I took your invitation to come in and listen to your talk at CC last night

Subject: I took your invitation to come in and listen to your talk at CC last night

From: Bob Armstrong <bob@cosy.com>

Date: 2011-03-04, 16:00

To: Van Jones <vjones@americanprogress.org>

Van ,

I'm the guy with 23 years more life stories than you who was carrying [ sign with ] the primary school science fact :

CO2
+ = LIFE
H2O

If I have occasion to use it again , I need to add a little 5800k sun .

Certainly I and others out there were impressed by your direct intercourse and display of a sense of respect which you further impressed me with your consistency in your speech . You have a future as an international lawyer .

The Political Science prof who introduced you triggered thoughts of the late David Nolan . I consider his unfolding of political space along the libertarian-authoritarian dimension and his founding of the Libertarian Party the first indication of that there may actually be some real science in the field . David was poliSci , MIT 1966 .

| 20110304.1146 | Just been reading the Independent article on you to find out what the row about you was all about . Guess you've learned some of your diplomacy recently . |

It's this individual market choice versus state force dimension on which we are philosophically opposed . Your argument that you and your political cronies are so superior in wisdom and charity to the markets of free individuals optimizing the welfare of their families that you must invoke the guns and prisons of the State to distort those markets would be more persuasive if you were not dead wrong , and therefore anti-life , in your attempt to criminalize the very building block of life . You clearly have a LOT invested in this stupidity , which the intelligence of the internet ( along with the refusal of the planet to "bake" ) is tearing down as surely as it is tyrants around the world . Below , I present some of the most basic science . I got diverted into spending a painfully expensive amount of time over the last few years on this issue because of the pathetic understanding of the most basic physics on both sides of the debate .

But the other flaw in your analysis , which you should care about if the welfare of your progeny ( for which I envy you ) is your true concern , is what I would label the FDR fallacy : Creating jobs DOES NOT create wealth . Product per population does .

Your comparison of coal jobs versus "green" jobs itself demonstrates this truth . The 80,000 or whatever coal jobs produce , what , 25% of the country's total kilowatt hours . How many kilowatt hours do those 80,000 "green" jobs produce ? 1% maybe . Those "greens" would be freezing in the dark if they had to rely on their own product .

Our living standards improve only as technology reduces the number of human hours it takes to produce a particular desired product . If this were not true , we might as well have stayed happy breaking our backs with 40 acres and a mule .

However , increasing productivity , the only path to increased welfare , does create dislocations with people surplus to the product<>money flows . One solution would be that everybody could relax a little more spreading the work around . But the Government has been pretty effective at piling up regulations and paper work sufficient to keep the average citizen trotting a treadmill . The economy is recovering only now that the Government seems to have been reined in at least a little .

Well , I hope this is falling on honest , not deaf ears . I have my doubts .

-- Bob Armstrong -- CoSy.com --	( 719-337-2733 ; SKYPE : cosybob ;
TURNING THOUGHTS INTO COMPUTATIONS	twitter : `BobArmstrong` ; Facebook

I reserve the right to post all communications I receive or generate to CoSy website for further reflection .

Some Science

If you are truly green , if you are honestly facing that question of maximizing our and our children's and our children's children's welfare , rather than a huckster seeking control over personal slivers of the governments guns prisons and taken money flows , then this living graph must moderate your language with respect to the life gas a bit of which we are restoring to the biosphere .

I've just added this display of spectra to my Planetary Temperature page :

| 20110304 | The best graph I've seen showing most of the relevant spectra other than our surface . That CO2 already has little more ability to effect our temperature is shown by the fact that its peaks are already absorbing 100% .

--

BTW : I've been to New Haven for an APL conference some years ago , and even in my short stay felt it was one of the most socially segregated places I've ever visited .

If you happen to be out here in August , I'm having my MidSummer Party Saturday the 6th .