Actually, La Nina years do depress the global atmosphere average temperature by pushing heat down into the ocean. El Nino years do the opposite, they pull heat up from the oceans and increase global average temperature. The effect is small (about 0.04C for each) but when El Nino and La Nina conditions are taken into account, it creates a much clearer picture of the earth's warming trends.
Really? We've known for over a decade that volcanoes represent approximately 1% of human emissions and I provided evidence to back that statement up and all you can muster is "You're lying"?
you're oversimplifying the science
As for "oversimplifying" would you care to explain the crucial error in my example? I doubt it, because you have no interest in actual discourse.
What's your agenda?
Informing people. You agenda appears to be making accusations. If you can't behave better than 3 year old throwing a tantrum, please feel free to leave.
No where did I say "Reality is what I say it is". However, humans have developed this amazing thing called science. You may have heard of it?
With science and the scientific method we can actually define an objective reality. You are certainly free to claim that you are not bound by that of reality but I doubt anyone will believe you. Although, I can think of many experiments that could resolve the question for you... permanently.
Actually, if the Republicans sweep the fall elections, the Chinese will be pointing at the United States for the exact same argument. On the books, the Chinese are at about the same place as Americans are in reducing CO2 emissions. In practice the Chinese are finding it difficult to enforce the environmental regulations they do have.
Beyond that, India and China would only be able to gleefully take up the slack if they were allowed to do so. If you put a carbon tax on CO2 emissions, it would simply be foolhardy not to slap an equivalent import tariff on manufactured goods from non-compliant countries. If the EU and the United States agree on a minimum level of carbon tax, they can force China and India to actually adhere to those standards. China will know it's better for them to become compliant and avoid the import tariff than it is to let the U.S. and E.U. collect it indefinitely.
Of course, that assumes that the policies are implemented correctly, but that's a different issue.
As for solar and wind, the crisis the coal industry is facing is that projections indicate that while coal is more economical now, solar has a better than even chance of being more economical than coal by the time they could finish building a new coal plant that was started today. The problem is that investors face the very real probability of never recouping their investment in new coal plants.
Being sceptical about theoretical models and extrapolations will not get you labelled a denier. But if you question whether global warming is due to human activity, you're questioning a lot of evidence that goes far beyond theoretical models. There are 13 separate lines of evidence that indicate that global warming is man made. The deniers have no credible alternative theories and can't even agree on which scapegoat to blame.
It's a fact that global warming is caused by humans, we know the mechanism that causes it (greenhouse gases) and we know we're the ones increasing greenhouse gases (industrial measurements and radio-isotope analysis), it's time to accept the truth on that count. There are other things you can question, like exactly how fast temperatures will increase, and what specifically the effects of a warmer climate are. But you need to accept that scientific facts established 30 years ago which have stood up to every question thrown at since aren't going to crumble before your non-expert opinion.
I think you're suffering from the "false consensus effect". I don't think your views are typical of actual conservative ideology. There are two types of conservatives (they are not mutually exclusive): fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives want effective and efficient government, they want to pursue policies that reduce costs. They have also been largely chased out of the Republican party. Social conservatives want the government to enforce morality and social order. They don't like it when people don't conform to their moral and social codes. They are perfectly ok with a bigger government that benefits the "good" people and hurts the "bad" people.
You seem to be neither type of conservative. Of course, that was pretty obvious when you described yourself as practical libertarian. Own it, you're a libertarian and not a conservative. The difference is fiscal conservatives don't care about the size of the government, they care that tax money is spent efficiently and effectively. On the other hand libertarians care about liberty, freedom from taxes and freedom from rules. To libertarians there is no such thing as efficient or effective government spending (except to protect property rights).
Also, I don't think you understand what fascism is.
There are many ways in which people might not believe all or some of the claims on AGW.
If you don't believe any of the evidence on AGW, you're either ignorant or a denier. The evidence is overwhelming.
Believe it or not, there are even climate scientists (Dr. Bas van Geel for instance) who think the current scientific majority belief (IPCC) is wrong.
Ironically, your post was the top result when I googled "Dr. Bas van Geel" and "denier". Maybe you're the only one who's calling him a denier?
Are you really so thick that you do not understand that labelling someone a 'denier' makes the angry !? Call me a skeptic, call me a maverick, call me an obstinate old fart, I don't care, but don't compare me with people that deliberately deny one of the most gruesome slaughters of all time.
You're called a denier because you deny the evidence. You're not a sceptic because you are only sceptical about one position. You're not a maverick, you're the status quo. You deny reality and evidence just like the people who deny that world is round, or deny that smoking causes cancer, or deny the Holocaust happened. If that makes you angry, too bad. Maybe you should stop acting like the people you abhor.
Just like a Holocaust denier, you seem to have a political reason to pretend the evidence doesn't exist or isn't conclusive. Maybe you should ask yourself why you deny something that every major scientific organisation in the world has accepted as fact? Climate change researchers are 97% in agreement that global warming is real and caused by human activity. That's an astoundingly high level of agreement among the experts. The level of agreement is somewhere around 80% when extended to active scientists in unrelated fields.
It seems to me that you're offended because you know the comparison is accurate and you're ashamed that you're stooping to the same level but you can't bring yourself to stop so you lash out at the people who call you on your irrational denial of the evidence. You know that you're engaging in the same reprehensible selective thinking for equally specious reasons. However, it's up to you to stop acting like the people you hate.
Eventually, I suspect the Heartland institute will be broken by global warming. They are becoming the face of opposition to global warming and when something really bad happens and people blame it on global warming. There's money and prestige in that, but also danger. Eventually, people will turn on them. The Heartland Institute will be dragged through the mud and destroyed. I know if they understand that they are going to be the fall guy on this one. When conservative voters wake up to the fact that global warming is real, the politicians will say "It's not my fault, Heartland lied to us all". Suddenly, they will be friendless and vulnerable.
This type of no holds barred lowest common denominator politics is going to make a lot of enemies, isn't going to win them many new friends.
You should probably check more often, that debate has been over at least a decade. Not that it was ever in much of a debate. While it's true that the natural cycle is larger than human contributions, the natural cycle operates in an equilibrium state. It's kind of like having two big tanks of water with water rushing back and forth between them. If you start pouring additional water into the tanks they will eventually both fill up regardless of how much water flows between the two tanks.
It would be, if he were in an area of American jurisdiction and not leading a military force against an ally. When you're engaged in military operations, you have to take the chance that weapons will be fired at you, including missiles from drones.
Noble sentiments, but they ignore thousands of years of tribalism. When the tribal leader starts throwing his own tribesmen into the volcano, you know something's wrong.
Absolute clap trap. Liberals don't accept that type of tribalism, and conservatives should care because he wasn't a good American. Really think about it for a moment, a criminal in a foreign country was killed by an American missile? Do you really think any American would care if it wasn't for political one-upmanship? It's an invented issue.
Is the same true of someone who said "I don't like how Florida counted votes or that the Supreme Court didn't do what I wanted them to, so George Bush is not my president"?
Except that is a legitimate gripe. Bush would have lost a state wide recount. The Supreme Court violated it's neutrality to make a political appointment. That's seriously bad for your country.
In a democracy, you have to accept the results even if you lose. In a democracy you don't scream "fraud" just because you lost.
No, but it will always be the losers who report fraud. The winners generally won't because, you know, they won. If you dismiss any claims of fraud because they come from "sore losers" then you've already conceded that you have no interest in fair or honest elections.
Be careful about throwing around words like "treason" (and "terrorism") just because you want to sound loud and powerful and savor the taste of outrage.
When people want the country to fail economically so they can be proven right, that's pretty damn close to treason. Whatever happened to making the best of it? If a significant number of people in your country hate the "other" people so much that they would rather everybody suffer than allow them to succeed, then you country is rotten to the core and will fail no matter what anyone does.
They had 2 full years with complete control of government, and the only thing of note that they did was to enact a partial reform of healthcare that was implemented in such a way as to give the conservative-dominated Supreme Court the final say.
Actually, Obama accomplished quite a bit in his first two years, most of it drown out by the health care controversy. It's not a liberal revolution by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I've heard from presidential historians and the like is that he actually got more done in his first two years than any president in living memory. He inherited a country in desperate straits and has managed to turn things around a fair bit and that's despite the fact that the Republicans have been extraordinarily obstructionist and now oppose everything the Democrats do on principle. The U.S. is even becoming a bizarro land where bills are defeated in the Senate when the vote is 51 for (due to endless Republican filibusters).
I honestly think Obama didn't consider ending the Bush tax cuts to be a priority. He thought he could just let them expire and that would be the end of them. As for health care, Obama implemented the Republican health care plan on the, obviously mistaken, premise that if it was their plan they'd probably support it. The truth is, the Republican party can no longer cooperate with the Democrats on any high profile issue. The power people in the Republican party are media ideologues who can't compromise with "the enemy" for fear of losing their audience to the next crazy firebrand. Talk radio and Fox News are poisoning both Americans and the Republican party. As for sending more troops to Afghanistan that was actually part of Obama's platform. He called it "the good war" during the 2008 campaign. I don't think there wasn't much point in changing the Bush timeline once it was set. The troops were going to be almost entirely out of Iraq 2 years after Obama took office? Why would he open a can of worms to make it one year when he had more pressing issues?
The parties aren't radically different in policy, especially not under Obama. He could have been in the running for the best Republican president ever, if he wasn't black. But there are key differences between the parties in how they operate. The Democrat's strength and weakness is herding cats and for the Republicans it's marching in lock step. The downside is the Democrats have trouble getting stuff done and the Republicans are all too willing to march off a cliff for "glorious leader".
Now you are demonizing people, which is the behavior I was hoping you would reconsider. I know a fair number of people who are all over the whole conservative principles you speak of, but would be horrified at the idea of using voting fraud. They are a pain in the ass for a lot of reasons, but in general honesty is not one of them. In no way does the whole ultra religious thing lead to voting fraud.
I don't think you understand. The point is that for conservatives (in particular) an "us versus them" mentality can lead otherwise honest people to do things that others would (rightly) find unethical. On the other side, liberals can be enticed to do the same things with an appeal that it's "for the greater good". The radical right that has seized control of the Republican party has been engaged in purging the party of anyone who is not ideologically pure enough. I too think the ordinary members want to do the right things, however, it is simple fact that conservatives are more easily lead astray by their leaders. More or less, the Republican party seems to be made up almost entirely of conservatives now. The conservative respect for leadership that allows the Republicans to organise and make the Democrats look like they're herding cats also allows them to be easily led astray.
Again, Blackwell is not the only player here.
Again, everything you posted indicates, at least to me, a false equivalency. On the one hand Republican leaders work to disenfranchise thousands of voters and then one man, not affiliated with the Democrats in any way is trotted out as the counterweight. It's false equivalency and in trying to pretend they represent the same scale and same severity, I think you are either ignorantly or deliberately misleading people.
My point was to inform about recent electoral shenanigans, and to comment about part of what is driving that behaviour.
Also, may I suggest that you look into the history of voting fraud. There is and has been no shortage of it in big cities where there aren't any Republicans to be found. Voting fraud is a human tendency, not a Republican or Democratic tendency.
I sincerely doubt there aren't any Republicans to be found in big cities, however I do agree that vote fraud is a human tendency. However, the current trend is vote fraud is anything but bi-partisan. Personally, I think "us vs. them" mentality pushed by right wing talk radio and Fox News that has overwhelmed the old Republican party establishment is reponsible. The insane right wing fringe that has taken control of the Republican is part of what is driving a massive increase in this behaviour. The right wing fundamentalists believe, literally, that God is on their side and therefore they can do no wrong. If vote fraud is required to win then that's ok because they're just making sure that things come out according to God's plan anyway. Plus the people who don't vote for Republicans are all "lazy or traitors who hate America" so they don't deserve to have a vote anyway. Or at least, that's a rather obvious way for other wise honest conservative people to justify electoral cheating. They fall into the traps of tribalism and conformity. They allow people like Blackwell to get away with obvious vote suppression tactics because despite they supposed disbelief in big government they have an almost pathological need to trust conservative leaders.
Mostly I agree with you, however, I also think the people who are doing it now need to have the boot put down on them no matter what party or affiliation they have. And given the recent history, I think it's misleading to pretend that both of your parties are equally guilty of the crimes. You alienate both Republicans and Democrats when you do so, and neither side will want to confront the issue.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this but the Wild Rose party of Alberta is run and backed by the same people as the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). The Progressive Conservative (PC) party was always a right of center party. The Reform party, which eventually became the CPC was formed by the people who thought the federal PC party was becoming too "left wing". Same thing for the Wild Rose party, they used to be the right fringe of the provincial PC party.
I agree, but the Democrats do the exact same thing. And because about 2/3 of the voters dutifully follow their team, the political parties can get away with it.
Actually, they don't. For example, there were somewhere around 250 incidents of voter fraud reported immediately after the 2008 election. 6 of them favored the Democrats.
There are plenty of other charges that can be leveled at the Democrats, but they're just don't believe in vote fraud like the Republicans do. This makes a certain amount of sense, there are a lot more liberals in the Democratic party and liberals are more concerned with fairness than conservatives. Conservatives are more concerned with making sure the "right" people win.
This observation is drawn differences in the basic moral principles of liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to value two moral axioms: the prevention of harm and fairness. Conservatives value tribalism, conformity and strong leadership. Both groups share all 5 values, but the ones listed are the ones they value the most. Tribalism allows conservatives to limit their prevention of harm and fairness to those who belong to the tribe. If the tribe is allowed to be "conservatives" then it should be obvious how that can be twisted to disenfranchise any group that doesn't vote the "right' way.
So your claim is that no one has ever done a temperature reconstruction going back more than 150 years? Or are you upset that all of the reconstructions have come to the same conclusion? Namely that it's warmer now, we passed the medieval warm period's average temperature decades ago. The graphs on the linked articles show many different reconstructions, but they all agree that the current temperatures are warmer than 1000 years ago. The only thing I could find to indicate that the medieval warm period was as warm (or warmer) than today was what appears to be a doodle with no temperature scale on a site that was directly tied to the Heartland Institute. I don't consider doodles with no supporting evidence to be credible and that's before considering that the Heartland institute has a history of support for creationism, smoking, and politically drivel denial of climate change. I think the best evidence shows that we are likely at a warmer temperature than any other time in the Holocene.
This is the crux of my problem with your argument. You've pre-determined the "relevant period" when choosing your time span (i.e., you've already framed the argument in a way to support a CO2 correlated conclusion).
If you want to study the effects of industrialisation, you're going to look at the period of industrialisation. If you want to study something else, then you choose a different period. If you want to accuse someone of cherry-pick you really do need to provide a reasonable explanation of why the data isn't representative.
Given that there are at least a dozens reconstructions of longer periods. I think your claim that climatologists never look at any scale longer than 150 years has been rather thoroughly debunked.
Climatologists have calculated that you only generally get statistically significant trends over about 17 years. Anything shorter and you're vulnerable to short term fluctuations, particularly ENSO related ones. We've been very fortunate last 10 years, all of the natural factors have been acting in opposition to the anthropogenic factors. For example, we've had a solar minimum, two strong La Ninas and only 2 weak El Ninos. This has led to the appearance of a "stop" in warming for very cursory inspections. However, if you factor out the short term ENSO variations the temperature increases appear to continue unabated.
Analysis shows that La Nina years on average reduce the global average temperature by about 0.5 degrees and El Ninos increase the global average temperature by about 0.5 degrees for that particular year. Give the trend over a decade is about 0.2 degrees you should be able to see how that short term variability can swamp the trend line.
Droll, but not very accurate. The last 100 year or 150 years are often used because the industrial revolution started about 150 years ago and cars are about 100 years old. They're used because they represent the time scale on which humans have been using mass amounts of fossil fuels and thus actually releasing mass amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In other words, it represents the entire relevant period and thus isn't cherry-picked by definition.
Now if you ever saw a study that went from 1994 to 1998, or 2004 to 2007, or even 1994 to 2007, then that would be cherry-picking. Those are all intervals that could be picked to show maximum warming.
Interestingly, temperatures are only flat if you ignore the influence of ENSO (El Nino and La Nina cycle). We've had a decade with weak El Ninos and strong La Ninas which does slow the apparent rise in global temperatures on a short time scale. However, when take into account the three different ENSO conditions (El Nino, La Nina, neutral), you end up with three separate trend lines that are all increasing at a steady rate.
Watts would have more credibility if he didn't say the opposite of what he wrote in his research paper. You see, he regularly claims to have shown that the surface stations is unreliable. However, his published paper concludes that the record is reliable.
When he talks about it, he deliberately misleads his audience because they don't care much about the facts, but only about rabid denial of global warming. Combine in the funding he receives from the Heartland Institute and he stands to lose money, prestige and influence whenever he is eventually forced to concede that global warming is real. That's why he reneged on his promise to accept the results of the BEST temperature reconstruction and instead attacked them mercilessly when they didn't come to the conclusion his supporters wanted.
Generally speaking, it should be spent on carbon reduction. It's much cheaper in the long run to reduce carbon emissions than it is to fight the effects of climate change. This should be no surprise, it's almost always more effective to fight the root cause than it is to fight the symptoms. In this case, economists who have studied climate change usually say the U.S. (by itself) could save trillions of dollars by reducing carbon emissions. The estimate is that it will cost about 1% of GDP to effectively eliminate climate change permanently, or roughly about what the world spends on sewers.
I suggest you review your logic, appeal to authority is not fallacious when the authority is a legitimate expert on the subject and a consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion. Thus the "overwhelming consensus of the scientific community" is a valid argument and not a logical fallacy, although it's probably a stronger argument if the overwhelming consensus of climatologists is used instead. That eliminates many scientists, who are not at all experts on climate change, from the expert group.
Why do you think the Heartland Institute (among others) spends so much time trying to convince people the link between smoking and cancer and the link between CO2 and climate change are "controversial". It's because they're attempting to defeat legitimate appeals to authority by creating doubt that the consensus exists. Most media outlets tend to aid and abet this behaviour because controversies generate more ad impressions than consensus.
Lastly, there are many things which are neither science nor religion. Your are use a false dilemma to cast aspersions on people you don't agree with and thus you are actually basing your beliefs on a logical fallacy, as opposed to your falsified accusation.
Most of the bands you have heard of are associated with a label which has paid the fees (possibly out of the band's pocket to itself) to allow them to play cover songs. And the bands you haven't heard of are playing at venues that have paid the fees to allow cover songs to be played.
Here's an article from 1996 about ASCAP threatening to sue camp grounds for public performances. ASCAP claims it only meant to charge for professional performances, but frankly, that's an excuse. They decided to shake down a bunch of camp sites with an ambiguous legal threat and got caught up in a public backlash over their attempted extortion of several girl scouts camps (among the over 6,000 camping grounds they threatened).
Copyright organisations seems to be evil by definition, they seek to steal from the public to enrich themselves. It's simply ridiculous that a song (Over the Rainbow) from a movie released in 1939 (The Wizard of Oz) is still covered by copyright and still requires a license to sing in a "public performance". Copyright needs to be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced. I see few good reasons for it to exist, and no good reasons why copyright should last more than 10 years. Copyright's revenues are heavily front loaded, which means each additional year of copyright protection increases costs for less revenue. By 15 years out, 98% of all revenues have been realised. If we broaden that out to economic benefits rather than specifically revenues of the copyright holder, the economic benefits of copyright are probably negative by 15 years out. The costs to enforce and police the copyright, which are increasingly being socialised by aggressive content industry lobbying, will definitely outweigh the limited benefits of copyright by that point.
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Actually, La Nina years do depress the global atmosphere average temperature by pushing heat down into the ocean. El Nino years do the opposite, they pull heat up from the oceans and increase global average temperature. The effect is small (about 0.04C for each) but when El Nino and La Nina conditions are taken into account, it creates a much clearer picture of the earth's warming trends.
You're lying about the debate
Really? We've known for over a decade that volcanoes represent approximately 1% of human emissions and I provided evidence to back that statement up and all you can muster is "You're lying"?
you're oversimplifying the science
As for "oversimplifying" would you care to explain the crucial error in my example? I doubt it, because you have no interest in actual discourse.
What's your agenda?
Informing people. You agenda appears to be making accusations. If you can't behave better than 3 year old throwing a tantrum, please feel free to leave.
No where did I say "Reality is what I say it is". However, humans have developed this amazing thing called science. You may have heard of it?
With science and the scientific method we can actually define an objective reality. You are certainly free to claim that you are not bound by that of reality but I doubt anyone will believe you. Although, I can think of many experiments that could resolve the question for you... permanently.
India and China will gleefully take up the slack.
Actually, if the Republicans sweep the fall elections, the Chinese will be pointing at the United States for the exact same argument. On the books, the Chinese are at about the same place as Americans are in reducing CO2 emissions. In practice the Chinese are finding it difficult to enforce the environmental regulations they do have.
Beyond that, India and China would only be able to gleefully take up the slack if they were allowed to do so. If you put a carbon tax on CO2 emissions, it would simply be foolhardy not to slap an equivalent import tariff on manufactured goods from non-compliant countries. If the EU and the United States agree on a minimum level of carbon tax, they can force China and India to actually adhere to those standards. China will know it's better for them to become compliant and avoid the import tariff than it is to let the U.S. and E.U. collect it indefinitely.
Of course, that assumes that the policies are implemented correctly, but that's a different issue.
As for solar and wind, the crisis the coal industry is facing is that projections indicate that while coal is more economical now, solar has a better than even chance of being more economical than coal by the time they could finish building a new coal plant that was started today. The problem is that investors face the very real probability of never recouping their investment in new coal plants.
Being sceptical about theoretical models and extrapolations will not get you labelled a denier. But if you question whether global warming is due to human activity, you're questioning a lot of evidence that goes far beyond theoretical models. There are 13 separate lines of evidence that indicate that global warming is man made. The deniers have no credible alternative theories and can't even agree on which scapegoat to blame.
It's a fact that global warming is caused by humans, we know the mechanism that causes it (greenhouse gases) and we know we're the ones increasing greenhouse gases (industrial measurements and radio-isotope analysis), it's time to accept the truth on that count. There are other things you can question, like exactly how fast temperatures will increase, and what specifically the effects of a warmer climate are. But you need to accept that scientific facts established 30 years ago which have stood up to every question thrown at since aren't going to crumble before your non-expert opinion.
In other words, they don't agree with you.
They don't agree with reality, that's why they get labelled as deniers. For denying reality.
I think you're suffering from the "false consensus effect". I don't think your views are typical of actual conservative ideology. There are two types of conservatives (they are not mutually exclusive): fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. Fiscal conservatives want effective and efficient government, they want to pursue policies that reduce costs. They have also been largely chased out of the Republican party. Social conservatives want the government to enforce morality and social order. They don't like it when people don't conform to their moral and social codes. They are perfectly ok with a bigger government that benefits the "good" people and hurts the "bad" people.
You seem to be neither type of conservative. Of course, that was pretty obvious when you described yourself as practical libertarian. Own it, you're a libertarian and not a conservative. The difference is fiscal conservatives don't care about the size of the government, they care that tax money is spent efficiently and effectively. On the other hand libertarians care about liberty, freedom from taxes and freedom from rules. To libertarians there is no such thing as efficient or effective government spending (except to protect property rights).
Also, I don't think you understand what fascism is.
There are many ways in which people might not believe all or some of the claims on AGW.
If you don't believe any of the evidence on AGW, you're either ignorant or a denier. The evidence is overwhelming.
Believe it or not, there are even climate scientists (Dr. Bas van Geel for instance) who think the current scientific majority belief (IPCC) is wrong.
Ironically, your post was the top result when I googled "Dr. Bas van Geel" and "denier". Maybe you're the only one who's calling him a denier?
Are you really so thick that you do not understand that labelling someone a 'denier' makes the angry !? Call me a skeptic, call me a maverick, call me an obstinate old fart, I don't care, but don't compare me with people that deliberately deny one of the most gruesome slaughters of all time.
You're called a denier because you deny the evidence. You're not a sceptic because you are only sceptical about one position. You're not a maverick, you're the status quo. You deny reality and evidence just like the people who deny that world is round, or deny that smoking causes cancer, or deny the Holocaust happened. If that makes you angry, too bad. Maybe you should stop acting like the people you abhor.
Just like a Holocaust denier, you seem to have a political reason to pretend the evidence doesn't exist or isn't conclusive. Maybe you should ask yourself why you deny something that every major scientific organisation in the world has accepted as fact? Climate change researchers are 97% in agreement that global warming is real and caused by human activity. That's an astoundingly high level of agreement among the experts. The level of agreement is somewhere around 80% when extended to active scientists in unrelated fields.
It seems to me that you're offended because you know the comparison is accurate and you're ashamed that you're stooping to the same level but you can't bring yourself to stop so you lash out at the people who call you on your irrational denial of the evidence. You know that you're engaging in the same reprehensible selective thinking for equally specious reasons. However, it's up to you to stop acting like the people you hate.
Eventually, I suspect the Heartland institute will be broken by global warming. They are becoming the face of opposition to global warming and when something really bad happens and people blame it on global warming. There's money and prestige in that, but also danger. Eventually, people will turn on them. The Heartland Institute will be dragged through the mud and destroyed. I know if they understand that they are going to be the fall guy on this one. When conservative voters wake up to the fact that global warming is real, the politicians will say "It's not my fault, Heartland lied to us all". Suddenly, they will be friendless and vulnerable.
This type of no holds barred lowest common denominator politics is going to make a lot of enemies, isn't going to win them many new friends.
You should probably check more often, that debate has been over at least a decade. Not that it was ever in much of a debate. While it's true that the natural cycle is larger than human contributions, the natural cycle operates in an equilibrium state. It's kind of like having two big tanks of water with water rushing back and forth between them. If you start pouring additional water into the tanks they will eventually both fill up regardless of how much water flows between the two tanks.
If you want a better understanding of the state of climate change science you should read this big picture overview.
It would be, if he were in an area of American jurisdiction and not leading a military force against an ally. When you're engaged in military operations, you have to take the chance that weapons will be fired at you, including missiles from drones.
Noble sentiments, but they ignore thousands of years of tribalism. When the tribal leader starts throwing his own tribesmen into the volcano, you know something's wrong.
Absolute clap trap. Liberals don't accept that type of tribalism, and conservatives should care because he wasn't a good American. Really think about it for a moment, a criminal in a foreign country was killed by an American missile? Do you really think any American would care if it wasn't for political one-upmanship? It's an invented issue.
Is the same true of someone who said "I don't like how Florida counted votes or that the Supreme Court didn't do what I wanted them to, so George Bush is not my president"?
Except that is a legitimate gripe. Bush would have lost a state wide recount. The Supreme Court violated it's neutrality to make a political appointment. That's seriously bad for your country.
In a democracy, you have to accept the results even if you lose. In a democracy you don't scream "fraud" just because you lost.
No, but it will always be the losers who report fraud. The winners generally won't because, you know, they won. If you dismiss any claims of fraud because they come from "sore losers" then you've already conceded that you have no interest in fair or honest elections.
Be careful about throwing around words like "treason" (and "terrorism") just because you want to sound loud and powerful and savor the taste of outrage.
When people want the country to fail economically so they can be proven right, that's pretty damn close to treason. Whatever happened to making the best of it? If a significant number of people in your country hate the "other" people so much that they would rather everybody suffer than allow them to succeed, then you country is rotten to the core and will fail no matter what anyone does.
They had 2 full years with complete control of government, and the only thing of note that they did was to enact a partial reform of healthcare that was implemented in such a way as to give the conservative-dominated Supreme Court the final say.
Actually, Obama accomplished quite a bit in his first two years, most of it drown out by the health care controversy. It's not a liberal revolution by any stretch of the imagination, but from what I've heard from presidential historians and the like is that he actually got more done in his first two years than any president in living memory. He inherited a country in desperate straits and has managed to turn things around a fair bit and that's despite the fact that the Republicans have been extraordinarily obstructionist and now oppose everything the Democrats do on principle. The U.S. is even becoming a bizarro land where bills are defeated in the Senate when the vote is 51 for (due to endless Republican filibusters).
I honestly think Obama didn't consider ending the Bush tax cuts to be a priority. He thought he could just let them expire and that would be the end of them. As for health care, Obama implemented the Republican health care plan on the, obviously mistaken, premise that if it was their plan they'd probably support it. The truth is, the Republican party can no longer cooperate with the Democrats on any high profile issue. The power people in the Republican party are media ideologues who can't compromise with "the enemy" for fear of losing their audience to the next crazy firebrand. Talk radio and Fox News are poisoning both Americans and the Republican party. As for sending more troops to Afghanistan that was actually part of Obama's platform. He called it "the good war" during the 2008 campaign. I don't think there wasn't much point in changing the Bush timeline once it was set. The troops were going to be almost entirely out of Iraq 2 years after Obama took office? Why would he open a can of worms to make it one year when he had more pressing issues?
The parties aren't radically different in policy, especially not under Obama. He could have been in the running for the best Republican president ever, if he wasn't black. But there are key differences between the parties in how they operate. The Democrat's strength and weakness is herding cats and for the Republicans it's marching in lock step. The downside is the Democrats have trouble getting stuff done and the Republicans are all too willing to march off a cliff for "glorious leader".
Now you are demonizing people, which is the behavior I was hoping you would reconsider. I know a fair number of people who are all over the whole conservative principles you speak of, but would be horrified at the idea of using voting fraud. They are a pain in the ass for a lot of reasons, but in general honesty is not one of them. In no way does the whole ultra religious thing lead to voting fraud.
I don't think you understand. The point is that for conservatives (in particular) an "us versus them" mentality can lead otherwise honest people to do things that others would (rightly) find unethical. On the other side, liberals can be enticed to do the same things with an appeal that it's "for the greater good". The radical right that has seized control of the Republican party has been engaged in purging the party of anyone who is not ideologically pure enough. I too think the ordinary members want to do the right things, however, it is simple fact that conservatives are more easily lead astray by their leaders. More or less, the Republican party seems to be made up almost entirely of conservatives now. The conservative respect for leadership that allows the Republicans to organise and make the Democrats look like they're herding cats also allows them to be easily led astray.
Again, Blackwell is not the only player here.
Again, everything you posted indicates, at least to me, a false equivalency. On the one hand Republican leaders work to disenfranchise thousands of voters and then one man, not affiliated with the Democrats in any way is trotted out as the counterweight. It's false equivalency and in trying to pretend they represent the same scale and same severity, I think you are either ignorantly or deliberately misleading people.
My point was to inform about recent electoral shenanigans, and to comment about part of what is driving that behaviour.
Also, may I suggest that you look into the history of voting fraud. There is and has been no shortage of it in big cities where there aren't any Republicans to be found. Voting fraud is a human tendency, not a Republican or Democratic tendency.
I sincerely doubt there aren't any Republicans to be found in big cities, however I do agree that vote fraud is a human tendency. However, the current trend is vote fraud is anything but bi-partisan. Personally, I think "us vs. them" mentality pushed by right wing talk radio and Fox News that has overwhelmed the old Republican party establishment is reponsible. The insane right wing fringe that has taken control of the Republican is part of what is driving a massive increase in this behaviour. The right wing fundamentalists believe, literally, that God is on their side and therefore they can do no wrong. If vote fraud is required to win then that's ok because they're just making sure that things come out according to God's plan anyway. Plus the people who don't vote for Republicans are all "lazy or traitors who hate America" so they don't deserve to have a vote anyway. Or at least, that's a rather obvious way for other wise honest conservative people to justify electoral cheating. They fall into the traps of tribalism and conformity. They allow people like Blackwell to get away with obvious vote suppression tactics because despite they supposed disbelief in big government they have an almost pathological need to trust conservative leaders.
Mostly I agree with you, however, I also think the people who are doing it now need to have the boot put down on them no matter what party or affiliation they have. And given the recent history, I think it's misleading to pretend that both of your parties are equally guilty of the crimes. You alienate both Republicans and Democrats when you do so, and neither side will want to confront the issue.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this but the Wild Rose party of Alberta is run and backed by the same people as the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC). The Progressive Conservative (PC) party was always a right of center party. The Reform party, which eventually became the CPC was formed by the people who thought the federal PC party was becoming too "left wing". Same thing for the Wild Rose party, they used to be the right fringe of the provincial PC party.
I agree, but the Democrats do the exact same thing. And because about 2/3 of the voters dutifully follow their team, the political parties can get away with it.
Actually, they don't. For example, there were somewhere around 250 incidents of voter fraud reported immediately after the 2008 election. 6 of them favored the Democrats.
There are plenty of other charges that can be leveled at the Democrats, but they're just don't believe in vote fraud like the Republicans do. This makes a certain amount of sense, there are a lot more liberals in the Democratic party and liberals are more concerned with fairness than conservatives. Conservatives are more concerned with making sure the "right" people win.
This observation is drawn differences in the basic moral principles of liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to value two moral axioms: the prevention of harm and fairness. Conservatives value tribalism, conformity and strong leadership. Both groups share all 5 values, but the ones listed are the ones they value the most. Tribalism allows conservatives to limit their prevention of harm and fairness to those who belong to the tribe. If the tribe is allowed to be "conservatives" then it should be obvious how that can be twisted to disenfranchise any group that doesn't vote the "right' way.
So your claim is that no one has ever done a temperature reconstruction going back more than 150 years? Or are you upset that all of the reconstructions have come to the same conclusion? Namely that it's warmer now, we passed the medieval warm period's average temperature decades ago. The graphs on the linked articles show many different reconstructions, but they all agree that the current temperatures are warmer than 1000 years ago. The only thing I could find to indicate that the medieval warm period was as warm (or warmer) than today was what appears to be a doodle with no temperature scale on a site that was directly tied to the Heartland Institute. I don't consider doodles with no supporting evidence to be credible and that's before considering that the Heartland institute has a history of support for creationism, smoking, and politically drivel denial of climate change. I think the best evidence shows that we are likely at a warmer temperature than any other time in the Holocene.
This is the crux of my problem with your argument. You've pre-determined the "relevant period" when choosing your time span (i.e., you've already framed the argument in a way to support a CO2 correlated conclusion).
If you want to study the effects of industrialisation, you're going to look at the period of industrialisation. If you want to study something else, then you choose a different period. If you want to accuse someone of cherry-pick you really do need to provide a reasonable explanation of why the data isn't representative.
Given that there are at least a dozens reconstructions of longer periods. I think your claim that climatologists never look at any scale longer than 150 years has been rather thoroughly debunked.
Climatologists have calculated that you only generally get statistically significant trends over about 17 years. Anything shorter and you're vulnerable to short term fluctuations, particularly ENSO related ones. We've been very fortunate last 10 years, all of the natural factors have been acting in opposition to the anthropogenic factors. For example, we've had a solar minimum, two strong La Ninas and only 2 weak El Ninos. This has led to the appearance of a "stop" in warming for very cursory inspections. However, if you factor out the short term ENSO variations the temperature increases appear to continue unabated.
Analysis shows that La Nina years on average reduce the global average temperature by about 0.5 degrees and El Ninos increase the global average temperature by about 0.5 degrees for that particular year. Give the trend over a decade is about 0.2 degrees you should be able to see how that short term variability can swamp the trend line.
Droll, but not very accurate. The last 100 year or 150 years are often used because the industrial revolution started about 150 years ago and cars are about 100 years old. They're used because they represent the time scale on which humans have been using mass amounts of fossil fuels and thus actually releasing mass amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In other words, it represents the entire relevant period and thus isn't cherry-picked by definition.
Now if you ever saw a study that went from 1994 to 1998, or 2004 to 2007, or even 1994 to 2007, then that would be cherry-picking. Those are all intervals that could be picked to show maximum warming.
Interestingly, temperatures are only flat if you ignore the influence of ENSO (El Nino and La Nina cycle). We've had a decade with weak El Ninos and strong La Ninas which does slow the apparent rise in global temperatures on a short time scale. However, when take into account the three different ENSO conditions (El Nino, La Nina, neutral), you end up with three separate trend lines that are all increasing at a steady rate.
This image demonstrates how a noisy, difficult to read graph becomes pretty clear when the data is partitioned according to the short term ENSO cycles.
Watts would have more credibility if he didn't say the opposite of what he wrote in his research paper. You see, he regularly claims to have shown that the surface stations is unreliable. However, his published paper concludes that the record is reliable.
When he talks about it, he deliberately misleads his audience because they don't care much about the facts, but only about rabid denial of global warming. Combine in the funding he receives from the Heartland Institute and he stands to lose money, prestige and influence whenever he is eventually forced to concede that global warming is real. That's why he reneged on his promise to accept the results of the BEST temperature reconstruction and instead attacked them mercilessly when they didn't come to the conclusion his supporters wanted.
Generally speaking, it should be spent on carbon reduction. It's much cheaper in the long run to reduce carbon emissions than it is to fight the effects of climate change. This should be no surprise, it's almost always more effective to fight the root cause than it is to fight the symptoms. In this case, economists who have studied climate change usually say the U.S. (by itself) could save trillions of dollars by reducing carbon emissions. The estimate is that it will cost about 1% of GDP to effectively eliminate climate change permanently, or roughly about what the world spends on sewers.
I suggest you review your logic, appeal to authority is not fallacious when the authority is a legitimate expert on the subject and a consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion. Thus the "overwhelming consensus of the scientific community" is a valid argument and not a logical fallacy, although it's probably a stronger argument if the overwhelming consensus of climatologists is used instead. That eliminates many scientists, who are not at all experts on climate change, from the expert group.
Why do you think the Heartland Institute (among others) spends so much time trying to convince people the link between smoking and cancer and the link between CO2 and climate change are "controversial". It's because they're attempting to defeat legitimate appeals to authority by creating doubt that the consensus exists. Most media outlets tend to aid and abet this behaviour because controversies generate more ad impressions than consensus.
Lastly, there are many things which are neither science nor religion. Your are use a false dilemma to cast aspersions on people you don't agree with and thus you are actually basing your beliefs on a logical fallacy, as opposed to your falsified accusation.
Most of the bands you have heard of are associated with a label which has paid the fees (possibly out of the band's pocket to itself) to allow them to play cover songs. And the bands you haven't heard of are playing at venues that have paid the fees to allow cover songs to be played.
Here's an article from 1996 about ASCAP threatening to sue camp grounds for public performances. ASCAP claims it only meant to charge for professional performances, but frankly, that's an excuse. They decided to shake down a bunch of camp sites with an ambiguous legal threat and got caught up in a public backlash over their attempted extortion of several girl scouts camps (among the over 6,000 camping grounds they threatened).
Copyright organisations seems to be evil by definition, they seek to steal from the public to enrich themselves. It's simply ridiculous that a song (Over the Rainbow) from a movie released in 1939 (The Wizard of Oz) is still covered by copyright and still requires a license to sing in a "public performance". Copyright needs to be eliminated, or at least dramatically reduced. I see few good reasons for it to exist, and no good reasons why copyright should last more than 10 years. Copyright's revenues are heavily front loaded, which means each additional year of copyright protection increases costs for less revenue. By 15 years out, 98% of all revenues have been realised. If we broaden that out to economic benefits rather than specifically revenues of the copyright holder, the economic benefits of copyright are probably negative by 15 years out. The costs to enforce and police the copyright, which are increasingly being socialised by aggressive content industry lobbying, will definitely outweigh the limited benefits of copyright by that point.