Science is what Sir Martin Rees isn't

Good day to you reader and how do you do? Fine you say?  Well I can't believe that! You cannot be fine because you are a barbaric, self centered, tribal and worst of all stubborn individual, but if you subscribe to the same beliefs as Sr. Martin Rees and other would be technocrats that say the same thing he does then you'll be slightly out of that quagmire of ignorance. The slightly part is only because you'd have jumped into a quagmire of credulity and adulation but eh you win some and you lose some.

It seems to me that every century we have an alarming discovery that attempts to reshape the legal landscape. As a result it only causes massive death tolls usually because force was needed to subjugate a dissident opinion. On the climate change debate, I've yet to see a level of desperation that would seek violence from my side which says there needs to be a divorcing of science from law. In other words while science is beneficial to mankind in many ways we cannot exaggerate how  history warns us of how devastating it can be when used as the foundation of wide sweeping legislation and the propaganda used to pass it.

Gravity for example advances aging, and people observe gravity but for some reason no law needs to be written for that, despite the fact that everyone will eventually get old and die. I say that's fine and that's how science should be divorced of the legal structure. A science enthusiast may find the current global warming communities disinterest in experimentation very disheartening; it reminds me of the way my high school history book depicted how social Darwinism became popular. I say fine let’s marry law and science but first what about the experimentation process, presently it’s easy enough to believe in Global Warming as a historicist after all Climatologist defend their profession from the rugged truth determiner of empiricism by simply saying they create models based on historical data and so cannot be taken to the task of testing that information.

Again I say fine, so then calling Climatologists scientists is a misnomer and I will start calling them Historians. But "no, no, no wait" they say, "we aren't Historians we can tell you about the future too, let's see" they say, then they say that in 5 years no ice will be in the North Pole and areas of the world will know drought that would be abnormal and so on. This was from the 2007 UNEP report and now that report 5 years later in 2013 is agreed upon as a 300% over estimate on the impact of global warming. This is in spite of a rapid increase in CO^2 emission thanks to China and India.

Ironic as it may sound Asia according to Martin Rees who as a result of the 2013 report I paraphrased above is on damage control for the UNEP and HSBC through Cambridge (I'll explain the connection in a bit) stated the future of scientific advancement rests in Asia for some reason and tossed in "after 400 years of European and American hegemony" wow Martin has hit just about every topic from Climate Change to Foreign policy, way to go Sr. Astrophysicist. I don't mind Martin sharing his perspective but when the facts end and the science begins in his statements leaves me with a giant question mark above my head and that shouldn't be so. Where are the other scientists to challenge his integrity on this issue of him actively mixing unrelated politics to unrelated history to unrelated science and then attempting to relate them with a sophist plea to the audience’s pathos by alarming us that the enemies (people who disagree with him) are "stubborn individualists" who don't care if people die?

As a friend of mine once said “if a noted figure makes public statements and you cannot figure out why just follow the money.” I did, HSBC is a major provider of student loans to Cambridge where Sr. Rees works as an Astronomer and whatever else. The bank itself thus holds leverage within Cambridge, but the kicker is that HSBC is heavily vested into alternative energy resources in... You probably guessed it Hong Kong. Now my reader may not know this but 4 out of 5 of the major exporters for solar technology comes from Chinese firms and a few of them happen to go through HSBC who regularly can be found cited making damning statements month after month and year after year about fossil fuel investments.

My point here isn't to say simply that Global Warming isn't an issue; I say it might just be but it needs to be something that goes through the normal scientific methods of verification before ever influencing the law. It cannot be the science version of the Nancy Pelosi Affordable Healthcare meme: "You have to pass it to see what's in it." Or George W. Bush’s “Too big to fail.”

Furthermore I don't ask for perfection, the universe is not perfect and so I only ask that the formulas that constitute the global warming theories can be said to have been more accurate than not accurate. That said a 300% disparage between the prediction and the reality is unacceptable in any profession or situation.

While I'd like Martin Rees to keep talking his points I now consider him nothing more than a sold out A-hole... who did he sell out? His countrymen and anyone who loves the principles that constitutes the expectation of right knowledge that science most fleetingly maintains.

Obama's Pseudo War

Good Day!

What a month, okay let’s start with a few terms, one is hegemony another is exceptionalism and the last is trust. In recent news the President of the United States a Mr. Barack Obama -whose birth name was apparently Barry Soretto and no I don’t have any idea why he changed it- unilaterally decided to unilaterally send cruise missiles hopefully over the heads of innocent men, women and children and into probably bunkered weapons of mass destruction which in this case are nerve agents and other chemical weaponry.   I wrote before on the Middle East, specifically Iran and as an American myself who has traveled I can say that Iran most definitely tops my list as places not to visit. It was suggested to me to go through Tehran; after all they have a lot of beautiful sites, mostly religious testaments of their expectations in an Islamic variation to the Christian book of revelations. I’d start believing in the supernatural if I weren’t me when I walk by a television whilst being told this over the phone to see news of some poor chaps who were just released from an Iranian jail over espionage. The shocking question dawned on me, shocking because I never thought of it before: “Why would I want to visit a police state?” I passed close by though and of course met some Iranians who are friends of a friend, stayed at their place and I had to ask them about the issues in Iran and if I as an American simply have the wrong understanding. After that I think it’s safe to say that Iran is a country that has declared war on the United States however the US for some reason has no desire to declare war right back.

The issue with Iran predates the current President and even if it would be nice of him to you know do something about it the fact is there is no pressing matter there for the American people to want to have a go at them about. Some say our last President made the mistake of invading Iraq and should have gone for Iran, indeed Iran and Pakistan are both responsible for the conditions in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia is very much responsible for Bahrain, Qatar, Iraq and Yemen.  To make it short and sweet, the axis of evil if you will in the Middle East is Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Those three countries have managed to fortify themselves through different ways, the simplest to understand is Iran, if the world would be understood as American and Anti-American which I’ll call Decent Folk and Anti-Decent Folk (evil and good in some cases may be too strong to use). Where Decent Folk is the side that tries to do the right thing and Anti-Decent folk simply try to centralize more power?  Then Iran is a regime that sees America as a threat to its sovereignty and because sovereignty is the issue here then the Eastern Alliance is truly a treacherous one.

Saudi Arabia plays the game the other way; they claim to be American allies in order to gain protection from Iran who would naturally be their enemy since the Ayatollah considers the King of the Saudi to be a fake who has his hands on Mecca. Again without an American hegemony these two sides would have probably settled their differences back in 79. It’s only a matter of who was there first as well as who is friends with who that lends the allegiances of Saudi Arabia to the United States.

Finally the last is Pakistan which plays its game both ways. Pakistan knows it is a failed state, it’s goal has always been to be a failed state at best right now it’s nothing but a segmented group of tribes pretending to have a state from time to time. Pakistan’s historical purpose has always been the exportation of Islam East into Indonesia and parts of the subcontinent. Pakistan pretends to be a US ally so that it’s natural enemy the Iranians who are only bolder because of their other ally is Russia who also really doesn’t like Pakistan either doesn't jump down their throat.

This entanglement of alliances and ideological enemies is the recipe for war and it’s all of the reasons why peace may never exist in the Middle East. If America should abandon Pakistan then it sends the wrong message to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Europe and vice versa with Russia and their hold on Syria. Now I’m not supporting any of this stuff or knocking it, I am just explaining what I understand of that region.  Now you reader understand a bit of the complexity within the word hegemony. My thing is that the cold war is over, and Russia while still a nation that operates on levels of corruption and may fail again if it stopped being corrupt  -that is how dependent on corruption it is, think if you’re an American of the  “too big to fail” logic- and started operating as a free republic.

Now this is a key point that must be made about Americans and I’m not about to say this because I am one and damn proud of it. It’s that America is a country that is founded on the principles of free republicanism and has an open policy towards any idea. American exceptionalism isn’t a sense of national pride which is what the world and some Americans might understand it to be but of the fact that we are individuals from all walks of life and we are uniquely adapted to one another. That sense of unity between individuals is what makes America exceptional and taking that way would make Americans like the Europeans, the Russians and well every other country. The idea of American exceptionalism can get conflated but what I just described is called pluralism the next part is what makes us American, it is our wish to have no control over the lives of our neighbors and in return for our neighbors being free to pursue their own goals without us interfering we expect the same kind of attitude towards us pursuing our goals. We wish everyone to be free in other words and as a result we establish laws which punish people for taking away another person’s freedom. We then have our Anglo background which says everyone from the President to the Janitor must adhere to the law and the law must be imposed the same across the board.

Every government official requires that you trust them, the thing is that only matters if they were unelected, an elected official that asks for trust is a demagogue. Put it this way you elected someone and if you are an American you don’t trust that person to do something, you expect it. If I’m hired to sell hotdogs, and you’re my boss I can’t ask you to trust me to sell hot dogs, you expect me to sell hot dogs and I know this is expected of me otherwise I’ll be fired. In this case we hold referendums to try to help these public officials find the right direction when they forget since they can get out of touch living like aristocracy. And when they go against those referendums we vote them out. Case in point Christine Quinn who sat on the council three years ago and after two referendums voted for two terms being enough for Mayor Bloomberg decided to go against the referendum and gives Bloomberg a third term. The reason for her decision evidently was that her own term was about to end and Bloomberg kept her around. Now that she’s running for Mayor New Yorkers I’ve talked to remember Mrs. Quinn from three years ago and so she’s out of the race.

A democratically elected politician that asks for trust is actually asking to be worshipped, more correctly they evaluate themselves as some kind of hero and expect to be treated as such. Such tactics work on those who believe that government on a whole is capable of doing things for the benefit of mankind that individuals cannot or will not… never mind the fact that government is consisted of individuals, there is a glaring issue of expectations. I could expect someone to fly to the moon but that may be impossible without a machine to help him/her do so. This idea of worship for a deity works on the same wavelength where expectations which are in some cases flat out wish thinking are rested on the shoulders of a sky god. The issue is that the same impossible expectations can be rested on a very real government and as a result you have very real ramifications with little or no accountability. That mode of thought that says government is essentially like a demi-god as it carries the will of the entire mankind is progressivism and it lends itself to hero worship and mass credulity.

I’m not saying not to trust or to trust, I am saying that this is what trust gets you when you invest it in a politician. Dictators on the other hand are simply politicians who have been trusted.

Barack Obama falls into the category of either a genius or an idiot, it may be that I do not have his information and thus cannot consider other angles. Maybe he’s just incredibly lucky which always comes with the recoil of being unlucky.  Secretary of State John Kerry establishes grounds never before spoken of how to end a Syrian confrontation. He did this in an off the cuff way and you could see that he understood what he said only after he said it. Since then the President kept quiet and only spoke when Putin suggested he take over the securing of WMDs in Syria. At that point the decision should have been clear, even if he was quiet before when he should have explained Kerry’s statement or had Kerry do it himself. He should have said that if any weapons were to be collected it would be collected in a joint effort between the 5 permanent countries of the UN. That would have been more than enough to send Putin packing and would still have allowed him a way out of the bed he made as well as keep the perception up with American allies that the American President who controls the American military means exactly what he says.

Charles Krauthammer put it wonderfully when he said that America at this point needs to learn how to bite it’s lower lip and bare with the atrocities of the world. People die and it isn’t America’s job to do something about it outside of our borders. I add that developing a culture based on solving humanitarian issues is either a symptom of or a precursor to a government that can, will and does invent enemies at every turn. It becomes tedious for the population to discern which enemies are real and which are not, and the whole dialog becomes breeding ground for apathy. And there is nothing more dangerous than a government on the loose with an apathetic population.

I’d like to add one more thing, people who make statements like “America tries to be the police of the world” have given away a very bit of detail if only it weren’t overlooked. The countries they defend like Iran, North Korea, Russia and China and so on are the ones that wish for a world without an America (I’m speaking about governments and ideals here). So of course a murderer, a rapist and a crook would want the police to just leave them alone. People who are silly enough to fall for such an argument under the guise of criticism have just committed themselves to a sad case of sloppy moral relativism.