Last updated on 2019-06-19
Dr. David Newquist offers the fascinating thesis that Soviet agriculture failed not because of communism but because of the consolidation of farms under a science-denying ideology that smelled a lot like Trumpism:
Lysenko formulated a cult of pseudoscience that became known as Lysenkoism. Lysenko attacked the validity of science itself, subordinating it to politics. He instituted a campaign against those who engaged in the true scientific method, which included imprisoning them when science contradicted Soviet doctrine.
I was a farm editor at the time Lysenkoism was coming to an end. At the time many delegations of Soviet scientists were coming to the United States to visit colleges of agriculture, American farms. and farm equipment manufacturers. The Eisenhower administration under Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson also arranged visits to the Soviet Union by farmers, professors of agriculture, and farm journalists to make a comparative study of agriculture in the U.S. and the Soviet Union. American visitors came away from those trips understanding why collective farms in the communist system struggled to produce while U.S. farmers were coping with overproduction. They warned about the dangers of consolidating farms into huge industrial units that operated as factories rather than as agricultural enterprises. They said there was no appreciable difference between a system of agriculture run by the Kremlin and one run by a corporate headquarters. Both impose the culture of a bureaucracy onto agriculture and reduce farmers to the status of serfs [David Newquist, “Trump Is America’s Lysenko,” Northern Valley Beacon, 2019.05.31].
Meanwhile, here in Trumpistan, state government is trying to bribe counties to overturn environmental restrictions and permit gigantic factory feedlots.
Lysenko’s bad science had deadly results:
Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage [Sam Kean, “The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia,” The Atlantic, 2017.12.19].
Winning favor with image, ideology, and proposals that told the powers that were what they wanted to hear instead of what really was, Lysenkoism led to famines in the USSR and China:
Wheat, rye, potatoes, beets—most everything grown according to Lysenko’s methods died or rotted, says Hungry Ghosts. Stalin still deserves the bulk of the blame for the famines, which killed at least 7 million people, but Lysenko’s practices prolonged and exacerbated the food shortages. (Deaths from the famines peaked around 1932 to 1933, but four years later, after a 163-fold increase in farmland cultivated using Lysenko’s methods, food production was actually lower than before.) The Soviet Union’s allies suffered under Lysenkoism, too. Communist China adopted his methods in the late 1950s and endured even bigger famines. Peasants were reduced to eating tree bark and bird droppings and the occasional family member. At least 30 million died of starvation [Kean, 2017.12.19].
Lysenko also killed scientists and stunted Russian science:
Unable to silence Western critics, Lysenko still tried to eliminate all dissent within the Soviet Union. Scientists who refused to renounce genetics found themselves at the mercy of the secret police. The lucky ones simply got dismissed from their posts and were left destitute. Hundreds if not thousands of others were rounded up and dumped into prisons or psychiatric hospitals. Several got sentenced to death as enemies of the state or, fittingly, starved in their jail cells (most notably the botanist Nikolai Vavilov). Before the 1930s, the Soviet Union had arguably the best genetics community in the world. Lysenko gutted it, and by some accounts set Russian biology back a half-century [Kean, 2017.12.19].
Our own Dr. Newquist isn’t the only observer to connect Lysenko’s deadly anti-science and Trumpism:
The Trump administration’s “climate lysenkoism” is being led by William Happer, a retired professor from Princeton University who was hired by the National Security Council in September 2018 as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for emerging technologies.
Media reports suggest that Professor Happer and his fellow propagandists will target the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which was prepared by leading researchers in the United States, and concluded last November: “The impacts of climate change are already being felt in communities across the country.”
Although the report was subjected to rigorous review by America’s top experts at the National Academy of Sciences, it was rejected by President Trump, who told journalists: “I don’t believe it.”
Professor Happer, who has not published any research on climate change in a reputable science journal, has been celebrated for many years by climate change contrarians and deniers around the world [Michael Mann and Bob Ward, “Donald Trump Is Using Stalinist Tactics to Discredit Climate Science,” UK Guardian, 2019.03.20].
Trump’s Lysenko approach to climate science means widespread costs to every nation’s economy, including, by one conservative estimate, a quarter million additional deaths each year. Rejecting Lysenkoism and electing a President who understands science could avoid those harms.
Republicans need to portray the starvation in Russia as being caused by socialism. The starvation in Russia was caused by just the opposite. Russian starvation was caused by communism.
Thumbnail:
~ Socialism is buying and working as a group to bargain for lower cost goods and labor.
~ Communism is when the government decides what job you’ll do and how much of the profit you get to keep.
Khrushchev spent quality time on iowa farms in 1959. https://www.stripes.com/opinion/what-happened-when-khrushchev-came-to-iowa-1.391288
Great article Mike. I knew Khrushchev had come to Iowa, but that’s all. Fascinating about the Garsts. Thanks.
We must defeat Wilted Weenie next year or the USA will wilt with him. And win the Senate while increasing our majority in the House. It’s not optional.
Idiots, ideologues and greedy bastards can deny science endlessly, but it will remain true and act accordingly. Humans and all living things will always pay, are paying right now.
I’m reading an article in Rolling Stone about suicides. Middle aged white men make up 70% of the suicides in the USA and 5 of the 6 states with the highest rate are in the Mountain Time Zone. Wilted Weenie’s whims, masquerading as policies, especially as they decimate ag and rural USA generally, will exacerbate that heartbreaking rate.
“There’s been an increase in the ‘every-man-for-himself mentality,’ ” says Dr. Craig Bryan, who studies military and rural suicide at the University of Utah. “There doesn’t seem to be as strong a sense of ‘We’re all in this together.’ It’s much more ‘Hey, don’t infringe upon me. You’re on your own, and let me do my own thing.’ ”
Sounds like the GOP and/or Libertarian crapola.
“Dr. Christine Moutier, a suicide specialist for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, estimates a suicide can impact the lives of 112 people, from loved ones to co-workers. While the numbers are not definitive, there is evidence that contemplating a loved one’s suicide can lead to a ripple of suicides in a family or community.”
“Gun availability is one of the tangible causes for the rural West’s suicide rate, and Wyoming leads the nation with 73 percent of its households owning guns, while the state is third in per-capita suicide.”
“No one up here wants to hear that you’re depressed and need help,” Emily told me. “And no one wants to even talk about getting guns out of the hands of sad people.”
“We could pretend guns aren’t the problem,” a Wyoming health official told me. “But that isn’t logical.”
“I could go on about the policy steps that must be taken to solve this social crisis. I could also tell you that the suicide rate could drop severely with a federal suicide-awareness program that would cost less than Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips. We could talk about how a sensible gun program and better mental-health care could be paid for with the dollars the Pentagon has wasted on the troubled F-35 fighter.”
I know this is long, but this comment is appropriate to the topic and It Is Dead Serious.
All-American Despair
http://flip.it/JWHhTB
Even if you’re not wondering, I think this is hilarious. It’s a hashtag name for Wilted Weenie’s Dead Eyes hire– #SatansSnotRag.
His given name, before the Omens appeared, was Stephen Miller.
Starvation in the Ukraine 1932-33 was orchestrated by Stalin using the Red Army. Food was taken from from Ukrainians and shipped to Moscow or exported while millions of people starved. This far exceeds Lysenko, whose methods and activities are not carefully defined in the article. Lysenko has grown in some respects in recent years, given the reduction of the importance of random mutation in favor of other possible causes of mutation—but not very much.
I do see a vulnerability in the current methods of Am agriculture. So much is invested by so few that I can see real peril in the face of economic change and change in basic methods of production. The current macro-scale may prove to be very brittle.
“I Got Mine” (a warm gun, an ivy league education, a house on the hill, a corporation that rapes the environment and can afford paying NO tax for billions of profit):
Like college debt and climate change, the housing affordability crisis is generational warfare. I would add: guns. Protect CAPITALISM at all costs. Riot boosters. Fence around the state gov mansion. Legislators carrying guns. A Virginia just had a mass murder by a public professional employee who fired 50 pistol shots killing 13 public employees. Republicans are scared sheitless because of their policies that inflinct so much damage on peoples lives.
“…everyone basically agrees that housing and college should be affordable and that the air and water should be clean. But older Americans have already enjoyed an affordable college education, a choice of affordable neighborhoods, skies full of monarch butterflies, and oceans with fish living in them. So when it comes to addressing the fact that reality has changed—that housing near good jobs is no longer affordable, that going to college now entails decades of debt, that Miami will be underwater in 30 years—their resistance to address the changing reality reads as a collective shrug of self-interest. I got mine.”
https://slate.com/business/2019/05/california-housing-crisis-boomer-gerontocracy.html
Leslie, there is some truth to that, but I’ll argue that generational differences aren’t that critical. I’ll add to Jim Hightower’s words:
“It’s not Left v. right,
[or old v. young],
It’s top v. Bottom.”
Syncophants all.
Our political system could once rely upon shame to keep misbehavior in check, to a degree. But the Trumps and Barrs of this new age have an immunity to this emotion. They have set us along a path toward an utterly corrupt and unaccountable leadership. We’ll stay there as long as public servants in the House and Senate limit their demands for impeachment to tweets and press releases, and we citizens remain content to be entertained by our leaders dunking on authoritarians in a hearing. Rollingstone
Thx debbo, i agree, ageism either way sucks. The article big pictures Democrat’s wuandry.
I wonder if thune rounds and johnson work around will of lesser constituents?
It must be exciting in the twin towns that Klobuchar is running. Since Kavanaugh questioning she has my heart.
The burden of proof is on those who believe in climate change, which is yet to be made at the molecular level.
A scientific argument would demonstrate exactly how at the molecular level not only how CO2 contributes to global warming, but why O2 does not.
I have never seen that. In fact, I have never seen that attempted…..So again—it is not enough to show that carbon dioxide is causing global warming, but that oxygen (O2) and nitrogen (N2) are not. Show me how they are not greenhouse gases.
Wow, straight-up denialism.
This what is killing the pro-climate change movement.
An opportunity is extended to make their case and the response is rhetoric.
“Denialism” means that someone is denying or ignoring or rejecting reality.
The reality is described in a broad or gross sense, but not established in a meticulous, empirical way at the molecular level and never contrasted with other gases at the molecular level.
Why does what have such a high boiling point for such a small molecule? Ethanol boils at 70 C. Water at 100 C, but water should have a lower boiling point than ethanol. That is easily explained—-Hydrogen bonding.
The same is not done for O2 and CO2, which are an awfully lot alike—-just as H2O and C2H6 are fairly similar…..Denial or pursuit?
Both H2O and CO2 have frequencies that they vibrate at. Our atmosphere is transparent to visible light, but after interacting with our planet, the frequency drops and the photons have a lower energy, becoming infrared frequencies (which are responsible for heat).
It just so happens that CO2 absorbs infrared frequencies that H2O does not. Other gases have different absorption spectra because of their molecular configuration. All of these gases provide more coverage in the infrared spectrum, so more of the infrared frequencies are captured and re-emitted back to earth instead of escaping into space.
Here’s something from NASA that may help.
http://www.ces.fau.edu/nasa/module-2/how-greenhouse-effect-works.php
If you want something more technical on bonds, please see the following from a chemistry class I found:
http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/GenChem1/L15/web-L15.pdf
You’re probably a real “fart smeller”, Mr. Stevens but I’ll take NASA’s word over your word.
Molecules containing several fluorine atoms are especially strong greenhouse gases, for two reasons. First, unlike many other atmospheric molecules, they can absorb radiation that makes it through our atmosphere from space. Second, they absorb the radiation (trap the heat) very efficiently, because of the nature of the fluorine bonds inside them. (In technical terms, fluorine atoms create a larger separation of electric charge within the molecule, and this helps the molecular bonds absorb electromagnetic radiation more effectively.) HFCs and other fluorine-based gases have been called “the worst greenhouse gases you’ve never heard of.” Now we know why.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/260/
If the argument is that man is not responsible for the change in climate, there is an isotopic difference between carbon in living things and carbon that has been buried for millions of years. Namely that the Carbon-14 has had enough time to decay.
Moreover, plants have a preference for Carbon-12 over Carbon-13. So CO2 in the air has a different ratio than CO2 in smoke from burning wood.
If you burn fossil fuels, you end up diluting the Carbon-13 to Carbon-12 ratio as a result. Scientists can measure this.
grudznick can’t argue with science. Neither can you.
My point is that to make the argument one must show how CO2 is a greenhouse gas and O2 is not. Also for N2. Carbon 12. Carbon 13, carbon 14, yes, they will tell us something about the past.
If one assumes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and O2 is not, then the NASA article is valid. In fact, it is to some limited (and misleading degree) valid without considering O2.
But to make the case, science must discuss O2 and N2. Bringing up fluorine and carbon 13, carbon 14 is….frankly embarrassing.
The case must be made at the molecular level—i.e. the case must be made by discussing bond length and bond strength, mass, eletronegativity. Some may be misled by reference to carbon 14 and fluorine—–not me…..Remember—fluorine won’t do it for you. the argument is about CO2. So let’s talk CO2 v O2 and show me the difference.
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-oxygen-and-nitrogen-not-considered-as-green-house-gases
You didn’t look at the graph in the NASA-related link that shows O2 and CO2 frequency coverage.
CO2 does a better job at re-emitting infrared frequencies back to the earth as a secondary heat source than O2 does.
Sorry. Just because the gas is there doesn’t mean it is effective as a greenhouse gas. For example, where is the similar graph for the absorption spectrum for N2 in the infrared and near-infrared for us to examine?
The short answer is that there is a reason that N2 and O2 are not listed as greenhouse gases, and H2O is always included. It is based upon the absorption spectrum that people can replicate in a laboratory.
https://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-dioxide-absorbs-and-re-emits-infrared-radiation
“This ability to absorb and re-emit infrared energy is what makes CO2 an effective heat-trapping greenhouse gas. Not all gas molecules are able to absorb IR radiation. For example, nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2), which make up more than 90% of Earth’s atmosphere, do not absorb infrared photons. CO2 molecules can vibrate in ways that simpler nitrogen and oxygen molecules cannot, which allows CO2 molecules to capture the IR photons.”
All gases are greenhouse gases as demonstrated by the temp of the moon—245 F at day and -230 F at night. The atmosphere is a thermal buffer keeping the planet cooler during the day and warmer at night. I didn’t say that a gas was a greenhouse gas because it was there.
I think O2 is a greenhouse gas because of its similarity to CO2. Both are non-polar. Both have O on the outside. They have near equal bond length. CO2 has stronger bonds and I believe less for that reason.
The Pauling electro-negativity number for Carbon is 2.56 The Pauling electro-negativity number for Oxygen is 3.44….a difference of 88-89. Significant but not great. CO2 may be slightly more heat conserving than O2 but only very slightly….and this heat is found not only in Infra-red but in the entire spectrum. The electronegativity is shared between the Os and the single C of CO2, reducing that of the O on the outside and enhancing the electro-negativity of the C. There is very little change. the mass is greater in the CO2, but so too is the bond strength.
If we can replicate these differences in a laboratory then why aren’t we heating buildings with the remarkable properties ? Why aren’t people getting rich using solar invested CO2?
O2 does not share the same frequencies that CO2 uses to absorb infrared frequencies, so it is transparent to the infrared spectrum. O2 is different enough to have an entirely different absorption spectrum, and that is what matters regarding its properties as a potential greenhouse gas.
I’m not sure what you mean by solar-invested CO2. CO2 does not store heat. It absorbs it and then re-emits that photon in a different direction. Instead of letting it transmit through the air to outer space (like O2 and N2 do), those photons can be re-directed back to earth.
We are long past whether climate change is real or not, there is no more denial.
The time is now, today, to get behind and support what needs to be done before we ruin our planet.
Another argument is if China and India build more coal plants and don’t join any climate agreements, why should we do anything at all?
We could still actively remove carbon from the air. And we could just not emit any carbon at all when we generate energy ourselves. True, China and India may not be paying for that directly, but we don’t have to wait for them to get on board….that would be our choice, not theirs.
It is incorrect that we are not playing a role in climate change, and it is also incorrect that we cannot fix it. In fact, our own carbon emissions were falling due to the replacement of coal plants with natural gas along with a flat electricity demand. Efficiency efforts have also helped to flatten that demand.
But as our demand increases, so will the carbon from natural gas. We will have to do something different to avoid slow exponential growth in CO2 and CH4 from our present modus operandi.
trumpism/GOP crapola may be on a shorter leash than thought. 538 has an article entitled “National Popular Vote Picking Up Steam.” With a few breaks, after 2020 the count of votes pledged could be 264. Minnesota’s 10 is included in that because the DFL only needs the state Senate to control the entire government. Chances are decent for that to happen. 🤞🤞🤞
Of course, redistricting will follow 2020 and that will make some changes in the count. Still, if the total votes pledged reaches 270, the number required for election, the compact goes into effect. States involved will allocate their votes to the winner of the national popular election and the Electoral College will be moot.
🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞
Do I detect a strain of Lysenko science here?
There are different paths for heat transfer. When I talk about absorbing radiation and re-emitting it, I am talking about the transfer of energy by radiation (for the greenhouse effect I mean infrared photons).
In conduction it is the vibrational energy of molecules that moves throughout the material (the vibrational energy is quantized as a particle called a “phonon”). The atoms don’t move very far if at all. Better insulated buildings do not lose the heat as quickly to the outside environment.
In convection, the hotter molecules can be transported to different locations (hot air rises, cold air sinks). The new nuclear plants use convection to remove heat from the core without outside power.
With regard to buildings, people try lots of things to improve heating and cooling. If you have a large thermal mass that is heated (or cooled) whenever solar or wind are available, then there can be passive heating throughout that room…but you can’t turn that off if it gets too hot or too cold. Desert dwellings often use convection produced by temperature differences during the day for bringing in cool air or getting rid of hot air.
The UK is about to find out what Lysenkoism is really all about. trump and his Woody want to trade out the NHS (National Health Service) of the United Kingdom. Add that with chlorinated chicken, and you have America. Fat and sick. Welcome to Lysenkoism in the third power.
On top of scientific consensus, the U.S. military agrees that climate change is real, threatens national security, and requires real action.
Frmr Rep/lobbyist Tom Coleman, (MO, R): impeach illegitimate trump/pence.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hD4NHfaj_lM
Question:
Trump calls which of these people dirty, filthy, disgusting, nasty, stone-cold-stone loser, flipper and/or shorty.
(a.) never-trumper mueller; (b.) megan marble calling out misyogny; (c.) mayor of london; (d.) the “I” word (everyone : “IMPEACH TRUMP AND THEN ILLEGITIMATE Russian-Elected Pence!!”); (e) the Jews; (f.) all of the above.
These red necks are going down. Trumps are “toast”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FA-uDnSQuQU
@ 4:00, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zsMRE0SyykA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a_02dHxWQTQ
Frigging hilarious
Mr McTaggart—-To say that air warmed by the sun cannot be managed by current engineering, when we have millions of automobiles and airplanes with complex systems, is suspect indeed. If CO2 warms the air so readily, then CO2 should be able to be used to heat buildings. Saying anything less than that arises form either—a confusion which relies or somewhat abstract platitudes to make points; or something fundamentally wrong with the whole theory.
What universe does Mr. Stevens live in?
If engineering can fix it now, then why are you waiting to solve the problem?
In essence we are paying a “climate tax” every time a disaster occurs. Seems to run contrary to those interested in lowering taxes or reducing costs for the consumer.
With regard to CO2 for buildings, it would be better to capture the CO2 and make insulation or other building materials with it. Heck, make some wind turbine blades with it…that would be better.
Pumping a lot of CO2 into or around a building in the concentrations necessary sounds like introducing an asphyxiate around people.
Which problem? You assume I am waiting. “Waiting” is your word. Not mine.
If we knew how to reduce the impacts of coastal flooding and more severe hurricanes and tornadoes, we would be doing that right now. But we don’t have mastery over the fluid mechanics of the atmosphere…we are along for the ride.
What we have available to us are engineering approaches that reduce our inputs into the atmosphere that drive climate change, or taking those things from the air.
You truly misunderstood what I said.
Robert McTaggart—It appears that your view of CO2 depends the actually movement of the carbon atom between the 2 oxygens rather than the distribution of even charge throughout the atom. The central atom, carbon, does not resonate, creating a dipole moment. Rather the charge is distributed or shared. Rather like peanut butter —unlike a marble or bead. Electrons are thought of in this model to be charge or force far more than mass. If this is true, the life of CO2 is much like that of its cousin and the neighbor on the periodic table have, not surprisingly, a great deal in common.
No, my view of CO2 depends on the experimental evidence of the frequencies at which the molecule resonates. These are replicated in laboratory experiments and input into climate models.
Vibrations occur about the center of mass. Rotations occur about axes of symmetry.
#4Science!!
I wanted to post this under the only story about hemp/marijuana, but, that story won’t allow any comments. So I post this cautionary tale here…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWyzPpYslYc
In Georgia’s Cobb county officers are allegedly trained to tell if you are under the influence of drugs and even which drugs even when blood tests and field sobriety tests are negative. Innocent people are being thrown in jail for having marijuana in their systems, even though they do not smoke nor hang around with people that do.
In a related video, the police chief says on record he believes his officers are more accurate than any designated blood tests. We should all be afraid.
Is this what the low unemployment numbers have driven you to?
If I wanted to beat Trump, I could think of 105 smarter things than this.
No, Don, this article does not replace or supersede any of those 105 other reasons that Trump is a terrible, ineffective, destructive leader. It’s another thoughtful, intelligent observation from Dr. Newquist of how Republicans keep putting forward candidates whose actual policies contradict their platform and land on the wrong side of history and evidence.
Stalin valued Lysenko because he offered an argument for the actions of man to liberate man from the weight of past history. The nearest we see to that today is sex change and the belief in it.