Carrying Capacity

Carrying capacity is an ecological concept concerning the population any environment can maintain. A maximum is determined by the availability of food, water, and shelter from adversity such as weather or predators. In a meadow with a stream, for example, the number of mice would be determined by the amount of food available.

In 1856, when the first commercial oil well was punched, world population was 1.2 billion. Today, 166 years later, world population surpasses seven billion, and for the most part people are better fed than the 1.2 billion in 1856. For example, 4% of the population of the United States are involved in agriculture, but American agriculture feeds 16% of the world. Considering United States population is 4% of world population, 1.6% of the world population is feeding 16% of world population. That's truly astonishing.

This is made possible by the energy liberated by that and follow-on oil wells. Perhaps this is best illustrated by the increase of GDP per capita in spite of the six-fold increase in population.  Note how well it correlates with bringing petroleum online after centuries of virtually flat or little progress.

In 1968, the book, The Population Bomb, became a best seller. It began "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..."

That, of course, didn't happen, and won't unless the greens realize their goal of de-developing the world. Almost every energy project, whether just another well or a major pipeline such as Keystone XL, meets opposition using any means possible.  The United States is already crisscrossed by numerous pipelines, so another hardly merits the attention it is getting. Note, too, many pipelines already cross the borders with both Canada and Mexico, so Keystone XL is nothing new.  The heavy oil of the Canadian tar sands is meant to replace the heavy oil now coming from Venezuela. Converting the refineries that now handle heavy oil would be difficult and expensive, and Canada would be able to receive an additional $30 per barrel they now must discount their oil because of the transportation difficulty and expense.

In other words, factual truth seems no impediment to stopping any energy project. Were the greens able to "get rid of oil," the consequent question would be "How do you intend to kill the six billion increase of population petroleum supports?"

Tyranny of the Immediate

I am aware of the tyranny of the immediate. We lived during the time Noyce, Moore, Grove, Hoff, et al, changed our futures and we could have, if nothing else, been employees of their company. They initiated stock sharing and options for everybody in Intel.

I contracted for a few months at Microsoft in Charlotte, NC. They have a help center there as well as Texas and Washington. Some of the long-term (10-15 years) employees were still making in the $20-$30 per hour range, but their stock sharing and options had long ago rendered them millionaires. One in the Excel group wasn't married (and never would be), had several dozen kids pictures over his desk. He was currently supporting them through various organizations all over the world at the then going rate of $19 per month each, basically his entire salary.

We indeed lived through a special time in history, and weren't really aware of it, mainly because of the tyranny of the immediate.

Another, more mundane example involves my experience with Chrysler. During the management of Lee Iaocca, Chrysler had dropped to near $1 per share when Iacocca was negotiating a special loan guarantee from the federal government. I thought to go down to the credit union of the company I was then working for, borrow a thousand or so, to buy 1000 shares of their stock. I got caught up in whatever were the tasks of the day, and forgot about it until sometime later. It was up to $10 per share. It finally peaked at $43 per share.

Yep, there is tyranny in the immediate.

Society has changed

Society has changed. LBJ started two wars and we've lost them both. First, of course, was 'Nam. Second, was the War on Poverty. Welfare became a profession since government paid "bucks for bastards." A single mom could draw until their kid was 18, as long as no male capable of support was present longer than sperm-donor requirement time. Further, when their daughter came into puberty, she could start a second check coming into the household. Culture became tolerant.

 'Nam also made an entire generation disrespectful of authority. You can still see that in the history of Kerry and Hagel. Many stayed in education to maintain their 2S draft status, and perhaps that explains the uber liberal position of much of education, even to this day. After World War II and that GI Bill, I assure you that wasn't so before 'Nam. Shacking up became common.

 Illegitimacy rates went from single digits to their current over 30% overall, and over 70% for blacks.

Many single moms go to heroic efforts to raise good kids; many don't. Males, especially, are kicked to the curb when they become old enough to support anyone. They joined gangs in droves. The crime rates skyrocketed.

During the 1990s, crime rates began dropping. Although many tried to claim this came from increased policing efforts, the correlation was to Roe v Wade. Abortion was taking them out early. Six states legalized abortion two years before it became national, and, sure enough, the crime rates dropped two years earlier in those six states.

Another tread was the change in economics for the middle class. At one time, the norm was one wage earner per household. It began shifting to where it required two wage earners, and single parenting became impoverishing.

This was, as we now know, finance taking over the world. At the start, finance was 10% of the total economy; it is now over 40%. We went from making stuff to making stuff up. Now, they need to remove the safety nets to extract those last billions. That requires a disarming of America. Starvation drives people to violence.

Busing in New Orleans: Then and Now

I am amused and relieved that there are 320 buses with professional drivers in place to carry anyone wishing to be evacuated from New Orleans. The buses are commercial (think Greyhound with high-backed, reclining seats, air conditioning, and built-in potty) , not school buses.

Seven years ago, ahead of Katrina, the emergency evacuation plan said school buses were to be used, but the mayor and his emergency manager neglected to read their emergency plan even though they had days of warning before Katrina killed 1800 of his people. The buses were there, but they neglected to tell the drivers. They had no call tree like the National Guard units use to alert members of a call-up.

In a call tree, someone calls the commanding officer, who in turn calls three others, who in turn call three others, and so on until the entire unit is notified. Redundancy is built into the tree to cover anyone not notified; in other words, people will be called several times to make sure everyone is called.

Instead, the bus drivers had been busy getting their own family out and didn't know they were supposed to be driving others. Over 250 buses were flooded and useless. 

One bus was "unofficial appropriated" by a kid, who stopped by the Superdome, picked up a load and drove them to Houston. He was fifteen and had no drivers license. I hope someone kept track of this kid and helped him later to succeed. He is an amazing kid who outperformed the mayor and his staff. 

The mayor was re-elected, but I never heard whether he replaced his emergency manager. This manager was offered 1000 free seats by Amtrak the night before Katrina hit, but turned them down as unneeded. Of course, both these happenings were later denied. I don't blame them for the denial (How many of the 1800 would have come through?).  

I am glad the new mayor has not only invoked the plan, but has improved on it, even if Isaac is barely a hurricane.

Central Planning

From: Oxford, England
 

I've noticed something strange over the past few weeks, maybe you have too. It seems that every 'contrarian' website out there has joined together to collectively bash the Olympics and anyone who tunes in to watch.

This seems nuts. Nobody should feel guilty for wanting to see athletes in peak condition push the boundaries of human performance. I certainly don't feel guilty about it. In fact I came to the UK several days ago specifically to catch some of the Olympics live.

Unfortunately it turned out to be much more difficult than I had expected.
As it turns out, the British government has centrally planned Olympic ticket issuance in a way that's so remarkably inefficient it would make Karl Marx look like Steve Jobs.

There's only one way to buy London Olympic tickets-- through the 'official' office that's controlled by the government. They've even solidified their monopoly by making it a CRIMINAL OFFENSE for individuals to resell Olympic tickets.

The concierge at my hotel, an affable Italian named Paulo, explained to me that the police even came around to warn (i.e. threaten) him against helping hotel guests find tickets.

Paulo directed me to the government's official website so I could buy tickets the legal way. I quickly found out how Byzantine it is-- there are all sorts of ridiculous hoops to jump through; if you're a resident of the UK, you follow one procedure. If you're a resident of the EU, you follow another. If you're a resident of other countries, you follow yet another.

Then after creating an online profile and giving them all sorts of personal information, they'll actually MAIL (i.e. snail mail) the physical tickets to the address you give them in your profile... and only to the address of your legal residency. It doesn't matter if you're traveling.

The alternative is that you could spend a couple of hours going to one of the ticket offices, all of which seem to have been strategically chosen for being in the most inconvenient locations possible.

Even if you can get through that maze, they've really screwed up their inventory management. Nobody seems to have any idea what tickets are available at any given time. An event may be 'sold out' at 10am, then have hundreds of seats available by noon.

The government's central planning of Olympic ticketing has been a complete failure, perhaps best evidenced by the THOUSANDS of empty seats at many of the events.

                         

Annoyed beyond belief, I asked the concierge at my hotel if there were any alternatives. He said, 'maybe', told me to write down my phone number, and wait.

Within a few minutes, my phone started ringing off the hook with calls from ticket brokers; since the government made it illegal for these guys to sell tickets, they've been pushed into dodgy underground boiler rooms for the past two weeks as if they're Prohibition-era bootleggers trying to move a shipment of hooch.

Negotiating ticket prices with these guys, I couldn't believe we were talking about a sporting event... it seemed more like an arms deal. One guy asked me three times if I was a cop, and another refused to give me his phone number when I said I needed to call him back.

Totally crazy. The government has managed to monopolize an entire industry and screw it up with Soviet-level inefficiency... then make it a criminal offense for the private sector to fix it.

                          

This is typical of how a government operates. They take a very cavalier attitude because they don't care about results, they only care about maintaining control. As a result, they run their operations based on the premise that people really have no choice.

With regard to Olympic ticketing, this is mostly true. My choice was either to go through the system legitimately (albeit painfully), deal with some dodgy backroom ticket broker at three times the price, or just watch it on television. 

Simon Black 

Doing the Right Thing

I am happy that President Obama has now decided to allow immigrants to stay who were brought here as children, at least, for two year intervals until hopefully something is done to make this permanent. It is the right thing to do, even if he did it for political reasons as indicated by it being late in the election cycle.  These kids or young adults are culturally American, and some do not even speak the language of the country they came from. They were raised American.

I find some of the criticism disgusting. For example, we are setting a bad example. Since when are we so small a people and a country that we would persecute a few for the failings of their parents--not to mention the failure for years and even decades to enforce the laws, thus creating these American kids without a country.

Another criticism that makes my skin crawl is that issuing these people green cards places them in competition with those citizens how are already having trouble finding work. I find this gambit really nausiating coming from the politicians who empowered the banksters to meltdown the economy, and now these same politicians haven't a clue or desire to do anything about it (FDR created millions of jobs in a few months. Look up one Harry Hopkins if you want to know how.).

I am happy that at least Rhomney, whether for ethical or political reasons, is agreeing with this action.

Man As The Bad Guy

I am amused.

A major academic theory explaining the disappearance of  megabeasts coming out of the last ice age is that migrants from Asia hunted them to extinction. These academics apparently don't get out of their ivory towers much if they seriously think a few thousand persons armed with pointed sticks can hunt over a dozen species of beasts to extinction in a few hundred years.  This is absurd on so many levels.

For example, Neanderthals used this type weapon and were built like WWE professional wrestlers.  Their remains show major injury was common. Had their coordinated hunting method using spears been as prolifically successful as these same tactics supposedly were in North America,  Neanderthals would have expanded to populate the earth rather than disappearing from the fossil record 25K years ago.

Another consideration comes from modern hunters. Many enjoy hunting with long bows, compound bows, and cross bows, all superior to pointed sticks, but modern hunters do not go after grizzly bears. They hunt species that run away if missed or wounded. Short-faced bears, one of the megabeasts driven extinct, were thought to have a personality ill-tempered enough to make grizzlies seem sunny in disposition. Short-faced bears drove lesser species off their kills, and would probably view men with pointed sticks contesting a kill like cannibals might view the arrival of a pizza delivery guy.

An indication of the actual hunting prowess of the American immigrants can be drawn from the history of the Lakota. The Lakota were respected, if not feared, by adjacent tribes, but these tribes also tell of the Lakota before horses. Lakota were a tribe of ne'er do wells who did not command any land along a river, so spent their time in subsistence hunting of bison. Once the Spanish horses proliferated and migrated up to the northern plains, the now-mounted Lakota could kill sufficient meat in one day per month to leave the other 29 days free for mischief.

The academics point out that the North American immigrants had a new technology for their pointed sticks--the Clovis point. Clovis points, named for Clovis, NM, where they were first discovered, are indeed an advance, and were wide spread over the 48-state area of what would become the United States. However, they are still just the pointed end of a pointed stick. The Clovis point was unknown in Asia, where the migrants originated. The Asian level of technology was inserting flint chips in a grooved line in the spear point--or in an animal bone. Yet, the megabeasts went extinction in Asia simultaneously.

In all probability, the extinctions resulted from either the Younger Dryas, or whatever caused the Younger Dryas. The Younger Dryas was a 1300-year span where temperatures returned to ice-age levels. The cause of this reversion continues in debate, ranging from a release of fresh water into the North Atlantic, halting the warm currents from the south (think Gulf Stream); a meteor strike causing a nuclear winter; a volcano in Switzerland. None concur with all the circumstances of the time--or have the expected substantiating happenings.

For example, there has been ongoing argument whether the Younger Dryas was a local, or just northern hemisphere, or world-wide event. Apparently the ice cores from Antarctic have settled the argument--it was world wide--but it occurred in the southern hemisphere several hundred years earlier and was warming when the northern hemisphere cooled.

In other words, one may logically conclude all their theories are inadequate, and another is needed. The academics also argue that the Younger Dryas cold should not have killed the megabeasts who had just survived tens of thousands of years of ice age. Good point. The key may be in the speed of onset. Ice cores show it happened within a decade and maybe much shorter. If the stories of mastodons and mammoths frozen so quickly their stomach contents  remained fresh, "much shorter" would be more like "abruptly." The bulk of a beast like an elephant is such that upon death their body heat cooks as well as digests their stomach contents--but these mastodons and mammoths were frozen too fast for that to happen. The sudden chill was enormous--such as happened in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

The key here is "if the stories are true." Most mammoth and mastodon remains show normal decay, leaving only bones.

The academics have now come up with a new cause for the Younger Dryas. Man killed off these giant herbivores so fast, the world-wide generation of  methane, a greenhouse gas some twenty times more potent than CO2, ceased, causing the Younger Dryas cooling.

I am not only amused, but envious they get paid to generate such.