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Old news. Circa 2004.

And Obama outright asked the people to turn in names of people they knew who weren't on board with Obamacare.
In addition his IRS attacked individual citizens based on their political affiliations

Things that never happened for $200, Alex. Stop with the #fakenews.

Right here are the citations for you — something the anonymous OP should've included in his post, of course:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov

After people got outraged about this solicitation, the above text was eventually removed.

In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes.

Two out of two things you dismissed as "fake news" are in fact true and indisputable. Good score, keep it up!

I'm sorry, but no....

The original accusations were...

- Obama outright asked the people to turn in names of people they knew who weren't on board with Obamacare.

This is False. Even the quote that you provided proves that it's false. The Obama administration request was to provide copies of articles, news stories, etc. that seemed to be inaccurate or questionable. This was so that they could develop a marketing program to address false rumors. At no point did the Obama administration ask for names, email addresses, etc. Granted, most people would not have been smart enough to scrub the email of personal identification which causes privacy issues. But the fact is that they didn't request names, just stories.

- The IRS attacked individual citizens based on their political affiliations

This is badly worded or deliberately misleading. The IRS did discriminate against certain political groups by performing deeper audits. But, to the best of my knowledge, they didn't target individual citizens.

And Obama outright asked the people to turn in names of people they knew who weren't on board with Obamacare. In addition his IRS attacked individual citizens based on their political affiliations

Things that never happened for $200, Alex. Stop with the #fakenews.

Right here are the citations for you — something the anonymous OP should've included in his post, of course:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov

After people got outraged about this solicitation, the above text was eventually removed.

In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes.

Two out of two things you dismissed as "fake news" are in fact true and indisputable. Good score, keep it up!

Can you supply any references for the debunked consensus? When I originally looked into the matter, I found several papers confirming the consensus, but it has been a few years since I looked

Comment on ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
a 2016 survey of american meteorological society members about climate change Initial Findings graph on page 11 shows 33% of AMS members believe the climate change is at least equally or more attributable to natural causes.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change
Climate Consensus Con Game
Sorry, global warmists: The ‘97 percent consensus’ is complete fiction
The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up
Global Warming “Consensus”: Cooking the Books
Climategate 3.0: Blogger Threatened for Exposing 97% "Consensus" Fraud

Trumpites, such delicate little snowflakes.

Wait, what?

http://canadafreepress.com/art...

Thanks Google but we don't need your help...

John Podesta says Hillary Clinton "lies" often , so she is Crooked Lying Hillary.
http://canadafreepress.com/art...

"Mr. Pagliano told investigators, he approached Ms. Mills to relay State Department concerns that the private server might pose a "federal records retention issue." According to Mr. Pagliano, Ms. Mills told him not to worry about it, because other secretaries of state had used similar setups."

If that's the case, then she didn't understand or know the distinction between an outside service and a personal server. (It actually makes no difference from a legal standpoint, but I'm looking at the "lie" claim here.)

An AOL "technician" and a personal server technician perhaps would be no different to her. She didn't "see" either. I work with non-IT people all the time that wouldn't understand that distinction unless explicitly and carefully explained.

http://canadafreepress.com/art...

It isn't as if he did it or approved it, someone else did it and we know it. Why is this even an issue? How about Hilary lying to the FBi and not going to jail. Directory Comey saying she's above the law? Why are we putting up with this?

Anyhow, Trump was a Democrat after all. Even invited and Hillary actually attended his wedding. They're really buds.

The real Nazi is Hillary. Don't think so? I dare you to go and look at the Nazi platform of the 1930s. Go ahead, what was it? Compare it to the Democratic platform. I don't see any light there. Same old crap. Free education, free health care, really dumb down education, ration health care. Nothing is free after all. Only morons and below think that. They're also into being divisive. "War on women", as if that has any basis in fact, yet some dumb women buy it.

Republicans freed the slaves, they gave women the right to vote, they tried to give them the voting rights and Johnson shot it down 3 times (and signed it when he was president due to the riots. He said, well look here - http://canadafreepress.com/art... Look for 200 years. The Jim Crowe laws were all from Democrats in the south. Governor Wallace, etc. Yet black people think Democrats are great, even though they've held them back.

Never understood it, probably stockholm syndrome.

We look forward to your publication of the flaws you have discovered in Dr. Mann ....

Here's Mann's new book on The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

Is it claimed that Dr. Mann won the Nobel Prize in that book?

Nobel Committee Rebukes Michael Mann for falsely claiming he was ‘awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’

That's a relief.

Nobel Committee Rebukes Michael Mann for falsely claiming he was ‘awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’

At least the Climategate emails are simple skullduggery whitened by a whitewash.

he's into politically motivated demagoguery, court actions and making a public circus of it.

You may recall that it is Mann that is suing Steyn, not the other way around, and Mr. Mann isn't above politics himself.

Climategate 2.0

Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. "I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy." Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann's "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures.

One can understand Mr. Mann's irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.

The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?

This is the real significance of the climategate emails. They show that major scientists who inform the IPCC can't be trusted to stick to the science and avoid political activism. This, in turn, has very worrying implications for the major international policy decisions adopted on the basis of their research.

Nobel Committee Rebukes Michael Mann for falsely claiming he was ‘awarded the Nobel Peace Prize’

Michael Mann And The ClimateGate Whitewash: Part One

I think there are a bunch of links in this Slashdot discussion claiming otherwise. On the surface, it makes sense: shut down nuclear plants, and what else are you going to do? Solar just can't produce that amount of power (yet).

To confirm this, I just did a quick Google search for "Germany Coal Nuclear Solar":
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+coal+nuclear+solar&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
which seems to confirm the increase in coal burning, although the Poland connection seems to be false.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Germany/
"More than half of Germany’s electricity was generated from coal in the first half of 2013, compared with 43% in 2010." but it says nothing about the shutdown of nuclear reactors.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/05/debunking-common-myths-about-nuclear-coal-power-in-germany-this-time-repeated-by-the-guardian/
"coal (including lignite) is up around 5%...have nothing to do with nuclear in Germany."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0716/The-dirty-coal-behind-Germany-s-clean-energy
This sites the 5% figure but doesn't mention why. "Germany has managed to be praised by environmentalists more than any other developed nation and yet is building more coal plants than more or less any other developed country" but it has no specifics.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/green-energy-bust-in-germany
This one claims the same thing.
"Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts—by opening new coal- and gas-fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic..."

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57035
"they are now building coal-fired electricity generation and shuttering nuclear power plants..."

I don't know what to believe now. Ultimately, we would need to see the energy mix numbers from the German power companies/government to know for sure. Just pointing out that new coal plants are being built doesn't mean much. They might be replacing existing ones, or making cleaner/smaller ones.

China is closing coal plants and building nuclear power plants like there's no tomorrow.

Citation needed. Chinese coal consumption continues to increase YoY.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58482

Germany's green jobs are very heavily subsidized by the government. Jobs are certainly being created, however the cost is enormous to their economy. The latest figures show Germany has spent over $130 Billion dollars for 6000 green jobs. That is a cool $20 million per job created. Each consumer subsidizes these jobs to the tune of an extra $260 per year making German electricity among the most expensive in the world. To quote that hard core leftist site Slate

Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germanyâ(TM)s CO2 emissions by roughly 8 million metric tonsâ"or about 1 percent â" for the next 20 years.

...
In the meantime, Germans have paid about $130 billion for a climate-change policy that has no impact on global warming.

The one thing that they were really doing right, nuclear energy they voted to get rid of once the Greens got in power. Now since even Germany can't run everything off of renewables the net effect is that Germany is massively ramping up building more coal power plants. So, how about those Germans?

Well put, although with what the British found in David Miranda's data, it isn't edging. It is somewhere between a swan dive and a cliff dive. This is way more damaging than most people realize. The British found 58,000 of their documents alone that he was transporting. A former Eastern Block intelligence general office assess Snowden as being a Russian asset.

Defector Describes Russia’s Handling of NSA Leaker Snowden

He explained, “During the Cold War there were hundreds of other self-motivated defectors from the Soviet bloc, and as far as I know, none came out loaded with secret documents. Even the famous KGB archivist Col. Vasili Mitrokhin, who in the 1990s supplied us with some 25,000 pages of highly confidential documents (described by the FBI as ‘the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source’) did not dare to cross the border with documents concealed on him. The British MI6 smuggled them out of Russia.”

Snowden, by contrast, was gathering up classified documents for months, including information disclosed by The Washington Post in its Friday newspaper of the “black budget” of U.S. intelligence agencies. The material was “obtained by The Washington Post from former—intelligence contractor Edward Snowden,” the paper confirmed. This is just the latest disclosure by Snowden, and more have been promised.

No fucking kidding. This is why NO ONE trusts anything "scientists" have to say any more. All they do is spend OUR TAX DOLLARS on *idiot* studies that confuse correlation with causation, or they contradict everything they said in previous studies, or they try to push hoaxes like evolution and global warming on the rest of us.

I sincerely hope that story is pure BS

It pretty much is BS... one tell-tale sign is the outer "wrapper" story explaining how he got the news. This is a common narrative crutch that lets an author "ease into" introducing his world. Instead of saying "I got a message and met my contact in the middle of the night", there is a slow, omnious build-up to the dramatic unveiling of the story's payload.

Then there the dialog... it's very tight, TV-like script with a lot of back-and-forth that reads punchy (“You don’t know jack") while chopping up the message into narrative-sized bites. There's even the obligatory recap that's followed by the journalist character saying "We know all this already." You see this type thing all the time in the movies: character A explains to character B some background info that the audience needs to know but that character B should already know; the author then papers over the narrative mismatch by having character B object to the unnecessary sharing.

The informant's pleading to "get the story out" is a very efficient mechanism: (1) it adds more drama, (2) it lends a sort of fake credibility to the unnamed informant, and (3) it simultaneously solicits the reader to take action/forward the story/whatever.

Hilariously, notice how the author promises more at the end... "My source provided additional information, but I am abiding by his wish to get this much out... Stay tuned." Four days later, he's forgotten about it and has move on to his next agit-prop piece.

Or maybe it has more to do with this: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

I think that this was all started by the Town hall protests, more specifically by the administration's reaction to it.

Shortly after the town hall meetings, and I think the birther campaigns, the Obama administration basically went on the offensive. They openly stated that they were going to call out and not stand idly by when similar things happened. The link, if it is true, sounds like an extension of that using the new Prussian apparatus set up over the last decade.

What is worse, is that this might have nothing to do with terrorism, and more to do with spying:

Or maybe it has more to do with this: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

I sincerely hope that story is pure BS, but at the same time, the US government's behavior over the last few decades and particularly over the last decade or so makes it at least somewhat plausible. Particularly in light of all the recent large-scale military/police drills & rehearsals that have alarmed people across the US that the authorities are very reluctant to be forthcoming about, apparently by the type and nature of the forces and their tactics, preparing for large-scale domestic urban combat actions against large numbers of unarmed/lightly-armed civilians such as protesters and rioters.

Interesting times, indeed. Damn you unknown ancient Chinese writer of proverbs/curses!

Strat

It's a sad day when an American has to go to China for Sanctuary for reporting violations of the Bill of Rights.

No shit. It's like living in some kind of "Homeland" or other dystopian-future-themed computer game.

I guess the old "reality is stranger than fiction" truism still stands.

Maybe China or Russia will actually end up sending arms and funding to a future American resistance movement like the US has been doing around the world regarding rebels fighting against unfriendly regimes for many decades.

Interesting times, indeed. More than a bit surreal as well.

And it may be a lot closer than most think. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

I admit, they told a good story. They had me going up until this bit: "This administration is collecting names of sources, whistle blowers and their families, names of media sources and everybody they talk to and have talked to, and they already have a huge list. If you’re not working for MSNBC or CNN, you’re probably on that list"

The MSNBC and CNN bit is a tired and obvious giveaway of a right-wing nutjob. Not that these stations aren't more left-leaning; it's the absolutely ridiculous suggestion that every single person working at MSNBC and CNN is a trusted Obama loyalist, that there are zero Republicans working anywhere in their ranks.

Then the capper:

"This is about the Marxist takeover of America"

In a country where corporations are clearly calling more and more of the shots, they want us to believe MARXISTS are taking over?

It's a sad day when an American has to go to China for Sanctuary for reporting violations of the Bill of Rights.

No shit. It's like living in some kind of "Homeland" or other dystopian-future-themed computer game.

I guess the old "reality is stranger than fiction" truism still stands.

Maybe China or Russia will actually end up sending arms and funding to a future American resistance movement like the US has been doing around the world regarding rebels fighting against unfriendly regimes for many decades.

Interesting times, indeed. More than a bit surreal as well.

And it may be a lot closer than most think. http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

Strat

This is a farce unlike any seen on this planet for more than a thousand years.

Spoiler alert: It ends badly.

That's putting it mildly.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

Btw, if you're looking for a job, the Army NG is looking to fill Internment-Resettlement Specialist positions.

http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/legal-and-law-enforcement/internment-resettlement-specialist.html

FM 3-39.40/50 Internment and Resettlement Operations: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/12_USA/120522.FM-3-39.50.pdf

Don't worry. Those men with machine guns pointing down at us from the guard towers and razor wire will be there to protect us...from...something really scary, I'm sure. Like 7-yr-olds operating unlicensed, unregulated, cardboard-box lemonade stands in their driveway that aren't even inspected by the local health dept., don't provide free contraception to employees (5-yr-old sisters), or registered as a for-profit business with the IRS (shudder). Oh, the horror!

"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie"

~ The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Strat

So, they were they to sightsee one of the largest American "chemical processing structures" . . . after midnight . . because it improves the view? You can see easier in the dark? And they had to trespass to do it.

A reservoir is in essence nothing more than a big tank of water. By your criteria, a water glass is a "man made chemical(water) processing structure." No "processing" takes place in a reservoir, it just hold massive quantities of water, that's it. Actual water treatment that involves chemicals takes place in actual water treatment plants.

On the other hand, a reservoir is a place where one might introduce poisons that could be selected with a knowledge of . . . wait for it . . . chemical engineering to make it through treatment unaffected and into the "man made chemical(water) processing structure" (AKA drinking glass) on your table that you sip from time to time.

Well, whatever was going on, I'm sure someone will get it figured out eventually. It obviously won't be you though. Maybe it was innocent, maybe not.

Not every terrorist has attacking as their mission. NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE & CITIGROUP HEADQUARTERS
Mirror: FBI hunting 12-strong sleeper cell linked to Boston Marathon bombing Hmmm, Boston? Isn't that close to some recent news item?

One last thing - I find the level of intellectual dishonesty in your post absolutely stunning.

Their goals are clear.

Well for starters, carbon credits have already turned into a racket, spearheaded by Al Gore:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031307.htm

Second, some industries are selling credits for doing literally nothing:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/asia/incentive-to-slow-climate-change-drives-output-of-harmful-gases.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

And finally (I'm only taking a minute here to do this as I'm on a short break, so no time to find the source) some companies have been selling carbon credits for carbon cuts that they already planned on doing anyways just to save on their bottom line by reducing costs. So in effect, the carbon trading didn't do anything at all.

Also, it is inevitable that you are going to end up with shell companies whose business model revolves around nothing but selling carbon credits. Say for example, a money laundering business that does fake business transactions, has miraculously low emissions as a result, and makes money on the side by selling carbon credits.

The whole thing is a joke.

Parent is showing much bias, just like MSNBC is far more biased than Fox News according to a new Pew study.

Absolutely :-)

I can't think of a better organisation to solve things. After all, how could the organisation that just yesterday voted Iran to the head of the UN arms trade committee (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/47911) and is about to vote Syria in to the UNHCR (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4252020,00.html) possibly go wrong!

In response to an accusation that the mentioned statements by Muller's colleague and collaborator, Judith Curry, are "lies" promoted by one biased newspaper, I offer the following:

http://junkscience.com/2011/10/30/curry-damage-control-mullers-oversell-a-mistake-not-a-new-scandal/

http://www.express.co.uk/features/view/280948/Is-global-warming-over-">Curry says no warming "for 13 years".

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100114292/lying-cheating-climate-scientists-caught-lying-cheating-again/

http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2011/10/31/berkeley-temperature-study-update-colleague-says-claim-was-huge-mistake/

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/41840

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=65364f00-802a-23ad-4994-117066e014ea

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/10/climate-change-scientist-accused-of-hiding-truth-by-colleague/

As I mentioned in the beginning, the graphs shown in some of these articles are misleading, because the time scales are completely different:

In addition, if you really need more convincing, you can go to Curry's own blog and read her comment yourself.

Not to mention that any user can root the iOS device, trivially. "Jailbreak" is fine if you're a home user chafing at Apple's restrictions, but rooted devices are a fucking nightmare if you're corporate security trying to make sure that things don't join the network loaded full of intrusion tools.

And I can hear the cries from dickwads, just like the last time we had this discussion, "well just make your network secure then and you won't care what's on it and I can run what I want." By that logic if we have a "secure" airport, as you said, a guy with a trenchcoat and 20 guns is no big deal because the airport is "secure", right? Wrong, because part of the security is keeping the fucker with a trenchcoat and guns outside the airport and away from the planes.

Corporate espionage is real. It happens. If you've got a contract with some Chinese company, it's already happened to you even if you don't know it yet. If you're the leader in your industry, or even second tier with some interesting patents or designs, someone is looking to get their hands on them.

Imagine if you will a company that implements this. No USB storage allowed. Users cry bloody murder. A ton of whining and groaning. Nobody thinking to ask WHY it happened - because someone in the middle level of the company, someone who had been one of those espionage artists getting paid money to steal trade secrets, carted off sensitive material in a USB stick.

yet we are at a stage where it is impossible to explain warming in the last 50 years without it.

That's an odd statement. I doubt we're at a stage where we can explain the climate in the last 50 years, in terms of all the variables that effect it, and we may *never* get to that level of certainty. This is the argument of ignorance - "we can't think of anything else, therefore it must be CO2". I still don't buy that one.

As for fire insurance -- it costs you money, and isn't what all the AGW-opposition is about? Really it is a question of cost-benefit analysis.

Fire insurance is a fraction of a fraction of total income. AGW mitigation "cap and trade" or other subsidies for inefficient energy is an order of magnitude higher.

Would you buy fire insurance if it cost 50% of your paycheck? 75% of your paycheck? *That* is the kind of economic impact you'll have if you pursue policies that increase real energy prices by subsidizing inefficient forms of energy, and restricting cheap forms of energy.

Everybody who actually knows something about climate science agree on the major details, except for a handful of people.

Appeal to Unnamed Authority. I've certainly found well more than a handful of people here: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3214

Is 31,000 not enough? Or are we simply going to denigrate their POV because they don't agree with our Unnamed Authorities?

I am not insisting that any change is due to human activity. I am insisting that there is a strong argument that some change is due to human activity.

I can agree with your second proposition, until it is asserted that this "some change" is "catastrophic change". We certainly have an effect (both up and down in temp) - but we are simply noise compared to natural drivers. Perhaps your definition of "some" is different than mine :)

As for temperature driving CO2 -- this is a often repeated denialist argument, that has been studied and responded to over a decade ago.

I'd be interested in your reaction to the latest study coming out this year that makes the case for that rationale.

. The oil price jumped, and everybody ran for foreign cars which are sometimes twice as efficient. Then GM screamed for a government bailout. That is what laissez-faire economics gives you.

Um, no, that's what socialist policies give you - laissez-faire economics would let GM fail, have its resources liquidated to other companies that would pursue economically profit driven activity.

The bottom line on the economics is that cheap energy is what brings people out of poverty. Your average person on this planet isn't affected by US subsidies to hybrid vehicles, a country that apparently has money to burn on unprofitable pursuits. They are, however, affected by the cost of energy, and if that goes up, their lives get incredibly worse. If we cared about the plight of most of humanity, we'd be drilling as much cheap petroleum as we can, from wherever we can, to provide the lowest cost energy for the most amount of people. Imagining high tech "clean" solutions unaffordable to the billions of people on this planet is simply fantasy.

That being said, I can imagine that having these expensive policies to destroy 1st world economies (while allowing unchecked development in impoverished countries) is a form of wealth distribution, so if you're into that, it might sit well with your proclivities. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/07/worldwide-co2-emissions-and-the-futility-of-any-action-in-the-west/

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/11607

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/al-gore-joins-the-vc-game-as-kleiner-perkins-partner/

There's plenty more. Gore stands to make hundreds of millions, if not billions from various green projects but most notably from carbon trading. Of course, it's not a conflict of interest, a politician would never lie to fleece the public, he's just "putting his money where his mouth is", poor fella, so just give him a break will you? I don't think he has any friends.

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that you can't have a democracy when the media is controlled by the person in power. It's also quite well documented on how the media in the countries I've listed has been taken over by the government or their freedom otherwise suppressed.

This is from just a quick Google search. The concept of freedom of the press and democracy goes back to the founding of the United States where the press is often referred to as the 4th branch of government or the 4th pillar of democracy. One needs a free press in order to expose corruption and provide an informed electorate which is vital for a healthy democracy.

It's well known among journalists in Russia that reporting on certain things is a good way to end up dead. In Venezuela almost all (if not all by now) of the major TV stations have been taken over by the government and spew pro Chavez propaganda without providing an outlet for the opposition.

http://www.un.org/democracyfund/XNewsSGFreePress.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21452
http://www.america.gov/st/democracyhr-english/2008/June/20080630215145eaifas0.6333842.html
http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/press-freedom-pillar-democracy-mzilikazi-wa-afrika
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51587-2005Feb24.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7321168.stm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100430/158814432.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443543,00.html
http://www.advancingafreesociety.org/2010/12/14/russian-style/
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/droi20071001_russia_004/droi20071001_russia_004en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia

Excuse me? I quote "the deluded SUV drivers of the world" unquote? Maybe if somebody was proposing REAL solutions instead of cap and trade, which BTW just FYI the big spokesman pushing for cap and trade is a hypocrite who will make out like a robber baron if crap and trade is passed.

Let me enlighten you as to what will happen if crap and trade is passed: The USA, which has already lost 42 THOUSAND factories since 2001, and that ain't a typo folks, that's not factory jobs, that is total FACTORIES just since 2001, will have NO way at all to compete in a global market because India and China, and rightly so, will tell you where to stick your credits and thus what few jobs not being a CEO, lawyer, or working at MickyD, will be gone. Now is Rev Al demanding we close off trade with India and China? Nope because he and his pals are making out like robber barons on cheap labor, not to mention taking bribes in the past from China. Meanwhile the "green economy" they keep blowing up our collective butts? That will be in ASIA, NOT the USA. The #1 selling low power computing device is the smart phone, which looks to replace the PC for many. Guess how many of those are made in the USA? Why zero of course!

So when I see some REAL solutions proposed, ones that will actually allow us to have a functional industry and not hamstring the USA or turn us into a third world hellhole, well then I'll be happy to sign up. More nuclear, solar and wind powerplants? ALL for it. But cap and trade is a scam, being run by the the same group that destroyed our economy. I'm sure I'll be modded to hell for daring to say anything other than "go green" but I frankly don't care. I can see first hand what these same bozo the clowns have done to our economy by simply looking out my window at the boarded up store fronts. And whether those here at /. care to admit it or not AGW has become political, with those that dare to say anything other than "the consensus agrees" getting treated like a nut.

If all the AGWers supported REAL change, like refusing to trade with massive polluters like India and China until they cleaned up their acts? Like putting Americans to work building new nuclear plants so we can kill the coal ones? Again ALL for it. Instead what we get is BS like "clean coal" and "green economy" with no actual numbers to back them up. If you support real change then it is time to put our foot down. Demand nuclear plants replace the coal plants, demand we stop trading with countries that poison the air and water, demand realistic caps NOT cap and trade BS. Because frankly all we are getting from the self appointed "guardians of the planet" is a ponzi scheme which will make them billions off the poor. Oh and if you think cap and trade will get rid of coal plants? Think Again.

Mmhmm. How about this.... http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/24336 and this... http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/07/acorn-clears-itself-of-wrongdoing/ or this from CNN no less... http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/22/voter.fraud/

Even if you still insist that all of those articles are correct, I insist that the very existance of an organization like ACORN is a misappropriation of taxpayers dollars. An organization like that should be completely funded by donations and fundraising. That they got millions of dollars every year makes me sick. To top it off, they didn't even HELP very many people. If you cannot afford a home then the you cannot afford a home. You can take out a loan but you will just default on it later and be evicted.

Consider that I am probably more educated about global warming than the average person (hey, I read slashdot afterall, right?). If even I'm poorly educated about global warming I think it's safe to say that we're doing an incredibly poor job about conveying the immediacy of the issue. And then we've got things like "climategate" further damaging the credibility of these scientists

There are also plenty of scientists who also report that global warming caused by man is a very small problem (or non-existent):

"In 2009 over 700 international scientists, including many current and former UN IPCC members, joined with Senator Inhofe in a Senate Minority Report to express their doubts over man-made global warming claims."

Or even better:
In the largest effort to date to document global warming dissent in the scientific community, 31,486 Americans with university degrees in science - including 9,029 PhD, 7,157 MS, 2,586 MD and DVM, and 12,714 BS or equivalent - have signed on with the Global Warming Petition Project to state “the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity.”

It seems that for every scientist I can find that supports the global warming I can find one who doesn't! I'm completely open to debate on the topic, but I just don't see the overwhelming evidence to support one theory. And I'm absolutely attempting to listen to people qualified to weigh in on the topic, the problem is we have experts on both sides.

Ok, fine, let's assume it's greater than zero. If that's your standard for accepting something as truthful enough to be taught or even believed, then you've set the bar so unimaginably low that we should believe in aliens, fairies, the loch ness monster, sasquatch, vampires, ghosts, etc. Because there are a hell of a lot more people who claim to have seen these things than any of the miracles in the Bible. My point is that your definition of evidence is utterly useless for any reason whatsoever.

Fair enough. However, I've never seen a teacher get fired for mentioning the possibility of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise.

Nice red herring. Who's advocating firing teachers for quoting Einstein? If that's the best you've got, you might as well give up.

Here is one. http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/03/the_classroom_wall_of_separation.html And another http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23671

The first link sounds like the courts did their job and the wall was restored. Like I said, I'm not advocating the removal of any reference whatsoever. Just that the school doesn't involve itself in the teaching of religious belief or the promotion of any religion over any others or none at all. As long as the wall displays are open to images and text regardless of what faith position they might represent or imply, and they don't cross into proselytizing, I don't have a problem with it.

The second link was just ridiculous. Devoid of information about what was actually said by the atheist teacher, or what occurred in the incident, but chock full of unsubstantiated allegations made against him by the writer of what I assume is some kind of opinion piece. It goes on to make some utterly moronic claims about both atheism and Christianity. Worthless article. The writer is more interested in preaching than reporting facts.

Ok, fine, let's assume it's greater than zero. If that's your standard for accepting something as truthful enough to be taught or even believed, then you've set the bar so unimaginably low that we should believe in aliens, fairies, the loch ness monster, sasquatch, vampires, ghosts, etc. Because there are a hell of a lot more people who claim to have seen these things than any of the miracles in the Bible. My point is that your definition of evidence is utterly useless for any reason whatsoever.

Fair enough. However, I've never seen a teacher get fired for mentioning the possibility of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise.

Nice red herring. Who's advocating firing teachers for quoting Einstein? If that's the best you've got, you might as well give up.

Here is one.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2010/03/the_classroom_wall_of_separation.html
And another
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/23671

The science has been explained clearly and nicely countless times.
Sorry I never watched an "Inconvenient Truth". Or paid myself for carbon credits for that matter. http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover031307.htm"

Maybe harder for women to get private funding, but much easier getting government loans, either small biz or schooling, etc.

Besides, VC stuff isn't that great, you are beholden to people who just want a huge return back, and swiftly. They won't ever care about the tech or doing a good job or being in it for the long haul.

You'd think this would be learned by now. Want a company, or to start your own business, expand on some ideas? That's fine! But you don't have to go this VC route either. Do what it takes to stay private and self funded some how. If this means you stay small for a long time..at least you are still working and don't have to put up with PHBs, dumb VC investors, dumber generic stockholders, etc.

  Small does not necessarily translate into bad, and giant doesn't necessarily translate into good either, despite what those pirates believe and are taught in the biz schools.

There's more to life than some nebulous goal of being a big biz tycoon. We already have quite enough of those globalist turkeys running around, we don't need any more of them..we need less of them.

And this "bigger is always better" corporate mindset is wrecking the economy as a whole, not making it better. All these huge companies are just eating the middle class up and spitting them out, leaving them stuck with huge debts, personal and governmental, and shifting the wealth of the nation into fewer and fewer hands, where they don't care after that point, they'll go elsewhere with that stripped wealth and just let everyone else rot.

  It's a vicious circle where they have to kowtow to the wall street pirates to achieve "growth" in their business, which has de evolved into just building up, acquiring with takeovers, stripping assets to achieve this growth, selling off the good stuff cheap and fast, shuffling off the jobs as fast as possible, another way they get short term profits, then bailing once your company and your idea has been destroyed with their golden parachutes they vote themselves to take. Lather, rinse, repeat, with co-opting our government in the meantime, to let them keep getting away with that.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19658

That's what you want, to be part of that system?

So..stay away from those guys. Do it yourself, stay small and integrated, have a better life, less hassles and headaches and bogusness, don't be part of that corrupt and morally bankrupt system if you can avoid it.

E.g. this or this or this. Really, you'll find a lot of that if you just google for "russia+agw".

There are even some conspiracy theories abound that Russia was the one behind "climategate" hack, though those are about as verifiable as truthers' or birthers' claims.

the USA

So does Cuba, does that mean we should follow Cuba's lead?

There are waits for some procedures for stuff that won't kill you. If you have a serious illness you get to see a doctor and whatever specialist is required within hours in most cases.

Canada has no rationing? None at all? Waiting for surgery isn't as bad in Canada? Wait tymes weren't at an all-time high in Canada? Average waiting tymes in Canada for surgery isn't 16 weeks?

Falcon

Al Gore and James Hansen aren't just making this stuff up.

actually, Hansen kind of did make stuff up...

Lookit - I'm not going to jump anyone's religion (either for or against), but we are talking about a scientist who got caught literally making up the infamous "hockey stick" that almost no one in climatology dares mention these days (and for good reason...)

/P

For the recent trend in global temperatures, see here: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12865.

As an aside, I'm not sure it was intentional, but you've done a very good job of citing an article which illustrates the dangers of cherrypicking data to suit your own agenda. I mean, honestly, selecting the last 5 years and using that to pick out a temperature trend. It's absolutely absurd. And it's well known that El Nino was responsible for the spike in global temperature in the mid-90s. The real point is that the long term trend is still upward, even if the short-term trend has been flatter.

And that's why you see a strong correlation between solar output and global mean temperature! Except, of course, there is no such correlation.

Don't be stupid. As any child knows, the sun heats the earth so there is obviously a correlation between solar output and earth temperature.

However, the highly variable part of the solar output is mostly in the UV/EUV/X-ray range and as such is not easy to measure on earth. No correlations of global temperature with ground-based or narrow-band solar flux measurements are to be expected.

For the recent trend in global temperatures, see here: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12865.

"in agreement on Global Warming being caused by humans."

Ditto, and I also recognise that organisations like GreenPeace spew political hyperbole. However I do understand why people get upset when the rantings of ex-tabacoo "scientists" are widely published in the mass media as a credible source for climate science.

"we get told all day long that we are heathens if we don't believe the empirical scientific evidence. In fact if we don't tow the scientific line we must be dolts and shoved to the side as nutcases"

Yes but who is telling us this, scientists or opinion columnists? Same goes for the converse argument, we are told everyday that if we don't belive the opinions of fringe dwellers and indusrty shills who cherry-pick evidence and have been thouroughly debunked time and again then we are religious zealots worshiping at the altar of Al Gore.

As you most likely realise, there is plenty of healthy debate in climate science but it's not about the much maligned "consensus", as a general rule the mass media are not interested in the finer points because nutcases sell papers.

You don't have to go very far to find major misconduct in allegedly scientific circles.

The biggest example by far is still ongoing, and because of the high profile of global warming, it even has a popular name, the Hockey Stick Scam.

In a nutshell, a bunch of corrupt scientists led by James Hansen tried to rewrite climate history to make it match their theories. Pretty sad.

(Whether their theories are right or wrong isn't the issue, their scientific misconduct is.)

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/7326 http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/No_Evidence.pdf http://jimball.com.au/Warming.htm http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/35/190/ http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/eae/Climate_Change/Older/Ice_Ages.html I still think that it is the ultimate arrogance that humans think they can alter the planets evolution. Think of continental drift and the accompanying earthquakes, volcanic activity etc. and you'll understand how insignificant humans are.

Economics - a far softer science with a (so far) vastly greater impact on human society - gets a staggering amount of leeway by comparison.

That's because most economic theories exist solely to rationalize government intervention in the economy and/or to obscure its real costs.

Now, speaking of which...

The reactions of laymen and the ignorant masses who follow Limbaugh et al can only be explained as propaganda-induced hysteria, to which only the profoundly ignorant and/or fearful are vulnerable.

O RLY? WHO is inducing hysteria here?

And did you really mean to ascribe such hysteria to those who don't buy into this particular bit of propaganda?

And only the profoundly ignorant and/or fearful are vulnerable?

That's got to be the purest example of projection I've ever seen anywhere.

Not sure if these are scientists: Avery/... some other guy I forgot the name of

News article about MIT scientists with evidence against human-induced global warming

Dr. Ball, I think his name is.

Of course, I have heard scientists say that all real scientists believe it and don't dispute it.

Peer reviewed stuff on here...