TREES —THE CLIMATE SOLUTION —THERE IS NO CRISIS

TREES HAVE BEEN CONTROLLING CO2 FOR 380 MY

 I read recently that the world’s most wealthy man. Elon Musk will donate $100 million to combat global warming  He appended a proviso to this gift which states that the money be spent  on the most efficacious method of sequestering carbon dioxide.  Musk, a “high tech”guy,  may have been thinking of some “technical” method.  But the Earth and Mother Nature have been naturally sequestering carbon  for millions of years.  Our Earth is a “living gas belching” planet .  These gases (much of it CO2, a “greenhouse” gas ) continued to accumulate during earth’s early history and kept the early planet warm.  

In the  Devonian Period (420-360 million years ago) terrestrial green plants evolved and expanded over the earth’s surface. These photosynthetic plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and use it to form and store carbohydrates in the leaves, stems, and roots of plants.  Since the long ago Devonian time, the normal out-gassing of carbon dioxide from volcanoes  (and other sources) were controlled and modulated by green plants and later by global forests and their uncounted millions of trees.  

In fact, tree planting to control CO2 Is the way to control excessive CO2.  Our present global forests, even today, much reduced by forest fires, logging, urban sprawl, agricultural expansion and disease are still the most effective means of removing gaseous carbon.  It is claimed that modern global forests remove about one third of all the anthropogenic (human derived) carbon we produce each year (an  amount often estimated at about 51billion tonnes per year).  

We must shun some of the outlandish and dangerous ideas of the “geo-engineers” (like seeding the oceans or dumping solar reflectors upper atmosphere) these technical “solutions” always (based on the laws of conservation of energy) create more pollution and use more earth heating energy than they save. 

On the other hand earth history and Mother Nature reveals to us that if we were able to triple the forested area of the globe, we would be well on the way to solving our overheating and global carbon dioxide problem. The positive aspect of this method is that we could accomplish this goal while we continue to use but slowly modulate the use of certain fossil fuels. Over the longer term we must slowly and in a measured way reduce our dependence on these sources of fossil energy.  We will always need these resources as sources of chemicals, fertilizers and synthetics.  Some claim they are actually too valuable to burn.  We need not upend our economies and way of life so drastically, as is envisioned by some.  

Climate change is not an impending crisis or an immediate threat. Some would like to equate it to the impact of the Chixulub meteor, which stuck the Earth some 66 million years ago and changed the climate instantly then wiped out the dinosaurs along with three quarters of the earth’s  land species.  Climate warming is an on going, natural, gradual, Earth process which would proceed even without human action.  It is true that humans have exacerbated the process by cutting down forests, digging up fossil carbon and burning this fuel in the atmosphere to release ancient carbon dioxide which had been sequestered for millions of years.   Reforestation is the best solution to a measured and reasonable means of the amelioration the ill effects of human actions on global climate. 

Along that line of thought, it would be well to mention here that a Canadian start-up company called Flash Forest, has developed a system to plant trees using aerial drones.   Especially equipped Flash-Forest-drones can fire a seed packet or pod into the ground from the air,  and in this manner plant as many as 100,000 trees per day.  This is  a vast improvement over hand-planting seedlings, which in reasonable level terrane is a method capable of setting perhaps only 1500 per day.    Also the cost per-tree using drones is a small fraction of what it would cost by manual planting .

 So if Mr. Elon Musk reads this: Elon,  please  look up Flash Forest for the best returns on your generous offer! 

Some further thoughts on the transformative evolution of green plants in the Devonian follow. 

Outgassing from volcanic activity  produces carbon dioxide (and other gases).  This natural and continuing process led to a build up of CO2 and was responsible for the fact that the early earth was much warmer than at present. In those times of the past, the continents were raw rock and earth there  were no green plants or trees to absorb carbon dioxide gas.  

It was in the early part of the Devonian Period (420-360 mya) that land plants (such as mosses, ferns, and horsetails ) evolved and spread over the earth’s surface.  This event radically altered earth temperatures. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide (photosynthesis) and sequester it as carbohydrates ( sugars, starches, cellulose).  With lower CO2 levels in the atmosphere less earth radiation was absorbed and the earth cooled. 

During the Devonian,  as a result of this transformative cooling event, global ocean temperatures began to fall, (as much as 40F) causing ocean water temperatures at the equator to fall to around 80 to 85 F,  this probably as a result of the expansion of green terrestrial plants on the continental masses.

An even more significant event for control of carbon dioxide occurred during the Devonian.  The evolution of the tree.  Trees are very much more effective in storing CO2. 

During the Devonian Period land plants speed and evolved into ever more complex forms which absorbed and held even more carbon dioxide. In the Early Devonian when the first low-growing horsetails, ferns and mosses were common, plants continued to evolve. In the latter part of the Devonian, or around  383 million years ago  actual tree-like plants arose. They belonged to a genus known as: Archeopteris a very successful new comer  which evolved, and spread widely over the earth’s surface.   These tree-like, spore-bearing Archeopteris plants grew to 40 meters tall (131 feet) with draping boughs and fern like leaves . Archeopteris created  dense forests which spread world wide during the Late Devonian and on into the early Carboniferous, (or from about 383 mya to 323 mya).  These forests had a great impact on earth temperatures, for as they expanded they withdrew and stored vast quantities carbon dioxide which resulted in a much cooler earth atmosphere. 

This was a watershed event in earth history, for while low growing herbaceous plants such as ferns and mosses absorb quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere and generate oxygen.  But  when these plants die, their leaves and roots quickly decay and release that same carbon right back into the air and the soil. 

The impact of small, low growing.  herbaceous plants was brief and seasonal. Trees on the other hand,  produce much more mass (or biomass).  They generate bulky wood, tall woody trunks , branches, woody twigs  and enormous quantities of leaves as well a large underground root structures.  As long as s tree is alive,  it holds on to the carbon it absorbed from the air and soil.  When, the tree dies, often after hundreds of years,  it too decays it only slowly releases the carbon dioxide  back into the air, but much much more slowly.  

But forests also cool the earth’s  surface directly. Trees absorb solar radiation and convert that energy into chemical bonds so forests are cooler. Forests,  by reducing the “long wave” earth radiation (this is the radiant energy that CO2 absorbs) cools the earth directly and cools by absorbing CO2 and  thus  are doubly effective. 

For these reasons forests are probably the most effective temperature modulators of a warming earth. They absorb ( but do not reradiate) both solar radiation and as well as carbon dioxide. (Our modern forests absorb as much as one third of the tons and tons of carbon dioxide that modern society releases into the air from fossil fuels  If we could triple the area of forests and modulate our use of fossil fuels on the earth, we can close the gap between the carbon we release from our trucks  autos, homes, power plants and industries and that which is absorbed by forests. 

By the end of the Devonian and early Carboniferous so much carbon dioxide had been removed from the atmosphere by trees that the earth cooled to a level at which many shallow water,  warm-water marine species (bony fish and eurypterids) died off during the resulting cooling.  (This is called the “end of Devonian extinction episode”)

Trees and forests are  controllers of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and  earth temperatures.  They can continue in that function today. 

BIDEN INHUMANE BORDER POLICY

 BIDEN-MAJORKAS POLICY INCENTIVIZES IMMIGRATION AND IS INHUMANE— NOT  REMAIN IN MEXICO DECISION 

Alejandro Majorca’s and Joe Biden are still dragging their feet over the 5^th District. Court order to reinstate the Trump “Reman in Mexico” (MPP) policy.  That decision  requires those seeking refugee status  to wait for their court ruling  in their home country, or in Mexico.  . A federal judge ruled against the Biden Administration, way back in January, claiming it pulled  the policy illegally.   In an August ruling, the court  required the Administration to reinstate that policy.   

Mr Alejandro Majorcas apparently has no appetite for this legal requirement and has not acted in accordance with the law. Sadly this cabinet member and the “undocumented” immigrants he supports so enthusiastically, both flout our nation’s laws.   Since August, due to his foot dragging, hundreds of thousands of illegals have entered the.country and been released to swell the ranks of the undocumented.  

The administration, to avoid the appearances of border chaos have devised a scheme to hide these illegal immigrants by transporting them from the border in the dead of night via secret air flights.  This attempt to mitigate the embarrassing chaos at the border is the kind of  “solution” the Biden team specializes in: a focus only on removing from view the chaos, violence, and unruly and dangerous mobs in encampments at the border.   How many of these people were released, no one knows. Were they positive for Covid 19?. Are they carrying TB, or small pox? Who knows if they are on a terrorist list? No questions were asked of these passengers  on these secret night flights.  The motive was to clean up the appearances of chaos, not the problem.  That  problem was cured long ago with the Trump policy of remain in Mexico.   Joe just reactivated a problem that did not exist before he came along. 

But the value of the MPP or Remain in Mexico policy is  that it reduced the INCENTIVE TO COME TO THE USA BORDER.  Cabinet member Alejandro Majorcas stated yesterday in a press release that the “MPP policy did reduce the flow of migrants but that it is “inhumane” to ask these folks to wait in Mexico”. The hypocrisy of the Majorcas-Biden “catch and release” or “catch and fly all over the country to safe havens plan” is that their policy actually encourage and incentivizes illegal, dangerous,  and yes, behavior that results in inhumane circumstances. 

Note that the MPP policy which actually discourages the vast majority of border crossers who are for the most part not refugees seeking asylum at all, but economic migrants in search of  better conditions  of life and bette pay. That is not a bad thing.  We encourage such immigrants, but we as a nation of laws have responsibility to those  legal immigrants and actual asylum seekers and real refugees who enter the nation legally.  And also to the American citizens who are asked to pay for the cost  of these inhumane policy’s which encourage dangerous immigration.  

These distinctions on immigration seem to be ignored by the ideologue- activist, youthful and inexperienced team Biden has around him.   As they did in the deadly, chaotic Afghanistan retreat from Kabul, where emails to pilots reveal Biden’s instructions to “fill up the planes with anyone, make sure that every seat was taken, ignore who was a real green card holder or an actual American citizen, just make it look good.”  The same unconscionable concern only for image and appearance, not right or wrong policy is taking place at our southern border.

PS. International protocols require the person seeking refugee status to make that appeal at the border of the first  nation that they enter after leaving their home country,  from which  they claim they must flee.  Almost every one of these people from 150 different nations must appeal for refugee status in Mexico, not the USA.  

Paleo-diet, Horses and Buffalo Hunters

 Anthropologists and archeologists know well that our early human ancestors, were essentially hunters and.scavengers who primarily consumed meat which they either killed on their own or or which they stole from the kills of larger predators. The Neanderthals ( who are related to all humans who came from Eurasian stock) were certainly excellent big game hunters who subsisted almost exclusively on meat. Their robust and sturdy skeletons are all we have of them,  but their longevity (130,00 to 40,000 YA) suggest that their diet provided more than adequate nutrition. 

.Archeologists and anthropologists make a great fuss about when and under what.circumstances early humans or human communities achieved what they considered to be a “pinnacle” of cultural development: the abandonment of the wandering  and “dead end” hunting culture to settle  down and turn to a diet derived from agriculture dominated by carbohydrates, vegetable, and non meat sources of protein.  Meat in the form of game would  become only a small part of the diet of these settled people.   

Was it such a achievement?  Or were these early people simply forced by desperate hunger into the laborious, difficult and time consuming  task of agriculture.   This life style requires digging up the earth, planting seeds,  nurturing the young plants, protecting them from depredations of insects, disease and wildlife. Then when the crop matures other problems arise such  as the need to store and protect the products of their labor (food) from pests and more concerning other humans who may not have been as industrious and responsible.

  

Were these settled societies better off, more vital, taller, bigger or healthier?   The archeological record can not provide a definitive answer. 

However, a unique historical circumstance in western USA  does support the idea of the superiority of natural meat diet or what is often referred to as the “paleo-diet” over that of an agricultural diet. That unique circumstance was the impact of the arrival of the horse in the late 15th century on the settled Native American tribes of the Great Plains. 

Let us first compare the agricultural life with that of the big game hunter,  who ate meat, a few roots and leafy herbs and occasionally a handful of berries or wild fruit. These hunter (gatherer) societies had an ideal lifestyle:  plenty of free time, lots of healthy exercise in the open air and at the end of their day a hearty nutritious meal of grilled meat, comprising flavorful, satisfying and nutritious protein, coated with sizzling. tasty, high calorie fat. These meat eaters had no food storage problems, no conflict  with others over land use or allotments. Furthermore  their isolated small groups inhibited the spread of communicable disease as a result they were more likely to be disease free.  There was no need to protect their hoard of food from others.  They were free, free to go where they wanted following the game they hunted. THIER food sources requires low effort, for  high quality food free for the taking. In modern day terms: high return in energy and nutrition for modest input in calories.  A win win situation. 

The support for this idea comes from the 19th and early 20th century archeologists and anthropologists who studied the buffalo hunting societies of the Great Plains of North America The unique cultural history of the Great Plain tribes Is a story of settled agricultural societies reverting to the life of the big game hunter when they had the opportunity. 

The native Americans of the Great Plains,  we were to eventually to know as: the Blackfeet, Assiniboin, Cheyenne, Sioux, Pawnee, Kansas, Osage and Comanche and others lived in the vast north-south “sea of grass” reaching from Texas to  Canada and bounded in the east by the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and on the west the Front Ranges of the Rockies.  

As early as 850 AD, most of these tribes and their precursors had begun to give up hunter gathering for subsistence  farming and a “settled down” life.  They built sturdy, permanent  earth-bermed wood frame houses, took up agriculture and inhabited small villages located along the wooded courses of the tributaries of the  Missouri and. Mississippi Rivers.  By 1250 AD almost all these tribes were settled and occupied by farming.  Some lived in larger communities. Almost all of them grew corn, beans, squash and sunflowers on the rich river bottom-lands along the tributary rivers.  They hunted small game, and though scarce in the areas that they inhabited occasionally took some larger game such as elk and deer.  But like all settled people  their principal source of food energy was the produce from their small plots of land.  Though the American Bison, or buffalo lived in these areas and roamed these vast grasslands in immense herds, hunting these  huge beasts (6-7 feet at the shoulders and thousands of pounds in weight) was very difficult and very dangerous for men on foot.  The buffalo, though sometimes driven over cliffs and taken occasionally by bow hunters “, was not a large part of the food of these settled people they remained settled in their riverside communities.  

Spanish explorers confirmed the settled life style of the Plains people in their reports of exploration in the southwest and Great Plains.  In 1540, the Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado ,his troops mounted on horses and using  horses for transport explored the southern portions of the Great Plains.  Many other Spanish explorers followed into these same areas.   These adventurers reported that the Plains “Indians” lived in settled villages along water courses where they grew corn beans and squash and built sturdy houses of mud and wood, insulted with soil mounded  up around the outer walls. They described a life ways of what we now call the “Plains Village Culture”  They found in these settlements little gold, and nothing much of value for them, but they did take note of the numerous villages and settled life, farms and the elaborate and complex trade networks these tribes maintained which they eventually planed to use.    

Native American exploitation of the buffalo, as common and numerous as it was, as a source of food and meat was impossible until the plains people had been introduced to the horse.  In these times prior to the 15^th century there were no horses in North America. 

The  horse (Equus) first evolved in North America about 4 million years ago during the Pliocene of the Cenozoic Era.  Over millions of years of evolution they became  well adapted to the grassy plains of North America  and by about 2 million years  ago they had spread to South America. By the early Pleistocene or ice age  (around 2 million years ago) they spread into Eurasia by crossing the Bering land bridge (going west) the where they proliferated.  They survived for much of the ice age in North America, but for some unknown reason they became extinct in North America (and South America) near the end of the ice age or about  8 to 10 thousand years ago.   Interestingly, their early ancestor species  may have passed early human groups on the Bering Land Bridge who were-migrating  east from Asia into North America as the horses went west.  

Perhaps ten thousand years were to pass before the  Spanish brought Equus, the horse,  back into North America.   Late in the 15^th century Christopher Columbus himself, bought horses to Hispaniola and Cuba.   But it was  Hernando Cortez,  who in 1519,  actually introduced horses into mainland North America in Mexico, returning the genus Equus back into the area in which it had originally evolved.   

This species. very quickly became an absolute waste necessity for life in the west. The horse quickly became an important trade animal, with a particularly high demand among the southern Plains tribes such as the Osage and Comanche.  The Spanish settlements in Mexico continued to import herds from Spain which were needed for transport and as part of their plans for conquest and domination.  (So many horses were transported to Spanish possessions that certain parts of the sea lanes the Spanish unused,  where calms were common, became known as the “Horse Latitudes”.  For the floating bodies of dead livestock.  For when ships were becalmed their cargo of large animals soon ate and drank the bulky stores of water and sealed their fate. ).  

Often times some of the introduced horses escaped from captivity and became feral in Mexico, southwestern North America and eventually wild herds roamed the Great Plains. These hardy, grass eating, animals were well adapted to the open plains where food was plentiful, and as an introduced species had few natural and effective predators. 

While the Spanish were  left relatively unchanged by their contact with the plains tribes, the impact on Native Americans first view of horses was to be earth shattering and transformative.  For the Spanish exposed the natives to the concept of men on the backs of horses and that idea was to change the culture and life ways of these native people in a way similar to the  way the advent of the automobile or the iPhone would have on other societies which lived in more recent times .. 

With a horse a mounted hunter could effectively and safely exploit the huge herds of buffalo for their meat. The horse  became an obsession,  as well as essential “tool”, to every young brave just as a sports car, motorcycle or iPhone would be to modern day societies.

The Comanche and other southern Great Plains tribes were soon making raids into Mexico to stealing or trading areas for horses.  Between the mid 1600 to the mid 1700s horses became essential for survival of the Plains tribes.  

The reason for this was that with a horse, a native hunter could very effectively exploit the uncountable herds of American bison or Buffalo that lived in these vast grasslands.  In a few short decades they had become the ultimate equestrians, riding bareback, with no stirrups, and controlling their mounts mostly with knee pressure.  To improve their ability to kill the buffalo they will developed a powerful, short bow which they could use while riding horseback among the stampeding beasts. As they rode among the stampeding herd they would ride close to one of the huge beasts and as they directed their mount with knee pressure the could deploy their short but powerful bow to deliver arrow into the chest, then move on to another animal and be able to kill  several of these beasts in a one hunting day.  They had access in time to muzzle loading flintlock muskets but shunned these as ineffective in comparison to their short bow with which they could harvest several beasts (the musket was a one shot only weapon) 

The horse and the short bow opened up a great “pantry” of fresh meat to the Plains Indians a source of food which had been unavailable to them prior to the introduction of the horse.  With such a source of rich protein and calories now available to them they very quickly  abandoned the drudgery of farming for the freedom and high quality foods of the buffalo hunt. The horse ( and dogs as well) were also used to transport their belonging when they were on the move . They built a travois of long springy poles,  the butt ends were joined by a tie over the back of the horse and the springy tips were permitted to drag along the ground. Cross bars provided a place to secure their folded teepee and other belongings and even their children. 

In a rapid succession from south to north, first the Comanche, the Osages and later the more central tribes such as the Sioux and  Cheyenne were to abandon their settled “advanced” agricultural life style and “revert” to big game hunting and to a life of wandering  over the wide “sea of grass” in pursuit of the almost limitless buffalo herds of those times.  

Their diet became almost exclusively meat, that is buffalo meat.  They were specialist hunters  killing only one species and consuming almost every part of the beast. They ate the muscle meat, the liver, was other organ meats, the brains, the tongue, marrow of the bones, intestines and the stored fats.  They even used the bile in the gall bladder for seasoning. They grilled boiled and baked the meat and ate some parts raw.  For future use they cut the meat into thin strips and dried it in the sun. They used the bones for tools and implements, the hide for their clothing and shelters.  They no longer reside in the earth-bermed and solid and stationary  “hogans”, but using the tanned hides of buffalo they built the light airy, warm and wonderfully effective and easily transported “teepee”. The buffalo hunting plains tribes were the only natives in North America to made such structures.  Traveling over the open plains where no trees grew they even used the sun-dried solid waste of the buffalo, the droppings (called buffalo chips) as fuel for their cooking and heating fires.  Studies of their dietary habits  have revealed that for most tribes meat comprised about 80 % what they consumed, the rest was fish or reptiles, leafy vegetables, nuts, roots and wild fruit. 

Even more interesting was that anthropological studies  of the Plains tribes indicated they were much taller than the average European of the time. Reports indicate that almost every male Sioux  or Comanche often stood over six feet tall, were well muscled, slim and with healthy teeth. 

Sadly the eventual expansion of Europeans into the Great Plains during the early and middle of the 19^th century caused drastic conflict and tragedy. The buffalo herds which were counted in the millions upon millions in the 1750s were by the 1860s nearly exterminated. It was not the result of native hunting but  by purposeful and shameful extermination by European settlers and potential settlers.  The hunting life ways of the Great Plains tribes was over.  In an 1860 traveler’s report going west by conestoga wagon to California emigrants were often trailed by  “ Indians”. These once great hunters were so reduced by hunger they turned  to begging for scraps of food from the travelers.  

1. An interesting side light to this story is that the northern tribes far from the sources of horse trading and Mexico were late to adapt to the horse and the buffalo hunting culture. Some of the far northern tribes (some in southern Canada) never abandoned the Plains Village  Culture  and continued living in small village settlements along the banks of river  tributaries and maintained their agricultural activities.  
2. When anthropologists and other observed these communities and compared the stature and health of these northern  tribes to those of the central and southern tribes they reported that these northern tribes never achieved the stature of the buffalo hunters.  It was the meat diet!
3. The paleodiet of the Comanche and Sioux were of course “organic” and not comparable to what we might use to facilitate such a diet I;modern times.  The buffalo ate only pure unaltered, wild grasses.   There were no pesticides or antibiotics or genetically modified products to get into their bodies and their meat and fats. These parts of the animal were what we would term organic. Buffalo were not cooped up in pens and fed high calorie concentrated pesticide laden processed feeds enriched with meat products from other animals. Their meat was as is all wild game meats relatively low in fats in comparison  to commercial meat cuts. Furthermore they ate all of the animal not just certain portions of the animal. 
4. Thus though there is good reason to assume that a meat diet is healthful modern paleo dieters beware….you may be ingesting more pesticide laden fats and protein than is good for you. 

ON GLACIERS AND GLOBAL WARMING WE ARE NOT TO BLAME FOR IT ALL

 

A feedback loop is defined as a system that can control a variable,  or some part of the output of a system to increase or decrease the variable and intensify or modulate the effect the variable has on the system. 

One example of a feedback loop in climatology/geology is the effect of snow cover on air temperature and formation of snow or  ice fields. .  During a cooling climatic phase, snowfall accumulates and covers larger areas of the earth’s surface. With these areas covered in white, reflective snow, sun light is more effectively reflected away, and little heat is absorbed  ( relatively more solar a radiation is reflected back into space) and the earth surface and atmosphere cool.  This cooler atmosphere keeps temperatures low enough so that fallen snow does not melt away in warmer seasons. The cooler air permits more snow to fall and accumulate covering even larger areas intensifying the cooling effect.  This may be described as a positive feedback loop. 

 Our climate fluctuations and “global warming” were to a large extent controlled and modulated by feedback loops. 

The many advances and retreats of the Pleistocene Ice sheets were the result of a great feedback loop—involving a  “ battle”  between the advances of  temperate forests and of continental glaciers. 

When s the Earth’s orbit, precession and the positions of continental masses on the earth’s surface are appropriate,  and when forests grew and expanded over large areas of the Earth surface, these long-lived green plants absorbed and stored CO2. Withdrawl of this gas from the atmosphere cooled the atmosphere by lowering concentrations of a greenhouse gas.

As the earth cooled,  winter snow accumulated in the high latitudes and did not melt away in summer.  This snow,  packed down into ice, forming massive ice sheets thousands of feet in thickness.  The weight of the overlying ice generated pressures in its lower levels high enough to cause the ice to flow plastically— generating a “glacial age” in which massive continental ice sheets flowed southward from accumulation centers to eventually cover as much as one third of the existing continental surfaces. 

  

But these ice sheets advanced into forested areas —the very  forests which had absorbed carbon dioxide gas and cooled the earth to a temperature where glaciers  might form—were now  buried and killed as they were overrun by advancing glaciers. The demise  of vast temperate forests (and consequent rise in CO2) sowed the seeds of an eventual  global warming trend.  

With reduced  areas of forest cover,  CO2 levels in the atmosphere could rise  again causing global warming and reversing the process and causing  melting and retreat of of the ice sheets . Homeostasis ( or the steady state when all effects were somehow equal)  was a fleeting period lasting only briefly in geologic time and occurred when the ice sheets and forests were in some level of  balance, at which time  ice sheets were advancing as fast as they were melting.  

Thus is the history and major causes of the earth’s heating and cooling or of glacial ages and warning stages or interglacials all tied up with the expansion and retreat of global forests.  Take a look at Google Earth today to see how  humans have actually devastated  our forests and encouraged global warming. 

For the last several million years ( @6 my) the Earth has cycled through long glacial and short interglacial stages .  This glacial interglacial cycle has lasted  roughly 100,000 years,  with about 90,000 years of ice and glaciers and about 10,000 years of a warm interglacial.  

The last glacial advance ended some 20,000 years ago. Since then as the earth warmed and the ice retreated,  reforestation followed the retreating ice fronts.  This growth in forests withdrew CO2 and initiated a cooling trend…which began some 6000 years ago and which could have initiated a new glacial stage. But it has not.  (Humans may have averted that event by deforestation and burning of fossil carbon. )

That expected cooling trend may have been counteracted by a new element— human deforestation and large scale farming!

Humans in their preternatural destructive way first multiplied and as they did  began burning down  and cutting forests, and prevented natural reforestation.  In some place the escape of methane gases from extensive rice paddies may have been a factor as well. Though volcanism, natural decay of vegetative matter, forest fires and other possible anthropogenic processes may have stalled the impending ice age too.  Certainly in the last 200 years deforestation and the use of fossil fuels have added huge amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which perhaps has actually averted a new ice age.  

Going far back in Earth’s half a billion year history we can decipher from fossils that the evolution of terrestrial green plants were a major part of the great feedback loops in the atmosphere and the rocky earth and oceans (geosphere) had starling effects effect on atmospheric temperatures. 

Thus for us moderns, global warming is nothing new.  It has been going on for at least the last 17,000 years in most of eastern North America and longer elsewhere.  Another factor is the importance of of forests in the equation.  They are the regulators of carbon dioxide levels and as such have a great impact on atmospheric temperatures. 

Whatever we do as modern fossil burning humans,  the earth was (and will remain)  in a warming trend for most of the last 20,000 years. We helped it along perhaps avoiding an onset of a new glacial stage with our destruction of forests and using the atmosphere to dump our waste carbon dioxide.  

Let’s not get panicky.  The Earth systems are essentially conservative…which change only slowly.  The earth has been much warmer in ages past and survived,  We should address our efforts to modulate the impact of natural warming and anthropogenic warming  on this only planet we will ever have by limiting population growth, reestablishing our great expansive  forests,  and slowly convert from fossil fuels to renewable and other sources of energy which are safe, clean and create no long term pollution. 

ANOTHER CRISIS OUR SUPPLY CHAIN AND ROLE PLAYING CABINET MEMBERS

 BUTTIGIEG FACILE FOLLY 

Our well spoken, so self-assured and well-rested Secretary of Transportation who has been absent from his desk (piled high with disaster warnings)  since mid-August) just gave a facile and fallacious response to the SUPPLY CHAIN CRISIS.  We have all been shocked by the  empty shelves in our retail stores, the images of cargo ships swarming like bees at a hive, attempting  to unload their freight in our coastal ports,  the quadrupling of shipping costs per container, the shortage and high prices of fuel, and the shortage of long-haul truck drivers so vital to our struggling economy.  According to this former small town mayor, with no experience at all in any form of transportation  ( except perhaps personal upward transport for self aggrandizement and higher  pay scale):

 “It’s all due to Covid 19” and “will disappear when we get past the pandemic”.   This is a mammoth crisis that will affect our economy; our health and well being and the nation’s security .  But the Biden team apparently has no answer or plan 

I  was not  surprised at the  facile folly of this newly minted  cabinet member who expressed many just as vapid positions as a far left “shock” presidential candidate. His two month long absence  from the front ranks of the struggling Biden administration  probably accounted for the fact that he did  not use Biden’s favorite  catch-all excuse for just about every recent catastrophe: “President Trump did it”  or, “ it due to climate change”. 

We knew from as far back the 2020 campaign that old “Uncle Joe”, who spent most if the campaign hidden away in the basement of his Delaware mansion,  his voice muffled and face covered in a black mask was not going to be a “hands on president”.  With his shortcomings in mind his handlers and controllers should have at least insured that those they put into authority at key cabinet posts were competent and professional rather than simply using the perks and emoluments of high government office as they “play the role” of government administrators.  .

Sadly both Biden and his cabinet are infected with a similar malaise  inexperience and incompetent “role players”.   Poor Buttigieg may get criticized but is just the the latest most egregious example of how not to run a government 

THE VIEW FROM THE HEARTLAND 10/ 2021

 THE.VIEW FROM THE HEARTLAND

The vast farmlands and rolling plains  between “La La land” of the west coast and the gritty, densely packed megalopoli of the east is our American heartland.  It is from these  open skies, spired forests, sun drenched farms, rangelands, and industrial centers that our people come, and here too we find the home of our traditions,  of our common-sense, our inventiveness and practicality which made us a great nation. It is here we can count the pulse of the American core.  

The pulses of the American heartland in October of 2021 can be best described as “fear driven tachycardia” (fast heart rate).  I report here that the dominant  emotion  of the nation’s heartland  is fear and disbelief.  

Fear of an unpredictable future, punctuated with a series of leadership generated mounting crises from Afghanistan to Del Rio Bridge. The fear is heightened by the fact that these chaotic events are strictly ignored by our elected officials in Washington and by the media which guard their fragile reputations for with no attention they can not be remediated. 

We fear a future of unimaginable government expenditures, and consequent massive national debt, higher taxes, shortages of vital goods, inflation, and insecurity from domestic mob violence and foreign violence too. 

We fear the spike in violence on our streets and in our communities fostered by lax enforcement and a judicial system which has become “arrest and release”. No trials no punishment and no end in sight for relief from criminal acts for the innocent citizen. 

Waves of uncontrolled robberies ignored by the leadership in certain cities have stripped the shelves of vital pharmacies clean. These vital service providers  have closed and only the communities suffer. 

We fear the abdication  of a rational unbiased news media, which we once  depended on to critically evaluate our leaders and their policies,  but who instead have become  propagandists for only one party.  

We fear for the military leadership which is dominated by some who would put their politics before the Constitution to which they swore allegiance.   

We fear for our Justice system and our  governmental institutions which have forgotten that they serve all of the people not just those who complain the loudest.  

We fear the loss of “the best person for the job” (or seat on a committee or place in a school) regardless of race, creed, origin, or sex. This loss can only lead to mediocrity and decline. 

We fear the erosion  of freedom of speech—our proudest  constitutional right—can only harm us, limit free expression and open discussion and foster division and misunderstanding. 

We fear for our future elections. Will they again  be subjected to manipulation by media, powerful monied interests, and the left leaning tech barons?  

We fear for our children who are buffeted in our own schools by those who spout fringe and radical concepts ( falsely claiming support by science) regarding race, gender and corrupted histories of our great nation’s past. 

And we fear and stand in disbelief that our great nation has been taken to such a parlous state in such short order by incompetent and leadership. 

These are some of the views from the heartland.  

We have hope and confidence too. Hope that our nation will surmount the threats we face today and confidences in the American electorate  that given the freedom of  our elections we can reinstate a unifying leadership and bring back our nation to health. 

Without a  “heart” there is no nation.  Those in Washington DC seem to think the “nation” ends at the 495 Ring Road,  please take note: your  cushy jobs may depend on how well you remember those who reside outside of the ring road where the heartland begins. 

REST IN PEACE HONEST COLIN POWELL

 In Defense of Colin Powell 

We learn today of the passing of a truly great man, a patriot, and an example to all how even those from difficult circumstances in our inner cities have a choice for life’s outcome,  and in the USA an almost unlimited opportunity to rise to the pinnacle of power for the qualified.  Powell was a four star general, a military advisor to four presidents and ultimately the Secretary of State, as well as a political icon in  our great nation . It saddens one to learn of his passing. 

If Powell’s career had some how ended before 2004 when he made that fateful speech supporting the  non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq,  he would still have been touted as an all-American hero and patriot.  

But his post 2004  life has given even greater depth and nuance to our understanding and appreciation of this very human and yes honest man.  

The irony of that disastrous speech was that at the time General Powell had  a well-deserved reputation as a staunchly truthful man of honor, The rabid war hawks in the George Bush jr Administration callously used Powell’s reputation of honesty to foster and build support for  their deadly, disastrous plans for war in Iraq.  A war which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands  soiled our reputations with numerous atrocities and torture, and destabilized vast swaths of the Middle East.   Before 2004 Powell made several attempts to counter the war hawks and slow the headlong rush to war, but was in the end unsuccessful and submitted to the BushCheney demands.  The hawks needed him to make the case for war to an uncertain public—Powell made it possible. .  All he had left at his disposal was his reputation for probity.  At that critical moment he lacked the will— the courage- to stand up to his superiors who he knew were making a grave mistake.  

We are all human, we all have flaws, even great generals and honest men have moments of weakness. Most will never admit them. Here Powell was different 

Perhaps the full and embarrassing revelations of the WMD lie, as well as the dire consequences in blood and treasure of that war and of Powell’s duplicity had a cleansing effect.  In fact,  the open revelations of these sad events in Powell’s life and may have been the impetus fir modern day younger military officers (like  Marine Lt. Col Scheller ) to courageously stand for honesty in more recent events in Afghanistan.. 

In the end, it was Powell’s honesty that won out.  After the war he “ came clean” and admitted his error, as well as his  responsibility for his past actions,  an act which I submit here  to a great extent expunged the stain on his record.  

Powell died an honest man. Rest In Peace Colin Powell. 

COLUMBUS DAY 2021

 Today, October 12, there was a bit of chill in the air.  

It was way back on this very same day, in 1492 that  Christopher Columbus and his crew of ninety Spanish fishermen, merchants, shipowners in  three, small wooden vessels  landed on a low-lying verdant Island  called Guanahani in the eastern Bahamian islands less than 400 miles off the coast of present day Florida.  That contact between east and, west was an earth shattering watershed global event that spawned unimaginable change in world economics, politics, agriculture, and had inconceivable  impact on world populations and societies.. 

Columbus and his small fleet  departed the Spanish port of Palos in southern Spain on August 3, 1492 (near modern day Huelva ) . The fleet headed southwest, well off the coast of present day Morocco toward the Canary Islands, Spain’s most westerly possessions. They came to harbor on Gomera a smaller though central island of this chain. 

Columbus’ “shake down” cruise from Palos  to Gomera confirmed his opinion regarding  the advantages of smaller vessels capable of exploring coastal areas.  In fact, his ships were not large.  The Nina and Pinta  were caravels respectively of about 50 feet and 70 feet long from bow to stern.  The Santa Maria, the flagship, was a larger, beamier vessel  with a deeper keel.   Allied a “carrack” or “nap” it was a bulky cargo ship of perhaps 100 feet in length.    But the ocean cruise to Gomera revealed a leak in the Pinta and also  reenforced Columbus’ preference for “square” sails which were better suited for down wind sailing, conditioned that would be encountered on the crossing of the Atlantic.    Columbus’ two caravels were rigged  with triangular, “fore and aft” sails (similar in shape to those of a modern sloop).  These were more suitable for coastal sailing and wind conditions more typical of the Mediterranean.  

These  triangular “lateen” sails were useful where  the wind often came “over the beam” or over the starboard or port sides.  Columbus’ many years of wind and weather observations during his long seafaring career Eich took him as far north as the British Hebrides and south to regions off the coast of Africa had given him unique  insights concerning global wind patterns.   He understood the wind conditions he would encounter on the Atlantic crossing wouldd be persistent “following winds”.  They would require a point of sailing called “downwind sailing”  or sailing “off the wind”.  

Thus in Gomera while repairs were in process on the Pinta,  the rigging of the two smaller ships were altered from the  fore and aft triangular or lateen sails to square sails.  Thus from    “caravella lateena” rigged ships they were altered  to “caravella redonda”.  This latter rig would be more effective with winds that Columbus expected  from the east and southeast on his outward passage and also on his return to Spain. 

According to a summary of Columbus’ ship- log, the “shake down” voyage from Palos in Spain to Gomera in the Canary Islands,  a distance of 800 nautical miles, took the fleet ten days. This leg of the  trip was hindered by poor sail plan on the smaller vessels and a leaky rudder post on the Pinta.  The fleet averaged about 80 nautical miles per day,  or about 3.3 knots (nautical miles per hour).  This author calculated the the average speed of about 3.9  knots made by the fleet  on the Atlantic crossing (Gomera to San Salvador) versus only 3.3 knots on the first leg. The fleet ad a significant  indicate a significant increase in speed of  (0.6 knots /3.3 =0.18 or) 18% a increase in speed of nearly 20%.  . Thu# the re.riggin of his fleet to squaecsails may have been the margin that made the difference between success and failure of the first voyage  ( see below) 

Arriving at Gomera on August 12, 1492, the fleet  languished in port for twenty-five days  waiting for repairs to the Pinta,  re-rigging the sail plan of the two smaller vessels, and arrival and storing of needed food, water and supplies. 

 

When all was completed, the small fleet finally left Gomera on September 6, 1492.   But the fleet, was becalmed off-shore, within sight of Hierra, the the most westerly island in the archipelago, until September 8. On that night strong northwesterly winds arose and allowed the fleet finally to depart Las  Canarias

That night Columbus set his course west-southwest across the Atlantic.  The voyage would  take  33 days days .  Columbus’ route took the fleet southwest from the Canary Islands and then west across the Atlantic for about 3,067 nautical miles.  The wooden sailing ships  averaged about 92 nautical miles per day or a speed of 3.9 knots (almost 4 nautical miles per hour)  a good speed, considering the broad, beamy shape of the ship’s hulls  and of the likely growth of seaweed and barnacle on the wetted surfaces of the hulls over the long period of time they were at sea. 

By October 10,  after more than a month of sailing, the men were restive.  (Columbus, using outdated and erroneous estimates of the length of a degree of longitude and the circumference of the earth, had estimated they would encounter the outer islands of  “Chipangu” or “the Indies” in only a month of sailing).  

By early Octoberafter a month of sailing the crew was understandably fearful of running out of water and food, and also began to have  doubts about the success of the voyage.  They demanded Columbus return home.  In an attempt to to allay their fears and perhaps prevent a mutiny, he struck a deal with his men for a few more days of westward sailing, and sweetened it with the promise a silk doublet and an annuity to anyone who first sighted land. 

On October 10 and 11 the there were sightings of land birds and  observations of a green tree branch as well as a bough of “dog rose”  (Rosa cantina?).  On the morning of October 12, a sailor on the Pinta, Rodrigo de Traina, saw land first.  Columbus himself also had  spotted a light the night before—perhaps that from a campfire—dead ahead over the bow..  At dawn with all hands at the rail straining to see the first land of a new world they finally came close enough to make out the form of a low lying island ( later identified as Guanahani ) one of the most easterly islands of the Bahamian archipelago. 

They soon  made landfall on this “salvation  island” which was inhabited  with friendly natives, covered in  verdant vegetation and many “fruit trees”. Columbus called  this place San Salvador—after Christ the Savior —or the island of their salvation!  After landing and taking possession of the island for Spain, they would go on from here to explore the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola for the next months before changing weather conditions and some disappointment (at not finding the expected great cities of the Great Kahn of the east) drove them to return to Spain.   

That was what happened on October 12, 1492…..a long time ago. Our lives toaday are very very different,  our ideas,  our sensibilities our technology too. So let us not fall into the trap of attempting to evaluate the actions the motivations and the lives  of other humans who lived under very different circumstances so long ago —with our own very modern ideas and concepts.  Ours  too some day will be looked back upon wth scorn. We too have much to answer for.  Let  us try to see their lives and achievements as they may have been received in their own day. 

 

Columbus’ achievement of sailing  southwest, instead of due west to cross the great “Ocean Sea”, his understanding and use of the global wind circulation patterns, which set the model for all other future sailors,  as well as  his three subsequent voyages of discovery would be acts of exceptional  perseverance, courage, and expertise in any age.  He was an outstanding navigator, leader, visionary, and explorer. If only for these achievements,  he should  remembered and celebrated with his special day.  

Some would claim that the “new world” was already known to native Americans who had crossed the Bering land bridge tens of thousands of years before.  Others would point to the voyages of the Vikings in the far north of the new world.  Perhaps in that age, the “age of discovery” some might add that someone else would have attempted a westward passage to reach the east, had Columbus not been successful.  In fact only 27 years later, in 1519 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan would lead a fleet that would actually circumnavigate the globe. 

But none of these earlier explorers or immigrants had the impact on the western world of the Colombian discoveries. Columbus (unknowingly) discovered a whole new world.  On his return to Spain the news of a “new world” would have the same impact today, if one of our “touring commercial space ships” would return with reports of an encounter with a new planet with unique life forms and environments completely unknown to us in our world   Imagine that, to get a sense of the Colombian discovery. 

So on this chill October date let us put history and its actual significance into meaningful perspective and remember the extraordinary achievements of one extraordinary explorer.: Christopher Columbus.  

BRIAN IS INNOCENT

  Brian Laundrie is innocent—-(until proven guilty).

The golden thread that runs through English and American jurisprudence as our system’s core foundational premise is: the presumption of innocence. (See: John (1st Viscount)  Sankey,1935, in: Wilmington vs DDP ) 

In our juridical system, we are innocent until proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”. 

In the Gabby Petito disappearance and “homicide” case, the nation has fallen prey to a form of mob rule, where prosecution and conviction takes place  in the press, with judgement based on innuendo supported with few or no facts.  Where only a supposition of guilt, leads to a public “trial” by press release..  What is known, at this time, proves nothing about Laundrie’s guilt or innocence. .

Brian has had a warrant issued for his arrest based on very flimsy charges— his possible use of a credit card that is presumed to be the property of Gabby Petito.   But the card’s  ownership and it’s past usage is unknown. It may have been a joint card shared by the couple.  

This person being chased by the FBI, local police, bounty hunters, who is sniffed out by bloodhounds, and has a bounty placed on his capture, has not been convicted of any crime—- and he is very much still presumed innocent. Attempts at arresting him must take into account that fact. The FBI and local police are not tracking down a fleeing convict, escaped criminal or convicted felon, but a citizen who is wanted for questioning, and the use of a credit card that might be his own. Nothing else. 

 

We are still a nation of laws, that protect us all from hysterical mob rule. If we ignore these our most sacred laws  we are all stripped of their protections and we descend into the jungle of injustice and chaos.

“FAR OUT” BIDEN ECONOMICS

BIDEN VOODOO ECONOMICS 

US Press Secretary Psaki::

“President Biden’s $3.5 trillion dollar plan will NOT cost even a dollar……Ahhhhh….I mean  .. ahh to those American taxpayers making less than $400,000 dollars a year.” ( Jen Psaki , WH Press Secretary. October 2921 ) 

Working Stiff 

“But wait, Jen,  I  don’t make $400K a year, but I do work for a guy who earns that much. He’s a  small business owner.  So if he has to pay more taxes, will he cut back my salary?  Or maybe even eliminate my job…I mean fire me?  (You know how it is Jen…a lot of us salaried guys work for these people. You know small businesses make up more than two thirds of our economy. ) 

Press Secretary

“I just said it.  It won’t cost YOU a dollar!….Just focus on all the Biden benefits you WILL get.”

Working Stiff

“But if I get a big pay cut or lose my job, .or inflation makes food so expensive, how will my kids go to college for free, or get free dental care ?”

Press Secretary 

Jen does not respond. She hurriedly leaves podium