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Ivan W.
Parkins |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2009, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
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About Ivan W. Parkins: Dr. Parkins is a retired professor of
Political Science from Central Michigan University. He received his PhD from the University of
Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval officer
during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama.
He is a recent widower with three daughters, 3 grand children and 2
great grand children. Dr. Parkins has
written extensively, having authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column
for many years. |
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Front Page |
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In This Issue: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year -The Earth Temperature
Debate….And Trap -The Surge in Afghanistan -Did You Know?, Parkins Points to Ponder -Partisan Advantage and Debate in the Senate -Atmospheric Changes: Politics and Science |
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DID YOU
KNOW? Parkins Points to Ponder
By Ivan W.
Parkins Dec. 9, 2009 ….. According to Wikipedia, a March 2009 atmospheric measure of CO²
showed 387 parts per million
(p.p.m). At 10,000 p.p.m.
people get drowsy. At 70,000 to 100,000 they get ill or die. 10,000 p.p.m. can be reached in a
poorly ventilated auditorium. …. The great post-WWII spy scare ( referred to as McCarthyism) was not a wild exaggeration. The actual Soviet penetrations of America’s
secrets, and their facilitation by Americans of communist belief or sympathy,
actually exceeded the official investigations and prosecutions. Many persons who were “cleared” were
actually guilty and many who were guilty, were never identified. …. “The Youth Movement” of the 1960’s and
1970’s actually generated here at home an increased rate of death among
youths, while the rates of other age groups were falling. Many deaths in that increase were violent, and
their numbers totaled more than those from our military combat abroad. ….. At the time that Congress ordered a halt
to all financial, air, and military equipment support to our allies in South
Vietnam, it appeared the South Vietnamese were successfully and willingly
holding off the attacks of the Communists, without support from American
ground forces. ….Both of the major presidential impeachment
efforts of recent Congresses, Nixon’s and Clinton’s, were subsequently
denounced as improper in books by the Chief Investigative Counsels chosen by
the House Judiciary Committees to pursue them—and those Chief Investigators
were both Democrats. In Nixon’s case
the charges were drawn by the Judiciary Committee in such a way as to exclude
evidence of any similar behaviors by earlier Presidents; in Clinton’s case
they were drawn so as to exclude Clinton’s most obviously official and
illegal acts, grants of citizenship to persons not eligible and severe
campaign finance violations. ….. Since the Korean War, the trend of
military spending, as a portion of this nation’s gross domestic product , has
been downward to a little less than half of what it was in 1951-52. Meanwhile, spending for education, health,
and other welfare have all taken increasing portions, and together have taken
much more than spending for defense. …..One hasty act of the Environmental
Protection Agency, joining with the World Health Organization in the ban on
DDT, resulted in more deaths (of Blacks from malaria) than all the deaths
from all ethic conflicts and American military engagements in our nation’s
history. .
. . .
. . . .
Were any of the above episodes the choices of an American public who
were well served by the educational, journalistic, and representative
institutions of our nation? |
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THE SURGE IN AFGHANISTAN By Ivan
W. Parkins Thanks
to President Obama, and to some bipartisanship, our considerable efforts so
far to bring stability in a very dangerous portion of the world will
continue. Unfortunately, the presence
of a vigorous anti-war element in this country, plus a much older and
recently revitalized reactionary element among Muslims, does not suggest an
early or comprehensive success is likely.
The Western World, and America as its vital center, faces difficult
times. For
a serious, but not especially reassuring, view of recent Afghan history, see
David Loyn’s IN AFGHANISTAN. Loyn
notes that, in the last half of the nineteenth century, Britain attempted to
control there with 60 military expeditions. Meanwhile, it took 23 “surges” to
manage India and 15 in the rest of the Empire. And,
the real center of danger to further progress towards a planet that is more
civil and sustaining to a vigorous and varied humanity may be Iran! Iran is more populous than Iraq or
Afghanistan (about equal to both). It is also more highly developed
industrially and militarily. And, it is doing a lot to aid terrorism
throughout the region. Later: The
President’s speech accepting his Nobel Prize should be a clarion call to
reason for both Europe and some of ourselves.
Americans should, and have, granted Europe some time of funk. Her suffering in the two great wars of the
early twentieth century was unlike any that we have undergone unless in our
Civil War of the previous century.
They have rebounded remarkably, with some help from us. It is now time for them to recognize that
in this real world there is a vast difference between maintaining the peace
and not engaging in any violence. Later still: General
Richard Myers, who took over as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff only a
few days after 9/11 (a previously arranged succession), has recently
published his autobiography, emphasizing the specific wars and other hurdles
he encountered in route to the top of our military. In his EYES ON THE HORIZON he notes of the
Tora Bora incident that “Just as in Bosnia, hunting for individuals was a
very difficult task.” Those who make
too much of our failure to get Osama bin Laden should be reminded that the two top Serb
war criminals, in Europe, evaded capture for many years. |
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THE EARTH TEMPERATURE DEBATE ….AND TRAP By Ivan W. Parkins The real trap in the earth temperature debate
is not whether our environments are warming or cooling, but how much and
why. We know that the earth does warm
and cool, and does so in ways that vary over time. The key view of those who advocate quick
and radical reductions of man’s uses of carbon fuels is that man has been the
chief cause of recent warming. In the late twentieth century we were being
assured a “scientific consensus” had determined that a rapid warming was
occurring, and that it paralleled man’s rapidly increasing consumption of
carbon fuels. But some temperature
observations in the twenty-first century do not support that. Now, it is becoming clear that the widely
claimed consensus did not exist.
Furthermore, much of the impetus for the earth warming claim may have
been fueled by large public appropriations that “warmed” the enthusiasm of
the alarmists. Some of those people
were apparently unscientific enough to fudge their own data and to try
suppressing contrary scientific work.
The human taste for fame and fortune seems not to be limited to
entertainers, capitalists and politicians. If the temperatures of the earth are now
ceasing to warm (after a decade of unparalleled carbon outputs by man) it
does not disprove the theory that man’s actions may affect earth’s
temperatures; it does provide strong reason to doubt that man’s actions are a
major factor in atmospheric temperature variations worldwide. |
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ATMOSPHERIC CHANGES: POLITICS
AND SCIENCE By Ivan W. Parkins This is a reprint from July 10, 2009
issue 15 Understanding our problems regarding
atmospheric changes is greatly complicated by the vigorous participation of
political action groups. That seems
especially unfortunate when one notes that similar political participation
produced the hasty and extreme measure of banning DDT. And that led to what may be the most
horrendous and unnecessary sacrifice of human lives in the history of mankind. The evidence regarding atmospheric
dangers is greater, and the dangers more widely shared by all of us. Fortunately, Asians seeking economic growth
are less willing to accept remedies advocated by “more sophisticated”
Westerners than Africans were to accept the DDT ban. Furthermore, the evidence regarding
atmospheric problems is vastly more convoluted than that regarding DDT. Even allowing for its many currents and
eddies, it is simplistic to think of one atmosphere serving the world. Yes, some poisoning of it should be a
concern to all of us. But, many of the
most intense problems are largely man-made, and local in effects. When it comes to broader problems of
temperature and CO2, we all share in them even when we breathe. But, there are many reasons to question how
significant man’s share is as compared to variations in the Sun’s emissions,
variations in the orbit of the Earth, and emissions from the Earth’s
interior. Most of the evidence offered by
scientists regarding atmospheric warming and cooling is true. Our problem is
that it is also fragmentary and contradictory. There are actually dozens of factors
contributing to cooling/warming of the Earth and their comparative importance
is often unclear. For instance, how
significant are the mostly unexplored seepages and eruptions from Earth’s
core that occur deep within the oceans?
The numerous geological and biological evidences of time cycles in
atmospheric conditions are significant, but overlapping and not very precise
as guides to our future. We need to study environmental
conditions. We need, also, to minimize
the special interest politics of our conclusions and responses. Let’s at least keep the costs of
atmospheric politics below that of major wars, the thing that those who
obtained the ban on DDT failed to do. I.W. Parkins 070809 |
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PARTISAN ADVANTAGE AND DEBATE IN THE U.S. SENATE By Ivan W. Parkins Under cloture, the Senate rule requiring
60 votes to close off debate, the Democrat Party has had the advantage. Under FDR, five Congresses, for 10 years,
the President had a majority of more than twenty Democratic votes, not always
loyal but partisan. Democrats held a similar advantage in the
Senate during Republican President Eisenhower’s last 2 years, and for 8
additional years under JFK and LBJ. Also, for 4 years that ended Republican
President Nixon’s tenure and included the first part of Democrat President
Carter’s term. Now Democrats must struggle to keep
partisans in line, and hold two independent votes in order to reach the magic
number of 60. Republican’s? No Republican President in
more than seventy-five years has had such an advantage! REVISED: I failed in the above piece to allow for the change in the Senate's
cloture rule, made in 1975 (after Nixon's resignation). As a
consequence my computations of Democrat advantages prior to that Democrats 24 years, Republicans 0. I.W. Parkins, 2/20/10 |