A SOLUTION FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

Some political leaders and scientists have asserted that climate change is the most critical issue facing the world today. Assuming this admonition to be true, perhaps the solution is at our feet.

This photo shows a fresh, dried cow chip, in situ. It is sometimes also called a cow pie or meadow muffin. Cow chips, simply stated, are the waste products of bovine digestive processes, or dung, if you will. They may contain undigested plant matter residue. The pictured chip, which I barely avoided stepping on, is about 10 inches in diameter and 2 inches high. Sort of gray-tan in color, the chip has the consistency of cooked oatmeal left on a plate to harden. (This why I have corn flakes for breakfast).

Cow chips are the successor to buffalo chips, which became obsolete when buffalo all but were exterminated by hunters. Buffalo chips, and cow chips when cows arrived, facilitated the settlement of the American Great Plains and the migration of settlers to the West Coast. Travelers through the prairies seeking the Oregon Trail and other trails through the Rocky Mountains soon discovered that there were no trees on the Plains. Homesteaders staying on the prairies had the same discovery.

Because wood and coal were not available for heating and cooking fires, buffalo chips became the fuel of choice. If a settler or traveler was accompanied by a cow, cow chips also were used-- unless the cow was used for food when game was sparse. "As a fuel, cow and buffalo chips offered the advantage of not throwing sparks into bedding or clothing, which was especially important in military tents and tipis. One early settler reported, 'Don't feel sorry for us cooking with cow chips. They had their advantages--didn't need to use pepper."*

Plains Indians also used buffalo chips for heating and cooking fires. In addition chips sometimes were used on the prairies as a building material, as a cure for various medical issues, as landmarks when piled high, and more recently for recreational cow chip throwing.

Since cow chips have a proven and important history as a fuel for heating and cooking, perhaps they can offer a solution in modern times for mitigation of concerns over perceived climate change. For example, under appropriate legislation such as the Affordable Cow Chip Act ("ACCA"), the government would provide each homeowner with one cow per member in the household. Thus, a house with two people and a two car garage would become a house with a two cow garage. Each home owner would be required to disconnect from the electric grid and from natural gas service. Instead, the home owner would be required to harvest his/her cows' chips and burn them in cook stoves, furnaces and fireplaces as the fuel for cooking and heating. Waste heat and gases would be recycled to in home generators to produce electricity. In the case of apartment buildings, where keeping of cows could be impractical, landlords or their tenants would be required to purchase chips from government operated exchanges. Commercial and Industrial facilities also would disconnect from the grid, and use cow chip independent generation, solar or wind power for energy needs.

Homeowners unable to afford maintenance of their cows would receive subsidies from the government for feed. Parties failing to participate fully in the ACCA program would be assessed a substantial monetary penalty, which would be called a tax.

Under the ACCA, therefore, all carbon related fuels would be eliminated from use as energy sources, thereby eliminating carbon emissions and stopping climate change. In addition, another benefit of the ACCA is that milk would be a byproduct of chip production from all those cows. Homeowners could sell surplus milk to the government for incorporation into the government milk grid.

Clearly, when the chips are down, governmental regulation will solve all our problems, including climate change.

________________________________________

*"Buffalo Chips", Encyclopedia of the
Great Plains

THE FOURTH MAN

The Mount Rushmore National Monument often is referred to as the "Shrine of Democracy." Four historic faces are carved by Gutzon Borglum in a granite Black Hills mountain.

Three of the "heads" were obvious choices, as they represent defining moments--game changers, if you will--in the history of the United States. Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence; George Washington and the Revolutionary War; and Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War to save the Union.

For the fourth man, Borglum selected Theodore Roosevelt, a not so obvious choice it would appear. Although Roosevelt had been a president, and even had a stuffed toy bear named after him, it did not seem that he represented a defining moment in history or even a game changer. Yes, he was a naturalist, a Rough Rider, and a rancher in the North Dakota badlands. In 1901, he became vice president under president McKinley. When Mckinley was assinated later that year, Roosevelt became president and was elected for another term in 1904. As president, he became known as a conservationist, setting aside some 280 million acres for national parks, monuments and forests, and as a "trust buster" for aggressive enforcement of antitrust laws.

However, Borglum may have picked Roosevelt for Mount Rushmore for a less visible but more important reason. Roosevelt was the first "modern" president, the first to exercise his executive powers to impose broad regulatory authority. In other words, his defining moment was his expansion of presidential power, particularly in relation to Congress.

For example, he wrote to historian George Trevelyan "I have a definite philosophy about the presidency. I think it should be a very powerful office, and I think the President should be a very strong man who uses without hesitation every power that the position yields."

In his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote: "The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my administration...was my insistence upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed by Congress under its constitutional powers...Under this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the departments. I did not usurp power but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power."

So, Roosevelt may have become the inspiration and model for the future aggressive broadening of executive power of the president, particularly through the use of administrative agencies, beginning with relative F.D.Roosevelt and continuing to this day. Indeed, regulatory agencies controlled by the executive are limited only when courts find that they have exceeded their statuary authority or have acted unreasonably.

Therefore, the fourth man on Mount Rushmore may have influenced and changed the United States as much as the other three men, but in more subtle ways.

DEJA VU

"Memory is like riding a trail at night with a lighted torch.
The torch casts its light only so far, and beyond that is darkness."

----------- Old Lakota Sioux Saying

Earlier this year, I discussed a published report that scientists have asserted the Earth's water was delivered to it by ice-infused asteroids and/or meteorites.* This conclusion was based upon comparisons of the Deuterium-Hydrogen (D/H) ratios of Earth water with water found in rocks from outer space.

Now, a new published report suggests that this water origin conclusion may not be correct, and that no one yet knows how water got here.** According to this report, there are problems with the prior D/H ratio analysis. Most of Earth's water is deep underground and has a different composition from ocean water. In particular, deep water has a different D/H ratio than the seawater ratio previously used to compare with asteroid and meteorite water.

Further, D/H ratios may not be reliable because Deuterium tends to become more prevalent at lower temperature, and computations are variable with distance from the sun making the ratios of questionable value in locating the origin of a water-bearing comet. Alternative ratios, such as nitrogen and oxygen isotopes have been suggested, but such measurements apparently require development of new instruments.

According to the report, no one knows how much water is inside the Earth. Estimates vary from 1.5 times to 11 times the amount of ocean water. Scientists are studying a series of underground lakes located hundreds of feet below Wind Cave National Park in the Black Hills, South Dakota. Wind Cave comprises at least 170 miles of honey-combed tunnels and is said to be the third largest cavern in the world. The lakes pop up in some of these tunnels and form the top of the Madison Aquifer, a valuable drinking water resource. The Lakota believed that their ancient gods delivered their ancestors from Wind Cave to the surface of the Black Hills.

As if figuring out where Earth water came from was not challenging, another report states that several moons of Jupiter and Saturn contain underground oceans of water, not to mention the possibilities on Mars.***

Is looking for a scientific explanation for the origin of water on Earth or anywhere else like looking for love in all the wrong places? To paraphrase the Lakota, "Looking for the origin of Earth's water is like riding a trail at night with a lighted torch. The torch casts its light only so far, and beyond that is darkness."

____________________________________________

* "Who Cares", May 27, 2015

** Crockett,"Struggle To Find Origin Of
Earth's Water",Science News,September 5,
2015, p.8

*** Crockett,"Ocean Envelopes All Of
Enceladus", Science News, October 17,
2015, p.8