Month: March 2022

Where Are the “Better Angels” Now?

Years ago I eviscerated Steven Pinker’s fatuous book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Pinker’s thesis is that human beings, on the whole, (or in “civilized” Western societies) are becoming kinder and gentler because of:

  • The Leviathan – The rise of the modern nation-state and judiciary “with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force,” which “can defuse the [individual] temptation of exploitative attack, inhibit the impulse for revenge, and circumvent…self-serving biases.”
  • Commerce – The rise of “technological progress [allowing] the exchange of goods and services over longer distances and larger groups of trading partners,” so that “other people become more valuable alive than dead” and “are less likely to become targets of demonization and dehumanization”;
  • Feminization – Increasing respect for “the interests and values of women.”
  • Cosmopolitanism – the rise of forces such as literacy, mobility, and mass media, which “can prompt people to take the perspectives of people unlike themselves and to expand their circle of sympathy to embrace them”;
  • The Escalator of Reason – an “intensifying application of knowledge and rationality to human affairs,” which “can force people to recognize the futility of cycles of violence, to ramp down the privileging of their own interests over others’, and to reframe violence as a problem to be solved rather than a contest to be won.”

Why is all of that wrong? Go to my post and read for yourself.

Or watch the horrendous events in Ukraine, if you have the stomach for it.

Ukraine: Who’s to Blame?

A correspondent took me to task for suggesting that NATO’s leaders bear some responsibility for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine:

This is all on [Putin].  He and Russia could have turned to the West, become part of Europe, even joined the EU.  Instead he has leaned on [Peter the Great’s] 300-year-old idea of a great Russian empire and imagined the rest of the world is preventing him from realizing it.  I think even Peter would have joined Europe.  (See Peter Massie’s terrific biography—reads like a novel—of Peter the Great and note Peter’s deep interest in things European and bringing Russia into Europe.)  NATO is a threat to Putin because he wants that empire back.

My response:

“NATO is a threat to Putin because he wants that empire back.” Exactly. Was that a secret? I don’t think so. It’s not news to me, so it should not have been news to all the “great thinkers” who advise NATO’s leaders. Given that, it’s reasonable to ask whether NATO’s leaders considered the possible consequences of the pas-de-deux between Ukraine and NATO, which had been gaining momentum in the years and months before Russia attacked Ukraine.

So, yes, Putin is directly responsible for the attack on Ukraine and for harboring the feelings that caused him to launch it.  But NATO’s leaders are responsible for not having foreseen the consequences of their courtship of Ukraine. Or, if having foreseen them, for not having made plans to do more than bluster and sanction while Ukrainians suffer the consequences of the war that the NATO-Ukraine courtship provoked.

And if the whole thing blows up into a war that costs the lives of NATO troops and (perhaps) eventually the lives of civilians in Western Europe and the U.S. (if it comes to nukes), NATO’s leaders should be drawn and quartered for not having been prepared to avert those consequences. They should have asked themselves, for example, what practical difference would it make if Ukraine were an official member of NATO, given the long-standing enmity between Ukraine and Russia.

All of this is preaching from the sidelines with the benefit of hindsight. But NATO’s leaders seek the responsibility to defend and protect us. Putin is one of the bad guys from whom we need protection. If we (citizens of NATO countries) are protected in the end, it will be at a very high cost (in Ukranian lives and economic consequences) — a cost that can’t possibly justify the psychic benefits of baiting Putin.

I share your assessment of Putin. But he’s not the only player in the “game” that has played out into the slaughter of Ukranians and possibly much worse.

Your thoughts?

P.S. If NATO leaders aren’t to blame for Putin’s aggression, who or what is? This article seems to cover all the bases: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18329/russia-putin-ukraine-invasion.

CO2 Fail (Revisited)

ADDENDUM BELOW

I observed, in November 2020, that there is no connection between CO2 emissions and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This suggests that emissions have little or no effect on the concentration of CO2. A recent post at WUWT notes that emissions hit a record high in 2021. What the post doesn’t address is the relationship between emissions and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

See for yourself. Here’s the WUWT graph of emissions from energy combustion and industrial processes:

Here’s the record of atmospheric CO2:

It’s obvious that CO2 has been rising monotonically, with regular seasonal variations, while emissions have been rising irregularly — even declining and holding steady at times. This relationship (or lack thereof) supports the thesis that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is the result of warming, not its cause.

ADDENDUM (04/09/22):

Dr. Roy Spencer, in a post at his eponymous blog, writes:

[T]he greatest correlations are found with global (or tropical) surface temperature changes and estimated yearly anthropogenic emissions. Curiously, reversing the direction of causation between surface temperature and CO2 (yearly changes in SST [dSST/dt] being caused by increasing CO2) yields a very low correlation.

That is to say, temperature changes seem to drive CO2 levels, not the other way around (which is the conventional view).

Sources for CO2 levels:

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gl_data.html

https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/data.html

Related reading: Clyde Spencer, “Anthropogenic CO2 and the Expected Results from Eliminating It” [zero, zilch, zip, nada], Watts Up With That?, March 22, 2022

Am I Back?

For those few readers who might wonder where I was from November 22, 2021, until March 2, 2022:

My wife and I made the mistake of moving into an all-inclusive 55+ residential community. All-inclusive, in this case, comprehended three meals a day of steadily declining quality. (The decline halted only when quality hit rock-bottom.) All-inclusive also encompassed prolonged, daily pounding on our ceilings by the woman who lived above us and couldn’t travel 10 feet without bounding like a kangaroo. There were other things, too, such as the football-field trek to the nearest elevator, which gave my wife’s aching knees more punishment than she could stand, and the Dickensian gloom produced by a combination of low ceilings, too few windows and a northern exposure.

We remedied those defects by buying a light, bright, much quieter condo in a vastly better location, and by relying mainly on prepared meals and restaurant fare, both of which are vastly superior to the slop doled out by the “chef” at our former abode. The real-estate purchase is not only a good investment (for our heirs) but also has vastly reduced our living expenses (also to the benefit of our heirs).

Anyway, as we settle into our new quarters and recover from a second move in four months, I may find the time to do more than dash off a brief post like today’s “Thoughts for the Day”. Or I may just satisfy my blogging urge by dashing off a brief post more often than quarterly.

Time, as they say, will tell.

Thoughts for the Day

Racists of old believed that their superiority licensed them to suppress and kill persons of other races.

Today’s “anti-racists” believe that the inferiority of blacks in intelligence — and thus in income and wealth — licenses them to penalize and suppress persons of other races. (Some “anti-racists” would even resort to genocide.)

There is a parallel in the treatment of men, especially (but not exclusively) in the effort to advance women in fields where they are inherently inferior.