Conrad Theodore Seitz

I have just recently become fully aware (yes, I was asleep at the switch) of WordPress.com advertising policy.   When you read it, you realize that it is only fair that they run ads on my site because I’m too cheap to upgrade to the no ad version.  And by cheap, I mean really cheap… it was eighteen dollars a year, which is less than a quarter of what I pay for my New Yorker subscription… so go figure.  The problem for me, and I emphasize that this is my *only* problem with the advertising policy, is that I can’t see what the ads will be beforehand because they are tailored to the user’s preferences and thus could be different for different people.

I think that the advertising makes perfect sense, because it’s not intrusive (I think–but maybe it looks different on the receiving end?) and Google made a ton of money that way.  It’s all in the clicks.  If it is tailored to produce twenty or thirty bucks a year on clicks, on the average, then the ads could be very intrusive indeed… considering only three people ever read anything I write here.  I’m guessing the ads don’t make up more than ninety five percent of the screen.  If you consider this a problem, feel free to drop me a comment, and I will commiserate with you but probably do nothing about it.

The chances of my upgrading are slim at the moment.  But we shall see, perhaps if I can insert a few photographs.

The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has announced its agreement to a proposal to sign the treaty banning chemical weapons and to allow destruction of its stocks of nerve gas and mustard gas.  This proposal, advanced by the Russians at the last minute based on an apparently offhand remark by Secretary of State Kerry, has turned the situation in Syria on its head.

The opposition movement in Syria is sorely disappointed by the delay in American military strikes on the government.  They view the proposal as a delaying tactic that will allow the government to avoid punishment for the deaths of over 1,000 innocent people.  Outsiders, however, are mostly relieved that the prospect of more violence has been belayed.

On close examination, the actual work of identifying, isolating, and eventually destroying these weapons is daunting, especially during a civil war.  Who will step forward to do this work and who will protect the workers with military force?  The thought of Russian soldiers doing the protecting suggests a subtle double cross that could be worked if the Russians themselves are not supervised.

It is clear that the proposal is a stalling tactic, but it is such a welcome alternative to violence that it cannot be rejected at this time.  Military action can always be prepared at a later time if needed.

An opinion piece in the New York Times online from August 30 explains that increasing heat in the near future will probably stimulate more conflict, such as civil wars.  In the next 50 years, the average estimated increase in temperature will be 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit; this will increase the likelihood of war by 50 per cent.  The writers of the opinion piece did a meta-analysis of heat and conflict related research, and found that of 27 studies directly testing the hypothesis that increased heat leads to increased conflict, all 27 were positive.  This type of confidence in a hypothesis only occurs very rarely, so there is little to argue that heat doesn’t irritate people.

What is more, the heat will increase no matter what we do, because carbon dioxide levels will continue to rise and may persist for as long as three centuries given its unknown half life in the atmosphere.  All indications are that climate changes related to the increase in carbon dioxide have only just begun.

Therefore, there will be an increase in violent conflict throughout the world, perhaps varying with location as temperatures rise unevenly.  It is not hard to imagine the stress that could occur related to the heat, with crop failure and drought alternating with more powerful storms.  The question is how to prepare for and minimize the impact of the heat.

One resource that will be much appreciated in this situation is a plentiful supply of cheap electrical power.  There is much to be gained by intensive research into sources of power that are more efficient, cheaper, and don’t release carbon dioxide.  Naturally, nuclear sources are very attractive but also present significant risks.  Development of better wind and solar power resources has the added attraction of local production (reducing transmission line problems) which will be especially useful in isolated rural areas.

It is ironic that, prior to the passage of federal legislation establishing a rural electrification policy in the 1930’s, well-to-do farmers obtained their electricity from windmills that could produce as much as ten kilowatts of electric power, more than sufficient to run an entire modern home. Windmill generators were tried and true power sources for expeditions to the Antarctic.

Therefore, aggressive research into such power sources is likely to produce dramatic improvements in cost, efficiency, and power production.  At the same time, research into new battery technologies will be equally useful.  There is no time like the present for investment of research dollars to avert or adapt to the potentially catastrophic changes that are occurring in our atmosphere right now; otherwise there may be famine, civil war, pestilence, and a massive die off of the human species.

We can speculate as to the horrible alternatives facing us in the near future.  The death of more than half the human population will be an opportunity for evolution to pick out changes in the human genome, adaptive changes that may or may not be felicitous.  The average person’s appearance may change dramatically.  Hair, skin, nails, eyes, all may change in adaptive ways that may not be pretty.  Just a thought.

Questions surrounding the recent nerve gas attack in Syria have come up.  Here are a few brief answers.

Why would Syria’s government attack rebels with nerve gas now, when they supposedly have the upper hand?  First, they may have thought we wouldn’t be paying attention, what with the massacres in Egypt.  Second, they only have the upper hand as long as they are willing to use weapons of overkill: Scud missiles, air strikes, artillery, and nerve gas.  They have used nerve gas in localized attacks over the last year, against rebel front lines that were subsequently over-run.  In the recent attack, gas was used as a small part of an intense attack on civilians who have refused to evacuate rebel-held areas.  The attack may have killed many more than expected because it occurred at night and most victims were sheltering or sleeping in basements where the gas would accumulate.

Why can’t the rebels just as easily procure and use nerve gas?  Because sarin has a short shelf life.  The ingredients have to be prepared, stored, and delivered by units with special training and equipment.  The big news last winter was that the Syrian government was mixing up a fresh batch of sarin, which will probably be good for a year or less.  The Syrians probably don’t have the “binary” capability, in which the gas is actually created when the missile is fired.  Instead, they mix up a batch of gas when they expect to need it in the near future.

Why is any military action by the Western Powers [TM] likely to be insignificant and yet still resented by Arabs everywhere?  First, President Obama has specifically limited the aims of a military strike to deter and degrade the Syrian capability to use nerve gas rather than to tilt the balance on the battlefield.  Second, Arabs have been so ill-treated by Westerners over the years that they are suspicious of any activity that might be construed as interference.

This is an important point, and not understood by most in the West.  The Arabs in general are so suspicious of Westerners that they do not even appreciate the NATO military action in Libya that led to the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, action that would be characterized by objective observers as a big help in the liberation of the Arab world.  Westerners, and particularly the British and Americans, have abused and occupied  Arab countries for many years, going back to the Crusades a thousand years ago.  The occupation of Afghanistan, first by the Soviets and then by the Americans, followed by the occupation of Iraq, are only the most recent of impositions on Arab sensibilities.  Western support of Israel is seen by Arabs as perfidy.  Iranians have still not forgotten the CIA-sponsored coup in 1953 that deposed an elected government and substituted a monarch beholden to the British and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was offended by nationalization of its assets in Iran.

Western “interference” in Syria will not be appreciated, at least in public, by any Arab country.  Only private thanks will come from conservative Sunni oligarchies like Saudi Arabia.  If Syria can be deterred from continuing to use nerve gas on its people, some good might come from military action.  This seems unlikely.  Larger massacres might prompt more decisive military action.  Is this what has to happen to stop the atrocities?

Looking back to World War Two, it is a little known fact that the Nazis intended to use nerve gas but apparently never got around to it.  The Nazis produced large quantities of the first nerve gas, tabun, and a small quantity of sarin.  At war’s end, a full-scale production facility for sarin was still under construction, but many tons of tabun had been conveniently installed in artillery shells, ready for use.  Hitler may have been hesitant to use chemical warfare because he had been wounded at the end of WWI in a mustard gas attack, leaving him with nightmares of suffocation.  It is also likely that Hitler did not use chemicals because tabun was so secret that he did not know the Allies only had mustard gas and their retaliation to Nazi use of tabun or sarin would have been ineffective.

It is well to remember that the Nazi philosophy of “might makes right” has not disappeared from the world.