Is global warming a non sense?

Is it true that the global warming advocates are making an issue of a non-issue? Do they have some hidden agenda? Millions of us have been bombarded with this global warming nonsense for so long that we have actually come to believe it.  If a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes the truth. In this case, people don't hear other points of view. The mainstream media has ensured it for the last few decades. New research by Professor Mathew Huber shows  that the mighty ice of  the Antarctic froze when the world had a much higher level of carbon dioxide (34 million years back when the atmosphere had 600 parts per million of CO2 opposed to today’s level of 360 ppm)

The computer models showed that from 1998 to 2008 the Earth cooled instead of warming as  predicted.  Was the hoax advocated by people like Al Gore to promote a system of world government or to attract more finance for the researchers of science? Was it to promote the leftist idea that everything the industrialized nations did was stupid? Was it to raise more taxes?  Warming is in fact good!  Throughout history, man, as well as all other living creatures, has thrived during the earth's warm periods, and suffered and starved during the colder ones. The industrial revolution coincided with the end of the ‘Little Ice Age” (a- 400- year- period). 

And why is it that Mars and Jupiter, and Neptune's moon Titan, have all followed the exact warming and cooling cycles as the earth during the 20th century? Do our factories and vehicles cause them too? Is it not more likely that the changes are caused by the Sun and the oddities of the earth’s revolution around it and the earth’s wobbling? 

Ice ages and warm periods have been alternating throughout history.  As the so-called warming stopped 12 years ago, the alarmists are finally admitting that the earth has started cooling again. Now they allege that the cooling is because China and India are burning a lot of coal, blocking the sun's rays from reaching the earth.  Could it be that West’s fossil fuel is warming the earth and China’s is cooling it?

Some scientific thinkers have suggested that global warming will trigger another ice age! The truth is that CO2, a beneficial gas, exists in such small quantities in our atmosphere, that the idea of it playing any significant role in determining our climate is simply silly.  CO2 comprises less than 0.1% of our atmosphere, and only 4% of it comes from human activity.  That's 16ppm, or 1 part in every 62,500 parts of our atmosphere!  CO2 is a plant food, and a key component in all life on earth.  They feed animals which, in turn, consume oxygen and plant-based foods, and exhale CO2.  Without CO2, nothing could be green!

 WHO maintains that there is no global warming. It is another hoax, being used to generate fear and panic. Those behind this movement are using it to control people's lives and for financial gain. Henrik Sven mark and several other leading climate scientists say  that cosmic rays and the solar magnetic field are the real cause of global warming.  Contrary to media reports Antarctic sea ice continues to expand and not contract. Totals for November 2009 are significantly higher than that of  i979 when measurements began. The mainstream media concentrates on a couple of small areas of the Antarctic in order to scare people in to believing that Antarctica is melting, when in fact it is gaining ice. 

Is Another Ice Age Imminent?

Throughout the history of the planet, the world periodically experienced ice ages when most of the earth was covered in ice sheets and glaciers. They advance and retreat rhythmically on the earth’s surface. Scientists believe that the immediate past ice age ended just 11000 years ago. Many of them believe that it is time for the polar ice to advance towards the equator. May be global warming due to the pumping of greenhouse gases in the last few centuries has temporarily halted the rapid advance of ice sheets.

The ice advance is called glacial, and the warm period in between interglacial. In the past, the interglacial period lasted for around 11,000 years. The current interglacial has already lasted 11,000 years and it might end at any time. Some scientists think, as mentioned, that fuel burning has held the ice advance and some others think that it might trigger another ice age.  Anyway, we have already passed the normal interglacial and a new ice age is imminent, irrespective of this ‘triggering’. During this period, the cold, dry air above the Arctic and Antarctica carries little moisture and drops little snow there. An increase in global temperature could increase the amount of moisture in the air and thus increase the amount of snowfall. After years of more snowfall, the Polar Regions could accumulate more ice. These ice sheets will reflect more sunlight that falls on the earth making it cooler and thus helping the ice to advance.   

Unlike the movie, “The day after tomorrow”,  the next ice age will not happen in a matter of days, but most likely in a few decades. It may not start during our lifetimes. During the ice ages, almost all forms of life will find survival more difficult than during the warm periods like the one we experience now. We will run out of supplies and need to start living off the land as cultivation would become hard as humans will have to shift towards the equator. Food, shelter, water and clothing will be harder to procure. Those who live in the north latitudes will have to shift southward and there will be too much crowding near the equator which is already overpopulated. How many will survive? How hard will be our survival?  We have to wait and see.  

Oppression of women starts in the Bible?

Bible is an old religious text and it looks like discrimination against women begins there.
In the Old Testament there are clear indications that a man can rape a woman and if the act is discovered he has to pay her father a few shekels of silver and later he is permitted to marry her. See Deuteronomy 22:28-30 "If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."
Fathers could sell their daughters as slaves to other men. See Exodus 21:7-8 "And in case a man should sell his daughter as a slave girl, she will not go out in the way that the slave men go out. If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master so that he doesn't designate her as a concubine but causes her to be redeemed, he will not be entitled to sell her to a foreign people….” Girls who engaged in prostitution could be burned! Read Leviticus 21:9 "And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire." There is no prostitution without the involvement of men but they are not to be touched! Women are considered evil in the Bible. "Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die." The Bible narrators made woman fail in the test and the wrath of God fell upon her. The birth of a daughter is less desirable: "Leviticus 12:2-5, if a woman gives birth to a baby boy, then she becomes unclean for 7 days. But if she gives birth to a baby girl, then she becomes unclean for 14 days! If a woman had her period and touches a chair or a bed or anything else then that item immediately becomes unclean. Anyone who then touches those things shall also become unclean. They must then bathe themselves and wash their clothes because they have touched an item that a menstruating woman has touched.” What is so unclean about menstruation?
In the epistles (New Testament) of the apostles we read: ‘Women should learn in subjugation and silence. They do not have authority over men and they should not teach. Women must keep silent in Churches. It is shameful for them to open their mouths therein. If they have a question they should ask their husbands before going to church and then their husbands will ask for them in the church.’ ‘ She should always cover her head while praying. If a woman prays with her head uncovered then she must shave her head.’ Is there anything dirty about the head of a woman? The books of the Bible maintain that God ordained men to rule over women for all time. Adam and Eve were not equal. He was created in the image and glory of God and Eve in his image. . Adam neither got deceived nor sinned but Eve did both. Saints like St. Augustin said: ‘Woman is a snare, her heart is a trap, and her hands are chains. The man who pleases God will escape her, but she will ensnare the sinner.’ While it is possible to find one upright man in every thousand, it is impossible to find even one single upright woman.’ How absurd!

A corrupt ant kingdom

1200 million ants are jostling in a not-so-large territory.  The worker ants produce enough food with their sweat and blood and they are sold to ant markets or to the collection agents of the ruler-ants who give them a little and keep the rest to themselves. These agents of the ant-government can be easily be identified as they work very little, are well fed, with good dwellings and more than enough storage of food.  There is another group who belong to the upper echelons of the ant-hierarchy having direct access to the ant-queen who, unlike others of her genre, is not big but diminutive, white, quite dignified, and lives in an intricate palace given free by the ant-government consisting of a series of underground chambers, connected to each other and to the surface of the ant city by small tunnels. She uses these intricate networks for transporting and hoarding the rich food delicacies and grains collected from the worker ants. There are other ornate rooms for retiring, meeting with her son-ant and other top officials of the ant-governing body.

 Again, unlike other ant queens she does not like the work of even laying all the eggs. She has so far laid only  two eggs which were  hatched with a lot of fanfare and one of the hatchlings  will eventually inherit the ant-kingdom.  She has relegated the work of laying eggs to the other lesser queens and the ordinary female ants by a special act of the ant parliament. The minor queens and kings shares the legal taxes collected and the wealth accumulated through graft.

When the underground cellars are full, she sends the wealth secretly to foreign stores of far away ant kingdoms. A part of this wealth is used during the election of ant-representatives to their law making bodies. Each candidate is given enough money to go and win the election by hook or crook. The queen with all her wealth is unchallenged and although she holds a major chunk of the black money in the kingdom, she is not questioned or accused as the police departments and the top investigating chiefs are under her thumb. She cleverly evades the issue and makes the poor ant-population believe that she, her family members and the court jesters are all clean and corrupt-free. The ants in general are always poor and hungry. One in two is starving and one in three is illiterate. The hungry, naked ones, pre-occupied with procuring the bare necessities for survival, are least concerned with what the queen or her courtiers do with the wealth of the ant-nation. The illiterate ants do not even know the policies of the Queen; let alone what is happening in the ant-parliament.

As the ants believe in different faiths, it is easy for the queen to manipulate the votes unblock of a minority community by blindly supporting it in their fight with the majority religious groups. The ant-media is fully controlled by the queen with her money power and the not-so-poor-not-so- rich ants which form about 30% of the ant-population (mostly the ant–government employees and blue collared  workers), influenced by the media lies, support the queen’s policies and she goes on unchallenged. The kingdom is said to be a democracy but the governance is simply autocratic and queen controlled. Ants are dying every day and the queen is sending rockets to seek interstellar ant colonies and she pops up an occasional crude nuclear device and announces the same with headlines like ‘ant-kingdom in the nuclear club.’ The national wealth is spent for the ant-government employees, such ridiculous programs and the remaining disappears in graft.      

Nurses are not slaves!

There are millions of nurses working in the private hospitals of India for as little as Rs1000($18)-Rs3000($54) a month! Remember a doctor is paid hundred times or more with other perks.The owners are minting money too. But the nurses, who run the whole show, are paid a pittance. They are neglected , ill-treated and humiliated.   

These nurses undergo a professional course of 2-4 years duration after 12 years of schooling. There are many among them who are graduates too. And still these highly qualified youngsters-both men and women- are working up to 12 hours for a pittance! Further, they are ordered around, made to work for 12 hours and persecuted and humiliated all the time. They take the brunt of the anger and emotional outburst of the doctors, patients and hospital owners.

In a poor country like India most of them finish their studies with huge loans from financial institutions. When they get a job the parents are elated. The debt can be paid up in a few years and then something will start coming to the poor family. But With the pittance they get and the ordeal they have to undergo, every hope is shattered.

The young girls know the frustration of their parents as a big dowry has to be arranged by them for their marriages.  The pressure of long arduous work, with the inability to pay back debts and the awareness of the tension of their parents  drive the girls to suicide.

A civilized society cannot engage in slavery. Any work should be suitably paid. An uneducated daily laborer gets Rs400-500 a day (Rs12,000-15,000 a month)in a state  like Kerala. A highly qualified nurse is paid just Rs2000! This is deplorable and below the minimum wages set for the private sector. This is an injustice done to the hapless youngsters. Measures should be in place to stop this exploitation worse than slavery.  Let them be decently paid and treated like humans.  

Focus success

When I was the CEO of a construction company someone walked into my office holding a paper. 

“Sir, I want a job. Here’s my bio-data.”

“What job,” I asked

“Any job, I just want a job.”

No corporation has ‘any job.’ They have specific jobs. No one is going to give ‘any job’ to anyone.

If he were a construction engineer, labor supervisor, mason, carpenter, plumber, surveyor, crane operator, steel fixer, cleaner, tea boy or an accountant I would have been interested. Nobody wants a person who has no particular skill.

There is a tendency for many of us to be a jack of all trades. Even professionally employed people dabble in things they are in no way connected with. Imagine doctors and Engineers reading politics and getting involved in heated discussions about the current politics of the state and the nation. It is OK to get to know what is going around but to dissipate one’s energy in an area they are not connected with defocuses one’s  mind. They do not get time to update themselves on the latest trends, discoveries and developments nor are they able apply their minds on what they are engaged in. They pull on perfunctorily just for the pay. They will be contributing, less if not nothing, to the job.

I met a few of my engineering college classmates after 15 years. They were all employed in the Public Works Department (PWD) of the state with good pay and perks. They could make a few bucks in other ways too. They were supposed to ensure quality in and timely completion of buildings, roads and bridges. 

‘After leaving the college we have not touched a book or read anything on engineering.. You are lucky as you have to read to teach the students.’

They followed the PWD codes of practice and they were not all that bothered about the new standards of quality or the latest developments and innovative methods.  They had to sign the attendance registers and do the bare minimum to get fully paid.

This could be the way many of the government departments function in the developing societies. Employees lack focus and they are inefficient.   

To succeed in anything we have to use our minds totally and fully. If we learn to focus on what we are concerned with or what we want to accomplish in life we can dramatically improve our productivity and the results.

Who made India one of the poorest?

India has 1/3 of the world’s extreme poor people. The priority of the Congress governments has been on programs of political expediencies. The large bureaucracy created by the Socialist First Prime Minister eats away about two thirds of the GDP both at the centre and in the states. These government employees, like the political leaders, are corrupt to the core and they swallow whatever little that is earmarked for the poverty alleviation programs.

The growth achieved has been uneven and states like UP, Bihar, MP, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh house the poorest of the world. They have the largest and the fastest growing population too. The bureaucracy eats most of the welfare measures which have failed to penetrate the underlying causes. The contours of inequality survive with the fierceness of a dagger. There are 85 million (7%of the total population) tribal adivasis living in regions where (due to extreme poverty levels and non-development) Naxalite movement is strong.

There are conflicting reports of poverty levels in the country. The Tendulkar Committee says 37% live below the poverty line but the Arjun Sengupta Report states that 77% of Indians live on less than Rs.20 a day! N C Saxena Committee states that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line. World Bank estimates the “below-the-poverty-line” households  may total about 100 million (or about 456 million individuals).  Presence of a massive parallel economy in the form of black money stashed in overseas tax havens is the main cause. That is how the wealth of this nation is plundered by the rulers! The leaders  drain the wealth of India.

It is safe to assume that 50% live below the Poverty Line. Nobody expects a person who is totally absorbed in prolonging his existence to know what is going one in an election!  Of these more than 25% cannot even read or write. (Indian illiteracy is more than 25% today- India  has the highest illiterate population in the world). The female literacy is much lower and they do not know what is going on either. They can be easily swung with favors, or by exploiting religious or parochial sentiments. There is no true democracy here.  

The average income in India was not much different from South Korea in 1947, but South Korea became a developed country by 2000s and India remained one of the world’s poorest. ‘The License Raj- a decision of Nehru-(requiring elaborate licenses and regulations) and the accompanying red tape that were required to set up and run business between 1947 and 1990 doomed our fate. He made all aspects of the economy controlled by the state and licenses were given to a select few. Corruption flourished under this system. The labyrinthine bureaucracy often led to absurd restrictions - up to 80 agencies had to be satisfied before a firm could be granted a license to produce something.  With a new mind set Oxford educated economists under Narasimha Rao started adopting free market policies and India advanced industrially. But by far the Congress rulers continue to be the same (interested only in power and wealth to control the Indian media and thereby the middle class.) They know the poor can be swung easily and they (Nehru, Indira, Rajeev, Sonia, and now Rahul) are adept in the game. The cries of the poor under pangs of hunger and pain go unnoticed. They are powerless. And, after all, their death is not that far.