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Machan's Musings-Unexpected Science News research, the kind reported in one of my favorite magazine, Science News. But guess what appears to be contributing big time to global warming? No, not car emissions; no, not your microwave oven; no, not even your electric razor. It is the wilds, folks, plants, grass, trees and, yes, even flowers, it looks like. In the January 14th issue of the magazine the article, “Greenhouse Plants?” reports that “From their data, the researchers [Frank Keppler and his team of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany] estimate that the world’s plants generate more than 150 million metric tons of methane each year, or about 20 percent of what typically enters the atmosphere. They report their findings in the Jan. 12 Nature.” Unfortunately, the report in Science News says nothing about what these findings do to the oft-repeated claims from environmentalists that global warming is the result of human industry, including, especially, the use of the internal combustion engine. The article does note that “lab tests suggests that a wide variety of plants may routinely do something that scientists had previously thought impossible—produce methane in significant quantities,” and that “[m]ethane, like carbon dioxide, traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere.” This certainly suggests that the heat being trapped and supposedly giving rise to all that global warming comes in large part from what environmentalists love most- the wilds! Has anyone heard anything about this in the major media? No? Wonder why? I have a few ideas, but I leave it to you to figure it out. Let’s just say when you shell out your hard earned dollars next time to plant that little tree, you may be doing more harm to the environment than the guy driving by in his Hummer waving to you! This, by the way, wasn’t the only interesting item in this issue of Science News. Another one that should have gotten big play on the major media is found in the article “Masters of Disaster” and reports on a survey that shows that New Yorkers who experienced and witnessed 9/11 were recovering far better than expected from their ordeal. Although “stress-related symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) soared among survivors and emergency workers,” “[n]onetheless, a large majority of people living in and around New York City experienced no more than one stress symptom during the 6 months after the devastating strike.” As the article notes, “That’s a sign of widespread psychological resilience, according to [the] new survey.” Wouldn’t you know it, most people are actually quite able to cope with even the worst circumstances in their lives. I had that impression myself after a recent visit to New Orleans, where the little I managed to observe suggested that what people were doing is recovering and building and cleaning up, leaving all the wrangling and blame-gamesmanship to the politicians and major media pundits. But you would not know about this much from the press, no sir. Why? Well, I do have my own strong hypothesis on this one. It doesn’t pay the media and those who love it most—the politicians and bureaucrats—to broadcast that people can handle problems without the politicians, bureaucrats, and rebel rousers coming to their aid—or, more accurately, calling for stolen loot from the federal and other governments. Such acknowledgement of human resilience goes contrary to the mentality that feeds the welfare state, namely, that we are all helpless slobs without the government. Never mind that government hasn’t managed to prevent either 9/11 or the damage from Katrina; never mind that every day one learns of more government officials going to jail or being indicted for various crimes, for corruption; never mind the truth of Lord Acton’s famous observation that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If, however, you turn to some more reliable sources of understanding the human situation, you are likely to find that the prospects of a successful world tend to be greater if government is left out of the picture or kept merely to keep the peace.
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