BLOWING HOT AND COLD
Not for the first time, I am struck by the disconnectedness between fundamental aspects of two articles in the same issue. In “The Big Thaw” (September/October) Adam Wolf makes the sweeping but compelling assertion that humankind's burning of fossil fuels in the “industrial age” has been “a lapse of judgment or understanding.” While obviously debatable, I have a feeling that this viewpoint has an exponentially growing future ahead of it.
Meanwhile, the article “Back to the Future” concerns the “biggest building boom” since the University's founding. Whatever the resulting short-term advantages, this investment in construction has all the hallmarks of the same ultimately unsustainable material expansion that has underpinned industrialization based on capital consumption of nonrenewable fossil fuels. To accommodate this quantitative growth, the university that prides itself on quality will move office staff to a Redwood City location convenient to the freeway. Maybe the resulting extra automobile traffic can be partially alleviated by shared use of the new car garage euphemistically termed an advanced vehicle facility and marked as structure 6 on the revised Stanford map. In any case, I can remember in my senior year when the Terman engineering center, now slated for demolition, was opened with fanfare for being high tech, energy efficient, etc.
I doubt that Olmsted would be impressed by his design plans being used to help hype these new buildings. Surely if the point in the global warming article has any validity, one should instead acknowledge much more directly that the accomplishments and reputation of Stanford derive principally from the quality of its faculty and students, not from their number, let alone from the number of glitzy new edifices built perhaps with good intentions yet fundamentally connected to lapsed judgment or misunderstanding.
Drew Keeling, '77
Kuesnacht, Switzerland
Your feature article “The Big Thaw” is a poor choice. It is long, poorly written and an uninteresting article about global warming. Average alumni wouldn't get past the first page.
The article says that in the past 2 million years there have been many glacial and interglacial periods. The article does not explain why our current warming period could wreck the climate when it didn't before.
James A. Kurfess, '50
Bakersfield, California
Adam Wolf's article is only the latest of many that repeat the false assertion that human emission of CO2 is causing global warming. The overwhelming weight of scientific evidence shows that the theory of anthropogenic global warming is false.
There is a simple way to tell the difference between a propagandist and a scientist. If a scientist has a theory, he searches diligently for data that might contradict his theory so that he can test it further or refine it. The propagandist, on the other hand, carefully selects only that data that might agree with his theory and dutifully ignores any data that might contradict it. In the case of the global warming alarmists, they don't even bother with the data. All they have to support their theory are half-baked computer models that are out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be wrong.
Here's the latest bit of data. From the El Niño year of 1998 until January 2007, the average temperature at the Earth's surface decreased some 0.25 C. From January 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C (Christopher Monckton in Physics and Society, July 2008).
Wolf should stick to biology: his assertion about “the greatest warming in the past 55 million years” is laughable. The Vostok ice core data (J.R. Petit et al., Nature, 1999, vol. 3999) show five Interglacial Warmings during the last 420,000 years, each with temperatures some 2 to 4 C above current values. Vostok data also show that temperature increases precede CO2 increases by about 1,000 years. More recently, temperatures during the Medieval Warm period were significantly higher than today's (Houghton et al., Climate Change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment, Cambridge, 1990). In the Eocene, some 50 million years ago, high latitudes were ice free, some 10 C warmer than today, and CO2 concentrations were more than 1,500 ppm, four times higher than today's (Pagani et al., Science Express Report [online], June 16, 2005). Where did all that CO2 come from some tens of millions of years before humans even appeared on Earth?
In any case, even at their current value of 0.039 percent, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have a trivial effect on atmospheric temperatures. In comparison to water in all of its forms—as vapor in the atmosphere, as clouds, and as ice or snow cover—the last century's 30 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 is about as significant as a few farts in a hurricane.
A presentation of the skeptic's point of view on anthropogenic global warming is long overdue. For some data that represent just the tip of the iceberg, I refer you to my article “The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide,” which is in the Guest Authors section of www.carbon-sense.com.
Martin Hertzberg, PhD '59
Copper Mountain, Colorado
“The Big Thaw” is the most important article you have ever published.
Thomas P. Lowry, '54, MD '57Woodbridge, Virginia
STANFORD's NATURAL HERITAGE
I hope President John Hennessy's commitment to preserve the open space and heritage oak trees of the central campus will be an enduring tenet of future Stanford administrations as well (“Back to the Future,” September/October). The old oaks, native shrubs, squawking jays and black squirrels are [as much a] part of Stanford's heritage as the original buildings.
Unlike the university across the bay, which recently killed its old oak trees, Stanford is smart in not sacrificing its magnificent campus to growth.
Bill Collins
Pacifica, California
NUCLEAR RESPONSE
Buried in the middle of the September/October issue is a frightening number: there are about 25,000 nuclear weapons in the world (“How Risky Is Deterrence?”, Farm Report). Why does the world need 25,000 nukes? The obvious answer is that it doesn't. Even if one of these were unleashed, it would create nearly unimaginable misery. And the traditional method for prevention of that catastrophe, deterrence, is no longer effective, for it presumed that the other side did not want to be annihilated and therefore would not launch a first strike. But that doesn't work when the attacker is willing, or even anxious, to offer his or her own life to achieve a higher goal. The issue of safeguarding nuclear weapons, wherever they reside, usually only garners the attention of a few technocrats. But when the consequences of failure become more widely known, I am confident society will respond appropriately. I recommend readers have a look at Professor Martin Hellman's website, nuclearrisk.org.
Roger Bourke, '60, MS '61, PhD '64
La Cañada, California
FOUNDER'S FAILURES
Lawrence Lessig should have noted that the failure of the Founding Fathers to develop an equitable constitution arose from a little-considered reality I learned 45 years ago in a senior colloquium with David Potter: namely, that the Constitution represented a step backward from the democratically based Articles of Confederation, the true child of the Declaration of Independence (“How the Founders Failed,” Farm Report, September/October). A Senate that could block the House; a president who could trump both houses; an unelected Supreme Court nominated by the president and approved by the elitist Senate, with no input of the House; and, most important, the now-dormant requirement that only landowners could vote—all of these were creatures of the rich of the day, determined to thwart the will of the masses. As I write, an NPR broadcast in the background is reporting on special interests' contributions to the political campaigns that skirt legislation and have now been upheld by our conservative Supreme Court, a 225-year-old legacy rooted in the Constitutional counterrevolution against true democracy.
Stephen E. Phillips, '63, MA '64
Brooklyn, New York
Professor Lessig maintains that a consensus has now been reached among scientists that climate change has resulted from human-induced global warming and “the debate is over.” He states that there is nevertheless a level of skepticism among the general public, but that this is “the product of the junk science that's been funded by the oil industry to make people think that two and two might be five under some circumstances.”
These claims regarding climate change are untrue. There is continuing debate among many scientists, especially geologists and climatologists, regarding the hypothesis of human-induced global warming. Geologists and climatologists know that the Earth's climate is always changing as a result of purely natural causes, and the changes in climate that have occurred in recent times are no different from those that have been repeated on many occasions during past millennia. They also know that there is no proof that increasing CO2 concentrations resulting from the burning of fossil fuels have had more than a minor effect on global temperatures.
Apart from the evidence of climate change shown in the geological record, there are also the historical accounts of the Medieval Warm Period (10th to 14th centuries, when the Norsemen settled Greenland) and the Little Ice Age (16th to mid-19th centuries, when the Thames in London froze over in winter and the Norsemen abandoned Greenland). Part of the Little Ice Age coincided with the Maunder Minimum, a time of no sunspot activity associated with reduced radiation from the sun and falling temperatures around the world. Moreover, in spite of rising CO2 emissions, there was mild global cooling from the 1940s to the mid 1970s and again from 2002 to 2007. There is no evidence that these recent changes in world climate have had anything to do with rising levels of CO2.
For more than a million years there has been a succession of ice ages, each lasting about 90,000 years, with intervening interglacial periods lasting about 10,000 years. During each ice age, much of North America and Europe was covered by a thick ice sheet. The present interglacial period has already lasted for about 10,000 years, and it may be due to end relatively soon. When the Earth does enter a new ice age, the consequences for humanity will be vastly more serious than any changes resulting from global warming.
Professor Lessig quotes an unidentified author as claiming that “a random sample of 1,000 articles in peer-reviewed journals” had found none that “questioned the basic consensus” on human-induced global warming. That claim can readily be disproved. For example, two recent reviews by Carter (in Economic Analysis and Policy, v. 38 no. 2, September 2008) and Freitas (Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology, v. 50 no. 2, June 2002) quote many papers in support of the case against human-induced global warming.
Phillip Playford, PhD '62
Perth, Australia
HOW STUDENTS VOTE
I write in response to letters from Karen Tenney and Richard Cummings (“Dismay About Diversity,” September/October) regarding the lack of political diversity among Stanford students (“Exit Interview,” July/August). I feel that both individuals overestimate the ability of a university education to significantly impact political views.
In my experience growing up in a conservative Orange County community, the top high school students were predominantly liberal-leaning, with well-developed and nuanced views on politics, religion, economics, science, abortion and homosexuality.
Our country's “best and brightest” currently at Stanford have spent their formative years under a Republican administration whose key accomplishment was entering a war in Iraq with dubious justification, a president who has cast intellectualism (called “elitism”) in a negative light, and a Republican Party generally hostile to gay rights. No wonder, then, that young, Democratic, non-legacy Ivy League graduates would match their worldviews more effectively in the upcoming elections.
The more interesting analysis would be to see how the voting patterns of these future high earners change in 15 years, after they reach the highest tax brackets.
Marc Puich, MS '97
Claremont, California
Interesting that Tenney and Cummings wrote of their dismay over Stanford students' preference for a particular presidential candidate by more than 2:1. They complain that this indicates a lack of “diversity” in the “student body.”
No kidding. Universities are where people go to learn even more than they have so far. Maybe students have indeed learned something, if they prefer a candidate who doesn't believe in: a) wastefully leaving more than 40 million Americans without health care, or b) running up deficits beyond all in history, or c) declaring war on a country that didn't attack us, or d) leaving our investment system so unregulated we now have lower home ownership than eight years ago and major investment houses being bailed out by us taxpayers, or going bankrupt, or . . . well, you know the list. Interesting too that Ron Reagan says his mom prefers Barack.
Do these writers expect that Stanford should break new ground and carefully filter applicants so a “proper” number of them believe in the Aristotelian planetary system rather than the Copernican? What about climate-change beliefs—should they be given quotas? Or, more topical, should the University intentionally ask and admit more Young Republicans than it does? Of course, they might then get educated, too.
It seems these writers skipped some important classes in economics, history and political science, apart from learning what patriotism really means. (I write on patriotism as a descendant of a colonel in the Revolutionary Army and distant relative of a signer of our Declaration of Independence.)
A. Cannara, Engr. '66, MS '74, PhD '76
Menlo Park, California
I hope Tenney and Cummings are not suggesting that Stanford have a quota for nonliberal students. It may be that roughly 80 percent of the qualified applicants are liberal. After all, it was Churchill who [is often quoted as having] said, “If you're not a liberal at 20 you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.”
Gary Martin, MS '76, PhD '78Boxford, Massachusetts
Karen Tenney and Richard Cummings, who are dismayed by the apparently liberal bias of the Class of 2008, may want to entertain the idea that this is the result of a top-notch education. Stanford has taught these students to be open-minded and to question statements from the standard media. They have probably learned to investigate the important issues by reading books and periodicals and sources other than the popular media. In other words, they have learned to think for themselves.
In my opinion, that kind of thoughtful and deep consideration of the current political issues would lead naturally to the result reported.
Terry Zaccone, PhD '82
Saratoga, California
The implicit assumption of both letters is that Stanford students are incapable of forming their own opinions and must be parroting what they “have been hearing in their classrooms,” which presumably is liberal propaganda. It's not that the majority of Stanford students have never heard the views of the Republican Party; most of us have heard these opinions, reflected on them and rejected them as ridiculous.
Consider a recent Republican policy push: offshore drilling (which McCain has vocally supported). The debate on whether to lift the 27-year moratorium, which has been renewed each year since it was started, was sparked by a lie that Vice President Cheney later retracted: that China was drilling 60 miles off the Florida coast. The GOP proceeded to apply political pressure to lift the moratorium “to do something about the gas price crisis,” even after the Department of Energy stated that offshore drilling would have “no significant impact” for at least a decade, and environmental groups pointed out that 80 percent of the untapped offshore oil was in areas already open to development, making it unnecessary to remove longstanding environmental protections to increase our domestic oil supply. The Republican political machine ignored these facts and continued to blast the Dems for “not moving on energy.” As a result of their angry, hollow rhetoric, the 27-year moratorium has been lifted.
This example typifies what the Republican political M.O. has been lately: to lie about something (and then later issue a quiet “correction”), build a fervor around that lie, and push for a major new policy without really evaluating the need or the consequences. Does this appear at all similar to what happened with Iraq?
I suggest the reason most Stanford students have not embraced Republican candidates is that in an atmosphere that promotes critical thinking and discourages racism, homophobia, sexism and religious intolerance, many of the underlying assumptions behind Republican suggestions (i.e., building a giant fence with Mexico will address immigration issues) appear as weak as they actually are. If you strip away the rhetoric, the Republican platform this year is a pretty absurd document. I'm surprised the poll results weren't even more strikingly “liberal.”
Matt Gribble, '09
Stanford, California
BEST EVER
Wow! This is the best issue I have ever read (September/October). Even though I don't own a hat, it is off to you, your staff and the contributors to this issue. It simply bristles with a variety of outstanding articles (e.g., Lawrence Lessig's “How the Founders Failed”) and remarkable pictures.
My usual routine with Stanford is to look at some of the pictures and rush half through an article before adding it to the pile of previous issues. But the outstanding design of this issue made me take notice and read most of it—even the Class Notes of my graduation year. Apparently, Die Luft der Freiheit weht with renewed vigor at Stanford. Bravo! Keep it up!
Herbert Zettl, '53, MA '56
Forest Knolls, California
OLYMPIANS THEN AND NOW
I've enjoyed your coverage of Stanford's Olympians competing in Beijing (“Cardinal Contenders,” July/August). But I must say I found your attention to your Olympians to be ironic, given my personal experience.
When I was at Stanford for my master's degree, I was training for the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games in flatwater canoe/kayak. Even though I was training to compete with the world's best as a representative of the United States, I was an outsider in the eyes of the Stanford athletics department, since I wasn't competing on a varsity team. I was not allowed official access to any of Stanford's varsity athletic facilities, which were first-rate, and was usually relegated to the student facilities, which, at that time, were not even second-rate. Occasionally, I was lucky to find a varsity coach who'd let me sneak in. The rowing coach was particularly kind.
I remember getting an injury in the winter of 1987. After having been refused access to the varsity training room, I found help in the non-athletically oriented student medical clinic. I was astounded to see that 1988 Olympian Debi Thomas, '89, who was one of America's highest-profile Olympians in figure skating, also was being treated there.
I just returned from Beijing (which was my 10th Olympic Games), where I worked as an in-venue commentator for canoe/kayak. Given that one of the largest economies in the world was willing to spend billions marketing itself through the Olympics, it is my hope that Stanford athletics has updated its policies and is now willing to spend a few thousand giving facilities access to all of those Olympians so proudly described to me in the alumni magazine.
Terry Kent, MS '89
Lake Placid, New York
CHANGING THE WORLD
James Vlahos's reporting on the Ginger Ninjas' magical mystery tour through the Americas evoked many happy memories of my undergraduate days with friend and fellow earth systems graduate Kipchoge Spencer (“Spinning Tunes,” Planet Cardinal, July/August). Kipchoge was always a rock star. I once watched him ride his bike down a massive flight of stairs and then ride much of the way back up before a spectacular tumble. I saw him wrestle a female rugby player twice his size and, after considerable struggle, pin her. I saw him rock the CoHo, overcoming heckling from a few tables of lubricated frat boys to garner a standing ovation. He was the first person I ever saw rollerblade.
But it wasn't all fun and games. At the risk of being thrown out of an environmental studies honors dinner held by a former University president, we questioned the choice of farmed salmon as the entrée. We sweated together through a civil engineering class where we modeled the flow of water out of dams, and through a mandatory computer science class in which we poked fun at the nose-to-the-grindstone techies all around us. They wanted to make money. We wanted to change the world. Of course, we were a bit naive. Those techies would go on to change the world in ways we couldn't fathom, and would make the work of activists like Kipchoge that much more effective.
I stay abreast of Kipchoge's exploits mostly through e-missives, and I'm glad to have known a Stanford grad who continues to celebrate while fighting the good fight.
Brian Halweil, '97
Sag Harbor, New York
As a Christian alum who rejects the new world order of androgyny that is being advanced by the LGBTQ agenda, I found Grant Sontag's letter to the editor (“Welcome Support” July/August) to be quite revealing of the precarious situation the University has edged itself into. I do not wish to condemn the students and alumni who suffer from the confusion wrought by the psychological gender identity disorder. But for the University to affirm the LGBTQ lifestyle as a natural alternative to God-ordained sexual union between a man and a woman in marriage, without acknowledging its risks to students' psychological, spiritual and physical health, is imprudent and alienating to students and alumni with traditional morals.
Grant Sontag's disappointment that the Alumni Association will not put the story on LGBTQ life on the cover of the magazine is valid; if the University believes that all students and alumni can benefit from exposure to the LGBTQ lifestyle, it should not hide that fact. The University should also include this information in its letter to parents of newly admitted students. Parents who are preparing to spend thousands of dollars on their child's education should be told up front that part of that education will include lessons on sexuality taught by the “pioneering” members of the LGBTQ community.
All of this confirms my belief that Stanford can be a dangerous place for a student wishing to abide by traditional mores. I would be wary of sending my children into an environment where such a warped and potentially dangerous attitude toward sexuality exists. (The attitude toward the hookup—no-consequence sex—among hetero students is alarming and the subject of another letter.) For more insight into the dangers students face on liberal campuses like Stanford's, read the book Unprotected by UCLA's Miriam Grossman.
Like Sontag, I wish Stanford would have the courage to put the University's liberal student policies on the front page, for all alumni to see. To do anything else is dishonest and unethical.
Erin Rath, '99
Santa Rosa, California
The following letters did not appear in the print edition of Stanford.
BEST FOOT FORWARD
I've enjoyed reading “Let Me Introduce Myself” (September/October). I myself reached out to a tier 1 school—didn't get accepted—and I've wondered “What if?” many times. Thanks to the admissions office. Fun reading.
Jack Marshall
Mt. Pleasant, Texas
BREAKING BARRIERS
You've done it again. Each issue is better than the previous one.
In her skillfully balanced article, “It's Who You Know (or Don't)” (July/August), Marina Krakovsky analyzes BJ Fogg's computer science class, Creating Engaging Web Applications Using Metrics and Learning, comparing online and offline social networking like nothing I've read to date.
Krakovsky hits all the notes in her review of the unprecedented attainment of social psychologist Fogg and his 73 students in reaching 16 million people online in 10 weeks with the sharing of information, buying and selling merchandise, job searching, rallying of political causes and just getting in touch. Communication barriers disappeared with such “hyperconnectedness.”
Yet offline networking also has its strengths as the proverbial six degrees of separation takes on new meaning. Krakovsky refers to the trade-offs between increased connectivity and the loss of privacy and the “strength of weak ties.”
Krakovsky refers to the impressive input of 17 key scholars and specialists before she closes with, “'The world's in pretty bad shape, but we have some amazing tools to connect and change people,' says Fogg.” Stanford magazine is clearly one of those vital instruments of extraordinary networking.
Tom Jenkins
Centennial, Colorado
MYSTIFIED BY RATINGS
By chance, I came across your piece on Joan Graves (“Discretion Adviser,” Showcase, July/August), head of Hollywood's ratings board. Long mystified by the absurd phenomenon of an R rating whenever a bare-breasted woman is depicted and a PG-13 rating despite countless stabbing, shooting, clubbing, bombing victims, I say to Graves, as did Judge Hayward (Spencer Tracy) in Judgment at Nuremberg, “You're going to have to explain that to me. You're going to have to explain that very carefully.”
S.K. Christensen
Hilo, Hawaii
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