December 25, 2011

Counterpoint

ABC Radio National


Coal is King


peaceandlonglife
Malcolm Turnbull (1954):
As the world's largest coal exporter we have a vested interest in showing that we can provide both lower emissions and reliable baseload power with state-of-the-art clean coal technology.
(National Press Club, 2016)

Tony Wood [Director, Energy Program, Grattan Institute]:
What are we talking about here, in terms of this what appears to be a contradiction in terms: clean coal?
The Prime Minister [is] in some ways is flying a kite, [since] no one's [knows] what he's actually going to do next. …
[If] you are looking to [invest in] coal fired power stations, with low emissions (because the technology does exist) …
What technology?
Tony Wood:
… you're not going to do that without … significant subsidies from government, which we do have but only so far for wind and solar …
Apart from the $9 billion a year in direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry via energy and transport.
Tony Wood:
More gas, which is also quite expensive in Australia …
Unless gas is quarantined for electricity generation (as opposed to being exported) as currently occurs in Western Australia.
Tony Wood:
What we do have is a vacuum of [state and] federal climate change policy … you can't specifically blame anybody for that except perhaps government generally …
A failure of government or a failure of governance?
  • Leaders advocating the repeal of the carbon price and dismantling of the clean energy infrastructure, and
  • enough people willing to follow them.

Grattan Institute:
[We] cannot rely [on] switching to gas-fired electricity to achieve all our emissions reductions.
[The carbon intensity of coal-fired power stations is between 0.8 and 1.2 tonnes of CO2 for every megawatt-hour of electricity produced.]
Conventional gas-fired power plants can achieve … about 0.4 tonnes of CO2 emitted per megawatt-hour. Australia must achieve a carbon intensity of 0.2 tonnes of CO2 per megawatt-hour or lower if it is to meet its targets.
(p 4)

A range of technologies available today can generate electricity at or below 0.2 tonnes of CO2 per megawatt-hour and have significant scale-up potential (excepting hydro, for which little expansion is feasible in Australia). …
[The] most important task will be to further refine the underlying power technologies such as wind turbine blades, photovoltaic cells and fuel combustion.
(No easy choices: which way to Australia’s energy future?, February 2012, p 6)

Supercritical steam technology is applicable to combined cycle gas turbines and solar thermal as well as coal.
This suggests that while supercritical coal may be "cleaner" than conventional coal it is just as "dirty" in comparison with supercritical gas or solar.
Therefore, from a mitigation viewpoint, if you were choosing between conventional coal and supercritical coal you would go for supercritical coal.
If you're choosing between supercritical coal, gas or solar; gas or solar would still be superior.

Using (ultra) supercritical coal fired power plants with thermal efficiencies of 45% (conventional coal being 33%) instead of combined cycle gas turbines with thermal efficiencies of 60% means additional carbon savings would need to be found in other sectors.
Which sectors and at what cost?
And what is the market mechanism for delivering emissions reductions at least cost across the economy?
A carbon price.

Wikipedia:
Of the 22 demonstration [clean coal] projects funded by the US Department of Energy since 2003, none are in operation as of February 2017, having been abandoned or delayed due to capital budget overruns or discontinued because of excessive operating expenses.
(Coal pollution mitigation, 19 February 2017)

IPCC:
In most scenarios for stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations between 450 and 750 ppmv CO2 and in a least-cost portfolio of mitigation options, the economic potential of CCS would amount to 220-2,200 GtCO2 (60–600 GtC) cumulatively, which would mean that CCS contributes 15–55% to the cumulative mitigation effort worldwide until 2100, averaged over a range of baseline scenarios. …
For CCS to achieve such an economic potential, several hundreds to thousands of CO2 capture systems would need to be installed over the coming century, each capturing some 1–5 MtCO2 per year.
(Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, IPCC Special Report, Summary for Policymakers approved at Eighth Session of IPCC Working Group III, 22-24 September, 2005, p 12, emphasis added)
Where are they?

Grattan Institute:
Gas can play a important bridging role, but in the longer-term Australia will need to either
  • retrofit existing coal and gas plants with Carbon Capture and Storage technology or
  • replace them with low-or zero-carbon technologies. …
(No easy choices: which way to Australia’s energy future?, p 5, emphasis added)
If carbon capture and storage does become available, replacing coal fired with bioenergy power plants (BECSS) rather than refitting coal plants with CCS would be the optimal strategy — since BECSS actually draws down atmospheric carbon.

(The Role of Coal, 13 February 2017)


Trickle Up Economics


Amanda Vanstone (1952)

When governments get out of the way, things in the economy can get going.
Perhaps we should be saying to our governments:
We don't want you to spend more. …
What we want you to do is undo some of your regulation.
Get out of the way and let the business people get on with it and make a buck.
And create jobs, and wealth and income.
(Counterpoint, 10 October 2016)

I am in the category of people who say:
Why do we keep regulating and passing laws?
We've had a law against murder for a long time and it hasn't worked!
There's a lot of people [who] put a lot of faith in regulation without realizing [that we then have to] pay a lot of public servants … to implement [it.]

(Counterpoint, 13 June 2016)


Climate change! [exasperated]
You're so ABC, Fran … [laughs]

(The Party Room, 26 May 2016)


It is primarily the Coalition that says we have to the deficit and public debt under control. …
[While Labor] sees itself as owning the concept of fair shares.
[This] makes it very easy, whenever you want to bring a budget back into some sort of control and make any cuts, to say:
Lower income people shouldn't have to pay anything for this — even though they may have been the beneficiaries of the spending which in large part has contributed to the deficit.
(Counterpoint, 16 May 2016)

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Green Army: Communications




Malcolm Turnbull (1954) [29th Prime Minister of Australia, 2015-8]:
I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.
(1 October 2009)

[We, in the Liberal party,] are not run by factions.
Nor are we run by big business or by deals in back rooms.
We rely on the ideas and the energy and the enterprise of our membership.
(Man on a Wire, ABC Four Corners, 8 August 2016)

Barnaby Joyce (1967) [National Party MP]:
This is parliament house.
By it's very nature [politics] has a nefarious aspect.
And to deny that is to lie …
[If] you are completely transparent, completely honest, you won't survive here.
(Michael Brissenden & Louise Milligan, A Form of Madness, ABC Four Corners, 27 August 2018)





Tim Ferguson (1963):
As soon as someone's heard that you're lying; they assume whatever you say next must be rock solid.

Paul McDermott (1962):
There's something I'm grateful we don't know when you're young:
Is that you realize the incredible fragility of every aspect of existence. …
It's a magical chaos that surrounds us.
(Tick F***ing Tock, ABC Television, 2018)

December 22, 2011

Andrew Bolt

Blue Army: Persons of Interest


Charles Darwin (1809 – 82):
[Ignorance] more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge …
(The Descent of Man, 1871)

David Marr (1947):
[23 June 2003:] Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun publishs details from a highly classified report by Andrew Wilkie, who had left the Office of National Assessments to blow the whistle on dodgy intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.
[John Howard's] office had already spread the story that Wilkie was mentally unstable.
Bolt mocked Wilkie's ONA predictions of civilian deaths and refugee numbers should war break out as "fairytale."
(The figures proved conservative.)
[Alexander Downer's] staff was widely assumed to be responsible for the leak, but no culprit was ever found.
(His Master's Voice, Quarterly Essay, Issue 26, Black Inc, 2007, p 56)

Isaiah Berlin (1909 – 97)


[Even in the most liberal societies, individual freedom is not] the sole, or even the dominant, criterion of social action.
We compel children to be educated, and we forbid public executions.
These are certainly curbs to freedom.
We justify them on the ground that ignorance, or a barbarian upbringing, or cruel pleasures and excitements are worse for us than the amount of restraint needed to repress them.
This judgement in turn depends on how we determine good and evil, that is to say, on our moral, religious, intellectual, economic and aesthetic values; which are, in their turn, bound up with our conception of man, and of the basic demands of his nature. …

To protest against the laws governing censorship or personal morals as intolerable infringements of personal liberty presupposes a belief that the activities which such laws forbid are fundamental needs of men as men, in a good … society.
To defend such laws is to hold that these needs are not essential, or that they cannot be satisfied without sacrificing other values which come higher … than individual freedom …

The extent of a man's, or a people's, liberty to choose to live as he or they desire must be weighed against the claims of many other values, of which equality, or justice, or happiness, or security, or public order are, perhaps, the most obvious examples. …

To preserve our absolute categories or ideals at the expense of human lives offends equally against the principles of science and of history; it is an attitude found in equal measure on the right and left wings in our days, and is not reconcilable with the principles accepted by those who respect the facts.

(Two Concepts of Liberty, Four Essays on Liberty, 1969)

December 21, 2011

The Koch Network

Blue Army: Finance


There was a time when corporations were more influential than they are now.
But at the moment … they are a beleaguered minority, rather than the dominant majority.


Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006), Free to Choose, PBS, 1980.


We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

Louis Brandeis (1856 – 1941), Associate Justice, US Supreme Court.

Lewis Powell (1907 – 98)


Associate Justice (1972-87), US Supreme Court

The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism [of the free enterprise system] come from perfectly respectable elements of society:
  • from the college campus,
  • [from] the pulpit,
  • [from] the media,
  • [from] the intellectual and literary journals,
  • [from] the arts and sciences, and
  • from politicians. …
[It] must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it. …
[The] time has come … for the wisdom, ingenuity and resources of American business to be marshalled against those who would destroy it. …

[As] every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders. …
Business must learn the [lessons,] long ago learned by labor and other self-interest groups: …
  • that political power is necessary;
  • that such power must be [assiduously] cultivated; and
  • that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination …

The threat to the enterprise system is not merely a matter of economics.
It also is a threat to individual freedom. …
As the experience of the socialist and totalitarian states demonstrates, the contraction and denial of economic freedom is followed inevitably by governmental restrictions on other cherished rights. …

Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.

(Attack of American Free Enterprise System, Memo to the US Chamber of Commerce, 23 August 1971)



The Golden Rule: He who has the gold rules




(Alex Gibney, Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, 2012)




(Edward Wolff, CEO to Worker Pay, A Century of Wealth in America, Harvard University Press, 2017)




(Executive Excess 2006, 13th Annual CEO Compensation Survey, Institute for Policy Studies & United for a Fair Economy)

Dan Ariely (1967) [James B Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics, Duke University]:
[In] 1976 the average CEO was paid 36 times as much as the average worker.
By 1993, the average CEO was paid 131 times as much. …

[In] 1993, securities regulators [started forcing companies] to reveal details about the pay and perks of their top executives.
The idea was that once pay was in the open, boards would be reluctant to give executives outrageous salaries and benefits. …

[However, as] salaries became public information, the media regularly ran special stories ranking CEOs by pay.
[This] publicity had CEOs in America comparing their pay with that of [their peers.]
In response, executives' salaries skyrocketed.
[Compensation] consulting firms … "helped" [by advising] their CEO clients to demand outrageous raises.
The result?
Now the average CEO makes about 369 times as much as the average worker — about 3 times the salary before executive compensation went public. …

Instead of causing shame, every new outrage in compensation encourages other CEOs to demand even more.
(Predictably Irrational, Harper, 2009, p 148-50, emphasis added)

Jane Mayer (1955):
[Steve Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of Blackstone,] made $398.3 million in 2006, which was 9 times more than the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
On top of this, his shares in Blackstone were valued at more than $7 billion.
(p 254)

The [carried interest] loophole was in essence an accounting trick that enabled hedge fund and private equity managers to categorize huge portions of their income as “interest,” which was taxed at the 15% rate then applied to long-term capital gains.
This was less than half the income tax rate paid by other top-bracket wage earners.
[It is] estimated that the hedge fund loophole [costs] the government over $6 billion a year — the cost of providing health care to three million children.
Of that total … almost $2 billion a year … went to just 25 individuals [— an average tax concession of $80 million each.]
(p 255)

[In] December 2010 … Republican negotiators insisted on cuts in estate taxes that would cost the Treasury $23 billion and save some 6,600 of the wealthiest taxpayers an average of $1.5 million each.
The demand didn’t materialize out of thin air. …
[Beginning in 1998, the] Kochs and the DeVoses … joined with [15] of the other richest families in the country, including the Waltons of Walmart and the Mars candy clan, in financing and coordinating a massive, multiyear campaign to reduce and eventually repeal inheritance taxes.
[These] 17 families stood to save $71 billion from the tax change, explaining why they willingly spent almost half a billion collectively, lobbying for it …
(p 290)

From 2006 until 2009, Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of the former president, worked as an associate at Avenue Capital Group, a $14 billion private equity and hedge fund firm.
Marc Lasry, co-founder of Avenue Capital, was a major Clinton supporter as well as a $1 million investor in a fund managed by the Clintons’ son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky.
The Clinton administration had been rife with Wall Street tycoons.
(Dark Money, Doubleday, 2016, p 323)


The Four Hundred

Few members of New York’s old money crowd were more suspicious of the newly wealthy than Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, whose ancestors had arrived from the Netherlands in 1630. …
It was Mrs Astor who would decide [who was] worthy of ascension into the highest tier of society.
It was a very exclusive club, roughly the number of guests Caroline Astor could comfortably host in her ballroom.
Four hundred was the magic number.


— Sarah Holt, The Gilded Age, PBS American Experience, 2018.


Jane Mayer (1955):
A 2008 study of the wealthiest 400 taxpayers … showed that they earned an average of $202 million and paid an effective income tax rate of less than 20%. …
In other words, the effective tax rate on earning $202 million was lower than the rate paid by Americans earning $34,501 a year.
(Dark Money, Doubleday, 2016, p 288)

Robert Lenzner:
The top 0.1% — about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million — [capture] about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year …
[These] capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400 [and are at taxed at 15%.]
(The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains, Forbes, 20 November 2011)

George Domhoff (1936) [Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Sociology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz]:
[The] average income of the top 400:
  • tripled during the Clinton Administration; and
  • doubled during the first 7 years of the Bush Administration.
[A 6 fold increase in 15 years.]
(Wealth, Income, and Power, September 2005)

Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006):
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power …
(The Tyranny of Control, Free to Choose, Episode 2, PBS, 1980)

Charles Koch (1935)Koch Industries$44.7B
David Koch (1940)Koch Industries$44.7B
Steve Schwarzman (1947)Blackstone$11.3B
Philip Anschutz (1939)Qwest$11.0B
Ken Griffin (1968)Citidal$7.0B
Richard DeVos (1926)Amway$5.8B
Diane Hendricks (1947)ABC Supply$3.6B
Ken Langone (1935)Home Depot$2.9B
Steve Bechtel (1925)Bechtel$2.7B
Stan Hubbard (1933)Hubbard Broadcasting$2.0B
Joe Craft (1950)Alliance Resource Partners$1.4B
Total$137.1B

Jane Mayer (1955):
Of the 200 or so participants meeting secretly [at the Koch's donor summit in Aspen in June 2010,] at least 11 [of the "investors"] were on Forbes’s list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.
(pp 256 & 411)

Fewer than 200 extraordinarily rich individuals and private foundations [account] for the $750 million pooled by DonorsTrust and its sister arm, Donors Capital Fund, since 1999.
(p 347)

DonorsTrust:
You wish to keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues.
Set up a DonorsTrust account and ask that your gifts remain anonymous.
Know that any contributions to your DonorsTrust account that have to be reported to the IRS will not become public information.
Unlike with private foundations, gifts from your account will remain as anonymous as you request.
(p 206)

On November 4, 2014, the investors of the Koch network finally got their money’s worth.
Election Day proved a Republican triumph.
The GOP picked up 9 seats in the Senate, winning full control of both congressional chambers. …
From this point on [Obama] would be largely relegated to playing defense against conservatives’ efforts to roll back everything his administration had done before.
(p 370)

Whether their motives were virtuous or venal, in the course of a few decades a handful of [fabulously wealthy] right-wing philanthropists had changed the course of American politics.
They created a formidable wealth defense movement, which had become a sizable part of what [Peter Buffett] dubbed “the charitable-industrial complex.”
(p 377)

Art Pope (1956) [Former Director, Americans for Prosperity]:
America does not have an aristocracy or a plutocracy.
(p 343)

In a generation, we’ve shifted the public-policy debate in North Carolina from the center-left to the center-right.
(Dark Money, Doubleday, 2016, p 338)





Jane Mayer (1955):
For several years, [Paul Ryan] had been advocating radically deep cuts in government spending, including to Medicare and Medicaid, the two main government health programs for the elderly and the poor. …
His ideas were wildly popular with most of the wealthy donors.
As the country’s highest taxpayers, they would be the biggest beneficiaries of the tax savings produced by spending cuts.
[Needless to say,] none of them needed to rely on government social services for their health or welfare.
(Dark Money, Doubleday, 2016, p 266, emphasis added)

John Galbraith (1908 – 2006):
No legislation in American history [has been] more bitterly [opposed by business] than the … Social Security Act.
(A History of Economics, Penguin, 1987, p 217)

December 18, 2011

2011 11 28 - COP17/CMP7 at Durban

Timeline


The Climate Institute


The 2011 Durban Climate Summit ended with the adoption of a set of 37 formal UN decisions … in three key areas:
  1. Agreement to negotiate a single, legally binding agreement by 2015 that will cover all major carbon pollution emitters including, most importantly, China, India and the United States;
  2. Establishment of the Green Climate Fund, building on the commitment made in Cancun to raise US$100 billion a year to help the world’s poorest nations invest in clean energy and manage the unavoidable impacts of climate change;
  3. Commitment from all countries to increase the level of ambition of national efforts to reduce pollution, building on the formal recognition that existing commitments are not enough to keep global warming below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. …
With the agreement to a have a single legally binding agreement for all nations, an important roadblock and ongoing excuse for limited action has been removed.

The Durban outcomes also have domestic political significance for Australia.
Most importantly the unconditional 5% reduction target is increasingly irrelevant as it is based on the assumption of limited global action.
To increase international credibility and ensure Australia does its fair share internationally the Government should move to the higher end of its target range.
The Coalition is even more exposed as virtually no one believes it can achieve its minimum 5% reduction target with current policies.

(The Durban Climate Summit: Implications For Australia, December 2011, p 4)

December 10, 2011

Sunday Profile

ABC Radio National

Dick Warburton [Head of the Renewable Energy Target Review]:
There are at least 30,000 people who have signed a petition on this saying the opposite to what the climate change people do.
[The science] is just not settled. …
[There's] no convincing evidence that carbon dioxide is a major cause … of global warming.
Not climate change — no question about climate change — climate change is happening: it's happened for ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years and will continue to do so. …
(23 February 2014)

Rob Vertessy [Director, Bureau of Meteorology]:
We probably see, something of order of five times as many very severe heat waves today than we did in the middle of the last century.
And that's a trajectory that we expect to increase. …
(29 March 2015)

Andrew Harper [UN Operations, Jordan:
The apartment [in Homs] which they had been living in had been bombed. …
Two of the family members had died. …
So they're obviously extremely traumatized, particularly the children.
One of the children was just still in her pajamas.
She'd obviously escaped when she was sleeping and didn't have a chance to get changed …
She'd been travelling for the last seven days just in her pajamas.
There was another one whose only possession was her teddy bear which she brought across, which was obviously filthy after travelling through the desert.
(22 September 2013)

The Atlantic

Green Army: Communications



The World Brain

Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943):
When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain …
We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.
Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone.
A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
We shall be able to witness and hear events —
  • the inauguration of a President,
  • the playing of a World Series game,
  • the havoc of an earthquake or
  • the terror of a battle
— just as though we were present.
(When woman is boss, Colliers, 30 January 1926)

Alan Kay (1940):
A combination of [a] ‘carry anywhere’ device and a global information utility such as the ARPA network or two-way cable TV will bring the libraries and schools (not to mention stores and billboards) to the home.
(A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages, Proceedings of the ACM Annual Conference, 1972)

Walter Isaacson (1952) [University Professor of History, Tulane University]:
Over the course of more than three decades, the federal government, working with private industry and research universities, had designed and built a massive infrastructure project, like the interstate highway system but vastly more complex, and then threw it open to ordinary citizens and commercial enterprises.
[The Internet] was funded primarily by public dollars, but it paid off thousands of times over by seeding a new economy and an era of economic growth.
(The Innovators, 2014, p 403)

Jimmy Wales (1966):
Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
(Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales Responds, 28 July 2004)

Timothy Berners-Lee (1955):
The design of the Internet and the Web is a search for a set of rules which will allow computers to work together in harmony, and our spiritual and social quest is for a set of rules which allow people to work together in harmony.
(The World Wide Web and the "Web of Life", 1998, emphasis added)


Price of a Pocket Calculator

(Walter Isaacson, The Innovators, 2014, p 182)
1967$150
1972$100
1975$25
2014$3.62


Vannevar Bush (1890 – 1974)


Director, Office of Scientific Research and Development

The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.
Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations.
  • They will be controlled by a control card or film,
  • they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted,
  • they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and
  • they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation.
Such machines will have enormous appetites.
One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes.
There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things. …

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. …
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.
It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works.
On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading.
There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. …

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. …
Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. …

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein.
They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons.
They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience.
He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good.
Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which
  • to terminate the process, or
  • to lose hope as to the outcome.

(As We May Think, The Atlantic, July 1945)


Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871)


It is the science of calculation — which becomes continually more necessary at each step of our progress, and which must ultimately govern the whole of the applications of science to the arts of life.
(p 114)

[If, in the future, any man should succeed in] constructing an [analytical] engine embodying in itself the whole of the executive department of mathematical analysis upon different principles or by simpler mechanical means, I have no fear of leaving my reputation in his charge, for he alone will be fully able to appreciate the nature of my efforts and the value of their results.
(p 123)

Every shower that falls, every change of temperature that occurs, and every wind that blows, leaves on the vegetable world the traces of its passage; slight, indeed, and imperceptible, perhaps, to us, but no the less permanently recorded in the depths of those wood fabrics.
(p 121)

(James Gleick, The Information, Fourth Estate, 2011)


Augusta Ada King (1815 – 52)


Countess of Lovelace

[Imagination] is that which penetrates into the unseen worlds around us, the worlds of Science.
It is that which feels & discovers what is, the real which we see not, which exists not for our senses.
Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown worlds … may then, with the fair white wings of Imagination, hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.
(James Gleick, The Information, Fourth Estate, 2011, p 112)

The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine … is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs …
We say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.
(Eugene Kim & Betty Toole, Ada and the First Computer, Scientific American, May 1999, p 80)

[The] Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere 'calculating machines'.
It holds a position wholly its own …
In enabling mechanism to combine together general symbols, in successions of unlimited variety and extent, a uniting link is established between the operations of matter and the abstract mental processes of the most abstract branch of mathematical science.
A new, a vast and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind …
Thus not only the mental the material, but the theoretical and practical in the mathematical world, are brought into more intimate and effective connexion with each other.
We are not aware of [anything] hitherto proposed, or even thought of, as a practical possibility, any more than the idea of a thinking or of a reasoning machine.
(1842)

London Examiner:
With an understanding thoroughly masculine in solidity, grasp and firmness, Lady Lovelace had all the delicacies of the most refined female character.
Her manners, her tastes, her accomplishments, were feminine in the nicest sense of the word; and the superficial observer would never have divined the strength and the knowledge that lay hidden under the womanly graces.
(Jack Rochester & John Gantz, The Naked Computer, Morrow, 1983, p 44)

Prosperity Without Growth 1

Green Army: Persons of Interest


Tim Jackson (1957):
[The] story of [our consumer society one] of us being encouraged …
  • to spend money we don't have,
  • on things we don't need,
  • to create impressions that won't last,
  • on people we don't care about or who don't care about us.
(Deakin Lecture, Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, 4 July 2010)

Low interest rates lead to easy credit, which creates higher asset prices.
Capital gains from these assets favour the richer members of society and increase both income and wealth inequality.
Since richer households typically have a higher propensity to save than poorer ones, this leads to a further increase in funds, lowering interest rates further and creating even more cheap credit.
(p 33)

Around 2600 employees at British banks were paid a total of £3.4 billion in bonuses in 2013, an average £1.3 million each almost 50 times the average annual salary in Britain [ie, equivalent to the average lifetime income.]
(Note 34, p 234)

[A study in] London revealed that life expectancy in Haringey (a poorer area) is 17 years shorter than it is in in Chelsea (a richer one).
People living in more deprived areas have
  • worse levels of drug abuse,
  • more alcohol-related hospital admissions, and
  • higher incidences of postnatal depression
Children brought up in those areas have
  • lower educational attendance, and
  • fewer qualifications.
(p 72)

The Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1992, committed the advanced economies to reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 5% over 1990 levels before 2012. …
By 2015, carbon dioxide emissions were over 60% higher than they had been in 1990 and being released into the atmosphere from human activities at a rate 'unprecedented in the last 66 million years'.
(Prosperity Without Growth, 2nd Edition, 2017, p 18)

United Nations Environment Program:
From 1981 to 2005 the global economy more than doubled, but 60% of the world’s ecosystems were either degraded or over-used.
(October 2008)

Prosperity Without Growth


Summary


Growth has delivered its benefits, at best, unequally.
A fifth of the world’s population earns just 2% of global income.
Inequality is higher in the OECD nations than it was 20 years ago.
And while the rich got richer, middle-class incomes in Western countries were stagnant in real terms long before the recession. …

[A] world in which nine billion people all aspire to the level of affluence achieved in the OECD nations … would need to be 15 times the size of this one by 2050 and 40 times bigger by the end of the century. …

Climate change, fuel security, collapsing biodiversity and global inequality … are issues that can no longer be relegated to the next generation or the next electoral cycle. …

[That] poorer nations stand in urgent need of economic development [does not mean that] ever-rising incomes for the already-rich are an appropriate goal for policy in a world constrained by ecological limits.
(p 6)


Forward


The myth of growth has failed us.
It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day.
It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival.
It has failed … to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods. …

Prosperity for the few founded on ecological destruction and persistent social injustice is no foundation for a civilised society. …

[At] the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures.
It transcends material concerns.
It resides in the quality of our lives and in the health and happiness of our families.
It is present in the strength of our relationships and our trust in the community.
It is evidenced by our satisfaction at work and our sense of shared meaning and purpose.
It hangs on our potential to participate fully in the life of society.

Prosperity consists in our ability to flourish as human beings — within the ecological limits of a finite planet.
The challenge for our society is to create the conditions under which this is possible.
(p 5)

December 9, 2011

James Hansen

Green Army: Persons of Interest

I would like to draw three main conclusions:
  1. The Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements.
  2. The global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect.
  3. Our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to affect the probability of extreme events, such as summer heat waves.
James Hansen (1941), Senate Committee Hearing, Energy and Natural Resources, 23 June 1998.


Chuck Kutscher [National Renewable Energy Laboratory]:
If you want to know the scientific consensus on global warming, read the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But if you want to know what the consensus will be ten years from now, read Jim Hansen's work.

Protecting the Home Planet


[Nature] and the laws of physics cannot compromise — they are what they are.
(p xi)

[On] June 23, 1988 … I testified to a Senate committee [that,] with 99% confidence [the] Earth was being affected by human-made greenhouse gases, and the planet had entered a period of long-term warming.
(p xv)

"Clean coal" is an oxymoron.
The clean-coal concept, at least so far, has been … a diversion that the coal industry and its government supporters employ to allow dirty-coal uses to continue. …
[To prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, coal] use must be prohibited unless and until the emissions can be captured and safely disposed of.
(p 174)

Now, what are the means by which fossil fuel use can be reduced and eventually phased out? The first priority … must go to energy efficiency. …
People in the United States, Canada, and Australia use about twice as much energy per capita as those in Europe or Japan …
California achieves energy efficiency close to that of Europe and Japan.
Since 1975, per capita use of electricity in California has remained constant, while growing 50% in the rest of the United States. …
(p 190)

Utility regulations in California also are structured such that the utilities make more money by encouraging efficiency rather than by selling more energy.

The second priority … is renewable energies …
(p 191)

However … renewable energies will not be a sufficient source of [baseload] electric power [in the forseeable future.]
[Currently,] there are now just two options for nearly carbon-free large-scale baseload electric power: (p 193)

[It would cost trillions] of dollars for new carbon-capturing power plants to replace all the old ones in China and India that emit carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
(p 194)

The World Health Organization calculates that there might be as many as four thousand [excess] cancer deaths because of radiation released at Chernobyl, which compares with one hundred thousand other cancer deaths among the same population. …
[A conservative estimate of deaths attributable to coal related air pollution is] ten thousand deaths per year — every year.
(p 195-6)

[The] backbone of a solution to the climate problem is a flat carbon emissions price applied across all fossil fuels at the source.
This carbon price (fee, tax) must rise continually, at a rate that is economically sound.
The funds must be distributed back to the citizens (not to special interests) — otherwise the tax rate will never be high enough to lead to a clean energy future.
(p 219)

Climate history is our best source of information about how sensitive the climate system is, and, it turns out, the climate is remarkably sensitive — large climate changes can occur in response to even small forcings.
(p 35)

[Humans,] by burning fossil fuels, are now increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide by 2 ppm per year.
[This human induced] climate forcing is [twenty thousand times] more powerful than the natural forcing [ie one ten thousandth of 1 ppm per year due to tectonic activity.]
(p 161)

The carbon dioxide amount 34 million years ago, when Antarctica became cold enough to harbor a large ice sheet, was found to be 450 [350-550] ppm …

If humanity burns most of the fossil fuels, doubling or tripling the preindustrial carbon dioxide level, Earth will surely head toward the ice-free condition …
It is difficult to say how long it will take for the melting to be complete, but once ice sheet disintegration gets well under way, it will be impossible to stop.
(p 160, emphasis added)

[The] last time that Earth was 2 or 3 degrees warmer than today [ie] about three million years ago, [sea] level was about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today. …
About a billion people now live at elevations less than 25 meters. …
A sea level rise of [even] 5 meters (about 17 feet) would submerge most of Florida, Bangladesh, the European lowlands …
(p 141-2)

The rate of sea level rise can be rapid once ice sheets begin to disintegrate.
About 14,000 years ago, sea level increased 4 to 5 meters per century for several consecutive centuries — an average rate of 1 meter every 20 or 25 years.
(p 38)

If ice sheets begin to disintegrate, there will not be a new stable sea level on any foreseeable time scale.
Instead, we will have created a situation with continual change, with intermittent calamities at thousands of cities around the world. …
Change will not be smooth and uniform.
Instead, local catastrophes will occur in association with regional storms.
Given the enormous infrastructure and historical treasures in our coastal cities, it borders on insanity to suggest that humans should [rely on adaptation to, as opposed to mitigation of, climate change.]

Would coastal cities be rebuilt, given the knowledge that sea level will continue to rise? …
[Where] would people in low-lying regions such as Bangladesh migrate to?
Global chaos will be difficult to avoid if we allow the ice sheets to become unstable.
(p 85)

[Most] of the climate response to fossil fuel emissions will occur … within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. …
[If] we burn all [known conventional] reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate [a] runaway greenhouse [effect and] destroy all life on the planet …
If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale … the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty.
(p 236, emphasis added)

The [safe] limit on permitted global warming, if we wish to preserve the great ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, and thus preserve the coastlines that have existed for the past seven thousand years, is much less than has generally been assumed [ie 350 ppm of carbon dioxide.]
Halting global warming is still feasible — but requires international cooperation in taking urgent, unprecedented actions, which would have additional benefits for human health, agriculture, and the environment.
(p 34)


[In 1863] Abraham Lincoln … established the National Academy of Sciences {to advise the nation on important matters that required the best scientific expertise}.
President Bush, early in his first term, asked the academy for advice on global warming.
Specifically, the White House sought the academy's evaluation of the conclusions reached by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [which had been making] increasingly strong statements about the likely consequences of continued increases of greenhouse gases.
The White House was probably hoping that the academy would document some criticisms of the [IPCC's conclusions.]
If so, the White House was disappointed.
(p 56)

The answer that the National Academy of Sciences had delivered … was not the answer the White House wanted to hear.
The president did not ask the academy for advice about global warming again during the remainder of his eight years in power.
(p 58)

Coal burning at power plants is the greatest source of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
It is also the source most susceptible to control.
[Bush's decision in March 2001] not to restrict power plant emissions reneged on a promise [he] made repeatedly during the 2000 presidential election campaign … to include carbon dioxide in a "four pollutant strategy" to reduce the most damaging pollutants from power plants.
That promise, together with the Clinton-Gore administration's poor record in constraining carbon dioxide emissions, stymied Al Gore from raising the environment and climate change as an effective campaign issue.
Given the razor-thin margin in the 2000 election, and the environmental awareness of Florida voters, it seems clear that Gore would have become president if it were not for Bush's pollution-reduction promise.
(p 2)

[On the other hand, the Bush administration did take steps to reduce] non-carbon dioxide emissions, including methane and black soot. …
[The methane-to-markets program] helps reduce methane emissions via capture at coal mines, landfills, and agricultural and waste management facilities and uses the captured methane as fuel.
White House interest helped Kruger and the EPA initiate the program in the United States and extend its effectiveness via cooperation with several developing countries that have larger methane emissions than the United States.
This approach, extended globally, is better than the Kyoto Protocol approach [since methane] is one of the escape hatches that make the Kyoto approach ineffectual for carbon dioxide.
The Bush administration also deserves credit for major tightening of soot emission limits in the face of opposition from diesel producers, truckers, and other industries.
In addition to supporting rules that reduced soot emissions from trucks and buses, the administration later expanded regulations to cover tractors, trains, and ships.
(p 52, emphasis added)


In my talks I began to emphasize the first line of the NASA mission statement:
[To] understand and protect our home planet.
But in the spring of 2006, a NASA colleague sent me an e-mail warning me that I had better stop using that statement as a rationalization for my actions because it no longer existed.
Sure enough, when I checked the mission statement on the NASA Web site, the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" was gone.
[Nobody] knew what had happened.
It had just disappeared.
The second thing to disappear was 20% of the NASA earth science research and analysis budget.
Because most of the budget goes toward fixed items, such as rent and civil service salaries, a 20% cut is monstrous, a signal almost of going out of business.
(p 135)
Mark Bowen:
A high insider at headquarters told me that Michael Griffin rewrote the mission statement and the agency's strategic plan basically on his own.
(Censoring Science, Dutton, 2008)
(p 136)
Michael Griffin (1949) [NASA Administrator, 2005-9]:
[Climate change is only a problem if you] assume that the state of the Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had, and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change.
First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown.
And second of all, … I would ask which human beings … are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have … right now, is the best climate for all other human beings.
I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
(NPR)
(p 152)

David Mould, [George W Bush appointee and] head of public affairs for NASA, [had] held senior positions in public and media relations at the Southern Company of Atlanta, the second-largest holding company of coal-burning utilities in the United States and thus the second greatest emitter of carbon dioxide.
Southern's contributions to the Republican Party [in 2000] were exceeded … only by Enron's.
(p 127)

Would you like to know more?

December 4, 2011

Climate Change Research Centre: Climate Science 2009

Green Army: Research and Development

It is over three years since the drafting of text was completed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). …
The purpose of this report is to synthesize the most policy-relevant climate science published since the close-off of material for the last IPCC report. …
This report covers the range of topics evaluated by Working Group I of the IPCC, namely the Physical Science Basis. …
The authors primarily comprise previous IPCC lead authors familiar with the rigor and completeness required for a scientific assessment of this nature.
(The Copenhagen Diagnosis, 2009: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science, 2009, p 5)

December 3, 2011

Peter Singer

Green Army: Persons of Interest


Peter Singer (1946):
[Evolutionary explanations say] nothing about the motives people have when they engage in co-operative behaviour, any more than explaining sexual behaviour in terms of reproduction suggests that people are motivated to have sex because they wish to have children.
(One World, Text, 2002, p 181)

Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832):
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor.
It may one day come to be recognized that
  • the number of the legs,
  • the villosity of the skin, or
  • the termination of the os sacrum,
are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?
Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse?
But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old.
But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail?
The question is not,
  • Can they reason! nor
  • Can they talk?, but,
  • Can they suffer?
(An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 1789)

Robert Bellah [Sociologist]:
In earlier days the individualism in America was one that also honored community values.
Today we have an ideology of individualism that simply encourages people to maximize personal advantage.

The Annual Holocaust


[In 2011] 6.9 million children died from preventable poverty-related diseases. …
[In] 1990, that figure was 12 million. …
Its dropping all the time.
[So] extreme poverty [is not] a black hole where you just pour money into it and does no good. …
We are actually making significant progress …

[Nonetheless,] 6.9 million children dying every year is 19,000 children dying every day.
Imagine [if] there were 19,000 children … at some sports ground …
You had them all there, in the stands, and they were going to die in 24 hours — unless somebody helped them. …
All of the media of the world would be focusing on this.
The donations would be pouring in.
They would certainly not die.
There would be enough people to ensure that they had what they needed.

But because the 19,000 children [are scattered] around the world [and it's] not a new story [—] its not in the media. …
And … although I hope the number will continue to decline — if its not 19,000 it will be 18 or 17,000 for 2012 and it'll be something similar, perhaps a little bit less, for next year, and so on — it will go on for years and years, with all those millions of children dying unnecessarily because we could be helping them. …

Currently there are 24 billion animals in factory farms around the world. …
Three and a half times the population of the world. …
We have made progress, not enough, we need to make faster progress, but we're headed in the right direction. …

But there is a third issue … where I don't think we really are making progress.
And its one which … has the potential to undo the good that we do in those others.
That issue … is climate change. …
Its already causing [as estimated] 600,000 extra deaths a year — not just through extreme weather events … but through things like tropical diseases spreading into areas where they previously did not exist.
Disease, like malaria and dengue, that now have a wider range because of global warming.

(Great moral issues for the 21st century, Big Ideas, ABC Radio National, 24 July 2013)


The Equal Consideration of Interests


The principle of equal consideration of interests prohibits making our readiness to consider the interests of others depend on their abilities or other characteristics, apart from the characteristic of having interests. …
Enslaving those who score below a certain line on an intelligence test [or on the basis of some other morally irrelevant characteristic] would not … be compatible with equal consideration.
Intelligence [race, gender, sexual orientation etc have] nothing to do with many important interests that humans have [such as] the interest
  • in avoiding pain,
  • in satisfying basic needs for food and shelter,
  • to love and care for any children one may have,
  • to enjoy friendly and loving relations with others and
  • to be free to pursue one’s projects without unnecessary interference from others.
(p 21)


[If] it is in our power to prevent something very bad happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it. …
[Because this injunction] applies only when nothing comparably significant is at stake … the principle cannot lead to the kinds of actions of which nonconsequentialists strongly disapprove — serious violations of individual rights, injustice, broken promises and so on.
(p 199)

(Practical Ethics, 3rd Edition, 2011


Social Costs — Private Profits


[For private enterprise to be able to generate and retain profits, it requires:]
  • a legal system that fosters and protects [resource] rights,
  • private ownership of land,
  • an accepted currency,
  • systems of transport,
  • the production and sale of energy,
  • the existence of an educated labour force,
  • corporate oversight,
  • the protection of patents …
  • the prevention of monopolies,
  • judicial resolution of disputes,
  • national defence and
  • the protection of trading routes.
(p 19)

Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has estimated … that social capital is probably responsible for at least 90% of income in wealthy societies.
(p 20)

A system of government is conceptually prior to property rights — and a system of government requires taxation. …
[In] a complex modern society, there is no way of sorting out what your property entitlements would be, if there were no government and no taxes.
(p 21)

Bertrand Russell

Green Army: Persons of Interest


Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), The Harm That Good Men Do, 1926.


[The universe] is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it.

Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642), The Assayer, 1623.


Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630):
My aim is to show that the heavenly machine is not a kind of divine, live being, but a kind of clockwork … in so far as nearly all the manifold motions are caused by a most simple, magnetic, and material force, just as all motions of the clock are caused by a simple weight.
(Letter to Hans Herwart)

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543):
All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe. …
[And the Earth] performs a complete rotation on its fixed poles in a daily motion.
(Commentariolus, 1514)

The harmony of the whole world teaches us their truth, if only — as they say — we would look at the thing with both eyes.
(On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, 1543)

Martin Luther (1483 – 1546):
People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon.
Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best.
This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.

John Calvin (1509 – 64):
Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?

Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430):
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger.
This is the disease of curiosity.
It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature.
Those secrets:
  • which are beyond our understanding,
  • which can avail us nothing, and
  • which man should not wish to learn.
(Confessions, Book X, Chapter 35)

John Locke (1632 - 1704):
Good men are men still liable to mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light. …
[Thus, it becomes] all men to maintain peace and the common offices of humanity and friendship in the diversity of opinions, since we cannot reasonably expect that any one should readily arid obsequiously quit his own opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the understanding of man acknowledges not. …
For where is the man that has uncontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns …
(Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1690)

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970)


Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas: its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.

(ABC of Relativity, 4th Edition, 1925, p 113)


Philosophers have too often … permitted themselves to pronounce on empirical questions, and found themselves, as a result, in disastrous conflict with well-attested facts.
(p 13)

It is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good.
In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

(Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914 / 2009, p 23)


The growth of electronic and communication engineering … is transforming the world under our very eyes in a manner more radical [than even the industrial revolution.]

(The Wisdom of the West, MacDonald, 1959, p 300)


If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.
If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.


The men who advocate an unpopular reform are exceptional in disinterestedness and zeal for the public good; but those who hold power after the reform has been carried out are likely to belong, in the main, to the ambitious executive type which has in all ages possessed itself of the government of nations.
And this type has never shown itself tolerant of opposition or friendly to freedom.


The glorification of the State, and the doctrine that it is every citizen's duty to serve the State, are radically against progress and against liberty.
The State, though at present a source of much evil, is also a means to certain good things, and will be needed so long as violent and destructive impulses remain common.
But it is MERELY a means, and a means which needs to be very carefully and sparingly used if it is not to do more harm than good.
It is not the State, but the community, the worldwide community of all human beings present and future, that we ought to serve.
And a good community does not spring from the glory of the State, but
  • from the unfettered development of individuals:
  • from happiness in daily life,
  • from congenial work giving opportunity for whatever constructiveness each man or woman may possess,
  • from free personal relations embodying love and taking away the roots of envy in thwarted capacity from affection, and above all
  • from the joy of life and its expression in the spontaneous creations of art and science.
It is these things that make an age or a nation worthy of existence, and these things are not to be secured by bowing down before the State.
It is the individual in whom all that is good must be realized, and the free growth of the individual must be the supreme end of a political system which is to re-fashion the world.

(Proposed Roads to Freedom, 1918 / 2014)


Sceptical Essays (1928)


As war becomes more scientific it becomes more expensive, so that the leading financiers of the world, if they combined, could decide the issue by giving or withholding loans.
And by the sort of pressure which has been brought to bear upon Germany since the Treaty of Versailles they could secure the virtual disarmament of any group that they dislike.
In this way they would gradually come to control all the large armed forces of the world.
(p 204)

[If] our civilisation continues much longer to pursue the interests of the rich, it is doomed.
It is because I do not desire the collapse of civilisation that I am a socialist.
(p 213)

Perhaps in time men may come to feel that intelligence is an asset to a community, but I cannot say that I see much sign of any movement in this direction.
(p 201)

Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because,
  • owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread information, and
  • owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.
(p 142)

It may be laid down broadly that irrationalism, ie, disbelief in objective fact, arises almost always from the desire
  • to assert something for which there is no evidence, or
  • to deny something for which there is very good evidence.
(p 34)

The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this:
  1. that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain;
  2. that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and
  3. that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.
(p 2)

Understanding of human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life.
Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons.
When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.
(p 70)

We do not like to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to [blame] when we suffer.
It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth.
For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred …
If so-and-so’s wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy.
(p 114)

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.
I do not believe that, on the balance, religious belief has been a force for good.
Although I am prepared to admit that in certain times and places it has had some good effects, I regard it as belonging
  • to the infancy of human reason, and
  • to a stage of development which we are now outgrowing.
(p 125)

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in
  • hearing all sides,
  • trying to ascertain all the relevant facts,
  • controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and
  • cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate.
These methods are practised in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge.
(p 129)

There are two simple principles which, if they were adopted, would solve almost all social problems.
  • The first is that education should have for one of its aims to teach people only to believe propositions when there is some reason to think that they are true.
  • The second is that jobs should be given solely for fitness to do the work.
(p 140)

With regard to any science, there are two kinds of effects which it may have.
  • On the one hand, experts may make inventions or discoveries which can be utilised by the holders of power.
  • On the other hand, the science may influence imagination, and so alter people’s analogies and expectations.
There is, strictly speaking, a third kind of effect, namely, a change in manner of life with all its consequences.
(p 174)

[The] individualist philosophy to which [an American] is accustomed prevents him from imagining that there is anything to be gained by collective action.
There is, therefore, no effective opposition to the holders of power, who remain free to enjoy the advantages of a social system which gives them wealth and world-wide influence. …

In a stable social system there must be some method of making the less fortunate acquiesce in their lot, and this is usually some kind of creed.
But in order to secure widespread acceptance, a creed has to offer advantages to the whole community sufficiently great to compensate for the injustices which it condones.
In America, [Capitalism] offers:
  • technical progress, and
  • [an] increase in the general standard of material comfort.
[However, it] may not be able to go on providing the latter indefinitely …
(p 192)

[At the] latest, some time during the twenty-first century, there must be either a cataclysm or a central authority controlling the whole world.
I shall assume that civilised mankind will have enough sense, or that America will have enough power, to prevent a cataclysm involving a return to barbarism.
(p 204)

[It] will become essential to the preservation of peace and well-being that the backward nations shall limit the increase of population, as the more civilised nations are already doing.
Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life. …

I believe that the problem of organising the world as a single economic and political unit will have to be solved before questions of justice can be tackled uccessfully.
I am an international socialist, but I expect to see internationalism realised sooner than Socialism.
(p 206)


Killing Your Way to Paradise


Odo of Châtillon (c1035 – 99) [Pope Urban II, 1088 – 99]:
[Let] this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God:
It is the will of God!
(Summons to the First Crusade, Council of Clermont, 1095)

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
The Anabaptists repudiated all law, since they held that the good man will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit, who cannot be bound by formulas.
From this premiss they arrive at communism and sexual promiscuity; they were, therefore, exterminated after a heroic resistance.
(p 20)

Gradually weariness resulting from the wars of religion led to the growth of belief in religious toleration, which was one of the sources of the movement which developed into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberalism.
The Thirty Years' War persuaded everybody that neither Protestants nor Catholics could be completely victorious …
(A History of Western Philosophy, 1945/61, pp 510-1)

Steven Pinker (1954):
The Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, [was decried by Pope Innocent X as] "null, void, invalid, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, [and] empty of meaning and effect for all time."
(p 143)

In the 13th century the Cathars of southern France embraced the Albigensian heresy, according to which there are two gods, one of good and one of evil.
An infuriated papacy, in collusion with the king of France, sent waves of armies to the region [to eradicate them.]
(The Better Angels of Our Nature, Penguin, 2011, pp 140-1)

Martin Luther (1483 – 1546):
[The Jews should be dealt with in the same fashion as a surgeon treats a gangrenous limb:]
Cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. …
Burn down their synagogues …
[Deal] harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying 3,000 lest the whole people perish …
If this does not help we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God's wrath and be damned with them.

… I advise that:
  • usury be prohibited to them, and …
  • all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping.
[Let] them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow …
For it is not fitting that they should … idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting and, on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat.
(On the Jews and Their Lies, 1542)


Death Tolls of Christian Wars and Massacres

(Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011, note 28, pp 140-1 & 704, adapted)
Thirty Years’ War7,500,000
Crusades3,000,000
Huguenot Wars2,800,000
Albigensian Crusade450,000
Spanish Inquisition350,000


An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)


The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies. …

Venereal disease is God's punishment for sin.
It is true that, through a guilty husband, this punishment may fall on an innocent woman and her children, but this is a mysterious dispensation of Providence, which it would be impious to question. …
Since it is the appointed penalty for sin, all measures for its avoidance are also sin—except, of course, a virtuous life. …

Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, in their old age, laid it down that all sexual intercourse is wicked, even in marriage and with view to offspring. …

We are told that sin consists in disobedience to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent.
If He is, nothing contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen. …
[So, if it is God that] causes men to sin, [how can it be] fair to send them to hell for what they cannot [help? …]

When anaesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God.
It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep
This proved that anaesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve.
In the West votes for women proved this doctrine mistaken, but in Japan, to this day, women in childbirth are not allowed any alleviation through anaesthetics.
As the Japanese do not believe in Genesis, this piece of sadism must have some other justification. …

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. …
No one can deny … that it is easy, given military power, to produce a population of fanatical lunatics. …

By instilling nonsense, [education] unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.
If all governments taught the same nonsense, the harm would not be so great.
Unfortunately each has its own brand, and the diversity serves to produce hostility between the devotees of different creeds. …

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Modern theological opponents of birth control … pretend to think that God will provide, however many mouths there may be to feed.
They ignore the fact that He has never done so hitherto, but has left mankind exposed to periodical famines in which millions died of hunger. …
By their own theology, most of the children whom their opposition to birth control will cause to exist will go to hell.
We must suppose, therefore, that they oppose the amelioration of life on earth because they think it a good thing that many millions should suffer eternal torment. …

Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone. …
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because
  • in arithmetic there is knowledge, but
  • in theology there is only opinion.
So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard …
[You] will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants. …

When the Romans won victories in the Punic wars, the Carthaginians became persuaded that their misfortunes were due to a certain laxity which had crept into the worship of Moloch.
Moloch liked having children sacrificed to him, and preferred them aristocratic; but the noble families of Carthage had adopted the practice of surreptitiously substituting plebeian children for their own offspring.
This, it was thought, had displeased the god, and at the worst moments even the most aristocratic children were duly consumed in the fire.
Strange to say, the Romans were victorious in spite of this democratic reform on the part of their enemies. …

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. …
[So] it is to be feared that the Nazis, as defeat draws nearer, will increase the intensity of their campaign for exterminating Jews.
Fear generates impulses of cruelty, and therefore promotes such superstitious beliefs as seem to justify cruelty.


In Praise of Aristocracy


Aristotle (384 – 22 BCE):
Citizens should not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue.

Scott Stephens:
I do think that social hierarchies are important.
I do think that according roles of public significance the honorability, the nobility that's due [to] them;
I do think that's important.
I think that de Tocqueville was right, that democratic society ultimately cannot survive without some latent sense of an aristocracy; that there is a virtuous class of people who have been set aside to be uncommonly selfless …

Judith Brett (1949) [Emeritus Professor of Politics, Latrobe University]:
I think all that stuff about aristocracy, that [Scott] was going on about, is just rubbish …
[What] we want in a democracy, are politicians who are both representative and larger than life … whereas, the aristocracy were [removed, they] were a different class of people.
We live in democracies; there's no going back to that.
One of the skills … of, say, John Howard, was that he was both able to represent and be recognizable.
People want to be able to recognize in their politicians someone they can … understand and identify with.
Because then, they think, that politician may understand them …

( Faith in politics: Can it be restored?, The Minefield, 6 August 2015)