Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)

(I've been itching to write this post for a while now, and since I'm stuck at work waiting for a massive file copy to finish, here you go).
One of the environmental/no oil crowd's biggest success has been halting oil drilling in ANWR. to justify it they show pictures of the refuge such as this:

Beautiful, who'd want to put a stinky old oil rig there?
And this:

awwww, look at the cute little squirrel, the poor thing must be afraid of the noisy oil well, poor little guy!
What they don't tell you is neither of these pictures is from the area where drilling is proposed. They are from the permanent wilderness area far to the south. No one is suggesting drilling there.
This is where the oil is:

Oh, wait, that's the winter picture, of course it's just a bunch of ice, it's Alaska for crying out loud! I wouldn't want to be accused of falsifying it's true beauty by showing it out of season. Here's the summer view:

Much prettier, no? I hear it often hits 40 degrees in July. Parts of it even grow grass as you'll see. But that's beside the point; it's the wildlife that will really suffer!
The best indication of the horrors that await the caribou and the other wildlife of ANWR can be found by looking at the sad plight of their brethren right down the coast in Prudhoe Bay who are already suffering the effects of the unfettered greed and environmental indifference of Big Oil! BEHOLD THE CARNAGE!!!!

Note the oil drilling operation and pipeline behind all the rotting carcases. . . what? . . . wait a second . . . those caribou aren't dead, they're eating and resting with their young!. . . huh? . . . well I'm sure they're scared of all the development! you'd never see them get any closer than that to an oil rig!

. . . like right on the access road . . . D'oh! Well, caribou aren't the brightest . . .  savvy predators, like bears, surely understand the danger posed by the human intruders!


well, OK. . . those are just dumb brown bears. Polar bears would never. . .

. . . ah, but small animals, like birds, would be driven away by the . . .

. . . they may hunt, but they'd never nest near an oil rig . . .

Um . . . Ok. Maybe we should learn from the other Alaska coastal drilling sites and not hyperventilate over ANWR.

Current Oil and Gas Prices are Self-inflicted Wounds

For several reasons, I always enjoy finding articles that summarize everything I've been thinking on a current issue. First, it confirms what I've always thought - "I'm a smart guy." Second, it saves me the trouble of composing long blog posts - I can just cut, paste and link. Much easier.
so I'm glad I found this post on the real political and historical reasons for the current "energy crisis."
Short version: Congressional dismay about high gas prices is like me blindfolding myself and then complaining when I bump into things a lot.
Long Version:

Americans feeling the pinch at the pump should recognize that the wealthiest nation on the planet has nothing but itself to blame for the third in a series of energy crises that began when Richard Nixon was still in office.
Having largely ignored the previous two shots across the bow — the first coming in 1973 when OPEC decided to ban sales of oil to nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the second in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran — the U.S. seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What should make Americans on both sides of the aisle even more ashamed is that before the first energy crisis, the United States produced 11.428 million barrels of oil per day. This represented 66 percent of the 17.308 million barrels we consumed that year.
Compare that to 2007, when America produced 8.481 million barrels per day, or only 41 percent of the 20.7 million barrels consumed. Such is the result of the so-called energy policies of seven White Houses and 17 Congresses controlled by both Democrats and Republicans.

Yet, today’s politicians — mostly on the left side of the aisle, of course — have the gall to place all the blame for rising energy prices on increased demand from expanding economies like China and India.
At least those countries are participating in exploration efforts to expand their own supplies. China’s oil production has almost doubled since 1980, while India’s has grown by an astounding 375 percent. At the same time, U.S. production has declined by 22 percent. . .
Closer to home, our neighbors also ramped up oil production. To the south, Mexico has seen its crude output jump 64 percent since 1980, while Canada’s increased 85 percent.
Did I mention that our production declined by 22 percent in the same period?
Putting this in its proper perspective, if America had responded to the second energy crisis by increasing oil production only at the average rate of our North American neighbors, we’d currently be supplying ourselves with 18.86 million barrels of crude per day, or 91 percent of our usage.

It's not as if we don't have the oil available. According to an April 2006 study done for the Library of Congress:

Oil shale is prevalent in the western states of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. The resource potential of these shales is estimated to be the equivalent of 1.8 trillion barrels of oil in place. . . . In comparison, Saudi Arabia reportedly holds proved reserves of 267 billion barrels.

That doesn't include ANWR, and it doesn't include offshore drilling.
The real problem, I believe, is that liberals, and environmentalists in particular, want oil to be expensive. Read the words of Sen. Obama when ask his opinion of high oil prices:

I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing. But if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money in their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more rapidly, particularly U.S. automakers.

I think most people fail to see the need for an adjustment at all. the article points out that Democrats don't have this attitude about other scarce "resources."

Why has one political party for nearly four decades viewed energy crises through the narrow prism of learning to adjust to higher prices and declining resources, as opposed to aggressively finding and producing more of what the country and the economy needs?

Such questions seem particularly relevant given how this same party views hunger in our nation and throughout the world. The answer isn’t for those that have less to make an adjustment and adapt to their impoverished condition. 'Adjust to having less' is certainly not the Left’s prescription for Americans lacking health insurance.

Democrats want government to increase the supply of food and medical care to those deemed financially incapable of providing for themselves.
Why doesn’t the same hold true for energy?

Climate and the Precautionary Principle

We went to a memorial day barbeque today with several families from the ward, and I got into a debate (friendly, of course) with a brother about the greenhouse effect, global warming, climate change (whatever it's called now).
Anyway, we each had points and counterpoints. I'm a lawyer and he's a physicist, so it's not like either of us really knows what we're talking about. But I noticed that whenever I'd make a point, the response would be something like "yeah, we don't really know, but we shouldn't risk it."
I've encountered this attitude recently as I wrote my final law school paper. It is basically "better safe than sorry." The formal name for this philosophy is the Precautionary Principle. It's widely used in environmental circles as a justification to prohibit, regulate or tax any activity that could conceivably impact the environment.
the Precautionary Principle is insidious for at least two reasons.

• First, it reverses the burden of proof - forcing one side to prove a negative. Instead of the environmental advocate gathering evidence of actual harm and using that evidence to advocate halting the damaging activity, all the activist has to do is come up with a scenario that will potentially harm the environment, and invoke the Precautionary Principle. The activist doesn't have to prove anything, the other side has to prove that their activities will be harmless. This is nearly impossible. I can't prove that driving to taco bell to get lunch will be harmless. This being the case, the precautionary principle says I should not do it.
• Second, it is used selectively. Environmentalists use it to force industry to prove they will cause no harm, but activists don't take into account the harm caused by their own actions. DDT was banned because it may have harmed some birds, but this ban has allowed millions of people to die from mosquito-bourne malaria over the last 3 decades. One would think that if an action had the potential of killing millions, the precautionary principle would dictate that it not be taken. not so. Only environmental harm is fair game. (and humans are not part of the environment).

Just something to keep in mind next time you hear predictions of possible environmental catastrophe.

European 'Human' Rights

A British woman is trying to convince an Austrian court to declare a chimpanzee a 'person' so that she can adopt him and be appointed his guardian. Read the whole story here.

36-year-old Miss [Paula] Stibbe and the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories have filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
She insists that the chimp [Matthew] needs legal standing so a guardian can be appointed to look out for his interests  -  especially if the sanctuary shuts down.
Miss Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years, says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person.

A person, not a human? I, being a lawyer, know there is a difference, but legal persons who are not human are usually organizations or companies. Maybe the chimp should just incorporate in Nevada. I know a guy on the radio who will do it for just $499.
But later she seems a bit fuzzy on the difference.

'Everybody who knows him personally will see him as a person,' she said.
'In his home in the African jungle, he would have been well able to look after himself without a guardian.
But since he was abducted into an alien environment, traumatised and locked up in an enclosure, it did become necessary for me to act on his behalf to secure the donation money for him and to avoid his deportation.
'Since he has no close relatives, I am doing this as the person closest to him.'

He was 'abducted?' She's trying to 'avoid his deportation?' As to his close relatives, isn't science always harping on how close we are to chimpanzees, genetically?
The sad thing is that the court will probably take the case, and probably rule for the chimp. After all, this is the same court that doesn't recognize that an unborn child is a person. In fact this very court awarded damages to a Polish woman who's "human rights" were violated when she was denied a 'therapeutic' abortion.
Europe's idea of 'human rights' is, I fear, irretrievably lost.

Discriminatory Dollars

A federal court ruled today that the treasury department discriminates against the blind by . . . get this . . . printing money!
Well, not exactly. But, the court did rule that the fact that different denominations aren't distinguishable by touch violates the Rehabilitation Act. In essence, the government needs to make sure that blind people can tell a $5 from a $10 from a $20 by touch.
I'm not saying this isn't a problem, but where does it end? Aren't the Homeland Security color alerts discriminatory? How does someone know what an "orange" threat level is if they've never seen color?
There's no really effective way to comply with this decision. Make each denomination a different size? won't they need to carry several reference cards for comparison? (not to mention the forced redesign or replacement of every single vending machine / ATM / counting machine / ticket machine / cash register / wallet in the country). Print raised marks on the bills? That will last until the bill gets wadded up or washed, and what a great way to counterfeit! a few minutes with a needle, and viola! all my ones are twenties. Texture? How many different textures are there, and do they survive wadding?
Some difficulty is, I think, an inevitable result of blindness. That's why it is called a handicap. There's nothing wrong with trying to help the blind, but I don't think the court thought this one through.
Incidentally, I'm not simply being "ableist", the American Federation for the Blind opposes changing the money too.

Surprised Economists

I've been struck repeatedly over the last few years by how many stories about the economy contain phrases along the lines of "economists were surprised by..."
It seems like they are surprised by any economic news that comes out. Something is always more or less than predictions, and not by just a little, but by orders of magnitude. For example, economists were surprised again today by job numbers and factory orders. (Incidentally, I wish I'd got to this earlier, the wording earlier today was different, the "news people" softened their description of how surprising the numbers were).

a government report showed the nation’s employers cut far fewer jobs than expected last month, stirring optimism about the buoyancy of the economy. . .
The Labor Department’s report that employers cut 20,000 jobs in April was a relief to Wall Street, which had been expecting payrolls to fall by 75,000 jobs. . .
The Commerce Department said U.S. manufacturers saw orders increase 1.4 percent in March. Economists expected a 0.2 percent increase after declines in January and February.

They were expecting 75000 fewer jobs. They were only off by 275% This one isn't sooooo bad, after all there are a lot of jobs in the nation, and the usual gains are 200-300 thousand. Maybe they had a bad day. But, 0.2 versus 1.4? That's off by 600% and the viable range on those numbers is never more than a few percentage points.
I can only think of 3 explanations for the constant stream of these stories:

• First, the stupid economists are the only ones giving interviews.
• Second, these are the smart ones, and even they don't know what they are talking about.
• Third, and this is my theory: You cannot reduce the countless individual choices of a quarter billion people to a formula with any degree of accuracy.

This may disappoint some of my economist friends, but economics is NOT a hard science, it is a descriptive science. It is valuable when looking retrospectively, but absolutely useless as a tool for precise prediction.
Economics is not the only 'science' with this problem. Political science, sociology, psychology, and even, to some extent biology have the same shortcoming. This is because they are trying to predict the actions of beings with souls and free will. In such cases, the best you can do is averages and general trends.
That doesn't mean they are not worthwhile tools, but their practitioners need to recognize the limits of their science and not advocate more detailed policies than the science can support.

Unity, Dissent and Patriotism

I am currently reading Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg who is one of my favorite columnists. His articles alone are worth the cost of my National Review subscription.
In the latest issue, Goldberg writes about Barrack Obama and his call for "unity." He relates it to the general liberal failure to understand patriotism. Liberals think patriotic conservatives are fascists, but united liberals are patriotic. Unfortunately, the whole article is only available to subscribers. Some highlights:

When John McCain released an ad calling himself the “American president Americans have been waiting for,” one could hear outraged caterwauling from the Democratic jungle: What’s John McCain trying to say? We’re un-American? Who’s he calling unpatriotic? Fred Barnes, writing in The Weekly Standard, calls this anticipatory offense “patriotism paranoia.” Indeed, there does seem to be psychological insecurity on display. If I say to a male friend, “Those are nice shoes,” and he responds with “How dare you call me gay!” it’s fair to say he’s the guy with the issues. . .
Part of the problem is that many on the left think patriotism is essentially fascist, another name for nationalism and jingoism. And some may use it that way — but some may also call a duck a “cat,” which doesn’t mean we should all be hostage to this usage. The misuse of “patriotism” and “dissent” is worse, because a country without a word to describe its love for what is best within it is a country ill-equipped to defend what is best within it. . .

Barack Obama and other Democrats use the word “unity” as a substitute for something like “patriotism.” They consider “questioning the patriotism” of Democrats — even when it’s not actually being questioned — beyond the pale and “divisive.”

But, unity itself is inherently neither good nor bad.

Unity by itself has no moral worth whatsoever. The only value of unity is strength, strength in numbers — and, again, that is a fascist value. That’s the symbolism of the fasces, the bundle of sticks that in combination are invincible. Rape gangs and lynch mobs? Unified. The mafia? Unified. The SS? They had unity coming out the yinyang. Meanwhile, Socrates, Jesus, Thomas More, and an endless line of nameless souls were dispatched from this earth in the name of unity.

Our government is set up specifically to discourage too much unity. Unfettered unity is really just the tyranny of the majority:

The founding fathers dedicated a great deal of thought to the subject of unity, and they found it was something to view with skepticism at best and, more often than not, with fear. Hence we have a constitution designed to thwart the baser forms of unity. Our government is set up so that the Senate cools the populist passion of the House, the executive thwarts the passions of the legislature and vice versa, and the Supreme Court checks the whole lot, to which its composition is in turn ultimately subject. “Divisiveness” — the setting of faction against faction, one branch of government against another, and the sovereignty of the individual above the group — was for the founders the great guarantor of our liberties and the source of civic virtue.

Liberals also confuse dissent and patriotism. Like unity, dissent is by itself is neither good nor bad.

Or consider this supposedly brilliant bumper-sticker insight: “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Mark Steyn has had great fun with that line, pointing out that Thomas Jefferson — usually credited as its author — never said anything of the sort. Steyn traces the fakery back to a 1991 quote from Nadine Strossen, the head of the ACLU, an organization with a vested interest in putting the founders’ imprimatur on relentless knee-jerk complaining. . .

It is worth pointing out that if Jefferson had in fact said something like that, he would have been what social scientists call a moron. As John O’Sullivan once noted, tongue firmly in cheek, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Treason is the highest form of dissent. Therefore treason is the highest form of patriotism.” Yet when you listen to the verbal contortions many on the left go through to defend the New York Times’s efforts to reveal national-security secrets, or to journalists who think expressing open sympathy for America in the international arena is a grave sin, or simply to the usual battiness of countless America-haters, you can appreciate the wisdom of the Italian proverb that the truest things are said in jest.

Equating dissent and patriotism is an egregious example of moral equivocation:

Now it must be said that no conservative standing upon the shoulders of Burke, Nock, Buckley, Hayek, Goldwater, and Reagan would for a moment dispute the suggestion that dissent for the right reason can be one high form of patriotism. But it depends on the reason. The dissenter-for-dissent’s-sake is among the most common species of pest in the human ecosystem. The reflexive contrarian who cares not what he is contradicting is quite simply the most useless of citizens.

When confronted with the assertion that the Soviet Union and the United States were moral equivalents, William F. Buckley Jr. famously responded that if one man pushes an old lady into an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of a bus, we should not denounce them both as men who push old ladies around. Likewise, we should not say that the man who dissents from a church-burning mob and the man who dissents from a fire brigade are morally equivalent “dissenters.”

Liberals try to end debate by calling for unity and labeling principled objection as cynical and divisive:

Rightly ordered unity in a democratic republic is the end result of ceaseless debate and discussion. But today, ceaseless debate and discussion is precisely what many liberals object to. As Al Gore is fond of saying about global warming, “The time for debate is over.” Legions of liberals insist that we must move beyond ideology and partisan differences on this, that, and the other. But have you ever heard anyone say that we need to “move beyond ideology” for the sake of bipartisan unity and then abandon his own position? Of course not. When someone says that we need to get past labels and move beyond ideology, what he means is that you need to drop your principled objections and get with the program.

So, what is patriotism really? I like the description above. It is the word we used to describe our love for what is best within our country.