Well I must say you live up to your Slashdot name. But I don't want to make this a personal battle.
This is not my "first foray into Latin". And I fail to see where I was twisting your words... could you give me an example so I don't do it again?
Based on your statements, it seems you don't care about the truth. I consider the truth to be important when making decisions affecting the whole planet, and I consider the debate a vehicle to ascertaining the truth.
I get the sense you're just dismissing me as some ignorant right-wing nut. But I value the input from your side, and you've brought up points that I haven't seen before. Let me clearly concede these so that you can see that I'm not just stubborn:
A sizable majority of scientists believe in global warming.
There was no consensus in the 1970s about global cooling. (I didn't know this)
The plan to cover the poles in soot was exaggerated. (I didn't know this)
Organizations that provide statistics on economics or climate change usually have a bias.
You admitted that a consensus can be wrong, but added
it's hubris for laypeople to dismiss it all as a vast academic conspiracy to get grant money.
I don't mean to dismiss it outright, and certainly not as a conspiracy. I think it comes back to money, as most things do. If grant money is more and more going to scientists that support global warming, it's in their self-interest to do so, no conspiracy needed. Being "green" is extremely popular right now. Many businesses also are making money from making "green" products, and car ads and household product ads are all mentioning how "green" they are. I don't think this is a big conspiracy. I'm also not saying it's a bad thing, being environmentally conscious is great. And I don't mean to suggest that the work these scientists are doing is bunk because there's a possibility they're just doing it for grant money. But the temperature record shows cooling or flat temperatures since 1998, historical cyclical swings in climate unrelated to humans, some studies showing antarctic ice growing, and so it seems to me like hubris or conceit to assume humans are causing disastrous global warming. In your link to Wikipedia it mentions some scientists that think it could even be a good thing if it happens.
Epic disaster is a 5 mile wide asteroid hitting the Earth. Epic disaster is the Yellowstone supervolcano covering the entire planet in ash. Epic disaster is a gamma ray burst from outer space eradicating all life. Large disasters are earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Any disaster means widespread destruction and many people dying. Having to change your address is not a disaster. Many people have been nomadic since ancient times. If there are more jobs in California than Missouri, people will move there. Mass migrations happen for many different reasons all the time. Some are bad like a hurricane dissuades people from living Louisiana, or an evil dictator commits genocide and refugees flock to neighboring countries. Some are good like the gold rushes in California and Alaska, or people moving to Florida because they prefer to retire there. And you seem to refuse to acknowledge that this would happen over the course of centuries. No mass deaths. Things would change slowly. That's where I'm coming from. Maybe we have a slightly different view of how big a calamity it would be. I will say I agree with you that it would be best if New York and LA stayed above sea level. But the point is, we don't know if it's us causing this, or if capping carbon will stop it. If this is part of a natural warming cycle, there would probably be nothing we could do about it, and the hardships this bill would put on us would be for nothing.
You're so insistent on taking me out of context, I'm not sure it's even worth responding.
Ad Hominem.
Even among climate skeptics (at least, the subset of skeptics with scientific credentials in relevant fields), only a handful will go so far as to claim that the warming is imaginary.
the number of peer reviewed papers predicting warming outnumbered the number that predicted cooling by about 6 to 1.
Your link does not support this, but suppose I take that as fact. I for one do not care how many people say something is true. In 1300 everyone knew the Earth was flat and everything revolved around it. Just because there is some kind of "consensus" either then or now, doesn't mean it's true.
Remember, the cap doesn't even kick in until 2012, and the industries that are most affected will continue to receive a sizeable number of free carbon permits for at least a decade after that.
Finally some good news. If I work real hard, I can get a raise so that I can pay my taxes. *feel the sarcasm!*
Sure, if somebody burns down your house, it's suddenly "more economical" to live under a bridge than in the middle of a field.
We need to be mindful of the timescales involved here. Burning a house down is a very immediate thing, with no warning, and little that predisposes one to having such a problem to begin with. If you live on the beach, you run the risk of your house being flooded by a storm swell, global warming or not. If you're not smart enough to get insurance, that's what we call natural selection.
Frankly, I'm stunned that someone can simultaneously believe that "the market" is capable of uprooting thousands of coastal cities, and yet is so fragile that it will fall over the moment CO2 pollution gets a price.
I don't think the market will fail. It is very resilient. I'm not like the alarmists- I'm not predicting doom for the economy if we don't do what I want. It'll just be harder on everyone, and you yourself admitted we don't know for sure if it will be a huge disaster. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It seems that, in your mind, no disaster is truly epic so long as there are survivors, and that it wouldn't be worthwhile to you to take a $1500 pay cut to avert any disaster that leaves a handful of humans behind.
Putting aside your slight on my reasoning and risk evaluation, I maintain that it is not an epic disaster. New York may have to move a few miles up the Hudson. I admit that this is not cheap. But I submit that no one will die in the process. A slug could walk away from the rising sea it's happening so slowly (if it's happening). So it's a choice between economic hardship now, for something that could happen in the future, because of something that we might be causing, or we continue to prosper, allowing businesses to finance R&D that could produce a cheaper cleaner fuel- which they will, because who wouldn't buy that?
A made-up number from Heritage, an right-wing propaganda mill built from the ground up to oppose any and all regulation.
If you say otherwise, you're pitting yourself against the majority even of climate skeptics.
This doesn't make sense. If they're skeptical, they don't think it's happening.
How safe do you feel placing your money on, "Nah, everything will be peachy!"
Safer than with an extra $1500 yearly tax I can't afford, for something that might not be happening, and might not be a problem.
we know that it started warming when we started burning fossil fuel with abandon
What more evidence are you looking for?
What about the "Medieval Warm Period"? The "Little Ice Age"? We certainly weren't "burning fossil fuel with abandon" then. This indicates to me that the burden of proof should be on you who claim it is man-made, since cyclical warming/cooling obviously has other causes historically.
it could warm 7 degrees (absolute disaster for all living things bigger than a cockroach).
How do you know? In fact I think this is patently false. Antarctica and Siberia would be very habitable at this temperature. Not to mention, this would take a couple centuries at the very least.
It's more akin to an admission that we don't know the right way.
What I'm getting a lot of is "we don't know". By your own admission we don't know if it will be a disaster, and we don't know the right way to fix it if it is a disaster. You're proving my point. Why spend untold billions on something that might be the wrong way to fix a possible non-problem?
Do you have another alternative?
Yes, in your own words-
let the market find a way.
If the sea rises, it's more economical to live further inland. If it gets warmer, maybe people will prefer to live in Alaska. At some point, (probably in the next hundred years) fossil fuels will no longer be the most economical source of energy, and cleaner energy will be preferred.
Even if we posit that it is happening, and it is man-made, for all we know we could be preventing an ice age. Just 30-40 years ago we were thinking about covering the ice caps in black tar to prevent global cooling. I bet you're thankful we didn't follow through with that, given the warming of the past few decades. Let's learn from history and not rush to implement a crazy plan.
I'm sorry you think this day is only now upon us, although frankly they are all a little nutty I think.
"Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them." - Wall Street Journal
The President: Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake.
Commander Gilmour: Sir. Are you suggesting that we blow up the moon? ...
The President: Would you miss it?
I agree.
But still, this only works if it looks enough like a bird to be inconspicuous, AND no one sees it land in the first place.
If someone sees it come in, it has two choices - fly zig-zag or random pattern to take a couple pics and get away (and fly another mission), or land and make itself a sitting duck.
I'm a conservative, and from what I've heard she's awful - but your examples give me a more complete perspective of her record. Hopefully she isn't as bad as she seems when I listen to talk radio.
That said, I'll point out two things:
1 - "I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations" This implies she thinks she is incapable of (or at least limited in) rendering decisions apart from her "experiences", presumably those relevant to being a latina woman, given the rest of the speech.
2 - As for taking a fragment of a speech and running with it, sometimes this can be very wrong as you suggest. But sometimes, (and as I believe with her comments) there is no context in which a quote can redeem itself. There is no context that makes it not racist to say that a latina woman would make better judicial decisions than a white male.
I think it is important to call things what they really are.
Otherwise it can be quite insidious.
Working together in a communal way can be a good thing, like folding@home or any open source software.
Communism killed tens of millions of people.
Let's not call something by another name, lest some people get them confused and vote for the next Stalin.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not my "first foray into Latin". And I fail to see where I was twisting your words... could you give me an example so I don't do it again?
Based on your statements, it seems you don't care about the truth. I consider the truth to be important when making decisions affecting the whole planet, and I consider the debate a vehicle to ascertaining the truth.
I get the sense you're just dismissing me as some ignorant right-wing nut. But I value the input from your side, and you've brought up points that I haven't seen before. Let me clearly concede these so that you can see that I'm not just stubborn:
You admitted that a consensus can be wrong, but added
it's hubris for laypeople to dismiss it all as a vast academic conspiracy to get grant money.
I don't mean to dismiss it outright, and certainly not as a conspiracy. I think it comes back to money, as most things do. If grant money is more and more going to scientists that support global warming, it's in their self-interest to do so, no conspiracy needed. Being "green" is extremely popular right now. Many businesses also are making money from making "green" products, and car ads and household product ads are all mentioning how "green" they are. I don't think this is a big conspiracy. I'm also not saying it's a bad thing, being environmentally conscious is great. And I don't mean to suggest that the work these scientists are doing is bunk because there's a possibility they're just doing it for grant money. But the temperature record shows cooling or flat temperatures since 1998, historical cyclical swings in climate unrelated to humans, some studies showing antarctic ice growing, and so it seems to me like hubris or conceit to assume humans are causing disastrous global warming. In your link to Wikipedia it mentions some scientists that think it could even be a good thing if it happens.
Epic disaster is a 5 mile wide asteroid hitting the Earth. Epic disaster is the Yellowstone supervolcano covering the entire planet in ash. Epic disaster is a gamma ray burst from outer space eradicating all life. Large disasters are earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Any disaster means widespread destruction and many people dying. Having to change your address is not a disaster. Many people have been nomadic since ancient times. If there are more jobs in California than Missouri, people will move there. Mass migrations happen for many different reasons all the time. Some are bad like a hurricane dissuades people from living Louisiana, or an evil dictator commits genocide and refugees flock to neighboring countries. Some are good like the gold rushes in California and Alaska, or people moving to Florida because they prefer to retire there. And you seem to refuse to acknowledge that this would happen over the course of centuries. No mass deaths. Things would change slowly. That's where I'm coming from. Maybe we have a slightly different view of how big a calamity it would be. I will say I agree with you that it would be best if New York and LA stayed above sea level. But the point is, we don't know if it's us causing this, or if capping carbon will stop it. If this is part of a natural warming cycle, there would probably be nothing we could do about it, and the hardships this bill would put on us would be for nothing.
How big the hardshi
You're so insistent on taking me out of context, I'm not sure it's even worth responding.
Ad Hominem.
Even among climate skeptics (at least, the subset of skeptics with scientific credentials in relevant fields), only a handful will go so far as to claim that the warming is imaginary.
Maybe you just don't hear them because they're being suppressed. example A
example B
And have you seen this?
Who is this "we" who wanted to cover the polar ice caps in tar 30 or 40 years ago?
Scientists clamoring for government to do something about Global Cooling
I never claimed it was a consensus, and I didn't mean to imply that.
the number of peer reviewed papers predicting warming outnumbered the number that predicted cooling by about 6 to 1.
Your link does not support this, but suppose I take that as fact. I for one do not care how many people say something is true. In 1300 everyone knew the Earth was flat and everything revolved around it. Just because there is some kind of "consensus" either then or now, doesn't mean it's true.
Remember, the cap doesn't even kick in until 2012, and the industries that are most affected will continue to receive a sizeable number of free carbon permits for at least a decade after that.
Finally some good news. If I work real hard, I can get a raise so that I can pay my taxes. *feel the sarcasm!*
Sure, if somebody burns down your house, it's suddenly "more economical" to live under a bridge than in the middle of a field.
We need to be mindful of the timescales involved here. Burning a house down is a very immediate thing, with no warning, and little that predisposes one to having such a problem to begin with. If you live on the beach, you run the risk of your house being flooded by a storm swell, global warming or not. If you're not smart enough to get insurance, that's what we call natural selection.
Frankly, I'm stunned that someone can simultaneously believe that "the market" is capable of uprooting thousands of coastal cities, and yet is so fragile that it will fall over the moment CO2 pollution gets a price.
I don't think the market will fail. It is very resilient. I'm not like the alarmists- I'm not predicting doom for the economy if we don't do what I want. It'll just be harder on everyone, and you yourself admitted we don't know for sure if it will be a huge disaster. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It seems that, in your mind, no disaster is truly epic so long as there are survivors, and that it wouldn't be worthwhile to you to take a $1500 pay cut to avert any disaster that leaves a handful of humans behind.
Putting aside your slight on my reasoning and risk evaluation, I maintain that it is not an epic disaster. New York may have to move a few miles up the Hudson. I admit that this is not cheap. But I submit that no one will die in the process. A slug could walk away from the rising sea it's happening so slowly (if it's happening). So it's a choice between economic hardship now, for something that could happen in the future, because of something that we might be causing, or we continue to prosper, allowing businesses to finance R&D that could produce a cheaper cleaner fuel- which they will, because who wouldn't buy that?
A made-up number from Heritage, an right-wing propaganda mill built from the ground up to oppose any and all regulation.
I suppose if Hitler had statistics supp
I submit that they have no sense.
See: Tax & Tax
If you say otherwise, you're pitting yourself against the majority even of climate skeptics.
This doesn't make sense. If they're skeptical, they don't think it's happening.
How safe do you feel placing your money on, "Nah, everything will be peachy!"
Safer than with an extra $1500 yearly tax I can't afford, for something that might not be happening, and might not be a problem.
we know that it started warming when we started burning fossil fuel with abandon
What more evidence are you looking for?
What about the "Medieval Warm Period"? The "Little Ice Age"? We certainly weren't "burning fossil fuel with abandon" then. This indicates to me that the burden of proof should be on you who claim it is man-made, since cyclical warming/cooling obviously has other causes historically.
it could warm 7 degrees (absolute disaster for all living things bigger than a cockroach).
How do you know? In fact I think this is patently false. Antarctica and Siberia would be very habitable at this temperature. Not to mention, this would take a couple centuries at the very least.
It's more akin to an admission that we don't know the right way.
What I'm getting a lot of is "we don't know". By your own admission we don't know if it will be a disaster, and we don't know the right way to fix it if it is a disaster. You're proving my point. Why spend untold billions on something that might be the wrong way to fix a possible non-problem?
Do you have another alternative?
Yes, in your own words-
let the market find a way.
If the sea rises, it's more economical to live further inland. If it gets warmer, maybe people will prefer to live in Alaska. At some point, (probably in the next hundred years) fossil fuels will no longer be the most economical source of energy, and cleaner energy will be preferred.
Even if we posit that it is happening, and it is man-made, for all we know we could be preventing an ice age. Just 30-40 years ago we were thinking about covering the ice caps in black tar to prevent global cooling. I bet you're thankful we didn't follow through with that, given the warming of the past few decades. Let's learn from history and not rush to implement a crazy plan.
I'm sorry you think this day is only now upon us, although frankly they are all a little nutty I think.
"Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them." - Wall Street Journal
Only if "Yes" answers all of those should we be doing this, especially now.
Because then all of those other Congress critters would also need to be arrested
I see no problem with this...
Obama hasn't been arrested yet, why should this guy be?
The election doesn't matter anyways.
The president is really just a figurehead - the Ayatollah rules the country.
The President: Jiminy Jumpin' Jesus, I can't believe we're gonna pay that madman. I got nukes out the ying-yang. Just let me launch one, for God's sake.
Commander Gilmour: Sir. Are you suggesting that we blow up the moon?
...
The President: Would you miss it?
Great answer. I concede on all points.
"drab instead of shiny" was what I was thinking of, imagining some metallic, odd sounding robot-bird.
I agree.
But still, this only works if it looks enough like a bird to be inconspicuous, AND no one sees it land in the first place.
If someone sees it come in, it has two choices - fly zig-zag or random pattern to take a couple pics and get away (and fly another mission), or land and make itself a sitting duck.
I don't know about you, but if I see some robotic thingy land on my roof, I'm going to shoot it whether it's from my own government or a foreign one.
Perch, and get shot.
Keep flying, not as much of an easy target.
What do they do when you don't pay your taxes?
They come to your house with guns and take away your stuff.
Good points.
I'm a conservative, and from what I've heard she's awful - but your examples give me a more complete perspective of her record. Hopefully she isn't as bad as she seems when I listen to talk radio.
That said, I'll point out two things:
1 - "I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations" This implies she thinks she is incapable of (or at least limited in) rendering decisions apart from her "experiences", presumably those relevant to being a latina woman, given the rest of the speech.
2 - As for taking a fragment of a speech and running with it, sometimes this can be very wrong as you suggest. But sometimes, (and as I believe with her comments) there is no context in which a quote can redeem itself. There is no context that makes it not racist to say that a latina woman would make better judicial decisions than a white male.
In recent months, China has blocked YouTube and closed two blog hosting sites, bullog.cn and fatianxia.com, known for their liberal content.
Funny how here in America, it is "liberals" who support suppression of free speech. See: Fairness Doctrine
As long as it's not Dot-Communism.
How does someone with their extremities amputated get through an airport?
No, the problem with every form of communism is that people suck.
If it's oppressive government - it's sucky leaders using violence to force poor central planning.
If it's the ideal Marxian communism - sucky people get lazy without the incentive to work harder.
Trying to fix the second always leads to the first.
I think it is important to call things what they really are.
Otherwise it can be quite insidious.
Working together in a communal way can be a good thing, like folding@home or any open source software.
Communism killed tens of millions of people.
Let's not call something by another name, lest some people get them confused and vote for the next Stalin.
Who gave anyone the right to tell businesses what they can make, or me what I can drive?
The greenies will say it's for the future safety of the planet, but it's all bunk:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/index.htm