Category: Current Affairs
Evidence Mounts That Global Warming is a Lot of Hot Air
So far I have been very measured and noncommittal in my comments on global warming. I have contented myself with drawing some elementary distinctions that would have to be observed in any rational discussion of the issue. See here and here.
But having spoken to a climatologist and having read more on the subject, I am now inclining to the view that much of so-called climate science contains a sizeable admixture of leftist, anti-capitalist ideology fueled by grant-funding agencies with political axes to grind who favor those who toe the party line. This WSJ article is a bit more evidence that this is so.
Travesty in New York
Will there be no end to the idiocies perpetrated by the Obama Administration? The latest is the absurd decision to give Islamic terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City. As usual, Charles Krauthammer cuts to the nerve of the matter:
So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.
Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
See also Mona Charen's Holder's True Motive for some incisive analysis.
Obama’s Fiscal Malpractice
Essential reading by Robert Samuelson. What were you thinking when you voted for this empty suit?
The Latest Heidegger Controversy
Court Merrigan writes,
I wonder if you'd like to weigh in on the newly-intensified debate surrounding Heidegger. Should the man's odious politics disqualify him from being taken seriously as a philosopher, as this book newly translated into English seems to indicate?
You may have seen this article, also, on Faye's forthcoming book.
This is apart from whether Heidegger's philosophy should be taken seriously in the first place. Many, I understand, do not think so.
I'm very curious to see where you stand on this and, more generally, the question of whether a philosopher's biography ought to be considered along with his body of work.
I should begin by saying that I haven't yet read Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. But if the NYT article is to be trusted — a big 'if' — Faye's book
. . . calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.
If this is what Faye is saying, then his book is rubbish and ought to be ignored. Hate speech? That's a term leftists use for speech they don't like. No one in his right mind could see Heidegger's magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), published in 1927, as anything close to hate speech. The claim that it is is beneath refutation. Nor can his lectures and publications after 1933, when Hitler came to power, be dismissed in this way.
What the Pelosi Health Care Bill Really Says
You say you haven't gotten around to reading H. R. 3962? What's wrong with you? It's only 1,990 pages long. Here is a summary. Section and page numbers are provided. Please read it. My summary of the summary: this is the most massive assault on our liberty by the Left to date.
Malcolm Pollack at the Gates of Vienna
Or rather, at the gates of Gotham. Malcolm writes,
Upon reading your post The Left's Death Wish, I thought you might find this interesting: A Genealogy of Radical Islam.
I've been contending with the liberal mindset regarding Islam over at my own place, where, for suggesting that the massacre at Ft. Hood was most likely an example of jihad, and of why an increasing Muslim presence in the West might not be such a good idea, I was tarred, as usual, as a vile Islamophobe.
It's often tempting, as my own shadow lengthens to the East, to withdraw to a quiet life of reading and contemplation. But scribble I must, it seems.
1. Well, Malcolm, I hope you don't succumb to the temptation to withdraw from the fray. To paraphrase Plato, the price the good pay for their indifference to politics is to be ruled by the evil. Not that I don't understand the temptation to withdraw. To quote from an earlier post:
Why not stick to one's stoa and cultivate one's specialist garden in peace and quiet, neither involving oneself in, nor forming opinions about, the wider world of politics and strife? Why risk one's ataraxia in the noxious arena of contention? Why not remain within the serene precincts of theoria? For those of us of a certain age the chances are good that death will arrive before the barbarians do.
[. . .]
The answer is that the gardens of tranquillity and the spaces of reason are worth defending, with blood and iron if need be, against the barbarians and their leftist enablers. Others have fought and bled so that we can live this life of solitude and beatitude. And so though we are not warriors of the body, we can and should do our tiny bit as warriors of the mind to preserve for future generations this culture which allows us to pursue otium liberale in peace, quiet, and safety.
2. I don't know whether to commend you or criticize you for the restraint and tolerance you have shown in the comment thread to your 11/5 post. One of the cyberpunks calls you a "xenophobe" while the other removes the 'crypto' from your ironic self-characterization as a "crypto-Nazi." Me, I DELETE and BLOCK the minute that sort of behavior is manifested. Why waste your time with abusive cyberpunks who hide anonymously behind their 'handles' while spewing their PeeCee nonsense?
The answer, I suppose, is that by responding you demonstrate to others, if not to the punks, how to rebut the charges. So perhaps I should commend you for your toleration. I suspect you will agree with me, however, that toleration has its limits.
3. We agree on the substantive point that, as you put it " the massacre at Ft. Hood was most likely an example of jihad. . . ." There is plenty of evidence for this, and it is most disconcerting that so many, blinded by their political correctness and moral cowardice cannot see it.
Blog on!
Ronald Reagan’s Role in the Fall of the Wall
Twenty years today the Berlin Wall came down. Anthony R. Dolan in Four Little Words explains the difference between a leader like Reagan and an appeaser like Obama. Excerpt (emphasis added):
Reagan had the carefully arrived at view that criminal regimes were different, that their whole way of looking at the world was inverted, that they saw acts of conciliation as weakness, and that rather than making nice in return they felt an inner compulsion to exploit this perceived weakness by engaging in more acts of aggression. All this confirmed the criminal mind's abiding conviction in its own omniscience and sovereignty, and its right to rule and victimize others.
Accordingly, Reagan spoke formally and repeatedly of deploying against criminal regimes the one weapon they fear more than military or economic sanction: the publicly-spoken truth about their moral absurdity . . . . This was the sort of moral confrontation, as countless dissidents and resisters have noted, that makes these regimes conciliatory, precisely because it heartens those whom they fear most—their own oppressed people. Reagan's understanding that rhetorical confrontation causes geopolitical conciliation led in no small part to the wall's collapse 20 years ago today.
The current administration, most recently with overtures to Iran's rulers and the Burmese generals, has consistently demonstrated that all its impulses are the opposite of Reagan's. Critics who are worried about the costs of economic policies adopted in the last 10 months might consider as well the impact of the administration's systematic accommodation of criminal regimes and the failure to understand what "good vs. evil" rhetoric can do.
California Grabs Ten Percent More in Withholding
One of the defining characteristics of liberals and leftists is a deep-seated quasi-religious belief in the benevolence and efficacy of big government, the bigger the better, and this despite repeated demonstrations of government incompetence, inanity, mendacity, and trickery. This from the Associated Press (emphasis added):
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California wage earners will soon notice a little less money in their paychecks. Starting Monday, employers in the cash-strapped state are required to withhold 10 percent more in state income taxes to help ease the budget problems. It's part of a plan to artificially inflate state revenue by $1.7 billion through next June.
Brenda Voet, a spokeswoman for the state Franchise Tax Board, says it's technically not a tax increase since workers will get their money back after April 15. A single wage earner making $51,000 a year with no dependents will get about $4 less a week.
So it's just an accounting trick? But it is worse than that: an arbitrary seizure of citizens' money 'justified' by the principle that might makes right, that what one can do, one is justified in doing. You've heard of 'ought' implies 'can'? This is 'can' implies 'may.'
It will be interesting to see if the California taxpayers get their money back. Where will that money come from, yet another accounting trick?
Fear of Fox
Obamacare: Lawyers Win, Doctors Lose
Today's column by Dennis Prager is a must-read. Excerpt (emphasis added):
If the 1,990-page House Health Care Bill becomes law, the average American will receive worse health care, American physicians will decline in status and income, American medical innovation will dramatically slow down and pharmaceutical discoveries will decline in number and quality. And, of course, the economy of the United States will deteriorate, perhaps permanently.
However, we are also certain that there is one American group that will thrive — trial lawyers. The very existence of a 1,990-page law guarantees years of, if not more or less permanent, lawsuits. And the law actually specifies that states that do not limit attorneys' fees in cases of medical malpractice shall be financially rewarded.
Unbelievable if True: Illiteracy and Innumeracy
Palin Derangement Syndrome: Another Case
(Written 5 October 2008)
Here is how Richard Cohen begins a recent column:
Thank God for Sarah Palin. Without her jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood and her personal attacks on Barack Obama, the Democratic base might never be consolidated. This much is certain: Obama could never do it.
Global Warming: Some Questions
What can a philosopher say about global warming? The first thing he can and ought to say is that, although not all questions are empirical, at the heart of the global warming debate are a set of empirical questions. These are not questions for philosophers qua philosophers, let alone for political ideologues. For the resolution of these questions we must turn to reputable climatologists whose roster does not sport such names as 'Al Gore,' 'Barbra Streisand,' or 'Ann Coulter.' Unfortunately, the global warming question is one that is readily 'ideologized' and the ideological gas bags of both the Right and the Left have a lot to answer for in this regard.
Some Definitions of ‘Global Warming’ Examined
Just what is global warming anyway? On this page you will find a page of definitions. This post will examine some of them. This is important because one cannot intelligently discuss global warming, or anything else, until one knows exactly what one is talking about.
Now one thing that should be obvious is that a genus cannot be defined in terms of a species thereof. And yet that is precisely what some of the definitions on the linked page do. For example,
An increase in the Earth's temperature caused by human activities, such as burning coal, oil and natural gas.
This fails as a definition of 'global warming' because it is too specific. Not all global warming is anthropogenic (man-made). And even if all global warming were anthropogenic, it is not a matter of definition that this be so. The opposite mistake is committed by the following 'definition':
Also called climate change.
This is too general. All global warming is climate change, but not all climate change is global warming. There is also global cooling. And again, even if, contrary to fact, there never has been in the history of the earth any case of global cooling, this is not a question that ought to be decided at the level of a definition. Here is another defective definition:
the theoretical increase of global temperatures caused by the greenhouse effect.
Theoretical as opposed to what? What is the difference between a theoretical increase and an increase? What does 'theoretical' add? And why is a cause specified in the definition? Suppose something other than the greenhouse effect is the cause of global warming. Would it not still be global warming? The business of a definition is to isolate the phenomenon in question, to say what it is. The question as to what causes it is logically secondary and does not belong in the definition. Here is a real winner:
Increased levels of gases such as carbon dioxide that trap heat in the earth's lower atmosphere potentially causing global warming.
Where's my logic stick? First, causes should be left out of definitions. Second, global warming can occur without the build-up of gases like carbon dioxide. Third, the weasel word 'potentially.' Fourth, the definition is circular: the definiendum occurs in the definiens. The following definition seems adequate:
Global warming is a term used to describe an increase over time of the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans.
I would delete the pleonastic 'over time.' How could there be an increase that was not 'over time'? More importantly, note the word 'average' which I think is essential to a good definition. The claim that global warming is taking place is not the claim that at every place at or near the surface of the earth the temperature is higher than it was at that place and on that date in the past. Dennis Prager, an AM talk jock whom I respect, seemed to fall into this fallacy recently. He cited a place at which there had been a record low temperature as evidence against global warming. But it is nothing of the sort. A record low at a particular place is consistent with a general warming trend.
It should be obvious that an average increase in some quantity need not be steady or ubiquitous. Suppose the average price of a house in some locality has increased over a ten year period from X to Y. This is consistent with (i) some houses losing value, and (ii) the average value being at some times during the period less than X.
The last definition strikes this layman as adequate. But it leaves wide open the question whther global warming is occurring, and if it is, how fast and from what causes. But these are empirical questions for the climatologist.