The Windows operating system is like a skyscraper built on a weak and swampy foundation. It sways and it creaks, and it requires massive amounts of labor to make it stable. Windows is overly complicated spaghetti code built on ancient legacy structures (eg. the registry in XP). The amount of money spent on maintaining this monstrosity of an operating system is a drag on the high tech economy. Microsoft employs a huge number of brilliant programmers, who labor to hack windows into a usable structure. The effort of those programmers would be better spent working on other more elegant and technically sound projects.
The only way Microsoft will end up with a truly modern operating system will be if they nuke the old system and start from scratch, the way that Apple did with OS X. They could then support legacy applications using some form of emulation or virtualization. If they did this, they would decrease the crippling complexity of windows, and would likely dramatically decrease their development costs, while at the same time increasing security and stability.
Also, I don't entirely agree with the argument that Windows is complicated because it has to support such a wide variety of hardware. If an operating system has a clear and open way of interacting with hardware, then hardware companies will write their drivers to that clear and open interface, and the operating system will easily be compatible with a wide variety of hardware. In some sense, a clear and open hardware and software interface will bring simplicity rather than complexity.
If a voter is given some sort of receipt that proves how they voted, even if only the voter can access the nature of the vote, then that receipt could be presented to an interested party as evidence of a vote for a particular party. The interested party could then pay the voter a particular sum of money for that vote. With paper ballots, the vote is dropped into a box and loses any association with the voter, and could thus not be used in a vote buying scheme.
As the parent post mentions, most people will simply not have the time to become familiar with the details of the propositions on the ballot.
However, the people that will tend to be familiar with the details and ramifications of a particular proposition will be special interest groups. This will be especially true if a referendum occurs outside the normal election cycle.
Consider this hypothetical situation: A particular interest group puts forth a motion for referendum. The society as a whole is used to frequent referendums, and has grown weary of the constant voting. When the referendum occurs, the turnout for the interest group is extremely high, while the turnout for the general population is relatively low. The referendum motion passes without broad public support. A small but vocal interest group has succeeded in foisting its policy on the public.
Admittedly I can see referendums as being useful in certain circumstances. If the referendums are on important issues on which the public is engaged, I can see them as a good way of ensuring that the will of the public is carried out. But if they are too frequent, and concern issues that are extremely specific, then I believe that they are a recipe for government by special interests. In other words, having too many referendums is undemocratic.
Elections can be stolen with paper ballot elections. However it is far more work to do so than with a fully electronic election. To steal a paper ballot election, especially if it isn't close, you would likely have to create a large number of fake ballots manually, and then selectively replace your victim's ballots. When there are many hundreds of thousands of ballots, this is a huge task, and cannot be done quickly. And to really cover your tracks you might want to shuffle the ballots, so they are not sorted by choice. Scrambling a deck of 52 cards is hard enough. Imagine hundreds of thousands of ballots.
And of course all of these changes would have to match with the vote tallies. Any errors will be obvious, and could be considered evidence for voting fraud.
Contrast this with electronic paperless voting, where a single piece of software can replicate itself through many voting machines, as was shown possible by two Princeton professors. This code can then invisibly alter votes, and then eradicate itself after use. The fraud in this case would be undetectable.
Terrorism is not a threat to the life of a nation. It is a nuisance. A deadly and horrifying nuisance. But a nuisance nevertheless. It should be dealt with forcefully, but in dealing with it, America should not give up its fundamental principles of freedom and become a defacto fascist state.
A standing army across your border waiting to invade IS a threat to the life of a nation. The German army waiting to invade Poland and France was a threat to the life of those nations. North Korea poses a true threat to South Korea, as North Korea can kill MILLIONS of people within a few minutes using artillery barrages. Compare this to the threat of a few bombs going off. Individually, these events are terrible and horrifying, but in reality, these bombs will affect a relatively small number of people. Their real effect lies in the fear they generate and the reactions caused by that fear. I would ask you to imagine living in London during the blitz of World War II, when huge areas of the city were destroyed. Imagine what those people had to live through. And then compare that to the above list of bombs and suicide attacks.
GW denialists are sabotaging real debate here. They keep lobbing grenades into the debate, by repeatedly saying things like "H2O vapor is the real greenhouse gas". This point has been discussed many times in the above comments and has been rebutted. More information can be found here and here. I think the point of their constant harping about water vapor is to plant seeds of uncertainty in the minds of the public, in order to "position global warming as more theory than fact", as was stated in a policy paper of a right wing think tank (see Al Gore's movie).
There is a difference between having an honest debate in order to discover the truth versus entering a debate simply to muddy the issues and distract the observers of the debate from the truth. Honest debate cannot happen unless all parties in the debate are interested in discovering the truth. Posting statements with the knowledge that they have been debunked is not honest debate. It is just noise.
Oh for chrisakes!!! There are many posts above explaining this. To summarize, overall water vapor does not force the climate to a different state because of its short lifetime in the atmosphere. Water vapor content in the atmosphere is a reaction to other factors in the climate system, such as CO2.
Water vapor can however reinforce other changes. If CO2 concentrations increase, then this will cause the climate to warm. In general, a warmer climate will likely mean more water vapor in the atmosphere, which will in turn cause more warming because the vapor is also a greenhouse gas.
If you want a better explanation, read some of the above comments or go to realclimate.org.
I am sick of people posting comments like "water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2" in the full knowledge that this will create misconceptions in people with less understanding of the concepts of climate change. DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT CLIMATE SCIENTISTS HAVE IGNORED WATER VAPOR IN THEIR MODELS?!!
If you want a detailed answer to this question, go to realclimate.org
Here is a somewhat more brief answer, based on what I have read: Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it is quite different than CO2 in that individual water molecules spend relatively little time in the atmosphere before returning to liquid form. CO2 molecules have a far longer lifetime in the atmosphere than water molecules, especially if you consider the relatively short time they spend bound up in plants that will eventually decay and release the CO2 again. The main way to remove the carbon molecule from the system is to bury it, perhaps as sediment at the bottom of the ocean. An important fact to realize is that once we remove carbon from the ground by for example pumping oil, that carbon will remain in the atmospheric system for a very long time.
If I understand the scientific ideas correctly, because the amount of liquid water on the Earth's surface is so large, the actual amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is not limited by the absolute quantity of liquid water. Think of two indoor swimming pools, both with the same surface area, but one being deep and one being shallow. The amount of water vapor in the air will depend on the temperature of the water, the temperature of the air, and surface areas of the pools, among other things. The amount of water vapor in the air is not related to the depth of the pools. Contrast this with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which are related to the absolute amounts existing in the atmospheric system.
So, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by factors such as temperature, sunlight, and other atmospheric conditions. Water vapor concentration changes in response to other factors, and is thus not considered a driver of climate. Carbon dioxide persists in the atmospheric system, and thus is considered a driver of climate.
I hope I have summarized the theories correctly. However if you want a better explanation, then go to the source. realclimate.org, or better yet find some real scientific papers on the subject.
This issue has been dealt with ad nauseum on realclimate.org.
To summarize (and I am not an expert):
Water vapor is transient in the atmosphere (a water molecule spends a limited time in the atmosphere before returning to liquid form again).
Carbon dioxide molecules spend a far longer time in the atmosphere, and spend an even longer time in the atmospheric system if you include plants and trees that grow, die, and decay. Once you have removed carbon from the ground by pumping oil, it remains in the system for a very long time. Thus it has an impact that is far more long lasting.
Increased heat in the atmospheric system caused by increased CO2 will probably increase the amount of water in the atmosphere. If you hold to the idea that water is also a greenhouse gas, then the increased water vapor concentration in the atmosphere will amplify greenhouse effect related heating. In other words, water vapor could create a positive feedback for global warming.
I urge this writer to read more thoroughly the literature on these issues before sounding off on them. And I would further ask that if this person, once they are familiar with the current thinking on global warming, would criticize the specific ideas he finds objectionable, using logic and rational argument.
The fact that the author of this comment seems to be familiar with the existance of certain climate theories (global dimming, water vapor, etc) tells me they have done some reading. Where that reading was done I am not sure. Perhaps he got his information from the "JunkScience" site, which is operated by one of the people who worked worked for tobacco interests to further the claim that cigarettes are not associated with lung cancer. Or perhaps he is being paid to post disinformation on Slashdot by the same interests who fund the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Comments like the above smell like they are part of an organized disinformation campaign aimed at people who have some limited knowledge of the subject matter, and who lack the scientific expertise to refute the disinformation. Oil interests are desperate to win the fight against action on global warming. They have a great deal to lose. I think they will do anything in their power to sway public opinion, and I am quite sure that they have devoted significant resources to this endeavor.
That's great. But where's the Clean Air Act on the temperature graph? Why, exactly, is the temperature graph not the least bit affected by something which radically altered our atmosphere for the better?
Speaking of BS, I think Harry Frankfurt (author of a book called "On BS", explitive abreviated) would have something to say about your above statement. His idea is that certain people make statements with little or no concern for whether or not they are true. The statements are not exactly lies, but inaccurate nevertheless. He categorizes this type of statement as BS.
Your statement is misleading, because the Clean Air Act reduced pollution, and not greenhouse gas emissions. It has been shown recently that particulate pollution may have in fact reduced the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, causing a cooling effect that masked the warming effect caused by greenhouse gas emissions (called "Global Dimming"). When you say "Why, exactly, is the temperature graph not the least bit affected" I really have no idea what you are basing this on. Are you omniscient enough to know what the graph would have looked like without the Clean Air Act? Do you have access to data that the scientists have not seen?
The fact that you mentioned the effects of the Clean Air Act without mentioning the idea of "global dimming" convinces me that you have a very limited knowledge of the issues surrounding climate change. And because you are offering opinions on a subject that you seem not to understand, I can only conclude that you have little concern for the truth of what you are writing. Under H. Franklin's definition, your posting is bullshit of the highest order.
Science is simply the pursuit of truth by examining physical evidence.
Yes there are flaws in the system. Yes there is corruption. But the research papers are all laid out for you to read at your local university library, if only you will make the effort to read them and to learn the language. And by and large, if a scientist falsifies evidence, he will lose his livlihood (unless he is being paid by oil interests to create uncertainty about climate science).
If science isn't to be listened to, then what is the alternative? The pursuit of truth through other means besides physical evidence? Or perhaps we should do away with the pursuit of truth all together.
The real threat to civilization from climate change will come because of drought and its effect on agriculture. And the threat is really quite easy to understand:
Let's use the Canadian prairies as an example. The prairies have been getting drier and drier recently. Not in all regions, mind you. But overall, it is a trend...the dry regions are growing larger and drier. Agriculture has been able to thrive in the prairies because of good soil and extensive irrigation, much of it from mountain fed rivers.
It is a well documented and indisputable fact that the glaciers in the Rocky mountains that feed the prairie rivers are shrinking at remarkable rates. Many glaciers have disappeared altogether, and most have shrunk in size by 50% or more in recent years. Since these glaciers feed the prairie rivers, especially in the summer, their shrinking size has led to a lowering in the levels of the rivers.
If current trends continue, the shrinking glacier levels will result in substantially lower river levels in coming years. These lower river levels will have a large impact on agriculture, especially during dry years...farmers will severely restrict their water use and food production will suffer.
Of course it is possible that climate change will merely shift the water to different areas. But there is no guarantee that those areas will be suitable for agriculture. Good soil is not as common as one might think, and it takes a long time to form. Perhaps we could pump water to dry areas from wet areas. However, this could be extremely expensive, and it is unlikely that we could pump the same volume of water as a river.
If this happens globally, there would be an extreme stress put on our economic system, and such stress could make it more difficult to adapt to the new reality.
Civilization is only made possible by agriculture. It is no coincidence that the first large cities appeared shortly after the end of the last ice age. When the ice age ended, the climate became far more stable, allowing groups of people to plant crops year after year without fear of famine. Failing agriculture will put extreme pressure on our systems of civilization.
--
Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very essence and no reform is possible.
This has been presented before, and debunked before. This study shows that while ice is thinning in some parts of the arctic, it is thickening in others and the temperature change isn't uniform.
Don't post BS neoconservative think tank studies as if they are real peer reviewed scientific studies. The link you gave above leads to a small article purporting to summarize some "scientific study" that seems to cast doubt on the reality that the arctic is undergoing massive warming. There is no obvious link to the actual study, so I have no way of knowing whether the study is for real, or whether it was bought and paid for by oil interests (as the NCPA website hosting the summary probably is). Anybody and their dog can write a "study" purporting to show pretty much anything, irrespective of the facts. What gives a study credibility is when it is published in credible peer reviewed journals. In those journals, other scientists review and criticize studies, exposing flaws in evidence and logic. If a scientist falsifies evidence, he loses credibility, and perhaps his livelihood (unless he is employed by an organization whose purpose is to falsify evidence, like an exxon funded think tank).
In posting a link to this study, I can only assume that either you are completely ignorant of the scientific process, or that your purpose is to deceive readers who do not know any better.
--
Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very essence and no reform is possible.
The primary method of fighting global warming suggested in this article is to increase taxes! Globally! It staggers my mind to think how many people might think this is a good idea. Giving politicians more money will save no one.
Have you ever noticed how neoconservatives such as the author of this comment speak in mindless slogans? Really, the above quote is simply an assertion of a perceived opinion: "Taxes are always bad". There is no argument, no thought, no facts presented. Just an aggressive assertion.
Briefly, here are some counter-arguments to the above assertion:
Firstly, taxes on energy do work to reduce energy consumption. I have seen it. Visit any modern European city and you will see it. Taxes on gasoline and other forms of energy are much higher there than what we pay in North America. And as a result, Europeans drive less than us. They pay attention to energy conservation as a part of everyday life. Examples: An acquaintance of mine in Germany chose to give up cheap accommodation with her boyfriend to live closer to school, because a 40 mile daily commute would be too expensive. In Paris, apartment hallways have timers on the lights; when you exit the elevator, the hallway is dark, and you must press the illuminated switch to turn the lights on. After you have entered your apartment, the lights turn off (some apartments have motion sensors). I could go on and on.
The simple fact is that our current energy costs largely reflect the supply of energy and the demand for the energy. The current costs, by and large do not reflect the damage to the commons that is done by using the energy. I would argue that taxing energy is the only practical way to bring the cost of environmental damage caused by using energy into the price we pay for energy. If you have a better method, I would like to hear it.
Also, in reading the article I noticed that the proposal was to lower taxes in other areas and raise taxes on energy. i.e. the government would still be removing the same amount of money from the economy, but would simply be doing it differently.
The environment can become a much larger issue now than it was in the 70's and 80's, for the simple reason that the consequences of global warming are potentially far worse than what was faced in the 70's and 80's. Smog is for the most part a local condition. Acid rain affects a wider region, but it is still somewhat localized. Global warming will affect the entire climate system. The risks are simply too huge to ignore.
Add to that the ever growing consensus in the scientific and intellectual communities that global warming is real, that it is strongly associated with human activity, and that it carries significant risks for the future, and you have a potentially huge swing in public opinion. Many of the so-called "climate skeptics" are increasingly seen as dishonest, smooth talking sophists similar to the main character in the movie "Thank you for Smoking".
When global warming enters the public consciousness in a significant way, the consequences will be felt far and wide. In America, it will be a political earthquake. There will be great anger for those politicians who closed their eyes to reality and did nothing. Global warming as a political issue will not go away. (I was going to say it will snowball, but given the predictions, I don't think that's the analogy I am looking for;))
I think the following is an apt quotation these days:
Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very substance and no reform is possible.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract" (1762), book 3, chapter 4
Slashdot Mirror
The Windows operating system is like a skyscraper built on a weak and swampy foundation. It sways and it creaks, and it requires massive amounts of labor to make it stable. Windows is overly complicated spaghetti code built on ancient legacy structures (eg. the registry in XP). The amount of money spent on maintaining this monstrosity of an operating system is a drag on the high tech economy. Microsoft employs a huge number of brilliant programmers, who labor to hack windows into a usable structure. The effort of those programmers would be better spent working on other more elegant and technically sound projects.
The only way Microsoft will end up with a truly modern operating system will be if they nuke the old system and start from scratch, the way that Apple did with OS X. They could then support legacy applications using some form of emulation or virtualization. If they did this, they would decrease the crippling complexity of windows, and would likely dramatically decrease their development costs, while at the same time increasing security and stability.
Also, I don't entirely agree with the argument that Windows is complicated because it has to support such a wide variety of hardware. If an operating system has a clear and open way of interacting with hardware, then hardware companies will write their drivers to that clear and open interface, and the operating system will easily be compatible with a wide variety of hardware. In some sense, a clear and open hardware and software interface will bring simplicity rather than complexity.
If a voter is given some sort of receipt that proves how they voted, even if only the voter can access the nature of the vote, then that receipt could be presented to an interested party as evidence of a vote for a particular party. The interested party could then pay the voter a particular sum of money for that vote. With paper ballots, the vote is dropped into a box and loses any association with the voter, and could thus not be used in a vote buying scheme.
As the parent post mentions, most people will simply not have the time to become familiar with the details of the propositions on the ballot.
However, the people that will tend to be familiar with the details and ramifications of a particular proposition will be special interest groups. This will be especially true if a referendum occurs outside the normal election cycle.
Consider this hypothetical situation: A particular interest group puts forth a motion for referendum. The society as a whole is used to frequent referendums, and has grown weary of the constant voting. When the referendum occurs, the turnout for the interest group is extremely high, while the turnout for the general population is relatively low. The referendum motion passes without broad public support. A small but vocal interest group has succeeded in foisting its policy on the public.
Admittedly I can see referendums as being useful in certain circumstances. If the referendums are on important issues on which the public is engaged, I can see them as a good way of ensuring that the will of the public is carried out. But if they are too frequent, and concern issues that are extremely specific, then I believe that they are a recipe for government by special interests. In other words, having too many referendums is undemocratic.
This person is responding with facts to a posting that was largely based on opinion.
Too much of American public discourse is becoming a shouting match of opposing opinions, instead of being a rational debate about facts.
Elections can be stolen with paper ballot elections. However it is far more work to do so than with a fully electronic election. To steal a paper ballot election, especially if it isn't close, you would likely have to create a large number of fake ballots manually, and then selectively replace your victim's ballots. When there are many hundreds of thousands of ballots, this is a huge task, and cannot be done quickly. And to really cover your tracks you might want to shuffle the ballots, so they are not sorted by choice. Scrambling a deck of 52 cards is hard enough. Imagine hundreds of thousands of ballots. And of course all of these changes would have to match with the vote tallies. Any errors will be obvious, and could be considered evidence for voting fraud.
Contrast this with electronic paperless voting, where a single piece of software can replicate itself through many voting machines, as was shown possible by two Princeton professors. This code can then invisibly alter votes, and then eradicate itself after use. The fraud in this case would be undetectable.
Terrorism is not a threat to the life of a nation. It is a nuisance. A deadly and horrifying nuisance. But a nuisance nevertheless. It should be dealt with forcefully, but in dealing with it, America should not give up its fundamental principles of freedom and become a defacto fascist state.
A standing army across your border waiting to invade IS a threat to the life of a nation. The German army waiting to invade Poland and France was a threat to the life of those nations. North Korea poses a true threat to South Korea, as North Korea can kill MILLIONS of people within a few minutes using artillery barrages. Compare this to the threat of a few bombs going off. Individually, these events are terrible and horrifying, but in reality, these bombs will affect a relatively small number of people. Their real effect lies in the fear they generate and the reactions caused by that fear. I would ask you to imagine living in London during the blitz of World War II, when huge areas of the city were destroyed. Imagine what those people had to live through. And then compare that to the above list of bombs and suicide attacks.
GW denialists are sabotaging real debate here. They keep lobbing grenades into the debate, by repeatedly saying things like "H2O vapor is the real greenhouse gas". This point has been discussed many times in the above comments and has been rebutted. More information can be found here and here. I think the point of their constant harping about water vapor is to plant seeds of uncertainty in the minds of the public, in order to "position global warming as more theory than fact", as was stated in a policy paper of a right wing think tank (see Al Gore's movie).
There is a difference between having an honest debate in order to discover the truth versus entering a debate simply to muddy the issues and distract the observers of the debate from the truth. Honest debate cannot happen unless all parties in the debate are interested in discovering the truth. Posting statements with the knowledge that they have been debunked is not honest debate. It is just noise.
Oh for chrisakes!!! There are many posts above explaining this. To summarize, overall water vapor does not force the climate to a different state because of its short lifetime in the atmosphere. Water vapor content in the atmosphere is a reaction to other factors in the climate system, such as CO2.
Water vapor can however reinforce other changes. If CO2 concentrations increase, then this will cause the climate to warm. In general, a warmer climate will likely mean more water vapor in the atmosphere, which will in turn cause more warming because the vapor is also a greenhouse gas.
If you want a better explanation, read some of the above comments or go to realclimate.org.
I am sick of people posting comments like "water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2" in the full knowledge that this will create misconceptions in people with less understanding of the concepts of climate change. DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT CLIMATE SCIENTISTS HAVE IGNORED WATER VAPOR IN THEIR MODELS?!!
If you want a detailed answer to this question, go to realclimate.org
Here is a somewhat more brief answer, based on what I have read: Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it is quite different than CO2 in that individual water molecules spend relatively little time in the atmosphere before returning to liquid form. CO2 molecules have a far longer lifetime in the atmosphere than water molecules, especially if you consider the relatively short time they spend bound up in plants that will eventually decay and release the CO2 again. The main way to remove the carbon molecule from the system is to bury it, perhaps as sediment at the bottom of the ocean. An important fact to realize is that once we remove carbon from the ground by for example pumping oil, that carbon will remain in the atmospheric system for a very long time.
If I understand the scientific ideas correctly, because the amount of liquid water on the Earth's surface is so large, the actual amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is not limited by the absolute quantity of liquid water. Think of two indoor swimming pools, both with the same surface area, but one being deep and one being shallow. The amount of water vapor in the air will depend on the temperature of the water, the temperature of the air, and surface areas of the pools, among other things. The amount of water vapor in the air is not related to the depth of the pools. Contrast this with CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which are related to the absolute amounts existing in the atmospheric system.
So, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is controlled by factors such as temperature, sunlight, and other atmospheric conditions. Water vapor concentration changes in response to other factors, and is thus not considered a driver of climate. Carbon dioxide persists in the atmospheric system, and thus is considered a driver of climate.
I hope I have summarized the theories correctly. However if you want a better explanation, then go to the source. realclimate.org, or better yet find some real scientific papers on the subject.
This issue has been dealt with ad nauseum on realclimate.org.
To summarize (and I am not an expert):
Water vapor is transient in the atmosphere (a water molecule spends a limited time in the atmosphere before returning to liquid form again).Carbon dioxide molecules spend a far longer time in the atmosphere, and spend an even longer time in the atmospheric system if you include plants and trees that grow, die, and decay. Once you have removed carbon from the ground by pumping oil, it remains in the system for a very long time. Thus it has an impact that is far more long lasting.
Increased heat in the atmospheric system caused by increased CO2 will probably increase the amount of water in the atmosphere. If you hold to the idea that water is also a greenhouse gas, then the increased water vapor concentration in the atmosphere will amplify greenhouse effect related heating. In other words, water vapor could create a positive feedback for global warming.
I urge this writer to read more thoroughly the literature on these issues before sounding off on them. And I would further ask that if this person, once they are familiar with the current thinking on global warming, would criticize the specific ideas he finds objectionable, using logic and rational argument.
The fact that the author of this comment seems to be familiar with the existance of certain climate theories (global dimming, water vapor, etc) tells me they have done some reading. Where that reading was done I am not sure. Perhaps he got his information from the "JunkScience" site, which is operated by one of the people who worked worked for tobacco interests to further the claim that cigarettes are not associated with lung cancer. Or perhaps he is being paid to post disinformation on Slashdot by the same interests who fund the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Comments like the above smell like they are part of an organized disinformation campaign aimed at people who have some limited knowledge of the subject matter, and who lack the scientific expertise to refute the disinformation. Oil interests are desperate to win the fight against action on global warming. They have a great deal to lose. I think they will do anything in their power to sway public opinion, and I am quite sure that they have devoted significant resources to this endeavor.
Here is a rebuttal to Michael Crichton's "State of Fear".
Speaking of BS, I think Harry Frankfurt (author of a book called "On BS", explitive abreviated) would have something to say about your above statement. His idea is that certain people make statements with little or no concern for whether or not they are true. The statements are not exactly lies, but inaccurate nevertheless. He categorizes this type of statement as BS.
Your statement is misleading, because the Clean Air Act reduced pollution, and not greenhouse gas emissions. It has been shown recently that particulate pollution may have in fact reduced the sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, causing a cooling effect that masked the warming effect caused by greenhouse gas emissions (called "Global Dimming"). When you say "Why, exactly, is the temperature graph not the least bit affected" I really have no idea what you are basing this on. Are you omniscient enough to know what the graph would have looked like without the Clean Air Act? Do you have access to data that the scientists have not seen?
The fact that you mentioned the effects of the Clean Air Act without mentioning the idea of "global dimming" convinces me that you have a very limited knowledge of the issues surrounding climate change. And because you are offering opinions on a subject that you seem not to understand, I can only conclude that you have little concern for the truth of what you are writing. Under H. Franklin's definition, your posting is bullshit of the highest order.
Science is simply the pursuit of truth by examining physical evidence.
Yes there are flaws in the system. Yes there is corruption. But the research papers are all laid out for you to read at your local university library, if only you will make the effort to read them and to learn the language. And by and large, if a scientist falsifies evidence, he will lose his livlihood (unless he is being paid by oil interests to create uncertainty about climate science).
If science isn't to be listened to, then what is the alternative? The pursuit of truth through other means besides physical evidence? Or perhaps we should do away with the pursuit of truth all together.
The real threat to civilization from climate change will come because of drought and its effect on agriculture. And the threat is really quite easy to understand:
Let's use the Canadian prairies as an example. The prairies have been getting drier and drier recently. Not in all regions, mind you. But overall, it is a trend...the dry regions are growing larger and drier. Agriculture has been able to thrive in the prairies because of good soil and extensive irrigation, much of it from mountain fed rivers.
It is a well documented and indisputable fact that the glaciers in the Rocky mountains that feed the prairie rivers are shrinking at remarkable rates. Many glaciers have disappeared altogether, and most have shrunk in size by 50% or more in recent years. Since these glaciers feed the prairie rivers, especially in the summer, their shrinking size has led to a lowering in the levels of the rivers.
If current trends continue, the shrinking glacier levels will result in substantially lower river levels in coming years. These lower river levels will have a large impact on agriculture, especially during dry years...farmers will severely restrict their water use and food production will suffer.
Of course it is possible that climate change will merely shift the water to different areas. But there is no guarantee that those areas will be suitable for agriculture. Good soil is not as common as one might think, and it takes a long time to form. Perhaps we could pump water to dry areas from wet areas. However, this could be extremely expensive, and it is unlikely that we could pump the same volume of water as a river.
If this happens globally, there would be an extreme stress put on our economic system, and such stress could make it more difficult to adapt to the new reality.
Civilization is only made possible by agriculture. It is no coincidence that the first large cities appeared shortly after the end of the last ice age. When the ice age ended, the climate became far more stable, allowing groups of people to plant crops year after year without fear of famine. Failing agriculture will put extreme pressure on our systems of civilization.
--
Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very essence and no reform is possible.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (the Social Contract)
Don't post BS neoconservative think tank studies as if they are real peer reviewed scientific studies. The link you gave above leads to a small article purporting to summarize some "scientific study" that seems to cast doubt on the reality that the arctic is undergoing massive warming. There is no obvious link to the actual study, so I have no way of knowing whether the study is for real, or whether it was bought and paid for by oil interests (as the NCPA website hosting the summary probably is). Anybody and their dog can write a "study" purporting to show pretty much anything, irrespective of the facts. What gives a study credibility is when it is published in credible peer reviewed journals. In those journals, other scientists review and criticize studies, exposing flaws in evidence and logic. If a scientist falsifies evidence, he loses credibility, and perhaps his livelihood (unless he is employed by an organization whose purpose is to falsify evidence, like an exxon funded think tank).
In posting a link to this study, I can only assume that either you are completely ignorant of the scientific process, or that your purpose is to deceive readers who do not know any better.
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Nothing is more dangerous in public affairs than the influence of private interests, and the abuse of the law by the government is a lesser evil than that corruption of the legislator which inevitably results from the pursuit of private interests. When this happens, the state is corrupted in its very essence and no reform is possible.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract)
Have you ever noticed how neoconservatives such as the author of this comment speak in mindless slogans? Really, the above quote is simply an assertion of a perceived opinion: "Taxes are always bad". There is no argument, no thought, no facts presented. Just an aggressive assertion.
Briefly, here are some counter-arguments to the above assertion:
Firstly, taxes on energy do work to reduce energy consumption. I have seen it. Visit any modern European city and you will see it. Taxes on gasoline and other forms of energy are much higher there than what we pay in North America. And as a result, Europeans drive less than us. They pay attention to energy conservation as a part of everyday life. Examples: An acquaintance of mine in Germany chose to give up cheap accommodation with her boyfriend to live closer to school, because a 40 mile daily commute would be too expensive. In Paris, apartment hallways have timers on the lights; when you exit the elevator, the hallway is dark, and you must press the illuminated switch to turn the lights on. After you have entered your apartment, the lights turn off (some apartments have motion sensors). I could go on and on.
The simple fact is that our current energy costs largely reflect the supply of energy and the demand for the energy. The current costs, by and large do not reflect the damage to the commons that is done by using the energy. I would argue that taxing energy is the only practical way to bring the cost of environmental damage caused by using energy into the price we pay for energy. If you have a better method, I would like to hear it.
Also, in reading the article I noticed that the proposal was to lower taxes in other areas and raise taxes on energy. i.e. the government would still be removing the same amount of money from the economy, but would simply be doing it differently.
The environment can become a much larger issue now than it was in the 70's and 80's, for the simple reason that the consequences of global warming are potentially far worse than what was faced in the 70's and 80's. Smog is for the most part a local condition. Acid rain affects a wider region, but it is still somewhat localized. Global warming will affect the entire climate system. The risks are simply too huge to ignore.
Add to that the ever growing consensus in the scientific and intellectual communities that global warming is real, that it is strongly associated with human activity, and that it carries significant risks for the future, and you have a potentially huge swing in public opinion. Many of the so-called "climate skeptics" are increasingly seen as dishonest, smooth talking sophists similar to the main character in the movie "Thank you for Smoking".
When global warming enters the public consciousness in a significant way, the consequences will be felt far and wide. In America, it will be a political earthquake. There will be great anger for those politicians who closed their eyes to reality and did nothing. Global warming as a political issue will not go away. (I was going to say it will snowball, but given the predictions, I don't think that's the analogy I am looking for ;))
I think the following is an apt quotation these days:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract" (1762), book 3, chapter 4