Recent Letters Unpublished: Environmentalism 3

Vincent J. Curtis

20 Nov 2013

 

Over the last several weeks, my hometown newspaper, The Hamilton Spectator, has run a series of Op-Ed pieces all of which conclude that the exploitation of the Alberta oil sands needs to be stopped.

 

- In the case of K.S., he wants them stopped because it would make Iranian oil more valuable in the world economy.

 

- In the case of D.M., he is a hair-shirt environmentalist who wants everyone to shiver in the dark and walk to work.  Abundant oil and gas make that difficult to enforce.

 

- In the case of D.R., he is a kid with an intellect but devoid of worldly experience, and apparently happy to see suffering visited on people he will never meet.

 

L.H. just wants people to notice her.

 

Today, we have T.W. of the Pembina Institute making the completely irrational claim that the loss of nuclear generating capacity is good for Ontario.  (Maybe he is an Albertan who is seeking revenge!)

 

None of these enviro wackos has observed that for every ton of steel made in Hamilton by ArcelorMittal Dofasco, 1.2 tons of carbon dioxide are created.  At 4.2 million tons of steel made last year, that’s 4.96 million tons of carbon dioxide.  Rather than make the case that their steel making neighbors be impoverished and thrown out of work, these fearless Spec Op-ed writers make the case against Albertans instead.  Their favorite whipping boy is Steven Harper, who represents a Calgary riding, and who, much to their chagrin, supports the development and exploitation of highly profitable Alberta oil sands.

 

What I don’t understand is why the Spectator opinion pages express such a volume of anti-Alberta sentiment.  Does the Calgary Herald run editorials demanding that steel making at Dofasco be shut down in order that Canada lower it’s carbon emissions?  Has Fort McMurray Today demanded that the printing presses at the Spec be shut down in order to alleviate the world-wide shortage of ink?

 

Where’s the balance?  Does the Spec have a hate on for things Alberta, like tar sands and Steven Harper?

-30-

 

 

 

Recent Letters Unpublished: Environmentalism 2

Vincent J. Curtis

19 Nov. 2013
 

The older I get, the less interest I have in the wisdom of youth.

 

This sign of old age was reinforced by the unfortunate example of youthful wisdom proffered by Mohawk student D.R., who unburdened himself of his insights into global warming in the referenced article.

 

R.’s resume is void of scientific education or experience.  Thus he used the word ‘traditionally’ without a second thought, as in “Traditionally, scientists shy away from linking specific weather events with climate change.”  Scientists do not do so out of tradition, but out of a desire to avoid looking foolish.  In the first place, to link specific weather events with climate change is to confute weather with climate.  Secondly, it is an error to assign a single specific cause to a weather event.  R. lacks the experience to distinguish between tradition and habit.

 

Further along, R. let loose the howler that “IPCC publications are the most diligently vetted scientific documents ever produced.”  The joke in that line is how widely known many of the IPCC claims have proven to be false through the lack of vetting.   Even the IPCC, in its most recent publication, has had to admit that no global warming has taken place in the last fifteen years.  But you won’t find that consideration in R.’s work of wisdom.

 

Making an altogether philosophical leap, R. concludes that the world’s problem with global warming is on the way to solution by Canada finding a Prime Minister who has a competent strategy to solve the problem.  The trouble is, competence is a human trait, not a trait of strategy.  But a competent Canadian Prime Minister with a strategy is not going to solve the alleged problem of global warming so long as billions in the third world live in poverty and seek to the means to a better life.

 

When he gets older, Mr. R. will be satisfied with a Canadian Prime Minister who does not screw up the means of Canadians living a better life.  That is competence in a Prime Minister.

-30-

 

Recent Letters Unpublished: Environmentalism 1

Vincent J. Curtis

15 Nov 2013

 

The thing to understand when dealing with environmentalists is that they care about the environment, not people.  To an environmentalist, people and their activities are the causes of problems in the environment, and the environment is the thing they care about.

 

The belief that mankind is the problem is often accompanied with a political and moralistic agenda towards a solution.  For example, rarely is an environmentalist not heard calling for the curtailment of some wealth producing activity.  In extreme cases, such as in those who believe in Gaia or in “deep ecology,” the good for the planet of the existence of mankind is called into question.  Mankind being the source of the problem, mankind’s ruinous activities on the planet would be at “sustainable” levels were mankind to number one billion instead of the current seven billion souls.  An echo of this sentiment is found in in Mr. M.’s article, where he congratulates Ontario for reducing total emissions of carbon dioxide but observes that Ontario could have done much better had her population not increased so much in the last two decades.

 

To an environmentalist, mankind’s quality of life have to be made to suffer for the sin of living better and better.

 

Take Mr. D.M., who has arranged his life so that he has been car-free for nine years, has lowered his electricity bill to $34.00 a month, and lives in a modest townhouse.  He has, in his words, “tr[ied] to do the right thing for the environment.” 

 

I am glad that Mr. M. has lived accordance with his beliefs; he deserves to.  But not everyone wants to live the pinched life of an ascetic monk.  A Hamiltonian who wants to put his canoe into a quiet Algonquin lake has to drive a vehicle big enough to carry a canoe.  That canoe, whether made of fibreglass, Kevlar, or birchbark, caused untold destruction of the environment in its manufacture.  To say nothing of the manufacture of the newest canoeing equipment, camping gear, and foods for that trip.

 

A problem arises, however, when Mr. M. thinks that everyone else should live the life of the ascetic-monk as he does.  In particular, he thinks that Alberta should be impoverished because the exploitation of her tar-sands resources offends his sensibilities. 

 

When an environmentalist says “everyone knows…” you can be sure that what follows is far-fetched nonsense.  In Mr. M.’s case, mankind has to reduce the use of fossil fuels so that homes around the Red Hill Parkway in Hamilton won’t be flooded again.  Apparently, a “damaged climate” is doing this, and engineering deficiencies are in no way responsible.  He says that “300,000 deaths a year are caused by climate change” except that climate change has not happened yet.   Climate change is supposed to be the consequence of 100 more years of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates, and cannot have happened yet!   We have heard this so-many deaths per year argument before, but it was associated not with climate change but with the emissions that came from coal burning.

 

What is amusing is Mr. M.’s admiration of China for leading the world in “installed renewable energy capacity…”  China’s air pollution problems are world-famous, and last month a Chinese city had to be shut down for several days to allow pollution to dissipate.  There is a theory among conservatives that an environmentalist is green on the outside and red on the inside.  By citing China favorably in the face of its well-known pollution problems, Mr. M. seems to confirm conservative paranoia.

 

In a free society, people are allowed to hold and espouse any belief they like.  They can bay at the moon if like, so long as it doesn’t disturb the neighbours.

 

An environmentalist may have a grain in truth somewhere in his utterances, but it is usually surrounded by arrant nonsense and one needs to be careful in separating truth from fiction.

-30-

 

 

 

Gettysburg at 150: Do soldiers die in vain?

 

 

Vincent J. Curtis


19 November 2013
 

GETTYSBURG, PA.  One hundred and fifty years ago, on Cemetery Hill, a ceremony was held to dedicate a memorial and a graveyard for the Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg.  Edward Everett was the featured speaker.  He spoke for two hours.

 

President Abraham Lincoln was invited to express a few appropriate remarks on the dedication.  He delivered the Gettysburg Address.  The speech was over in less than three minutes.  So short was the speech that the photographer of the event barely had time to set up his camera and snap the shutter as Lincoln sat down.

 

On the occasion of the 150^th Anniversary of that speech, a succession of Edward Everetts addressed the few thousand people who attended, followed by a recitation of the speech by an actor dressed up as Honest Abe.  President Obama did not attend.

 

In the course of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln raised the matter of the dead at Gettysburg having died in vain.  He exhorted his audience to highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.  He was asking his audience to continue to prosecute the war to final victory in order that those who died on behalf of the Union at Gettysburg and elsewhere shall have had their goal achieved.

 

Does that mean that soldiers who die in a losing cause die in vain?

 

The Southern memorials at Gettysburg seem to support the view that they do.  The cause of the South during the Civil War was the break up of the American Union and the preservation of the institution of slavery.  Southern memorials refer to the devotion to duty, the sacrifices, and the courage in the face of long odds and much suffering of the Southern soldiers.  None of the memorials speak of the Lost Cause, for today everyone realizes the Lost Cause was evil in both its respects.

 

The people of Gettysburg look upon their military park as a place where the United States comes together.  There must be more Confederate flags flown at Gettysburg than anywhere in the old South.  Confederate flags are placed upon the most touching of the Southern memorials: the place where CS General Lewis Armistead fell having crossed the wall near the copse of trees and the places of furthest advance of the 26^th North Carolina and the 11^th Mississippi, who reached the stone wall between the Emmetsburg Pike and the Taneytown Road at the crisis of Pickett’s Charge.  Having won, Northerners can forgive.  They can show respect.  It would be hurtful if they did the opposite.

 

If it is granted that soldiers can die in vain, then it is incumbent that the cause soldiers do die for ought to be good.  If they die in a losing cause, they die in the satisfaction that their cause was good.  Politicians who whip up public sentiment in favor of war need to be certain that the cause which they ask others to fight and die for be a good one.  Abe Lincoln was certain, and he was right. Just as certain was Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy; and he was wrong.

 

Like the United States, Canada has sent soldiers to fight and die in places like Korea and Afghanistan.  These soldiers did not fight for the cause of Korea or Afghanistan.  They fought for the cause of Canada.  Their government asked them to go overseas and fight for reasons of national policy too complex to articulate.  The evils of Communism and Talibanism require a rational argument to justify fighting.  Fighting to protect home, family, friends, and a way of life is simpler and goes to the heart of the matter.  Their motivation is simply the Cause of Canada.  In the heat of battle, the cause is simplified even further: the guys next to you.

 

The war in Vietnam was, at the time, hated; and that hatred was turned partly upon the soldiers who returned from that war.  They were somehow tainted by the evil which that war came to represent.  These soldiers went to Vietnam mostly because they were drafted; their government told them they had a job to do in the cause of the interests of the United States.  Several decades and the experience of a couple of wars later, passions concerning the treatment of veterans changed.  Now we distinguish between the war that politicians send soldiers on, and the soldiers who answered that call to duty.  We notice first and foremost their patriotism.

 

The passions aroused by war are among the most powerful felt in a society.  We send soldiers to fight and perhaps die for some cause or other; and the most powerful and most direct political cause is the cause of Country.  The country must be certain that its cause is good, for then the honoured dead, win or lose, shall not have died in vain.

-30-

 

 

Stanley McChrystal My Share of the Task Review

 
Vincent J. Curtis 

30 October 2013

Book Review 

Of

 

My Share of the Task

By

General Stanley McChrystal

 

Portfolio/Penguin

2013

ISBN 978-59184-475-4

452 Pages

Hardcover

$29.95 US

 

This is as much a book about leadership as it is a history.  General Stanley McChrystal was as important as General David Patraeus was in America’s War on Terrorism in the decade from 2001 to 2010.  McChrystal was the one who organized the effort of the U.S. military against al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The death of al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006 and the destruction of his network were the high achievements of McChrystal’s organization in that decade.  These, combined with the exploitation of the “Anbar Awakening” and the military surge of 2007-8, were what led to an end of the wave of terrorism and civil war that engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion that brought down Saddam Hussein, and enabled the Coalition to depart Iraq in 2011 with a stable Iraqi government in place.

 

McChrystal spent most of his military career in the Special Operations community of the U.S. military.  He qualified as Airborne, Special Forces, and Ranger and spent most of his development period either in command of units or as the J3 (Operations Officer) of units.  He spent as little time in the Pentagon as he could get away with.  Eventually, the lack of political instincts which would have been developed by a long stay in the Pentagon were to cost him at the end of his career.

 

The military reader can gain on two fronts by reading this book.  The first is on leadership and the second on the development of “industrial counterterrorism.”

 

In taking the reader through his development period, McChrystal enables the student of leadership to gain valuable insights not only into what made McChrystal the General, the Commander, and most importantly the leader he became, but also what makes good military leaders in general in the modern world.  Seeing the finished product in Iraq, the British saw him as a “soldier-monk.”  Supported by his loyal military wife Annie, McChrystal dedicated his life to the war against al Qaeda.  He spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan, living in spare accommodations immersed in the war, and enjoyed next to no down time back home during the prolonged crisis of the war.  McChrystal did not do a “tour”, he fought the war.

 

McChrystal’s great achievement as a leader was the development of Task Force 714.  There was no model for such a thing.  But in order to fight the metastasizing cancer of al Qaeda inspired terrorism in Iraq, McChrystal invented what came to be called “industrial counterterrorism,” and TF714 was the vehicle by which that method of combatting terrorism was deployed.  All the means by which intelligence was gained and analyzed were fused with the means of fighting in TF714, and industrial counterterrorism was the product of a feed-back loop of intelligence and captures run at very high speed.  Based on information provided by intelligence, US and British Special Operators used to go out on several missions a night, capturing terrorists for the further exploitation by the intelligence side.  Without a leader with the man-management skills of McChrystal, industrial counterterrorism would never have come about.  Industrial counterterrorism was only possible because of the vast, but disparate, intelligence and special operations resources of the United States.

 

McChrystal’s downfall came about when he let a trait that made him a great leader – trust – be exploited by people he ought to have been cautious in dealing with.

-         XXX -

Arguing like a simpleton

At the risk of giving an Op-ed piece more readers than it deserved, below is a letter to the editor in response to that piece which the newspaper refused to publish.

 

The OP-ed piece was written by a university professor and writer.  The thesis of the article was unclear, but it rehearsed the usual themes of catastrophic global warming being inevitable, and point at right wing politicians as the culprits and as obstructing evildoers in general.

 

I have written previously against the belief in man-caused global warming, and grounded my objections in scientific terms.  My having a science background, it is amusing to observe Arts majors speak with greater certainty of the conclusions of science than scientists do themselves. 

 

To wit:

 

Here we go again: another Arts major who is more confident in his grasp of science than real scientists are.

 

Here is a news flash for Professor of cultural studies and communications Latham Hunter: the globe is not warming, and none of his scientist friends can explain why.

 

Here is a piece of advice from another writer: when you argue like a simpleton, you can only persuade simpletons.  If you take it as intuitively obvious that Stephen Harper is an evil man devoted to the destruction of (a) the country he governs and (b) the world, you cannot persuade people who find these assumptions contentious and even repellant for a thoughtful person to hold.

 

The professor seems to have had his head in the clouds for so long that he has forgotten some basic philosophy 101.  I speak of the far-fetched argument.  Stephen Harper may believe in developing the Alberta tarsands, but from that it does not follow that he is in favor of “colossal water pollution, habitat destruction…” not that such things in Alberta would affect us in Hamilton anyway.  As for carbon emissions, I’m sure that even the professor is in favor of some of those, such as the carbon dioxide emissions he gives off by breathing.

How Stupid Can Americans be? Obamacare.

I'm watching Greta, and the crawl at the bottom contains Obama's taunt that the unifying principle of Republicans is to deny 30 million people health care.

 

Now, I watched the President's press conference live.  I noticed the illicit substitution in his argument the moment he made it, but NO ONE ELSE, NOT ONE JOURNALIST, picked it up or has made note of it since. (Either they think Obama is illiterate and don't want to say it, or they are!)

 

He was talking about the provision of health care insurance and then said that Republicans want to deny health care.  NO!!  They would want to deny health care insurance.  There is a difference between health care and health care insurance.  Smart people would rather have health care than health care insurance.  It is the difference between cash in hand and an IOU.

 

Nobody has picked up on this!!

 

To deny the free provision of health care insurance is not the same as to deny the provision of free health care, which Americans (and illegals) already enjoy to a certain extent.

 

When the entire political class and the entire journalistic class can't pick up these vital distinctions and illicit substitutions in argument, it is no wonder Obama gets to exist in an intellectual twilight zone.

 

To the taunt that Republicans want to deny people health care insurance, the retort is that Republicans refuse to force health care insurance on those who don't want it, don't need it, can't afford it.  In addition, this new insurance scheme may not be able to deliver the health care it promises!!!

 

Why??

 

Because doctors won't accept lower pay and more work.  They will select patients who will pay more than medicare and more than Obamacare minimalist policies.  They won't accept new patients.  So where are the 30 or 45 million new insureds going to get health care with their precious new policies? Mexico?

 

That's the distinction between health care and health care insurance.  Smart people would rather have health care than health care insurance, and Obama is offering insurance and saying the other side wants to deny you health care.

 

The iron law of politics is that the people get the government they deserve.

 

Does America deserve Obama?  I rather think so!!