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Misuse of Scientific Data By the White House
Science data nerds writes "The White House is consistently and persistently claiming that the US is doing better than Europe in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is false — their claim is purely based on carefully selecting the only subset of the data that supports this conclusion. When all the data are used, it is plain that European emissions have declined substantially and US emissions have grown substantially. The article, and this linked analysis, debunk the White House claims."
Just more wishy-washy leberal blathering. The head of NASA says that Global Warming doesn't exist - and if it does, it's Gods will. Maybe it's time to get Baptized, eh?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Everyone knows that George W. Bush loves the scientific method so much that he would NEVER allow this to happen. Just look at his stance on that intelligent design nonsense....
You mean the White House lied to the public? I'm shocked, shocked! Well, not that shocked.
The ensuing hot air will contribute [a] little.
...so what else is new? http://30days.itious.com/
21st-Century-Citizen
For everyone interested in this topic, Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science is required reading.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
with alot of eastern countries mostley not using cars i find this hard to believe. they also have better public transportation. Seems like in america i see big SUVs and trucks everywhere. i cannot comment on industrial pollution since i cannot link to any facts. and besides, the white house wouldnt lie. they always tell the truth. i almost couldnt say that without laughing
This is the same way the White House got us into the war in Iraq. They only ever choose the evidence that suits them. Move along folks. (me wipes tear from my eye)
are belong to U.S.
George W Bush deserves the death penalty.
All claims by all governments are based on cherry picked data, EU included.
If you are shocked, then you are either fresh off the turnip truck or you are not really shocked, but just see an opportunity to bash Bush.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The submitter, the analysis, and the relevant claims in the first linked article are from the "Pacific Institute". That's fine and doesn't mean anything about it is incorrect, but probably means there is an agenda at work - surprise, just as there's an "agenda" served by the White House, too - and this is also a factual statement:
Pick any year since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997, Mr. Bush should have said, and the U.S. CO2 emission performance is superior to that of all major Kyoto parties, including and most notably Europe (CO2 being the focus of the many pending legislative proposals).
Also, the submission complains that the US metric shown in a positive light - surprising they'd choose something that reflects positively! - is that because only CO2 emissions are considered. Well, CO2 emissions account for nearly three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Further is the problem with using 2000 as the reference point. In fact, it is perfectly valid to use 2000 as a reference point; it's just as valid as using 1997 or any other time. There is no magical time in terms of statistical length or any point in time that is any more valid than any other. You can argue that the submitter is "cherry picking" his own data. It's laughable to say there is a "right" base year.
Of course, the issue is much, much more complex, and no one wants to take into consideration the very real economic impacts of taking drastic action to reduce emissions, especially when China and India - forget the EU - are not saddled with the same restrictions.
Constructing greater and more elaborate lies, and applying the finest of lipstick to pigs.
The White House is full of graduates from Regent University - Pat Robertson's fiefdom. Since Pat Robertson is willing to go to great lengths (including calling for the assassination of foreign leaders) to impose his anachronistic views, it stands to reason that his graduates will think nothing of lying when it push theirs.
True - they operate on the fact that if the T.V. tells you "4/5 dentists chew Trident", it must be TRUE (even if the dentists are given free samples or paid to say that, lol)!
(Sample sets are EVERYTHING in statistics... anyone who's taken stat 1 & 2 alone know this)
I.E.-> For those that don't? Well, choose the right sample set of data (OR, in this came, from a body of data) to display, you can make folks believe nearly anything!
(Those creating the "charts/graphs" know 9/10 viewing won't actually research the evidences, data, & how/what/where/when/why/how etc. et al it was collected & assume "that's the way it is baby, for real: this 'study' showed me so!")
APK
P.S.=> I know 1 thing: Bad news today? It's quickly forgotten, because of the bad news tomorrow, & the 'spin masters' know this, above all else... apk
When all the data are used,
Let it be noted where the article submitter is from...
I just watched two movies: Control Room (2004) about the media coverage of the invasion of Iraq and Al Jazeera's role and The revolution will not be televised (2003) about the role of the private media in the coup in Venezuela in 2001. Neither of the two might be called very objective, but I see how difficult it would be to find an audience for more scientific analysis.
The common theme in both is how important the media has become. Now this is not really news, but during the last decade the media reaction has been part of e.g. military operation (embedded journalism) and there is a tremendous effort to control the pictures. Not so much to suppress any reporting, since it has become obvious that this will never work, but to control what is fed to the press. And unfortunately the press is not yet up to speed to get their informations from a wider number of sources.
Now with blogging, youtube, flickr etc. there seems to be a much wider range of possible information sources, even harder to suppress than in the past. But today we face the problem which of these sources to trust, there are just so many. There are attempts like newstrust, which tries to be a sort of slashdot moderation system on top of existing news. But I think we need much more of this. Like greasemonkey allows you to attach things to websites that the authors did not intend to be there, we need the option to attach other sources to any news and have a large body of people vote on which of these sources should be taken into account. I have no clue how to realize this, but this is a typical case: the government using FUD to strengthen their position. People can react and argue with the claims, but there should be a way for these comments to reach the public, not only via sites like slashdot, but by default. With the increase of media sources and media power we have to become better at using and evaluating media as a group, not only as single viewers and readers.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
it's the latest gotcha is all. those guys lie like a preacher at a lap dance parlor.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Cheers
The whole purpose of data/statistics is to prove your point. The US government has always misrepresented data to prove it's point. Its the 'tail wagging the dog'. Government makes policy, in order to not seem like a tyranny government creates data to justify policy. Let's see, War in Iraq, Spanish American war. I could go on forever this isn't new and we shouldn't' pretend it is. The problem is most people don't understand statistical data. Its not just a matter of greater than or less than, there are so many mitigating factors. But thats what we get, guess what we are also behind Europe on mmm education maybe . No wonder American's buy everything they here or see as fact. There is a reason advertising is a billion dollar industry, we're jsut a bunch of little fat fish waiting for the magic hook to re-appear
Take a look at US and UK BMW websites. The UK entry level model gets 40MPG, which is not much worse than our Prius. Living proof that we can double our car fuel efficiency NOW if we just stop being apathetic about it. And this is nothing compared to the impact of living in apartments and having a working Metro.
I'm not saying the writer is wrong, but making accusatory claims and then revealing evidence makes one sound very biased. Pre-verifying the claims rather than merely pointing out where they are lowers ones perceived reasonableness as well as the perceived likely value of the evidence. A statement as to where the evidence came from might be more useful.
Statistics these days are becoming increasingly worthless, often just used to justify a political agenda on both sides. It's like the old adage says: statistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is crucial.
Cherry Picking the Time Period
In addition to selectively choosing the indicator to evaluate, Horner and the White House both
selectively chose a time period to make U.S. policy look good. Horner, who ironically has been a
staunch and regular opponent of U.S. participation in the Kyoto Protocol, chooses 1997 ("Pick
any year since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997"), and 2000 ("In truth, Europe's CO2
emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the U.S. since Kyoto, three times as fast since
2000"). The White House settled on 2000 as their base period.
First of all, Horner gets his math wrong, even when selectively choosing 1997 as a base year.
From 1997 to 2004 (the last year for which official data are available for both regions), European
carbon dioxide emissions rose just under 8%; US emissions rose just under 7%. Thus, Horner's
claim that "Europe's CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the U.S. since Kyoto" is
false. Indeed, in absolute terms, US carbon dioxide emissions rose by a larger amount over this
period than Europe's.
Second, when the proper date is chosen as the base year, Europe does better than the United
States.10 The proper base year for comparison is 1990.
First, the Bush wasn't in the White House in 1990. This may come as a surprise to the person who wrote the article, but Bush became president in 2001. He can pretty much distance himself to stuff prior to being in office all he wants, without it being "cherry picking."
Second, the very point the administration tries to make on this particular facet is that the agreement was in 1997, not 1990, thus 1997 is what should be used. 1990 favors other countries, because industries do this cyclical thing; starting at the date the agreement was reached seems the most logical regardless, to pick any date other than then is what is "cherry picking."
Finally: "European carbon dioxide emissions rose just under 8%; US emissions rose just under 7%." So when it's all said and done, and you provide your own slant to it, you still admit it rose less in the US than it did in Europe? Yeahkthnxbuhbye, enjoy the moments in fame, 20 years from now people will laugh about arguments like yours.
They lie so frequently, it should not surprise anyone.
-1 iHate bush/republicans/america/non-environmentalists/
Why, I'll see your see misuse of scientific data by the right wing with a misuse of scientific data by the left!
a) Including 1990 as a base year for European emissions is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, up until very recently European economic growth has badly lagged that of the USA. When there is less growth, there is less emissions. Even now, European economic growth lags, as a rule. When you have 10% of your people unemployed, as the French do, it does not take them much CO2 to drive to work, as there is no work to drive to. Secondly, Europeans have been furiously gaming emissions in their own right. There's been rampant adjusting of the baseline in order to improve their own greenhouse picture. So, the real question is, are the Europeans actually seriously making their targets, or are they simply patting themselves on the back for the slow growth side effects of the nanny state.
b) The gases described by the convention do not include water vapor, which constitutes the bulk of global warming.
c) All climate conventions these days presuppose that a reduction in manmade emissions will correct the atmospheric balance of gasses, and, that, by doing so, our climate will revert to some imagined ideal state of 1700, which was in the middle of an ice age, and a billion people will easily starve to death because of a shortened growing season. This will be almost as stupid as the wide spread left wing opposition to nuclear power, which essentially doomed us to global warming to begin with. Really, if the USA had gone 100% nuclear, there would be no global warming, and, so really, all of this finger pointing at Republicans over global warming is an elaborate smokescreen to say that you Lefties once again f=== up the planet and want we superior Bush supporters to bail you out.
We told you what the answer was : Build Nukes. Build Hydro. If you don't like it, that's your problem.
I think anyone can see that humanity needs to manage the atmospheric mixture of gases. We manage the acidity of our soils to grow things, we build dams around rivers and levees around the sea. It only stands to reason that we should do battle with mother nature and preserve some happy mix of gases to benefit humanity. So, where is the call to actually build a technology that sequesters excess gases from the atmosphere? Why can't we research and build machines that eat CO2 and turn it into carbon and oxygen? Sure, the energy required to split that up is enormous, but, that's what nukes are for. Do we really seriously build an atmospheric management strategy that a geologically active planet with a radioactive core and a radically diverse ecosystem will not on occasion enter an atmospheric state on its own that we should control? What if we discover some giant CO2 source on the ocean floor that we never considered before?
Let's pursue a strategy of building nuclear plants to reduce our own emissions, and then, while we are at it, build a machine to manage the atmosphere.
This is my sig.
(short excerpt link, but watcha want, effort? pff)
The Assault on Reason
by our fearless runner-up A1_G0r3 is also potentially apt, but I'm annoyed that he felt it necessary to publish a physical book tome.
I mean, the guy invented the interweb for crissakes...
Post the book up for free like the rest of the science mafia.
Earn flask cred. Save a tree. Meh.
And yes, he was on the daily show last week hocking it.
How else would I have remembered he still existed? (joke al)
PS: -1 offtopic, but doesn't the voting machine issue (www.diebold.com) start looking less tinfoil about now?
WHY TEH HECK ARE THEY NOT USING CONTROL OF CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE THE UNDERMINING OF OUR "DEMOCRACY"?
Is there a more important issue in the next 18 months? I'm not so sure. Stay tuned.
all governments all over the world do stuff like this. I thought that the great thing about the usa was the fact that things like this could be exposed by the likes of the media (as well as open discussion). While many cheer this administration because of the propaganda, and many hate it for the same reason, the real problem has to account for nothing.
Calm down! Relax! It's all part of a carefully orchestrated plan; when we eventually begin to get severely affected by global warming, the US war mongering will reach a point where nuclear winter will cancel it out.
It's remarkable - everyone in the US seems to have made peace with the fact that they're consistently being lied to by the very people they employ.
It's not even as if the lies are insignificant. Why don't you people do something about your government?
The summary's claim is that the White House is selectively using data points, and to an extent that is true. They base their claims on an index comparison that starts at the year 2000. When you view the data this way, it does appear that the EU's Greenhouse Gas emissions have gone up, while the US's have declined/been neutral. The article prefers on the other hand to index at 1990, which shows that over the last 14 years of data that the US's emissions have increased dramatically compared to the EU.
Now here's my first problem: the accusation assumes that 2000 is not a good index year, which it is. If the Bush Administration wants to make the case that they (The Bush Administration) have been more successful than the EU in reducing emissions, then the logical start point for comparison is about when they took over which would be 2001.
Now, the article points out correctly that Greenhouse emissions tend to drop during economic slowdowns. One can see that easily by looking at the graph at the end of it (the US has a drop in 1991; the EU has a drop from 92-96; the US has another drop from 00-01). If one takes these economic slowdowns into account, then 2000, the peak of the last economy, might very well be a good starting point for the Administration to start their indexing from. Why should they have to take into account the failures of past administrations (Bush I, and Clinton) when touting the success of their administration? If, hypothetically, US emissions had decreased from 1990 to 2000 and increased from 2000 to 2004, would it be fair for the Bush Administration to take the earlier data into account and claim that they had reduced emissions? No, that would be taking credit for progress they did not make. The same principle applies reverse.
The article also brings about a perpetual flaw in any sort of greenhouse gas analysis. It completely ignores economic growth and the effect it has on increasing emissions (which it candidly points out by the way). During much of the mid-90s the US economy was booming, especially compared to the EU, so of course there was going to be an increase in emissions from 1991-2000. Additionally, these indexes fail to take into account the size of the economic growth when making the comparison. If we really want a useful measure, we should be tracking "Volume of Emissions per Unit of GDP Growth." That way we could judge economies based on their environmental efficiency rather just on pure volumetric data.
The sun beams down on a brand new day, No more welfare tax to pay, Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light...
a) 10% unemployment in France? lol
b) it would be nice to see a link to prove that, I would have thought water vapor was caused by global warming not the other way around.
c) 1700? the middle of an ice age? wtf? did you go to grade 5? That's when we learned about an ice age, read a bit on it and you'll find out that we would still be in it. I agree about the nukes being a good idea but don't you think you contradict yourself when you say there will be no more global warming because you also say that it's mostly caused by water vapor.
I'm not left or right because being on one side causes one to have to accept ideas without proof. Man your post sucks.
I weep for the future
...there's Lies, Damned Lies and Scientific Facts!
(At least I think it was something like that... I really think I shoulda wrote that down.)
Speaking of agendas...
/. become the next Rush Limbaugh site, but the slow emergence of slashkos is concerning as well. Then again it's the editors' right to tilt one way or the other, so whatever.
This is quite typical of kdawson. Just be glad it wasn't a mention of the "stolen" 2004 presidential election.
I'm no partisan Republican myself, but I'm getting fairly tired of kdawson. I don't want to see
Well, see ya' in modded-down-to-oblivion-ville.
And just what exactly do you think Al Gore (inventor of the great internet, mind you) did with his movie? He showed only the subset of evidence which supports global warming, when there's plenty of evidence against it too. It's nothing new to only be getting half the truth from either side.
Likely because the evidence ont he other side is very very sparse and comes from mostly "vested" parties (ie. EXXON) or noted shills (Seitz et al). Mostly non-peer reviewed corporate paid studies.
Btw, if you didn't see Al Gore's movie, let me sum it up for you: "OHH NOOOOEZ!!! The world is coming to an end!!!"
I hadn't seen it since I avoid propaganda from btohs sides but the whole "OMG we're Fucked!" camp annoy me. At the very very worse we'll have famine and violent storms. It wont' kill us all, and I'm certain we can deal with it.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Did you actually expect anybody in the Bush Administration to be capable of analyzing scientific data properly?!?!
One thing the United States aught to get more credit for is R&D for new technologies. All the latest and greatest green tech is American. Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries for hybrid cars. Thin film solar cells. Composite fuselage airliners by Boeing. Lots of work going on in hydrogen fuel cells in Japan and the United States. Gotta give France some credit for their enthusiasm over nuclear energy and ITER (although ITER surely won't pay off for at least 100 years, if ever). But really, name one green tech with Europe's name on it? "Smart" cars?
This most shocking thing in this article is not that the White House cherry-picks data, but that the White House (and the Conservatives in general) have finally got on board with the whole "climate change" thing. Go back 5 years and you would be called crazy if you said greenhouse gasses are aiding global warming (notice the alternate term: "climate change" instead of "global warming" - Conservatives wouldn't dare agree with Liberals and call it "global warming").
:)
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're finally getting what Liberals have been shouting for decades. It's just shocking that they're only agreeing with the science now.
Now all we have to do is wait 30 more years for Conservatives to accept evolution.
Health Insurance Quotes
.
As are most of the "facts" reported by this administraton. Cherrypicking "facts" isn't anything new. Clinton did it to a small extent, Carter did it infrequently, Bush 41 did it to a moderate extent, Reagan did it so much that he manufactured "fact" from whole cloth (but not as much as Dubbya), And Ford did to a small extent.
What I find troublesome is that Dubbya's troopies (I call 'em "The Disney Land on the Potomic bunch") actually beleive their own lies.
There's nothing more dangerious than a fanatic that beleives his own PR.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
I use this as an example of when people aren't fully up on all of the details can cause people to skew their mindset one way or another. We all know that all the claims on the famous www.dhmo.org website are 100% accurate, but also that that 100% accuracy doesn't mean that it is the bugaboo that it is made out to be.
The problem is, you can frame just about anything in such a way as to extol the virtues or vices of just about anything, and get people to buy into their wholesomeness or unwholesomeness as needed.
All one needs to do is compare the rhetoric against GWB and in support of Al Gore, and compare each followers response to the Tale of Two Houses http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
So, where I am going with this? Easy. It is easy to frame something that makes one thing look worse than it really is, or better than it really is. It happens all the time. Can we do better? Probably. Are we doing all we can? Probably not.
But there is a reason for it. Not everyone can afford a top of the line Architect to design an highly efficient home, nor the "carbon offsets" and energy from renewable sources. One day it will be feasible and necessary, even for people like China and India.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I mean, seriously, come on.
Water vapor warms the atmosphere. Of that, there is no doubt. The problem is that as CO2 rises, it ever so slightly nudges up the temperature, which in turn kicks off more evaporation, and that, my friend screws up the climate even more. So yes, we are both right. But, if we were emitting water vapor ourselves, we would be skipping the CO2 step. I wonder if a study has ever been done on water vapor emissions?
The 18th century was the tale end of the Little Ige Age. I picked 1700 because it was unarguably pre-industrial, but even during the American revolution, the climate was much colder than it is today. There was a year without a summer, for one, and, one of the most famous moments of the American Revolution, George Washington crosses a Delaware river packed with giant chunks of ice, as it was freezing over. The Delaware NEVER freezes over any more. I have read that if not for global warming, we would actually be entering an ice age now, if you believed the Milankovich cycle and all of that stuff.
Unemployment in France indeed hovers above 10%, which is why the French did the unthinkable and elected Sarkozy.
The plug about Left vs Right is that the Left likes to paint itself as the Angels of the Environment, and, in retrospect, they have made two disasterous mistakes. Banning DDT contributed to millions of deaths from malaria, and, killing nuclear power aggravated global warming. This doesn't mean the right wing is perfect. If you take the Mauna Loa CO2 ppm measurements, you can roughly calculate the increase, in tons, in CO2 added to the atmosphere each year. Basically, you take the ppm, get the % of weight in the atmosphere, then, knowing the atmospheric pressure you can figure out that somewhere each year 4 - 8 gigatons of CO2 go into the air, and, of all surprises, that's about how much carbon is in the fuel that we burn. So, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the CO2 is coming from us. My point is, though, that, the origin of CO2 is ultimately irrelevant. We know that the CO2 is going up. And just as we know we need to build a levee when the water goes up, we know we need to manage the CO2 in the air, and part of that equation has to be sequestration, just in case something screwy is going on with the earth that we don't know about, or, just as likely, something screwy goes on with the earth, like, a big burst of methane hydrates erupts out of the ocean or yellowstone erupts. We just need to have a way to manage the atmosphere.
This is my sig.
the ones that monitored global warming emissions worldwide run by the US were ordered to stop monitoring said emissions by direct order of the White House.
Why?
Because the truth is not on their side.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Of course Al Gore never said that he "invented" the Internet--that was wording that the RNC (Republican National Committee) came up with specifically to discredit Gore--and which has been repeated by the media and people like you either purposefully to smear Gore or because of ignorance/incompetence. As for there being "plenty" of evidence against human effects on global temperature, your belief is contradicted by statements signed by hundreds of scientists that study the issue--who believe that the preponderence of evidence is now that humans are almost certainly having an effect. Your hypothesis that Dems are just as bad as Bush at misusing science also fails to note several unprecedented actions that scientists have taken to protest Bush's misuse of science (e.g., http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/10600-sci entists-condemn.html).
Why must we be plagued with these sorts of loonie left-wing ideological nutjobs?
Picking the time period from 2000 onwards makes sense BECAUSE PRIOR TO THAT PERIOD, THERE WAS EXCEPTIONALLY LITTLE FOCUS ON REDUCING EMISSIONS.
To the contrary, THE MAJOR CONCERN AT THE TIME "DOCTOR" GLEICK STARTS HIS GRAPH WAS ON HOW THE WORLD WAS THREATENED BY A GLOBAL ICE AGE.
Criticising the White House for "cherry picking the period" is therefore idiocy.
I must wonder whether it was intentional idiocy or unintentional. Based on past experience I would settle on the latter.
Who funds these guys anyway?
Coyoteblog had a good article a few months back on why we did not sign the Kyoto Treaty. It mentions some of the critiques of the United States.
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Because it contains something a mod doesn't agree with? Giving a serious response to another poster with references for my position is hardly a "troll". And same for noting the truth about the situation no matter who is in office in the US.
This is how you use statistics. You find the numbers that agree with your beliefs and publicize the hell out of them.
clancey
Well then why the bloody hell didn't he name his movie as such? I mean, if people walked into a cinema and saw the following movie listings:
* Shrek
* Pirates
* OHH NOOOOEZ!!! The world is coming to an end!!!
I swear the last film would break box office records with a name like that.
http://www.pacinst.org/about_us/staff_board/adviso ry.htm
"Advisory Board
Ms. Nancy Ramsey, President, Morningstar Imports, a small Sausalito-based company. Independent analyst on disarmament, security issues, and international telecommunications. Ms. Ramsey is also a Legislative Director for Senator John Kerry (D - Massachusetts). "
Shills, did you say?
Is the UK entry level model street legal in the US? Does it meet US emissions and safety requirements? (For that matter, what constitues a 'UK entry level model', as no model is designated as such on the UK BMW website that I can find.)
7 years ago, every single article on Slashdot had multiple comments joking about Al Gore's inventing the internet. He was regularly laughed at and criticized on /., even though everyone here knew perfectly well what he had really said. All the comments about it were modded +5, Funny anyway. Now, all of a sudden since Gore has become a prominent Bush-bashing propagandist, people like yourself jump at the chance to defend him. Funny how that works isn't it?
Also, your contention that all scientists are automatically unbiased and non-partisan is pretty weak. What makes you think that scientists are magically more objective when it comes to politics than lawyers, doctors, or burger flippers?
The USA alone plants more than 4 million trees *per day* - billions of trees per year. The US forest area has increased over the last several decades. How many trees are Europe planting?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yawn... more slashtrash from angry, disgruntled slasholes. This site hasn't been about tech for years. Its just a whiney zone for the liberal problem of the day...
but just see an opportunity to bash Bush.
How blatant do the lies have to be before it's justified? How can someone lie to you so much and so often yet you...apparently...seem to still support them?
Saying Bush cherry picks statistics and manipulates data to mislead the public (i.e. lying) cannot be doubted by a reasonable person. The truth doesn't have many friends these days, might ask yourself if you're one of them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Seriously, whoever moderated this a "troll" should be ashamed of themselves.
- AJ
Those ignoramuses, they're ignorant. They're the most ignorant bunch of ignoramuses that ever ignored.
(Though the original quote would probably apply too.)
BTW, Both sides of the argument are full of shit. Having been to many of the countries in Europe (and spent significant time in some) I have seen that most European countries are much less concerned about the environment than the US is, they require significantly lower standards and allow vehicles to smog freely.
a rt.html
Why not also test your global warming knowledge. http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/GlobWarmTest/st
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
In other news, fish have been seen swimming according to recent reports, and several birds were also observed in flight.
Welcome to the wonder and beauty of statistics!
Well what are you asking people to do, READ? Apply scientific principles? Sheesh.
Half the issue here is how lax science and statistics can be used as a reality shield.
The other half is the matter at hand, global warming and protecting big oil from regulation.
Europe is innovating green tech AND mandating that it be used, NOW. This spurs industry growth.
America is putting lipstick science on pig industry to keep profits up. This spurs executive salaries.
The regulators are asleep at the wheel because they can't bite the hand that gets them elected.
Corporate money owns our government on many levels, and in the case of diebold, quite literally.
The left hand KNOWS what the right hand is doing, and is doing a tapdance in front of the curtain.
Of course, we didn't sign the Kyoto accord, so there's no reason this can't continue indefinitely...
that is, so long as we keep our people distracted with bad science and top-down media blindness.
Gas costs $8.00 a gallon? Oh well. Lets push the terrorism button again. Step 4: Profit!
It's hard to do better than others when you're doing nothing...
The trading regime instituted in Europe has already caused stress to clean efficient plants trying to control their emissions because they face competitors in places like Morocco with no control regime who undersell them.
At present, it takes a typical US factory twice the energy input to produce equivalent goods to a typical German or French factory. Controlling emissions puts a high emphasis on efficient use of energy. It won't be long before the European factory is, say, using only 1/3 the energy of a US factory, or a Moroccan one. In the longer run, energy prices are sure to spike. So while the short-term advantage goes to Morocco - or China or even the US (especially as the dollar continues to drop against the euro), in the long run, when energy surpasses labor as the chief component of the wholesale cost of the finished good, the European factories will both the price leaders, and - in a way the Moroccans and Chinese are sure not to be anytime soon - the quality leaders.
When that happens, the Europeans will also start making significant euros selling their energy-efficient, low-emission tech to the rest of the world - if they want to. But many of those efficient processes will be treated as trade secrets and not shared. We may well be looking not at a new Chinese, let alone American century, but at the latter half of the 21st century being entirely dominated by a new European supremacy.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yeah,
Um... re-read your quote - I'm pretty sure they are simply talking about the year/date selected.
Dumbass.
^^
With that single word, I contributed more to the discussion than you.
Btw, if you didn't see Al Gore's movie, let me sum it up for you: "OHH NOOOOEZ!!! The world is coming to an end!!!"
I hadn't seen it...
Then how do you know it's propaganda? The parent is wrong, by the way. The movie says "This is a serious problem. If we don't act, the consequences are dire. However, it's well within our ability to do something." Hardly the OMG we're fucked point of view.
Cthulhu for President! Why settle for the lesser evil?
You do realize that you're splitting hairs. Although his actual words were that he "took the initiative in creating the internet" presumably by voting for a bill which had funding of ARPA as one of its items, the essence of that statement was Gore claiming credit for the internet's existence.
He might as well have actually said he invented it since he was attempting to ride its coattails directly into office.
Perhaps you've never heard of the principle of "fake, but true?"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Nice try though hahaha
that the Whitehouse seems to actually expect that intelligent people won't see right through their argument.
The other thing that gets me is that most Americans seem to prefer to believe the Whitehouse's argument because it conveniently eliminates their need to take responsibility for their own pollution.
The third thing that gets me is that even though its actually just stating true facts, this post will probably be moderated (by an American) as 'Flamebait' or 'Troll' just so they can continue to live in denial.
As others have pointed out, picking 2000 as a base year is a lot more useful than picking 1990, if you want to know what current trends are.
That, plus Europe's CO2 reductions for the 1990->now period are artificially inflated by once-off events such as coal mine closures, the movement of steel industry to China (an aggregate CO2 increase, btw) and by closures of inefficient Eastern European industrial plant.
So the WHite House's claims in fact have condiserably more merit than this Pacific Institute which the slashdot people have credulously believed.
Europe as a whole has a declining population. Typically a nation has to have a birth rate of 2.1 children per woman in order to sustain it's population. Europe's number of births per woman in 2004 was 1.45 while the United States has actually managed an average of 2.09 births per woman.
i lity should suffice for anyone wanting more information.
I wouldn't readily accept that policy alone accounts for differences in a regions rate of pollution as much as there are gradually fewer and fewer people that are engaging in pollution causing activities. I'm not discounting the influence of policy but I would like to suggest that any analysis of the situation should take into account declining population.... especially in the middle and upper classes of the region.
This article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fert
load "$",8,1
The current administration *always* lies, so the truth is just the opposite of what they say. GW's methods have made it so easy to know where the truth is. So, we know if GW says we are doing better the than EU on emissions, than the truth is the EU is doing better than we are. So simple!
... Gates educated the government on marketing hype practices as part of the sentence bargaining of the DOJ VS. MS case. Really. And the Gov bush got practice during the war drum banging on pre war iraq... yeah know prove you don't have WMDs.... (against scientific perspective of not being able to prove a negative, like prove there is no god.)
And look how good it works...
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I have developed a rather handy rule of thumb during the Bush administration:
If something comes from George Bush's lips, the exact opposite is in fact true.
If those fuckers are willing to lie to us, then get them the fuck out of office. Mod me down for inflammatory language but it needs to be said.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
The largest, most successful car company on the planet? Toyota. The leader on going Green through higher fuel economy and smarter technology? Toyota. Coincidence?
Which city in the rust belt has a trade surplus with China and why? Erie PA. Because GE makes the most fuel efficient locomotives on the planet in Erie and even though the Chinese have lower labor costs and environmental protection standards, the GE locmotives, while costing more to purchase, pay-back the extra cost very rapidly in fuel savings. The greenest tech is the most efficient tech and it wins economically.
So, protecting and subsidizing stupidity might protect one particular set of players in an industry (GM & Ford, for instance) but overall it doesn't do the USA any good.
Green is efficient, so Green is smart business.
There's green in going green -- Friedman
Didn't humanity survive through multiple ice ages? Harshest climate change yet? I don't think so. The worst that happens in global warming is that sea levels rise up, some areas become deserts, and others become rain forests, if you believe the accuracy (which is suspect), of global climate computer models.
This is my sig.
Global Warming!
Somebody will always find something that is not broken, spend money on conferences and studies, and declare it fixed!
The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
You don't know anything about the people you are responding to, so it is rather presumptuous--inaccurate/wrong in fact in my case--to say that stating the truth about what Gore said has some connection to Bush. Gore did not get up in front of a crowd and say something like, "aren't you glad that *I* invented the Internet." Instead, he was talking about his qualifications to be President and the fact that he had been a major Senate proponent of research that led to the development of the Internet (e.g., see a key bill he sponsored: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Bill). It is not in any sense "splitting hairs" to draw a distinction between these two situations--particularly since the media and Republicans continue to promote the "I intevented the Internet" misrepresentation.
Whoever said that?? I don't see any posting here claiming that! However, if what you are saying is that you aren't willing to trust the consensus of the majority of scientists in a field to decide what the current best theories in the field are, then I don't see how you believe that science should work. Every person's opinion is equivalent, no matter how ill informed about a subject they are? If 5% of scientists in a field disagree with 95% then *nothing* is known? Honestly, if you believe that scientists are just as biased and dishonest about their own research field as politicians are about most things, I don't see how you could support any scientific endeavours at all.
Griffin did not dispute the reality of global warming, he's just not sure it is worth doing anything about it. This is strange coming from an engineer since one would think the basic reaction would be "Wow! If we can change the planet with out meaning to, what could we do if we engineered it?" but he seems to have some philosophical hangup about not interfering in how we are interfering with the planet. Here's a summary: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Administrat or_Michael_Griffin_Not_Sure_Global_Warming_A_Probl em_999.html.
s -selling-solar.html
More to the point on emissions from various countries, here is a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tabulation of emission trends. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700609104v1. China appears to be primarily responsible for the acceleration of emissions. With the US reducing it's emissions 1.3% between 2005 and 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18831796/, it look as though China will continue to dominate the acceleration.
While TFA has some valid points, the main thing is that industrialized countries have a better opportunity to slow or reduce emissions since, for them, efficiency improvements can pace growth while for developing nations efficiency cannot help with a growth from zero situation.
--
Out pace growth: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The entity known as Darwin is going to take care of everything. If there is global warming, pollution, toxic environment, rampant cancer then Humans will have children that can handle it.
okay?
"Even when carbon dioxide is the only gas evaluated, the EU- 15 does far better than the U.S. over the proper period from 1990 to 2004. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions grew almost 18% over that period, while EU-15 CO2 emissions grew 8.6%."
and goes on to state that:
When any year other than 2000 is selected as the base year, and when all greenhouse gases covered by the UN Framework Convention are included in the analysis, the claims of Horner and the White House that the U.S. is outperforming the EU turn out to be false: the European Union is performing far better than the United States. Over the entire period from 1990 to 2004, the difference is stark. During those 15 years, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions grew more than 15% while emissions from the 15 countries of the European Union (the EU-15) declined by around 1%. Moreover, calculating the index of emissions for any set of years between 1990 and 2004 other than 2000 to 2004, European greenhouse gas emissions either grew more slowly than U.S. emissions or actually declined.
Confusing? Then why not just look at the graph of emissions for all greenhouse gases displayed in the .pdf file?
The line showing US emissions goes up ... the trend being just about linear from 1990 to 2004, with a dip between 2000 and 2004 that comes back to the trend by 2004. The line showing EU CO2 emissions wiggles a bit below the index of 100 (i.e. the index relative to 1990], and returns to the index of 100 by 2004.
So ... yes ... for the time period covered by the dip you can show that the index for the "dipping" series is lower than for the non-dipping one. That's not so much a feature of the data as it is of the presentation. Hence the term "cherry-picking".
Now that's our "how to lie with statistics" lecture for today. Let me summarise for you:
- you have two timeseries, of which you need to show that one is increasing faster {or slower} than the other
- plot both timeseries you want to compare in one graph
- look for a dip in the one you want to "show" is decreasing or increasing slower (or a bump in the one you want to show is increasing or decreasing slower]
- index the timeseries at the start of the dip (or bump] and only take as many data points as are in the dip or the bump. This is important!
- graph the results for that period, or produce those hard-as-nails growth figures
- Just remember to *never* allow any graphs of the whole timeseries to reach your target audience or you will be caught out.
Which Republicans will TrollMod me just because I say that Bush is destroying America, and stupid people still approve of him?
--
make install -not war
Likely because the evidence ont he other side is very very sparse and comes from mostly "vested" parties (ie. EXXON) or noted shills (Seitz et al). Mostly non-peer reviewed corporate paid studies.
Oh really? How about opinions and papers by a respected MIT climatologist. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the UN-sanctioned International Panel on Climate Change? Please read this article and then research the background on the interviewee: http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/20/2/2/1
man George you seriously need a sense of _humor_
Actually, it's quite complicated to pick a data set. For instance, in the course of my job today, I was looking at the record temperature records for June in Moses Lake WA. From 1995 until now, there have been precisely zero new record highs set. There have been 6 new record lows set. So based on that data set, global cooling is much more likely than global warming.
Is it a valid data set for that purpose? No.
Even if it was, there could be confounding factors. Maybe warmer oceans are making more clouds and cooling the local climate, since Moses Lake is downwind of the Pacific.
Since 1995, personally I have become more convinced there is global warming, and less convinced the it's all humanity's fault. (If it has not cooled down to some extent by 2020, then I'll have to change my mind about the solar output cycles.) And my conviction that there is nothing substantial we can do about without directly or indirectly killing 2 or 3 billlion people hasn't changed. We are stuck with it, so prepare to roll with the punchs.
$65 a barrel oil will do more to reduce fossil fuel consumption than any amount of frantic arm waving. The generation doing the frantic armwaving now doesn't remember the riots of the '60s, and how completely useless they were at actually getting anything useful done. And if you don't like corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel, then invest in a startup to develop something better (sugar beets, cellulose, algae, a GM cold climate sugar cane?) and put the corn people out of business.
junkscience.com is the home of the notorious corporate shill Steven Milloy, who's corrupt enough to deny the link between tobacco smoke and lung cancer on behalf of big tobacco.
As Gore Vidal calls it...
Need Mercedes parts ?
The waters around china are disgusting. If that isn't enough, zoom in over some of the larger cities and notice how brown they are... it is the smog
china has advanced demographically faster than any other nation in our history.. Reducing infant mortality leading to a fast growing population to reducing the number of babies per woman to slow the population growth... it took them 50 years. It took the U.S. 100 years. 50 years to go from lots o babies who die, to having few babies who all survive. But as they advanced quickly, they have poured out all the pollution that goes along with industrializing.
Your point about China switching away from coal is an interesting one. A recent German report estimated that China will reach peak coal in about 15 years (linked here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/three-cornered -ghost.html). China takes enourmous staged hits from global warming
but it is not clear that their conversion is owing to recognition of that particular problem.s -selling-solar.html
--
Orient toward the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Ok, so why did the EU's carbon-dioxide emissions increase by so much in 2000-2004? Could it have been in part because the EU expanded during this time to include, for example, Poland? Does anyone here know what the status is on this?
Logic, macros, and more
It'd be real nice to grow tropical fruit in New England.
The USA will get that Mexican climate, fitting for the new owners. The old owners can move to that uninhabited area called Canada. We all get more space; the continent is kind of triangular with the big part up north.
Alaska is way bigger than Hawaii.
Opening up the Northwest Passage would be great for trade. Opening up the whole Arctic Ocean would be even better. Right now the area is a damn worthless because of the ice.
And people are bitching about Republicans coming around on Global warming?
This is my sig.
Iceland going geothermal/hydrogen is pretty cool stuff.
Feeling sad about the future? Here's your remedy... stop watching "An Incovenient Truth"!!!
It's like the Book of Revelation for fear mongering environmentalists.
Wow, a dullwitted anti-Bush screech from K "Senile Hippie" Dawson, complete with link to some idiotic leftoid web site.
What are the odds?
Hey, Dawson: why don't you limit yourself to posting moronic non-stories about technologies that you understand about as well as a barnacle understands quantum mechanics, rather than subjecting us to your idiotic 40-year-out-of-date political maunderings?
Hitler was also a mass murderer, but the Germans didn't have many problems with science, did they?
This is what cherry picking data really does: Imagine you roll a die, and only record the result when it lands on a 6. Your conclusion is that rolling a die produces a 6 every time. Or to make it look realistic, just remove about half the times it lands below a 3. That way you get an average of around 4. That's pretty much what the global warming deniers do. Cherry picking data is possibly the most outrageous of scientific misconduct. Sadly it's all too common these days - even in intro science courses in college, a lot of kids throw away experimental results if they don't agree with "What I'm supposed to get" and far too many courses reward getting the "right" result ahead of performing the experiment thoroughly and interpreting the real data your receive.
There has, and the upshot is that water vapor stays in the air for a week or two, whereas CO2 has a residence time of at least decades. For climate purposes, water vapor is essentially always in equilibrium with current temperature, whereas the CO2 sinks can't keep up with human production.
Carbon dioxide isn't the strongest greenhouse gas (metric ton for metric ton), but it is the one that will stay in the atmosphere for years, driving water vapor as a secondary effect.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
probably the republicans are making another press release and this time to cover up the real situation of the green house effect, how could they loose a lot of honesty for the people. The main reason why there are no changes in the program is the lack of political will to decrease the emission of gases. let's discuss this further, reach me at: http://forum.affiliatebot.com/register.php
This happens the whole time - it is a combination of politics and the nature of statistics. Is it not obvious that a goverment will accept a study in favour of what they are preaching in the political arena rather than accepting a study that openly criticises them - it would rather stupid not to.
Also, I'm sure that the US government would be satisfied with a study on a 5% significance level so that they can just say "We are 5% certain that the USA's pollution rates are lower than Europe's"
Well of course... That's the nature of the beast.
The White House is full of Politicians, what do you expect from Politicians (or Politicians playing Scientists on TV)? Just as there is truth in Religion, there is truth in politics (meaning the truth is absolute, and not up for examination).
Now if a lie (or carefully selected data) had come from Scientists, that's another matter. There is no truth in Science (unlike politics, Science is always up for examination).
If Environmental Science is not open for examination. It would not be science, it would be politics or religion.
Politics is about building a consensus, and when the consensus is built. Then there is truth. The political truth is not open for examination. The political consensus is truth. It is an absolute upon which all parties agree.
If you are not happy with the consensus, perhaps you should have been a contributor to the consensus. Instead of screaming "She's a Witch... Burn the Witch" from the sidelines.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Hmm.. so a UN committee of hundreds of scientists vs one MIT climatologist.
Interesting to note as well, that many of the so-called 'respected scientists' who challenge anthropogenic warming fail to declare what their PhD is actually in, and who granted it. Are these the same 'Universities' who offer PhDs in Bible Studies and Genesis? When medical doctors and archaeologists and biblical scholars deny global warming I might just listen to metereologists, climatologist, earth scientists and the evidence of my own eyes.
Where I live we are seeing extinctions because higher altitudes are consistently warmer, so creatures evolved for those climates have nowhere to go.
This is what's known as The Whitehouse Effect. It's caused by polititions open their mouths and releasing whitehouse gasses.
It's purely political. Now you might say the same about U.S. DOE releases.
But I refuse - completely - to read any "scientific" report that has "bush is evil" and "the washington times had the nerve to discredit me" on the first page.
Why ? Because such statements DO NOT belong in a scientific study. Neutral references from both sides, in peer-reviewed journals, yes. Note that still would mean that the washington times is off limits.
Also why is the study house so young ?
There are so many things wrong with calling this a "study" that it's ridiculous.
Clinton comes from an unpriviledged, to say the least, background. IIRC he was raised by his mother alone.
Bush, just like Kerry, comes from wealth and power.
Definitely not the same cloth.
unfortunately, economics has the concept of externalities, which is much more prone to haphazard manipulation than the scientific concept of statistical significance.
both these are used to selectively regard (i.e., ignore) reality. this is not to say that i agree/disagree w/ your analysis; i just wanted to inject some warning color into the discussion...
That's quite the pointless figure. Australia could blow up dozens of nukes and still come ahead in radioactive pollution ... per land mass.
And if you want to counter the otherwise irrelevant republican argument, that Kyoto would harm the economy, look at the European example, where oil consumption per GDP unit is half the US.
All of GM's full size trucks and SUVs - GMC Yukon and Yukon XL, Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV, and pickup trucks and fleet vehicles - will have the most advanced two-mode full hybrid system to date on nearly any consumer vehicle for MY2008.
Well in the future I expect to be driving a De Lorean with an advanced MisterFusion garbage-powered engine.
Oh, and an "advanced hybrid" from the future is about as efficient as your average European or Japanese sedan from yesterday.
And no, you can't have the freedom to pollute my air, destroy my roads and gridlock my city. Not yours.
Your US fluid oz is bigger than our UK fluid oz.
So the number of oz per gallon doesn't relate to the different size of the gallon.
The UK gallon is a little bigger.
That's just another misdirection.
o king_at_the_.html
The GDP of the US has only increased if you measure GDP in US$.
The US$ has collapsed, and your $ will only buy you 58% of the corn it did at the turn of the millennium or 40% as much oil.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/05/lo
For example:
Supposed your GDP stayed flat when measured in oil. When measured in US$ it would appear to be 2.5 times greater (100/40), because the $ has devalued so much. You say 'yippee out GDP to oil ratio is 2.5 times better, aren't we clever!'.
But your GDP is the same, it's just your US$ have devalued by that amount and your actual ecomony is stagnant.
Do you really want to be led by someone who's completely ignorant?
It could get you into all sorts of shit, wars and things...
And if you don't care then what's all the fuss about?
Deleted
The linked article reads like a bad highschool report. Just a kludge of assertions with no clean data to back them up.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
from the dems proclaiming that an increase in spending less than some inflation-adjusted amount is a decrease in spending?
all pols are humpty-dumpsters...
Go post this partisan crap on the Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, asshole.
Now you know why our great US economy continues to be
amazing and fantastic to __legitimate politicized economist.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Climate science is all about cherry picking data to say what you want so why not say something that is less costly in the long run like not hindering your economy
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
When is AL Gore going to be exposed. He does exactly the same thing with his Global Warming dribble.
There are more besides the one MIT Climatologist. The guy who founded the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Wisconsin (#2 research university in the US based on federal funding) recognizes that the earth is warming, but does not believe it is due to man-made CO2 emissions.
Congress should investigate voter fraud? I thought Gonzalez was getting in trouble because he fired US attourneys that WEREN'T investigating voter fraud!
BMW offers the 1 series in Europe. It won't be available in the US until next year. Even then, there are different engines available in Europe versus US.
In Europe you can buy the 3-series with a 1.8L engine using either petro or diesel. The diesel model gets around 50 mpg.
As others have pointed out, US safety standards are more rigorous, and as such the cars tend to be heavier when coming to the states. Also our roads are built differently, and our driving styles tend to demand the larger engines.
In general though, I agree that the US could cut consumption if we wanted to. More smaller cars, etc. There's no real need for some of the vehicles people buy here, such as say a Hummer H2. That being said, I've noticed as cities become more crowded, parking is harder to come by and gas prices go up, there is a natural tendency towards buying the smaller vehicles.
> Misuse of Scientific Data By the White House
That would imply there is someone there than can read.
I am not trying to troll or throw flames here, just pointing out what I learned while looking into who the Pacific Institute is...Astounding Bible Prophecy! Yes, yes tongue-in-cheek that's pacinst.com, not .org.....
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
What the oil biz doesn't want you to know, or, put another way,
what they aren't going to come out and tell you...
The somewhat-complicated act of drilling for oil and gas produces
tremendous amounts of CO2. Read: vast pockets of CO2 are
also trapped in various strata, and oil companies are drilling into
these pockets and releasing staggering amounts of C02 into the air
on a daily basis. I've actually watched gas-detection meters "peg out"
while a well was being drilled, with the main culprit being CO2.
(For the initiated, it was a Continental Labs detector.)
I eat spaghetti code out of a bit-bucket while sitting at a hash table, and I pay for the meal with cache!
Cars are growing heavier so they can withstand the impact of cars that are growing heavier.
It just like bureaucracy, which is also expanding to meet the needs ot the expanding bureaucracy.
Just because what Bush may decide to do isn't something YOU or I like, it is something that a vast majority of Americans did like (at least at one time). That doesn't make him a sociopath. Misguided, perhaps, but not a sociopath.
You're on the path to ruin. The "Bush is a sociopath" meme is an article of "progressive" faith. Denying it will not be productive when debating a devout "progressive" because it will only inspire rage and violence.
Remember: we can't talk with individuals whose minds won't change when new facts are discovered. They use facts like drunks use lampposts: for support, not for illumination. There is absolutely no virtue in "standing up for what you believe". The real bravery comes from a person who is willing to change what they believe, even right down to their core, formative beliefs, when new discoveries arise. That is the most difficult kind of bravery because it requires us to destroy our own ego and reinvent it -- provided we survive the process. Are you willing to admit that everything you believe might be wrong, and that the morality you've stood for and fought for might actually be evil? The person who steadfastly answers "NO!" to that question is the individual I prefer to keep at arm's length.
Ramble ramble ramble...
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
ah, rational pie...that's just an urban legend, you know. That was never a law, nor an attempt at law, in any US state. Check Snopes.com
You're thinking Meters per Gallon.
"Russia is not the enemy,"
Then , who IS?
Democracies want to know.
vehicles to smog freely. ... as in "beer". Did you have a look at the gas prices ? Noticed any difference ? That alone makes drivers in Europe much, much more concerned about how much gas their vehicle guzzles.
Having lived near Butte, MT. I am also well aware of what a little strip mining can do. And articles recently have brought to life other pollutants in our immediate environment. But the difficulty is that these do not lessen the risk of a greenhouse effect.
C02 has a huge lead time - up to forty years. That means what we spew out now is probably not going to be an issue for a while - but will be hard to reverse when it *is* an issue. The time for action is now, on all of these fronts. It is not a sufficient answer to say "This part of the problem is bigger, we should focus there." They are all big, and we are basing our decisions on which fronts to fight on which fronts are going to be least painful to fight.
Creating a sustainable, controlled environment and economy is going to be extremely painful. It means that we can't all have one of everything; that's a lie sold to the American public by the devil if ever there was one. We have the resources in the here and now to cope with the problem - but we choose to expend that energy on other spectres, such as the idea that increasing our wait time at airports will save us from terrorists. Or that having an indefinite, ongoing war in the middle east will somehow secure our blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity. The ironic thing is that jobs can be created and the economy powered by fighting back the pollution we have now - it just won't be putting money into the pockets of those who control modern industry.
We have to stop the C02. We have to stop all the pollutants. To quote from the best movie of all time, "We can't afford to let one of those bastards in here."
[Ego]out
Actually France is being even more aggressive in lowering their CO2 emissions as some of those unemployed "youths" are running around burning cars each night to make sure the evil things don't pollute (I wonder if they have to buy CO2 offsets for the burning cars?).
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
There seems to be a fair amount of denial going on, not only at the geopolitical level, but here as well.
... "Those are our jobs you're talking about!" ... "It aids the terrorists!" ... "It's fuzzy math/science/reporting!" fly from both sides.
Cries of "It will hurt the economy!"
But the cold, hard fact remains, we *are* changing our environment, as a look at these articles, some of which are decades old, will attest. Taken as a whole many of those changes are not at all beneficial.
So rather than focusing on who-said-what games, maybe it's time to quit clicking the heels of our ruby slippers, and begin cleaning up the mess we've made.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
I just can't believe that anybody in the White House would misrepresent data or facts. It is just inconceivable.
I mean something like that would be punishable. Wouldn't congress get their panties in a tight wad if they found out that the White House were doing such a thing.
I remember just a few years back a President lied about having sex in the White House and you would have thought the world was going to end , because of some fornification in the White House and on top of that the President misled the media and the public.
My point being that the White House wouldn't dare lie about facts and such that could actually affect the health of American citizens. Especially after that malstrom the previous President went through.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
The current adminstration has set my expectations so low that I find myself cheering a bit when they start going one percent in the proper direction.
This design is German-Swiss: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passivhaus. This one is pretty amazing.s -selling-solar.html
--
It's easy to shift off fossil fuels: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
There was this date, right, the 11th of September in 2001, that caused the airline industry in the states to be shut down for some time. 36,000 - 40,000 flights PER DAY. Interestingly, planes cause quite a lot of pollution (and, as it turned out, significantly contribute to cloud formation)[PDF]
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the shutdown depressed the overall emissions figures.
I've yet to be convinced that human factors are accounting for the current rise in global temperatures. However, I think it's irrelevant - the massive CO2 production, and the lesser mentioned waste heat production) is clearly unsustainable in the long (or even medium) term. I quite like Ireland the way it is now, and we'd be pretty severely affected by a rise in sea levels or change in the Gulf Stream. At the moment, Nuclear appears the only way to go, and surely there are realistic ways of getting rid of the waste (for instance, disposing of them on fault lines a-la David Brin). Even without that you cannot tell me that there is no way of filtering the output from power plants with the technology available today. There just needs to be the will to do it, and the costs can be shared, surely, between governments and private industry.
Interestingly, China recognise the problem for all that they're mulish in public. They're planning 2,000km of MagLev track instead of laying conventional rail - it's safer and apparently more efficient. They're also cutting down on road building in favour of other transport mechanisms. Centralising power generation means it can be controlled at the source, and if that's not happening now it can happen in the future.
The problem is that the debate is so political now that there will be no consensus on how to fix it, and the EU, US, India, China, Russia and everyone else will just go their own way - or not bother. Another problem is that the Gaia theory is not really taken into account - if it's right (I personally think it is) then the earth is a self regulating system, or at least a balanced system. Without understanding the system, pretty much anything we do is doomed to failure, and much research is focused on a very small section of the overall system (because the overall system is so complex). But it IS a system, and we need to understand all the inputs into that system, and their effects on the system until we can make definitive statements about climate.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Global Warming is a crock of shit anyhow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8v5du5_ag
b) The gases described by the convention do not include water vapor, which constitutes the bulk of global warming.
This point is where your post turns to nothing more than a troll. And bullshit troll at that!
Get it through your thick, thick skull -- "WATER DOES NOT CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING - WATER IS A HEAT **M*O*D*E*R*A*T*O*R** FOR PLANET EARTH". Call it a giant heatsink. CO2 would also not cause global warming if and only if oceans of CO2 were covering the planet as oceans of water are covering the planet.
Why can't we research and build machines that eat CO2 and turn it into carbon and oxygen?
Those magic devices are called tropical jungles. They soak up more CO2 than anything we can create in our lifetimes. But they are being burnt down on purpose...
Some of your points make sense, but the first one qualifies you as nothing more than an uneducated troll.
A very good answer.
I take my hat off to you for a superb post, sir.
"We're doing the most about global warming!"
"No, we are!"
I can't say I'm surprised to see the issue turn in this direction given how absurd the discussion has been so far.
While I agree with you that one must be willing to change anything, down to one's core beliefs, if they are shown to be incorrect, I disagree with your characterization that this is somehow a "progressive" problem.
I'm not sure how to read your criticism. You could be saying one of the following:
1) "I disagree with your characterization that this is solely a 'progressive' problem."
2) "I disagree with your characterization that this is a 'progressive' problem because it's actually a conservative problem."
In either case, my response is the same: it is not solely a "progressive" problem. It is a problem exhibited in anyone with faith-based thinking, and many "progressives" exhibit faith-based thinking despite claims to the contrary ("reality-based", etc.). My previous post originally contained a line which compared denying the alleged sociopathy of W with accusing Jesus Christ of being a gay drag queen to an evangelical conservative, as I was trying to evince that I am even-handed in my criticism of faith-based thinking. I deleted the sentence out of fear that I'd be down-modded, but, given your response, I think it would have done me well to have left it intact.
Are you willing to change your beliefs, or is that an article of faith?
I can't tell if this question is snarky or serious, but I'll answer it anyway. I understand faith as "belief in something in spite of insufficient or contradictory evidence". In that case, I don't understand how being willing to change one's core beliefs can be an article of faith. The answer is "yes, I am willing" anyway.
In my experience, conservatives are far more likely to use facts as lamp posts, for support not illumination.
In my experience, both conservatives and "progressives" are equally as likely to exhibit faith-based reasoning. The principal difference I see between the two is that conservatives are honest and unapologetic about their faith-based reasoning. I don't really regard that as virtue, since they're being honest about their immoral behavior (compared to "progressives" who are being dishonest about their immoral behavior). The immoral behavior I'm referring to is faith-based thinking.
This is why I find it so hard to converse with conservatives in general. But perhaps I am just stubborn and wrongheaded, they are correct, and I am just unable to see it, hmm? Wouldn't that be convenient?
Perhaps both of you are wrong. There are more than two sides to every issue, you know. Did you reflexively assume that I am a conservative because I dared criticize "progressives"? Are you, in the next breath, going to claim that you eschew unsophisticated black-and-white thinking?
I'm willing to admit that everything I think about conservatives being amoral, venal, greedy, self centered, elitist bastards might be wrong.
Wow, you sound like a very hateful person.
So, are you willing to accept the fact that your belief about "progressives" might be utterly and completely false and delusional, too?
Yes, I am willing. But first I will have to be shown the sufficient evidence. I certainly won't change my beliefs just to please you.
By the way, which of my beliefs about "progressives" do you regard as false? The fact that "progressives" exhibit faith-based thinking and lie about it, perhaps? That's the only negative thing I remember writing about them in our conversation (outside of my refusal to deny "progressives" their hard-earned scare quotes). My criticism is certainly quite a bit less damning than the broad-brush treatment you gave your reviled enemies.
Because if you aren't willing to admit that possibility, I'd just as soon keep you at arms length.
You might not have to bother. I generally avoid contact with "progressives" because they are generally orders of magnitude more openly hateful and malicious than evangelical Christians (who are generally more passive-aggressive about their hate). I feel
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Note that gallons are not the same size in the US and the UK. A gallon in the UK is a bit over 1.2 US Gallons. Your "40mpg" UK BMW gets 33 mpg if you're using US Gallons, which is quite a bit lower than the 47mpg the Prius gets under even the revised EPA ratings that just came out.
Handy Converter
"In the UK fog lights are mandatory, in the US they are illegal."
That is simply wrong.
picking 1990 was cherry-picking. The administration thinks the year the actual agreement was made, 1997, should be used. Makes sense, because before then no one had agreed to anything. Sorry if that's confusing for you.
"Cherry picking" hardly describes using the date the agreement was reached. It's the most logical date to have used anyway. There's reasons 1990 favors the EU over the US, and none of them have to do with environmental policy.
uh, what else would they have been talking about? Did you read what I wrote? Of course they were talking about the date selected.
and the fact that the cattle industry produces more pollution than the entire transportation industry combined (planes, cars, trains, trucks, boats, etc) makes me a bit less worried about cracking down on SUVs and more concerned with converting people to being vegan, too. That's not the point, the point is that the 1990 date was the cherry-picked date. The reasons have a lot to do with the collapse of the USSR, and the eastern-European countries that are now part of the EU. There were other reasons 1990 worked well for the EU. 1997 though, in the end, was the date the agreement was met - so it is the date that should have been used. Comparing data from before the agreement was made is silly.
Quagmire means swamp, yes? Like 300 million years ago, when most of the earth was a hot swamp, in the Carboniferous period? Where did that name come from again.. oh yes, from coal! I wonder what happens to the climate when we humans turn all that coal back into CO2 in the coming few hundred years? (though the author of the first link seems to disagree here).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor#Water_vap or_in_Earth.27s_atmosphere
"Gaseous water represents a small but environmentally significant constituent of the atmosphere. Most of it is contained in the troposphere. Besides accounting for most of Earth's natural greenhouse effect, which warms the planet,"
You did see that he said water vapor right? and you did see that you're completely, irrevocably, unequivocally wrong don't you?
It's awesome to watch an asshole like you fumble all over himself like you did.
"Those magic devices are called tropical jungles. They soak up more CO2 than anything we can create in our lifetimes"
That one was even better though. Suggestion, LEARN ABOUT THE FUCKING SUBJECT BEFORE YOU DISCUSS IT AGAIN.
Because everything you posted was wrong.
Thanks for your reply. You seem interesting.
What I'm worried about, primarily, is the way you seek to judge others without looking as if you are judging. It's as if you want to come across as non-judgmental, but have an inner rage that needs release.
I don't know why this worries you, but I appreciate it, I guess. I never claimed to be non-judgmental. I judge all the time. Everyone does. I judge things good and I judge things bad. Everyone does. I think what you mean by "judgmental" is "condemning", but I condemn and criticize, too. Everyone does. I think what I'm trying to do is come across as patient and forgiving (I am) instead of rash and vicious (which I am not). You can read into my words whatever you want to read, as I have no control over what you see and what you think.
So you excoriate "progressives," lumping all people who want to change the world for the better into a single monolithic category, and cleverly imply they are all deluded by faith based thinking and prone to rage and violence.
First, you have to admit that "progressives" can only be changing the world for the better if you agree with "progressive" values. Since I don't agree with all of those values, I can't agree that they're changing the world for the better. It's a mixed bag. I will easily claim that they have crapped on many of the principles that they used to stand up for, such as eschewing "hate speech" (they engage in it), standing up for women's rights (they fail at then when it comes to the woman's plight in Islam), and intellectual freedom (they attempt to suppress all thought except for "progressive" thought at many universities). I also criticize the neo-conservatives for crapping on principles that they used to stand up for, such as small government, non-intervention, and defending the Nation's borders. But I am not a "progressive", not a conservative, and not a Neo-Con. These are my observations and occasionally my judgments.
Second, "all" is the word that you inserted.
You can't be a generalizing, over the top asshole and then claim to be a calm and reasonable promoter of logical discourse.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I commit to not being a generalizing, over the top asshole. Will you do so as well?
You hate faith based thinkers, so do I. But I hate hypocrites far worse.
And I remember writing that you sounded like a very hateful person. Here, you openly admit to hate. I thought that you, a "progressive", were supposed to stand up for tolerance and peace and non-violence, and I think that hatred toward other people (such as faith-based thinkers and hypocrites) is anathema toward all of those values. I do not hate faith-based thinkers. I tolerate them despite their immoral behavior. Maybe it's time for you to let go of some of that hatred you feel. I've felt hatred many times in my life and it served no good purpose. It was the poison that I took in the hopes that my enemy would die.
One thing you must know, if you are committed to logic, is that your own acquaintances do not constitute any sort of random sample. Neither do mine.
I know this already. We congregate with people who are like us. Everyone does this.
I've not had many experiences where I have called a so-called article of progressive faith into question and had them lash out at me in any way. I have seen that over and over again, hundreds if not thousands of times, from conservatives.
I'm not surprised. My limited and biased experience is that anyone who views me as an "enemy" will lash out defensively when their beliefs are challeneged. If they view me as a friend or an ally, then the discussion tends to be civil. So I've been lashed out at by both conservatives and "progressives". I've been called both a "liberal" and a "conservative", both times perjoratively. I will say that, in my limited and biased experience, the "progressives" have been more hateful than the conservatives. I t
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I try really hard to keep it just on this side of civil, though. About the worst I'm guilty of most of the time is poisoning the well, which I did to you a little bit, in an underhanded way. Sorry. I mean, I know that not everyone who disagrees with me is amoral, self centered, and stupid. Intellectually, anyway. Sometimes I can't help but feel the opposite, especially if I think someone is attacking me or mine. Damned monkey mind.
For instance, if someone makes blanket moral statements about progressives or liberals, I'm likely to take a guess at their position and make blanket moral statements right back. Even though I'm really more of an anarchist.
Now let's see, your positions: government-run schools should be abolished, capitalism is moral, selfishness is amoral and inherent, altruism is a myth, and "progressives" are often racist. Oh good lord. I very well could have been one of the dread "progressives" here who's laid into you. Of course, if you had responded the way you did right now, I would have backed off and we could have had a conversation about it.
Let me run down my responses here. I know you said you didn't want a debate, that's fine. But I was surprised that you aren't quite the person I'd initially assumed, I figured I'd give you the same opportunity to be surprised.
Government run schools are necessary because public education is a public good that everyone benefits from, so to prevent free-riders, everyone needs to pay. The free market system breaks down in three situations: externalities, imbalance of information, and natural monopolies. If an outside agency does not step in and correct these situations, a positive feedback loop can develop which will destroy the freedom of the market itself.
Capitalism is amoral, as economic pressures can be just as real and just as deadly as political or conventional force. If I have all the food, capitalism says it is moral to let you starve if you can't pay. Well, the free market says that, but we are kind of conflating the two here to begin with, I think. I say it is amoral to let you starve, not moral. I know that everyone walks away from an open transaction feeling as though they have gained, but I can force you into "choosing" to let me rape you rather than starve, if I control all the means of production. You now have food, I've had sexual gratification, we both gain, right? Wrong.
Selfishness is amoral and inherent. Altruism is a form of selfishness. No disagreement there. However, altruism is also inherent, programmed into us by our genes for our species survival, rather than our personal survival. Altruism comes from three root causes: the tit for tat algorithm, kin selection, and the handicap principle. You can google or wiki those phrases if you're interested. Cooperation is as much a driving force of nature and natural selection as competition, if not more so. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that cooperation and altruism are two of the most competitive strategies available.
Progressives are often racists. Bet you didn't think I'd agree there, did you? I was a serious activist and organizer in my youth, and I knew it was a danger. The well off white guy going into a minority neighborhood and basically telling them, "You're all fuck ups, but never fear! I'm here to save you." That's racist. Eastern liberal establishment types profiting off of the continued existence of poverty and inequality, that's racist too.
All that is well and good, open to debate and discussion. It won't get too much of a rise out of me unless you're being a dick when you say it.
Shaman heal thyself. Now that was the line that made me like you.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I write letters with pen and paper, but so far to no avail.
I've shown up to anti-war and anti-Bush protests, to no avail.
I've decided to just 'go conservative' and do my best to work the system and to hell with anyone who isn't my friend or family.
Blar.
2 so far.. The debate is really on to what extent is the earth's climate a solid state system. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11cnd-ar ctic.htm?ex=1181188800&en=2eedff2644276c15&ei=5070
Ignoring reality and pretending that the delusions of the current US administration could be true is a much worse form of bias than the one you're imagining to exist here.
Partisan morons like yourself need to get over their infatuations with certain politicians and political groups. You can always spot them; you probably noticed a few of them yourself ten years ago -- the people who went around whining like spanked children everytime there was an article about the Clinton's supreme court hearings. "How can they be so judgemental and MEAN! Grrr! Clinton is a good guy! BIAS! BIAS! Ricky... wahhhh *" The best thing for them would have been to not idolize clinton in the first place, and to simply acknowledge that he was a pig-fucking con artist. So how does it feel to be in the same moronic position with the Bush administration? Get over them -- they're a bunch of corrupt moronic assholes and they have the collective scientific knowledge of a sack of mice.
* Reference to "I Love Lucy".
Hey buddy, you are dead wrong.
1 10_051110_warming.html
l _3/climate_change_8.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1
"Evaporated H2O is a known greenhouse gas--a gas that absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation in Earth's atmosphere, thereby increasing temperatures"
http://www.greenfacts.org/studies/climate_change/
"The Earth's surface temperature would be about 34C (61F) colder than it is now if it were not for the natural heat trapping effect of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. Indeed, water vapor is the most abundant and important of these naturally occurring greenhouse gases. In addition to its direct effect as a greenhouse gas, clouds formed from atmospheric water vapor also affect the heat balance of the Earth by reflecting sunlight (a cooling effect), and trapping infrared radiation (a heating effect)."
I won't even begin to discuss how the role of tropical, or, any forest for that matter in CO2 uptake, might be overstated. That is, if you plant a tree, it will consume CO2 while it grows, but then, it stays even, dies, and rots, and releases methane, which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2 is. To some extent, one could argue that chopping down all of the trees and making boards out of them would be the best way to sink carbon - if you knew trees would go back to take the place of the ones you cut down. The problem is, in the rain forest, they don't grow back, because the soil sucks.
This is my sig.
DDT has never been banned for fighting the malaria disease vector. According to the Stockholm convention on POPs, DDT is banned for all purposes except for fighting malaria vector./
See http://www.who.int/malaria/docs/10thingsonDDT.pdf
Very nice. You're not a troll and you don't let your buttons get pushed easily. I come on a little strong at times, here in the wild and woolly world of the web. More so than I ever would in a face to face conversation. I've built up a pretty thick skin and I figure, people want to play out here, they should have one too. So I forget sometimes and go a little overboard.
Thank you for your kind words. What's interesting about what you write is how your description of yourself mirrors so closely the way I feel after so many hours of largely futile arguing on the internet. (When I use "arguing", I use it in the sense of futile arguing versus productive problem-solving.) I've written some things that I wish I could take back. I've ratcheted up my own hate for other people because I felt like their horribleness merited my righteous hate. I baited people's attacks so that I could round them up and destroy them. That's how I earned a thick skin: with e-blood. I don't feel proud about it.
If you walk away from this conversation with one and only one thing, then I dearly hope it would be the honest consideration that it's time to let go of your hatred. My only motivation in writing that to you is compassion. I don't see myself as better than you or anyone else. When it comes down to it, all of us are marching inexorably toward our shared destiny of being a buffet for worms and germs. Coming from a previous mindset where I was expecting eternal bliss after I died, my new understanding is quite the let-down. (No wonder I was so angry toward Christians for so long -- what a dupe I was.) As I get older and do my best to improve myself, I realize that this life I live is beautiful for its own sake, as it's all I have. That's the peace of mind which inspires my compassion and love for humanity, and what causes my heart to break when I see you write the words, "I hate." But I'm not asking you to let go of your hatred for my sake -- god knows I'm not worth the effort. Do it for your sake, so that you can find greater peace of mind and thus flourish. I'm reaching out to you in the only way that I know how by appealing to your need to love and be loved, by hoping that there still some of that need inside you.
For me, adulthood is the long recovery from my childhood. I wonder if you sometimes feel the same way.
I am encouraged by your response because it falls in line with what I've noticed about other people and thus makes me think that I am acquiring better understanding of human nature. I think that the reason you didn't lay into me is because you don't see me as an enemy who must be destroyed. I think you see me as an ally who, at times, provides a decent mental challenge to bright and introspective individual such as yourself. This way you can talk about your thoughts and values without attacking me. I think it's human nature to categorize other people into friends, allies, and enemies.
I like all that hippy, tipi, outdoorsy stuff that you do. I love looking at the woods and at fungi and at birds of prey. I love frogs and flowers and being outside. You lose me when you start talking about "means of production" and "common good", so forgive me for not engaging you on those topics. I think we should focus on the things we have in common so that we can build bridges instead of walls. I don't know if I'll ever be lucky enough to move from "ally" to "friend" in your standing, given how different our values are, but I'm willing to try.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.