President Barack Obama gave the customary annual State of
the Union Address to a joint session of the United States Congress on February
12, 2013. As per tradition, Senator Marco Rubio followed a few minutes later
with the Republican rebuttal. But then something new happened this year; a
second Republican rebuttal was delivered by Senator Rand Paul in the name of
what was called the Tea Party even though no party by that name exists
officially.
These were long addresses that touched on many subjects and
covered a great deal of territory. I did not see anything in them that was
jarring, but I encountered in each a point about which I felt the need to say
something. The point in the Obama address deals with climate change. The one in
the Rubio address deals with the economy. And the one in the Paul address deals
with foreign relation.
President Obama spoke about “our emissions of the dangerous
carbon pollution that threatens our planet.” He went on to cite observations
concerning the weather which he attributed to “climate change,” and dared the
audience to “choose to believe [they are] all just a freak coincidence. Or ...
choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it's
too late.” And when he said act, he meant act to curb “our emissions of the
dangerous carbon [dioxide] pollution that threatens our planet.”
Let me tell you what I choose to believe. I believe that
nothing is more active at producing unpredictable occurrences than the daily weather
at the local level. When you apply this to a climate at the planetary level,
you can have four or five occurrences that will look like freak coincidences or
that will not. And you will find that they may repeat themselves in the exact
same way or they may not. And that it will all happen in the same spot or
happen in many places all at once. This is why respectable science classifies
the coincidence as being a subset of all possible outcomes. Anything can happen
whether you believe it to be random coincidence or believe it to be a cause and
its effect.
And where the observation of a phenomenon is the first to
knock at the door of science asking it to explain, it stops at the door and
lets science apply the “scientific method” to find out what is true and what is
false. This is because an observation is only an observed fact and not a
scientific fact – and there is a huge difference between these two. What
produces a scientific fact in the end is a law that is put in the form of an
equation; a formula that is used to predict future observations whether they
have to do with the local weather, the planetary climate or a phenomenon of the
atmosphere in-between.
So then, how to go about applying the scientific method to
find out what it is that we want to find out? Well, this is it – this is the
relevant point: What is it that we want to find out? Is it that the planet is
warming? No, it would be too soon for that. We ought to walk before we run.
Well then, is it that human activities have something to do with climate
change? Again, the answer is no because we would be wasting time and effort not
knowing what it is that we're looking for. But carbon dioxide (CO2) has been
identified as the culprit that is causing climate change. In fact, President
Obama has said this is where the effort to curb climate change has been
directed. And this is where we should begin to reconsider what we're doing.
We need to start the process by doing a scientific
experiment. And guess what, my friend; it will be one of the cheapest
experiments to conduct for the purpose of settling one of the most vexing
questions of our time. When done, the experiment will determine if there is a
relationship between the concentration of CO2 and heat in the atmosphere. In
fact, we should obtain an easy curve – like one of those we draw when
discussing the economy.
And this will lead us to write down the equation we can use
to show how much CO2 will cause the temperature of the planet to rise by how
much now and in the future. This point settled, there will be no disagreement
as to whether or not the planet is warming, whether or not the cause is human
activity, whether or not the use of hydrocarbons (large emitters of CO2) should
be regulated. It can't get any better than that.
What follows is the description of an experiment that will
cost no more than 10,000 dollars, and can be conducted by a university
physicist or a high school science teacher with the help of one or two
students. You construct two identical cabins the size of a fish tank or a
little bigger. Unlike a fish tank, however, the top of the cabin will be
closed, and the whole thing will be made of glass. There will be a thermometer
in each cabin; and each will be equipped with a valve through which small
amounts of CO2 can be let in.
You take the cabins out on a sunny day and write down what
the thermometers say is the temperature. You let a trace amount of CO2 into one
cabin, and write down the change in temperature if any. You keep increasing the
amount of CO2, and write down the corresponding pairs of numbers. They will
indicate that this much CO2 has caused this much change in temperature. As to
the other cabin, the thermometer in it should remain stable. But if not, it
will have indicated that the ambient temperature has deviated due a natural
cause such as a cloud eclipsing the sun or a gust of wind upsetting the local
temperature. The deviation should be noted and taken into account when doing
the math later on.
What you have now is what you will need to draw the curve
and find the equation. To be certain that the equipment did not cause any
error, you may repeat the experiment by reversing the roles played by the
cabins. That is, you let the CO2 into the other cabin, thus ascertain that you
have a set of results identical to the previous set. And this should settle the
argument one way or the other once and for all. A rational course of action can
then be drawn up and followed by everyone without meaningless arguments getting
in the way.
We now look at the Marco Rubio speech. He says the following
at the start: “For much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant
societies, where a tiny minority always stayed on top, and no one else even had
a chance. But America
is exceptional because we believe that every life, at every stage, is precious,
and that everyone everywhere has a God-given right to go as far as their
talents and hard work will take them.”
What he makes no allusion to anywhere in the speech is that
the stagnant societies where a tiny minority always stayed on top, were the
societies that followed the kind of economy he is advocating. It happened that
even in ancient history, some civilizations came to a point where they could
mass produce the goods they were consuming. This left them with a surplus that allowed
a more equitable distribution of the wealth. In turn, this gave everyone the
opportunity to reach for the top. Thus, without having what we today call a
liberal democracy, these people had at least a democratic form of economy.
By contrast, the societies where everything produced was a
“one of a kind” something, only a handful of people at the top were able to
acquire that something. This left just enough for the masses at the bottom to
live on and stay alive. And these people kept producing the little that was
taken by the few at the top. In modern days, the kind of economy that Marco
Rubio is advocating has been explained and justified with the image of the
masses at the bottom laboring to build one-of-a-kind yachts for the people at
the top. When this happens, said the Rubios of this world, the wealth will
trickle down to the bottom and make everybody happy.
This was tried but things did not work out as predicted, and
there was a reason for it. Obviously Marco Rubio does not know what that reason
is because he volunteered to give one that was incomplete. Here is what he, the
politician, had to say about the matter: “Many [problems] are caused by the
moral breakdown in our society … challenges [that] lie primarily in our
families and our faiths, not our politicians.”
No, Marco, what happened was that the distribution of the
wealth went out of whack due to the behavior of the politicians. Increasingly,
the masses at the bottom found themselves losing the strength to lift their
heads up and see the top, let alone reach for it. We can't all have yachts, and
those who get them have neither the time nor the inclination to mass produce
what the masses need to lead a life at the middle class level. Clearly, a new
paradigm is called for.
Now to the Rand Paul speech. He said this: “...we could
start with ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and
chanting death to America …
The President could begin [with] the radical Islamic government of Egypt .” Every
word in this statement being at variance with reality, you cannot escape the
conclusion that the statement was made not for its content but to achieve
another objective.
When you look closely, you see that the Jewish organizations
are attempting to duplicate the success they had with the Bush family. It is
that they hated the father so much, they took revenge by recruiting his feeble
minded son, and making him carry water for them doing what they love most which
is to insult someone Yiddish style. Similarly, they hated Paul the father so much,
they are grooming his son to carry water for them by insulting someone in that
same style.
These people never give up, and America always ends up paying the
price for the adventures they initiate.