Okay, let me explain to you how the English language works.
We write things in paragraphs, and each paragraph should have a topic sentence, and then several sentences that back up that topic sentence. Usually the topic sentence is at the beginning, but depending on the writing style it can also be at the end, or even the middle of the paragraph.
"The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless" is one of these fairly strong sentences we call topic sentences. Now, I meant w.r.t. the environment, but did not say so explicetely in that sentence. But let's look at the rest of the paragraph, shall we? The next sentence I mention that there wouldn't be a noticeable change from the environment, so okay, I'm definitely saying it's useless environmentally, and qualifying useless to mean not any change that we would notice, NOT there is no change that occurs at all. The third sentence is more of the same. The fourth sentence, I infer that it has an effect beyond the environment (our economy) and that it's a negative effect, but re-iterate that it's useless and this time directly bring back the useless description with how I mentioned it in the previous two sentences. All of this together makes the implications that I was only calling the Kyoto treaty useless w.r.t. the environment quite strong.
Now lets look at some other statements you can't read.
Did I ever say that the Clinton administration was opposed to Kyoto? Here's what I said: "and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_"
Oh look! I said that CONGRESS during the Clinton administration was opposed. Huh, that's kind of different, isn't it?
Did I ever agree with you that Kyoto wasn't useless? Well, let's take a look, shall we?
On point 1: I say, "Sort of." Hmm, that probably means I somewhat agree with your point. Let's see how I qualify it. Hmm, my first sentence is a question implying that your statement only works for some of the countries, which would also imply that the opposite of your statement might be true for other countries, resulting in a net wash. My second sentence I point out that the entire scheme is messed up in such a way that environmental effects rarely happen. My last sentence takes the point I percieve you making about Kyoto and talks about such schemes in general, not about Kyoto at all. So this entire point response amounts to me saying that there is barely any effect from this point, which fits pretty closely to how I was qualifying the word "useless", didn't it?
On point 2: Not only do I first say that Kyoto isn't doing anything for us w.r.t. this point (and so signing it really doesn't make a difference, does it?) but then I say, "That being the case, if this was all that Kyoto was doing" which directly implies that it's not all that Kyoto was doing, and that what else Kyoto is doing isn't positive, doesn't it?
On point 3: Here I do say that Kyoto isn't useless _politically_, but with the direct statement that it's not worth very much politically even so. I've already gone through that argument, so I'm not going to again.
I'm done arguing with you, it's not worth it for me to have to explain simple English and how logic works in it for every post I make.
Umm, no. The EU wanted a model similar to their own trading scheme. All Kyoto is IS a greenhouse gas trading scheme, which is fine, greenhouse gas trading schemes can be a great way to reduce pollution. It's the holes in it for developing nations and former soviet countries that make it useless.
Except that Kyoto is like if we were to tax everyone who fooled around with rockets. We'd end up with no rocket scientists, and wouldn't have gotten to the moon.
Kyoto was not the first global environmental effort, or the first political treaty or legislation. Plenty of other policies have been tried and tested, with several already showing what works and what doesn't, primarily I'm thinking of emissions trading, which can work great if implemented properly, and ironically is one of the primary things that makes the Kyoto Protocol useless when implemented poorly. Why sign a treaty that's broken and harmful to us to test policies we've already tested? Do you really think that the political show of unity is worth that much?
It's always possible that any of the data we're looking at either way could be shaped a bit to support either side. I've read several other papers about the Oscillation recently that would lead me to think that the theory is gaining in prominance. I would suppose that this means that you are correct, and that both sides are building up to a fight to hammer this one out soon. Which means of course that there's not much debate that we can have about this that doesn't boil down to seeing who's correct 10 years from now.
Take a look at how the Europeans are actually doing on reducing emissions, and how they're actually planning on meeting the Kyoto requirements. You'll find two amusing things.
1: We've done a better job with emissions than they have, and we didn't even sign the stupid treaty (We haven't reduced to the amounts demanded by the treaty, but they would have been pretty harsh for us to meet. Also, we still have more total than anyone else, but only because there's no comparably sized developed countries. When you compare production vs. pollution we're far far more efficient than anyone else in the world.)
2: None of the developed countries who have signed Kyoto are actually doing much significant reduction. They're all just trading the rights with each other so that they all get a free pass w.r.t. Kyoto.
So if the measure being implemented that you're talking about is buying the rights to pollute, no, I don't count that, since all that's happening is paper trading hands. Probably lots of paper, made at the expense of lots of dead trees, in fact.
No, I've said that the Kyoto treaty is useless environmentally, worse than useless economically, and only slightly useful politically. Don't try and twist my words against me, read carefully what I've typed before trying to make that argument.
It's funny what you think the Bush administration says. The justification for the Asian-Pacific Partnership for on Clean Development and Climate was pretty close to what you claim they're not saying, and what you claim they're saying I've never heard in regards to Kyoto. Rather, I've heard the Bush administration, and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_ (remember, Kyoto was turned down before Bush!) say that Kyoto was harmful to the economy and not very effective for the environment.
A great way of phrasing it, nice and simple! Especially since we're the best when it comes to figuring out how to turn our money into something useful. Why in the world would we even CONSIDER spending giving money to some third world country to help pollution there when we could be spending it on researching better powerplants or something? Styrofoam eating bacteria!
Spending the money here to develop better solutions to our problems is going to do so much more for the world in the long, and probably even in the short run that it's laughable to consider spending it anywhere else for the same reason.
Not to mention that the Kyoto protocol was rigged to be much worse for the U.S. than for pretty much everyone else. It's no great secret that the rest of the world is envious of the U.S. economy, and so tying penalties to our productivity gives everyone else a chance to catch up to the U.S.
The U.S. actually is far more efficient and less polluting than any other countries when you compare our production to our pollution.
No, it's useless because it's a politically based and minded treaty rather than an environmentally or economically based treaty.
Since everyone can simply trade their various pollutions to people who don't produce said pollutions or who are developing nations, it amounts to so much political kudos, and not much else. If you wanted to actually reduce pollution levels through a cap sort of system you can't have those two holes in the system.
Yes, Russia get's a free pass, as do India and China. And since everything can be traded, that turns Kyoto into a charity for those countries, rather than any sort of reduction in the actual level of pollution anywhere in the world.
Secondly, as I asserted in the beginning, it would take about 50 Kyotos just to reduce emissions enough to have a noticeable effect, meaning, to have any sort of difference we can actually measure. There are prodigious amounts of CO2 in the world, and many of them are from quite natural sources. Such a tiny reduction in percentage of emissions we create isn't going to do anything useful, especially when it slows down our economy and is therefore less than useful. Fostering our market to create and use technologies that are better for the environment will have much more of an effect.
There are many better solutions. Tax breaks for companies that operate cleaner, Tax breaks for companies that invent cleaner technologies. Research funds and market incentives for companies that create or implement cleaner technologies.
If you can think of ANYTHING that is stronger and more amazing and better at creating solutions to problems then capitalist economies, ESPECIALLY the U.S. economy, please tell me.
Since that's the case, let's use that and not fight it!
I do have fairly good evidence for my assertions, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Suffice it to say I'm basing my assumptions on a couple of things: For my first assertion: We'd need to reduce a LOT more carbon emission levels than Kyoto to notice any significant change worldwide. For my second assertion: As long as the birthrate is more than 2 kids per family, the market is going to continue to grow, which means that mankind is going to continue to consume resources, and produce pollution. Trying to limit the growth won't do anything besides delay the inevitible, but trying to foster new growth in more environmentally healthy areas can mitigate and even reverse environmental damage.
So my responses would be:
1. Sort of. It's only really a negative force for the country buying those emissions, isn't it? Not to mention that the whole devloping nations clause messes up the entire situation so that it's really just a way to shuffle money to said nations, and doesn't do much for emissions as a whole. That being said, if you want to introduce either negative or positive forces on the market for pollution, there are simpler, more direct, and more effective ways to do so.
2. Most countries, and certainly the U.S. have these measures in place already. That being the case, if this was all Kyoto was doing, sure, lets sign a treaty saying everyone needs to pay attention to how much pollution we already put out, because we already do and it'd be nice to have other people do so as well.
3. America is and has been concerned about pollution, which is why we've led so many other environmental initiatives. The argument that Kyoto is worth political brownie points is at this point certainly true, since that's all anyone seems to think about regarding the environment nowadays, but, and here's where we probably will always disagree and I won't try and argue to change your mind: those political brownie points are not worth the negative effects the rest of the treaty causes.
The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless. Everyone would need to sign the Kyoto treaty some 50 times or so to even NOTICE changes in the environment. Secondly, the way the treaty is arranged no one who's signed it is actually meeting the requirements it sets, they're just trading their excess productions in each field with people who do. So why sign a treaty that's economically damaging since it's so useless?
The only thing that will reduce our environmental footprint is creating and using cleaner technologies, and the best way to do that is to have as efficient and powerful an economy as possible, but direct it in the ways that we want to.
The Earth is getting warmer currently, but the primary cause of increased ocean temperatures in the atlantic is from the fact that we're entering the warm part of the 50 year cycle. If you want a very good write up of the study check out this:
No, as oppossed to those who actually think about a situation before making a decision. And I'm not talking entirely about party lines, btw. When I read slashdot posts, I tend to find that right wingers usually make posts that have some thought behind them, and left wingers fall into two categories: the large majority is the groupthinking variety, and then there's a small minority that actually puts reason into their arguments. The relative disparity between the two sides probably weeds out the less-reasoned right -wing posters.
I think it has to do with the emotional logic and relativism that so much of the left is based on. Being based on emotions, they dislike or often even hate anything that doesn't agree with their ideas of victimhood on every issue, and so of course seek any scrap of evidence they can find to fling in the face of whoever's presenting said issue. The irony is, as you point out, that this is a highly technical group who should be well informed thanks to the internet. I know, for myself, that most of the situations I hear about in politics or the news aren't as clear cut as they appear because I read a wide variety of blogs, which cover every issue from a wide variety of views, even liberal ones. How can one still think Iraq or Afghanistan is doing so badly after browsing around the blogs of soldiers and Iraqis and Afghanis? Not that either situation is perfect, certainly not! But anyone who presents a counter argument is tossed aside and villified out of hand.
Good Post. Too bad 98% of the slashdot crowd, when confronted by such simple statements of facts, gets blinded by their own religious hatred of Bush and the right side of politics.
Obscure theories unverified by the scientific community aren't able to make significant predictions, as Heim theory does with particle masses.
I'm a physicist, and I've always had a problem with string theory, since it's built on such a contrived premise: they essentially said, "What's a theory that would let us be done with physics?" and then just made the whole thing up, without any sort of evidence to go on.
Re:Every time someone brings up conservation ...
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Actually, you missed it in my previous post. The technology exists to build reactors that EAT our current nuclear waste, most of which comes from coal power, btw, and output non-radioactive lead. The reason said reactors aren't being built is that they constitute the processing of nuclear materials which is forbidden by our current weapons treaties. The reactor design is called an energy amplifier, and I could draw you a neat little diagram of how it works if you wish, I just studied it in one of my physics classes. (I just graduated with a degree in physics)
Now, that being said, there's nothing wrong with trying to be more energy aware and conserve energy. I don't know where you heard such ideas being branded as un-American, as I never have heard anyone opposed to energy conservation. However, you have to understand that being opposed to energy conservation doesn't mean that one is automatically for the Kyoto Treaty, or that if one is against the Kyoto Treaty one is automatically against energy conservation.
Re:What about conventional fission reactors?
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Everytime anyone brings up any sort of Nuclear Reactor as a solution to our energy crises they get slammed from public histeria, even if the reactor design is safe, and eats nuclear waste. Remember, Bush tried to get Nuclear Power back into the public conscience as a good solution to our energy problems.
There are a decent number of left leaning people out there who are able to carry on a decent conversation and back their arguments with reasoning, I'm certainly not denying that. What I'm pointing out is that there's a large portion of the modern democratic party that refuses to take a look at any facts that might fly in the face of their convictions. Even worse, this group tends to create it's own distortions of the truth to try and gain a partisan advantage. Two of the larger examples I would point out are Howard Dean and Micheal Moore.
A lot of my frustrations with the modern democratic party arise from the fact that I live in Boston, where the left leaning culture has become sort of a self propogating thing: so many people lean to the left and read left leaning opinions that it shifts their view of where the middle is, causing them to lean further to the left, etc.
An example: Two days ago my roomate asked me what I thought about Bush's quote, "It's just a G*dd@mn piece of paper". When I said I suspected that was a hoax, since I doubt any politician in this country would be foolish enough to say something, she wouldn't believe me, because to her and her friends it was just a confirmation of what they believe to be true (that Bush would say something like that). Five minutes later with Google showed that every article about that was linked back to one blogger, who never linked his article. Conclusion: It's either a hoax from said blogger, or else he privately was told that by the president, and no reporters heard it. My point, however, is that the knowledge that Bush not only would do such things but does such things is just common knowledge here, and the entire culture of lies and slander against the left is self propogating here.
Note I didn't say that I agreed with everything that she pointed out, just that there are counterpoints to many of the statements in the article. My general approach to an issue is to try and find reasonably discoursed arguments for both sides, read them, and then make my decision. I do tend to fall towards the conservative views on issues, but that's probably because most liberals seem to be unable to do much besides froth at the mouth against Bush and America. In my opinion those who follow the political philosophies of Truman and FDR are now the moderates --their party has moved away from them.
I know...usually on the political posts I don't even bother...occasionally such as this though I feel I can get in a post early enough and in a mild enough way that some people might read it and actually pay attention to what it says and not immediatly think, "Oh no! Someone who didn't refer to Bush as McChimpy BusHitlerburton! He needs to be moderated to oblivion!"
Sigh...
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, let me explain to you how the English language works.
We write things in paragraphs, and each paragraph should have a topic sentence, and then several sentences that back up that topic sentence. Usually the topic sentence is at the beginning, but depending on the writing style it can also be at the end, or even the middle of the paragraph.
"The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless" is one of these fairly strong sentences we call topic sentences. Now, I meant w.r.t. the environment, but did not say so explicetely in that sentence. But let's look at the rest of the paragraph, shall we? The next sentence I mention that there wouldn't be a noticeable change from the environment, so okay, I'm definitely saying it's useless environmentally, and qualifying useless to mean not any change that we would notice, NOT there is no change that occurs at all. The third sentence is more of the same. The fourth sentence, I infer that it has an effect beyond the environment (our economy) and that it's a negative effect, but re-iterate that it's useless and this time directly bring back the useless description with how I mentioned it in the previous two sentences. All of this together makes the implications that I was only calling the Kyoto treaty useless w.r.t. the environment quite strong.
Now lets look at some other statements you can't read.
Did I ever say that the Clinton administration was opposed to Kyoto? Here's what I said:
"and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_"
Oh look! I said that CONGRESS during the Clinton administration was opposed. Huh, that's kind of different, isn't it?
Did I ever agree with you that Kyoto wasn't useless? Well, let's take a look, shall we?
On point 1: I say, "Sort of." Hmm, that probably means I somewhat agree with your point. Let's see how I qualify it. Hmm, my first sentence is a question implying that your statement only works for some of the countries, which would also imply that the opposite of your statement might be true for other countries, resulting in a net wash. My second sentence I point out that the entire scheme is messed up in such a way that environmental effects rarely happen. My last sentence takes the point I percieve you making about Kyoto and talks about such schemes in general, not about Kyoto at all. So this entire point response amounts to me saying that there is barely any effect from this point, which fits pretty closely to how I was qualifying the word "useless", didn't it?
On point 2: Not only do I first say that Kyoto isn't doing anything for us w.r.t. this point (and so signing it really doesn't make a difference, does it?) but then I say, "That being the case, if this was all that Kyoto was doing" which directly implies that it's not all that Kyoto was doing, and that what else Kyoto is doing isn't positive, doesn't it?
On point 3: Here I do say that Kyoto isn't useless _politically_, but with the direct statement that it's not worth very much politically even so. I've already gone through that argument, so I'm not going to again.
I'm done arguing with you, it's not worth it for me to have to explain simple English and how logic works in it for every post I make.
Umm, no. The EU wanted a model similar to their own trading scheme. All Kyoto is IS a greenhouse gas trading scheme, which is fine, greenhouse gas trading schemes can be a great way to reduce pollution. It's the holes in it for developing nations and former soviet countries that make it useless.
Except that Kyoto is like if we were to tax everyone who fooled around with rockets. We'd end up with no rocket scientists, and wouldn't have gotten to the moon.
Kyoto was not the first global environmental effort, or the first political treaty or legislation. Plenty of other policies have been tried and tested, with several already showing what works and what doesn't, primarily I'm thinking of emissions trading, which can work great if implemented properly, and ironically is one of the primary things that makes the Kyoto Protocol useless when implemented poorly. Why sign a treaty that's broken and harmful to us to test policies we've already tested? Do you really think that the political show of unity is worth that much?
It's always possible that any of the data we're looking at either way could be shaped a bit to support either side. I've read several other papers about the Oscillation recently that would lead me to think that the theory is gaining in prominance. I would suppose that this means that you are correct, and that both sides are building up to a fight to hammer this one out soon. Which means of course that there's not much debate that we can have about this that doesn't boil down to seeing who's correct 10 years from now.
Take a look at how the Europeans are actually doing on reducing emissions, and how they're actually planning on meeting the Kyoto requirements. You'll find two amusing things.
1: We've done a better job with emissions than they have, and we didn't even sign the stupid treaty (We haven't reduced to the amounts demanded by the treaty, but they would have been pretty harsh for us to meet. Also, we still have more total than anyone else, but only because there's no comparably sized developed countries. When you compare production vs. pollution we're far far more efficient than anyone else in the world.)
2: None of the developed countries who have signed Kyoto are actually doing much significant reduction. They're all just trading the rights with each other so that they all get a free pass w.r.t. Kyoto.
So if the measure being implemented that you're talking about is buying the rights to pollute, no, I don't count that, since all that's happening is paper trading hands. Probably lots of paper, made at the expense of lots of dead trees, in fact.
No, I've said that the Kyoto treaty is useless environmentally, worse than useless economically, and only slightly useful politically. Don't try and twist my words against me, read carefully what I've typed before trying to make that argument.
It's funny what you think the Bush administration says. The justification for the Asian-Pacific Partnership for on Clean Development and Climate was pretty close to what you claim they're not saying, and what you claim they're saying I've never heard in regards to Kyoto. Rather, I've heard the Bush administration, and come to think of it, just about all of congress during the Clinton administration _including_the_democrats_ (remember, Kyoto was turned down before Bush!) say that Kyoto was harmful to the economy and not very effective for the environment.
A great way of phrasing it, nice and simple! Especially since we're the best when it comes to figuring out how to turn our money into something useful. Why in the world would we even CONSIDER spending giving money to some third world country to help pollution there when we could be spending it on researching better powerplants or something? Styrofoam eating bacteria!
Spending the money here to develop better solutions to our problems is going to do so much more for the world in the long, and probably even in the short run that it's laughable to consider spending it anywhere else for the same reason.
Not to mention that the Kyoto protocol was rigged to be much worse for the U.S. than for pretty much everyone else. It's no great secret that the rest of the world is envious of the U.S. economy, and so tying penalties to our productivity gives everyone else a chance to catch up to the U.S.
The U.S. actually is far more efficient and less polluting than any other countries when you compare our production to our pollution.
No, it's useless because it's a politically based and minded treaty rather than an environmentally or economically based treaty.
Since everyone can simply trade their various pollutions to people who don't produce said pollutions or who are developing nations, it amounts to so much political kudos, and not much else. If you wanted to actually reduce pollution levels through a cap sort of system you can't have those two holes in the system.
Yes, Russia get's a free pass, as do India and China. And since everything can be traded, that turns Kyoto into a charity for those countries, rather than any sort of reduction in the actual level of pollution anywhere in the world.
Secondly, as I asserted in the beginning, it would take about 50 Kyotos just to reduce emissions enough to have a noticeable effect, meaning, to have any sort of difference we can actually measure. There are prodigious amounts of CO2 in the world, and many of them are from quite natural sources. Such a tiny reduction in percentage of emissions we create isn't going to do anything useful, especially when it slows down our economy and is therefore less than useful. Fostering our market to create and use technologies that are better for the environment will have much more of an effect.
There are many better solutions. Tax breaks for companies that operate cleaner, Tax breaks for companies that invent cleaner technologies. Research funds and market incentives for companies that create or implement cleaner technologies.
If you can think of ANYTHING that is stronger and more amazing and better at creating solutions to problems then capitalist economies, ESPECIALLY the U.S. economy, please tell me.
Since that's the case, let's use that and not fight it!
I do have fairly good evidence for my assertions, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Suffice it to say I'm basing my assumptions on a couple of things: For my first assertion: We'd need to reduce a LOT more carbon emission levels than Kyoto to notice any significant change worldwide. For my second assertion: As long as the birthrate is more than 2 kids per family, the market is going to continue to grow, which means that mankind is going to continue to consume resources, and produce pollution. Trying to limit the growth won't do anything besides delay the inevitible, but trying to foster new growth in more environmentally healthy areas can mitigate and even reverse environmental damage.
So my responses would be:
1. Sort of. It's only really a negative force for the country buying those emissions, isn't it? Not to mention that the whole devloping nations clause messes up the entire situation so that it's really just a way to shuffle money to said nations, and doesn't do much for emissions as a whole. That being said, if you want to introduce either negative or positive forces on the market for pollution, there are simpler, more direct, and more effective ways to do so.
2. Most countries, and certainly the U.S. have these measures in place already. That being the case, if this was all Kyoto was doing, sure, lets sign a treaty saying everyone needs to pay attention to how much pollution we already put out, because we already do and it'd be nice to have other people do so as well.
3. America is and has been concerned about pollution, which is why we've led so many other environmental initiatives. The argument that Kyoto is worth political brownie points is at this point certainly true, since that's all anyone seems to think about regarding the environment nowadays, but, and here's where we probably will always disagree and I won't try and argue to change your mind: those political brownie points are not worth the negative effects the rest of the treaty causes.
The Kyoto Protocol always was and always will be useless. Everyone would need to sign the Kyoto treaty some 50 times or so to even NOTICE changes in the environment. Secondly, the way the treaty is arranged no one who's signed it is actually meeting the requirements it sets, they're just trading their excess productions in each field with people who do. So why sign a treaty that's economically damaging since it's so useless? The only thing that will reduce our environmental footprint is creating and using cleaner technologies, and the best way to do that is to have as efficient and powerful an economy as possible, but direct it in the ways that we want to.
The Earth is getting warmer currently, but the primary cause of increased ocean temperatures in the atlantic is from the fact that we're entering the warm part of the 50 year cycle. If you want a very good write up of the study check out this:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031606F
No, as oppossed to those who actually think about a situation before making a decision. And I'm not talking entirely about party lines, btw. When I read slashdot posts, I tend to find that right wingers usually make posts that have some thought behind them, and left wingers fall into two categories: the large majority is the groupthinking variety, and then there's a small minority that actually puts reason into their arguments. The relative disparity between the two sides probably weeds out the less-reasoned right -wing posters.
What a good point!
Fox news clearly copies all of their articles and news from the AP, unlike all the other news outlets! </sarcasm>
I love the groupthink 90% of slashdot engages in, even though it's supposedly such a smart community
I think it has to do with the emotional logic and relativism that so much of the left is based on. Being based on emotions, they dislike or often even hate anything that doesn't agree with their ideas of victimhood on every issue, and so of course seek any scrap of evidence they can find to fling in the face of whoever's presenting said issue. The irony is, as you point out, that this is a highly technical group who should be well informed thanks to the internet. I know, for myself, that most of the situations I hear about in politics or the news aren't as clear cut as they appear because I read a wide variety of blogs, which cover every issue from a wide variety of views, even liberal ones. How can one still think Iraq or Afghanistan is doing so badly after browsing around the blogs of soldiers and Iraqis and Afghanis? Not that either situation is perfect, certainly not! But anyone who presents a counter argument is tossed aside and villified out of hand.
Good Post. Too bad 98% of the slashdot crowd, when confronted by such simple statements of facts, gets blinded by their own religious hatred of Bush and the right side of politics.
Obscure theories unverified by the scientific community aren't able to make significant predictions, as Heim theory does with particle masses. I'm a physicist, and I've always had a problem with string theory, since it's built on such a contrived premise: they essentially said, "What's a theory that would let us be done with physics?" and then just made the whole thing up, without any sort of evidence to go on.
Screw string theory. Verify Heim theory!
Actually, you missed it in my previous post. The technology exists to build reactors that EAT our current nuclear waste, most of which comes from coal power, btw, and output non-radioactive lead. The reason said reactors aren't being built is that they constitute the processing of nuclear materials which is forbidden by our current weapons treaties. The reactor design is called an energy amplifier, and I could draw you a neat little diagram of how it works if you wish, I just studied it in one of my physics classes. (I just graduated with a degree in physics) Now, that being said, there's nothing wrong with trying to be more energy aware and conserve energy. I don't know where you heard such ideas being branded as un-American, as I never have heard anyone opposed to energy conservation. However, you have to understand that being opposed to energy conservation doesn't mean that one is automatically for the Kyoto Treaty, or that if one is against the Kyoto Treaty one is automatically against energy conservation.
Everytime anyone brings up any sort of Nuclear Reactor as a solution to our energy crises they get slammed from public histeria, even if the reactor design is safe, and eats nuclear waste. Remember, Bush tried to get Nuclear Power back into the public conscience as a good solution to our energy problems.
There are a decent number of left leaning people out there who are able to carry on a decent conversation and back their arguments with reasoning, I'm certainly not denying that. What I'm pointing out is that there's a large portion of the modern democratic party that refuses to take a look at any facts that might fly in the face of their convictions. Even worse, this group tends to create it's own distortions of the truth to try and gain a partisan advantage. Two of the larger examples I would point out are Howard Dean and Micheal Moore.
A lot of my frustrations with the modern democratic party arise from the fact that I live in Boston, where the left leaning culture has become sort of a self propogating thing: so many people lean to the left and read left leaning opinions that it shifts their view of where the middle is, causing them to lean further to the left, etc.
An example: Two days ago my roomate asked me what I thought about Bush's quote, "It's just a G*dd@mn piece of paper". When I said I suspected that was a hoax, since I doubt any politician in this country would be foolish enough to say something, she wouldn't believe me, because to her and her friends it was just a confirmation of what they believe to be true (that Bush would say something like that). Five minutes later with Google showed that every article about that was linked back to one blogger, who never linked his article. Conclusion: It's either a hoax from said blogger, or else he privately was told that by the president, and no reporters heard it. My point, however, is that the knowledge that Bush not only would do such things but does such things is just common knowledge here, and the entire culture of lies and slander against the left is self propogating here.
Note I didn't say that I agreed with everything that she pointed out, just that there are counterpoints to many of the statements in the article. My general approach to an issue is to try and find reasonably discoursed arguments for both sides, read them, and then make my decision. I do tend to fall towards the conservative views on issues, but that's probably because most liberals seem to be unable to do much besides froth at the mouth against Bush and America. In my opinion those who follow the political philosophies of Truman and FDR are now the moderates --their party has moved away from them.
I know...usually on the political posts I don't even bother...occasionally such as this though I feel I can get in a post early enough and in a mild enough way that some people might read it and actually pay attention to what it says and not immediatly think, "Oh no! Someone who didn't refer to Bush as McChimpy BusHitlerburton! He needs to be moderated to oblivion!" Sigh...