Bonus Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux on August 12, 2022
in Environment, Media
… is from pages 249-250 of former Caltech physics professor and provost – and former Energy Department undersecretary during the Obama administration – Steven Koonin’s excellent 2021 book, Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters:
But I’ve been dismayed along the way as well. First by the willingness of some climate scientists – abetted by the media and politicians – to misrepresent what the science says, and then by the many other scientists who are silently complicit in those misrepresentations. The public deserves better. By demonstrably misinforming non-experts about what we know and don’t know about the changing climate, they deny governments, industry, and individuals the right to make fully inform decisions about how to respond.
cafehayek.com
Lysenko’s theories about plant genetics were unscientific, but the Bolsheviks used them
to impose even more control over farmers. Indeed, the term has since been used to
describe any deliberate distortion of well-founded scientific facts or theories in order to
impose concepts driven by religious or political compulsions.
Lysenkoisms rules over climate change bullshit.
BOB HOYE
AUGUST 2022
Insane Governments Ruining Agriculture: 1930s Suffered
Lysenkoism and in 2022 Nitrogen is Suddenly a Threat
As an historian of governments going from authoritarian to the even more regrettable
totalitarianism, one wonders “Why?” harm agriculture. Sadly, that governments get into
the mode of declaring war on countries as well as upon their own citizens can be
criticized, but no amount of research can explain why.
After assaulting oil and gas, for political imperatives, Ottawa is suddenly compelled to
attack agriculture. At a time when crops around the world are unusually threatened.
Beginning in the 1930s, the Soviet Union became convinced that biologist Lysenko’s
theories would improve agriculture. These were brutally imposed upon farming that had
been decimated by previous experiments in collectivization. Indeed, more than 7 million
farmers died of famine. Despite making a desperate condition worse, his crank theories
prevailed. In retrospect the key function was not food, but control. Understandably, as it
turned out, enough was confiscated to feed the urban governing classes. But not the
farmers, who merely wanted to work the land as they knew best.
For typically authoritarian reasons, Trudeau has been in an unusually destructive mode.
Unofficially declaring war upon oil and gas production as well as transportation through
pipelines. Not even environmentalists can protect the pristine waters of the Saint
Lawrence Seaway. When Ottawa and Quebec don’t want safe pipelines to extend into the
Eastern Seaboard it won’t happen, where existing refineries continue to use oil from risky
tankers.
Unfortunately, political history has been in a destructive mode since around 1900 when
the East went for Communism and the West fell for Progressivism. Resulting in every
country going authoritarian in its own way. The regrettable transition from authoritarian
to totalitarian has been marked by the governing classes granting themselves the
privilege of state murder. Which provides one answer for “Why?”. To impose and
maintain rules and regulations that are unpopular. Hitherto, political parties would
campaign with popular policies, but that places power in the hands of “we the people”.
Which is now verboten.
Lysenko’s theories about plant genetics were unscientific, but the Bolsheviks used them
to impose even more control over farmers. Indeed, the term has since been used to
describe any deliberate distortion of well-founded scientific facts or theories in order to
impose concepts driven by religious or political compulsions.
Around 3,000 biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, with some executed in the name
of “State Science”. While destroying the country’s honest inquiry into genetics and many
harvests so long as the political powers in the cities were living well the nonsense
prevailed.
Articles by an obedient press touted: “Soviet people change nature” and accomplished
geneticists were condemned as “fascists”.
Stalin liked it and the madness continued until he died.
And now just as regrettably, control freaks are on another march to madness, with any
banner that is convenient for massive intrusion. “Global Warming” caused by mankind’s
emissions of CO2 has been a remarkable promotion, as has the hysteria about COVID,
and now they have “discovered” another problem. Nitrogen, atomic number 7 on the
periodic table, that as a gas makes up 78 percent of our atmosphere. Also, it is the most
abundant non-combined element on our hospitable planet but for political ambition must
now condemned.
It is used in thousands of compounds essential for today’s standard of living. Moreover,
the symbol of a wheat sheaf has been long used to signify its importance to agriculture.
With CO2 now losing the mojo to promote hysteria, something “new” is needed, and the
“Gnomes of Davos” – the scheming World Economic Forum – have turned to nitrogen. A
contrived nemesis that is fronting yet another promotion by control freaks. Whose
literature includes “You’ll own nothing and will be happy”. Fronted by “The Great
Reset”, it is yet another banner to impose control. Authoritarian – yes – but will the
movement become totalitarian?
No. Costs of today’s intrusions have required massive inflation. This sets off equally
massive financial speculation that in becoming unstable, crashes bringing down the
whole house of cards.
Stock exchanges have suffered the worst six months in generations.
Similar inflation and speculative failure occurred in the equally reckless early 1600s and
with the demise of Rome at the end of the tyrannical Third Century.
The folly of “Nitrogen Nemesis” when introduced in Sri Lanka inspired headlines around
the world. “Government Moves on Fertilizer Help Spark Disaster in Sri Lanka”. Dated
July, it reviewed yet another mad assault by urban power into practical farming.
Despite the failure of Sri Lanka’s government, control freaks in Holland had to impose
their personal compulsions, prompting massive uprisings. This is not too startling, but the
intrusion is – because the region has had traditions of freedom “forever”. Julius Caesar
wrote that the people had a high regard for freedom, which prevailed until now. Indeed,
through the 1500s freedom made Holland the commercial and financial center of the
world.
And attacked by a rare contingent of control freaks the most efficient agriculture, ever, is
being severely threatened. Urban power brokers are doing it again to practical farmers,
joining the long-running attack upon freedom and prosperity intending to replace it with
servitude and hardship. As noted above, “Why?” cannot be explained, but the potential
destruction prompted headlines: “Dutch Farmer Protests Reap Populist Support”.
Despite the protests, the Trudeau minority government continues its impractical intrusion
in imposing the “Anti-Nitrogen” movement to Canadian farmers, as well as consumers. A
headline: “Trudeau Pushes Ahead on Fertilizer Reduction as Provinces and Farmers Cry
Foul”. The intrusion is another canard about climate that seriously threatens food
production.
Regrettably, M. Trudeau has embraced M. Lysenko.
If one takes the time to read farming websites, planting and application of fertilizers is
carefully monitored. Seeds must be planted at inches apart with the same precision on
depth. And nitrogen natural to the land that has been depleted is replaced, with an exact
amount. Although knowing nothing about nitrogen, Medieval farmers discovered rotation
including “nitrogen fixing” crops such as clover.
Agriculture has had thousands of years of farmers improving yields. Regrettably, it has
suffered massive destructions by urban control freaks.
The immediate task is to end the nonsense of reducing farmland efficiencies by the
tiresome Trudeau. Earlier in the year, his intrusions inspired the impressive “Freedom
Convoy” that attempted to introduce the concept of freedom to Ottawa and was widely
admired around the world. Then there was the veteran soldier who walked from
Vancouver to Ottawa – arriving on “Canada Day” his message of freedom, as with the
truckers’, it was condemned as “unacceptable”.
And now Trudeau’s foolhardy attempt at agricultural control during a time when other
crazed governments are doing the same, could prompt the developing commonsense
movement to act. Which could be successful as the growing numbers of practical
ordinary folk will join the farmers in first resisting and then condemning the years of
authoritarian blunders coming out of Ottawa’s control freaks. |
