Cuba

Well, I never believed that it would happen in my lifetime but now Barak Obama has done it. I am very happy that we will now start being at peace with these people. We may not like their government, but we have held the people of Cuba hostage for way too long.

And for those who are angry about this, let's remember that the US had no problem supporting Fulgencio Batista for years-and-years. Batista was an evil and repressive dictator, but he was a friend of Capitalism. Led by Fidel Castro, the Cuban people rebelled against this repression, but Castro was a Communist. So there it all is --- America's age old hysteria about Communism vs. Capitalism. How many people have suffered on the horns of this dilemma?

When we listen to those Miami Cuban exiles rant about Obama making peace with the Castros, we need to remember that they are "Cuban exiles" because they were friends of Batista. Yes, he was a "great leader" --- a friend of mine in Berkeley in the late '50s left Cuba after the Batista regime mailed her brother's head in a box to his mother. That's the kind of guy we supported down there. But now we bawl and complain about Castro's human rights violations.

Some day I will figure out what America really is.

Police in America

Obviously this is a topic of concern today. However, it has been an issue in one way or another for well more than a century. Ask an early trade unionist about the police and you will get an ear full. 

Today, the obvious issue is using lethal force against young black men. But young brown men are scarcely better off. And recent history shows that you don’t necessarily have to be young. The problem? A) police use lethal force in cases where lethal force is not warranted, and B) they are never taken to task for their actions.

Now, it is clear that we need to have police in order to enforce our laws and protect our citizens. It is also clear that serving as a policeman is a dangerous and demanding task. It is also a sobering task. Young police officers see a very bad side of society. The problem, I think, is that police are trained to focus their attention on that “bad society” and they are not fully trained in the “protect and serve” motto that ought to embrace their relations with the whole community. Junior deputies in the Los Angeles Sheriff”s Department, for instance, are required to serve five years in the jails. That’s a great way of getting them involved in communities. No wonder the new officer on the street looks at everyone with suspicion. It’s like saying, as a part of training, “these are the guys we put in here; go find more.” Of course, since most of the young men in jail are either brown or black, it is easy to become a racist without even knowing it. 

But another aspect of police training is at fault here, I believe. Police are trained to draw their guns under almost any circumstance. In contrast, in the military, troops are trained that a gun is drawn and pointed at someone only if their is a real intention to shoot and kill. I once walked into a gasoline station and found myself standing next to a policeman just inside the door with his automatic pistol aimed straight at a young Mexican man who was standing at the counter. The man had no weapon; there was no body lying about; he was, in fact, quite docile. There is no way that he had committed a crime requiring a death sentence, but he was facing deadly force.

Even if Michael Brown was not a very nice kid and bullied his way out of a store with a fist full of cigarillos, he had done nothing that would deserve a death sentence. But he died of multiple gun shot wounds from an officer’s weapon. What brought that about? Unfortunately, we will probably never know unless there is a Federal prosecution. The officer claims that Brown attacked him. But it is also easy to imagine the officer pulling up and shouting some racist thing — like, “Hey Ni…rs get your asses up on the sidewalk” to set up the dynamic. The fact is that the county prosecutor used the Grand Jury as a way of trying Brown without a defense by putting all of his own “evidence” before them and never allowing cross-examination. And this is how police are protected in the system. Police need protection sometimes, but not when they have done bad things. 

I am glad to see the protests all over our country. It’s about time people got fired up enough about something to get out into the streets. Obviously, I am not glad to see a small minority of others jumping into the action and doing violence. All that does is reinforce the police vision of what people are like. I hope that the protests will produce change, but I have to admit that I doubt they will. The police are way too set in their ways to change.

Perhaps the next issue to bring people into the streets will be the complete breakdown of democracy in America. If we don't start reacting to that, it will become a permanent state of affairs.

November 5, 2014

How do the Republicans, who operate in the interests of about 1% of the people, succeed in convincing 55% of the people to vote for them? How stupid can Americans be!

The Liberal Spirit

We have been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts during the last few weeks. I've learned a lot about Theodore Roosevelt that I never knew and it has been fun to watch Franklin and Eleanor develop. Actually, I don't think that I ever realized Franklin, Eleanor, and Teddy were all relatives. 

Anyway, the documentary is a good way to understand the rise of liberalism in American politics because it shows us the state of affairs in American life when business and wealth are all powerful. This is the condition of life into which we will soon fall if Conservatives (so-called) have their way. It is ironic and impossible to understand why we are collapsing into this mire, given the fact that it is contrary to the well being of 80 or 90% of Americans. But we are.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with business or with wealth as such. The issue lies in a moral relationship of the people. When the wealthy are interested only in their wealth and when business is interested only in making more money, then the lives of the majority of people are in jeopardy. We need business and business organizers to create products that we will want to consume and thereby to create job opportunities for other people. But it is a moral fact that these products would not appear if it were not for the people who fill the jobs and do the work. Business organizers would be mere fools if they did not have people to do the work. So here is their moral obligation; that is, they must treat their employees with due consideration for their important part in production. The moral problem of Capitalism is the tendency to treat workers in quite the other way, as expendable units of productivity who can be replaced always by someone who is hungrier. 

The fascinating thing about the Roosevelts is that they were very wealthy but, nevertheless, were raised in the belief that wealth must be used in the defense of people who are less fortunate. Teddy and Franklin were in opposing parties but both worked for the benefit of ordinary people. 

When did we get this winner-take-all mentality in the US? Well, what the documentary shows us, painfully, is that that attitude has always been with us. Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor were constantly attacked by Conservatives for their liberal beliefs and political actions. Very little has actually changed. The moral attitude of these Conservatives is simply the hope that the poor people will just die quietly so as not to be a disturbance. 

Has the World Gone Crazy?

Thus far, the 21st Century has been pretty much of a disappointment. In 2000 George Bush was elected president. Only a half of a year after he took office, the World Trade Center in New York was destroyed. An angry Bush took us into war against al-qaeda in Afganistan and we are still there, thirteen years later. Meanwhile, Bush and his cronies decided that now was the time/excuse to go back into Iraq. One suspects that the younger Bush was eager to show his daddy that he could do a better job. And, of course, what he did was completely de-stabilize Iraq and the whole region. We've only recently gotten out of there, only to return as military "instructors." And now, an incredibly vicious group known as ISIS is taking hold of land in Syria and Iraq in the name of forming an Islamic State. Oh, and should we mention the Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine? Or Israel's devastation of Gaza?

The time frame for all of this is especially amazing when you contrast it with our involvement in World War II. Basically, we entered WWII right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The war ended in the summer of 1945, only four years later. Not only that, but we were really not ready for war in 1941 so it took a year or more of tremendous industrial production and military training to take the country to war. Now-a-days the US is ready for war on a moments notice. In fact, every time there is a disturbance in the world we find ourselves debating whether we should send in our military. 

A sad aspect of this situation is that our heavy investment in the military has transformed war. Back in the age of WWI and WWII the people as such had to go to war. Ordinary citizens had to volunteer or were drafted. The economy had to shift to make war instead of butter and bread. People's consumption was limited. In fact, every one sacrificed. In Bush's wars the design was to do the whole thing independent of the people --- no changes in industry, consumption, life as such. It's a volunteer military running on borrowed money. Of course, this ultimately created a major depression but people still ignored what had caused it. My feeling is that, when a nation wants to go to war, it should be something that the people as a whole support and make major sacrifices to conduct. That's the only thing that justifies the human losses. 

So now we come down to the "war" against ISIS. Obama is willing to send in our planes and drones but not our soldiers. That's "war" with very little sacrifice. Will it continue that way? I doubt it. What we have been dealing with, this century, is basically a religious war --- 18th Century Islamists versus the whole modern Western world. This is not just a crazed leader like Hitler trying to make up for Germany's humiliating loss of WWI. It is a whole religious movement that can spawn new radical leaders at the drop of a hat. If we had successfully dropped Hitler at some point in the '40s, the war would probably have ended right there. But the fact is we can blow up hundreds of radical Islamic leaders and more will spring from the earth. The sad and disturbing fact is that this war has no end.

Ferguson and Beyond

The situation in Ferguson, MO, is a lot like the situation in Gaza. If people are oppressed for a long enough time, they eventually go crazy and start fighting back. The odds are the same as well. Israel is affluent and well supplied with American arms. Ferguson and St. Louis police (and now the National Guard) come from an entirely different economic culture and are also very well armed. As a consequence, Israelis have suffered little damage and only a few lives while Gaza residents have suffered huge losses. The result will be similar in Ferguson. The fight is desperate but it is also hopeless.

It is impossible for most Americans to understand the hopelessness of life for young black men in American ghettos. They are treated like trash and, when they fight back, they are shot dead. The only hope for the entire situation is a huge investment in urban re-development, education, and job training. But that is not going to happen so long as the ultra-wealthy of this country have so tied up our Congress that there will be no new funds for any such program. The whole situation will continue to descend into chaos. I can only imagine that there will be many more Fergusons. But the ultra-wealthy will have no problem with that because they have well insulated themselves from the rest of the world and country and, indeed, can pay for their own security. 

One of the really spooky aspects of this discussion is that America's situation in the world as a whole has a lot of resemblance to Gaza and Ferguson. While Americans naively see themselves as "peace keepers," the underdogs of the world see us as the great oppressors. We can carry this just so far and then they will begin to fight back just like any other oppressed people. That has, of course, already begun and we call them "terrorists." But, at what point, will the rest of the world come to see America's passion for domination as a grave danger and what will they have to do in order to reign us in? The remainder of the 21st Century is not going to be a pleasant experience for Americans.

Israel and Gaza

I cannot stand what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. It is simply immoral and reprehensible. And so I cannot stand the fact that my government continues to support Israel. What Israel is doing is diametrically opposite to what Americans supposedly believe. But our government goes on its merry way in spite of what it supposedly believes. It's been doing this almost as long as I can remember, and now I am fed up with it. 

I have supported the Democratic Party all my life but I see little difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to these issues of foreign relations. Hence, I condemn both. I will vote for neither in the coming elections.

Gaza is little more than a concentration camp. People are trapped there and the Israelis are bombing them quite literally to pieces. Israel says that they must be allowed "to defend themselves". Do they really expect us to believe this trash? They have already killed more than 1500 people in Gaza and they have lost fewer than 50 of their own. 

So how does this relate to the Holocaust? Israelis seem to think they can do anything because of the Holocaust. But what they are actually doing is proving that they are little better than Hitler himself. 

They have asked our government for more ammunition, and we will undoubtedly give it to them. But as a citizen of the US, I do not want to be responsible for this slaughter.

Killing

Why is it that human beings like killing other human beings so much? Other species don't do this sort of thing to each other. Why do we?

Other species kill species other than their own for food; humans are no different in that regard. We kill huge numbers of fish and other animals. The only difference is that it is all industrialized, sanitized --- no blood on human fangs. Oh, there is one other difference --- waste. Humans waste enormous amounts of what they kill for food. In the natural environment, there is little waste. Whatever predators leave is picked on by smaller kritters. Almost nothing remains at the end of the chain.

Yet we take enormous pride in who we are and tell ourselves (and anyone else listening) that we are superior to the animals --- actually we don't think we're animals at all, but divinely created species of a different kind. How ridiculous.

Consider the Second World War. In that regard, consider thousands of men dying on beaches along the French coast or on Pacific Islands --- thousands in just a single day of mayhem. Can you imagine horses waging war of that kind against other horses? Lions vs other lions?

Actually, the history of humans killing humans goes way back farther than writing. It doesn't seem to have diminished; it has simply gotten more efficient. Technology has blossomed with the fruits of massive destruction. At Hiroshima we proved that we can kill thousands of people with just one instrument, and we have spent the intervening time developing more destructive weapons and better delivery systems. If we got together and synchronized attacks, we could actually blow up the world and destroy the human race entirely. I suspect that we will do that one day but we still seem to be a few years distant from that last example of human insanity. 

I'm not sure that 'like' is the correct word, but how else should we say it. If we don't like it why do we do it? Let's face it. If we really do not like doing it, wouldn't we do something about it? We claim to be the most intelligent beings on the planet, but this may demonstrate that "intelligence" isn't really a survival trait.

I'd like to hear what other people think about this.

Gun Violence in America

The 74th school shooting incident since Sandy Hook happened yesterday. When schools are in session, shooting incidents happen 1.37 times per week! Of course, this is only a small but highly visible part of gun violence in America.

The annual toll of deadly gun violence in most European and other developed countries is near 100. America distinguishes itself with a total over 10,000 gun-related deaths per year! Are we proud of this?

It is not surprising that our government does nothing to stop this because by and large our government has become completely ineffective in doing anything for the common good. So called law makers have mostly been bought off by the NRA in combination with manufacturers of guns and ammunition. 

But I really am skeptical that guns are the problem anyway. Obviously, mental health is a big problem too --- yet another problem that we seem incapable of dealing with. But I believe a far greater problem exists and that is the character of the American "melting pot" itself. Frankly speaking, the "melting pot" was a foolish experiment, one that virtually guaranteed cultural disaster. Americans gathered under the banner of "free for the taking" throughout the frontier era. Gradually, this moved into the era of hard core Capitalism, upward mobility, and profit at any price. The central element of American culture is greed --- our one distinguishing value. But something has changed in a couple generations. Most of my older friends will tell you that they worked their way up from small jobs by hard work and eventually "made good." And they did that. But young people don't do that anymore, at least not with the reliability that was possible generations ago. I think people are frustrated today, and picking up a gun and shooting someone has a real cathartic feeling.

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of great people out there who do fine things for one another. But they are not the majority and they have little cultural influence over the majority.

Religious Rights and Tolerance

The ultra conservative Christian group in Arizona that was responsible for pushing the recent legislation to allow discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs is called the Center for Arizona Policy. Cathi Herrod is the group's president. Other recent legislations sponsored by this group are Criminalizing Assisted Suicide, "Women's Health Protection Act" (which allows police to inspect abortion clinics without warning and without warrant), Corporate Scholarship Tax Credit (which gives tax breaks to corporations that give money to school tuition organizations), and Property Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions. You can find out more about the organization and their successful legislations at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/28/arizona-anti-gay-bill_n_4860817.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

What is happening here, under the banner of "religious rights," is a constant process of trying to use political influence to require the people of a state to conform to specific behaviors promoted by their Christian faith. In effect, they are trying in every way possible to make Arizona a Christian state. Of course, the first amendment to the United States Constitution that supposedly gives them their "religious rights" also prohibits the formation of a national religion and, thereby, also prohibits the formation of a state religion. In the United States, we have the right to pursue any religious faith, including pursuing no religious faith. This means that citizens of the United States must be tolerant of others who pursue different faiths.

Consider the case of abortion. Whether an individual approves of abortion or not, it remains a law of the land that women have a right to pursue an abortion within a certain time period. Yet religious groups of several varieties, because they abhor the idea of abortion from within their own religious beliefs, have done everything in their power to prevent women from pursuing their legal rights. Where is tolerance?

I always thought that tolerance and love were mainstays of Christian beliefs, but a large number of Christian groups behave as though tolerance means only welcoming those who behave your way. That, of course, is not tolerance but rather dominance.

Religious Rights

The recent skirmishes over a bill in Arizona that would allow business owners to discriminate by refusing to serve certain people of their own choosing were defended by the claim that "religious rights" were involved. But Governor Jan Brewer vetoed the bill and that produced even more screaming that religious rights were being violated. "Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer makes Christians in her state second class citizens," tweeted one person. It's interesting that in this person's mind it is only Christians who are being deprived of their rights. Is it really only Christians who want this bill so that they can refuse to serve Gay and Lesbian couples? It's interesting how something that is proposed and defended on the basis of broad rights nevertheless comes down to just one thing, hatred of the LGBT world.

What interests me in all of this is the way Christians evidently feel threatened and how the concept of "religious rights" is used. The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The first part of this sentence means that in the eyes of our government Christians have no more clout than any other religious or non-religious group. For to elevate Christians above Muslims, for instance, would be to establish a state authorized religion. The thorny part is the second half of the sentence, providing that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Does this mean that members of any religious group can do anything they wish so long as it is defended as an authorized "practice" of that religion? Hence, should American Muslims be allowed to follow all practices of Sharia Law? Should conservative Mormons be allowed to have numerous wives, many of them under age? Obviously, we are not ready to embrace every "practice" that comes along.

What we need to think through is what it means to "practice or exercise a religion." Catholics are counseled to shun birth control measures and to have as many children as possible. The exercise of Catholicism evidently means ignoring birth control when it comes to one's personal behavior. But does this give Catholics the right to disapprove of non-Catholics who want to behave otherwise? And how far can they go with their disapproval? It seems clear to me that the free exercise of a religion is the freedom to think in certain ways, to join with others of a similar faith, and to regulate one's own behavior in accordance. But everyone must remember that the very same right to religious freedom is held by every other person, which includes the right to be completely non-religious as well. So there must be an "edge" to personal behavior beyond which the practice of one's religious beliefs is no longer appropriate. This is because going beyond that edge begins to imply that all others must practice the same religious beliefs as you do. Interestingly, the First Amendment has a tricky side. If the Constitution in saying that free exercise of religion cannot be prohibited were to mean that any religious group can require others to conform to its standard of behavior, that would actually constitute an infraction of the first part of the amendment, that Congress shall not establish any religion. So clearly the First Amendment does not grant the free exercise of religion in any sense that allows religious groups to require their preferred behaviors of others. 

Now in the Arizona law the issue is whether a Christian business owner can refuse to do business with someone who behaves in a non-Christian way. The question is whether running a business is an authorized part of a Christian practice. Or, in running a business, does a person leave the free exercise of his/her religion behind and, instead, commit to working with people of any belief as guaranteed them by the Constitution. The answer seems obvious to me.

Is There Really a Science vs. Religion Debate?

Very recently there was a staged debate between Bill Nye, the Science Guy, and Ken Ham, the Genesis Guy (founder of the Creation Museum). The question posed was the limited question of the earth's history --- the Bible's version of a 6000-year history vs. Evolution's version of millions of years. Ham suggested that there are really several "sciences" and that his "Historical Science" based on the Bible deserves as much respect as so-called "Observational Science" favored by Nye. Ham claims that his Historical Science "works at least as well" as Observational Science. It is very interesting that Ham put it this way because his claim follows straight down the avenues of American Pragmatism, especially the version popularized by William James. Meaning and truth follow because something works for us. 

What concerns me is what it is, in Ham's mind, that works for him and his followers. I will illustrate, below, something the works pretty well for observational science. 

The general idea that trees have rings of annual growth works for us because we can cut a cross section from a tree and both show and count the rings. We can also demonstrate that rings increase in size or decrease in size in concert with the annual amount of precipitation. This gives the pattern of rings a unique "finger print" belonging to the weather history in the area where the tree grew. This works for us because we can compare trees that grew in the same region and whose histories are known. If one tree was cut down years earlier than another, we can still match the finger prints for the years that they overlapped. In this way, scientists have been able to map trees backward in time, producing a weather history through ring patterns. The bristlecone pines of the White Mountains are of special interest here because they are very slow growing and very old. Dendrochronologists have reconstructed ring sequences that go back 10,000 years and several living trees are on record as being very old indeed --- a 5,000 year old bristle cone pine and a 9,550 year old Norway spruce in Sweden. Dendrochronology also works for us as a comparison to radio-carbon dating for similar time periods. The two procedures compare very well; that is, they reinforce each others results. 

This is what observational scientists mean when they say that science works for them. Not only can we show things to one another but we can write about our observations in journals which can be read by others around the world (no matter what their religious beliefs are) and they can make similar observations of their own. The scientific community is a world community that shares observation of the natural world. It does not depend upon any particular object of reverence or a religious icon. 

What Mr. Ham needs to do now is to actually tell us what it is that works for him in his historical vision guided by the Bible. One of the first things we can say is that Ham's community is not a world community but only a segment of the Christian community. Furthermore, it seems to me that what works for this community is a kind of self-satisfied commitment of faith to a particular religious icon.

I want to go back to the title of this blog --- Is there really a religion vs. science debate? I don't want to put down the self-satisfaction of Ham's Christian community and I don't particularly want to elevate the satisfactions of observational scientists like dendrochronologists. What seems obvious to me, in fact, is that there is no debate and there is no possibility of a debate because there is no common ground. Both of these are what Wittgenstein called language-games and they have very different rules and goals for playing them. 

It is fair, it seems to me, for each group to get into the other's language-game and ask critical questions that aim at clarification. If Ham's intention is to understand the Bible literally and if we ignore, for now, the fact that the Bible has been translated out of its original language and gone through many different editions, it is still fair to ask, it seems to me, how we can calculate the age of our earth when Genesis admits that the order of creation doesn't admit the tools for defining 'years' for several days. At the same time, it is fair for Creationists to get as deeply into observational science as they can and ask whether God can fairly be excluded from a scientific account of the universe. These are interesting questions, it seems to me, but they do not stand as a "debate" in which either side might be construed as winning.  

Another thought about the Second Amendment.

First of all, there is an enormous amount of paranoia in this country about both guns and the Second Amendment. Paranoia is good for the people who want no restrictions of gun manufacture or sales because it keeps people in fear that they will lose their rights and their guns. That's why big money is in back of paranoia production.

In fact, no one in power is talking about eliminating the Second Amendment and no one is talking about taking everyone's guns away from them. So why don't we drop the paranoia and talk about what really matters, which is why the gun lobby has such a tight grip on Congress that it is impossible to do anything about regulating gun traffic. 

The Second Amendment talks about citizens bearing arms so that a militia is always potentially available to come to the country's defense. It didn't talk about people carrying guns into theaters and shooting obnoxious men who text their daughters during previews (which happened just yesterday) or arming heads of households so they could accidentally shoot their sons coming in late through the back door (which happened years ago). The arms of the time were muskets and pistols, not weapons of nearly-massive destruction. 

My point is that the Constitution is a living document, meaning that it has to be reinterpreted and advanced as the times change. With a well trained and supplied military and National Guard, we may no longer need every person to be prepared with military-style weaponry. Just because the Second Amendment gave us the right to have a musket or two, I don't think it is rational to believe that everyone today has an equivalent "right" to posses an assault weapon. 

I have a 12-gauge shotgun for hunting but the law says that I must keep a plug in the magazine so that I can load only three shells. I have a six-shot Ruger pistol but the law says (in California at least) that I cannot carry it concealed in any way and that I am responsible for keeping it out of accessibility to children. There are other interesting laws. One cannot fly an airplane without first taking training and qualifying for a pilot's license. One cannot drive an automobile on public roadways without a training, a driver's license, and sufficient insurance. All of these laws are in the name of public safety. But virtually anyone can buy an assault weapon capable of killing hundreds of people within minutes without training, insurance, or any other regulation.

Yes, guns don't kill people. People kill people with guns (and with other things). But it is terribly difficult to predict what people are going to kill. It is way too simplistic to say that law abiding citizens can do anything they please and criminals are the ones to be regulated. Unfortunately, we don't know who the criminals are until they have committed a crime. (The man who shot the texter, mentioned above, was a retired policeman.)

When I wanted to go hunting, I had to take a training class before I could get a license to hunt. I don't see anything wrong with that, and in particular I never saw it as a violation of my Second Amendment rights. 

Global Warming and the Big Freeze

Well, the eastern US (that is, just about everything east of the Rocky Mountains) has had an extremely cold and icy winter thus far. So, of course, those who disbelieve in Global Warming and Climate Change are out in mass yelling "victory." 

But not so fast! Global Warming does not mean that we cannot have winters --- even severe winters. Indeed, the seasons continue to cycle through just as the tilted axis of earth intended. Global Warming is an issue of averages and requires us to look at long periods. So neither spectacular heat waves nor spectacular freezes have very much to say about it. The real question is whether actual temperature records around the earth demonstrate a gradual increase and, if so, whether we can observe consequences of this gradual rise in temperatures. So far as I know, scientists around the world are indeed recording increases in average temperatures and, among other observations, they are seeing the disappearance of polar ice, including the withdrawal of glaciers. All of this is problematic, when viewed through well established theories of weather generation because the polar ice has a great influence over the ways that weather events are generated in the latitudes below. American winters, for instance, are greatly influenced by the position of the so-called jet stream. The average position of the jet stream as it comes off the Pacific Ocean can bring snow into the Sierra Nevada and rain into Southern California or it can hang us out to dry. And the track of the jet stream is heavily influenced by what happens in the far north. If you have been following weather maps for the last few weeks, you will have noticed that the jet stream has been coming off the Pacific up in Oregon and then diving dramatically to the south east of Nevada, bringing extreme cold and snow to everywhere east of that line.

This much can be measured and observed. What causes Global Warming is a matter for speculation, though scientists are now reasonably confident that the output of "green house gases" is the culprit. Here is where politics --- left and right --- comes to the fore. If scientists are right in believing that green house gases should be blamed for Global Warming, then we should probably do something about the production of these gases to avoid the disastrous results predicted --- rising ocean levels that may well flood coastal regions and even bury small islands, and dramatic changes in world-wide weather patterns (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc). The problem is that reducing our output of green house gases requires changes in our habitual lifestyles, and there are powerful people who have huge investments in maintaining our habitual lifestyles. So the more rational among these people want to assert that the science is incomplete and inconclusive, and they are partly right. Scientists base their expectations on theoretical models that can always be challenged and should be challenged. That is what science is about. But this fact alone does not mean that scientists are presently wrong in what they believe; it simply means that we have to continue working on this. 

Now the more-nearly irrational disbelievers want to claim that scientists have formed a large Climate-Change Cult that is trying to use government (especially the socialist Federal government) to ruin the American paradise --- especially their own wealth-producing paradise of "big oil." This claim, of course, just demonstrates pure ignorance of what science is all about and how it works. If there is a cult at work here, it is the cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism that has plagued the American scene for centuries.