My Beauty Best Teacher

"Are scientists becoming the new priests?" asks Debra J. Saunders in a recent editorial for the San Francisco Chronicle, and the conclusion that she comes to is "Yes":

...university science departments are havens of harmony, with scientists as priest-like figures to whose greater wisdom the public should defer. With scientists on this pedestal, who needs religion?

Saunders is on the right track here- increasingly, scientists are filling a role in our society once reserved from priests- they tell fortunes based on reading omens in the weather, they tell the future (inaccurately) based on models they create, they punish unbelievers and reward those agree with them without questioning, they build themselves great temples on universities designed to add prestige to their profession, they advise people regarding the proper sacrifices to make in order to appease the angered science gods, they peddle myths and run secret societies, and they hold to a worldview that does not allow any other challengers.

It should be no surprise that scientists are filling this role- for thousands of years, humans have turned to priests, shamans, fortune-tellers, soothsayers, magicians, witch-doctors, and religious types of all sorts. These sorts prey on those who are looking for hope, looking for direction, looking for someone to tell them the right way to live their own lives, and these scientists fill that role- many have, after all, devoted their lives to killing the Christian God and subverting his people, and now they rush into that vacuum with their own creation myths, sacred beliefs, sacrifices, and class of keepers of the eternal flame of truth.

In my post Is Al Gore the Re-incarnation of the Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse? I touched on this idea:

Alarmingly, the prophet that Gore most resembles may turn out to be Nongqawuse, who led her people to ruin in the mid-19th century. Nongqawuse was a teenager and a member of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to fetch water. When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of three of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring them fresh, healthier cattle. (Some of the Xhosa cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle.)

Astonishingly, the Xhosa chieftain, Sarhili, agreed to do exactly as this young girl urged. Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed. Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual. It was not red. And the Xhosa ancestors did not show. But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood. In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000. Cannibalism was reported. Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Al Gore and scientists who peddle his myths in the hopes of winning lucrative government grants are damaging our nation, slowing down our economic growth, making us more dependent on foreign powers, destroying jobs and the tax money that those jobs could be generating for schools and roads and important projects, and holding humanity back from progressing to a bright future. One can only hope that our educated population here in America is more sophisticated and civilized than the Xhosa tribe and begins to fight back and resist the peddlers of these destructive green myths.

Many in the media are gibbering away at how the recent hurricane that struck the East Coast of the United States is some sort of sign that mankind is permanently warming the entire globe in a horrible way through their energy production and driving habits, but the truth of the matter is that hurricanes have hit the East Coast in the past and are going to do so in the future, regardless of what sort of activities that humans engage in, and that people are just talking about global warming right now because it is still warm in the Northern Hemisphere.

But in the Southern Hemisphere it is cold and winter still, and in some areas of the world they are experiencing record snowfalls. As citizens in these areas freeze and suffer and crops and food is destroyed by the frigid temperatures, they are not begging government to control their behaviors and punish them for using heat and power and technology, but rather they are suffering through record snowfalls that are a result of changes in the suns gravitational field (see my post "Bombshell" Experiment: Global Climate Change Caused by Cloud Cover for more information on my logic and evidence for this theory).

Many, including Democratic-nominee for President Al Gore, believe in the religion of man-made destructive global warming, and want humans to stop 'warming the globe.' But in many ways, a warmer globe will mean higher crop yields, less starvation, and lower numbers of people freezing to death, although if the globe does warm more people will have more to eat and will be warmer, which some people feel is bad.

Regardless, let's gain some perspective on the issue by reading this weather report from New Zealand from this August:

Heavy snowfall in New Zealand essentially brought the country to a standstill on Monday, hitting majorcities including Wellington and Auckland.

Snow fell in downtown Auckland for the first time in 72 years as the city faced its coldest day on record, according to the New Zealand Herald. The weather and temperatures are slated to get
worse in the coming days.

William Neeley, 26, an American living on a farm near the town of Clinton, south-southeast of Dunedin on the south island, said “there’s about a half a foot” of snow. “We have to dig through the snow to find the carrots” on the farm, he said and adding that “it’s awful.”

UPDATE: I just saw on memeorandum a story that reports that parts of Britain experienced the coldest summer that it has had in nearly two decades. Now, I know many people believe that as global warming gets worse that parts of the world will get colder and that snowfall will be higher and stuff like that, but if it is colder in the south and in the north the explanation very well could be that me driving my SUV isn't making the entire globe warmer, and that sometimes it is cold and sometimes it is hot, and that what drives these changes is the sun.

Here is a link to the story about cold weather in Britain.

On Wednesday, August 6, 2008 I wrote:

As I listened to Obama talk about his energy visions for the future, I imagined what it would be like to live in a world that is cured of it's oil addiction- a world where there is no power generated by fossil fuels, and instead water and wind power the world. Ahh, indeed- the change we need... windmill from ancient Rhodes, waterwheel from Roman Spain...

After two years of an Obama Presidency and Democrats in Congress, it appears that the world’s chief sources of large-scale energy production — coal, oil and nuclear power — all are becoming increasingly unsafe and unproductive, possibly moving us back to the future of windmills and waterwheels. Liberals and Democrats have seized on the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion in West Virginia, the Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the unfolding nuclear crisis in Japan, to dramatize the dangers of conventional power generation and push for more regulation, taxes, and government control over these industries while simultaneously diverting large amounts of taxpayer money to politically-connected companies who dutifully pray at the alter of the Green God.

The winners of this war on coal, oil, and nuclear are the Al Gore's of the world, who make big money selling government false promises and inefficient power generation, and every set-back or disaster in the coal, oil, and nuclear world are met with happy glee from the government agents transferring wealth from productive, job creating energy businesses to unproductive, job killing green energy politically-connected firms.

The continued support for Democrats marks the beginning of the end of energy production and the voluntarily suicide of a nation's ability to power itself, on a level not seen since the Xhosa Prophetess Nongqawuse convinced her tribe that it must destroy all their crops and kill their cattle so that they might progress as a society and be more powerful and happy. Sadly, much like Al Gore, following the advice of Nongqawuse only resulted in a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people, as it will be in our nation if we don't continue to drill for oil, mine for coal, and build nuclear reactors.

The 'woes of Japan' are a wake-up call for our nation- a nuclear reactor that was built 40 years ago can withstand a 8.9 earthquake, tsunami, and electrical problems and still keep generating power- surely we can build better, more efficient, more safe nuclear power plants here in America to power our nation and improve our national security. The biggest barrier is liberals, Democrats, and their uneducated unwashed mass of interest groups who in their ignorance and foolishness would drag us back to less prosperous times, if we let them.

Badara Jobe,Ashoka Fellow and founder of Njawara Agricultural Training Centre

...has developed an approach that cultivates and strengthens farmers’ abilities to produce successful crop yields despite climate changes.His core insight is that fluctuations in an already short rainy season introduce a new and complicating set of variables for farmers. Even a missed day of rain or slight decreases in rainfall intensity over a few days can jeopardize certain crops in ways that were not previously understood. What is needed is not simply agricultural diversification, but hedging strategies that involve cultivation in precisely calibrated but small areas for a range of different crops tied to particular seed varieties

The BBC reports on Calestous Juma's new book New Harvest,where he contends:

that there is great scope to expand crops traditionally grown in Africa, such as millet, sorghum, cassava or yams.He sees areas where farmers will need to adapt to tackle a changing climate - cereal farmers may switch into livestock, he says, while others may chose more radical options."Tree crops like breadfruit, which is from the Pacific, could be introduced in Africa because trees are more resistant to climate change."...[continue reading]

Hope Shand writing in Pambazuka:

Under the guise of developing ‘climate-ready’ crops, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations are pressuring governments to allow what could become the broadest and most dangerous patent claims in intellectual property history. A new report by ETC Group[1] reveals a dramatic upsurge in the number of patent claims on ‘climate-ready’ genes, plants and technologies that will supposedly allow biotech crops to tolerate drought and other environmental stresses (i.e. abiotic stresses) associated with climate change. The patent grab threatens to put a monopoly choke-hold on the world’s biomass and our future food supply, warns ETC Group.

More here

G. Paschal Zachary on the advent of higher prices for cocoa and the consequent higher income for farmers:

Image via Wikipedia

The benefits to African farmers should be significant over time. Unlike some other crops, new gardens can require years of planning and labor. Existing trees are subject to blight and aging and must be worked intensively to maintain yields. When I visited Ghana’s cocoa-growing region a year ago, I was struck by the prosperity of farmers I met but also the relative inflexibility of growing cocoa. Expansion of output is hard to achieve. Inputs, such as fertilizers, are expensive and are used less than they should be by non-organic growers. New trees take years to reap fruit. Field labor is surprisingly costly. Producers also fear a glut; they can benefit from stagnant production too...[continue reading]

Shouldn't the farmers be exploring ways collectively or otherwise to add value to their primary product? The irony of having to purchase chocolate derivatives in the West for usage back on a continent is simply inexcusable 50 years after independence.

In Scidev:

Most endangered livestock breeds are in developing countries, where they are herded by pastoralists or tended by farmers who grow both crops and livestock on small plots of land. Faced with a daily struggle to survive, many of these farmers are unlikely to prioritise conservation of their rare breeds — at least not without significant support...Documenting and conserving this diversity — of cattle, goats, sheep, swine and poultry — is just as essential as the maintenance of crop diversity for ensuring future food supplies in the face of health and environmental threats.

More here

As theblogprof points out, at the end of pretty much every single episode of Scooby Doo, the bad ghost/ghoul/monster that was trying to scare everyone away from the truth is unmasked as a fraud for all to see, only to say "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those darned kids." From the beginning, this was my theory on the whole global warming issue, and it looks like those darned bloggers and Freedom of Information acts have unmasked the ghost of global warming and revealed it for the fraud that it is.

The 'Global Warming Issue' was built on several bad premises. First is that the globe is warming. Contrary to Al Gore telling me it is, the data is not conclusive that the Earth is warming at all- we had a warm 1990's, but the data is not clear that this decade was all that warm. In order to persuade people that the Earth indeed is warming, data has been doctored, cherry-picked, and massaged to produce some sort of result that does show that the Earth is warming. But since Earth is emerging from a recent Little Ice Age, I would not be terribly shocked if eventually trends would indeed show that we are warming up.

The next part of the Issue is that this warming trend will continue in one direction, and will also accelerate and we'll get warmer and warmer and then turn into Venus. It is a nice theory, and to back it up, they've relied on computer modeling that can't even predict tomorrows weather accurately, and the computer models themselves have used doctored data and illogical calculations to produce this run-away-global-warming model. It is at this point that I become an unbeliever, since I don't see any possibility of run-away global warming, rather I see a billions of year trend of warming and cooling and the Earth being mightier than us puny humans.

The next part of the Issue is that this global warming is man-made. As evidence of this, 'scientists' break out their theories and show some stuff working in some labs. But just because I have a theory that I can pull a coin out of your ear and do it once doesn't mean that everyone everywhere has coins falling out of their ears. In reality, humans impact on the environment, especially the global temperatures, is very limited. A volcano going off does more to impact the globe than you driving your SUV, and thus the ultimate cause of any warming is natural, not man-made. That's not to say that you shouldn't be mindful of your environment, but the proper approach is the exact opposite of what Global Warming Believers want, and the proper approach is increased private property rights and less tragedies of the commons.

There are people out there though who Believe- they hate God and attack anyone who believes in him, but they worship at the alter of the Green God and believe in man-made run-away global warming in spite of the lack of evidence, the faulty data, and the bad premises. They then advance to the next stage, which is that this man-made global warming is very very bad and a bigger threat to everyone's life than war, poverty, hunger, or any other really bad issue. If the globe warms than bad stuff will occur- you name it, global warming believers believe that it will happen. In reality what might happen is a better growing environment for many crops and expanding food supply, warmer weather demanding less energy to heat homes and businesses, and a generally spring-like feel to the world. Global warming actually might be good for everyone, if you can get over the fact that polar bears might have to migrate farther north (oh, the horror!).

Yes, the global warming myth is increasingly being proved to be just that- a myth. And those who fight the most to keep this myth in place are in reality those who are benefiting from the myth- Al Gore has made millions on peddling this myth, makers of wind turbines and solar panels have made millions more, and most government bureaucrats and corruption agents are out there peddling the myth while making money off of it. So be one of those darned kids, and expose the myth, and laugh at anyone who tries to sell it to you, because in the end, like at the end of most Scooby Doo cartoons, the whole thing is only worth one big laugh.

MasterResource has the best title for a post I have seen in a long time, and I'm reusing it, because it makes you laugh, and then you read the post and you cry. You laugh because it is funny, and you cry because it really is happening. Here is the post:

Alarmingly, the prophet that Gore most resembles may turn out to be Nongqawuse, who led her people to ruin in the mid-19th century. Nongqawuse was a teenager and a member of the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to fetch water. When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of three of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring them fresh, healthier cattle. (Some of the Xhosa cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle.)

Astonishingly, the Xhosa chieftain, Sarhili, agreed to do exactly as this young girl urged. Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed. Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual. It was not red. And the Xhosa ancestors did not show. But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood. In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000. Cannibalism was reported. Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Like Nongqawuse, Gore tells us that the sun will soon rise red over the land. Well, maybe. But already the models that he relies on have been proven wrong. The intense period of warming that these models predicted over the past ten years never came to pass. Yet we are repeatedly told that it’s still coming and that it’s just a little late. Apparently, we should pay no attention to the fact that the polar ice is expanding again. Instead, we must put the brakes on our use of energy–the very thing that makes the modern world possible–to avoid antagonizing the spirits of our ancestors, I mean to avoid climate disaster.

Again, I am persuadable. But it will take more evidence than I have seen so far (and yes, I’ve spent more time than the average lawyer trying to piece together the evidence, though that’s not saying much).

There are two more parallels to the Great Cattle Killing that are worth pointing out. First, Nongqawuse’s urgings did not come out of nowhere. Some of the cattle were indeed sick. The problem is that her proposed course of action was utterly disproportionate to the problem, just as Gore’s proposals are disproportionate given the state of our knowledge. Second, some historians believe that the Great Cattle Killing was in part motivated by class animosity. The Xhosa people had been losing ground to white settlers for years, and some members of the tribe blamed their more prosperous members. Cattle were a status symbols, and initially at least, the burden of their destruction seemed to be something that would fall disproportionately upon these tribal leaders. The cattle were, in effect, the SUVs of their time.

If a calamity does occur, one person who is sure to survive it is someone who has a massive house, a private air plane, lots of money, a houseboat, and is very well fed. Sadly, that means Al Gore will still be around!

In a couple posts, I have mentioned that Democrat President Obama and the Democrats who control Congress seem to be promoting energy policies that are closer in vision and direction to those of the 1800's than the 2000's. While Republicans push for oil to fuel the internal combustion engine and points towards splitting that atom as a source of fuel for electrical generators, the Democrats push for windmills and solar heaters. Republicans talk about faster, safer, better automobiles- a product of the 1900's. Democrats talk about faster, safer, better trains- a product of the 1800's. It's almost as if the Democrats are looking at an old playbook, one from the late 1800's.

With this thought in my head, I pondered. Perhaps the Democrats are using a playbook from the late 1800's. But whose playbook would they use? Obama uses ideas of radicalism that were invented by Saul Alinsky- but this 'railroads, wind, and solar' junk predates his adventure in government. These ideas must have come from farther back. They must have come from someone who really influences the Democrat party, even today. So I did some research, and think I know where the Democrats got their energy policy from: Karl Marx.

Marx was influenced heavily in his communist theories by his amateur and uneducated studies in soil nutrients. He read a report once from a German chemist, Justus von Liebig, who claimed that British agriculture, with its intensive methods of cultivation to increase yields for the market, operated as a system of robbery, destroying the vitality of the soil. Marx thought that this worked fine- instead of farmers making society better by watering more, putting down fertilizer, and employing better farming methods, Marx thought that the poor soil was being tortured and that as the British farmers grew more and more crops, the soil was losing nutrients.

Marx said that in earlier societies, where they didn't use such environmentally unfriendly methods, everything was better- there was some cycle of life that went on. But capitalism and private property destroyed this utopia, and the land was sad. Now, farmers grew crops who took happy nutrients from the soil, and then those crops were exchanged for money (the horror!), and the nutrients went to cities, were they were wasted by people. Marx thought this was all very bad, and the solution that he implies is that all people must die.

Democrats today like these ideas, and react with horror when oil is traded for money and produces things- they are upset that the Earth is being raped for money. Pelosi and others talk about how the globe has been protected by cap and trade, about how we are going back to responsible stewardship of the planet, and how the energy that is produced can now be better controlled by government so that it isn't wasted.

Democrats are using Marx's ideas today.

As I am reading the Bible to one of my children, I read the following passage from the Book of Genesis, passages 47:23-47:26-

Then Joseph said to the people, 'See, I have bought you and your land for Pharaoh. Here is grain. Go and sow the land. And when you harvest it, a fifth of everything you get belongs to Pharaoh. Keep four parts for yourselves to be used for next year's seed, and as food for yourselves and for your households and little ones.

'You have saved our lives' they said. 'We will gladly be serfs of the Pharaoh.'

So Joseph made it a law throughout the land of Egypt- and it is still the law- that Pharaoh should have as his tax twenty percent of all the crops except those produced on the land owned by the temples.

I may be wrong in my interpretation of this, and I am not a trained Biblical scholar, but it seems to me that the deal was that the government would feed them in exchange for a 20% tax and slavery. A couple things come to mind- really, all questions that I leave unanswered here.

First, 20% taxes are very low compared to what we pay now days. Is 20% taxes, complete welfare, and slavery comparable at all to 40% taxes, no welfare, but no slavery? What is going to happen when we do have a total welfare state- how far behind is slavery after that? Wait, is the Pharaoh the good guy or the bad guy for centrally planning the economy, lording over us, and taxing us so?

Lastly, is this the vision that our Founding Fathers had for our nation? Is this the vision that our grandparents had? Our great-grandparents? Is it me, or has something gone wrong, and instead of low taxes and freedom, we now live in a state of high taxes and increasing tyranny? Is this really the best way to do things?

Yara Prize winner Florence Wambugu discusses impediments to African agriculture.In an answer to a question about her focus on Bananas she stated:

Bananas are an orphan crop, like cassava, sorghum or sweet potato. It hasn't received the same attention as the crops used for export. But it is very important for food security, very important for women and children. When I was growing up, for example, banana was a baby food.
I realised when I looked around that the technology existed to double the yield and help poor farmers come out of poverty. So I brought together people from all along the value chain — businesses, farming communities, scientists — in what I call a participatory bottom-up approach. It is this holistic approach in linking farmers to the market that has brought success...[continue reading]

via Scidev
photo courtesy of Ole Walter Jacobsen

Related articles by Zemanta

• The African Green Revolution [Scientific American Magazine]

Prosper Mondé writes:

Identifying traditional knowledge and putting it to good use is more important than ever, given that our economies remain geared towards outside markets and that people, especially those living in towns, do not have any viable way of feeding themselves. You only have to look at the quantities of frozen meat from the West and rice from Asia being imported by a number of West African countries, products that are widely acknowledged as less nutritious than their local counterparts. Sorghum and millet are disappearing in some parts of southern Benin, though these crops play an important role during lean periods.
How can we reverse this trend? By fighting collective ignorance. In this respect, governments, national and international civil society organisations, researchers and journalists all have a major role to play...[continue reading]

Two articles in the African Executive emphasize the importance of small holders, firstly James Shikwati states:

Our foot soldiers (read- smallholder farmers) have endured myriad onslaughts that have left them numb. First was the attack from 'exotic' crop varieties such as maize, wheat, pawpaws, citrus fruit, and 'sukuma', among others, which reorganized their dietary habits. The demand for indigenous foods dropped and forced them to attempt production of 'exotic' crops. The modern day farmer's definition of hunger may be lack of maize, rice and perhaps wheat....[continue reading]

While William Arap Ruto (Kenya's Agriculture minister) asserts that:

There is need for commercialization of production at this level. This process involves transformation from production for household subsistence to production for the market. Essentially, it implies monetization of the rural economy...[continue reading]

Josh Ruxin writes in the NYTimes:

Programs that allow the world’s poor to be self sufficient are smart on many levels. They allow more stability — indeed, those parts of the world with good agriculture programs have been less susceptible to the food rioting we’ve seen recently in the world’s poorer urban areas. Such programs are also more cost effective for American taxpayers since they cost less than emergency food aid. Most importantly, when they allow small farmers in Rwanda or Tanzania to grow hardy crops bred to be drought- and pest-resistant, these programs help the poor feed themselves.

They can also help local subsistence farmers make money and climb up from poverty into prosperity. Small farmers who work to meet local and regional demand end up putting more acreage into profitable cultivation, and the income they receive even allows them to invest in crops like pomegranates — a high-demand niche product for which wholesalers and food production companies will pay a premium.

Faith And Sustainable Technologies combines appropriate technology and spirituality in its development approach.They:

Provide teaching and training of appropriate technologies including but not limited to:
a. Reducing deforestation by encouraging the use of solar energy and biogas.
b. Construction and use of slow sand filters and water purification techniques to reduce water borne diseases.
c. Construction, use and maintenance of low cost water pumps for irrigation.
d. Manufacture and use of compressed earth blocks to build permanent structures for
housing etc…
e. Use of bio-digesters and composting techniques as methods of waste management to reduce the spread of disease and improve crops.