What's an even bigger misnomer is that AGW skeptics are often called "climate deniers".
Not in the slightest. Like deniers of Evolution, climate change deniers do so not out of any scientific basis, but out of pure ideology and the quaint notion that beliefs are equal to reason.
it's not enough to call them deniers, but alarmists have to misrepresent
Is it really so difficult to imagine that people simply do not want to see an enormous government intrusion into literally every energy use decision they make, or are made on their behalves by others?
No, I don't think that many people spend much time thinking about red herrings that you just made up out of thin air.
There are quite a few people who disagree (which in itself creates that association). And I suspect the people who started use of the term, "climate denier" were deliberately invoking that parallel.
Sure. And some people still disagree with the notion that the Earth orbits the Sun. They're also blabbering fuckwits, so what's the point?
Does it mean millions dead? Are you a fortune teller? How do you know?
How do you know nuclear war would be a problem until we see one? We know the Earth has experienced rapid climate change before. We also know that those changes also coincided with mass extinctions.
Resource wars. Drought. Famine. Disease. More and more powerful typhoons, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Lengthy heat waves that can prove deadly for the young, the sick. and the elderly. All real risks of real climate change.
The economic part is not to be dismissed either. The richer someplace is, the better off the poor are. Just look at the poor in the US with TVs and cars vs. Ethiopia.
Dude. The Randian Kool Aid. You might want to cut down. Cuba has a fraction of the percentage of the wealth that the U.S. does, yet it's populace has universal health care, and despite spending 1/37th per person as much as the U.S., has comparable health care stats.
And of course, that's even supporting the conservative urban legend that mitigating climate change would be a detriment to society, when in fact it would be the greatest economic boon to hit this planet since the post WWII era. Millions of jobs created in building solar, wind and hydro power. Millions more in building mass transit. And of course, saving energy means *saving money*. Even if you want to remain a self-centered troglodyte and continue to use your Hummer as a passenger vehicle, you still want society as a whole to cut way back on the use of fossil fuels, because it will mean cheaper gas.
Hide under your bed much? There is nothing out there that remotely threatens the United States militarily. Nothing. We could stop building new armaments today and still have military superiority over the rest of the planet for the next 50 years.
Yeah, WWII. Where we ramped up our military spending, beat the greatest military power in the Pacific, and helped finished off the greatest military power in Europe. Then spending fell after peacetime.
Spending over a trillion a year on "defense" spending doesn't have anything to do with actual defense. It's shoveling cash into the bottomless pit of the military-industrial-congressional-contractor complex.
It's even more of a blatant farce when the USSR has been gone for nearly three decades now.
Canada largely relies on the US as part of a collective defense although Canada contributes proportionally more (significantly more) to that defense than most countries under the US umbrella.
Not really. Canada is geographically surrounded by oceans and friends. It's actual defense needs are infinitesimal. Hmm, kind of like it's neighbor to the south.................
Revolutionary war was muskets vs muskets with cannons. As opposed to rifles vs....assault ships, spy satellites, infrared, drones, poison gas, cluster bombs, bunker busters.....
That's exactly what people thought at inauguration of Slobodan Milosevic. And they didn't even have the constitutional right to bear arms. But within a decade they would be doing just that, whether they wanted it or not.
Still not the best comparison, as no group of marksmen would ever hold off a serious military assault from a modern military force. The Russians were willing to both take and deal out casualties in their occupation of Afghanistan. It was only when the U.S. started to supply the future Taliban with surface-to-air missiles that they started to lose the war.
Yep. If anything, Ronnie Ray Gun's sabre rattling delayed the fall of the Soviet Union, as external threats naturally increase the patriotism of the civilian population. It's why the mullah's in Iran are happy as a clam when the U.S. threatens to bomb Iran over the nuclear weapons program the Secretary of Defense admits Iran doesn't actually have.
Which would be a great point, if we were in, say, India's geographical location. But we aren't - we're across the largest ocean on the planet, so the size of the standing armies involved is fairly meaningless. So it would first be an air war - and given that the U.S. navy is more powerful than the rest of the world's navies combined, we don't have too much to worry about from China.
"Jane's Defence Forecasts in 2012 estimated that China's defense budget would increase from $119.80 billion to $238.20 billion between 2011 and 2015. This would make it larger than the defense budgets of all other major Asian nations combined."
That's about a third of current US military spending.
Wrong. You're off by 2x. At least. Cowboy. Even if China starts spending 200 billion a year, the U.S. is still spending 7 times that.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official DOD figures of ~$600BN?
And was sized to support 2 wars, both of which are largely over.
Wrong again. One of those wars is largely over - Iraq - but we've merely redeployed those troops in the region in preparation for the next bogus war of choice - Iran. Or to re-invade Iraq if we decide it's "necessary". Then there's the bevy of undeclared drone wars from Africa to Asia.
My problem comes when people don't think they should "work their way out of" poverty, but that the government should do it for them, not by helping them to get better work or creating an environment where business thrives so jobs are created (not a liberal strong point), but by simply giving them the money to support a better lifestyle.
Slight problem with that Randian storyline - even if it were true - giving poor people money to support a better lifestyle is not only a more moral system than the "up from your own bootstraps" nonsense, but it makes for vastly better economics than cutting taxes on the rich.
Working stiffs can't take lengthy unpaid internships to get a job in their field after college. They better hope that they find one though before their student loans become a weight around their neck. If George Bush was George Johnson, he'd be lucky to be the assistant manager of a Burger King, if he wasn't in prison for cocaine possession. Not handed business after business no matter how many he drove into the ground, much less the presidency. Or have beautiful women sent to your hotel room to have sex with you because your last name is Bush.
Social spending isn't about "hand outs". It's about basic human decency and equality of opportunity.
It is the duty of America to worry about Americans, and feed its people, not feed the world.
If America is going to bully the rest of the world through it's military and economic imperialism, it could at least feed the world while it's doing it.
This is a chimera - a mythical beast. It's also a false dichotomy, equivalent to "eat your peas, there are children starving in India".
Not when social spending is being slashed while military budgets are ever-fattening sacred cows (decades after the end of the Cold War), it's not. If the United States lopped a trillion dollars off it's annual $1.2 trillion+ war budget, it would leave a lot of money available for other things.
$66 dollars per year is basically going to do nothing but inflate the cost of housing for the poorest
So: they need to be left homeless, otherwise they would end up being unable to afford housing? Ah, the beauty of Randian logic....
If by some stroke of magic, every person on the planet suddenly started receiving, say, a minimum of $5000 per year guaranteed income, and assuming (again, by magic) no resulting inflation or other unintended consequences, then the definition of poverty would gradually move up the ladder, until, again, something between 20% and 50% of the populace would be seen by some groups as deprived of essentials because $5000 per year just wasn't enough to buy the 'things they need' - things that would have been considered the realm of the social elite a few generations before.
To borrow Clinton's line about the economy: it's the standard of living, stupid. If $5000 is enough to ensure a decent lifestyle (i.e. decent housing, food, education, health care, transportation) than $5000 isn't poverty level. If $20000 isn't enough to afford decent housing, food, transport, health care and education, then $20000 falls within the poverty level.
sounds frighteningly a lot like when they believed in wars after WW2 that dogfighting aircraft were no longer needed
You mean when the Cold War was just getting ramped up between the two largest superpowers in the world? Just what is the modern equivalent to the USSR to which we need this military counter, exactly?
The United States spends $1.2 trillion a year on it's military, more than the rest of the world. Combined. We could stop spending money on new armaments entirely and still have military supremacy over the rest of the world. For decades.
It would be far better welfare to just hand that cash out to people on the street. Would give the same benefit, while avoiding the costs of worsening income disparity (since FAR more money ends up in the hands of top defense contractor shareholders than defense contractor engineers) and the "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem.
As in, you give them the toys (drones for the CIA, tanks for SWAT teams), sooner or later they will want to use them.
When is Poland threatening to build their own anti-missile system, and Russia threatening to retaliate? You know, to keep the comparison relevant and all that.
Europe has a longstanding postwar habit of not spending more than â0.17 on defense
Because they don't need to, with or without American military bases in Europe, and certainly not after the fall of the U.S.S.R. Grotesque military budgets have nothing to do with actual defense needs and everything to do with shoveling cash into the military-industrial complex.
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Not in the slightest. Like deniers of Evolution, climate change deniers do so not out of any scientific basis, but out of pure ideology and the quaint notion that beliefs are equal to reason.
I find your lack of self-awareness disturbing.
Gravity is just as much a theory. That skepticism can easily be tested with your foot and an anvil - no temperature records or satellite data needed!
No, I don't think that many people spend much time thinking about red herrings that you just made up out of thin air.
Sure. And some people still disagree with the notion that the Earth orbits the Sun. They're also blabbering fuckwits, so what's the point?
No, you don't. You might not support Heartland, but you do support pulling random assertions out of your ass - just like Heartland.
How do you know nuclear war would be a problem until we see one? We know the Earth has experienced rapid climate change before. We also know that those changes also coincided with mass extinctions.
Resource wars. Drought. Famine. Disease. More and more powerful typhoons, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Lengthy heat waves that can prove deadly for the young, the sick. and the elderly. All real risks of real climate change.
Dude. The Randian Kool Aid. You might want to cut down. Cuba has a fraction of the percentage of the wealth that the U.S. does, yet it's populace has universal health care, and despite spending 1/37th per person as much as the U.S., has comparable health care stats.
And of course, that's even supporting the conservative urban legend that mitigating climate change would be a detriment to society, when in fact it would be the greatest economic boon to hit this planet since the post WWII era. Millions of jobs created in building solar, wind and hydro power. Millions more in building mass transit. And of course, saving energy means *saving money*. Even if you want to remain a self-centered troglodyte and continue to use your Hummer as a passenger vehicle, you still want society as a whole to cut way back on the use of fossil fuels, because it will mean cheaper gas.
Hide under your bed much? There is nothing out there that remotely threatens the United States militarily. Nothing. We could stop building new armaments today and still have military superiority over the rest of the planet for the next 50 years.
Yeah, WWII. Where we ramped up our military spending, beat the greatest military power in the Pacific, and helped finished off the greatest military power in Europe. Then spending fell after peacetime.
Spending over a trillion a year on "defense" spending doesn't have anything to do with actual defense. It's shoveling cash into the bottomless pit of the military-industrial-congressional-contractor complex.
It's even more of a blatant farce when the USSR has been gone for nearly three decades now.
Not really. Canada is geographically surrounded by oceans and friends. It's actual defense needs are infinitesimal. Hmm, kind of like it's neighbor to the south.................
Revolutionary war was muskets vs muskets with cannons. As opposed to rifles vs....assault ships, spy satellites, infrared, drones, poison gas, cluster bombs, bunker busters.....
Still not the best comparison, as no group of marksmen would ever hold off a serious military assault from a modern military force. The Russians were willing to both take and deal out casualties in their occupation of Afghanistan. It was only when the U.S. started to supply the future Taliban with surface-to-air missiles that they started to lose the war.
Yep. If anything, Ronnie Ray Gun's sabre rattling delayed the fall of the Soviet Union, as external threats naturally increase the patriotism of the civilian population. It's why the mullah's in Iran are happy as a clam when the U.S. threatens to bomb Iran over the nuclear weapons program the Secretary of Defense admits Iran doesn't actually have.
Not unless they've started spending $400 billion a year, officially or unofficially.
Which would be a great point, if we were in, say, India's geographical location. But we aren't - we're across the largest ocean on the planet, so the size of the standing armies involved is fairly meaningless. So it would first be an air war - and given that the U.S. navy is more powerful than the rest of the world's navies combined, we don't have too much to worry about from China.
Actually, verifiable U.S. numbers are $1.2 trillion.
Wrong. You're off by 2x. At least. Cowboy. Even if China starts spending 200 billion a year, the U.S. is still spending 7 times that.
Did you even TRY to verify your facts before you posted that? Or are you seriously believing the official DOD figures of ~$600BN?
Wrong again. One of those wars is largely over - Iraq - but we've merely redeployed those troops in the region in preparation for the next bogus war of choice - Iran. Or to re-invade Iraq if we decide it's "necessary". Then there's the bevy of undeclared drone wars from Africa to Asia.
The military industrial-congressional-contractor-surviellance complex has only ballooned since Bin Laddin's death, not started to recede.
Slight problem with that Randian storyline - even if it were true - giving poor people money to support a better lifestyle is not only a more moral system than the "up from your own bootstraps" nonsense, but it makes for vastly better economics than cutting taxes on the rich.
Working stiffs can't take lengthy unpaid internships to get a job in their field after college. They better hope that they find one though before their student loans become a weight around their neck. If George Bush was George Johnson, he'd be lucky to be the assistant manager of a Burger King, if he wasn't in prison for cocaine possession. Not handed business after business no matter how many he drove into the ground, much less the presidency. Or have beautiful women sent to your hotel room to have sex with you because your last name is Bush.
Social spending isn't about "hand outs". It's about basic human decency and equality of opportunity.
If America is going to bully the rest of the world through it's military and economic imperialism, it could at least feed the world while it's doing it.
Blow it back up your own ass.
Not when social spending is being slashed while military budgets are ever-fattening sacred cows (decades after the end of the Cold War), it's not. If the United States lopped a trillion dollars off it's annual $1.2 trillion+ war budget, it would leave a lot of money available for other things.
So: they need to be left homeless, otherwise they would end up being unable to afford housing? Ah, the beauty of Randian logic....
To borrow Clinton's line about the economy: it's the standard of living, stupid. If $5000 is enough to ensure a decent lifestyle (i.e. decent housing, food, education, health care, transportation) than $5000 isn't poverty level. If $20000 isn't enough to afford decent housing, food, transport, health care and education, then $20000 falls within the poverty level.
You mean when the Cold War was just getting ramped up between the two largest superpowers in the world? Just what is the modern equivalent to the USSR to which we need this military counter, exactly?
The United States spends $1.2 trillion a year on it's military, more than the rest of the world. Combined. We could stop spending money on new armaments entirely and still have military supremacy over the rest of the world. For decades.
It would be far better welfare to just hand that cash out to people on the street. Would give the same benefit, while avoiding the costs of worsening income disparity (since FAR more money ends up in the hands of top defense contractor shareholders than defense contractor engineers) and the "when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail" problem.
As in, you give them the toys (drones for the CIA, tanks for SWAT teams), sooner or later they will want to use them.
When is Poland threatening to build their own anti-missile system, and Russia threatening to retaliate? You know, to keep the comparison relevant and all that.
FTFY.
Because they don't need to, with or without American military bases in Europe, and certainly not after the fall of the U.S.S.R. Grotesque military budgets have nothing to do with actual defense needs and everything to do with shoveling cash into the military-industrial complex.
You know that the U.S. is the by far the largest single member of NATO. No?
So when do Middle Eastern countries get their missile defense against belligerent western imperialism?