Blowing Hot and Cold
In the article “Danger Ahead” (September/ October), you fail to note that climate is never constant. It will always change, getting either warmer or colder. About 20,000 years ago, the ice age was ending. Sea levels were lower, and areas like the Adriatic Sea were large coastal plains. Modern man emerged about that time. As the climate warmed, sea levels rose and people migrated. Various species, including man, evolved to adapt to the changing conditions. Species unable to adapt disappeared.
We are now at an interglacial high. Modern society has constructed a large infrastructure to take advantage of a climate condition that is transitory, ignoring the fact that climate will continue to change. The biggest danger is the onset of the next ice age. Deep ice cores have shown that the onset of the last ice age was sudden, occurring in a time period equal to a person’s lifetime. It is unlikely that modern society could survive a sudden change of that magnitude. Scientists trying to regulate climate change need to be very careful that they do not cause a reversal.
Fred E. Camfield, MS ’64, PhD ’68
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Thanks for an interesting piece; it’s certainly lots of work studying patterns of climate and probable consequences of higher temperatures. However, the main teaching appears to be if you are not a climatologist, you can’t understand the situation, so don’t make “friction” by suggesting that global warming is still debated.
My impression is global warming is an experimentally observed fact—people have thermometers and have been recording observed temperatures for some time. I think the debate centers on the causes. I would have valued more discussion about the experimental foundation underpinning the broad consensus that human activity causes the present warming trend. The global climate has warmed and cooled before; how do we separate “nature’s” actions from humankind’s? If the climate is changing on its own, without human cause, it’s a much more serious problem.
I work in renewables, where I’ve spent most of my career, so I probably have a vested interest in concluding that humans cause the problem.
Bob Wieting, PhD ’79
Simi Valley, California
Nine hundred years ago (the Medieval Optimum), our planet was considerably warmer than it is today; tropical vegetation grew in the Pacific Northwest. Nine thousand years ago (the Holocene Optimum), our planet was so hot that the Sahara desert was a lush oasis; scientists say that re-creating that scenario would require CO2 levels 10 times today’s levels. Earth, its atmosphere and its climate are in a continual state of change and always have been; over the past 2 ½ million years there have been more than 20 hot/cold temperature cycles, and the biggest effect of each of these global warmings was a large increase in both the number and the diversity of plants and animals on Earth. The vast majority of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is produced naturally; “human-caused climate change” is the most widely believed hoax in world history. There is little credible science behind it, just irrational feelings, emotions and beliefs, all fueled by grant money and left-wing politics.
Walt Kimball, ’67
Palo Alto, California
This is the most insidiously biased piece I have ever read on the subject, and I have read quite a few asinine ones. The factual errors in this article are too numerous to mention. Contrary to what the author flatly states, there is a defini-tive debate among qualified scientists that the earth may not be warming (cf Science and Environmental Policy Project); or, if it may be warming, that the cause is unknown and due to natural processes (cf works by the National Academy of Sciences, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and many others). The statement that the scientists whose findings run counter to the groupthink so exemplified by the Stanford faculty portrayed in the article are not climatologists (i.e. unqualified) is patently false.
It is good that the magazine wants to provide a window into the research conducted by well-meaning (and somewhat naive) Stanford people, but if there is a danger ahead, it is the absurdity propagated under the guise of describing a very thin slice of research. Any serious scientist who has used the sorts of mathematical models that so impressed [article writer] Joan Hamilton will tell you that they will point to what their authors aim at: you look at the crowd and you see your friends. Some years ago, it was proven by “qualified scientists” that we would run out of oil by the turn of the century, and that we would all be starving by now. The point is, Luddites come in many costumes. And may we be spared the Kyoto Protocol bromides and the opinion of the California governor?
Jean Louis Forcina, MS ‘81
Alamo, California
For billions of years, the temperature of the earth has fluctuated. These fluctuations can be attributed to variations in the electromagnetic emissions from the sun and variations in the distance between the sun and the earth. Other contributors are comets and space debris, but their effect is negligible.
Today, some people are lamenting the warming of the earth that has been going on for 10,000 years, attributing that warming to the activities of people, especially the rapid burning of fossil fuels that took the earth millions of years to deposit. Specifically, they want to control the generation of energy that powers our fast-paced way of living in the United States. Their goal is to take us back to the Middle Ages with a slow-paced lifestyle so that the socialists (monarchs, dictators, priests) can regain their control over all the people.
If global warming is truly a problem, I recommend that those concerned form a committee to negotiate with the sun the amount of energy it delivers to the earth. They could arrange to modulate the emissions delivery consistent with maintaining a constant earth temperature as our production of energy varies. Then everybody’s future would be brighter, not just the socialists’.
Behind this global warming concern is a bunch of Marxist-minded imbeciles who, although small in number, want to rule the world. They have managed to kill off hundreds of millions of people over the last century in an unsuccessful attempt to dominate. As the human population of the world increases, their chance for success diminishes.
Stanford University is indirectly encouraging the sham. It is why so many of us alumni are sparing in our contributions to anything but specific educational programs that benefit our individual schools of record.
LaMar L. Briner, ’51
Elon, North Carolina
Thank you for your coverage of global warming. Reading about the different climate-related research projects at Stanford helped drive home how complex this scientific endeavor really is, and how important it is to integrate the different components.
I was disappointed, however, by your compulsion to give “equal time” treatment to Thomas Gale Moore. His statement, “I find the effects are going to be small,” is preposterous. I question his qualifications to assess the scope of the impacts because he doesn’t study climate physics, he doesn’t study agriculture, and he doesn’t study natural systems. As was no doubt obvious to Stanford’s readership, those who do study these systems are plenty worried.
Surveys show that the U.S. public’s perceptions of climate change are out of step with scientific knowledge. Many Americans still think there is a scientific debate about whether global warming is happening. Part of the reason is the media’s persistence in treating this as a debate, simply because a few ideologically motivated individuals—many of them receiving big payments from fossil-fuel lobbying groups—have positioned themselves as professional skeptics. Reporters don’t seem to ask whether the professional skeptics have actually published their arguments in peer-reviewed scientific outlets. Has Moore? Your magazine should do better.
William Stanley, ’81
Albuquerque, New Mexico
As a professional geologist, I read with considerable interest your lead article. It is unfortunate that the data input says little to nothing about cooling-warming episodes as recorded in the geological record of the last billion years.
Cyclic periods of cooling-warming, with mass extinctions, have occurred since the Proterozoic period over a billion years ago. Indeed, since the beginning of the Pleistocene (2 million years ago) there have been at least 30 known important periods of cooling-warming, the more important at roughly 200,000-year intervals with minor cycles at 12,000 to 15,000 years. The earth is now in the declining stage of warming, which will be followed by cooling and a new ice age. It must be admitted that man and the industrial age have had very little to do with these fundamental changes in climate.
The earth’s climate changes are, fundamentally, a response to changes in the heat output of the sun that reaches the earth. Also, periods of coolingwarming may be affected by the changes in the earth’s axis tilt and orbit (the Milankovitch theory), with the cycle of eccentricity repeating every 100,000 years, obliquity every 40,000 years and precession every 261,000 years. Milankovitch in 1938 reported evidence of 17 major cycles, including four groups of summer temperature minima in the past 600,000 years.
Glenn C. Waterman, ’33
Bainbridge Island, Washington
Defining Democracy
The Larry Diamond interview (“What’s Wrong With America,” Asked & Answered, September/October) raises some questions. First of all, Professor Diamond discourses comprehensively on the political problems in our democracy and what might be done as improvements. But as might be expected from a Hoover Institution scholar, he sees “democracy” too narrowly. No democracy can merit the name if it doesn’t also enshrine values of economic and social democracy, as well as those of political democracy. Differences exist as to what degree of economic and social fairness or equity or equality is sufficient in a democracy; and one would expect the Hoover set point on that to be lower than some others, but that doesn’t justify ignoring the issues altogether. The lessons of Hurricane Katrina seem to underscore this.
The second point could be nitpicking, except that in Stanford, representing a diverse and multicultural community, it seems important. It’s one thing for politicians and songwriters to use the word America when they mean the United States; but this ignoring of all of South and Central America and Mexico and Canada, as if they are not also America, seems a particularly insensitive choice by the editors. I suggest a trip to the Stanford Bookstore to see how pervasively the great Latin American writers refer to themselves and their countries as Americans and America.
Robert Powsner, ’51, JD ’53
Point Reyes Station, California
I was surprised to read the letter (“Justice and Justices,” September/October) in which Frank Tangherlini, a 1959 PhD, referred to our system of government as a democracy. As the Founding Fathers intended, we do not have a democracy, but a constitutional republic. A major concern of theirs was that we not have a democracy with the prospect of the tyranny of the majority. The experience of the Greeks and Romans on this topic is mentioned throughout the debates on the Constitution. In a republic, officials are elected to represent the public. Thus, it is representative government, not a democracy. The latter is a system in which all citizens participate directly.
“Constitutional” means that the government is limited; it cannot do just anything it wants. The primary instrument to ensure that is the court system. The courts protect the rights of individuals and minorities from mistreatment by the majority. Thus, decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was an infringement of their constitutional rights to require children who were Jehovah’s Witnesses to participate in the flag salute in public schools, despite the majority’s contention that all schoolchildren should do this. Similarly, the Court in a 1954 decision ruled that segregated public schools were a denial of equal protection of the law. Certainly, the majority in Southern states, and perhaps other states, did not agree with that.
Living in California, where the public votes on scores of issues in elections, may have confused Dr. Tangherlini. As tons of evidence demonstrate, the majority of voters are uninformed about most of those issues. Those initiative elections are more similar to lotteries than reasoned decision making, and confirm the Founders’ apprehension about democracy.
Thomas P. Wolf, MA ’61, PhD ’67
New Albany, Indiana
Fairman and the Chief
Please tell Charles Lane I loved his story on Chief Justice Rehnquist (“Head of the Class,” July/August). It brought back a wonderful day, meeting [the Chief and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor] on campus when I was the legal administrator for Student Legal Services.
They were at the Law School and I asked them for pictures of themselves when they were about 5 to 9 years of age, so that students could see the justices on the wall as they waited to see a lawyer. They both laughed; he said, “not on your life,” and she said, “in your dreams.” She then told me she might have been missing one front tooth during that time and she hoped she had not left one piece of evidence behind. The whole auditorium burst into laughter.
We did not agree on much, the Chief and I, and at one point I told him if he had traveled with my family from state to state in the 1950s, he’d have a better understanding on states’ rights from a black point of view. He smiled—I must say smirked, because that is what I thought at the time—and said, “You could very well be right.” I agree, Hail to the chief, as he leaves the stage.
Jewel C. Hudson
Austin, Texas
I had a class with Professor Fairman as a senior at Stanford. I don’t particularly remember his brilliance, but I do remember that he was Genghis-Khan far-right, even in the ultraconservative political climate of the Stanford of that era. I had come to the United States at 11, daughter of a well-known Social Democrat, and to Stanford in March 1946, still holding those views. The hostility between Professor Fairman and me was palpable in class. But he really exploded when I chose as my term paper “The Constitutionality of the Thomas Committee.” Glaring at me, he said, “What do you know about constitutional law?” He was right at the time, but no longer. On June 7 this year, I graduated from the Cardozo School of Law.
Remembering Fairman, I can fully understand Justice Rehnquist’s views. I had a few other politically conservative professors both as a Stanford undergrad and grad student, but I found many of them far more generous of mind and spirit. Stuart Graham, whom I baited shamelessly as only a fresh kid from New York might, was one of the truly great gentlemen on the Stanford faculty. Some two dozen years later, he wrote a generous reference for me. He told me, while I was still a kid at Stanford, that he enjoyed my passion about the issues he taught in Modern European History.
Professor Ralph Lutz, who praised Hitler’s physical courage for coming through Vienna in an open car after the Anschluss, was another generous spirit. I pointed out that two SS-men with crossed rifles stood at the windows of every apartment facing the streets on which Hitler’s car passed, unless those apartments belonged to formerly illegal Austrian Nazis. Professor Lutz apologized for his mistake, and asked the class to listen to what I had said.
No such compliments for Professor Fairman. I found him to be a true ideologue.
Evelyn Konrad, ’49
New York, New York
What part of a simple, straightforward amendment to the Constitution don’t these ultraconservatives understand? The 14th Amendment begins with a definition of U.S. citizenship, proceeds to deny to the states the power to abridge the stated rights, diverts to deal with the ex-Confederate states and the Civil War, then it ends with a key provision, “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
Thaddeus Stevens, a leader in the Congress when this amendment was passed, stated the intent, “to allow Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so . . . that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all.”
When professors like Fairman expounded a very narrow view and ignored the last sentence of the amendment, and influenced a generation of students like Chief Justice Rehnquist, it is no wonder that it took 100 years and President Johnson calling in his “markers” to have effective civil rights laws. The Fairman view is still an influence: case in point, the current debate on extending portions of the Voting Rights Act that are about to expire. Why should there even be an expiration date on a law that provides for protection of a basic right of citizenship?
Robert G. Lynch, MA ’52
Smith River, California
Credibility Gap
In the stirring conclusion to Lewis Rice’s article (“The Iconoclast,” Showcase, July/August), Sam Harris concludes that the real problem in the world today is that “The holes in their [Christians’] worldview are so gaping that you’d think it should be easy enough to argue them out of their beliefs. The larger issue in our own culture is that no one even tries.” So there it is. If only we would take a little time each day to convince our neighbors and friends to embrace Harris’s reasonable and tolerant belief that there really is no god, then the world would be a better place, and as an added benefit, terrorism would die on the vine.
There is only one problem: how do we know Harris’s faith in his belief that there is no god is any more credible than faith in the God who has revealed himself in creation as well as in his written revelation to man? And are we to accept the notion that there is no difference in the two world religions Harris mentioned? Allah and Jesus are just like two peas in a pod and whether we choose to believe in one or the other makes no difference in the end? Do both religions really motivate us to “support martyrdom and the killing of nonbelievers”? Mr. Harris, how much charitable giving would you estimate comes out of the major Islamic hotbeds in the world today? How many hospitals per capita have they built versus those Western nations where some remnants of the Christian faith still survive? Where are women treated as fellow human beings rather than chattel?
And about this deplorable practice of “holding strong convictions without evidence.” What evidence is there to support your strong conviction on the folly of religious belief? What is your proof that the Bible is nothing but “ancient myth” and that the God revealed therein is no more worthy of our notice than Zeus? Don’t you have one standard for the beliefs of others and another for your own beliefs?
You might want to check your facts before you spend much more time under the delusion that “Western democracies are morally superior because their morality stems from secular values.” Have you ever heard of the Reformation or the Great Awakening? Have you read Lex Rex? Have you ever walked around the monuments in Washington, D.C., and noticed the plethora of references to God in the writings of our founding fathers? And what are “secular values”? Are not all values ultimately rooted in faith in a higher authority to whom one appeals to validate the rightness and wrongness of those values?
Harris does make one assertion with which I am in full agreement: that double standards should be criticized. It might be advisable for him to look in the mirror and see if he has not done the very thing he so roundly criticizes.
John I. Maynard, ’77
Maitland, Florida
Is a fanatic atheist in any way superior to a fanatic Christian or Muslim? Is perfervid proselytizing for atheism any more appealing than perfervid proselytizing for a particular religion?
I think not. Fanaticism is fanaticism, whatever belief is proclaimed. Like any fanatic, Mr. Harris is convinced he has the true faith, is overeager to convert, and is convinced that all who disagree with him are losers, fools or villains. As far as I’m concerned, fanaticism destroys persuasiveness.
Barbara Broaddus, ’55
San Mateo, California
It took me nearly 24 hours to understand why I was so troubled by a simple book review, and then it came to me. It was the arrogance. Did this author take himself seriously in asserting “Anyone who lives based on Old Testament tenets is a sociopath,” and did this really deserve a review in the alumni magazine? By failing to counter the false premises of Mr. Harris’ award-winning thesis, [the article] seemed to imply that credence should be given to his position. I disagree. There are no fewer gaping holes in Harris’s worldview than he claims to find in that of others. His position requires no less “faith” and lacks just as much for the evidence he insists upon from others.
Is it not an exceedingly arrogant position to assert that if evidence cannot be provided to Harris’s satisfaction for the basic tenets of any religious faith that they must be disregarded as false? “In almost every other area of our lives, when people hold strong convictions without evidence, they get pretty swiftly marginalized in our culture. It’s really only on matters of faith where a radical exception is being made. That double standard is something I’m criticizing.” What Mr. Harris really seems to be missing is that it is not a double standard at all, but rather the very definition of faith—the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I only wish I could introduce him to a man named Thomas who became an example for all ages when he took a similar position some 2,000 years ago. History provides any number of examples of things the human race has come to understand that at some point were not understood, or were understood incorrectly.
I am also not sure of the source of his premise that the morality of Western democracies “stems from secular values.” The founding documents of the United States and supporting writings of many of the founding fathers point not only to a clear acknowledgement of a higher power, but also to belief in that power being necessary for the success of the new government. The founders understood that if We the People ever failed to maintain a right relationship with that Creator, and also to elect representatives that clearly understood that right relationship, our nation would wind up as oppressive and corrupt as the monarchies our charter citizens fought so courageously to escape.
It is a fairly recent development that Christians in Western democracies have “learned” to ignore most of their canon. Because of people who share the worldview of Mr. Harris, our nation has for several decades been establishing a culture where faith is not allowed to “survive an elementary school education,” and by implication certainly not a Stanford education. Unfortunately it is the economic, social and cultural unmooring of our nation from its founding morality that is resulting in severe disunity and division at home and diplomatic failure abroad. Following this path, our nation stands to no longer be great when it is no longer good—or isn’t Alexis de Tocqueville required reading anymore?
Jeff Bier, ‘87
Florence, Kentucky
Down with Downsizing
As a longtime Stanford football fan who has attended the vast majority of home games since 1990, I was thrilled to hear that Stanford Stadium was going to be renovated, but dismayed to hear that capacity was going to be markedly reduced (“Stadium Renovation Planned,” Farm Report, July/August). The planned “downsizing” is not right-sizing; it is wrong-sizing. The track needs to be removed to allow closer seating, the stadium needs to be enclosed, and the seating needs to be more vertical. The best seats are between the 20-yard lines, then come the high end-zone, then low end-zone, and last the angled seats. If the total capacity is only 50,000, how many are going to be poor-view seats? The average attendance will drop even further if losing continues. Then what, “right-size” down to 20,000 seats? Every other major college football team adds seats when they remodel, including Cal and the other teams in the Pac-10. As far as Walt Harris’s comment that this will immediately boost recruiting—doubtful; I have not heard any football prospect looking to play before fewer people, not on television, not in bowl games, etc. All it takes to produce Ted Leland’s “ticket scarcity,” and fill the stadium (even the lousy end-zone and angled seats), is to have winning teams. Now that Buddy Teevens is gone, maybe that will be possible; two years after he left Tulane they went undefeated.
Robert O. Dillman, ’69
Newport Beach, California
Abortion and Genocide
The two pro-abortion letters (“Protesting the Protest,” May/June) clearly show the PC, goose-stepping thought among leftists, [which says] those who oppose abortion support the Iraq war (implicitly). David Hahn’s contempt for “Wal-Mart Christians” and President Bush is elitist arrogance of the worst and most ignorant kind. Besides calling the Iraq war “illegal,” despite 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions that Saddam’s regime violated, he agrees with Bush that Darfur is genocide without noting that the same United Nations explicitly calls it not a genocide—so as to avoid taking actionto stop it. I have little doubt that Hahn supported Clinton in 1996, rewarding him for his “no genocide in Rwanda” policy of inaction in 1994.
Jonna Ramey recalls the anti-Vietnam War crosses from the 1970s protesting a “senseless and corrupt war.” It was indeed corrupt, filled with Johnson and Nixon lies about the nearness of victory over the communist North Vietnamese, as well as the involuntary servitude of a slave army. But senseless? The purpose was to stopcommunist genocide in Southeast Asia, and for 18 years U.S. action was successful. Had it been willing to keep bases in South Vietnam, support the government and continue the long, hard work of nation-building, there is little doubt that South Vietnam and Cambodia would have avoided the consequences of Killing Fields genocide. If fighting and dying at a rate of 2,000 to 3,000 Americans per year (1972-1974 rate) to avoid 2 million-plus communist murders doesn’t make sense, how many would the commies have to murder before it does make sense? Most Stanford graduates have probably not lived through any greater human catastrophe than the Killing Fields—when America stopped fighting evil.
But many pro-life people think the 44 million abortions since Roe are a greater catastrophe. Virtually none of them are for the health of the mother, although many more are because of rape and incest—the three exceptions likely to be written into the legal abortion amendment that California will pass after Judge John Roberts helps the Supreme Court overturn the terrible Roe “amendment.” With the Robertses having adopted two children, I hope more women will consider giving their child up for adoption rather than abortion. It’s truly sad that for so many, killing the unwanted fetal human causes no regrets, while letting the child be born and giving it to another couple probably does.
Tom Grey, ’81
Bratislava, Slovakia
Correction
In his letter to the editor (“Justice and Justices,” September/October) we misidentified William Benton Harwood, ’50, MA ‘51, EdD ‘61.
Address letters to:
Letters to the Editor
Stanford magazine
Arrillaga Alumni Center
326 Galvez Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6105
Or fax to (650) 725-8676; or send us an e-mail. You may also submit your letter online. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and civility.
