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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You mean scientists like Michael J Fox, John C Grisholm and Perry S Mason?
That particular news organisation needs to fire that particular reporter - because that particular petition was debunked a long, long time ago.
And the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine isn't exactly highly regarded as a result.
As an Australian citizen, interested observer and recent visitor to the USA, I found this article and the responses to it to be fascinating. The most alarming element of all of the above is that even the progressives and moderates seem to be missing the most important point. You folks aren't just making these decisions for US citizens... as one of the top 2 polluters in the world, your policies on alternative solutions need to address the needs of a growing and increasingly affluent world population as well. Carbon emitted by the US citizenry, military & corporations does not simply sit over the USA. It ascends into the atmosphere and diffuses out over most of the northern hemisphere - and eventually, over the south as well.
While my duly elected government is not exactly guilt-free on this issue, they have at least now signed up to Kyoto and are working towards building on the innovations of previous decades in the alternative energy sector. In other words, we've accepted that our decisions affect our neighbours (including many of the rapidly shrinking oceanic states that are threatened by rising ocean levels) and we've started to orientate our economy towards a solution.
On the other hand, the USA - which can bring an R&D budget the size of our GNP to bear on future energy research - is standing by and haggling over Roe vs Wade and the relative merits of teaching intelligent design in classrooms. If the US government offered even MODERATE incentives to corporations for developing new clean energy solutions the problem could probably be solved in under a decade.
Meanwhile the God-botherers (who seem to have only a sketchy handle on the doctrine of divinely granted free will) are wheeling out the bible saying "God will save us", clapping their hands over their ears and singing psalms as if this will make the bogey man they created through their own (free) decisions go away. Maybe this is natural selection in action, but when these people stand behind the first amendment and demand their right to be heard on the floor of Congress, they're holding up the rest of us.
Has anyone considered that the delaying tactics of the religious right might simply be a delaying tactic while they create a path to the fulfillment of their much-vaunted "day of salvation" and the respective damnation of the unbelievers to a millenium of hell on earth? I'm not sure how they think they're going to get to the heavens... maybe 14400 people could get into a "New Ark" if they started building now. Oh... but they'd need new energy sources to get it into orbit, right? *pfeh* Would this count as a terrorist act? I wonder.........
Yours from Down Under
Jeremy Huppatz
It's one thing to self-destruct, but it's another to drag down half of the life on Earth. Humanity is pathetic in this respect. We're treating the planet like a garbage dump. No respect. No respect for ourselves or future generations.
How can we allow this? What can we do?
I am sorry, but this government (of the USA) is defunct. It is "of, by, and for" only the very biggest corporations. Corporatism has come home to roost.
And we are suffering for it.
"No taxation without representation" - anyone? Does that ring a bell?
Let's go down your list:
Scientists do not have much of a consensus at all on the many possible outcomes of global warming. Do you think it is going to be "catastrophic" in the next 100 years?
Predicting anything of this sort is called "conjecture." Look it up. When I was doing my Master's work, we ran models of the changes _that took place_ (Meaning, these things had already happened.) When the Farallon Plate collided with the West Coast of North America. We were mainly interested in the effects of the Pacific Northwest around Oregon and Washington. We plugged in everything we knew and you know what happened over and over? Vancouver Island became part of the mainland. We know why it didn't but everything we knew about the process said it should. Even computer models of past occurrences containing known facts are flawed. What if it had been ninety-five percent conjecture? Predicting climate is just that; conjecture.
When I said "We can't believe it's actually going to change!" I wasn't referring to scientists. I was referring to the people who let others do all their thinking for them. You know as well as I do the basic tenets of modern thinking is everything should remain as it is. We even flip when a species becomes extinct even though extinction and death is the most fundamental part of reality along with birth. It was no straw man argument.
"Never before in recorded history has the rate of climate change been as fast as it has been in recent decades, and the increase in the rate of climate change is both predicted and explained by fossil fuel burning." You base this on what recorded history? Think about that for a moment. Are we talking about the thermometer hanging out on the barn we ordered from Montgomery Ward? Or the thermometer a weatherman in Boston ordered from Montgomery Ward? Are we talking about tree rings or tea leaves? What would you say the relation is in the present time to when every individual in the civilized world heated everything they had to heat with a fire? Which, for hundreds of years, consisted of burning a LOT of coal? Would you say the Earth is cleaner now than it was then? Seriously, do you? Do you think the air we breathe and the water we swim in is dirtier than it was in the 1960's?
Do you honestly think we're facing a global warming catastrophe that will make the world of our grandchildren unlivable?
Do you honestly think that a planet that has been bombarded by untold numbers of huge asteroids, been subjected to countless warming and cooling events that were strong enough to change the very geology of the planet is going to be destroyed (Save the Planet!) by a tenth of a percent increase in CO2?
Do you honestly think that a species that rose out of the Ice Age (Hey, that was a major thing when all you had to keep you warm was bear skins and rubbing two sticks together.) BETTER than it was when it went into it is going to die out because of any of this?
Mankind has written about miracles from God which none of us have ever seen yet some believe in it.
Mankind has written about evolution which not even men in biblical times ever saw, and yet some of us believe in it.
We make a big deal about sedimentary strata and the fossils they contain. We date these fossils from the strata they're found in. For instance, Cambrian. Did you know that we also date the strata from the fossils they contain? We date a strata to Cambrian times because it contains Cambrian fossils and we date the fossils as Cambrian because they were found in a Cambrian strata. Amazing, isn't it? I'm not making it up. :) My specialty is paleogeology. You brought up "Straw man" and now I've brought up "Circular reasoning." It would seem we really don't know how old the damned things are but we pretend we do and people, of course, believe it.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
