THE FACTS ABOUT CARBON DIOXIDE

Today we often hear mealy-mouthed politicians (mostly on the political right) trying to weasel out of taking a stand on climate change. Members of the GOP can not abide the fact that CO2 levels are rising, that they are caused by human actions and that such changes will have serious perhaps calamitous climatic, economic and social effects. But the scientific facts are so overpowering they hit you in face like a stretched circle of uncooked pizza dough.

Carbon dioxide is the gas which makes soda pop fizzy and forms the bubbles and the “head” on beer. It is also the gas that makes that pizza dough light and bubbly. It occurs naturally in the earth’s interior as a result of igneous rock differentiation processes. During volcanic eruptions it is vented into the atmosphere from the earth’s interior, along with water vapor and other gases. In our modern atmosphere CO2 gas amounts to only a tiny fraction of the air we breathe(less than 0.04% by volume of dry air), but that small amount is exceptionally important. Beside arising from the earth’s interior, carbon dioxide is also formed on the earth’s surface as a waste product of oxidation and animal metabolism. Carbon dioxide is an essential element to the process of photosynthesis, by which carbohydrates are produced by combing CO2 and H2O in the presence of chlorophyll. Photosynthesis releases the oxygen necessary for life, as a gaseous waste. Carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere also functions to soak up heat in the lower levels of the atmosphere, absorbing earth long-wave radiation and holding that heat like a gaseous blanket which helps to warm the lower atmosphere. For that reason, it is classed as one of the “greenhouse” gases, keeping the earth warmer than it would normally be based on how much solar radiation it receives.

Over most of the last nearly one-million years the concentration of CO2 has remained remarkably steady in the atmosphere and up until recent times so has the earth’s temperature. This “steady state” of CO2 is the result of the cycling of carbon from the atmosphere into the biosphere (plants) and back again into the atmosphere in about equal amounts. In the “carbon cycle” photosynthetic (mostly green) plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and fix it as a simple carbohydrate, from which plants generate sugars, starches and insoluble cellulose, and in the end release oxygen as a waste. Plants also consume the oxygen they produce for their own metabolism. While animals (which use the oxygen for their metabolism) complete the cycle by consuming the plant-formed carbohydrates, combining them with oxygen and releasing CO2 as a waste of metabolism back into the air. Thus when Mother Nature held unrestricted sway over the earth, the tiny percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere remained stable and minuscule at about 4/100s of one percent and the earth’s mean surface temperature kept steady too at about 13 degrees C or about 55 deg F.

But enter the human species. According to Ancient Greek myth, it was Prometheus who created man out of clay and then tricked the Gods out of the meat from sacrificial offerings (the Gods got only the long bones and some fat or skin). Zeus, displeased with this effrontery, hid fire from the earthlings, but Prometheus stole a burning brand from heaven to comfort his human creation. However man acquired fire, once they learned to make fire and use it, they developed a penchant for burning things up. Wood was the main fuel of early man. By using wood as a fuel, man simply converted the cellulose and lignin created from atmospheric carbon and water, back into those same substances. As a result, no additional carbon was added to the earth’s atmosphere. But man is very curious and inventive, something Prometheus may not have planned on or foresaw. Upon the discovery that other substances, other than wood (which is difficult to cut, dry and haul) would burn and produce heat, man quickly began to exploit these substances. coal was the first and easiest to exploit.

Very early in human history man learned that some “rocks” would actually burn even hotter than wood. They quickly began to exploit the outcrops of coal or seams at the surface, even dig down into the earth to extract this, light-weight, black material. As far back as 1000BC the Chinese used coal, the “rocks that burn", extracting the light weight rocks from the Fushun Mine in northeastern China to smelt copper. As a result of, the Venetian, Marco Polo’s travels in late 13th century AD in China, (@1271-1291) Polo was able to report in his travelogue the remarkable observation that the Chinese used “black stones” which “burned like logs” to heat water for their baths. He added the astounding fact (for cold, unwashed, Medieval Europeans) that the “stones” were so plentiful and widely used that the common people could take “three hot baths a week!”.

The Romans also exploited coal for smelting and to heat water in the hypocausts under their communal baths. Soon after the Roman invasion and colonization of Britain, initiated under Emperor Claudius in 43AD and lasting to about 409AD, the Romans mined coal to smelt British tin and copper, to burn limestone to make quicklime for concrete, and as a source of fuel to heat water in public baths.

From those early beginnings the use of coal and other fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, expanded exponentially to eventually provide the major sources of energy for the Industrial Revolution. In 2011,according to “coal statistics", world coal production reached 8 billion tons annually and its use was still growing by about 7% each year. Coal is approximately 70% carbon, so when it is burned its carbon is converted into CO2 and that waste gas is simply voided into the world atmosphere to add to the total burden of that gas in the atmosphere. In 2010, the world economy consumed nearly 32 billion barrels of crude oil, while in 2010 natural gas consumption reached 113 trillion cubic feet or 3 trillion cubic meters (doubling in use since 1980). These fossil fuel resources are burned when they are used and the carbon dioxide waste is dumped into the atmosphere. Some have estimated that human activity adds about 29 gigatons or 29 billion tons (tonnes?) of carbon to the atmosphere annually. But this (0.04 %) amount is small compared to the approximately 750 gigatons cycling in the earth oceans and atmosphere at any one time. However, it is "new" carbon and it is added to the already existing carbon, over the over two hundred years of industrial activity that amount has accumulated. It can not be absorbed without consequence into the earth or atmosphere and slowly builds up to alter the climate.

The vast majority of fossil fuels were formed from plants and other organic materials hundreds of millions of years ago. The deep burial of these concentrations of carbon in sedimentary structures sequestered the carbon from the atmosphere and removed them from the carbon cycle. During the industrial revolution beginning @ 1750 these fossil carbon sources were mined, and consumed (i.e. burned, or combined with atmospheric oxygen), which resulted in the release of the ancient carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. It is this “ancient” carbon which is spewed out from every internal combustion engine,every home heating plant that burns fossil fuel, every coal and oil fired electric generation plant, every car, every truck, every motorcycle and lawn mower which dumps newly formed carbon dioxide back into the air and adds to the formerly stable carbon burden of the atmosphere.

Today (as of October 2012) the concentration of carbon dioxide or CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere is 391 ppm (parts per million) That is significantly higher than the value of 280 ppm calculated for the pre-industrial era. Thus the present high level is about 1.4 times greater than the pre industrial period in human history. That is an uncontested actual fact. Annual measurements of CO2, (which are generally made in the well-mixed, far from industrial contamination, pristine air on the slopes of Mona Loa on the Island of Hawaii) indicate that the value has been increasing steadily since the first measurements in the last century and between 2000 and 2009 in this century at the rate of about 2 ppm/year. That is also a simple scientific fact. No, there is no opportunity to formulate your own opinion on this.

Though the overall graph-trend of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is still rising, the recent economic downturn or Great Recession of 2007-08 is reflected in a corresponding slight decreases in that rate. It is noteworthy that the CO2 curve closely follows a graph of the world economy. In an expanding economy, when we all use more fossil fuels, the CO2 levels rise too, and when we use less energy they fall. Thus the correlation between human economic behavior and the CO2 concentration is very close. This fact alone strongly supports the general scientific opinion that the fluctuations are anthropogenic. If we accept the fact that our industries and behavior can control carbon levels then perhaps we can do something (or stop doing some things) to modulate the increasing concentration and the even now observable climatic consequences.

Get the picture?

rjk

AMERICA TAKES UP ROMAN PROSCRIPTION ---BY DRONES

Of all the revelations that are the most hurtful and embarrassing to an American who loves his country and wishes it well is that of the government’s policy of targeted killings of individuals abroad under the claim that they are enemies of the state. In recent times, even American citizens have been killed, and some were as young as sixteen years of age. They were only ACCUSED of crimes. They were not tried in a court of law, or in absentia, or even had a malleable judge cast an eye over their case. They had no opportunity to face their accusers, or even minimal opportunity to defend themselves. The President writes a list of people he wants killed and he or his advisors act as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. This is definitely not the “American Way" I learned of as a student. I was taught that Americans are exceptional and here to lead the world to a better more humane place, not draw it down into repetition of ancient barbarity. The policy of former President Bush and now of President Obama is indeed barbarity, reminiscent not of an American Republic, but more akin to the worst depravity of the latter Roman Republic of two thousand years ago.

 In those archaic days they did not refer to “extra juridical executions” but called it simply “proscription”. The Roman word derives from “proscribe” to put outside the law, outlaw, or condemn something which is dangerous or harmful. Who would have imagined as a student reading Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Republic” and shuddering at the thought of how the Roman leaders used the infamous “proscriptio” which acted to speed its descent into chaos, violence, corruption and death. Who would have imagined that our own nation would ever countenance such horror? And then by bald faced lies attempt to justify it. Yet we have.

 Proscription is the policy of public identification and official condemnation of enemies of the state first used in the Roman world of the first century BC. Proscription as employed by the Romans was the violent elimination (murder) of political opponents, rivals or even personal enemies, which occurred during violent revolutions. Proscription is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a "decree of condemnation to death or banishment". The word is heavily charged in a political sense since it in fact simply refers to illegal state-approved murder or persecution. It was not confined to the First Century BC but has reared its ugly head in more recent politically chaotic times as well,in times and places that we as Americans would probably not like to be associated with...yet we are. Proscription occurred during the ugly “reign of terror” of the French Revolution, and during the political violence that ensued in Argentina after the fall of the Peron government. These were times and characters that we as a nation would not like to be associated with...but Bush and Obama have in fact involved this nation in “state approved murder”. We must fully appreciate that fact and understand it in its historical context.

The earliest incident of proscription I know of occurred in 82BC in Rome, when Lucius Cornelius Sulla, after defeating the forces aligned against him was appointed dictator by a weakened and frightened Senate to make changes to the constitution and repair the Republic. Sulla who was described by a contemporary as having the “cunning of a fox and the courage of a lion” proceeded to direct the Senate to draw up a kill list of those he considered enemies of the state and have the list published in the Roman Forum. Does this seem familiar? Perhaps the only difference from modern times was that Sulla had no technical means (no drones and cruise missiles) to secretly assassinate his enemies, so he published his list and let it be known that each person on the “proscriptio” list was stripped of his citizenship and excluded from all protection under law. Thus anyone could kill and were encouraged to kill the listees with impunity. To encourage them, Sulla provided reward money to be given to anyone who provided information leading to the death of a proscribed man. The weaknesses of the system were obvious. It permitted accusers with ulterior motives to fall prey to corruption and greed. The President’s kill lists are similarly filled and established by CIA paid informers. In Sulla’s day any person who killed a proscribed man was entitled to keep part of his estate (the remainder went to the Roman treasury). We haven’t fallen to that level yet.

The victims of Roman proscription were decapitated and their heads were displayed on spears in the Forum. Bush and Obama have had no similar option in our own times, since their victims are generally completely obliterated by high powered munitions delivered from armed drones or cruise missiles. The blast not only vaporizes the intended target but is so overwhleming that it too often kills many other bystanders and innocents. (Though the present government counts all those killed near-by as "terrorists", an so never kills any innocents.). The Romans by contrast were very specific in their viciousness only the man on the list was killed, his family, wife and children were spared.

Sulla used proscription to help restore the depleted Roman treasury which had been drained by costly civil and foreign wars in the preceding decade, and to eliminate enemies (both real and potential) of his reformed state and constitution. Bush and Obama used their form of proscription to pad their domestic political fortunes, to insure reelection, to lower the costs of war in difficult terrain, and terrorize the purported enemy, their families and supporters, as well as insulating the President from the Republican charge of military “wimpishness”.

Sulla's proscription was bureaucratically overseen, as are the modern USA practitioners of this form of murder, and during Sulla’s time the names of informers and those who profited from killing proscribed men were entered into the public record. In later years and under succeeding Roman consuls these informers and profiteers could and were prosecuted under Roman law as criminals. There the Romans were well ahead of those in the USA who use state-sanctioned assassinations today, for our present government has kept “secret” those who are supporters and practitioners of these immoral, illegal and unconstitutional acts. We only know that both Bush and Obama, like Sulla...were initiators of the policy and signed off on each instance of killing. We as American citizens, apparently have no hope that in the future the guilty will be prosecuted for these barbaric acts. Unless we act to stop it, we are guilty too.

Got the picture?

rjk

BLOATED MILITARY THREATENS SECURITY RATHER THAN INSURES IT

"Standing armies are inconsistent with a people's freedom and subversive of their quiet." Thomas Jefferson 1775

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2009 indicates that the average family spends about 13% of its income on food annually. What would you think of an average family that spent more 26% of its income on food? They may be just spendthrifts, gourmands, food connoisseurs, or just unable to control a habit. Regardless, of the reason it is mathematically certain that this family has less to spend on other essentials. It food habits threaten its long term well being. Supporting evidence of this certainty is that such a family is likely to live in a home which has fallen into disrepair, its automobile is an old,junker, with bad brakes, and the family's youngsters may have teeth in desperate need of repair. One might conclude this family has fallen into a bad habit--- spending too much on smokes, expensive take-out foods, snacks, ice cream, and pizza, a habit that has compromised their well-being. Food rather than providing nourishment, health, and growth threatens to undermine this family's well being. That is analogous to what has happened to the USA. We are spendthrifts too. But our habit is not addiction to food or cigarettes. Our spendthrift habit is military hardware and overseas military adventurism, which threaten our long term well being.

In 2012 the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published a list of the top 15 military spenders. Their publication lists the US at the very top and notes that in simple gross dollar amounts the US spends as much as the next fourteen other top military spenders. The SIPRI yearbook lists the top spender as the US, spending $712 billion dollars on defense in 2011. China our nearest competitor in this category spent $143 billion. Russia spent only $72 billion. While both the UK and France spent about $63 billion each. That is, the only possible (but very unlikely) opponent in any conflict---China, spends only one fifth of what we do. Russia another nation sometimes categorized (unrealistically) as a potential enemy by some, spends only one-tenth of what we spend. Though unimaginable, we're we to have to tangle with both of these nations simultaneously we would have a better-than-three-to-one military spending advantage over them. So just who are we girding up to fight? Even if all these top fifteen nations unimaginably ganged up on us in a war...we would still be on a better than even footing on the basis of our military spending.

Looking at it another way, the World Bank figures for 2011 list military expenditures of 74 nations as a percent of their gross domestic product (GDP). A quick calculation from the published World Bank data indicates that on average, the world's nations (74 of them in this 2011 analysis) spend on average about 2.8% of their GDP on defense and military hardware. The US expenditure for the same period is listed as 4.7% of GDP. that figure is 167% higher than the world average. (Note that this figure is our published "defense spending" category, and is the "base budget" which does not include hundreds of billions more in costs for overseas deployments such as in Iraq or Afghanistan, or secret wars elsewhere, nor does it include hidden costs such as maintenance of nuclear stock piles, transportation of troops, health care for wounded veterans, etc. etc. )

If we examine other western industrialized nations, similar to ourselves, the exceptionalism of the USA in military largess (at 4.7% of GDP) is even more pronounced. Canada expended only 1.4% of its GDP on its military in 2011, while Australia spent 1.9%, China 2.0%, France 2.3%, Belgium 1.3%, Netherlands 1.4%, Denmark 1.5%, Germany 1.3%, Poland 1.7%, Russia 3.5%, Sweden 1.2%, Suisse 0.8%, Spain 1.0%, Turkey 2.3%, and our closest ally, the UK, spent only 2.5% of GDP on its military. The average military spending of this group in percent of GDP is 1.7%. Or only about a third of what the US--the world's self-designated policeman--spends of its GDP. It is noteworthy as well, that these nations almost all claim longer citizen lifespans, better health care and health outcomes, lower infant mortality rates, higher school children math test scores, and better, more modern transportation systems, electric grids and infrastructure. The answer is simple, if, as our gourmand family above, if we are overspending in one category (by spending about four dollars out of every ten on military hardware, foreign bases, unnecessary interventions and wars, in this nation, and we maintain one of the world's lowest tax rates on the wealthy) there is little excess available to spend on pressing long-term domestic needs of our citizenry and to improve our infrastructure.

As a nation, in a mostly pacified world, we may have the most powerful military with a many bases, big ships and big guns, but our country is on decline in every other category. Thus in a real way our military over-expenditure which acts to protect the world as a whole, permits other western nations to sit back and "let the USA do it". Our citizenry pay in the form of taxes for our protection but also for the safety our nation offers the rest of the world. We pay for it also in shorter lives, a skimpy social safety net, insufficient health care and inadequate investment in the nation's infrastructure. We live more like a third world country here, while our bloated defense spending helps to permit the Europeans and our Asian allies, as well as much of the rest of the world which falls under our military umbrella, to avoid those expenses and to live more stable, well-cared for affluent lives.

Another way to evaluate our over-spending on "defense" can be measured as the percent of our military costs compared to total global military spending. Measured this way, the USA (representing less than 5% of the Earth's total population) spends about 45 % of the world total on battleships, guns, bullets, armor, bombs, planes, drones, uniforms, etc. etc. That is---one nation the USA--- spends the bulk, 45%, or nearly half of the entire amount of all the world's military bill! The total US economy in 2011 comprised about $15.2 trillion dollars. That amount represented only 22% of the total global economy (of about $70 trillion dollars). Thus a nation representing only less than 5% of the world's population and which accounts for only a bit more than a fifth (1/5) of the world's economy, spent almost half of the money the entire world laid out on equipment like, guns, bombs, ships, planes and bullets. Why? Who are we so afraid of?

Were our military expenditures more in line with our economy and size, we might expect that as a nation which represent a bit more than a fifth of the global economy, we might be expected to spend a similar amount, say 20% of the world's total military bill, but you would be wrong. For the US is a military spendthrift. We spend more than double what you might expect. We are gun-hungry squanderers and by necessity (there being little money left) are domestic pinch pennies.

Our stated and published "Defense Spending" for 2011 was about $711 billion dollars or 4.7% of our $15.2 trillion dollar GDP. I have noted elsewhere in this blog, and previous ones that this "base" figure is only a fraction of the actual total.

Suppose our defense spending was more in line with other industrialized nations? Say if our defense budget was more like the western industrialized nations above, which spend at a rate of about 1.7% of their GDP. That value (1.7%) of our 2011 GDP of $15.2 trillion would be about $258 billion dollars. That amount is a far cry from the $711 billion we actually spent ( and more) on defense. Were we constrained to that figure, we might have to stop building some of those expansive, sumptuous, air-conditioned, palatial, military bases overseas. We now have some nine hundred (900) of them around the world and growing. We might have to eliminate some of the unnecessary duplication and competition between our Army, Air Force, Marines and Navy. Trim down our forces so as to come into line with real and existing threats. Our top generals might actually have to do some real work, rather than sit around like Marine Corps General John R. Allen and write thousands of pages of flirtatious emails to friendly women "pen" pals. Former General Petraeus might have had to actually spent his time diligently working for the US citizens who provided him with cushy living quarters, free staff, servants, health care and free transportation, rather than spending illicit hours dallying with nubile female admirers. Were we to drop our spending to one more in line with other industrialized western nations we would have had ($711- $258= $453) about $453 billion in hand that we somehow spent in wasteful, unproductive ways abroad and at home. That amount might have been spent on US infrastructure, health care, our children's education, etc. Or perhaps we could have simply put it toward reducing our budget deficit for that year. We would not have had to borrow as much money as we did---$1.3 trillion and our deficit could have been reduced to "only" ($1,300 - $453 = $847) $847 billion dollars.

Why do we overspend so much on our military? Some reasons for defense expenditures are fully justified. We do have legitimate defense requirements. We are a nation which depends on trade. Our nation's access to overseas markets must be protected for our export industries. But these expenses are "benefits" a form of "corporate welfare" paid out or the benefit of highly profitable, (and in some cases--as in the oil industry--enormously profitable enterprises). Why should these costs not be borne more equitably by the industries that profit from our military efforts?

But much of our overspending is from long habit. Our military expansionism began way back in the press-WW II era. Before that war our defense spending was much like those of modern western industrialized nations. During the war our defense spending grew to close to 45% of GDP. In the post war era we began a great competition with the Communist world, the USSR and Communist China. The Cold War continued until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. During that period we continued on a war footing. Fighting hot wars in Korea, and Vietnam. After a brief spell of peace (too brief) our military spending declined to about the the 3% level then the Iraq War and on into the War on Terror caused the percentage to climb back up. Our only yardstick for what our defense spending should be like dates back to pre WW II days when it was in the one and two,percent of GDP range, and what similar economies spend today (see above). Today after nearly three quarters of a century spending on our military as if we were existentially threatened, as it we were in a hot war we are like a drug addict, hooked on war-related spending. We have a military monkey on our back and a "golden" arm. Today our heavy spending is in part the result of the cosy relationship between the military and the industrial giants which provide military hardware, materiel and services, and the Congress which is flooded by lobby money derived from these sources. We have built industries to build weapons, and industries to support the industries which support weapons builders.

Our emphasis on military spending has made us first class warriors and second class citizens in the world. Our infrastructure is antiquated, our health care is less than adequate, our transportation systems, electrical grids, energy systems are all in need of refurbishment and investment. But we are the world's policeman, making the globe safe for international business, opening markets for our industries and in passing for those of China and the Asians and Europeans, while at home we collapse under the burden of debt and excess armament spending.

You will soon hear howls from the Congress and the vested interests in the military as some minor cuts are proposed by the Obama Administration in our bloated defense budget. Keep in mind that even under the most stringent cuts envisioned (not the ones I discuss here), even the sequestration proposal (across the board cuts) our military/defense budget will still GROW by 16% over the next several years. The cuts being proposed are cuts IN THE INCREASE of the defense budget, a light trimming down from 21% to 16%. Our defense budget will continue to grow, from its now bloated level to an even greater bloated level, but just not as fast even if the very deepest cuts spoken about today in Congress are actually put into effect. (A good piece to read on what should be cut is: "We spend too much on defense" by Gordon Adams, July 11, 2012, in "Aol Defense", and for a full explanation of why defense spending is out of control.

I suggest that a truly strong nation and a powerful defense posture requires full employment, a healthy citizenry, up-to-date infrastructure, a healthy middle class, and a sound robust economy. Such a nation can best withstand any external threat. As it stands today, our bloated military establishment is actually more of a long term threat to our security, than it is a bulwark against such threats, since it gobbles up resources today which could have been invested in needed domestic spending, structural changes, improved energy supplies, better transportation, more investment in the future and growth in the nation as a whole. Our military and the complex of industries, lobbyists and Congressional supporters in league with it are hollowing out the nation they claim to protect. This is not a wise or desirable situation for our future.

Get the picture?

rjk Peru, Vermont

THE FERMI PARADOX AND EARTH'S FUTURE

THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE FERMI PARADOX

Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American theoretical physicist, sometimes referred to as the "father of the atomic bomb" was winner of the Nobel Prize (1938 Physics) and who,with his colleagues, built the first atomic reactor at the University of Chicago in 1942. Fermi had a facile mind and was fond of making rough mathematical estimates off the top of his head. In the post-war era, Fermi worked on the hydrogen bomb project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was about this time that a particularly active spate of UFO sightings were reported in the USA. They all proved to be ruses, or to be of explicable atmospheric or terrestrial origin. About the same time, in New York, in 1950, cartoonist Alan Dunn published a comical piece in the New Yorker magazine implying that the bane of the suburban homeowner,the lost or missing garbage pail cover was really the work of “aliens” from space who needed them to make flying saucers. Only a short time after the cartoon's appearance Fermi and several of his colleagues, while walking to lunch, took the opportunity to discuss this amusing matter in a lighthearted way. As the scientists bantered, Fermi thought in silence. When the jokes ended, he turned serious as he asked his scientist friends "So where are all the ailiens?” or "Where is everybody?". As a response to their quizzical expressions, he explained that his rough calculations indicate a high probability of extraterrestrial, sentient life and of advanced civilizations. He based his conclusions on the fact of the non-unique character of the Earth, the young age of the Sun (and Earth) and the immense number of stars in the galaxy and the universe. Thus, he concluded, there was a high probability for the existence of other planets with earth-like conditions where civilizations should have had plenty of time to have reached and surpassed the Earth's level of technology and sophistication and had time to embark on space voyages of exploration and colonization. But, he added, why are there no credible evidences of other worldly civilizations? The only evidences were imaginings such as UFOs and Dunn's cartoon about trash can covers. Fermi concluded by posing the now famous question, "Where is everybody?"

Fermi's query underscores the serious conflict, the paradox, between our knowledge of the physical world and the expected probability and path of events likely to occur, against the lack of evidence of those events in our earthy experience.

As they walked on, Fermi fleshed out his hypothesis with some rough figures. He pointed out that scientists assume that the Earth is a typical planet, orbiting an average-sized young star, the Sun. The Sun is located in the outer rim of our galaxy, known as the Milky Way. Our star is just one of some 200 to 400 billion or more other stars in our galaxy. But beyond the Milky Way we can see the swirling lenticular patterns of other galaxies in the visible universe, an estimated 80-100 billion of them. Each one of those billions of galaxies are comprised of stars as is our Milky Way. Galaxies vary in size, making precice eatimates of the total number of stars in the visible universe difficult. A recent estimate, December 2010, (by Pieter Van Dokkum in Nature) indicates that there may be more than 300 sextillion stars in the visible universe. (Note: that number is 3 x ten to the 26th power, or 300 followed by 24 noughts or zeros) Even if only a very tiny percentage of all those stars had planets with an earth-like range of temperatures, certain gases in its atmosphere, specific geological processes going on, and surface processes in which chemical elements could combine into simple molecules, each with the ability to reproduce themselves, generating "progeny" with minor chance-induced variations. Once reqching that stage, the grand process of Darwinian evolution would initiate and proceed to engender more and more well-adapted forms. The number of specific requirements, each one dependenpt upon the previous, and also necessary to occur in a certain order make the probability of occurrence for these circumstances to be indeed very low and for these multiple events to initiate on each of the Earth-like planets only adds to the difficulty. Perhaps there is only a probability of one in a billion (I am guessing here!) yet the sheer number of stars, 300 sextillion or almost an infinite number available, overmatches these low probabilities. Of those planets with earthy conditions many would follow Earth's course toward sentient life and would go on to develop technological sophistication. Given what we know from our own Earth we would expect advanced civilizations to develop similar to our own. Furthermore, since the Sun is a young star at only 4.5 billion years old, while the known universe is more than three times older (at about 14 billion years) and thus these "other earthly" civilizations might be well along in their evolution toward space travel and universe colonization, being far ahead of our own recent feeble attempts. Fermi reasoned that these extraterrestrial civilizations, many of which could have existed millions or even billions of years prior to our own Sun's birth, would have more than adequate time to explore and colonize other parts of the universe, making their presence known to us.

But according to Fermi, as diligently as we have sought and searched (such as efforts by SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, at Berkeley U of C) the heavens, we have so far found no proof of other life forms. In spite of the number of UFO reports, pseudo-scientific imaginings of alien landings, reports of flying saucers, etcetera, there have been no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life or visits. Why? According to all that we know of the universe and what we know of mathematical probability they should be there or have revealed their presence to us by this time. But they have not. Where are they? This is the basis of Fermi's question: "Where is everybody?".

If we accept the basis of Fermi's Paradox, we are inexorably led to examine more closely its significant implications.

The first might be, that we find no evidence of extrqterrestrial life because life is scarce and more difficult to develop "from scratch" than we expect and that the are no other advanced or sentient life forms or civilizations out there. We are alone in the universe. This line of reasoning posits that the development of life and civilization on earth is the result of the exceedingly rare concatenation of unlikely circumstances. One such example is the chance impact near present day Chicxalub, Mexico by an asteroid at the close of the Cretaceous Period, some 66-67 million years ago. The large Chicxulub asteroid (on impact formed a 6 mile deep, 100 plus mile wide crater off the Yucatan Peninsula) just happened to impact Earth at a critical time for the evolution of mammals. Its impact caused severe world wide environmental effects, so as to cause the mass extinction of a dominant life form of the Cretaceous Period the dinosaurs. This event seemingly would alter the biosphere to make way for the explosive adaptive radiation of a group of tiny, inconspicuous, nocturnal,insect-eating mammals (a large species was the size of a squirrel) which, with the demise of the saurians had new habitats and food resources to exploit. This is the quirky, "chancy" way by which life evolved on Earth. Earth's course of evolution could have just as easily gone some other way had the Chicxulub asteroid missed us by a hair. It would seem that such lucky strokes of nature are very rare and unlikely to be repeated again and again on other distant planets. However, a truism of astrophysics is that all things are possible given enough time and enough stars near where they might occur, and our universe has no scarcity of either one. Thus such an hypothesis (our specialness or uniqueness) seems to fly in the face of all we know about the physical world and the mathematics of probability.

A second possibility advanced to explain the lack of evidence of human-like neighbors in the universe is more ominous for us. Perhaps life and civilizations are as common as Fermi suspected. Perhaps life has formed many, many times before on other distant planets, but given the nature of such life, encoded as it is with the traits necessary to exploit and survive in a harsh environment, and to become a dominant life form--the inherent greed, rapacity, the need to conquer, and the development of exploitative interrelations among their own kind, ultimately lead to conflict, chaos, exploding populations, population collapse and extinction.

Is the answer to the question Fermi posed:“Where is everybody?"--that they have existed once, but have all gone to hell? Is the natural end of planets like ours, which are able to develop and harbor "sentient" life and "civilization" that in the end, they get snuffed out in a global nuclear holocaust, starved to death, or burned to a crisp on a planet with Venus-like high levels of heat-absorbing carbon dioxide in its atmosphere, generating a run-away greenhouse effect?

We are now in the 21 Century on they very cusp of a significant change in human development and direction. Our course from here can lead us toward one end or another. One route takes us on to conflict, nuclear war, chaos, starvation and global warming. The other, more hopeful course, may give us time to progress and evolve further, both socially and technologically, and ultimately lead toward peaceful exploration of space. What will be our future?

Are we Earthlings wise enough to understand the implications of the Fermi Paradox?

Get the picture?

rjk

SECOND AMENDMENT REFERS TO FLINTLOCK MUSKETS NOT BUSH MASTERS

Assault weapons and the Second Amendment

Queen Elizabeth I of England, to help protect her small, weak nation against the threat of powerful continental enemies instituted a wise and reasonable laws to encourage and support the use and practice of archery, chiefly of the long bow, the main weapon of the day. All able bodied men were required to keep a long bow and an adequate supply of arrows and to be proficient with this weapon. It made great sense. In a national emergency, were the government to have to raise an army, the Queen wanted her bowmen to be proficient with the most effective military weapon of its day and be able and ready to defend the state.

Our own founding fathers, had a similar problem. In 1791 when the Second Amendment was drawn up and voted into law, the USA was a newly formed and weak nation faced with formidable and powerful foreign enemies. The constitutional amendment that established the right to " bear arms" as part of a "well regulated militia" was designed to insure that were an armed defensive force needed to be quickly called up, our defenders would have the requisite skills and proficiency to use the weapons of the day...the single-shot muzzle loader musket and perhaps the more difficult and slow to load Kentucky rifle. These weapons, though vastly more advanced and deadly than the bow and arrow of Queen Elizabeth's day were what the Founders were imagining when they envisioned US citizenry "bearing arms". They could not have imagined the highly mechanized armies and powerful nation we would become, or how military technology would make most hand-held weapons obsolete in the 21 Century.

The muzzle loading weapons of the late 18th century --the time of the adoption of the Second Amendment in 1791, were deadly, but were difficult to reload and frequently more threatening to the user than to the enemy they were intended to kill or disable. The muzzle loader musket of the late 18th Century was a simple hollow metal tube open at one end, and affixed to a wooden stock. It was loaded from the front, or open muzzle-end of the tube. To load it a measured charge of black powder was first poured down the tube. A wad of paper or other similar material was pressed and tamped down on top of the powder. The tamping process was accomplished by a long wood stick called a ram rod. On top of the first wad, the shot charge or solid lead ball was rammed home and was held in place by a second wad. The basics of the mechanism of firing was that in the breech end of the gun (just above the trigger) the barrel had been bored with a tiny hole which connected the base of the barrel with a little metal exterior ledge called the "pan" or "frizzen" where a small amount of additional powder was placed. The strike of a small piece of flint or chert held by a hammer against the frizzen would created a spark, and ignite the powder in the pan. That ignition passing in a flash through the little hole called a "flash hole" in the side of the barrel would ignite the main charge, and fire the projectile through the barrel.

There were many problems with muzzle loaders. These primitive weapons were all single-shot affairs. Reloading could take as much as a minute or more even when an expert was firing and reloading. (Though it is claimed that some musketeers could fire as many as three rounds a minute.). As a result, a shooter usually got only one chance to fire his or her weapon, at some given target. If he or she missed the first opportunity, the chance for a second shot was very remote, and the game or intended target was likely gone. But that was only one of many problems. The least of which was that a person never knew if the gun was loaded. All muzzle loaders had to be assumed to be loaded until proved otherwise, since one could not peer down into the business end of the barrel, that would be foolhardy, and useless as well, since nothing could be seen down there anyway. One way to make the determination regarding its load, might be to test the depth of the barrel with the ram rod. Some shooters would scribe a mark on the wood of the ram rod to indicate an empty barrel and another mark for a charged barrel. But not all shooters were so responsible and careful. Not being able to easily ascertain if the gun was charged or not could lead to further serious problem--placing a second charge on top of an earlier unfired one or double charging. Double charging a piece could cause a catastrophic explosion which would likely burst the barrel close to the breech-end and seriously wound the shooter. Another major difficulty was keeping the loose powder in the pan in place and keeping it dry. Carrying the loaded piece roughly or carelessly might cause the powder in the pan to fall or dribble out, or it might get wet and not fire in wet or damp weather. Another problem is that a fired weapons scatters sparks all around it. When the musket is fired, a spray of sparks disperses at the muzzle and from the flash hole. These embers could easily ignite the charge of another musket near by. When in a battle, and firing and reloading in rapid succession, sparks might remain lodged in the barrel as the shooter attempts to reload. These remnant sparks could ignite the powder being poured in and the ignition could run up the barrel and into the powder-horn held by the shooter...blowing it up and seriously injuring the soldier. Due to these mechanical shortcomings and problems accidents, unexpected firings, and misfires were very common.

Thus when the Second Amendment was proposed and ratified, this was the type of unsophisticated military hardware and technology the Founders had knowledge of and were encouraging the citizenry to become proficient with. The possibility of mass murder with an 18th century blunderbuss, musket, or flintlock rifle was very unlikely. The proposers of the Second Amendment certainly could not have imagined weapons such as the AR 15, Kalashnikov, or Bush Master assault rifles, with thirty more rounds per clip. Nor could they have imagined a citizenry who would try to use the Second Amendment to stockpile, carry, and use such military hardware in modern, congested settings. I imagine that if they had such ideas, even as pipe dreams, they might have been very much more precise in their terminology.

The Second Amendment clearly is a document of its time and its reference to "arms" that citizens could carry are the armaments of those days....the primitive arms of more than two hundred years ago, not those of the present day. So I suggest that those of us who wish to belabor the fact that the Constitution gives us the right to bear arms, let us remember what arms our Founders were referring to. That honored document has nothing to say about modern arms like modern assault weapons.

So let us make no restrictions on those who would bear the arms our Founders actually conceived of. If you would wish to hunt or protect your home with a flintlock musket or a horse pistol of those days go right ahead.

But modern rapid fire, automatic fire, and assault weapons are another matter all together.

What's next anti-aircraft artillery?

Get the picture?

rjk

GOVERNMENT MISREPRESENTS MILITARY EXPENSES IN BUDGET

MILITARY SPENDING NOT ENTITLEMENTS LARGEST COMPONENT OF US BUDGET AT NEARLY 40%

In 2001 a Huston, Texas, blue-chip company with interests in energy, natural gas and wood pulp, and known as Enron, was the darling of Wall Street, and touted as "America's most innovative company". Enron employed a staff of 20,000 people world wide, and had a reputed revenue in 2000 of over 100 billion dollars. Yet in that same year it suddenly filed for bankruptcy. The company stock plummeted from $90 dollars a share to pennies in days. The cause of its failure---lies, misrepresentation and accounting fraud. To keep its upscale reputation on Wall Street and remain attractive to investors and to new customers, Enron simply misrepresented its accounts so as to appear more stable and more profitable than it really was. Enron executives moved their less profitable "assets" to shell companies which were "off the books", and kept only its more profitable assets on the record...to deceive its investors and others. Of course such deception is criminal fraud and the company's executives and accountants were eventually tried and convicted as felons.

But similar deceptions are practiced every day by our government. Republicans and Democrats alike mislead the public concerning how our government allocates its funds. Such misrepresentation is just as much fraudulent as Enron's, and should be investigated and prosecuted.

Our government, both political parties, the Congressional budget Office (CBO) and the White House continually misrepresent our military spending. Like Enron they would prefer to present a more congenial set of facts to the voters and to do this, it appears they have decided to lie about the magnitude of government defense spending and its relation to other discretionary and mandated expenses. Our government consistently presents military expenditure so as to make them appear less than they actually are. Such deceptions alter the way citizen/voters perceive our overall spending patterns and have no place in a democracy supposedly "by the people, of the people and for the people". Our government should not deceive us.

In April of 2011 Congress passed the United States government budget for expenditures from September 2010 to October 2011. The document disclosed revenue collection at $2.3 trillion dollars, while total expenditures were $3.6 trillion dollars, and debt payment at @$250 billion dollars. The deficit--the amount of spending which was unfunded and had to be borrowed was listed as $1.56 trillion (or $1.3 trillion). Therefore, in 2011 we were projected to spend more than a trillion dollars that we did not have!

OK, that's what happened, it is not too unusual. We have been running a deficit like that for many years now. But what is important is how these expenditures were represented or misrepresented by our government officials.

In 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a pie chart of U.S. Federal spending for fiscal year 2011. I indicate below how they represented the data in the form of a pie chart. (Follow here a link to site with pie chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2011.png) The multicolored chart represents the total expenditures of $3.6 trillion dollars and how those funds were distributed for fiscal year 2011.

The largest slice of the pie, depicted in bright red, is labeled "Medicare and Medicaid" the category which accounts for $835 billion dollars or 23% of the total. Next largest is Social Security, which at $725 billion dollars accounts for 20% of the total pie. (I must add here that Social Security is not an entitlement and should not be included here. It is an insurance program! A program which actually pays for itself. In fact in the year in question, 2011, the government took in about $800 billion in SS taxes and paid out $725 billion, so it made a "profit" on SS. Social Security seems to be added into the calculations here to "pad the bill", making it appear that the government spends more on entitlements than it actually does and skewing the graph to make Defense appear smaller.). The third largest expenditure in this analysis is "Defense Department", which according to this chart, accounts for 19% of the total disbursements or $700 billion dollars. "Discretionary Spending" accounts for $646 billion dollars or 18% of the total; while "Other Mandatory" costs $465 billion and represents 13% of the pie; finally "Interest On The Debt", is represented as $227 billion dollars, or 6% of the total.

In this pie chart illustration, (referenced above) it is clear what the CBO is implying---that social-safety-net-spending, in the form of Social Security and Medicare /Medicaid make up the largest portion of the pie---for in the CBO analysis, added together they represent a whopping 43% of the budget while Defense is listed as only 19%. This is certainly a misrepresentation. Regarding defense spending, the truth is that Defense is not third down the list at a measly 19% of the total, but number one at about 39% of the total. Te other half of military costs are hidden in the mysterious "Discretionary Spending" and "Other Mandatory" pie slices. That is not a fair or accurate representation of how we spend our tax dollars.

It turns out what the CBO has done with this pie chart is very much what felon Bernie Madoff or convicted Enron executives would have done. To deceive our citizenry, it has shifted much of what is actual (perhaps embarrassingly big) defense spending costs into other categories, just as Enron shifted around it non-profitable assets into shell companies. The real total military spending (see below) is more accurately $1.4 trillion dollars, or closer to double what is represented on the pie chart. If Defense was properly represented on the CBO graphs it would be a biggest red slice of the pie nearly twice as big as it is. A valid pie graph should represent Defense Spending at about 39% of the total-----not 19%. Misrepresenting defense spending is a fraud committed against the people. Such misrepresentation has helped to befuddle the electorate, to misinform and to add to the confusion regarding what is our largest expenditure and where to logically and equitably cut our expenses so we can slowly reduce the annual deficit. In a more valid analysis we spend more on military matters than all other components. Furthermore, if we were to properly remove Social Security from the total "expenditures" since SS actually pays for itself and then some, the graph would be even more obviously skewed toward military spending than it is.

Notes :

See: Center on Conscience and War, True Costs of the Military (http://www.centeronconscience.org/pubs/urgent-action-alerts/45-2011/187-do-you-know-the-true-costs-of-the-military.htm)

Summary:

Military Discretionary Spending @ $775 billion in 2011 (included on chart as Defense Department)

Mandatory Military Spending @$204 billion (placed into "Other" category on chart)

Hidden Military Expenses @$423 billion (not included in Defense Department)

Total: $1.4 trillion

Get the picture?

rjk

WELFARE IN THE USA--FOR THE ELITE

THE WELFARE STATE IN THE USA

 Perhaps it is another outgrowth of our sordid past as a nation which ruthlessly uprooted, imported and enslaved large numbers of black Africans (as is our penchant for hand guns and assault-weapons for self defense) but, for whatever reason, today, the USA has an antipathy for its poor, and underclasses black or white. Today in the USA being poor is considered your own fault. The unemployed or underemployed are viewed as citizens who never took advantage of the opportunities available to them, or simply were improvident, or did not work as hard as those who consider themselves successful. Then too, our political history and the tendency for some to a rigid adherence to an inflexible Constitution tends to supports those who make these claims. The 18th Century authors of that great document could not possibly have foreseen the need for welfare intervention, and it makes no clear provisions to redistribute money collected by taxation.


 As a consequence of its history, our political system, and Constitution, the USA has become the world's great hold-out against welfare. Particularly odious is the very efficient and successful Nordic or European-style "welfarism". In our present political discourse even the word "Europe" has begun to carry a negative connotation to the American right and its business classes and is often wielded as an epithet. As a consequence of this antipathy; of the approximately two dozen modern, industrialized, wealthy nations in the world, such as Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and those of Western Europe, the USA, with the largest economy and the most affluent upper class, has the most stingy, minimalist and least effective, (but most expensive) social-safety net for its citizenry. Our nation also boasts the shortest lifespan, highest rates of income and wealth inequality, highest rates of infant mortality, highest rates of gun-related fatalities, poorer health and health-related outcomes than those of all other wealthy nations.

Yet welfarism is not dead in America. It is a little spoken of secret that the USA supports an elaborate, nay even "European" style safety net, one which gets little attention from our corporate-sponsored press and media. For the truth is that more government funds are doled out as welfare to businesses, banks, military suppliers, and big business agriculture in what can be termed "corporate welfare" than to the infamous 47% of our population singled out as "moochers" by Mr. Romney during the last presidential race. Enormous funds are expended by the USA government to help insure the profitability, access to markets, sustainability, insurance against loss, support for research, development and planning, and the well being of its most affluent and connected citizenry....the corporatists, oligarchs, military-industrialists, bank officials, and other elites. The USA has a well-developed and well-funded welfare system, but though we all pay for it, the funds are showered only on the largest businesses, their CEOs and the well-connected. The rest of us are on our own to sink or swim. The vast amount of our wealth and government largess derived in large part from taxing the 99% is used to support this privileged element of our citizenry, perhaps only one tenth of one percent of our population. The rest of us are pretty much left to fend for ourselves.

So lets not go around claiming we are not a welfare state. We are! The only difference in our nation, which has traditionally tended toward its capitalist elites, from say that of Sweden, Denmark, Germany, or France is that our welfarism is directed not at the majority of our citizenry but functions to support our banks, industries, military, and the cadre of elites who control and or own these institutions. Once our citizenry come to realize this fact, perhaps they will not be so biased against appropriate and necessary government intervention on behalf of its poor and working class citizens----and then we may be more likely to institute a more sustainable and equitable division of assets in this great nation.

Perhaps the first step in this monumental change of perception will be to understand the actual function of our bloated military. Our military has long ago surpassed its Constitutional mandate and libertarian-sanctioned aims of simple defense of the homeland. With its massive military outlays annually, and world wide military footprint of more than 900 bases on every continent and nearly rocky islet in the world oceans, it serves not for simple defense but as an adjunct and protector of our great industries and their economic world interests. Our military expenditures also underwrite our European competitors who are protected by our military umbrella and thus can cut their military costs to the bone. We all pay for this largess to our industries and to the world in the name of "defense". But it is in large part only another face of industrial and corporate welfarism.

Therefore let us all remember this when in two months, the Obama Administration will have to face up to the Republicans who are the real advocates of welfarism, and who will attempt to cut the minimalist safety net we have in this nation so as to protect their corporate welfare clients---and the great military industrial complex, massive agribusinesses, pharmaceutical companies, and the industries which support them. Watch out! Do not support corporate and military welfarism. We must all fight for a better balance in our government's outlays...for the betterment and true welfare of our nation as a whole.

Get the picture?

rjk I