion on the existence and/or the severity of global warming (particularly AGW) is divided along political lines. Liberals in congress tend to support AGW and conservatives do not. It is also evident in the money trail: grants by governments to scientists to produce evidence of AGW.
The academic community is also clearly, and bitterly, divided over this issue. Here is an excerpt from an open
letter by Dr. Petr Chylek, a leading climate scientist, to the top 100 climate scientists in the world (including Phil Jones, head of the East Anglian University Climate Research Unit whose emails were leaked to the world recently) in which he argues for a return to academic integrity in climate research:
It is very distressing to me that world leaders are so convinced of this so-called “truth” of AGW that they are willing to destabilize their own economies trying to “reverse” the effects of something that, to all intents and purposes, is a complete and total scam. Radical policy decisions will be made on the basis of a corrupted scientific process in which researchers of good faith are derided and ostracized for reaching conclusions at variance with the prevailing “correct” ones.
Hopefully, decades from now, we will look back and see that the real truth was that the world climate was never in danger of an apocalyptic rise in temperatures. What will more likely occur, however, will be a revisionist historical view that vindicates the draconian measures currently being taken by the industrialized world to reduce “pollutants” like CO2 as having “done the trick” in saving the world from global warming. If that is the case, science is doomed to be the slave of politics.
In fact, those who accuse AGW skeptics of being “global warming deniers” argue that the “debate is over”; that it is now time for radical action. What’s disturbing about this is that this is not how science is supposed to work. As an illustration, imagine there are 1000 reputable climate scientists in the world. If 600 of them are convinced of AGW and the remaining 400 are not, does that mean AGW is a fact? What if the ratio was 800 to 200? Does a so-called consensus have to be reached in order to arrive at scientific truth? Fortunately, science has never worked this way! If it had, we would still believe the earth was the center of the solar system and that all the matter in the universe had always existed (no big bang)! Very often, the most profound scientific revolutions come about because of the work of lone scientists working in fields sometimes outside of those in which the discovery is made (see the book by Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”).
Most of the time, the advancement of knowledge through the operation of the scientific method does not engender controversy. But the current state of global warming alarmism leads me to believe that science is being co-opted by political and social agendas. I will be blunt: I strongly believe that leftist, eco-socialists have been promoting AGW as a “hook” to advance a radical environmentalist agenda that is fundamentally anti-capitalist and anti-free market (it has to be man-made global warming or else their agenda doesn’t work). This agenda seeks to weaken industrialized nations, particularly the United States, and uses the manufactured world cataclysm of the hypothesized effects of global warming (rising sea levels, droughts, etc.) to shake down the “rich” nations and force the transfer of wealth directly to underdeveloped countries. That this is clearly a political and not a scientific issue is borne out by the fact that opinion on the existence and/or the severity of global warming (particularly AGW) is divided along political lines. Liberals in congress tend to support AGW and conservatives do not. It is also evident in the money trail: grants by governments to scientists to produce evidence of AGW.
The academic community is also clearly, and bitterly, divided over this issue. Here is an excerpt from an open
letter by Dr. Petr Chylek, a leading climate scientist, to the top 100 climate scientists in the world (including Phil Jones, head of the East Anglian University Climate Research Unit whose emails were leaked to the world recently) in which he argues for a return to academic integrity in climate research:
“For me, science is the search for truth, the never-ending path towards finding out how things are arranged in this world so that they can work as they do. That search is never finished.
It seems that the climate research community has betrayed that mighty goal in science. They have substituted the search for truth with an attempt at proving one point of view. It seems that some of the most prominent leaders of the climate research community, like prophets of Old Israel, believed that they could see the future of humankind and that the only remaining task was to convince or force all others to accept and follow. They have almost succeeded in that effort.
Yes, there have been cases of misbehavior and direct fraud committed by scientists in other fields: physics, medicine, and biology to name a few. However, it was misbehavior of individuals, not of a considerable part of the scientific community.
… To blame the current warming on humans, there was a perceived need to “prove” that the current global average temperature is higher than it was at any other time in recent history (the last few thousand years). This task is one of the main topics of the released CRU emails. Some people were so eager to prove this point that it became more important than scientific integrity.
The next step was to show that this “unprecedented high current temperature” has to be a result of the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. The fact that the Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Models are not able to explain the post-1970 temperature increase by natural forcing was interpreted as proof that it was caused by humans. It is more logical to admit that the models are not yet good enough to capture natural climate variability (how much or how little do we understand aerosol and clouds, and ocean circulation?), even though we can all agree that part of the observed post-1970 warming is due to the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Thus, two of the three pillars of the global warming and carbon dioxide paradigm are open to reinvestigation.
The damage has been done. The public trust in climate science has been eroded. At least a part of the IPCC 2007 report has been put in question. We cannot blame it on a few irresponsible individuals. The entire esteemed climate research community has to take responsibility. Yes, there always will be a few deniers and obstructionists.
So what comes next? Let us stop making unjustified claims and exaggerated projections about the future even if the editors of some eminent journals are just waiting to publish them. Let us admit that our understanding of the climate is less perfect than we have tried to make the public believe. Let us drastically modify or temporarily discontinue the IPCC. Let us get back to work.
Let us encourage students to think their own thoughts instead of forcing them to parrot the IPCC conclusions. Let us open the doors of universities, of NCAR, NASA and other research institutions (and funding agencies) to faculty members and researchers who might disagree with the current paradigm of carbon dioxide. Only open discussion and intense searching of all possibilities will let us regain the public’s trust and move forward.”
It is very distressing to me that world leaders are so convinced of this so-called “truth” of AGW that they are willing to destabilize their own economies trying to “reverse” the effects of something that, to all intents and purposes, is a complete and total scam. Radical policy decisions will be made on the basis of a corrupted scientific process in which researchers of good faith are derided and ostracized for reaching conclusions at variance with the prevailing “correct” ones.
Hopefully, decades from now, we will look back and see that the real truth was that the world climate was never in danger of an apocalyptic rise in temperatures. What will more likely occur, however, will be a revisionist historical view that vindicates the draconian measures currently being taken by the industrialized world to reduce “pollutants” like CO2 as having “done the trick” in saving the world from global warming. If that is the case, science is doomed to be the slave of politics.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Projection
The older I get, the more I am convinced of the truth that we tend to project onto others those faults and foibles we ourselves struggle with. There is a liberal columnist whose syndicated column appears in my local paper a couple of times each week. I disagree with him on virtually every topic, but what really galls me is his self-righteous, finger-wagging attitude. In every one of his columns he climbs on his high horse and acts as if he is the sole possessor of the moral high ground.
Why does this bother me so much? Why should I even care?
I think it’s because, as much as I hate to admit it, he and I are probably very much alike. As a Christian, I understand that both of us share humanity’s fallen nature – we are all sinners. But it’s deeper than that. Why do I sense pride and self-righteous egotism oozing from his writing? Like most liberals, he writes passionately about social justice issues, particularly race. I’m sure many of his readers admire this passion and concern, whether they completely agree with him or not. Perhaps the reason I get so incensed when I read his columns is because where others see passion and concern, I see moral superiority, and there’s no way I’m going to let someone with the “incorrect” positions on the issues get away with acting as if he is morally superior to me!
But , if I’m honest, I’d have to admit that I’m no different than him.
My natural tendency is to bristle at and criticize people who act as though they are superior (in other words people who tend to bristle at and criticize others!). If I were a man of true humility, I would be more concerned with getting the log out of my own eye before trying to point out specks in the eyes of others. But there is a little policeman inside of me that sees it as his duty to “call out” those who don’t follow the rules and who behave as though the rules don’t apply to them. Here’s how idiotic it can get: on my drive home from work, I often take the carpool lane (because I carpool), but I am keenly aware of single drivers who try to “get away with” driving in the carpool lane. So what do I do? If I see a “single ship” driver coming up behind me in the carpool lane I will slow down to match the rest of the traffic. I do this intentionally to frustrate him, but more importantly, to make sure he knows that I know that he is a jerk and a lawbreaker!
Again, I have to ask myself the question, “why is this so important to me?” Why is it important that I be right? Why do I chafe at the notion that there is someone who thinks they are “better” than me?
The answer is that I am a sinner who does not rightly acknowledge the dominion and authority of the Most High God. I have often identified with the psalmist when he says, “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… they are not stricken like the rest of mankind… pride is their necklace… their hearts overflow with follies” (Psalm 73). He even goes on to say, “in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence”. Yet the author of Psalm 73 also goes on to say, “when my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you”. In other words, my indignation is nothing more than envy of those whom God alone can and will judge. God’s Holy Spirit “pricks my heart” and causes me to realize my sin. That God in His mercy would discipline me to be aware of my own pride and sinfulness is truly a blessing!
In one sense I am no different than my antagonist columnist. Yet, by God’s grace, I can become more aware of my own failings, and instead of driving me into bitterness and anger, He will turn my heart to repentance and an acknowledgment of His sovereign goodness. I will still struggle with pride and arrogance, but I know the victory has already been won.
It is only God’s grace that differentiates me from my antagonist; nothing inherent in my own self-righteousness. I pray God may deal as mercifully with him as He has with me!
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Danger of Authority Without Responsibility
Bureaucracies are strange things. Once created, they tend to perpetuate themselves and often grow into large, unwieldy corporate entities that take on a life of their own. I happen to work for one of the world’s largest and most notorious bureaucracies, the Federal Government of the
In almost thirty years of working directly for the DoD, either in uniform or as a civilian, I have come to the conclusion that the US military bureaucracy is too large, too top-heavy, and has developed a pathological culture of risk aversion, obstructionism, and excessive consensus-building. This has created a situation, devastating to organizations in general, in which most low- and mid-level bureaucrats are given responsibility with little or no authority, and most high-level bureaucrats (generals, admirals and senior civilians) have a great deal of authority and little, if any real responsibility. Such a situation directly violates one of the most basic tenets of leadership, which is that one should be given authority commensurate with one’s responsibility.
How did we get to this point? Put simply, there are too many people at the top with not enough real responsibility; so they have to create it. According to author Richard A. Gabriel, “Since Vietnam, the percentage of officers has fallen to 11 percent of total force strength. Curiously, however, as the number of officers relative to enlisted strength has declined since the war in
Here then, is the situation: you have a surfeit of ambitious, high ranking officers filling positions, many of which are of questionable value-added to the mission of the
All this creates a culture of risk aversion. No one wants to fail or be seen to be incompetent. So incompetence and failure among senior officers is masked and diluted by the sheer number of senior officers and the creation of elaborate “governance” structures consisting of boards, steering groups and other “consensus building” bodies of which they are members. Thus, no one individual can be blamed for making a poor decision. Of course, these boards and steering groups require secretariat staffs to prepare all the briefing materials and coordinate the agenda – more activity leading to more shelf ware.
This practice of consensus building as a means to insure oneself against criticism has generated a strange practice called Joint Staff Action Plan (JSAP) staffing. Let’s say my office within the Joint Staff is the proponent for security assistance training, and my general wants to write a new security assistance policy for the military. A draft of this document must be circulated to every office in the Pentagon, every major joint command and every DoD Agency for comment. This is usually done three times: at the “action officer” (bureaucrat) level, the Colonel (Navy Captain) level, and the Flag Officer/General Officer level. Any comments considered “critical” must be successfully adjudicated with the commenting organization. Such a process stifles creativity and innovation, discourages risk taking, and tends to result in outcomes that give the appearance of progress, but in reality simply “kick the can down the road” and perpetuate the status quo.
Congress is the only organization in the Federal government authorized to establish the size and makeup of the US military. Legislation should be introduced and passed that will fix a target ratio of senior officers and civilians in the DoD at a level far lower than today. This target can be achieved through the gradual attrition of senior officers through the normal retirement process. Congress should also hold hearings to determine the necessity of the continued existence of non-warfighting commands and staffs, both at the Service and Joint levels.
The history of successful militaries, from the Roman legions to the German general staff in WWII, to the Israeli army, has shown that the most effective and efficient fighting forces can be fielded with a relatively few, key experienced and talented senior leaders. And we should never forget that the mission of the US military is to win our nation’s wars, not to provide a career path for high level bureaucrats.
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