There's no faux fairness here, I'm not trying to be fair, I am openly against the UK leaving the EU, because it appears to me that leaving has no merits whatsoever. I would like to hear any you can think of.
I'm not a Brit, nor a European, so I'm far from an expert. However, one need not be an expert on the specifics to understand the principle that having to obey the edicts of a commission composed of members of which you are only one, the edicts of which you do not have veto power over, is a de facto ceding of sovereignty, to at least a degree.
If you either do not value sovereignty in principle, or you think that nothing bad enough happened yet to justify retaking sovereignty, that would be a good clarification for you to make.
You know that it's always easier to maintain the status quo, and after all the controversy and hand-wringing since the referendum, you know a second one would favor remaining.
True. The mistake has been realized, a taste of the consequences has been had, and the UK's public would like to undo this mistake. You'd prefer to bind them to it against their will, I presume.
Nice try. More leftist propaganda and spin. "You'd hold them hostage against their will, you fascist!" you say after a completely legitimate referendum was held, after years of campaigning for both sides. Now that the media has gone into full-on, we-never-thought-this-would-actually-happen panic mode, and succeeded in scaring people into thinking that the sky is falling--with the helpful scolding of even the UK's allies, Obama even threatening Britain if they follow through!--now you want another vote! "Now they realized their mistake!" you say. Pathetic. Had the referendum been to stay, and the opposition were calling for another vote, you'd be crying foul as loudly as anyone. Hypocrite.
And if you're really a patriotic Brit, have a little faith in your fellow Brits
I am not, and those Brits just demonstrated horrendous decision-making skills, so my faith in them is low right now.
If the British 60 years ago had that attitude, they'd be speaking German right now.
For the good of Europe, Britain needs to return to a position of leadership and strength, and for that it needs real sovereignty.
Ah so this is the imperialist nostalgia I've heard so much about, first time I've seen it myself. Britain was only ever a superpower thanks to colonialism. Unless you think you can give that a second try, you'll have to accept that Britain is a relatively small country with no notable abundance of natural resources and as such it will never be a superpower comparable to the US, China, Russia, or arguably the EU you just left.
No, it's nothing to do with imperialism or colonialism or being bigger or badder or more powerful than other nations--it's to do with surviving the threats facing Europe today, and the role of leadership the UK played in WWII and the Cold War. If nothing else, the UK needs to be a voice of reason, an example of sanity, and a bastion of Western society and culture (which, though far from perfect, is what has enabled the progress that has been made in the past few millennia), because Europe and the West is currently under siege from barbarians who would return us to a Stone Age society, as well as under renewed threat from Russia (the president of which has stated that "we are in a new cold war").
I've asked this to other Leave supporters: is there something special about the EU's trade and travel agreements that causes them to strip the UK of its sovereignty, and if not, will the UK have to sever all others as well? Will you have to refrain from forming any new ones?
This appears to me another example of selective omission, minimizing, dismissal, and strawmanning. For the sake of argument, lea
Of course it's an outright lie from the leave camp that we didn't have sovereignty. We always had it and could always choose to not implement any of the EU rules we wanted (as the exit vote has proven).
I'm no expert, but according to what I saw, the UK alone could not veto EU rules and laws, but only as a whole with the rest of the EU member states by convincing them to agree. In practice, this had only happened successfully one time in the entire history of the UK's EU membership, and in challenging EU rulings in court, the UK had a success rate of only 30%--all of which, of course, could hardly be considered sovereignty. Can you explain this to me?
I don't understand. In the EU, the UK has to go to the EU and beg and plead for concessions, giving up things to get what it wants.
Out of the EU, the UK can do what it wants, when it wants, without begging for permission to administer its own affairs in the way it best sees fit.
And regarding that "slightly better deal," other people say it was not better, that it actually conceded some of the few advantages the UK still had.
Sheesh, can you imagine the same nation that endured the Battle of Britain wanting to live under the thumb of the rest of Europe? What has become of this once-courageous, once-independent nation that it--some people in it--now cowers in fear at the thought of self-determination?
Ofcourse, you could claim that the 51% in this particular case would not be fucked over, but that argument would essentially boil down to "because I know better than them", and I'm assuming we can all see the folly of those ways.
No, that's exactly the problem: leftists cannot see that folly, blinded by their own hubris to even the most egregious horrors of even recent history. To them, the ends always justify the means, and their ends are always correct.
Typical leftist rhetoric. Your opponents are "objectively wrong," they "hate," an "informed populace" could not make such a decision, and anyone who did must therefore be throwing an "overpowering tantrum of xenophobia," "due to extreme ignorance."
Your faux fairness is transparent. You're the one throwing a tantrum that you didn't get your way. You know that it's always easier to maintain the status quo, and after all the controversy and hand-wringing since the referendum, you know a second one would favor remaining. You'll say anything to try to disqualify and discredit the referendum, from ageism to vague accusations of which your side couldn't possibly also be guilty of, according to you and anyone who's "informed."
Pathetic.
And if you're really a patriotic Brit, have a little faith in your fellow Brits, the same nation that bravely endured the Battle of Britain and defeated the Nazis less than a century ago. How cowardly to think that you're doomed without the rest of Europe telling you what to do. For the good of Europe, Britain needs to return to a position of leadership and strength, and for that it needs real sovereignty. And for the good of its own citizens, it needs to control its borders and immigration--or would you have more foreign Muslims running sex slave enclaves where even your own police will not venture, or more cleaver-wielding maniacs chopping up people in the streets and boasting red-handed to the cameras?
Or maybe you're just a pro-EU troll, mindlessly imitating the shrill cries of leftists everywhere as a member of the collective reached to pull its plug and wake from its slumber.
So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming".
No, that's not logical at all. It's a transparent attempt at manipulating the feeble-minded, or grade-B trolling. Perhaps your post history would reveal which.
When the legislative representatives of the People place restrictions on the Executive branch, that's the People restricting the Government. That's really quite simple to understand.
You might be right about all you said. But I still don't see how requiring the government to disclose to the People the information it uses to justify its regulations could possibly be a bad thing, except for people who want to enact unwise, unfair, damaging regulations that benefit special interests. How do you justify secrecy? This isn't a matter of national security.
>What about the arguments by environmental and climate change lobbyists saying, "But the poles will melt and we'll all drown! We have to stop everything NOW!"?
They are absolutely correct - to the best of our understanding it may already be too late to maintain the basic climate we've enjoyed for the last several thousand years, and *every* *single* day we avoid fixing the problem the more drastic the permanent changes are going to be, and the more traumatic and expensive the transition is going to be.
This is alarmism and panic and Chicken Little at its finest. You've convinced yourself that you understand something as enormous and complex as the earth's climate and ecosystems over an enormous time scale so well that you are certain you know what's going to happen far into the future. Human arrogance doesn't get much bigger than this. The earth is amazingly adaptable and flexible, and so are its ecosystems and inhabitants. No doubt, the weather will be the weather, i.e. always changing. That doesn't mean we're all going to die--I mean, we are all going to die, because that's what humans do, but you know what I mean.:p
>What about the observational science that shows that CO2 levels lag behind temperature change? Right. This time is something different - the rising CO2 levels are the forcing factor this time, rather than just being a part of the positive feedback system. That actually tells us that once things get past a certain point the CO2 levels will probably quickly snowball out of control as the "usual" natural feedback takes over. If you want the run down I can give you some of the basics, but it's getting late right now.
Do you hear yourself? "Yeah, yeah, but that's not how it's working this time. This time we're all DOOMED! It's about to SNOWBALL OUT OF CONTROL! It's over folks!" I can't help but wonder what your motives are.
>What about the observational science that shows that the earth was both warmer and colder, running in cycles, long before humans showed up?
It should terrify you.
No, it really shouldn't. For one thing, if the climate were to go nuts, we'd all be dead long before that happened. For another, we're far, far more likely to die of a million other things than climate change. For another--and this is probably more important than any other point--the earth and its systems are enormous. The CO2 that humans emit is only a tiny fraction of what the oceans emit. But we--well, some of us--think that we have such an enormous impact on the global climate. We are tiny and pathetic compared to the earth and all of its many parts. You really give humans far too much credit. But the bottom line is that the numbers tell the true story: humans have a miniscule, if any, effect on the climate.
Because it means that there's nothing "normal" about the climate that human civilization developed in, it's just a nice self-reinforcing "comfy spot" the climate settled into for a while, until the next traumatic event shakes things up again. And there's pretty much always a traumatic event that changes things up - cosmic ray burst, asteroid impact, *something* throws the ecosystem severely out of balance and then everything goes to hell for a few thousand years while most of the species on the planet go extinct, until eventually a new stable ecosystem emerges. This time it appears the traumatic event is to be us, most recently by pumping massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere millions of years ahead of the normal geologic carbon-cycle schedule.
Your logic is simply flawed. It's like saying, "He's been in a slump for 8 games, so he's due for a hit any at-bat now." And it's really just silly that you would compare a catastrophic, unpredictable event like a large asteroid impact to human beings' putting out a sma
...Are you so dense? The point is that the AC was either lying or lacks critical thinking skills. Either he knows those media sources are extremely biased, or he's so gullible he fell for it. This is simply more of liberal media's smear campaign against conservatives. What's sad is that so many people fall for it.
No, those who restrict the Government are the People. The Government doesn't govern itself; the Government governs the People, and the People authorize the Government.
Regulating the government with new regulations is "big government"
That is simply illogical. Reducing the government's power is not big government; it's the opposite. That's the whole point.
the sheer size for the EPA to be constantly running billions of dollars of research to justify ever proposed regulation will cost much more than using scientific consensus.
This is a false dichotomy. Who said the EPA would have to be "constantly running billions of dollars of research to justify ever proposed regulation"? This is about forcing the EPA to disclose its research rather than keeping it secret. You're making up objections based on pure speculation and exaggeration. Try being honest.
TFTI. Well, it seems to me that if a citizen's taxes went to sponsor their NOC, they ought to be able to watch their teams compete without having to spend more money.
The majority of people I disagree with disagree with me, so why wouldn't the sane default position be to distrust any of their bills concerning science? I'm clearly the only sane one, so my ideas should be the default, and the burden of proof should always be on them....Wait, you believe what? You're one of those whackjobs! LOL, hey everyone, look at what this guy thinks!
I'm not making logical fallacies, I'm asking questions to prove a point. One side says it wants to require the EPA to disclose the science it uses to justify its regulations. The other side says that's not a good idea, that we should just trust them. My question is to prompt them: If they are not saying that the EPA should be allowed to base its regulations on non- or secret-science, then what are they saying? That is, besides mindless anti-Republican ranting.
No, no one is advocating that the EPA should be able to issue regs based on non science.
Then what are they advocating? That the EPA can keep its justifications secret? That we should just trust them? Or that it's a Republican-sponsored bill, and therefore must be bad, so the Democrats should write their own version, and then it'll be okay?
The Fox Propaganda school of debating, that assumes that Republican legislation is about what it says it's about. This law must be about sound science and cannot possibly be about tying up any possible regulation in court until doomsday. See also: Voter ID, "Patriot" Act, War on Civil Liberties^W^WDrugs.
The (I don't know...MSNBC? Huffington Post?) school of debating, that assumes that Republican-sponsored legislation is innately evil. If this law passes, we're all doomed. DOOMED!
Democrats are not pushing creationism or global warming head-in-the-sandism. Todd Akin with his "legitimate rape" bullshit is not a Democrat.
Anyone who thinks God created the universe is clearly an antiquated fool. And anyone who doesn't agree that we're all doomed because the planet is going to cook us is clearly suffering from head-in-the-sandism and should be publicly ridiculed until they convert. And all Republicans think rape is a gift of God, and that women can just not get pregnant if they don't want to. There are no foolish Democrats.
Both sides are bad so vote Republican.
...Both sides are bad so vote Democrat?
Hey, the Republicans have done a lot of bad things to this country too. But ask yourself this: if one group of people wants to take more of your money and make more decisions for you, and the other party wants to let you keep more money and make more of your own decisions, which one is less evil? Which one wants to control your life more?
Are we not doing that right now? I have lights, heat, food, and clean air outside. My life expectancy is probably higher than at any time in recorded history. Is that not acceptable enough for you? Must we blindly trust the government and whatever they want us to do?
Better that than US citizens choking to death like the citizens of China because of lack of regulation.
Good grief, I'm so sick of these stupid false dichotomies.
"We can't require the EPA to be open and honest and scientific! If we don't blindly trust them, we'll end up like China and won't even be able to go outside!"
Is it even possible to have a reasonable discussion with anyone?
Similarly, we are currently running a long, dangerous experiment in climate science.
"So we definitely need to stop running this dangerous experiment and run this other experiment instead. Yeah, we don't know exactly what will happen, but 'The predictions are there,' so if we don't do it NOW, 'we are screwed, and millions will die'! Yeah, yeah, 57 million people die every day...but think of all the millions that might die if we don't force people out of work and into poverty! Think of all the millions of people that might die if we don't force other people to die earlier! Think of all the millions of people that might die if we don't reduce the population by making people die faster! Yeah, yeah, the earth has been around for millions and millions of years, long before humans existed...and yeah, the oceans produce far more CO2 than humans ever could...but WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW!!! All these rich people just want to get richer so they can afford huge A/C units when the rest of us roast! They're all anti-science!"
and more-or-less why it's changing (though we're still working on some of the details
"Look at all this CO2 we're producing! It must be our fault! Yeah, the CO2 produced by the oceans alone dwarfs what we produce...but it still must be our fault! It has to be! Don't worry about these 'details', I have them more-or-less right, and I'll keep adjusting them until they prove what I think!"
We can make millions of different measurements and determine that evidence from many unrelated sources corroborates our theories
"Look at all these millions of measurements I took! Clearly I am right! Er, no, don't bother with those measurements...they're...uh...irrelevant."
What we can't do is make a duplicate Earth to perform experimental science on.
"Hey, what do you want me to do, reproduce an entire planet? You're crazy! But look, I made a computer simulation that basically does just that, and it agrees with me! And look, I keep adjusting--I mean, improving it! I keep getting more right all the time!"
By the way, who is this mythical "we"? People who agree with you? Oh, okay then.
Slashdot Mirror
There's no faux fairness here, I'm not trying to be fair, I am openly against the UK leaving the EU, because it appears to me that leaving has no merits whatsoever. I would like to hear any you can think of.
I'm not a Brit, nor a European, so I'm far from an expert. However, one need not be an expert on the specifics to understand the principle that having to obey the edicts of a commission composed of members of which you are only one, the edicts of which you do not have veto power over, is a de facto ceding of sovereignty, to at least a degree.
If you either do not value sovereignty in principle, or you think that nothing bad enough happened yet to justify retaking sovereignty, that would be a good clarification for you to make.
You know that it's always easier to maintain the status quo, and after all the controversy and hand-wringing since the referendum, you know a second one would favor remaining.
True. The mistake has been realized, a taste of the consequences has been had, and the UK's public would like to undo this mistake. You'd prefer to bind them to it against their will, I presume.
Nice try. More leftist propaganda and spin. "You'd hold them hostage against their will, you fascist!" you say after a completely legitimate referendum was held, after years of campaigning for both sides. Now that the media has gone into full-on, we-never-thought-this-would-actually-happen panic mode, and succeeded in scaring people into thinking that the sky is falling--with the helpful scolding of even the UK's allies, Obama even threatening Britain if they follow through!--now you want another vote! "Now they realized their mistake!" you say. Pathetic. Had the referendum been to stay, and the opposition were calling for another vote, you'd be crying foul as loudly as anyone. Hypocrite.
And if you're really a patriotic Brit, have a little faith in your fellow Brits
I am not, and those Brits just demonstrated horrendous decision-making skills, so my faith in them is low right now.
If the British 60 years ago had that attitude, they'd be speaking German right now.
For the good of Europe, Britain needs to return to a position of leadership and strength, and for that it needs real sovereignty.
Ah so this is the imperialist nostalgia I've heard so much about, first time I've seen it myself. Britain was only ever a superpower thanks to colonialism. Unless you think you can give that a second try, you'll have to accept that Britain is a relatively small country with no notable abundance of natural resources and as such it will never be a superpower comparable to the US, China, Russia, or arguably the EU you just left.
No, it's nothing to do with imperialism or colonialism or being bigger or badder or more powerful than other nations--it's to do with surviving the threats facing Europe today, and the role of leadership the UK played in WWII and the Cold War. If nothing else, the UK needs to be a voice of reason, an example of sanity, and a bastion of Western society and culture (which, though far from perfect, is what has enabled the progress that has been made in the past few millennia), because Europe and the West is currently under siege from barbarians who would return us to a Stone Age society, as well as under renewed threat from Russia (the president of which has stated that "we are in a new cold war").
I've asked this to other Leave supporters: is there something special about the EU's trade and travel agreements that causes them to strip the UK of its sovereignty, and if not, will the UK have to sever all others as well? Will you have to refrain from forming any new ones?
This appears to me another example of selective omission, minimizing, dismissal, and strawmanning. For the sake of argument, lea
Of course it's an outright lie from the leave camp that we didn't have sovereignty. We always had it and could always choose to not implement any of the EU rules we wanted (as the exit vote has proven).
I'm no expert, but according to what I saw, the UK alone could not veto EU rules and laws, but only as a whole with the rest of the EU member states by convincing them to agree. In practice, this had only happened successfully one time in the entire history of the UK's EU membership, and in challenging EU rulings in court, the UK had a success rate of only 30%--all of which, of course, could hardly be considered sovereignty. Can you explain this to me?
I don't understand. In the EU, the UK has to go to the EU and beg and plead for concessions, giving up things to get what it wants.
Out of the EU, the UK can do what it wants, when it wants, without begging for permission to administer its own affairs in the way it best sees fit.
And regarding that "slightly better deal," other people say it was not better, that it actually conceded some of the few advantages the UK still had.
Sheesh, can you imagine the same nation that endured the Battle of Britain wanting to live under the thumb of the rest of Europe? What has become of this once-courageous, once-independent nation that it--some people in it--now cowers in fear at the thought of self-determination?
Ofcourse, you could claim that the 51% in this particular case would not be fucked over, but that argument would essentially boil down to "because I know better than them", and I'm assuming we can all see the folly of those ways.
No, that's exactly the problem: leftists cannot see that folly, blinded by their own hubris to even the most egregious horrors of even recent history. To them, the ends always justify the means, and their ends are always correct.
Typical leftist rhetoric. Your opponents are "objectively wrong," they "hate," an "informed populace" could not make such a decision, and anyone who did must therefore be throwing an "overpowering tantrum of xenophobia," "due to extreme ignorance."
Your faux fairness is transparent. You're the one throwing a tantrum that you didn't get your way. You know that it's always easier to maintain the status quo, and after all the controversy and hand-wringing since the referendum, you know a second one would favor remaining. You'll say anything to try to disqualify and discredit the referendum, from ageism to vague accusations of which your side couldn't possibly also be guilty of, according to you and anyone who's "informed."
Pathetic.
And if you're really a patriotic Brit, have a little faith in your fellow Brits, the same nation that bravely endured the Battle of Britain and defeated the Nazis less than a century ago. How cowardly to think that you're doomed without the rest of Europe telling you what to do. For the good of Europe, Britain needs to return to a position of leadership and strength, and for that it needs real sovereignty. And for the good of its own citizens, it needs to control its borders and immigration--or would you have more foreign Muslims running sex slave enclaves where even your own police will not venture, or more cleaver-wielding maniacs chopping up people in the streets and boasting red-handed to the cameras?
Or maybe you're just a pro-EU troll, mindlessly imitating the shrill cries of leftists everywhere as a member of the collective reached to pull its plug and wake from its slumber.
So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming".
No, that's not logical at all. It's a transparent attempt at manipulating the feeble-minded, or grade-B trolling. Perhaps your post history would reveal which.
What did you do with your sense of humor?
When the legislative representatives of the People place restrictions on the Executive branch, that's the People restricting the Government. That's really quite simple to understand.
...What's your point? And who is "science," and why do you trust him?
You might be right about all you said. But I still don't see how requiring the government to disclose to the People the information it uses to justify its regulations could possibly be a bad thing, except for people who want to enact unwise, unfair, damaging regulations that benefit special interests. How do you justify secrecy? This isn't a matter of national security.
>What about the arguments by environmental and climate change lobbyists saying, "But the poles will melt and we'll all drown! We have to stop everything NOW!"?
They are absolutely correct - to the best of our understanding it may already be too late to maintain the basic climate we've enjoyed for the last several thousand years, and *every* *single* day we avoid fixing the problem the more drastic the permanent changes are going to be, and the more traumatic and expensive the transition is going to be.
This is alarmism and panic and Chicken Little at its finest. You've convinced yourself that you understand something as enormous and complex as the earth's climate and ecosystems over an enormous time scale so well that you are certain you know what's going to happen far into the future. Human arrogance doesn't get much bigger than this. The earth is amazingly adaptable and flexible, and so are its ecosystems and inhabitants. No doubt, the weather will be the weather, i.e. always changing. That doesn't mean we're all going to die--I mean, we are all going to die, because that's what humans do, but you know what I mean. :p
>What about the observational science that shows that CO2 levels lag behind temperature change?
Right. This time is something different - the rising CO2 levels are the forcing factor this time, rather than just being a part of the positive feedback system. That actually tells us that once things get past a certain point the CO2 levels will probably quickly snowball out of control as the "usual" natural feedback takes over. If you want the run down I can give you some of the basics, but it's getting late right now.
Do you hear yourself? "Yeah, yeah, but that's not how it's working this time. This time we're all DOOMED! It's about to SNOWBALL OUT OF CONTROL! It's over folks!" I can't help but wonder what your motives are.
>What about the observational science that shows that the earth was both warmer and colder, running in cycles, long before humans showed up?
It should terrify you.
No, it really shouldn't. For one thing, if the climate were to go nuts, we'd all be dead long before that happened. For another, we're far, far more likely to die of a million other things than climate change. For another--and this is probably more important than any other point--the earth and its systems are enormous. The CO2 that humans emit is only a tiny fraction of what the oceans emit. But we--well, some of us--think that we have such an enormous impact on the global climate. We are tiny and pathetic compared to the earth and all of its many parts. You really give humans far too much credit. But the bottom line is that the numbers tell the true story: humans have a miniscule, if any, effect on the climate.
Because it means that there's nothing "normal" about the climate that human civilization developed in, it's just a nice self-reinforcing "comfy spot" the climate settled into for a while, until the next traumatic event shakes things up again. And there's pretty much always a traumatic event that changes things up - cosmic ray burst, asteroid impact, *something* throws the ecosystem severely out of balance and then everything goes to hell for a few thousand years while most of the species on the planet go extinct, until eventually a new stable ecosystem emerges. This time it appears the traumatic event is to be us, most recently by pumping massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere millions of years ahead of the normal geologic carbon-cycle schedule.
Your logic is simply flawed. It's like saying, "He's been in a slump for 8 games, so he's due for a hit any at-bat now." And it's really just silly that you would compare a catastrophic, unpredictable event like a large asteroid impact to human beings' putting out a sma
...Are you so dense? The point is that the AC was either lying or lacks critical thinking skills. Either he knows those media sources are extremely biased, or he's so gullible he fell for it. This is simply more of liberal media's smear campaign against conservatives. What's sad is that so many people fall for it.
What's your point?
No, those who restrict the Government are the People. The Government doesn't govern itself; the Government governs the People, and the People authorize the Government.
Regulating the government with new regulations is "big government"
That is simply illogical. Reducing the government's power is not big government; it's the opposite. That's the whole point.
the sheer size for the EPA to be constantly running billions of dollars of research to justify ever proposed regulation will cost much more than using scientific consensus.
This is a false dichotomy. Who said the EPA would have to be "constantly running billions of dollars of research to justify ever proposed regulation"? This is about forcing the EPA to disclose its research rather than keeping it secret. You're making up objections based on pure speculation and exaggeration. Try being honest.
TFTI. Well, it seems to me that if a citizen's taxes went to sponsor their NOC, they ought to be able to watch their teams compete without having to spend more money.
The majority of people I disagree with disagree with me, so why wouldn't the sane default position be to distrust any of their bills concerning science? I'm clearly the only sane one, so my ideas should be the default, and the burden of proof should always be on them. ...Wait, you believe what? You're one of those whackjobs! LOL, hey everyone, look at what this guy thinks!
My children used to try to change the subject and assert correctness rather than have a rational discussion. they grew out of it, however.
"whackjobs", "deniers," "That makes it automatically suspect..."
The irony is so heavy, man. Can you even write one comment without using ad hominems, labeling, well-poisoning, and name-calling?
And you say they should be automatically suspect.
I'm not making logical fallacies, I'm asking questions to prove a point. One side says it wants to require the EPA to disclose the science it uses to justify its regulations. The other side says that's not a good idea, that we should just trust them. My question is to prompt them: If they are not saying that the EPA should be allowed to base its regulations on non- or secret-science, then what are they saying? That is, besides mindless anti-Republican ranting.
No, no one is advocating that the EPA should be able to issue regs based on non science.
Then what are they advocating? That the EPA can keep its justifications secret? That we should just trust them? Or that it's a Republican-sponsored bill, and therefore must be bad, so the Democrats should write their own version, and then it'll be okay?
Complain about the size of government while increasing it.
How is placing more restrictions on the government's power increasing its size?
The Fox Propaganda school of debating, that assumes that Republican legislation is about what it says it's about. This law must be about sound science and cannot possibly be about tying up any possible regulation in court until doomsday. See also: Voter ID, "Patriot" Act, War on Civil Liberties^W^WDrugs.
The (I don't know...MSNBC? Huffington Post?) school of debating, that assumes that Republican-sponsored legislation is innately evil. If this law passes, we're all doomed. DOOMED!
Democrats are not pushing creationism or global warming head-in-the-sandism. Todd Akin with his "legitimate rape" bullshit is not a Democrat.
Anyone who thinks God created the universe is clearly an antiquated fool. And anyone who doesn't agree that we're all doomed because the planet is going to cook us is clearly suffering from head-in-the-sandism and should be publicly ridiculed until they convert. And all Republicans think rape is a gift of God, and that women can just not get pregnant if they don't want to. There are no foolish Democrats.
Both sides are bad so vote Republican.
...Both sides are bad so vote Democrat?
Hey, the Republicans have done a lot of bad things to this country too. But ask yourself this: if one group of people wants to take more of your money and make more decisions for you, and the other party wants to let you keep more money and make more of your own decisions, which one is less evil? Which one wants to control your life more?
Is there no doubt in your mind that Democrats won't do bad things if they get their way, too?
Are we not doing that right now? I have lights, heat, food, and clean air outside. My life expectancy is probably higher than at any time in recorded history. Is that not acceptable enough for you? Must we blindly trust the government and whatever they want us to do?
Better that than US citizens choking to death like the citizens of China because of lack of regulation.
Good grief, I'm so sick of these stupid false dichotomies.
"We can't require the EPA to be open and honest and scientific! If we don't blindly trust them, we'll end up like China and won't even be able to go outside!"
Is it even possible to have a reasonable discussion with anyone?
Similarly, we are currently running a long, dangerous experiment in climate science.
"So we definitely need to stop running this dangerous experiment and run this other experiment instead. Yeah, we don't know exactly what will happen, but 'The predictions are there,' so if we don't do it NOW, 'we are screwed, and millions will die'! Yeah, yeah, 57 million people die every day...but think of all the millions that might die if we don't force people out of work and into poverty! Think of all the millions of people that might die if we don't force other people to die earlier! Think of all the millions of people that might die if we don't reduce the population by making people die faster! Yeah, yeah, the earth has been around for millions and millions of years, long before humans existed...and yeah, the oceans produce far more CO2 than humans ever could...but WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW!!! All these rich people just want to get richer so they can afford huge A/C units when the rest of us roast! They're all anti-science!"
We can tell you how it's changing
"It's hotter outside!"
and more-or-less why it's changing (though we're still working on some of the details
"Look at all this CO2 we're producing! It must be our fault! Yeah, the CO2 produced by the oceans alone dwarfs what we produce...but it still must be our fault! It has to be! Don't worry about these 'details', I have them more-or-less right, and I'll keep adjusting them until they prove what I think!"
We can make millions of different measurements and determine that evidence from many unrelated sources corroborates our theories
"Look at all these millions of measurements I took! Clearly I am right! Er, no, don't bother with those measurements...they're...uh...irrelevant."
What we can't do is make a duplicate Earth to perform experimental science on.
"Hey, what do you want me to do, reproduce an entire planet? You're crazy! But look, I made a computer simulation that basically does just that, and it agrees with me! And look, I keep adjusting--I mean, improving it! I keep getting more right all the time!"
By the way, who is this mythical "we"? People who agree with you? Oh, okay then.