Thoughts on Friedman, Sowell and Pitts
Some comments on our commentators:
Thomas Friedman warned in his lecture at High Point University last month that he's pretty much dedicating his column from now on to alarming the world about climate change and the need to address it through development of smart, clean energy. Today's entry follows that theme.
It comes across as hysterical, unless of course he's right. Are we in fact experiencing a "meltdown" in our climate system like the meltdown in our financial systems, with cataclysmic consequences likely? Most people, it seems to me, are more troubled by the fast-rising unemployment rate than the ever-so-slowly rising global temperature (Friedman pegged it as 1 degree C since 1750 in his HPU lecture).
Then there's the remedy. Responding to the financial crisis, we're throwing mind-boggling amounts of money in all directions without really having a good idea of what will work and what won't. We just know we have to do something. Is it the same strategy for trying to stabilize the climate? Friedman recommends immensely expensive solutions. Do they represent the right steps in that they can actually alter the climate? Can we trust climate scientists more than we can economists? There are many different ideas within the ranks of both.
Friedman makes a compelling case. He outlines new-energy opportunities we should pursue regardless of climate considerations. But paying the price of full implementation could stagger our already shaky economy in the short run. What if the cure kills us before the disease does?
Thomas Sowell, meanwhile, is way off the mark is dismissing Barack Obama based on lack of executive experience in his column today.
"Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been president before," Sowell wrote. "He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization.
"Other first-term presidents have been governors, generals, cabinet members or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and had not spent half their few years in the Senate running for president."
Sowell might have forgotten Abraham Lincoln, who likewise lacked executive experience, and served but a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives plus a few years in the Illinois legislature. His national fame came by way of his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate against Stephen Douglas in 1858.
Lincoln impressed through the power of his ideas and his exceptional ability to communicate those ideas -- in speech and on paper. He had great strength of character, confronted crises with moral character and iron-willed resolve and worked tirelessly at pulling public opinion to his side.
Can Obama make use of those same qualities? Time will tell, but it's foolish to exclude the possibility on the basis of his relative inexperience.
Yesterday, Leonard Pitts stopped about an inch short of endorsing legalization of drugs.
He asked for objections he might not have considered.
Mine is in the form of a question:
Which drugs?
All drugs, including crack cocaine, meth, anything else someone might cook up in a home lab? Because, any drugs NOT legalized would still find an illegal market.
Then there's the issue of regulation. We're moving toward the day when tobacco is going to be taxed and regulated out of the market. What a time to put heroin or cocaine ON the market, legally.
How much should legal marijuana be taxed? Surely at least as much as cigarettes, where the idea is to price them beyond the reach of many Americans. Congress is likely to give the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products, meaning it can restrict cigarette ingredients considered harmful or dangerous. Certainly it should be given the same power over marijuana or any other legalized drugs.
So, before I agree with someone who says maybe we should legalize drugs, and adds that he can't think of any objections, I'd like some basic questions answered. Starting with, which drugs?
Comments (5)
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Excellent points, Doug. Then you would also get into a huge conundrum reguarding confidentiality /access to pharmacy records. Who has it? gov't, law enforcement, prospective employers ?
It's different from alcohol in that alcohol is a socially accepted, non-stigmatized substance in our society. Lifting prohibition on it did not require any shift in morals etc.
It's easy to see then why a huge black market for drugs would still exist anyway.
Posted on April 2, 2009 9:58 AM
My initial reaction to Friedman's column was to call him an idiot. I'll refrain, and simply put him in the category of the many hysterical, global warming zealots that have made this complex subject a matter of the only religion with which the left feels comfortable.
This hysteria is not new. I'm looking at an article titled, "Fire and Ice." It chronicles the 115 year history of the media "climate scientists" warning us of the rapidly approaching catastrophes of alternately, global warming, and global cooling. They all use very similar terms. Isn't that strange!
The one item they all leave out is any mention of the Medievel Warm Period that lasted from approximatelt 1050 A.D. until about 1450 A.D. I first saw this chart produced by the IPCC in 1995 or 96. During that period the planet was somewhat warmer than it is today. Guess it was all of those SUVs and Flat Screen TVs. Their chart showing the Warm Period, somewhat remarkably disappeared in their 2000 assessment report as Al Gore ran for president of planet earth. The new chart showed a constant earth temperature from that time up until the 1980's. I wonder how that happened!
Friedman says the temperature of the planet "skyrocketed" a full degree C. since 1750. But the planet COOLED 1 degree in 2007 alone! Moreover the World Meterological Society, among others have told us that there has been no warming for the past 10-15 years. I wonder how he missed that "tiny" piece of pertinent information.
The very same, "blue ribbon" IPCC panel just informed us that the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions are FARM ANIMALS. I recently saw an interview with a PETA representative who said that if we all became vegans, it would have the same effect of removing every gas using vehicle from the planet!
We have been finding with regularity that when actual observations are used, they often dispute the information we've been getting from computer models, which of course, merely spit out information based on the information entered, usually by the zealots!
How long have we been preached to about the disappearing Arctic ice. Well, it's recently been reported that somehow missed was ice packs the size of Krazyfornia, or approximate 183,000 sq. mi.
Okay, so Friedman is an idiot, or he's dishonest, or he gets his information from his very own, NY Times. I don't which is worse.
Posted on April 2, 2009 11:37 AM
Mine is in the form of a question:
Which drugs?* Doug
The whole show! Pot! Recycle Hemp rope from America's first Battleship " The Constitution", Miller Lite Beer, Coke Coca new amazing drink that makes old Coke look like recycle sewer water from Baghdad, The new "G" or the old GatorAide that makes nude tennis players excited when they hear the name of Lord Maynard Keynes in the Obama stilumus programs. I thought you were a free market guy Doug?
Posted on April 2, 2009 12:58 PM
Tony, I think you missed what the projections say. They say, that it'd gone up a degree, but that the rise is accelerating, so we're already about at the levels of the warm period you mention, and expecting to surpass them by 5-9 degrees.
Also, that's true about agriculture, particularly meat production. There's nothing controversial about it, it's just a straightforward analysis of the resources that go into agriculture, and meat production uses about ten times the energy to produce the equivalent calorie content in plant-based products.
Posted on April 2, 2009 3:38 PM
Andrew, I'm not surprised that you failed to address the fact that the planet stopped warming 10-15 years ago.
By projections, you mean guesses! As i said, whenever actual observations are taken they are consistently less problematic than the guesses from the rigged computer models.
If you admit to the farm animal thing, then why all the hysteria over the harmless CO2? If I'm not mistaken, the farm animal "emmsions" are more than FOUR times more problematic than anything that we evil humans do.
Posted on April 2, 2009 5:14 PM