Anders Breivik, the monster of Oslo was also a climate denier

Sorry for insisting with the Oslo tragedy, but I am deeply shocked by it. That doesn't mean there haven't been other similar tragedies - even worse ones in terms of carnage. It just seemed to me, however, that this particular event was especially evil because Anders Breivik did everything alone - or at least so it appears to be the case. And even if he was helped by someone, he was still theorizing all of it alone. I my view, it is mind boggling; I can't imagine how you can accumulate such hate, all by yourself, all in your mind. I am still bewildered because of this.

I am even more bewildered by discovering some paragraphs of Breivik's "manifesto" where he describes how climate change is a marxist scam using the whole set of legends surrounding climate change, from climategate to the speeches of Christopher Monckton. You know, it is easy to find this kind of statements on the web. And I had always thought that these people were harmless.

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Excerpts From Breivik's "Manifesto"

http://www.2shared.com/file/M-s-2fBD/2083-AEuropeanDeclarationofInd.html


2.72 Green is the new Red - Stop Enviro-Communism! 

You might know them as environmentalists, enviro-communists, ecoMarxists, neo-Communists or eco-fanatics. They all claim they want to save the world from global warming but their true agenda is to contribute to create a world government lead by the UN or in other ways increase the transfer of resources (redistribute resources) from the developed Western world to the third world. They hope to accomplish this through the distribution of misinformation (propaganda) which they hope will lead to increased taxation of already excessively taxed Europeans and US citizens. The neo-communist agenda uses politicised science to propagate the global warming scam in order to implement their true agenda; global Marxism. Marxism’s ultimate goal is to redistribute wealth from successful nations to failed nations, instead of actually trying to fix these broken nations. Politicised science is being used by the cultural Marxist hegemony to manipulate the unsuspecting masses. They are using our trust and faith in science to spread lies and hysteria that will allow Marxists to implement socialist “solutions” to a problem that never actually existed. 

<..>


That's exactly what is happening with the Anthropogenic Global Warming scam; too many people are too demoralised to assess true information about Socialism, Communism, and climate change to allow its use for other agendas on the hands of the useful idiots “the leftists” as former KGB agent Yuri Bezmenov calls them. Enviro-communism is a new twisted idea of redistribution of wealth through “environmental” policies and the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference 2009 is the perfect manifestation of it. Environmental Justice is the new Social Justice; Climate Debt is the new Redistribution of Wealth, Anthropogenic Global Warming scam is the Communism. 

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Please see Lord Christopher Monckton's speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe5dOgbu40&feature=player_embedded

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Barak Obama received the Nobel Peace prize for exactly the same reason Al Gore did. The prize is given by Thorbjørn Jagland, Chair of the Nobel Committee who was also the Vice President of Socialist International. One can think they are pushing a global agenda of Enviro-Communism or Eco-Marxism that will force Europe and the US to cater for the global Eco-Marxist agenda. Their end goal is to “punish” European countries (US included) for capitalism and success. The Marxist agenda of the Climate Change Conference 2009 was to discuss the totalitarian idea of World Government, transfer of wealth from Western countries to 3rd world countries under what they call “Climate debt”, because allegedly western countries have been burning CO2 and 3rd world countries haven’t!

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Climategate incident – exposing the eco-Marxist scam 

On Thursday 19th November 2009 news began to circulate that hacked documents and communications from the University of East Anglia’s Hadley Climate Research Unit (aka CRU) had been published to the internet. The information revealed how top scientists conspired to falsify data in the face of declining global temperatures in order to prop up the premise that man-made factors are driving climate change. The documents and emails illustrated how prominent climatologists, affiliated with the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, embarked on a venomous and coordinated campaign to ostracise climate skeptics and use their influence to keep dissenting reports from appearing in peer-reviewed journals, as well as using cronyism to avoid compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests. Here follows a compendium of articles and videos on what was quickly dubbed as “ClimateGate”. The full story: [3] 

Sources: 
1. http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/113009_IISDreport.pdf 
2. http://www.europa-eu-un.org/articles/en/article_8975_en.htm 
3. http://www.prisonplanet.com/climate-bombshell-hacker-leaks-thousands-of-emails-showing-conspiracy-to-hide-the-realdata-on-manmade-climate-change.html 
4. http://www.prisonplanet.com/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming.html 
5. http://www.prisonplanet.com/hacked-e-mails-climate-scientists-discuss-hiding-decline-in-temperatures.html 
6. http://www.prisonplanet.com/mike%E2%80%99s-nature-trick.html 
7. http://www.prisonplanet.com/mcintyre-the-deleted-data-from-the-%e2%80%9chide-the-decline%e2%80%9d-trick.html 
8. http://www.prisonplanet.com/hide-the-decline-climategate.html 
9. http://www.prisonplanet.com/bishop-hill%E2%80%99s-compendium-of-cru-email-issues.html

Complex system gone bad: the tragedy of Oslo

It is said that the human brain is the most complex system we know of in the universe. Complex systems, by their nature, are unpredictable and difficult to control. A feedback dominated system can stabilize in unexpected states. The brain of Anders Behring Breivik, the killer of Oslo, is a complex system that has reached a certain state of horrible lucidity. One can get some glimpse of this lucid folly from this document that he wrote under a transparent pseudonym.



http://www.scribd.com/doc/60743276/2083-A-European-Declaration-of-Independence

Of all the things I read in my life, this is the one that most closely fulfils the definition of "evil". It is not even so much for what Breivik did, but just for what he is, or at least for the way he appears to be from this document. What we get is a glimpse of a state of evilness that one wouldn't think possible. And yet, as I said, the human brain is the most complex thing of the universe and can reach even this state. Try to imagine the solitude of this man the way he describes it. Try to put yourself in this state of personal exaltation; being convinced that it is upon you, and you alone, to save Europe by killing Europe's enemies. And this from a man who calls himself "Christian".

Facing this, I can only cite Paul, in the letter to the Romans (1:30) when he says that "they invent ways of doing evil". The human brain, indeed, can invent new and ingenious ways of doing that. There is no doubt that Anders Breivik has invented an ingenious way of being evil.




(thanks to "Mago" for Paul's citation)

Peak Research

Joseph Tainter's model of decline is based on the idea that civilizations attempt to counter the effect of declining resources by creating more complex structures. That strategy fails to bring the desired results because of the diminishing returns of complexity. The same factors may be causing a decline in the worldwide effectiveness of scientific research, plagued by bureaucracy, strangled by excess of rules and controls, and weighed down by lack of resources. (My detailed interpretation of Tainter's model can be found in a post titled "Tainter's law, where is the physics?")

Life has been very hard for scientists during the last few years. Already, the life of an active scientist was a rat race in which you had to run in circles, trying to get grants that would allow you to pay students and postdocs and they would help you write more papers that then would be used to support proposal that would provide you grants that would allow you to pay students.....  It has always been like that, but in the last few years it has become hell. More and more bureaucracy, tight controls, guidelines to follow, time schedules to keep and less and less money. And, of course, any attempt to do something creative and a little outside the known schemes seems to be becoming impossible to finance.

I think that the situation is like that everywhere in Europe and the US, at least from what I hear from my colleagues: reduced budgets, more paperwork, and the sensation to be running a rat race. I couldn't find data about the worldwide situation, but these data from the US do suggest that we may have peaked in terms of resources available for scientific research or, at least, we are plateauing. (source: Task Force in American Innovation)

But the question of resources may not be the most important one. What I perceive is, rather, a declining quality of the research being performed. I may be wrong, because it is hard to quantify an entity such as "quality of research". But my impression is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to perform original and innovative research within a system that provides resources for doing that only if researchers submit to a series of tight constraints. Not long ago, I was hearing a talk by a well intentioned presenter who endeavoured to teach to young scientists how to successfully apply for research grants. I don't know what the young scientists thought of that. My impression was that the presenter could have been described the rituals of an esoteric cult dedicated to adoring the God Quetzalcoatl; human sacrifices were not requested, but almost.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that I don't like to do research any more. I love doing research and I wanted to be a scientist from the time I read my first science fiction novel; I think that was when I was about six. And I am not saying that science is not progressing any more. Absolutely not. I am amazed by the progress being done in many fields, for instance, in climate science. And that is done despite climate scientists being threatened, harassed and insulted for what they are doing.

What I am saying is that the state of scientific research in the world seems to be a nice example of Tainter's interpretation of the diminishing returns of complexity. Tainter had devised his model to explain the fall of civilizations - he had mostly in mind the Roman Empire. His idea is that when civilizations face diminishing resources, they react by building up more and more complex structure to cope with the problem. But there is a diminishing return to complexity; these structures become burdens rather than solutions and help bringing down the whole system (a discussion of mine on Tainter's model can be found here).

Tainter's model has a certain "fractal" quality; that is it applies to subsystems just as it does to the whole system. If you look at the Roman Empire, you see that all its subsectors where declining together. Can you cite a Roman poet after Virgil? Most likely, you can't. Not that there were no poets after Virgil, but  Roman literature declined with the decline of the Empire and we found little or no interest in refined but shallow poems such as those written by Claudian in the 5th century AD.

Something similar seems to be happening in our times with scientific research (and possibly also with literature). It seems that, facing a declining supply of resources, the structures that manage scientific research try to compensate by building up a new layer of bureaucracy aimed at "optimizing" research - just as they are trying to optimize teaching. It means that, when you obtain a research grant, you are told in exquisite detail exactly what you are to do, how, for how long and that any departure from the plan must be justified. It seems that the very concept of "research," intended as looking for something new, is not allowed any more in these plans. You can't get funded unless you already know what you are going to find.

That's the perfect recipe for that "excellent mediocrity" which is the bane of scientific research. It was already a problem with the phenomenon known as "publish or perish", but with the bureaucratization of research it has gotten much worse. I could give you a series of funny (or tragic) examples from my own experience, but let me skip that. It just seems to me the system is becoming innovation-averse; it is like if "research" had become an oxymoron all by itself. The point is, could we do something about that? Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that scientists should be like Dr. Zarkov in the first episode of "Flash Gordon," where he builds an interplanetary spaceship in his basement. Science is a collective task that requires coordination, planning and some degree of control. But how to turn research into something that can change the world for real? Something that may help us to attain sustainability and stop destroying the ecosystem?

That's difficult of course. Bureaucracy is a tool to keep the world as it is, not to change it. So, in perfect Tainter-style, the system works hard to avoid innovation, not to promote it. It is almost impossible to be financed to study resource depletion; that would highlight problems that would require changes and that's a no-no. Instead, it is still possible to obtain research grants as long as there is no risk that the results will threaten the status quo. Hydrogen as a fuel is a good example. It is high-tech, fashionable, sophisticated, popular, environmentally friendly, and it doesn't work. This last characteristic makes sure that its development will bring no changes whatsoever. Absolutely perfect for the bureaucrats who manage the research grant system.

Thinking about that, I feel like the centurion of Kipling's story, the one who dedicated his life to the defense of Hadrian's wall in Northern England.  The Romans could not reform their Empire to survive decline; they fell in the trap of diminishing returns described by Tainter. And if the Romans failed in reforming their empire, who are we to think that we can reform research?  Tainter's law is harsh.

But, if the idea is to make research more creative, we should think creatively. About the problems of the Roman empire, I said that there was only one solution and that was called "Middle Ages". The only way to save the Empire, intended as its culture, art, laws and all what goes under the name of "civilization", was to break it apart. In a way the solution to keep the Empire alive was to kill it. As the Zen Masters say, "when you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!"

Could we think of something just as drastic for scientific research? Yes, it would mean to leave the tight world of the research grants and find new ways to perform better research - more independent, more creative. Moving, in a way, to an equivalent of "Middle Ages" intended as the break-up of the old, tight structure. And, think about that a moment, maybe there are already examples of this approach. Think of Wikipedia - it was not created by bureaucrats; it is a free sharing of information done by people who work for free. Think of "free and open source software," that has generated the Ubuntu operating system which I am using to write this post. Probably there are more examples of good work that can be performed not because you are paid to do it. It is said, after all, that "things done illegally are done most efficiently."

That doesn't mean that it is illegal to do scientific research without being told to do it by some bureaucrat, at least so far. But I think that some of the best scientific work I've done in my life (or perhaps the least bad work I did) has been done outside the boundaries of the granting system. A couple of examples are the papers on resource depletion that I and my coworkers recently published  (here and here). All done on a strictly zero budget - but so what? Scientific research is about sharing, after all. I think we should at least try this approach.


With the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire, Roman poets such as Claudian could only write elaborate and shallow praises of those who paid them. That wasn't the end of poetry in Europe: at the same time, the great sagas of King Arthur and of Sigfried were being written outside the Empire's borders by unknown poets who knew nothing of the elaborate rules of Latin poetry. So great was their creative energy that their stories were told for millennia after them and are still known today. So, creative energies can survive declining times and that is perhaps true also for scientific research in our times.

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Note: you may wonder why I am citing so much the Roman poet Claudian in this post about scientific research. Well, it is because I am preparing a post on the figure of Galla Placidia, the last Roman Empress who lived in the 5th century A.D. The historical sources from that period are scant and, therefore, even the poet Claudian may be used as a source of data. And perhaps I have been too harsh in my judgement; his poems have some charm.... ahem.... occasionally.  

Hard times for science

Skip the mumbo-jumbo of the neuronally challenged guy; go to minute 1:00 and watch the noose presented to the speaking scientist.

All right; just a few madmen, their threat is not to be exaggerated. But, think about that just one moment. Doesn't that scene eerily remind you of the movie "Hypatia"? Yes, in the age of the decline of the Roman Empire, Hypatia, scientist and philosopher, was first threatened and eventually killed by a group of madmen just for the fact of being a scientist.

Now, of course that can't happen here. Sure. It can't............

(from Deltoid)

The Great Haboob

The Phoenix Haboob of July 5th, 2011 from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

Now, you can say, of course, that a single event proves nothing about the importance of anthropogenic effects on the ecosystem. Yeah... sure....

Peak University

Students attending the IISCABC graduate school on the chemistry of the environment and of cultural heritage in Feltre (Italy) on July 8, 2011

Sometimes, they ask me "are you a teacher?" My usual answer is, "Well, let's say that sometimes I enter a room where there are young people sitting. I say things, they look at me and, sometimes, they write down something on their notepads. Whether that qualifies as 'teaching' is open to discussion."

Over the years, my doubts about what I am doing as a teacher (so to say) have been increasing. This impression has been reinforced by my experience with two summer schools, this year. In both cases, the class was arranged in the way you see in the picture above. Students sit behind computer screens. As a lecturer, I can't possibly know what they are doing; I can only see that they are typing something and moving their mouses. I know that they are connected to the Internet. Are they chatting with their friends? Answering e-mails? Looking at the latest news? Who knows? But that kind of arrangement is becoming more and more common in classrooms.

In some respects, having the students half hidden and doing something unfathomable may well be an improvement in comparison with the old style. Normally, they have been sitting in class while looking at you with vitreous eyes, scribbling something on their notepads (what are they writing? Prose? Poetry? Magic formulas? Invocations to obscure deities?). If they have a computer and an internet connection, they can at least use Facebook to evade for a while from the boredom of the average university lecture. (and think that I am teaching chemistry: that's boring almost by definition.)

Of course, we might forbid students to surf the web while in class. That, however, won't get rid of the simple fact that, with a few simple clicks on Wikipedia, Google scholar, or the like, the students can access a wealth of information that is way more complete, updated, better organized, rationally presented (and more) than anything that can be provided by a single person standing in front of them.

That is true, at least, when the idea is to teach the basis of wide field; things change when you go into specialized subjects, where a specific researcher may know more than anything you can find on Wikipedia. But there is a limit to the usefulness of teaching specialized matters to average students. So, no wonder that students find their time in the classroom an abyss of boredom. I am sure they do; I remember perfectly how boring it was when I was a students and I think things haven't changed today. If you are not convinced, just go give a look to sites like "ratemyprofessor". If you are a teacher (or, at least, you emit sounds in those rooms called "classrooms") and you can find your name in there, most likely your self-esteem will take a bad hit. (I am lucky that my students can't write in English!).

So, I think that a certain model of passing knowledge from one another is hopelessly passé. The university as a repository of knowledge may well have peaked and be rapidly going the same way as slide rulers and mechanical typewriters went. Disappeared; surpassed by faster, better, wider ranging instruments. We need to think of new an more dynamic ways to pass knowledge; we need to stop this weird ritual in which you say things to young people who look at you, but you have no way to know whether they are actually decoding the sounds you are uttering. We should rather focus on the direct, human contact with a teacher. The relation with a mentor has been fundamental in history and it is likely to remain the master way to attain knowledge. But that happens outside classrooms; it has always been like that, and it always will be.

Unfortunately, the organization of teaching in most universities seems to be in the grips of an asphyxiating bureaucracy that forces researchers to mould to specific roles. As I see things around me, universities seem to be moving towards that "scripted teaching" which is becoming more and more common in elementary and high schools. A kind of teaching where teachers are told exactly - sometimes word by word - what to teach. It may be an effective way of teaching basic concepts, but it is the perfect antithesis to building that kind of mentor-pupil relation that is the basis of all true learning. Besides, if I am not forced to a script, I can still tell to my students about peak oil and about other subject that keep them awake and away from on-line chatting.

Taking the opposite approach, perhaps some old models could be rejuvenated and found to be more suitable for exploiting "the cloud" where most information is being moving to. "Long distance learning" used to be a 2nd class kind of university; but it does have the good feature that it doesn't require the kind of ritualized and boring lecturing that regular universities require. An long distance teaching institution like the "UNED" in Spain, may be an interesting case to examine - they have been doing good work in areas such as peak oil. In this kind of university, students don't sit in classrooms, at least most of the time. They study at home and then they spend a couple of weeks of intense interaction with their teachers at the school site. Maybe it could be a way to go; although at present these schools are still rare and not valued for the potential they have.

And how about research? I spoke about "peak university" as related to teaching, but that's not the only activity in universities - of course we do also research. About that, let me just say that I believe that we have peaked in research just as well. Research has become an elaborate game that we play with bureaucrats and has mostly to do with getting money that then must be used to follow arcane rules that involve charts, milestones and targets. The whole enterprise, mainly, leads to ponderous reports that nobody reads. It all reminds me of state-supported poetry at the time of the Soviet Union. 

So, if you arrived all the way to here, I think I have to apologize for this little rant of mine. It was written in a single stretch as soon as I was back home from that school in Feltre that I mentioned at the beginning. It is not supposed to be a complete discussion of this matter and let me say, in addition, that it is not meant at all to disparage the competent and dedicated organizers of this interesting school, nor the bright, caring and attentive students who attended it. Maybe we can discuss more about these matters it in the comments.

Peak oil joke

I know, I know, this is not an original joke; it is an old one, readapted. But there are not so many jokes on peak oil, actually none I know about - so now there is at least one. It came up over a few beers after the social dinner at the Barbastro conference on peak oil. If I remember correctly (you know, all those beers....) I told a first version of the joke in that occasion, then Pilar Carrero improved it on the spot with a better punchline. So, here it is; a lighter side of the peak oil problem!

An geologist is prospecting for crude oil, somewhere in a desert. Digging here and there, he finds an old oil lamp. He uncorks it and, suddenly, a big, mean genie comes out. Towering over the geologist, the genie speaks to him in a thundering voice:

Genie - Mortal, you freed me from a thousand years of imprisonment in this old lamp. I had sworn that I would fulfil a wish to anyone who would free me; so now, express your wish!

Geol. - "Oh, genie, that's very nice of you........"

Genie - "Then, Mortal, speak!"

Geol. - "Well, I think I don't want anything for me. I'd rather ask for something useful for everybody. So, Genie, could you solve the peak oil problem?"

Genie - "Mortal, consider that I have been locked inside that stupid lamp for one thousand years. Pray, explain to me what is the "peak oil problem"

Geol. - "Ah... see, it has to do with crude oil......"

Genie - "Which is.....?"

Geol. - "It is like the oil for those lamps - the one you came out from. But we use it for a lot more things, like cars...."

Genie - "Cars?"

Geologist - "Sort of magic carpets, but on wheels."

Genie - "I see."

Geol. - "And then, you see, we need a lot of this oil, because we have many cars...."

Genie - "And the problem is....?"

Geol. - "Well, you know, oil has been formed long time ago as the result of sedimentation of organic material in anoxic conditions. The process called diagenesis leads to the formation of kerogene and then, at sufficiently high temperatures and pressures, to the formation of long chain hydrocarbons that collect in formations called anticlines.....

Genie - "Anticlines?"

Geol. - "Yes, anticlines. Salt domes, usually, a fold in which oil collects by buoyancy. It is from there that we extract crude oil and, you see, what we would need is a way to fill up again those anticlines......"

Genie - "Hold on, mister. You know, I am a desert genie. I know nothing about crude oil, diagenesis, anticlines.... I mean, I can do things; I am a supernatural being, after all. But what you are asking me; what the heck; it is too much - filling up the anticlines with crude oil? Couldn't you think of something simpler for your wish?

Geol. "Hmmm..... yes, I understand. Sorry, I have been asking for something very difficult. Maybe I could think of something simpler.

Genie. "Thanks......"

Geol. "Let me see.... Yes, there is one thing I had always wanted. I would like to be able to understand women."

Genie - "........."

Geol. - ".........."


Genie - "Let's see...... could you tell me more about those anticlines?"


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If you are curious about the co-developer of this peak oil joke, here is a picture of Pilar (Pili) Carrero, who did an excellent job with the organization of the Barbastro peak oil conference. Pili also interviewed several of the speakers (see the interviews at this link), including the modest me whom you can admire (so to say) while desperately trying to speak Spanish, here.