1-7 Star Rating – Page 238 – Public Intelligence Blog

2006/06/152009/12/04

Review: The Case for Impeachment–The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (Hardcover)

Amazon Page

On the Left: Lying About Oral Sex–and on The Right:? 10 Big Crimes,

June 15, 2006

Dave Lindorff

Edit of 12 Apr 08 to add new additional links.

The Republicans set the stage for hard-ball when they actually impeached President Clinton, not for having oral sex with an intern, but for lying about it. This book lists ten specific documented reasons for impeaching President Bush:

1. Stole Florida election in 2000.
2. Lied on Iraq to Congress, the Public, and the United Nations.
3. 9-11 Cover-Up and Obstruction of Justice.
4. Violated Rights of Citizens including Habeas Corpus.
5. NSA Program to Listen to Citizens without Warrant.
6. Violated International Treaties Including Geneva Convention.
7. Actively Encouraged, as a Policy, Use of Torture.
8. Gross Negligence on Hurricane Katrina.
9. Iraq Contract Corruption–Bremer “Lost” $8 billion in cash, sole source awards, and gross negligence in managing the peace.
10. Stole Ohio election in 2004.

This book is not just an indictment on the specifics, it is also a very useful primer for citizens on the purpose and process of impeachment, which is a last resort intended to restore the checks and balances of government–it is in essence, supposed to be reserved for out of control Presidents whose high crimes and misdemeanors threaten the security and prosperity and morality of the Nation.

Having set the bar so low in attacking President Clinton (see Kenneth Becht's “Just the Facts: A Case for Impeachment” (December 1997)), the extremist Republicans have absolutely no basis for objecting to the impeachment of the President in February 2007. I for one do not favor impeachment–I prefer containment with the threat of impeachment.

This book (there are others, this is the one that caught my eye in the airport) comes at a timely moment, as we go into the summer leading to the November 2006 Congressional elections. The Independents and swing voters are clearly regretting their re-election of Bush (but as a moderate Republican, I think Bush has been better at radicalizing America, Kerry would simply have muddled through), and there is an excellent chance that the Republicans will lose control of the House and perhaps even the Senate. This book, and the case it makes, should be required reading for everyone running for election in November 2006, and the litmus test for their election should not be “do they FAVOR impeachment,” but rather “do they favor containing the President from running further amok by holding the impeachment card high?”

The book reminds us in passing that President Bush was fearful of testifying to the 9-11 Commission in public or under oath. He testified to a handful of the Commissioners, with Vice President Cheney at his side, and concealed from the public.

The book points out that the full cost of the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, an occupation that the President just announced will go one for several more years, is likely to go over two TRILLION dollars, inclusive of lost income by the troops, lifetime medical costs for tens of thousands of amputees and traumatized individuals (remember, Gulf I, a cake walk, gave us 264,000 veterans on FULL DISABILITY), and interest on the debt (which is now at 9 TRILLION, not counting 40 trillion in future unfunded obligations).

The book names Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Gonzalez as subject to impeachment, but again, as a moderate Republican, the idea of Nancy Pelosi replacing Bush as President is even more repugnant. This book inspires me to hope for more Independents such that the Democrats may slightly outnumber the Republicans and be the de jure majority, but NOT be the actual numerical de facto majority. We need to put the “swing” into Congress, and not leave it at the voting place.

The appendices are of passing interest. The key point of this book is that discussion of impeachment is neither radical nor academic. It is real. America has been through the ten high crimes and misdemeanors itemized above.

If we do not take note and correct this in 2006 and 2008, we are no better than one of the 44 dictators that our Administration continues to support in return for cheap natural resources at the expense of foreign publics that will eventually overwhelm us. Jonathan Schell in “Unconquerable World” documents how there are not enough guns in the world to force our way–restoring “America the Good” is the one path to peace. Holding this President accountable–not necessarily through impeachment–is a good way to set the stage for honest and thoughtful elections in November 2006.

The Bush Tragedy
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running On Empty: How The Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

2006/06/152011/10/22

Review: The Global Class War –How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win it Back (Hardcover)

5 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Amazon Page

Borrowed Title, Missing Bits, Worthy Restatement of the Threat to Labor,

June 15, 2006

Jeff Faux

The title appears borrowed from Sam Marcy's original work in 1979 on “The Global Class War and the Destiny of American Labor,” but then, no one wanted to listen in the 1970's, when I did my first master's degree, to the three major themes in the political science literature:

1) Limits to Growth and need for Ecological Economics (Club of Rome, Herman Daly);

2) Global Reach of Multinational Corporations and the Home-Host Country Issues and Threats to Domestic Labor and Social Welfare (Barnett)

3) Need for World Government to address global issues (Falk).

This book is valuable for its one main point reiterated and documented over and over again: the American elite has joined with other elites world-wide to reach accommodations that favor the investors and the ruling elites over the individuals that are employees.

If I had not also read William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy as well as John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and (over two decades ago), Lionel Tiger, Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System I might have seen this book in a different light. In the larger context of the 700+ books I have reviewed at Amazon, this book sums up a key factor that the public must consider when going to elect its leaders over the next few years.

As the author documents and discusses, the combination of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism has led to government being in the service of corporations and the wealthy, rather than the public and especially the working public. The author suggests, citing another author, that the working class is 62% of America, the middle class 36%, and the ruling class 2%. He also notes that America is no longer a mobile society, with 77% of the people “stuck” in their parent's rut, and with wages now BACK to where they were in the 1970's–in other words, no real gains in quality of life or purchasing power across the land.

The author spends a great deal of time on NAFTA, and his views are all negative. He is passionate on the topic of Mexico being a socio-economic bomb waiting to explode, and on how NAFTA and the deliberate tolerance of illegal immigration have essentially served as a pressure value, where the US imports poverty from Mexico in order to keep it from a worse explosion.

The author is quite provocative when he examines the “rescue” of Mexico by Secretary of the Treasury Rubin. He “follows the money” and discovers that the U.S. taxpayer did not bail out Mexico per se, but rather Goldman Sachs and all the other investors in Mexico, investors who were supposed to evaluate risk and take risk and accept the consequences, but instead used their Goldman Sachs brother in arms to bail them out at taxpayer expense. Today of course President Bush has just appointed another Goldman Sachs leader to be Secretary of the Treasury (after the more honest Paul O'Neil resigned when he discovered that Vice President Dick Cheney was making all the policies without regard to the Cabinet process (see my review of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill)

The author is compelling in discussing how the Reagan Revolution broke the backs of the labor unions and also broke up the postwar social safety nets. The author discusses how there is no corporate mind-set that puts the home country, the USA, first. He discusses at length how we are coming off decades during which multinational corporations, aided and abetted by their class collaborators in government and the media, have essentially broken the social contracts with each country's public, and disconnected their global investments from any social benefit for labor.

The author is very illuminating when he points out that it is NOT China that is flooding the US with cheap goods, but rather Wal-Mart and Wall Street, investing US dollars in China to leverage low-cost Chinese labor while off-shoring jobs and driving both salaries and quality down across the board within the USA where Wal-Mart has been proven to destroy small businesses for 50-100 miles around any one of its main stores (see my review of both the DVD Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price and the book The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works–and How It's Transforming the American Economy).

The author is an optimist and an idealist, and I will end my review with a quote that I hope a future enlightened President will support. The author says on page 246:

“To this end, a conference, or congress, of North American civil society, state and local officials and representatives of labor, and small businesses, should be held every year. One of its functions would be to do a public review of the state of continental integration and to discuss, debate, and make proposals for the future.”

I am reminded of Falk's genius in knowing in the 1970's that we would one day need global council for both religions and peoples. Government has failed to be just or to represent the public. This book comes at a good time. In America, November 2006 is a necessary pre-requisite to electoral reform and getting an honest wise President and a Coalition Cabinet in 2008. To do that, enough people have to vote so as to defeat the extremist Republican skill at stealing elections that are close. It has to be a landslide.

I venture to say tha there is a very tight connection between Congress being broken and corrupt, and the global class war. Labor unions and the middle class have been rolled back, standards and protective regulations have been rolled back, and on every front, “We the People” have been abused by those we have entrusted.

EDIT of 10 Dec 07: As I write this, Lou Dobbs on CNN is urging every American to register as an Independent, and Jim Turner, #2 Naderite, is telling me he hopes 100 million Americans will come back to vote the two broken parties out of office. Amen!

2006/06/142009/12/04

Review: Preventing Surprise Attacks–Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11 (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society) (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Thoughtful Outside View with Academic Bent,

June 14, 2006

Richard A. Posner

Judge Posner is not intelligence professional but he is certainly one of the most thoughtful of outside critics, with a legal, academic, and organizational-economic point of view that is helpful.

This, his first of two books disagreeing with the 9-11 Commission focus on centralization, has a number of nuggets worthy of study, but this book is largely oblivious to the many recommendations of both insiders and outsiders who can be considered “iconoclastic.” Judge Posner is an insider, and he draws primarily from “establishment” sources.

He states, I believe correctly, that the Intelligence Reform Act was a “backward step” and provides very professional and detailed support for his view.

The biggest mistake in his view was the refusal to remove intelligence from the FBI culture and create a separate domestic intelligence agency (note: since the Department of Homeland Security has steadfastly refused to do its assigned job of integrating intelligence in support of its mission, Judge Posner can be said to be totally correct in this view).

He posits a fork in the road for the Director of National Intelligence, between engaging in substance and managing the larger enterprise, and appears oblivious to the fact that the Vice President has ordered the DNI to distance himself from the three national agencies captured by the Department of Defense, which are “hands off” in all practical terms.

Judge Posner is at his most articulate and most pointed when he says that the Intelligence Reform Act is a placebo, misleading the public into thinking something has been done, and preventing or lessening focus on other needed defenses including border security, deterrence, and hardening of potential targets.

He noted, accurately, that most of the commissioners were lawyers without an intelligence background, but does not mention that most of them were also compromised (as were senior members of the staff) by ties to the Administrations, precisely what Congress did not want.

He posits a potential role for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and this would indeed be a good thing for a future president to consider, but first they would have to put the M back into OMB, as it died over a decade ago.

He brings to bear a familiarity with the literature on organization but not the literature on “organizational intelligence,” nor, as alluded to above, does he appear to have read any of the many works from Allen to Codevilla to Gentry and onwards.

He obsesses on the impossibility of predicting and understanding surprise, while acknowledging that we could do better if we had a *deep* understanding of other cultures that he correctly terms *alien* to our own. Never-the-less, he completely avoids the matter of pre-emptive morally based reduction of incentives to surprise attack and he completely avoids any discussion of the degree to which US budgets and behavior might be aggravating rather than ameliorating the global situation that threatens America.

Chapter 4 is especially valuable, a thoughtful and detailed listing of all of the mind-set, bureaucratic, and other obstacles to intelligence reform that characterize the continually failing secret intelligence environment.

His understanding of open source information (OSIF) and open source intelligence (OSINT) is glib and incomplete. He is still back in the era where CIA defined OSINT as the mainstream media that Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) could cover in comfort from air-conditioned cubicles in Reston. He appears to have no grasp of the degree to which localized overt collection and distributed leverage of thousands of overt human observers and indigenous experts contribute “real time intelligence” that is legal and ethical (and in languages CIA and FBIS cannot handle).

He suggests that the problem with intelligence is not collection, but rather sense-making. He is half right. For $60B we collect the 5% we can steal and ignore the rest. He is also right that sense-making is the challenge–as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission Report of December 1999 made quite clear, we have invested hundreds of billions in technical collection and next to nothing in tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (TPED). The SAIC failure with NSA's Trailblazer program and the FBI's digitization case file program can be partly blamed on inept government contract management, but the bottom line is that secret processing is dead in the water, withy 80% of the data being “off line” and the processing power now available being marginal.

At the end of the book he raises the issue of “diseconomies of scale” and he is very thoughtful in this regard. He appears to favor a distributed community that can engage in competitive analysis, and I applaud that with one caveat: the intelligence arms of each cabinet department must be fully independent of their policy masters, or “cooking the books” will continue to be the prevailing attribute of the intelligence-policy relationship.

2006/06/142009/12/04

Review: Uncertain Shield–The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform (Hoover Studies in Politics, Economics, and Society) (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Amazon Page

Insider at Heart, Useful Critiques, Not the Whole Picture,

June 14, 2006

Richard A. Posner

This is the second of two books critical of the 9-11 Commission, both double-spaced, both approaching the issue of intelligence reform from a legalistic-organizational-economic point of view, right down to including arcane formulas incomprehensible to most people.

My reaction as I went through the foot-notes was that this was a bunch of old guys, many associated with the Hoover Institute or themselves failed insiders, talking to one another. There are however, sufficient side notes in the book to have been worthwhile, even though much of what the author discusses is “old hat” for those of us that have spent the last eighteen years being critical of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

The following points made it to my fly-leaf review:

1) Provides very strong critique of the WMD Commission as “critical overkill.” I would add to that that the WMD Commission displayed a conflict of interest in suggesting that CIA could handle open source collection and analysis after decades of abusive irrational prejudice against open sources.

2) The author is completely off track when he says early on that Congress is not to be blamed for intelligence failures. Perhaps he is unaware of the fact that the Boren-McCurdy National Security Act of 1992 was undermined by then Secretary of Defense Cheney, but totally derailed by Senator John Warner of Virginia, who first sidelined reform to the Aspin-Brown Commission, then opposed all the recommendations, encouraged several DCI's in succession to do the same, and continues to this day to demand that the Pentagon control 85% of the NATIONAL intelligence budget because both the Pentagon and the bulk of those agencies are in VIRGINIA.

3) He provides a short discussion of how the IC elements use secrecy as a way of asserting “intellectual property” and this is useful. It would be even more useful if he were familiar with past public statement of Rodney McDaniel and with the full report of the Secrecy Commission under Senator Moynihan.

4) On Iraq and WMD he blames CIA without knowing what he is talking about. Charlie Allen got 30+ line crossers and at the professional level (which is to say, not including George “Slam Dunk” Tenet) it was clearly understood between Ambassador Wilson's foray to Niger, the British confessing on the side that they were plagiarizing school papers, and Charlie Allen's work (see my review of James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration) that there were no WMD in Iraq–this was a fabrication by Dick Cheney, and perhaps understandable since he and Rumsfeld provided bio-chem to Sadaam Hussein and–as the joke goes–kept the receipts.

5) He returns to his earlier (first book) focus on the need for a domestic intelligence agency, but does not appear to grasp that 50% of the dots that prevent the next 9-11 are “bottom up” dots that have no place to go and would still not have a place to go with a DC-based domestic intelligence agency. We need fifty state intelligence centers with county-level collection networks including 119 and 114 numbers for citizen reporting to a sense-making LOCAL center that is tied in to a NATIONAL picture.

6) The chapter on “Automated Woes” is quite interesting, and like Chapter 4 in his earlier book, is one of the best parts of this one. He demonstrates a superior understanding of the many reasons why government is happy to continue with 1970's technology. He focuses on the value of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) technology but does not appear, at least to where I could see it, to appreciate the value of open source software as a means of making a national intelligence network, with commercial levels of security, available to all 20,000 police forces, none of which can afford the brand of “secure” nonsense that the federal agencies are telling the states they need in order to receive the precious jewels of useless intelligence from “on high.”

7) Although he absolves Congress of blame in intelligence failure, he provides a truly excellent discussion of the limitations of Congressional oversight, as well as the pathologies of Congressional oversight, and offers some suggestions for remediation.

8) The book concludes with a discussion of the “intelligence dilemma” to wit that success demands sharing but sharing threatens secrecy. Like most insiders, he completely misses the point of the OSINT revolution: sharing is optimized by focusing on open source intelligence that can be shared with both state and local governments, and with foreign coalition and non-governmental partners.

9) Finally, he ends with comments on the need for metrics, concluding that this is in the too hard box, but that is simply because he is unfamiliar with the path-finding work of Marty Hurwitz in the 19990's, or the work of Thomas J. Berholtz (see my review of his Information Proficiency: Your Key to the Information Age (Industrial Engineering) The fact is that intelligence can be evaluated based on its outcomes in relation to investments of time, money, risk, and credibility.

See my lists on intelligence (short and long) for a wider range of readings more likely to result in long-term intelligence reform. Judge Posner certainly merits our respect and attention, but his views are rather narrowly formed.

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: The Winds of Change–Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations (Hardcover)

4 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Amazon Page

One of Best Two Out of Four,

June 11, 2006

Eugene Linden

This book just edges out “The Weather Makers” by a slight margin that has everything to do with the specific gems I pulled from both and is therefore a very personal even random order. The two together are superior to “When the Rivers Run Dry” and “Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum,” the “runners up” in my four book survey.

From my personal focus on non-fiction about national security and prosperity, the authors focus on the fact that climate change can undermine legitimate governments by fostering water scarcity, disease, migration, and hence poverty, was highly relevant.

The author is wonderfully contextual in declaring that the real weapons of mass destruction are these: disease, migration, conflict, and famine. He gives credit to David Key's “Catastrophe,” a book I reviewed some time ago, very favorably.

The author identifies climate as the ultimate context for the human playing field, and points out that a series of El Nio's in the 19th century may well have killed more people than the two World Wars in the 20th century.

Thus, the author does not show alarm about Global Warming per se, as do many of the more scientific observers, but rather about the manner in which global warming leads directly to the spread of disease, often sparked by drought.

He notes–and this is in the aftermath of the global fright over SARS–that Asia historically produces cataclysmic plagues from weather and water related disease, including the Black Death in 1332. He specifically identifies water as the gold of tomorrow, hence Canada (or separatist Quebec) and Scotland will be quite heavenly.

The chart on page 89 is alone worth the price of the book–showing the rate of change in each decade from the 1950's (10,000 years) to 1980's (100 years) to 1985 (50 years) to 1992 (3 years).

On page 190, without direct reference to the Cheney-Bush regime, he could not have described them better: “Climate's capacity to inflict misery rises steadily when arrogance and ideology hinder a society's adjustments to extreme weather.” This is consistent with other books I have reviewed that point out that the difference between disaster (e.g. New Orleans flooding) and catastrophe (e.g. the U.S. Government sitting on its hands) is mind-set–planning mind-set, preparation mind-set, and response mind-set.

Of the four books, this one is the best for the warrior-thinkers as it brings forth the ideas of Mike Davis and on pages 199-200 discusses the triangle of State Decapacitation; Household Poverty; and Ecological Poverty. In the author's view, it is social and political misjudgments that “load” the climate “gun.”

The author is consistent with other books I have reviewed for Amazon in pointing out that scientific alarm is sharply at odds with public indifference to climate. Those that think Al Gore will get a second shot from his book (bad) and movie (good) on the environment are delusional.

The author is gently vitriolic in suggesting that governments that claim that climate changes are going to be moderate and incremental as either delusional or deceptive–in today's (2006) White House, both would apply.

The absolute high point of this book–and one that singles the author's perception out as being acute, is when he provides an extremely provocative discussion of the need for “science in real time” in order to detect and understand changes in the deep ocean and high atmosphere that otherwise might not be noticed or known for 3-5 years–which, as the chart on page 89 shows, are now a statistically significant period for climate change. Here I have to give the White House *very* high marks, for their attempts to get all nations to share information from earth observation systems including undersea sensors, sea buoys, ground sensors, aviation sensors, and satellite sensors. That project has been very successful and is now being extended to monitor disease. The problem is that the White House, while advancing the collection of data, refuses to acknowledge the meaning of the data that is arriving.

Citing Kerry Emmanuel of MIT, the author notes that hurricanes have gotten twice as intense in the past 30 years. He goes on to note that Los Angeles is “hosed” in that the best case scenario for that city calls for it to suffer a 50% drop in available water by 2050, absent a major program to desalinate sea water and save the aquifers from further depletion.

According to the author, 9/11 opened a lot of eyes, and actually made some people more sensitive (but see also my reviews of the four books in the series beginning with “The Republican War on Science”). He cites John Dutton of Penn State as stating that $2.7T of the total US economy of $10T is subject to weather related loss of revenue.

As he draws to a close, he gladdens my heart in pointing out that insurance companies are now getting wise, and starting to withhold insurance coverage from the Exxon's of the world with respect to lawsuits for damages and liability in the case of climate change. Just as tobacco companies were ultimately held accountable for covering up the lung cancer risks, so does the author foresee the day when both oil and coal companies are buried by punitive law suits related to their negative impact on the climate and their lies to the courts and the legislatures (remember, its not the sex, it's the lying about the sex that draws the greatest punishment).

The author ends the book with a fine chronology, 18 pages long, on changes in climate and changes in views about climate change from the 1950's to date.

In addition to this book I would certainly recommend E. O. Wilson's “The Future of Life” and J. F. Rischard's “HIGH NOON: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them.”

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: The Weather Makers –How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (Hardcover)

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Amazon Page

One of Two Best Out of Four Read on This Topic,

June 11, 2006

Tim Flannery

I realize some prefer this book to The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations which just edged this one out in my personal opinion–see my review of the other book for a sense of why.

This book is, however, easily of the same caliber, and more readable to boot. The author points out that climate change is different from “limits to growth” focused on resources. He is less focused on and consequently provides less detail than others on the intimate relations between climate, water scarcity, disease, poverty, and failed states. He does emphasize that absent more respect for climate change, human health, water, and food security are all at risk.

The author points out that the Earth's average temperature for the past 10,000 years has been 57 degrees Fahrenheit, and focuses his book on the need to transition to a carbon free economy.

Among the points he makes that jumped out at me: only four nations have refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty: the US, Australia, Morocco, and Liechtenstein.

His best chapter for me was focused on the cost BENEFITS of addressing climate change.

He attacks the oil and coal companies for disinformation, which has unfortunately had great effect. He likens them to dinosaurs with dinosaur brains that have been wounded, but stagger on.

As a former clandestine case officer, long fed up with the tens of billions of dollars we waste on satellites (most of whose data we cannot make sense of in a timely or coherent fashion) I was quite pleased to have the author recount a story about the conflict between satellites in space and lowly thermometers on the ground. The satellites were averaging the temperatures of the cooling stratosphere with the warming troposphere, and getting ground truth wrong. As I like to say over and over again, ground truth comes from the ground, not from satellites.

In his conclusion, the author notes that both the energy grid and the transport grid are candidates for decarbonization, but between the two he recommends the energy grid as the first priority. Readers may be interested to know that the same month that Vice President Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon and others to plan the invasion of Central Asia and Iraq, WIRED Magazine published a thoughtful cover story on how to get from the wasteful (50%) one way energy grid to the much more productive two way and localized energy grid. This is not about brains; it is about ideology in the White House against practicality and the common interest across the Nation.

The author ends with a simple and credible 11 item list of ACTIONS that translate into IMPACTS.

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum–How Humans Took Control of Climate (Hardcover)

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Amazon Page

Very small print, good work, falls between big picture and farming,

June 11, 2006

William F. Ruddiman

This is a fine book that ties with When the Rivers Run Dry: Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century and falls slightly below The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth and The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations all of which I read in this week-end's series. Better books in the larger scheme of things include E. O. Wilson's The Future of Life and J. F. Rischard's High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them.

The books is blessed with many useful figures.

The author focuses on farming, which requires deforestation through burning, as preceding the impact of cities on climate.

He titillates with his discussion of 6 billion humans producing methane in huge quantities via rice irrigation, livestock tending, biomass burning, and human waste.

I especially appreciated the author's discussion of climate studies as being relatively new, and his itemization of the number of specializations that now bear on climate study, including geologists, geochemists, meteorologists, glaciologists, ecologists, biological oceanographers, climatologists, etc.

The book is somewhat mis-titled in that the humans are not in CONTROL of the climate as much as impacting upon it in ways not fully understood but largely understood to be negative (e.g. hurricanes twice as intense as 30 years ago, witness New Orleans and KATRINA).

It takes 50 years to raise a forest.

Plagues are a form of natural control. People die, farms are abandoned, forests grow back, and emissions are reduced.

For a taste of the future, the author shows us the past, when Africa and India and China had much greater moisture across their regions. The author ably argues that the water cycle is as important if not more important than the energy cycle in relation to the future of life.

Page 152, the author provides a superb discussion of climate response time, noting that the land mass is much more responsive, which the varied layers of the ocean run from months-years at the top to years-decades in the middle, and centuries in the deep ocean–with the average being decades.

On page 182 the author demonstrates a lack of understanding of politics when he says “Politicians generally vote for policies their constituents want.” Not so fast, bubba. Read Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders; Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It; and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) among many other works on corruption in Congress, where the bottom line is money from special interests, or privileges and committee assignments from the party that demands one vote the party line rather than as constituents' desire.

The author is the only of the four that I really felt made the point that BOTH extremes are bad: the extremists that deny climate change, and those that demand draconian corrective measures. He points out, in a very balanced way, that pollution is as old as the earth itself.

As with other authors who value the truth in this arena, this author makes it a point to lament the unethical and unreasoned “alternative universe” of industry-funded contrarians and the actively malicious mis-representation and disinformation they purvey. I was quite pleased to read his suggestion that citizens need to get organized and “follow the money” in order to out the connections from industry to “front organizations” to specific liars and agents of influence seeking to deceive the public.

He discusses the concept of ecosystem services and the costs to replace, something E. O. Wilson does in a more thorough and readable manner in The Future of Life but the coverage here is useful if you do not wish to buy many books.

Finally, the author concludes that global warming is not the most vital issue–that energy and then water scarcity are more important, followed by the issue of topsoil replenishment (no longer from clean natural ice melts, now from petroleum-based fertilizers).

There are no notes in this book, with disconcerted me a bit.