We The People

[manyeyedhydra]

You don't understand. The planet is not in danger. We are in danger. We don't have the power to destroy life on this planet. We don't have the power to save it either. We might have the power to save ourselves.

Michael Crichton

A smart guy and absolutely correct.

The problem is we won't save ourselves. The person that thinks purely for themselves and for short term gain has an advantage over the person that thinks for others and for long term gain. We're going to follow the same curve as bacteria in a petri dish. Soon we'll plateau and then we'll decline.

Then we'll be replaced by something else.

That's how life is and how it has always been.

 

[amicus]

]Not clowns. Scientists.

The best and the brightest of us all.

The ones who find cures, prolong our lives, invent and discover.

Intelligence should not be so easily disregarded[/I].

~~~~

sweetsubsarahh...et al, on both sides:

~~~


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

Key word search: 1970's global cooling theories history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geophysical_global_cooling

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/241006_b_Cooling.htm

~~~

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ecology-environmental_movement.html

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/tnl.html

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/index.html

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_sugread&printer_friendly=1

~~~

http://www.answers.com/topic/environmental-movement

The environmental movement in the United States is often dated to the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. This seminal description by an articulate scientist on the dangers of the chemical era to the environment and to human health struck a responsive chord with the general public and among opinion leaders. It tapped into a perhaps inbred human belief of the sanctity of air, water and soil, as well as an atavistic human concern about insidious and unknown poisons. The widespread success of the first "Earth Day," in 1969, revealed the environment to be a potent political issue as well. This led to the formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 1969, and to a wide range of laws to control existing and potential threats to the environment.

http://www.mnforsustain.org/beck_environmental_movement_retreat_short.htm

The years surrounding 1970 marked the coming of age of the modern environmental movement. As that movement enters its fourth decade, perhaps the most striking change is the virtual abandonment by national environmental groups of U.S. population stabilization as an actively pursued goal.

How did the American environmental movement change so radically? Answering that question will be a challenging assignment for historians. The authors are not historians. We have spent most of our lives as a journalist and an environmental scientist, respectively. But to the historians who eventually take up the task, we have many suggestions of where to look.

To begin to understand why that retreat has occurred and the significance of the retreat, it will be important to review the 1970-era movement and its population roots.

http://wiki.objectivismonline.net/wiki/Environmentalism

The basic principle driving the environmentalist movement is the belief that "nature" has inherent moral value, and therefore the influence of man, and especially that of industrial civilization, is evil. Politically, this means the advocacy of various limits on industrial civilization, since all productive human activity has some kind of byproduct. While few (but alarmingly many) advocates of environmentalism recognize it as such, the ultimate goal of the environmentalist movement is the total destruction of industrial civilization, and the vast majority of the human race whose existence is made possible by it.

~~~

It remains problematic to ascribe motives to the 'flower children', of the 60's & 70's, the children of a war torn world and the inheritors of a 'Doomsday Clock' of Nuclear annihilation. I was born ten years before that generation and winning the war and setting about to win the peace against a threatening Soviet Union was simply the way things were.

But this 60's generation wanted no population growth, they wanted no more pollution or encroachment on nature; one can understand that, juvenile as it was and is.

I have tried, for the longest time, even before arriving here, to be tolerant and gentle with our now aged hippie population who cling yet to the mantra of an anti industrial world.

The Radical, Progressive Left has accumulated a base that contains malcontents from all fringe area groupies that now has a representative at the highest level of government in the United States, and has, without a doubt, become a threat to the nation, to the American way of life, to human individual freedom and liberty in general.

I predicted a Revolution back in the late 70's, for these very same reasons, but Reagan was put in office and effectively squelched the uprising on the Left. So much for my predictive ability.

Yet, as I read the comments of a mere handful on this mainly far left forum, I sense, from here and elsewhere, that toleration is coming to an end and that Resistance is moving to the front burner.

Time only will determine my prognostications, thus we can but wait and see what transpires.

America!

Amicus...

 

[TE999]

In the field of science, it is not always intelligence that wins the day, but often ego and tenacity. There are numerous good scientists out there whose theories and evidence are often discounted because they lack the funding, backing, patience, confidence, whatever, to persistently present their ideas.

As well, there are many who advance a theory based more upon supposition than evidence. And evidence is always challenged, manipulated and interpreted to different degrees. It takes a lot to have even the most sound theory accepted at large as a truism. Galileo and Newton would attest to that.

Excellent points, slyc.

In many cases, science and scientific theory have been so politcized that it's difficult to reach a rational conclusion based on fact. In extrapolating how existing climactic conditions will change based on insufficient or short-term data results in flawed theoretical reasoning...not something you would irreperably disrupt a nations economy to implement programs against.

At one time pseudosciences such as Phrenology, Alchemy and Chiromancy were accepted as truth in some scientific circles...and widely accepted by the general public. There is not enough long term research on possible human induced climate change to justify spending additional billions attempting to overturn it.

 

[slyc_willie]

Excellent points, slyc.

In many cases, science and scientific theory have been so politcized that it's difficult to reach a rational conclusion based on fact. In extrapolating how existing climactic conditions will change based on insufficient or short-term data results in flawed theoretical reasoning...not something you would irreperably disrupt a nations economy to implement programs against.

At one time pseudosciences such as Phrenology, Alchemy and Chiromancy were accepted as truth in some scientific circles...and widely accepted by the general public. There is not enough long term research on possible human induced climate change to justify spending additional billions attempting to overturn it.

True, but I don't discount humanity's impact, especially since the Industrial Revolution, upon the ecology of the planet. The Great Pacific Garbage Dump is a humbling, sobering slap in the face regarding our flippancy for the Earth's ecosystem.

Still. We are not the first dominant race on this world, and we probably won't be the last. While it may be true that our development of technology is unique when compared to history, I can't help but think our overall impact will be nothing the planet cannot handle and correct. Global warming, ice ages, et. al, seem to be the result of natural cycles and are therefore practically impossible to prevent or direct.

But I'll never rule out that the occurrence of such can be influenced by human activity, or that of any other dominant species.

 

[Byron In Exile]

How much was spent on that fucking fiasco in Iraq?

Over six years? Less than Obama spent on his "stimulus" fiasco in his first 30 days.

 

[cloudy]

Over six years? Less than Obama spent on his "stimulus" fiasco in his first 30 days.

I don't recall thousands dying for the stimulus package, or perhaps since none of them were your family, that didn't matter.

 

[Byron In Exile]

I don't recall thousands dying for the stimulus package, or perhaps since none of them were your family, that didn't matter.

Your question was: "How much was spent on that fucking fiasco in Iraq?"

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I recommend reading Richard Feynman's science essays or watching his interviews if you want a fair assessment of the scientific community.

He frequently spoke of dum bastards who know all the names for things but know nothing about the thing itself. And these people perpetuate their ways of thinking to their students.

 

[Byron In Exile]

I don't recall thousands dying for the stimulus package, or perhaps since none of them were your family, that didn't matter.

For what it's worth, had it been up to me, there would have been no war, no TARP bank bailout, and no phoney pork-laden "stimulus" sham.

And I would have used that money instead to send a $20,000 check to every one of 110,000,000 American households.

Something that actually would have stimulated the economy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

For what it's worth, had it been up to me, there would have been no war, no TARP bank bailout, and no phoney pork-laden "stimulus" sham.

And I would have used that money instead to send a $20,000 check to every one of 110,000,000 American households.

Something that actually would have stimulated the economy.

Your point is excellent and implies how the Rescue is aimed at saving the elites who brought the house down with their folly. The whole fiasco is a do-over for the Perfumed Princes.

 

[DesertPirate]

Not clowns. Scientists.

The best and the brightest of us all.

The ones who find cures, prolong our lives, invent and discover.

Intelligence should not be so easily disregarded.

The ones that can't predict what the temp or rainfall will be next week, or month and yet they can predict something this major?.

That's why we call them weather guessers!

 

[freshface]

The ones that can't predict what the temp or rainfall will be next week, or month and yet they can predict something this major?.

That's why we call them weather guessers!

*sigh* At least try to understand the difference between a climatologist and a meteorologist.

According to NASA, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all happened since 1997. Using paleoclimatology, scientists at NOAA have concluded that the nineties and this decade are the warmest in the records for at least a thousand years. Read for yourself the methods they used to determine that.

The scientific consensus is that the planet is warming. The disagreements now are centered on how quickly it's happening and what will happen long term if it continues at its current rate. Well, except at Fox News...

 

[Liar]

For what it's worth, had it been up to me, there would have been no war, no TARP bank bailout, and no phoney pork-laden "stimulus" sham.

And I would have used that money instead to send a $20,000 check to every one of 110,000,000 American households.

Something that actually would have stimulated the economy.

Didn't they already try something like that some year ago?

 

[Guest]

*sigh* At least try to understand the difference between a climatologist and a meteorologist.

According to NASA, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all happened since 1997. Using paleoclimatology, scientists at NOAA have concluded that the nineties and this decade are the warmest in the records for at least a thousand years. Read for yourself the methods they used to determine that.

The scientific consensus is that the planet is warming. The disagreements now are centered on how quickly it's happening and what will happen long term if it continues at its current rate. Well, except at Fox News...

Yes.

Exactly so.

The ridicule of the educated was encouraged by the Bush administration. AND Fox News. Called "elitists".

When I was a kid I thought that term meant the snooty rich. I never knew that by working hard in grad school, me, a military brat, would wind up being called elitist. Wish I had the cash.

But it makes sense. When you first take over a country you eliminate the intellectuals, the college professors, the scientists. They are a threat to your dictatorship. Then you can easily control the flow of what information you wish to send out to everyone else.

Bush didn't do it with the military, but he did it very effectively with propaganda.

Science is a kinetic field, it's constantly changing and growing as more information becomes available. New information becomes available, of course, through study and experimentation, and hard work.

To ridicule evolving scientific theories shows a simplistic view of the world.

And I'm so damned tired of being insulted on this thread, and others, because of my views and because I believe in education.

There really is another forum many of us have gone to.

Not because it is elitist, not become it is populated only by liberals (gosh! That L word!), because, quite frankly, it isn't. There is a very nice variety of folk.

And when they post opinion, it is followed by proof. Facts are very important.

But you don't find many personal attacks. Those people are banned. And you don't find the same people starting multiple ridiculous threads every day bitching about the same old thing. Those are removed, too.

What has happened to Lit? Why is it okay to smear everyone with the same nasty brush if they do not share your views?

Damn it. And damn me, too, for bothering to try.

 

[trysail]

*sigh* At least try to understand the difference between a climatologist and a meteorologist.

According to NASA, the ten warmest years since 1880 have all happened since 1997. Using paleoclimatology, scientists at NOAA have concluded that the nineties and this decade are the warmest in the records for at least a thousand years. Read for yourself the methods they used to determine that.

The scientific consensus is that the planet is warming. The disagreements now are centered on how quickly it's happening and what will happen long term if it continues at its current rate. Well, except at Fox News...

Wrong.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/e...es/2009/07/01/no_climate_debate_yes_there_is/

"... No debate? The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years, and not only in America. “In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming,” Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal the other day. “In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the ‘new religion.’”

Closer to home, the noted physicist Hal Lewis (emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara) e-mails me a copy of a statement he and several fellow scientists, including physicists Will Happer and Robert Austin of Princeton, Laurence Gould of the University of Hartford, and climatologist Richard Lindzen of MIT, have sent to Congress. “The sky is not falling,” they write. Far from warming, “the Earth has been cooling for 10 years” - a trend that “was not predicted by the alarmist's computer models.”
Fortune magazine recently profiled veteran climatologist John Christy, a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. With his green credentials, Fortune observed, Christy is the warm-mongers’ “worst nightmare - an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth’s atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good.”

No one who cares about the environment or the nation’s economic well-being should take it on faith that climate change is a crisis, or that drastic changes to the economy are essential to “save the planet.” Hundreds of scientists reject the alarmist narrative. For non-experts, a steadily-widening shelf of excellent books surveys the data in laymen's terms and exposes the weaknesses in the doomsday scenario - among others, “Climate Confusion” by Roy W. Spencer, “Climate of Fear” by Thomas Gale Moore, “Taken by Storm” by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, and “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery..."


http://wattsupwiththat.com/resources/

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html#UAH MSU

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Beijing_cave_short.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Vostok_420ky_4curves_insolation.jpg

http://www.heartland.org/_images/Advertising/method.pdf

 

[freshface]

Wrong.

Hmmm...A website representing the consensus opinion of NASA scientists versus the Op Ed page of the Boston Tribune. Which could possibly be more credible? Dare to visit the NASA link I provided and you see, gasp, actual data showing comparisons of global temperatures now and compared to the past. Show me a credible source with specific details that refute global warming and we can talk. And for your general information, physicists and chemists are not subject matter experts on this topic. Provide me with data showing that the earth has gotten cooler over the last ten years. Then we can compare it to NASA's data showing warming and have an informed discussion about the phenomenon. Because I'd really like to know how they can say the planet is cooling in the face of the existing data.

 

[trysail]

Hmmm...A website representing the consensus opinion of NASA scientists versus the Op Ed page of the Boston Tribune. Which could possibly be more credible? Dare to visit the NASA link I provided and you see, gasp, actual data showing comparisons of global temperatures now and compared to the past. Show me a credible source with specific details that refute global warming and we can talk. And for your general information, physicists and chemists are not subject matter experts on this topic. Provide me with data showing that the earth has gotten cooler over the last ten years. Then we can compare it to NASA's data showing warming and have an informed discussion about the phenomenon. Because I'd really like to know how they can say the planet is cooling in the face of the existing data.

Climate change is normal. For billions of years, there have been periods of warming and there have always been periods of cooling.

That's the Boston Globe, by the way. And where, pray tell, did you come up with "how they can say the planet is cooling." Where did you read that? It is true that temperatures have declined in the last ten years— even NASA and Met-Hadley admit that. Whether that is cyclical or secular is anybody's guess.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/1626767871_bab06c00d9_o.jpg​

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN_AND_CONGRESS.jpg

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm



I wouldn't haved believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The BBC (which along with NPR, PBS, the New York Times and every other media outlet has bought into anthropogenic global warming hook, line and sinker) reports that global temperatures have not risen for ten (10) straight years. Naturally, the proponents of anthropogenic global warming...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm


http://i44.tinypic.com/29dwsj7.gif

 

[Byron In Exile]

Didn't they already try something like that some year ago?

No...

 

[freshface]

Climate change is normal. For billions of years, there have been periods of warming and there have always been periods of cooling.

That's the Boston Globe, by the way. And where, pray tell, did you come up with "how they can say the planet is cooling." Where did you read that? It is true that temperatures have declined in the last ten years— even NASA and Met-Hadley admit that. Whether that is cyclical or secular is anybody's guess.

We've had this conversation before. Yes, climate change is normal over eons. Yes, there's evidence that Antarctica used to have tropical weather. Yes, it's possible that Antarctica will be tropical again in the future. Doesn't change the willful ignorance that I've seen here or the evidence that we are causing the Earth to warm in ways that it would not have done otherwise. And I'm still waiting for you to provide a credible source. The Op Ed page isn't it. Neither is an interest group with an agenda. Your own BBC link says, "But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 2008 temperatures would still be well above average for the last 100 years."

From NASA:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig1.gif

From Met Hadley:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/images/guide/Big%20Picture_Fact%202_global%20temperature.GIF

Oh, and making your images really, really big and using bolded green font does not make the information any more accurate. Just sayin...

 

[Liar]

No...

Well they did do something where they handed out a wad of monies to each and everyone. Please do explain the difference. Size?

 

[trysail]

... the evidence that we are causing the Earth to warm in ways that it would not have done otherwise.

The only trouble is... there isn't any. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem: the theory of anthropogenic global warming has no proof.

Show me the evidence. Computer models are not proof— certainly not the ones which, thus far, have proven nothing other than they have no predictive capacity. In the context of millenia, twenty year correlations are not proof— they are statistical random noise. Association is not causuality.

It is a well-documented fact that the recent U.S. temperature record is highly suspect. The inspection of data collection sites by http://www.surfacestations.org has demonstrated that an enormous number of those sites— particularly those located near cities— have serious deficiencies and/or violations of NOAA standards respecting contamination by adjacent heat sources which call into question the advisability of their use in any historic study.

A willingness to believe in the unproven/unprovable is one of the things that defines disciples of religion.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

For what it's worth, had it been up to me, there would have been no war, no TARP bank bailout, and no phoney pork-laden "stimulus" sham.

And I would have used that money instead to send a $20,000 check to every one of 110,000,000 American households.

Something that actually would have stimulated the economy.

Let's see 110,000,000 x 20,000 = 2,200,000,000,000 that's 2.2 trillion dollars!

 

[Byron In Exile]

Well they did do something where they handed out a wad of monies to each and everyone. Please do explain the difference. Size?

Oh, you mean Bush's ridiculous "stimulus."

That was more or less a gimmick like John D. Rockefeller's handing out dimes to poor people on the street.

It was a tax rebate of $300 per person. So if you were poor and on welfare or you were on Social Security, you got nothing. And if you made over $75,000, it was phased out until you got nothing.

It was a pittance compared to my stimulus plan of $20,000 per household with no exceptions.

Twenty-thousand dollars is a lot even to someone who makes $75k/yr. Imagine what that would mean to a family scraping by on $15k. They could buy new furniture, new clothes, maybe a used car from someone else who wants to sell it so they can afford to buy a new one...

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Climate change is normal. For billions of years, there have been periods of warming and there have always been periods of cooling.

That's the Boston Globe, by the way. And where, pray tell, did you come up with "how they can say the planet is cooling." Where did you read that? It is true that temperatures have declined in the last ten years— even NASA and Met-Hadley admit that. Whether that is cyclical or secular is anybody's guess.




I wouldn't haved believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. The BBC (which along with NPR, PBS, the New York Times and every other media outlet has bought into anthropogenic global warming hook, line and sinker) reports that global temperatures have not risen for ten (10) straight years. Naturally, the proponents of anthropogenic global warming...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm


http://i44.tinypic.com/29dwsj7.gif

Great graph try...I love the way is shows how the number were manipulated.

 

[Byron In Exile]

Let's see 110,000,000 x 20,000 = 2,200,000,000,000 that's 2.2 trillion dollars!

Iraq war $683 billion, TARP $700 billion, Obama "stimulus" sham $787 billion = $2,170,000,000

Okay, so I'm $30 billion short. We'll borrow it from Luxembourg.