Swickard: Voting only for those citizens who care

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  Four years ago I wrote, “The election this year has felt like going to the dentist and having the same tooth filled every day for a whole year.” It is even more so this time around. This election has brought out the worst in Americans rather than the best.
            What is either forgotten or never learned by most Americans and the media is that the system of presidential election is designed to sustain the party bosses and no one else. The media is not telling the truth to the American public.
            What is the truth? Our founding leaders did not trust average citizens to select the president so we have rules allowing party bosses almost unlimited power to select who they want. Hilary Clinton will be the Democrat Nominee regardless of the votes garnered by Sanders because of Super Delegates. Likewise, Republicans who think they have any control over the party bosses are mistaken.
            I like Ted Cruz but realize that he and Donald Trump have little chance to win regardless of how I vote. The party bosses pull the levers at the convention. Occasionally the people’s choice wins but not often.
            Why did the founding leaders and the subsequent members of Congress make a system where the citizen on the street has little to say as to who will be running for president in the general election? They did not trust citizens to use good judgement. Hence, the Electoral College where influence has been used to steal elections.
            Remember, only a quarter of American colonists were for Revolution. A quarter of the colonists opposed them. And the remaining half of the colonists didn’t care either way, they were too busy with their teenagers and making a living to care or take part.
            Today the same is true. Half of all Americans either are not registered to vote or do not vote. America votes more for Dancing With The Stars than for President. Perhaps our citizens are not fit to select the winner.
            Several years ago on election day I was in a store. One person said that they voted for president. Another asked, “Who is running.” That was after millions was spent on ads and television was 24/7 about the election.
            Four years ago I wrote, “We, the people, have concentrated on the personal trivia of candidates and the untrue about them. We have not had an authentic dialog about our country’s needs.”
            Still true. Lately people have been talking about how to get young people to vote. That’s a population who can name every song from a Rap artist but can’t tell you when the War of 1812 happened.
            How do you get young people to vote? By selling them on their own interest. I am always surprised that young men will register for Selective Service without the awareness they’re in line for war if we need soldiers.
            They look so surprised when I mention this to them and say, “Naw, can’t happen to me.” Well, of course it can happen. It has before and will again. I got a letter from President Nixon greeting me and sending me to an induction center on December 28, 1972. As luck would have it President Truman died two days earlier and they did not take me into the Army because it was a National Day of Mourning for Truman. I spent two years in ROTC in college for which I’m glad.
            We should not spend our time trying to get young people or for that matter anyone registered and to the polls. We should spend our time getting these people to care. If they care, they will register and vote. Caring, not voting, makes the democracy.
            What do I hope for this election? I hope people of character and integrity win, regardless of party affiliation. I hope the will of the people triumphs over voter fraud, regardless of who wins. I hope leaders tackle the war on terror, social security, taxes, health care and education with an understanding that political solutions only work for political problems. Never use political solutions for anything else.
            Vote if you care. If you do not care, please stay home and watch the stars dance.

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Audubon Goes over the Edge (Jan/Feb 2016 issue promotes anti-science alarmism)

Bob Endlich - The cover of the January-February 2016 issue of Audubon Magazine proclaims: Arctic on the Edge: As global warming opens our most critical bird habitat, the world is closing in. In reality, it is the magazine’s writers and editors who have gone over the edge with their misleading reports on the Arctic.

Bob Endlich
This magazine is so awash in misstatements of fact and plain ignorance of history, science, and culture, that they must not go unchallenged – especially since they epitomize the false and misleading claims that have characterized far too much of the U.S. and worldwide “news coverage” of “dangerous man-made climate change.” The following analysis corrects only some of the most serious errors, but should raise red flags about virtually every claim Audubon makes from the front cover to the back page.
Audubon on the Arctic
Figure 1: Cover of the January-February 2016 Issue of Audubon Magazine.
Country-by-Country Deceptions
The first part of the January-February issue devotes pages to each of the countries surrounding the Arctic Ocean. The Finland page says “storms become more severe” with warming. The writers are either clueless or intentionally misleading. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, as they likely did not take Earth Science or Meteorology, and they certainly have no clue about atmospheric fluid dynamics. The pole to equator temperature difference drives the strength of storms. If there actually is more warming in the Arctic, that temperature difference declines, and storm strength becomes less severe – not more so.
The Russia page mentions a familiar location, the Yamal Peninsula, home of one of climate science’s most famous trees. Both the Russia page and the Finland page say that current warming is causing “soggy tundra,” which is certainly not the case in North Slope Alaska, as discussed later in this article.
The Norway page describes the Black-legged Kittiwake and speculates that warming in the Barents Sea attracts herring which feed on Kittiwake prey. The authors are clearly unaware that natural warming and cooling cycles have been occurring for centuries. In the map below (Figure 2), the green dashed line shows extensive warming in the Barents Sea in 1769, just prior to the American Revolution, as derived from the Norwegian Polar Institute’s recent examination of ship logs to determine the extent of Nordic Sea ice. During that particular warm period, ocean currents and weather conditions made Svalbard and even parts of Novaya Zemlya (where the Soviets conducted their nuclear tests) ice-free.
Arctic Sea Ice
Figure 2.  Map showing maximum (April) sea ice extension in the Atlantic sector of the Arctic (Norwegian Polar Institute 2000). The map is based on a database on sea-ice extension in the area during the past 400 years, largely derived from written records found in ships logbooks.
 The Greenland page features “Greenland Warming,” with an image of tundra and a glacier in the background. However, only about 80% of Greenland is ice-covered; Greenland was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period; and abundant new ice formed in Greenland during the past century. A recent blog post estimates that only 0.3% of Greenland’s ice was lost during the twentieth century, and enough snow and ice accumulated on the Greenland Ice Sheet that Glacier Girl,the P-38 airplane that landed there in 1942, was buried in 268 ft of ice before she was recovered in 1992. That’s 268 feet in 50 years, well over 5 feet a year of ice accumulation, much of it during a period when Earth was warming and Greenland supposedly losing ice.
The cover photograph features a Russian oil rig amid an ice-covered Arctic Ocean. It, too, is supposed to instill fear, based on the suggestion that a once solidly icy Arctic is rapidly melting. However, history shows that the Nordic ice extent has been decreasing since at least the 1860s, and probably since the depth of the Little Ice Age, around 1690. The historic data, shown in Figure 3 below, indicate that multi-decadal variability of the Nordic Sea extent (on the order of 30-45% up or down each time) has been occurring for over 150 years.
Figure 3

Figure 3.   From Vinje (2001), showing the reduction in April sea ice extent in the Nordic Seas since 1864.  Nordic Seas (NS), eastern area (E), and western area (W) time series given by 2-year running mean and regression lines. Linear year-to-year interpolations of the ice extent have been made for the western area for 1940 and 1944–46, and for the eastern area for 1868–70, 1874–78, 1880, 1892, 1894, 1940–41, 1943–48, and 1961. The blue area to the right shows the time extent of the satellite-era. Apparently, much of the sea ice reduction in this region occurs in concert with planetary warming as the Little Ice Age ended and with the warming that followed during the twentieth century. 
Melting tundra deceptions
Toward the end of the January-February issue is an account of a visit to Wainwright, Alaska, an Inupiat village of about 556 natives, located on the Arctic Ocean in North Slope Borough. The native Inupiat desire to maintain their subsistence culture, which has been their tradition since their ancestors settled nearby about 13,000 years ago.
Figure 4
Figure 4: Wainwright, Alaska. From the online version: “The IƱupiat use portable houses and sandbags to shield themselves from rising waters and melting permafrost, but can they save their culture?”
The article on Wainwright cites a 5 degree F increase in temperature on Alaska’s North Slope, an apparent reference to a supposed increase of that amount around Barrow. However, that increase was found to be contaminated by the urban heat island effect: even in Alaska, a winter average contamination of +4 degrees F to an extreme of almost +11 degrees F. In reality, there has been little or no warming in Barrow or the North Slope, as proven by the fact that, a mere four miles east-northeast of Barrow, the Berkeley Earth measuring station shows no temperature change over the past decade.
The caption to Figure 4 (from Audubon magazine) emphasizes rising ocean waters. However, most of Alaska has falling sea levels, the result of the isostatic adjustment of northern North America. This rebound effect began with the melting of the Wisconsin Ice Sheet, as Earth emerged from the Wisconsin Ice Age and entered the Holocene between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago. The nearest tide gauge to Wainwright is Prudhoe Bay, and sea-level rise there is very small, 1.20 mm/year +/- 1.99 mm/year – so small that sea levels might actually be falling there, as well.
The Audubon writers mention “melting permafrost” numerous times, but when the natives spoke in 1979, they clearly did not think this is a problem. In fact, in their own words, as recorded in The Inupiat View,the natives specifically note that melt water is scarce in the North Slope Borough. What has happened in the years since?
First, the North Slope has a summer, and from early June until mid-September air temperatures average warmer than 32 degrees F; Wainwright’s extreme maximum once reached 80 degrees Fahrenheit! During the summer months, the soil melts, creating an “active layer,” meaning the surface is not permanently frozen, but is melted part of the year. Whether there actually is a “melting permafrost,” as claimed by Audubon, can be determined only by finding the long-term trend in the thickness of the active layer.
Specialists do study this phenomenon and publish reports on it in the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring Network, NOAA’s annual Arctic Report Car and elsewhere. Not all the Arctic Report Cards address permafrost issues, but the 2012 edition had an extensive section on permafrost.  A quote from this edition pours freezing water on Audubon’s “melting permafrost” claim:  “Active-layer thickness on the Alaskan North Slope and in the western Canadian Arctic was relatively stable during 1995-2011,” it notes.
The literature seems rife with alarmist claims, many of which seem to be politically motivated, as is this issue of Audubon. The NOAA Arctic Reports have a heavy dose of alarmist rhetoric, especially in the boilerplate introductory sections. But the actual measurements and data present nothing that supports the alarmist polemic of the day. If you look at the data, especially long-term data, the pattern which emerges is a centuries-long slow warming, with multi-decadal fluctuations. Significant or alarming anthropogenic trends are simply not there.
Audubon should focus on real problems
The Audubon Society and its magazine should stay away from areas where they have no expertise – specifically the imagined or invented catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Audubon’s equivocal policy on wind power ostensibly calls on wind energy developers to consider planning, siting, and operating wind farms in a manner that avoids bird carnage and supports “strong enforcement” of laws protecting birds and wildlife. On the other hand, the same Audubon policy speaks about “species extinctions and other catastrophic effects of climate change” and “pollution from fossil fuels.”
When read together, this schizophrenic policy clearly puts Audubon on the side of climate alarmism – with the loss of protected, threatened and endangered birds and bats merely a small price to pay in an effort to save the planet.
Another article shows that Audubon’s alarmist climate claims, rather than bird safety, clearly dominate president David Yarnold’s concerns, Beneath a picture of a forest fire, an editorial quotes him as saying: “Climate change is the greatest threat to birds and biodiversity since humans have been on the planet.”
This latter piece is rife with the alarmist propaganda of recent political statements: increasing drought (actual data show that drought is decreasing in the United States over the past 110 years in regions where we have temperature and rainfall measurements) … forest fires (not so, according to actual data) … species extinctions  (virtually no extinctions have occurred except on isolated islands where predators have been introduced by humans) … and flooding (nothing outside of normal experiences and variability has been documented).
Audubon needs to concentrate on saving birds and other flying creatures not from imagined or exaggerated global warming and climate change – but from very real catastrophic deaths enormous taxpayer-funded “alternative energy” machines that kill countless thousands, and perhaps millions, of them every year. These killing machines include wind turbines that chop up raptors, song birds and bats, and heliostats (installations that use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays) that incinerate them.
Bats pollinate crops and consume insects, but the number of bats killed has been conservatively estimated at 600,000 annually, and may be as high as 900,000.  In the pursuit of “renewable energy” the Ivanpah solar-to-electrical-energy plant in California’s Mojave Desert actually ignites birds in flight; the dying birds are called “streamers,” because they emit smoke as they fall from the sky. One report estimates that over 100 golden eagles and 300 red tailed hawks are killed yearly by wind turbines at California’s Altamont Pass, but another analysis uses detailed European studies to calculate that tens of millions of birds and bats are killed every year by US wind turbines.
Audubon needs to get some real science in its research and show true empathy for the human-caused deaths that our feathered friends face on a daily basis. It needs to focus on ending the real threats to our birds, rather than on threats that exist only in computer climate models and overly active imaginations.
___________
Robert W. Endlich served as Weather Officer in the USAF for 21 Years. From 1984-1993, he provided toxic corridor and laser propagation support to the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range. He has published in the technical literature and worked as software test engineer. He was elected to Chi Epsilon Pi, the national Meteorology Honor Society, while a Basic Meteorology student at Texas A&M University. He has a BA degree in Geology from Rutgers University and an MS in and Meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University.

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Swickard column: Liars, cheaters and puppy dog haters

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations…” President George Washington’s Farewell Address
            Our first president knew the party system held many dangers. Not the least is the intentional lying and cheating to enhance one party over others in elections and during the time of governing. We have a government with its party interests instead of the interests of the country as a whole.
            To me it seems America has dissolved over the years into tribes. There are four tribes I see: Democrats, Republicans, Independents and Disinterested Americans. In every question of what our country should do next is the overarching needs of the tribes such that America is held hostage by the tribe in power.
            Washington realized that the pull of the party system would cause otherwise good people to lie, cheat and act to bolster their party. He opposed the very notion of the party system. While he was President Washington everyone was quiet and then the party system started full force after he left office.
            Currently two tribes run our government. We are in an election year and I hear citizens wonder why the conventions of the tribes do not allow transparency or fairness. Indeed, they are a tribe and to them this is life and death of the tribe.
            When elected those tribe members are then part of the government and swear to act honestly. But as we can see their behavior is to push their tribe regardless of the damage it does to our country. Sadly, we have put the two tribes: Republicans and Democrats in charge of our government. There are a few Independents but not enough to change the outcomes.
            I had to be a member of one of the two tribes if I wanted a voice in who was going to represent that tribe in the general election. Over the last couple decades, I have been a member of three tribes: Independents, Democrats and now Republicans.
            Each tribe is a private entity though the practitioners when running for office do have to conform with some general rules. Their fiduciary relationship is generally their own tribe. Therefore, they generally band together while in office to represent their tribe and defeat the efforts of the other major tribe.
            Citizens are fed up with their self-serving behavior but the system currently assures that only Republicans or Democrats will win the presidency. The rules assuring this outcome were agreed upon years ago in a bi-partisan effort by Republicans and Democrats.
            We also have sham local governments which proclaim they are non-partisan but by the way they run and govern it is obvious they are still tribe members who follow their tribe. Even more disturbing is that the media is supposed to not be a member of either tribe but it is obvious the media often are pushing one tribe over the other.
            You can tell by their coverage of some candidates where no mention is made of legitimate issues and on other candidates they happily spread the dirt spoken by a partisan that so-and-so candidate is a liar, cheat and a puppy dog hater.
            So what are we to do? Truthfully, we are needing patriots to take over the tribes at the local levels and not participate in tribal unity. They will be met with a vigorous defense of the same-old model when they try to make changes. So it will hinge on enough patriots in the two major tribes deciding to clean up their tribes.
            Will it work? It is the only thing that will work. One thing more: Journalism Schools must be set back to where they were when I graduated in 1972. At that time, we looked down on both Republicans and Democrats and didn’t root for either.
            Most importantly, money and privilege must be taken out of elected service. No more going to Congress in a station wagon and flying home years later in their own jet. One step at a time. Giving up the tribe mentality will be a good start.

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Swickard: The evil obsession with educational testing

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “Shouldn’t these early grades be a time to discover, play, and explore? ... but I guess that doesn’t fit into our testing obsession.” Teacher Ginger Rose Fox
             If our leaders flew airplanes like they manage educational resources, we would shortly be a flightless society. Jeanne Fulbright wrote, “If the purpose of learning is to score well on a test, we’ve lost sight of the real reason for learning.”
            Ask most politicians the purpose of education and you get, “Score well on the tests.” Sadly, that is not what our public schools should spend their time on, rather, they should develop lifelong learners. This is done by using curiosity to bolster learning behaviors.
            The testing obsession is driven by money and power for the leaders of public schools, not by research or best practices. Our country has many times the number of educational administrators as is needed for effective schools because the administrators have taken over the schools.
            To give themselves power and money they created a testing society where students spend most of their time preparing for and taking tests to evaluate teachers and schools. There is no educational value of these activities for the students. It serves to disenfranchise them from real learning activities.
            What if we stopped testing so much and just used that extra time for things like teaching? First thing that would happen is the educational power brokers and political leaders would lose power and money. That is what is driving our current educational testing obsession.
            What is education? Ask most administrators and you get things like: to prepare students to go to college. Wrong. Education is the concentration of curiosity such that literate and numerate resources are acquired by students to satisfy that curiosity.
            We have put accountants and political pushers in charge of our public schools and they get worse and worse because the unstated goals of the schools are now to satisfy political influences. The first destruction of education was in kindergarten.
            That grade was used to bring students into public schools in a way that the students found enjoyable and intellectually stimulating. So there was lots of play and fun activities. But no longer. Kindergarten has been destroyed by an out-of-control educational administration that does not want students enjoying themselves.
            Want to see which administrator to fire or politician to vote out of office: ask if students should enjoy being in public school? Get rid of everyone who says, “They should not.”
            To educate means to give reason for developing literacy and numeracy. Administrators say students will do so or be punished along with their teacher. The schools now spend their time intimidating teachers. Students only gain the ability to take tests and little else.
            Take a clear look at schools spending all of their time on accountability tests which students have no interest in and you will see the destruction of our public schools. Parents don’t know what to do. The law says the students have to go even when they say they hate school. Most parents can’t home school so they turn a blind eye to the abuse of their children. The media does not know either. Test scores are easy to report.
            Public schools shouldn’t operate on a top-down model where teachers have little or no say in the instructional activities. Teachers in public schools are told that they must obey or lose their job.
            When students first go to school they are curious about almost everything but curiosity is beaten out of them by all but the few teachers who have underground instructional styles to cope with the obsession of testing.
            Spiders and snakes and a thousand other things are interesting but they are not on the test so all but the stoutest teachers do exactly what the administrators demand. If administrators demanded they cut their students in two with a butter knife, many of today’s teachers would do so to save their job.
            Our society needs curiosity based schools that develop lifelong learners, not political castles where educators get rich on the backs of students not being properly served. Teachers need to be in charge, not highly paid administrators feathering their nests. A major change is needed.

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Swickard column: Opposing civil asset forfeiture

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “Civil asset forfeiture is a cancer that eats at the very heart of the integrity of the American judicial system.” Brad Cates
             Some may think it odd that a friend of mine, Brad Cates, opposes Civil Asset Forfeiture since years ago he was the Director of the Department of Justice Forfeiture Program. He knows better than anyone else the strengths and weaknesses of that program.
            I’ve known Brad Cates since 1970 when we both served in the New Mexico State University Student Senate. Later he ran successfully for Student Body President. After graduation I worked at KOB-TV in Albuquerque and Brad was a New Mexico Legislator. We talked often. Then he moved to Washington, D.C. and I lost contact with him until recently when he returned to Las Cruces.
            It pleases me that he opposes the taking of cash and assets from citizens who have not been convicted of a crime. This is a subject that I have written about several times. There is no place in a Nation of Laws for citizens to lose assets without legal process.
            Years ago when Brad Cates became involved as the Director of the DOJ Forfeiture Program the Drug Cartels and Mafia had resources they used that were gained by illegal actions. So it was thought that the police should not allow criminals to use their ill-begotten gains.
            Then our police departments noticed that it was also a convenient way to get additional financial resources to bolster their budgets. Citizens who were not indicted or convicted were fleeced of their assets so that police departments could grow on stolen money.
            Never convicted law-abiding citizens have been and are victimized by this immoral use of police force. The Washington Post in 2014 wrote that $2.5 billion in cash alone has been taken from citizens since 2001. It was done without warrants or indictments.
            But the practice is growing. In 2014 alone, according to the Washington Post, the take was $5 billion. That $5 billion was more than was lost in all burglary that year.
            So Brad Cates has been pushing to rein in the practice. I noticed one of his quotes in the Santa Fe New Mexican and contacted him.
            He explained that he is a proponent of taking the profit and proceeds from convicted drug dealers, terrorist, racketeers, child pornographers and other serious criminal in a process called criminal forfeiture. However, he is against taking assets from citizens not charged or convicted of a crime. Me too.
            It is unfortunate for liberty in our country that Civil Asset Forfeiture is in nearly four hundred federal laws along with similar laws in many states. There has been a flash fire of protests by New Mexico citizens about police departments taking cars from citizens without going before a judge.
            Please understand it has not happened to me or anyone I know, rather, I protest this action since while legal it is immoral. There is something that we can do about this if you will help.
            The next meeting of the New Mexico Legislature will be January 2017. All 112 members of the legislature are up for reelection. Today is a great time to find your legislator or person running for the legislature and bend his or her ear that a law needs to be passed and upheld if vetoed to end all forfeiture without legal action. No exceptions.
            This is the time of year that you can spend time with these politicians and they will listen since there is the November election.
            One more thing: shame on town councils and police departments who justify this immoral practice because they say they need the money. If so, then fire every municipal worker who isn’t day to day keeping the municipality going. The police, fire, sewage, water, trash and traffic workers are safe.
            Instead fire all public relations workers, extra program workers, art festivals and other nice to have but not critical programs. If we have to steal assets from citizens without judicial review, we can do without those services. Again, all they have to do is use forfeiture after judicial conviction and I will support their actions.
            You can contact Brad Cates through his website: www.bradcates.com.

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