Tag Archives: coal

Climate, Crime, Economics, Environment, Governance, Religion

Sus… Stain

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Old and new technologies stand in contrast as a farm windmill is surrounded by wind turbines.

“Sustainability” is the great leftist byword in the summer of 2023.  Democrats and other Communists are determined to force Americans to give up much of what we have invented and worked for, in order to transform our economy and society to states of “sustainability.”  This also means that the work, inventiveness, science and engineering of the most “successful” peoples (in terms of wealth and standards of living) may have to be thrown away due to the color of their skin or the dominant religion(s) in their traditions.

White-skinned people, especially Christians and Jews, must renounce their successes and civic structures because they were “stolen” over the course of history, whether 200, 500 or 1,000 years ago and even more.  Nothing those groups ever accomplished can remain in their possession.  To do so would be “unsustainable.”  As would be most of their “racist” and “supremacist” ideas… things like private property, Constitutional limits on government, and free speech, religious freedom and equal application of the laws.

Sustainability appears to require conformity.  That is, the jumbled non-regulation of independent liberty is “unsustainable” in the views of leftists; conformity is more permanent and “sustainable.”  First, everyone has to think the same thoughts, of course.  Religious thoughts don’t conform.

The whole world, now, must conform to “sustainability” as if some activities – and politics – are sustainable and some not.  America is not sustainable, we’re told, because we use too much clean water, too much electricity, too much oil and natural gas and way, way too much coal… as in, any.  China, on the other hand, is the model of conformity and therefore sustainability.  They use millions of tons of coal to bring modern electrification to their industries and to people who would otherwise be oppressed by white people.  Plans to begin figuring out how to reduce coal-fired electricity 20 or 30 years from now in China, are examples of excellence in sustainability; actually reducing coal-fired electricity, today and for the past 30 years or so, in the United States, are examples of failure to conform to the planet-saving zero-carbon-emissions model.  Whose “model” is that, actually?

Mostly, it seems to be a political model rather than a scientific one, and one that even ignorant children and older persons can become agitated about.  All that are needed are a few chemical terms and scientific-sounding phrases and a whole political movement can be created and, better, sustained.  The zero-carbon-emissions model of “sustainability” is, itself, sustainable!  How cool is that?  Despite the fact of lots of private-jet travel and ritzy accommodations, (high-carbon emissions activities, all) sustaining the zero-carbon political movement is vastly more important and sustainable than all other methods of improving living standards and sustainable economies across the developing world as both it and the developed world invent ways to operate and grow economies and social well-being.  Suddenly the only “sustainable” model for humans appears to be allowing for far, far FEWER humans, altogether.  Humans are not sustainable.

To maintain and sustain the numerous articles of faith that underlie the carbon-free climate-control model, many untruths must be sustained as well.  One of these is that CO2 is causing global warming which would be, needless to say, unsustainable if true.  That premise is not provable but it certainly has its adherents.  The earth, the oceans, weather and plant-life have efficient means of removing carbon-dioxide (one of those important chemical terms) from the atmosphere.  Over geologic time there have existed both higher concentrations of CO2 and lower than we have right now.  During cold periods, ice periods, warm periods and very warm periods, the atmosphere has held more and less CO2.  Sometimes the CO2 increases before a warming period; sometimes it increases afterwards.  It is definitely an indicator of global changes, but the case for its being a cause of those changes is merely sophisticated speculation and, sadly, some of even that is disingenuous.                                                                                                    [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/]

Given its 3 to 4 Billion-year age, the Earth-Moon binary system has proven highly sustainable.  Even giant collisions involving the formation of the moon couldn’t knock the system off track.  Additional materials, including comets with trillions of tons of water, added to the Earth while the Moon sort-of protected the new planet from other impacts and collisions, resulting in a remarkably stable binary planet system in a remarkably stable Solar System orbiting a remarkably stable star.  But, “stable” doesn’t mean “static.”  Our Sun is a nuclear engine, constantly accumulating Hydrogen and constantly fusing it into Helium, while, bit-by-bit, accumulating heavier elements including carbon and metals as the deep inner core of the Sun ages and “dies.”  Sometimes the Sun puts out more energy, sometimes less.  Eventually, some billions of years into the future, the Sun will become UNSUSTAINABLE and blow itself to bits like every star eventually will.  Not even the entire Democrat Party and its Antifa troopers will be able to prevent it.  OMG!

There should emerge a certain perspective on the likelihood that about 7/10ths of a billion tons of humans, including the few hundred thousand pounds of bureaucrats and committed Communists, can change the tax system enough to significantly modify the future of the Earth.  Oh, they might force people to breath less, procreate less and mow their lawns less… they might even get more of them to eat bugs instead of beef (the ones with “Love is Love” signs), but they won’t – and can’t – shift the processes of Earth-sustainability in any significant way.  They do, however, manage to change the meanings of perfectly good words… words like “freedom,” “rights” and “racism,” for examples… along with “climate,” “family” and “education.”  Oh, yes: “peaceful,” too.

It used to be that hydro-power was “green” and sustainable, but no longer.  Now it’s only “solar” and “wind” power that’s green enough.  Collateral damage to animals, birds and humans along the way, is easily ignored for the “greater good.”  That sounds wicked nice: “greater good.”   Who wouldn’t sacrifice a few dozen whales or 62 million pre-born babies for the “greater good?”  Put another way, “The end justifies the means.” 

The other day, speaking at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Vice-President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, a brilliant economist and historian, she, stated, “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” (Emphasis added)

The official White House transcript shows Harris misspoke. She had intended to say “reduce pollution,” not “reduce population.” The transcript provides this correction in brackets alongside the original wording, which is crossed out.  This is a process in which  the Biden White House is well-practiced: modifying official statements.  Back in 2020, while Joe Biden was “campaigning” from his basement, he stated that the Democrat Party had the most sophisticated voter-fraud operation ever.  Of course, we were told that what he meant to say was “voter-fraud prevention,” but he needed modification.  Recognizing how frequently Mr. Biden says the opposite of what he has been told to say, Prudence is not so sure that he hadn’t told the truth the first time he described the DNC’s voter-fraud operation.  This is bolstered by the evidence of a very sophisticated voter-fraud operation employed in the 2020 elections.

Ms. Harris may have heard about the sophisticated population-reduction efforts and intentions of forces like the World Economic Forum, Planned Parenthood, Bill Gates and his ilk, and others, and inadvertently let slip a truth bomb.  “Population / Pollution…” they are mildly alliterative, as is she, as is “Planned Parenthood.”  Maybe she hadn’t proof-read or practiced her talk.  The more one learns about mRNA shots pushed so diligently around the world, the words, “reduce population” may very well have been heard among the circles in which she unravels… err, travels… travels, I meant to say.  The World would be a great place to live in if it weren’t for all the relatively useless people over-populating it, now.  We are simply unsustainable.

The global Communist philosophy… ideology, is based on the end justifying the means, even if the means include the deaths of a hundred-Million people, or so.  They had to go for the greater good because they did not think or believe correctly.

Humans have done and still do many foolish, if not stupid things.  We dirty our own homes, neighborhoods, cities and lands, air and waters.  We could avoid these errors and clean up what we’ve done and Prudence believes we will, in fact.  Economics has distorted our values but, we can change our thinking about what is most important.  Current economics is not sustainable – $32 Trillion in debt, indeed!  Operating industry, living, transporting, modernizing can all be done cleanly; those who do so should be rewarded economically.  Only then will we actually do something good for the environment.  Only then will things become “sustainable.”

Economics, Education, Governance, Health Care, Politics 2021

THE VELOCITY OF CARBON

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Masking won’t help…

In terms of money, economists measure the health or activity of an economy using “velocity” of money in an economy.  There are a thousand measuring tools measuring the same parameter, whether it’s investment dollars generating new production or a change in policy like a tax cut or increase that either releases money to or sucks money from, an economy.  Supply-chain snags can certainly reduce the velocity of money; building road, rail or air infrastructure can speed it up.  If you’re seeking real understanding of this kind of velocity you’ll have to ask someone else: I know only how rapidly $20 bills move out of my pocket these days, converting themselves to a few coins in a blink of an eye.

Let’s talk about the climate… a place where velocity is never discussed as a “good.”  It’s always “bad,” and it’s everybody’s fault, which means “climate change” by today’s – or this morning’s – definition, is going to increase a lot of financial velocities while slowing or stopping others.  These effects will affect everybody and his or her $20’s like we’ve never seen.  In any case, the velocity of “change” in the Earth’s climate seems to always be too fast, potentially the end of humanity, often in a very small numbers of years, and the result of conservative politics.  That is, unless the “conservative” in question is neither European nor English-speaking.  The Earth knows.

Very quickly, climate change discussion centers on carbon: carbon dioxide, carbon-based fuels, “carbon-neutrality” by 2030, 2050 or next week.  Anyway, the other day, at a point when no other useful actions were possible, Prudence led to an interesting question about climate that we’ve never heard asked: “What is the velocity of carbon in the Earth’s climate-economy?”  And this will be followed in most people’s minds with, “What the Hell is wrong with this person?  There’s no such thing as carbon velocity.”  Ahhh, but there is, my friend… there is.

The Earth has about as much carbon on it as it has ever had.  A lot of it is buried deep underground, but a lot more is in the biosphere between, say, 20 feet below ground and, maybe, 200 feet above ground, although with 1,000-foot high rise buildings we’re certainly stretching those limits.  Then, there’s the ocean – definitely part of the biosphere, so… cripes!  We live in a gigantic biosphere!  And, it’s carbon-based, which is to say that molecules with carbon in them are the fundamental building-blocks of life, including seaweed and us.

Now, the CLIMATE we all live in has been “changing” for billions of years, which is a very good thing.  The simplest example of a climate-change “good” is the endings of ice-ages, of which there have been several.  Humans were impacted by only the last couple of them: they’re not very frequent, thank goodness, and the impacts of the last one are still with us, even being enjoyed by us, like the Great Lakes, Cape Cod and so forth.

For the average ersatz vaccine-loving supplicant to climate-change fears, the movement of carbon from safety underground to horrific, polluting, crime above ground is a cumulative, onrushing white-man-caused threat to life.  Why, the USGS (U. S. Geologic Survey) tells us that upwards of 36.5 TRILLION TONS of carbon spewed (probably, “spewed”) into the atmosphere worldwide in 2019!  That is a hu-u-u-u-ge number, but there are lots of huge numbers involved when measuring worldwide things.  A small amount was in the form of methane, other ethanes, ordinary “anes” and the majority of it from CO2 which is a lot heavier than average, breathable air.  Fortunately for all concerned, plants “breathe” CO2 in and oxygen, O2 out.

“Oh, my Gawd!  Everybody stop breathing!”  Also, stop mowing your lawn, heating your homes, cooking, refrigerating, making plastics, driving cars and trucks and, for God’s sake, stop flying back and forth around the world on those terrible jet planes… just stay home.

Quite a bit of CO2 derives from cute little woodland creatures that, since Walt Disney gave them names, we must love and protect, along with every other sort of elk, antelope, bison, bear, reindeer, POLAR bears, for heaven’s sake, whales, dolphins, dogs, cats, protected tigers, elephants and, of course those evil cattle who do little but eat and fart, don’t you know?

Still more comes from rotting vegetation in the normal cycle of plant life and the bacteria and bugs, termites and ants that live off of the trillions of tons of IT.  Government types, those who really like to apply rules for living to most everyone else – rules derived from superior intellects like theirs – hold, without fail, concepts of perfection for humanity and how humanity should live, among which are rules against eating animals that Disney may have named or which provide substantial amounts of nutrition for sub-perfect humans, nutrition those same humans may be “taught” to live better without.

Just the same, carbon in various chemical combinations moves into and out of the atmosphere at rates that could be measured, extrapolated, closely estimated, and measured again for more or less controllable impacts humans might want to have.  Except no one asks the velocity question.  There are no grant millions for calculating how fast carbon churns in what kinds of weather, over what kinds of land or waters. Or, in what levels of the atmosphere.  Grants are plentiful if researchers – or advocates – can add to climate panic; only a level of panic enables political control, after all, which is a large part of making grant monies available: find out something that makes specific political or taxation controls possible.  If you find out something else, give it a good leaving-alone.

No matter how carbon moves around, whether from volcanoes seen and unseen, or burning forests to yield cropland, or propelling planes at 35,000 feet, or burning trash at ground level, moving trucks and things, or, pushing ships with both vital and frivolous container loads, joy-riding passengers or militaries setting off to war, not all climatological consequences are of the same value.  Some are just plain pollution, spreading dirt where we live in ways that we could control if the value were better understood.  Others are “necessary evils,” tolerated, temporarily, for lack of cleaner alternatives.  Over the past 130 years, say, humans have quite consistently moved away from “dirty” ways to improve life and living standards, towards much cleaner ones.  Only a relative handful of people on Earth burn cattle dung to keep warm – too many, and a very controllable problem – but a handful.

Cars and trucks get phenomenally better mileage compared to 40 or 50 years ago, as do even those jet planes at 35,000 feet.  More and more electricity is generated without coal, and “scrubbers” can mitigate particulates and sulphur compounds, which are actually bad to have in the air, along with some CO2, making even coal much cleaner.  New buildings are built to be far more thermally efficient.  New lighting and electronics are far more efficient, too.  Watch for the impact of solid-state batteries in making almost everything electrical more efficient, including cars and trucks.

The point is, CO2 in the air is not, per se, a bad thing, but if you ask the average, fearful, climate-change crybaby what he or she is afraid of and the answer will be that we have to stop spewing CO2 or else the world is going to end… possibly even before illegal aliens and polar bears get the vote!

In a sense, we are constantly reminded that the CO2 from last year, and the year before that, and before that, and ever since the first automobile burned gasoline, is hanging over our heads ready to destroy the PLANET, including my daughter’s recycling science project!  All it will take to tip the balance is for a few more Trump voters to drive through drive-up windows for a cheeseburger and some Freedom Fries, when they could have had a hand-picked kale salad.  The time to act is now, now, now!

But it isn’t, is it?  The CO2 building up in the atmosphere, I mean.  It churns around, dissolving into bodies of water, like oceans, of which there are a lot, and if not dissolved right away, generally CO2 sinks down to near ground level because it’s quite a bit heavier than air.  This, alone, is a good thing, because that’s where most plants that we can eat, grow.  Whoever thought of this system was a very smart Dude.

Mankind, however, is both brilliant and ignorant, wise and foolish, scientific and superstitious, and clean and dirty.  We used to think that God had provided convenient sewers in the form of rivers, but we have become smarter about that foolishness – we could be and will be much smarter about that.  We used to think the atmosphere was a big river to dump effluents into, too, but we’re coming around quickly on that foolishness.  Politically, however, we are being propelled to ever greater foolishness over CO2, not because we can “save the planet” and keep ocean levels and weather right where WE want them by limiting it, but so that we can, politically, control how people live, prodding them ever closer to the perfection models government-types have clung-to since Miss Hannigan’s 4th grade terrarium with the turtle in it.

Just like fraudulent COVID-19 statistics, if the government and compliant media focus on single numbers, a lot of fear can be ginned up, quickly modifying sovereign individuals’ actions, beliefs and willing abandonment of freedoms… like the number of COVID “cases,” as they “spike” from time to time.  Most are simple positive results from testing, and what they have detected are remnants of spike proteins, mostly not actual infections.  If you run enough cycles of PCR tests you can detect a lot of “cases.”  Everyone can be made to change his life through the police-power of the state or municipality because of largely meaningless numbers like these.  Fixating on how much CO2 goes into the atmosphere is much the same.  That we should be happy it’s there, for the most part, is never part of the news.  Do you have any concept of where we’d be without global warming?

Respecting our home planet by not dirtying its air and water is a noble thing to do – not from baseless fears but from purpose.

There are satellites watching the whole earth, now, measuring CO2 for places where it comes from and goes to at different times of year.  These are fine data to have and will, little by little, improve recommendations for spewing less CO2 .  Which we probably should… spew less, that is.  But we never will, or never will fast enough, if we don’t adopt a worldwide perspective on being clean or dirty in how we live, prosper and move ourselves and things about, starting with how cleanly we can generate electricity.  This will have to include nuclear power at its best, for urban areas, and solar collection and energy storage at its best in rural areas.  Cleaning up the planet need not, and should not require forcing people into cities, for example, or forcing ever tighter regulation on freedom (quite the opposite) or directing whole economies from a dictatorial, tight-control top.

It does involve honest education and a recognition that fouling where we live is anathema to both God and to humanity.  Economic mobility is prime in terms of balancing needs and wants and increasing qualities of life.  That comes from freedom.  Any “plan” for defeating – pick any – COVID, inflation, climate change, crime, ignorance, poverty in every other country in the world, that also includes restricting personal freedom or sovereignty, is the absolutely wrong move to accept.  A political party that identifies with restricting freedom and which villainizes those who don’t, does not deserve any American’s vote.