It’s truly wondrous, how sure we are
Whenever we see from afar.
But as we magnify our view,
What we once knew becomes less true.

Sweat the small things: Viruses, bacteria, parasites, and, oh! The 15-micron wavelength—this last one is going to make you sweat. Sure the first three can cause fevers in individuals, but that last one, according to no less authority than the IPCC, Al Gore, and sundry others like Greta Thunberg, can make everyone everywhere sweat. Yes, sweat the small stuff.


To survive on a risky planet, all life-forms need to recognize threats. Thus, evolution suffused biology with a sense of danger supported by fight or flight responses both to seen and to unseen, but still perceived, threats. Some threats are obvious, the snarl of a wolf through bared fangs or the open hood of a cobra are examples. Other threats, like viruses and bacteria remain largely undetected until they begin to wreak havoc on a species, often causing the flight response as seen in the 2020 pandemic when many ran to their respective hideaways to flee from the unseen spikes of a virus.     


An individual coronavirus, such as SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, can’t be seen unless one has a scanning electron microscope, so we become aware of it by its effects. Yersinia pestis, the zoonotic bacterium that killed an estimated 50 million people in the 14th century’s sweeping Black Death, is bigger than a virus, but is still only about three microns long. And another perceived threat, still small by our daily standards of measured waistlines and basketball player heights, is the 15-micron frequency of infrared radiation. That length is about equal to some Plasmodium pathogens that cause malaria—a malady that kills about half a million people every year. That which is little, it seems, can have big consequences. We do, it seems, have to sweat the small things.


Fifteen microns—I’ll repeat it because it has become so important in the minds of so many—is the measurement of a threat perceived to be as great as that ten-kilometer-diameter asteroid that killed 75% of life, including the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. Fifteen microns measures that ostensible threat not just to humans, but rather, like that bolide of long ago, to all life-forms. Fifteen microns is in the minds of many the measurement of death, the length of a threat so enormous it has been called “existential” by two presidents and a number of world leaders.


So now we know. Carbon dioxide absorbs energy in the wavelength of fifteen microns. That’s about the width of two average bacteria wiggling side-by-side, maybe a little less. The fifteen micron wavelength lies in the thermal infrared band, so carbon dioxide absorbs—and reradiates—heat energy. Those people who worry about “climate change” or global warming believe that the anthropogenic carbon pumped into the atmosphere will absorb so much energy at the fifteen-micron wavelength that Earth will warm catastrophically, thus the term existential threat repeatedly broadcast into our heads by unquestioning media, Hollywood’s elite climate experts, and politicians. And darn if it isn’t one of those invisible threats we know only after we see its effects like melting ice caps, warming and rising seas, dying coral reefs, droughts, floods, Cat V hurricanes, and tornadoes too numerous to mention in this brief essay. Did I mention the spread of tropical diseases? No? Tropical diseases will spread like uncontrollable wildfire—which, by the way, is another effect predicted by global warming alarmists. You are doomed, and you will sweat as you die. Or, so they say.


The current rate of warming, that is, the current demonstrable rate of warming based on data accumulated over several decades, is about 1.5 degrees Celsius per century, a rate that has occurred before--naturally. The measured warming is less than model-projected warming suggests—that is, models of climate unscientifically tell us what warming “should be” occurring, not what IS occurring. Nevertheless, the models have instilled fear of a dire threat in the minds of millions who have succumbed to economic hardships unnecessary in a world of cheap and abundant energy derived from fossil fuels—now seen as sources of that 15-micron wavelength absorption that “forces” the atmosphere to warm. But, as I have previously written, don’t get me wrong. Carbon dioxide, methane, and Earth’s chief greenhouse gas water vapor do, in fact “force” warming of an atmosphere. That’s been a good thing because it prevents Earth from having Martian climates and from returning to a condition called Snowball Earth.     


Panicked by the assumed threat of that 15-micron forcing effect, the UN’s IPCC and some world leaders have declared fossil fuels anathema, and proclaimed the value of green energy sources like wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal, and nuclear energy as workable replacements for some of the energy needs of eight billion people. Unfortunately, those suggested alternatives to carbon for a planet with such a large population fail to meet all the current and projected energy needs. Yet, in the rush to convert, those in control have started humanity down a path to energy impoverishment.


You and definitely your descendants will undergo an energy impoverishment by replacing the cheap abundant stuff with the expensive and often unreliable stuff. Nowhere is this more evident than in California, where the legislature and governor have set a date for banning internal combustion engines. Have they replaced oil with snake oil?


California has no alternative energy plan in place that will supply energy to meet all the electrical needs of a state running on electric vehicles while still using electric lights, washers, dryers, refrigerators, freezers, furnaces, stoves, ovens, coffee makers, escalators, drills, saws, other tools, conveyor belts, cell phones, computers, and entertainment centers. In short, that obsession with the short measurement of fifteen microns will shrink California’s ability to operate at a level it now enjoys—note the recent request by the governor that EV owners restrain from charging their car batteries. Energy—and all that depends on it—will become an economic burden, an unnecessarily harsh one. And for what?


In two centuries the planet will as a whole be a guesstimated three degrees Celsius warmer if the current and actual trend continues. But that 1.5 -degrees-C-per-century is a general, and not a specific geographic trend, and it requires a “doubling” that isn’t guaranteed because temperature and carbon have a logarithmic relationship, not a geometric or exponential one.


The oceans and atmosphere move heat energy around the planet. The atmosphere also radiates it to space. That’s why we don’t have the extreme differences in temperature that the moon or a spacewalker has between areas lighted by the sun and areas in shadow. But that’s the planet as a whole. Every location has climate controls: Latitude, elevation, ocean currents, land-water distribution, continentality, prevailing wind systems, semi-permanent High and Low pressure systems, the position with respect to Hadley cells, days of cloud cover or sunshine, and even transpiring vegetation and soils. California ranges from deserts to redwood forests, from fertile valleys to barren mountains. A general trend over the planet might or might not affect each of these landscapes.        


The politicians in California have committed the state to some imagined panacea of electric vehicles powered by wind and solar—probably not so much by nuclear because of bureaucratic processes and threats to such power plants by potential seismic activity. The current level of civilized luxury will become harder for the commoner to achieve as the state robs itself of abundant and cheap energy—while across the Pacific the massive carbon-emitter China continues to burn coal under the same atmosphere that blankets California.


Let’s analogize here. The Romans invented cement, using it, for example, in the famous dome of the Pantheon. With the fall of the empire came the loss of cement making. Its rediscovery had to wait centuries. In the forgetfulness of populations, ensuing generations don’t even realize what they do not know. Probably very few, if any, people in the Dark Ages said, “Gosh, I wish we knew how to make cement.” Those who will grow up in a California bereft of cheap and abundant energy will not know that life could be different, could be easier—as their ancestors, the current Californians, experienced it. They won’t know about the good ol’ times that with a more measured approach might have extended today’s prosperity far into the future. Two centuries from now, with temperatures in California very little changed from temperatures today, with periodic droughts and floods as have occurred for millennia, there will be unnecessary impoverishment. The cement of cheap abundant energy that currently holds together a prosperous society will be a thing of the long forgotten past. A new medievalism will prevail, all because of a fear of what the fifteen-micron wavelength will do.


And if the absence of cheap and abundant energy sources two centuries hence plays out as its absence now plays in undeveloped nations, then lifespans will shorten. One need only look at those countries where energy shortages can’t meet the needs of the population to see a future of shortened lifespans. And remember, nothing happens without the expenditure of energy. Don’t believe that? Try depriving your body of energy. So, decreased energy means decreased production of tools, machines, and even medicines. Tired of plastics, also? Then eliminating the fossil fuels from which they are made is right for you. Tired of driving on asphalt? Even tired of steel? Not to worry, without carbon, there will be no steel.   


With mandated abandonment of fossil fuels, the promise of a bright future will fade; the lights will dim because no affluent country can cover itself in solar panels and windmills just to meet about half to three-quarters of the energy it now has from fossil fuels. We humans, after centuries of growing urbanization and technology, will become “villagized,” medieval-like. The landscape not covered by solar panels will support windmill towers, both systems revealing their limitations in their own short lifespans, inadequate energy production, and pollutant composition. Graveyards of giant fiberglass propellers and toxic batteries will dot the once arable soils. Ah! The paradise on Earth envisioned by Californians!


Now here’s where any argument against switching from fossil to green energy gets tricky. Should we use electric cars? The easiest answer is “Why not?” They do reduce the carbon dioxide emissions over the projected lifetime of the vehicles, starting about the EV’s 60,000-mile mark. But the argument for the vehicles is offset by an argument against them, that is, the amount of mining, shipping, and manufacturing that such vehicles require can’t be measured simply against the weight of fuel burned by internal combustion engines. The thousand pounds of batteries in an electric vehicle contain toxic materials that require, like gold, mining much—maybe more than 50 tons of rock—to acquire as little as a kilogram of metals. So, the “environmental argument” about EVs being better for the humanity depends on a dismissal of some ugly truths. For one, there’s a rather limited reserve of un-mined lithium, meaning that making an EV with lithium batteries will become more expensive, not less. And at some point, except for recycled lithium, there will be unavoidable shortages—the current world reserve is an estimated 80 million recoverable long tons. At an average of 10 kg (22 lbs) of lithium per electric vehicle, that reserve holds enough for fewer than 10 million new cars—less that amount required by the manufacture of all other lithium-powered objects like cell phones. Add to that potential shortage, the inescapable fact that mining of a kg of lithium in places like the Atacama Desert requires 2.2 million liters (581,178 gal) of water. Plus, the toxic nature of the metal has recently led some Portuguese to file injunctions against lithium mining in and near their communities, even though the mining would create new jobs. * Serbia, also, considering the potential pollution of lithium mining has nixed the proposed mine at Rio Tinto. And another offsetting fact lies in the lithium battery fires. A recent EV fire took 12 hours and 75,000 gallons of water to douse. Imagine the damage if that vehicle had been inside an apartment building parking garage. Of course, sometime down our future, iron batteries might replace lithium batteries, so it would be foolish to rule out a future for EVs just because they now use toxic lithium and cobalt. And we can’t dismiss our history of having successfully dealt with other toxins, radioactive materials included.


But let’s say we go solar, total solar. The USA would need enough solar panels to replace the energy output of its current 7,300 power plants. And if consumers up their consumption, even more. An acre could accommodate 2,450 average-size solar panels, but nothing else. No farming there except for mushrooms growing in the shade beneath the panels. Now, no one I know suggests the US meets its annual need for four trillion kWh exclusively with solar panels. Given the amount of land with adequate sunlight per day to make the panels efficient, some billions of panels would be needed even in areas with abundant sunlight; cloudy areas like Ithaca, NY, would require more panels than Phoenix, AZ.


There’s a downside to every technology, even to the older tech like internal combustion engines and coal-fired power plants. But is a decision to alter the planet’s road to prosperity on the basis of a 1.5-degree C rise in global temperature truly prudent and environmentally sound? Is it not possible that those people in colder climes, after undergoing a rise in temperature, might be able to grow crops previously not tenable agriculture in their present climates?


A word about the Gulf Stream: Because water is denser than air and has a higher specific heat (requiring more energy to heat and holding the heat longer than air), the heated water of the tropics can move heat energy to higher latitudes through warm currents like the Gulf Stream. Should all Arctic ice melt, the cold water might shut down that transfer mechanism (the Gulf Stream, after all, is a “river” flowing in water) because icy water is denser than warm water. No one knows for sure what the effect would be. The tropics might get warmer while the temperate zones might get colder until the current “equilibrium” is restored. Gosh, this climate prediction stuff is really complex, isn’t it? Yet…


Yet, none of the foregoing will influence any climate alarmist to rethink the path he or she is on. Yearly conferences always result in the same eschatological rhetoric: “We have only seven years left (or eight, or nine, or ten—the number keeps changing).” And all the while that affluent countries like those in Europe and North America cut back on their cheap and abundant energy sources, the underdeveloped nations forge ahead to burn more coal, oil, and natural gas in an effort to raise the standard of living and the lifespans of their citizens.


And all of this because of a frequency only 1.5 microns in length.

*https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-reveal-the-dark-side-of-our-electric-future

Obsessed with the nature of Being, * existentialists developed a hybrid composed of philosophy/aesthetics/psychology that has influenced the West since the the publications of works by Kierkegaard, Husserl, and all those designated as existentialists like Sartre and Heidegger. That last guy, Heidegger, makes much of art and hyphenated words like “being-in-the-world.” And that, my dear reader, is a good place to start for this discussion.


Briefly, we can’t seem to get away from the dichotomy of understanding our world that varies between the simplicity of a single word and the complexity of combined meanings. Take that “being-in-the-world” of Heidegger’s, for example. My first thought is, “Where else?” As far as I know, all of us basically understand that what we do and where we exist is a manifestation of “being-in-the-world.”


The influence I wrote about in the first paragraph has led western thinkers into a more oriental way of perception—or at least into that “hybrid” I mentioned above. Today’s obsession with “mindfulness” is a product of that influence, and much what westerners perceive as valuable—outside “things” they accumulate—lies in some version of “being-in-the-world.” Again, “Where else?”


It’s odd how we find both simplicity and complexity as foundations of our existence. “”Give me the straight and narrow,” “Just give me the facts,” “Keep it simple,” “Cut to the chase,” and other expressions reveal our impatience with complexity. “Be thorough,” “What does that really mean,” and “Make your argument complete,” all reveal the opposite perspective. Simplification is both good and bad, as is complexity. The difference between their value lies in the individual’s mood. And that seems to be at the heart of existential thought, which belabors Angst, Dread, and, in a seeming contradiction, Play. To run away from the reality of our own mortality, we visit Disney World, or a resort, a precipitous ride on top a skyscraper, or a mountain cabin as we occupy our minds with play, both physical and mental to escape the simple undeniable fact of our mortality.**


With the growing wealth and complexity of western societies and the proliferation of urban life came the need to “find oneself—elsewhere” or to “find oneself in the moment,” that is to vacation by vacating the “ordinary” life for some place of renewal and escape or to immerse oneself in the present so much that the mind becomes a place of being. Staying in the village or on the farm and never leaving isn’t a modern practice for many. And when actual travel from home isn’t possible, we travel by video, live-streamed or recorded. I’ve never been to the Amalfi Coast, but I know what it looks like; never physically been to the moon, either, or Mars, but I’ve been to both through videos. Heck, I’ve even “been” to a black hole via video-travel thanks to NASA.


I sometimes think that Mike Brady’s (of the movie The Brady Bunch) “Remember, wherever you go, there you are” might be one of the best descriptions of “Being-in-the-world,” the best encapsulation of what pages of existentialist writing could not encapsulate. It’s a simplification, but it holds true for those who are self-aware. It’s “Know thyself” in the actual world. But could Mike Brady also have said, “Remember, whatever you do, is you”?


Today, you will be “somewhere.” You might even be “mentally elsewhere” when you are “physically somewhere”—that’s probably more a modern experience than an ancient one. You have been to so many “elsewheres” through actual and virtual travel, that you can’t say you’ve never left the village or farm. And knowing all those other “wheres” and ways of being-in-the-world, you are steeped in complexity that humans before the rise of civilization probably never knew.


Can you find the meaning of Being where you are? I have a T-shirt with “To do is to be,” “To be is to do,” and “Do-be-do-be-do” respectively attributed to Socrates, Plato, and Frank Sinatra. I’ve seen another T-shirt that attributes the first two sayings to Nietzsche and Kant. In a complex western society, doing often equates to being. We ask strangers, “What do you do?” We define ourselves by what we do in meeting others because attempting to define ourselves by pure “being-in-the-world” is very difficult since all of us can be characterized by our “being-in-the-world” and by our “thingness.” We also define ourselves by our “thinkness,” that is, by intellectual positions we take. In contrast, we believe that what we do is different from what or who we are. Thus, we seek refuge from the complexity of a world of doing by heading for a spa, a quiet retreat, or just an isolated place.

And now, dear reader, a politicization of the topic: A key Heideggerian term is Dasein, which, without all the pages of clarification, means "being there." It seems to me that many of those we elect to political offices get thrown into the candidate category simply by being there. The movie Being There with Peter Sellers illustrates what I mean. Chance the gardener of a deceased rich guy is mistaken as Chauncey Gardiner by the wealthy and influential segment of society. He is, in fact, a simpleton, who by the end of the film is the subject of talk about becoming the next President. Anyway, I distinguish between guys like President George Herbert Bush, successful businessman and career politician, and Barack Obama, a "community organizer" who, by "being there," becomes President. Now, you might be a rabid fan of President Obama and think this is an unfair assessment of his rise to power, but I might point out coverage by a local liberal newspaper and by the disgraced political pundit Chris Matthews. The local paper supported Hillary Clinton's candidacy over Obama, as did Matthews. Both the paper and Matthews could not find any accomplishments that would make Obama fit for the office. After Obama defeated Clinton in the primaries, however, the paper and Matthews sang Obama's praises, with Matthews making his famous "thrill up the leg" comment in emotional support. Being there, just plain being there [probably not what Heidegger meant] in the right place at the right time put Obama in office in my estimation. But I suppose that could be said for just about every elected official who rises from "everydayness" to fame, power, and fortune. I suppose, also, that re-election of incumbents on both sides of the aisle is also a manifestation of the power of simply "being there." If you can see it, watch the movie, and if you want to wade through it, read Heidegger's Being and Time.  ***




*”Nature of Being” seems a bit oxymoronic. If Being can be taken as “existence itself,” then it is a category that includes “Nature.” But how should I then open this essay? Simply with “Obsessed with Being”? That, in turn, begs a question about what existentialists were doing in attempting to “define” Being (or characterize it) through philosophy, art, sociology, or even psychology: The best example is the plethora of writings centered on van Gogh’s painting of peasant shoes. Do the shoes, which are things-in-this-world, lead us to an understanding of anything beyond our own subjective interpretation. Heidegger “puts” them on a peasant woman’s feet and says they reveal the nature of her being, or her nature, or even her personal history of work in the field (the shoes are very worn). But what insight has he really given us that we don’t already have from experience. Does everyone’s favorite old sweatshirt or pair of jeans define a life or merely indicate that things wear out with use, with “doing” and not with simple “being”?


**Do you find it interesting that those who want to “escape reality” or their ordinary “being-in-the-world” and dread, go on thrill rides that safely frighten, roller coasters, for example? Disney’s Tower of Terror, also? Las Vegas’  Big Shot, Insanity, SkyJump, or X-Scream? Is there something innate that makes us want to confront our own existence and dread in the knowledge that we can do it safely strapped into a thrill ride?

***You might also research the Peter Principle, a late twentieth-century notion that people rise to the level of their incompetence. 

Left and Right talk.


Left: Finally, a President who puts money and action at the forefront of climate science! Biden just committed to giving more than eleven billion bucks per year to Indonesia and other countries to fight climate change.


Right: Really? That’s what gets you excited? How much of that money is yours? Do some math. Let’s see, if the average amount of tax Americans pay is a pinch over $20,000, then…click, click, click…it will require all the taxes from 550,000 Americans to fund the eleven billion each year. So, that money you put into the kitty—if I can count you as one of the 550,000 average taxpayers whose money is tabbed—will be going overseas. And you see nothing in that that is absurd?


Left: Not if it fights climate change. I’m willing to do my part.


Right: Again, really? Do you have $20,000 on you right now?


Left: No. But if you are talking about my taxes, you should realize that I pay them through a payroll deduction program, so I really never see that money anyway. And it’s not divided among just 555,000. It’s all taxpayers. Millions, not hundreds of thousands, of taxpayers.


Right: So, the government’s siphoning off $20,000 is painless for the average taxpayer? And, in addition, you must trust that some official getting your tax dollar in some foreign country will use the money precisely as the Biden Administration says it will.


Left: It’s what the eleven billion is for. And we have to start somewhere because climate change is an existential threat.


Right: Nice term. Have you actually thought about it? I mean, have you thought about what the term entails?


Left: Yes, existence as we know it will end.


Right: And this because…


Left: Because a warmer world will make tropical diseases spread, make hurricanes more dangerous, make winters colder and summers warmer, will make flooding more severe and droughts more prolonged, forest fires more widespread and crop failures more frequent, and…


Right: I get it. You are pretty sure that we’ll all die from Dengue while a hurricane interrupts our drought during an exceptionally hot summer right after a winter characterized by Arctic blasts that bury the American Upper Midwest in feet of snow that melts to flood the Mississippi valley during late frost springs—that is, if we don’t die in a forest fire along a coastline of rising seas.


Left: Go ahead. Mock. I’m following the science. You are a science denier.


Right: So, you are willing to give $20,000 directly to, say, Indonesia? You can say that your $20,000 goes to other projects, but the reality of the money distributed is that even though it comes from all of us, it still means that your $20,000 is in practice tagged for foreign aid centered on climate change. Would you commit $20,000? I can see it now. You get a call from Indonesia. “Hello, Mr. Left. Your distant relative just died and left you the fortune he made in oil, but before I can send it to you, I need to have your bank account number to acquire the $20,000 we’ll need to satisfy government regulations and fill out paper work.” And you will say over the phone, “Don’t you need my Social Security number, also?”


Left: NO, it’s not like that. There’s an agency. There are people who oversee the transfer of tax money to Indonesia or India or wherever. There are government officials in charge of the funds.


Right: And you don’t think that those funds—your money—will be misused or stolen? Do you know that the Secret Service had to recover $286 billion from fraudsters who stole from the Covid Relief money? * Imagine how much they did not recover. Billions more. But you have faith that your twenty grand will go to the right place to be administered by ethical people who with oil wealth of their own will curtail their use of oil.


Left: You don’t understand. Climate change is an existential threat.


Right: Who are you, Sartre? Existential? By that I assume you mean humanity will become extinct. Scary.


Left: Yes.


Right: Wouldn’t nuclear annihilation be more of an existential threat than climate change that might or might not affect all eight billion of us? Isn’t the threat of nuclear war a greater danger to humanity and, by the way, to climate? What about the sudden onset of a “nuclear winter” brought on by a total nuclear war? Because once it begins, there’s no one who is going to say, “Oh! I think we hit Russia or North Korea, or China with enough. I’m sure they won’t send any more bombs our way. We’ve made our point.”


Left: What’s that got to do with climate change mitigation?


Right: Well, if you insist on giving away $20,000 a year for the rest of your life, wouldn’t giving it to military allies (who would also find ways to steal) to discourage China from threatening them with nuclear war be a better use of the money? After all, that nuclear winter will change climate much faster than the slow burn of a couple of degrees Celsius over the course of centuries and a sea level rise of a meter over the course of 900 years. You know what? I wish you a long life. I wish you had such a long life that you could have witnessed the rise of sea level over the last 12,000 years, the first half of which would have been rather rapid—more rapid than now. And that warming occurred before humans drilled and mined.


Left: You just don’t understand. The money is going to wean countries off fossil fuels.


Right: Yeah, so you said. And I still say, “I don’t trust that they will use it thus. I don’t think they will accomplish what Americans have in reducing carbon emissions. China and India will continue to spew carbon into the atmosphere, and all your $20,000 per year for life will go for naught. China emits about ten billion tons of carbon per year, whereas the United States emits about five billion tons. India emits about half the U.S. output, but it has said it will switch to “green energy” only insofar as it gets aid to do so from wealthy countries and only insofar as the switch doesn’t inhibit economic growth. In other words, it wants subsidies from the U.S.


Left: But at least I will be trying to save human existence.


Right: And that’s it: “trying” based on climate models and an idea repeated so often that it has become the philosophical bedrock of the twenty-first century and a secular religion. Existential threat, nice catchphrase, repeated repeatedly.


Left: So, you don’t want us to do anything?


Right: Didn’t say that. But I certainly wouldn’t want to send my $20,000 to Indonesia or India or Nigeria. And I have to ask whether or not you would be as committed to climate change theory if someone came to your house and said that you had to give him $20,000 every year for the rest of your life. I can’t believe you would.


Left: But it’s the government. It’s part of a shared commitment. They know more than you.


Right: Sorry. Bureaucrats following people who get funding for saying “existential threat.” And the funding? Enforced by a tax-collecting authority. Spent by a government-gone-wild with spending that has put the country $30-plus trillion in debt. And nothing the money goes for will have any consequential effect except to make certain people wealthy on your and my dime. Or should I say, your personal 200,000 dimes—per year?


Left: You don’t care about the environment.


Right: And you don’t seem to care about your money. You have tens of thousands of people dying from fentanyl because of super-carbonizer China, but you are concerned about spending money to make Indonesia a green-energy country. You are not concerned that mining hundreds of tons of earth to get enough materials for a single electric car battery is more a threat to the environment than fossil fuels. Do you know an EV has to be driven about 60,000 miles before it begins to make a dent in its carbon footprint if one considers the mining, the transporting, and the manufacturing of the materials? You know that the solar panels and windmills are made in China which continues to open coal-fired power plants while the Biden Administration intends to shut down American coal-fired plants?


Left: You’re just a science denier.


Right: And you are wasting money while polluting the planet with mine tailings from heavy metal and rare earth mining and at the same time not doing anything to stop the Chinese from building more coal-fired plants.


Left: It’s a moral issue. I’m saving the planet for future generations.


Right: As I said, I wish you a long life. In ten years you will have given $200,000 to Indonesia and other countries; in 30 years your contributions will equal $600,000. Let’s hope that the world stays stable enough over that period to avoid nuclear winter; let’s hope no madman like Putin or Kim will unleash nuclear horror. As for me, I’d rather throw a little more carbon in the atmosphere and give my $20,000 to causes centered on practical safety, on the reduction in fentanyl deaths, for example, or on the military might that deters a nuclear attack.


Left: You’re hopeless. You just don’t understand.


*https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/secret-service-recovers-286-million-stolen-covid-relief-funds-rcna44886   Accessed November 15, 2022.

From magnetotactic bacteria to humans, some kind of environmental assessment is necessary. On their relatively simple neuron-less level of existence, the monococci bacteria orient themselves in a magnetic field. No bacterium asks another “Which way is north?” Once in the field, the bacteria turn by magnetotaxis, most often, it seems, toward the north magnetic pole—though some even in the Northern Hemisphere can turn “south." The process is an unconscious one driven by magnetite in organelles called magnetosomes. In contrast because we possess neurons, we orient ourselves in various human fields: Social, religious, political, attitudinal, intellectual, and behavioral. And though we claim an independence of thought and action, we often act either consciously or unconsciously in one of those human fields. Like the bacteria, we also act in unison, groups of us orienting in one direction or another as the external human field dictates. As we “assess” our human environment, we judge. We set values, ascribe blame or heap praise, and support or suppress. From bacteria to human, whatever field drives us—magnetic field, social pressure, fear—garners loyalty to the orientation mechanism, often unshakeable loyalty.


I think of Sonnet 116’s “Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds/Or bends with the remover to remove./O no! It is an ever-fixed mark….” That poem by Shakespeare begins, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments.” The bacteria will turn as we often turn in the field that envelopes us. And in no circumstance is this more apparent than in American political leanings. Once committed to the mass belief, the individual must orient—even when that orientation runs counter to self-interest.


Thus, the commitment to “green energy” in the field of “climate change” garners the unshakeable loyalty of those who believe that somehow eight billion people can flourish without the abundant cheap and reliable energy that fossil fuels supply. The “climate change” field envelopes much of the world—but not the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, India and China.


Picture two fields, that is, two competing fields or even two ends of a bar magnet. One field is so far physically un-demonstrable. No climate change prediction that was made in 2001 for 2021 has materialized. Anecdotes have replaced science. “Oh! Did you see how that storm devastated the coastal community and caused deaths?” “Did you see the catastrophic floods that killed so many?” “What can anyone say about the drought in the American Southwest, the drought in India, the floods in Pakistan, or the temperatures in Australia or Alaska, except that climate change is at work and humans are responsible?”


And even when the commitment to green energy relies on climate models that have as yet to prove their value—remember, most (if not all) dire climate predictions have failed to materialize except in anecdotal form that simplify causes—the “love” that connects the alarmists to the idea does not waver. No information counter to the climate change field removes the committed from their commitment. (“Love does not alter when it alteration finds”)


Are we with our neuron-filled heads much different from magnetotactic bacteria? At the current rate of sea-level rise—barring any change or discovery of a mistake about eustacy—it will take almost a millennium for a transgression of one meter. Yes, one meter of sea level can inundate the foundations of structures built along shorelines. Yes, there will be damage. Populations will have to contend with sea level changes. But a thousand years hence? Go anywhere in the world to find the location of communities a thousand years ago to see whether or not their relationship to sea level has been unaffected by eustatic changes. Or, look at the record of storms to see whether or not they are more frequent as the climate alarmist say. * Look at all weather phenomena to find the reality that all places undergo climatic fluctuations, with the prime example of the American Southwest, a region that has had droughts that last centuries. Want anecdotes of disasters caused by weather? Well, there’s no shortage of them. The 1887 Yellow River flood in China killed from one to two million people. In 1598 the Tiber River flood killed 3,000. Was either an instance of “climate change,” that is, of “anthropogenic climate change”? Was the Mayan drought of a millennium ago caused by the burning of fossil fuels? Was that megadrought in Africa 75,000 years ago the result of human activity? Did the Anasazi population move or decline because they burned coal and caused a climate disaster? 


Am I arguing that the climates aren’t changing? No. As one who has taught historical geology to college students, I'm well aware of climate history on a planet whose extremes have included "snowball Earth" and the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum. I’m arguing that those caught up in the “climate change field” can’t break from their commitment. Shakespeare says that someone in love would not change allegiance even when the loved one dissolves the relationship. “Love is not love when it alteration finds.” That kind of commitment is often seen in the inability of rejected lovers to change their commitment—often to someone’s detriment: Stories abound about rejected lovers killing their former mates; teens often can’t break their bond to their one-time boyfriend or girlfriend. And climate activists?


The U. S President has boasted at the November, 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh Climate Conference in Egypt—in an air-conditioned room—that he will stop drilling and shut down coal-fired power plants in favor of green energy. He will oversee the installation of 50,000 charging stations. He will make green energy a gender equity issue. And, somewhere down the line of impoverishment, when people can buy only electric cars to replace the 284 million vehicles on American highways in 2022, will those 50,000 charging stations supply all the energy needed from windmills and solar panels? Will you be one of the EV owners to wait with 5,679 other EV owners for a charging wire? And will you get that power from the roadside outlet connected to a windmill or field of solar panels? **


Yet, the alarmists will not alter when they find an impediment. The commitment is unshakeable. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments.” Thus, Americans and Europeans have committed themselves to an idea—nay, idea-field—regardless of its effects on self-interest. The climate-change field directs the orientation. The committed continue to be committed, and their logic lies in weather phenomena and as yet unfulfilled predictions.


And while the world’s nonruling masses are forced to commit their personal wealth to maintaining the field, they continue to suffer from restricted energy sources and shortages imposed by those in the ruling class. Yet, those who suffer continue to support those who make them suffer. The field is stronger than individual self-interest. Like bacteria driven by magnetite crystals in their organelles, many simply turn in the dominant field—regardless of the impediments they encounter. “Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds,” and commitment to an idea—or to a political party—does not alter even when it goes against one’s best interests. Shakespeare’s sonnet also contains the lines “O no! It is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken;/It is the star to every wandering bark…/Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,/But bears it out even to the edge of doom….” Just as sailors steer by the North Star, so alarmists steer by the climate-change field.


One final comment on this: Of course, anecdotal evidence will persuade. There are more people living along more coastline than ever before. There are more people living in semi-arid lands like Nevada than ever before. There are more people, billions more than there were when past weather disasters hit populations. But take this as an analog: Seismologists recognize two kinds of assessments: earthquake magnitude and earthquake intensity. A large magnitude (Richter scale) earthquake in the middle of Antarctica, where no one lives, would have no measurable intensity, which is usually assessed by the damage done to structures. A twenty-year drought would be insignificant in the Sahara or the Great Sandy. Add to the billions of people now in excess of any past era’s population the mass communication we share and the dearth of historical knowledge about weather phenomena among those billions, and you see the reason that so many are committed to their unwavering loyalty to an idea. And there won’t be a change. “Climate-change love does not alter when it alteration finds.” It seems not to matter to Americans and Europeans that their commitment to the idea of green energy in lieu of fossil fuel energy has cost them wealth, convenience, and even safety. They turn in the field.

*The alarmist will say, "Look at the number of Atlantic hurricanes in 2010 (12) and 2012 (10)." But 2011 had 7 and 2013 had only 2. In that latter year, three were no major hurricanes, and there were three years in the nineteenth century with 10 such storms, and in 1887 there were 11 of them.

**Each EV owner will have to drive the vehicle at least 60,000 miles to overcome the environmental effect of making the vehicle. And though charging time for an EV should decrease, the process will slow down a society used to rapid in-and-out refueling. Maybe EVs will be good for increasing time for meditation along a busy highway, for making new friends, or for reading a smart device.

One of the consequences of a wholesale handover of Afghanistan to the Taliban has been the recent banning of women from gyms, fun fairs, and fun parks. “No fun for you,” one can hear in imitation of the oft-repeated line of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi.” But the restrictions on entertainment are just a scratch on the surface of women’s degradation in Afghanistan. If you are a teenage girl there, you can forget about attending middle school and high school. It seems that the Taliban prefer to deny advanced education to more than half the brains in their country. But as foolish and harsh as Westerners might think these restrictions are, their own rearview mirrors reveal the same kinds of restrictions imposed on women prior to the twentieth century. The imposition of restrictions on half the human population equates to more than 50 billion brains in the 200,000-300,000 years of Homo sapiens sapiens. And the irony of the restrictions is that the men who impose restrictions on them will never know what they will never know. What might have been engineered or discovered by a female brain never given the chance to explore will forever mark our collective ignorance. 


This recent “setback” along the path of freedom is the result of one man’s unnecessary decision and the process by which that decision unfolded: The catastrophic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan without safeguards for the abandoned population of females. I won’t mention any names here. But I will point out the hypocrisy of western politicians claiming to be champions of women’s rights while turning millions of women away from entertainment centers and schools.


We’ll never know what current and future Afghani women might invent or discover. That door has been shut; its opening is now sealed. All those brains will lie idle in daily chores and obeisance. All those brains have been denied their potential creativity. And all those brains have been restricted because of an unnecessary and ill-thought decision.


One man; millions of women. “No fun for you, and no education, too.” **


*Chris Matthews for MailOnline and AFP. 11 Nov 2022. Taliban bans women from funfairs, parks and gyms in latest crackdown on female freedoms. Online at dailymail.co.uk


**Afghanistan has 41 million people and a current birthrate of 4.56 births per woman. With military restrictions imposed on emigration, the country’s population will likely rise. There’s little chance of escape from the Taliban’s restrictions.

Would I sit to scribble a blog if I had won the $2 billion-Powerball? Would I have a grip on reality? Become a different person? Run and hide from the incessant beggars I might attract—iron filings gathering football shape in a magnetic field generated by my newfound wealth?


Did I even have a grip on reality in buying a ticket for the recent big prize on November 7, 2022? I think the odds of winning were something like 262 million to one. What about the ensuing jackpot for Saturday, November 12, 2022? I understand the odds of winning something—even two bucks, but maybe not the $40+ mil—are one in 24.9? Should I spend the $2 on a line? Could I use an extra $40 million? Do I want to spend my time anticipating, dreaming, planning? All my plans for the $2 billion went for naught. What if I spend brain energy on another set of hypothetical plans—markedly reduced plans, of course—only to find disappointment? Anyway, what can one do with a mere $40 million? Buy a plasma TV the size of a football stadium? Empty the shelves at both Costco and Walmart? Fund a food bank out of guilt?


And in a week when so many thought they might be the winner of the $2 billion jackpot, did other people with other concerns also wake up to disappointment? To shattered dreams? It was, after all, election week in America.


When hypotheticals carry us like self-driving cars, we put our lives in the control of others—even in the control of machines. Don’t get me wrong. Hypotheticals drive discovery. That’s how physicists motivate themselves to work at CERN; that’s how vaccines based on mRNA get made; and that’s how you looked for a job and a place to live. “If I work here…” and “If I live here….” What we find, however, is that the pursuit of hypotheses often leads to null hypotheses. But that’s okay for scientists, if not for the rest of us in our daily lives. When our personal hypotheses fail to become theories, we can become stuck in the past centered on “wasted emotional and intellectual efforts,” not to mention the perception or reality that we wasted time, space, and material.


Hypotheticals. Was not the winning the $2 billion the product of an unreal condition? Well, someone won. So it wasn’t entirely “unreal.” And now the rest of the millions of Powerball ticket-buyers have to decide on whether to spend money on a new set of hypotheticals.


Occasionally, faith in hypotheticals pays off, but all hypothesizers need to temper that faith with some probability reasoning. It seems unlikely at this time, for example, that physicists will be able to run an experiment that proves String Theory though many are strung along like Powerball ticket-buyers. The “prestigious” research institutions want to hire string theorists over other theoretical physicists and practical physicists. The hypothesis drives like an autonomous vehicle; the hypothesis about strings is all they have, like the hopes of a ticket-buyer. Oh! Sure. It all works out theoretically, but in practice? The odds of running that final experiment are far larger than 262 million to one.


And the hypothesis that people will get along as Rodney King hypothesized—yes, that famous question after the riots centered on his arrest—or that “unity” that naive politicians seem to have when they are candidates only to discover that “people will be people” and “hypotheses” are often unfulfillable wishes.


But we can’t relinquish our adherence to hypothetical living. It’s in our nature. Call it “hope,” “desire,” or “wishful thinking,” it’s what we do as humans. It’s a bane. But, hey, no one is stopping you from buying that next Powerball ticket. Someone has to win sometime.

“Fence-sitter,” “Line-walker,” lots of choices to make these days, and many of them are nuanced, or complex, or multifaceted. No one escapes the see-saw of life except those who—my my gosh! Here comes another cliche—those who see only in terms of black and white, Either/Or, and right and wrong. Gray isn’t a color; it’s a washout; and then, as we are “metaphored” into movie talk, even gray comes in fifty shades.


Poor Pope Francis I. Fresh off his trip to an Arab country that condemns homosexuality as a disease of the mind, he had to answer why he put pro-choice economist Mariana Mazzucato on the Pontifical Academy for Life. * His obfuscation? She’s pro-choice, but not pro-abortion. Duh? How are the two not related? His argument? “Women know how to find the right path and move forward…She is a great economist from the United States, and I put her there to give a little humanity to it…[and, Wait for it—one can’t say anything nowadays without offending someone] Women…shouldn’t become like men [sorry, Trans]. No, they are women; we need them…Equality to move forward because otherwise we are impoverished.” This comes from the same pope who declares that abortion is murder. What did Johnny Cash sing? “I walk the line.” Francis I appears to teeter on a narrow fence. Tell us, Francis, just where do you really stand on the issue? Or should we ask, just where do you stand on the practice centered on the issue? Is this a matter of theology? Of philosophy? Or of psychology?


But lest I find myself on the slide under someone else’s microscope, I should note that in some way each of us is a fence-sitter because absolutes are difficult to justify. Sure, there are some absolutes for some, but no absolutes for all—Did I just write an absolute? Murder, for example, seems to be acceptable in war and self defense, seems to be acceptable against a perceived enemy, but not so much against friends and family or against random innocents.


Go ahead. Name your “absolute” and then wend your way along the path of its practice. There aren’t just fifty shades of gray; there are shades too numerous to mention. And what is that “right path” the Pope mentions that “women know how to find”?


One might think that someone in a position to issue complex Papal Bulls might clarify with details and irrefutable logic. But then, Francis I is a human, and in my experience, humans tend to fail intellectually when they argue from atop a fence. And I include myself in that category of “humans.” As a result of our difficulty in resolving nuanced absolutes (obviously, an oxymoron), we usually switch our argument from philosophy to psychology. “He’s a good person who just got into the wrong crowd”; “We can’t judge him from a single act in a lifetime of good deeds”;“She separates her personal life from her professional life”; “He’s a practicing Catholic except for his public statements that conflict with the tenets of his faith”; or “He’s a peacemaker who out of necessity starts a war to prevent the potential advance of a perceived enemy. Peace through war was his only option.”   


Run the logic on any absolute you hold near and dear.


*https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2022/11/07/pope-francis-defends-choice-pro-abortion-woman-academy-life/

Remember the wisdom spoken by character Mike Brady in the film The Brady Bunch? Mike says, “Remember, wherever you go, there you are.” And so, the advice to find one’s “happy place” mentally during times of stress, according to Mike, is difficult at best.


Sure, we all have ways of dealing with stressful situations: Anger, drinking, drugging, eating, withdrawing…,each method a different mechanism for avoiding reality. But in most circumstances for most people, “finding one’s happy place” mentally is like those other methods of avoidance, a temporary distraction. As A. E. Housman wrote in “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff”:


    Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
    And left my necktie God knows where,
    And carried half way home, or near,
    Pints of quarts of Ludlow beet;
    Then the world seemed none so bad,
    And I myself a sterling lad;
    And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
    Happy till I woke again.
    Then I saw the morning sky;
    Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
    The world, it was the old world yet,
    I was I, my things were wet,
    And nothing now remained to do
    But begin the game anew.


As “the world” continuously bombards you with stressful situations, remember Mr. Brady’s line. You are where you are at any moment. That’s the reality of life. Dealing with whatever causes the stress is a more effective way of relieving that stress than, say, drinking quarts of Ludlow beer and awakening to the same reality that drove you to escapist anger, drinking, eating, or withdrawing. If you lie down in a stressed-caused stupor, you will eventually awake muddy and wet, and the “world” will be “the old world yet.”


Churchill, England’s PM during WWII, said upon learning of the Allied victory in Africa, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Overcoming the “beginning” of any stressful circumstance by seeing it as a reality is better than trying to find one’s “happy place” outside that reality. We are where we are. This is the place; now is the time.


Too often we choose to lie in “lovely muck.” Too many of us choose Ludlow fair as a better place than where we are. That “happy place” some advise you to find during times of stress is a muddy ditch. You will awake.

First, consider that politics and religion have long been joined at the hip. Socrates was condemned by the Athenian aristocracy for turning the youth away from traditional Greek gods—though he argued he did no such thing. It was a Pope who officiated at the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor. In modern Iran, women find themselves caught between their sense of decency and desire for freedom and the theocracy’s sense of morality, with the death of a woman in the custody of “morality police” highlighting their predicament. And in India, numerous Dalits have just abandoned their Hinduism to convert to Buddhism to free themselves from the caste system that they know enslaves them and keeps them from succeeding in most Indian venues.


Second, consider that all religions have a political component. Think choosing a Pope, for example. The College of Cardinals play the same kinds of political games that the U.S. Congress plays in choosing a leader. Think the Anglican Church, founded by a king who named himself its Head. Think shamans who are also high priests with the power to judge and rule.


Third, think blind loyalty. Think of Republicans who would never under any circumstances vote for a Democrat and Democrats who mirror that voting pattern. It isn’t the individual politician who captures such loyalty and, dare I add, reverence or belief, but the Party Itself, the Ideal raised to some ethereal level of overriding existence. Thus, the most flawed and incompetent among us can become elected leaders who retain their posts regardless of their policies.


Each of us might profit from a self-examination of our stands on these three tenets: 1) Politicians reveal their inextricable bond to religions through their policies on moral matters, such as capital punishment, imprisonment, justice, and restrictions on freedom; 2) Religions are political entities; and 3) Political entities can be religions bound together by a group of the Faithful.


Of course, you’ll want me to qualify, right? But before I offer three examples, consider this anecdote: A cousin once asked me how I could vote for So-n-So because “my father would never have voted that way.” And she was correct. He adhered to his voting allegiances in spite of disagreeing with the political stances of individual politicians for which he voted. They were to him, after all, members of his party, and he had long held that members of the other party were somehow responsible for all the ills of society. Thus, consider also, that many coal miners and union officials now out of work voted for the very politicians who promised they would shut down coal mining and coal-fired power plants. Or consider Catholic politicians who vote to support abortion while claiming to adhere to the principles of a religion that condemns the practice as immoral. In other words, people will vote against their self interests or beliefs because faith in Party overrides faith in a Faith. One more example, please: A local western Pennsylvanian newspaper, long a supporter of the Democratic Party, argued during the primaries that Barack Obama had no discernible accomplishments or experience to warrant the Party's choosing him as their candidate over Hillary Clinton; yet, when Obama became the candidate, that same newspaper endorsed him--a person they had specifically rejected as unqualified--for President. Go figure.


I might suggest that the politicization of climate science demonstrates the first tenet. A whole segment of the political class condemns those who rely on fossil fuels and insists that renewable energy sources are the only moral choice. Pope Benedict VI’s resignation and the election of Pope Francis, a Left-leaning semi-socialist from Argentina seem to demonstrate the second tenet, as does the effort among Anglicans and Episcopalians to alter traditional forms of their respective faiths. And the refusal of legislatures to impose term limits ensures the continuation of the third tenet.