bigguns: "Here's one thing that puzzles me about the term, unborn. If we're going to call fetuses what they might be one day, why not call them the "undead," since we'll all be dead one day, one way or another."

The problem with this is that there'd be no way to make a distinction between unborn regular babies and unborn zombie babies.

Well, howdy, and thanks for the decent, substantive discourse!

I have never said there was NO PLACE for government regulations. I think you are shooting the horse I did not ride in upon.

But as a variety of scientist, more or less, you should know that "consensus" means nothing regarding what is true or not. If we went by consensus, would Galileo have been persecuted? Oh, wait, he was!

Oh, sorry, I forgot to comment on the other.

Why is it hard to see beyond the plitics? Simply because, beyond the politics, there ain't much "there" there. The data is incomplete, contradictory, the climate scientists generally admit such, and the political committees that run the scientific sessions then fabricate various positions that are specifically NOT HELD BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS in order to promote their agenda, which is ALWAYS to the detriment of the industrialized world and favors China and India.

It's a Forrest Gump thing: Stupid is as stupid does.

If a set of policies is inevitably seen as anti-economic development in westernized countries, then one should conclude that's the precise purpose.

Also, one notes, that the data simply do not support the manmade global warming hysteria.

Actually, as an engineer a "consensus" is important to me. While it is always possible that the "consensus" has gotten it wrong, the more researchers who can replicate and confirm each other's work from a variety of approaches the greater the probabilty that their hypothesis is correct. My main point, however, is that most (if not all )of the researchers who support anthropogenic climate change are hard-working honest people who are using the best tools available to them to answer a difficult question. I don't think their research is politically driven. That's all.

Why is it hard to see beyond the plitics? Simply because, beyond the politics, there ain't much "there" there. The data is incomplete, contradictory, the climate scientists generally admit such

All data is incomplete. We don't have a perfect fossil record, but evolution is still true. If by "the climate scientists generally admit such," you mean that climate scientists generally agree with you that the jury is still out on anthropomorphic warming, you're just lying again, because that is not the case, and saying so is a lie (whether you believe the lie is irrelevant).

, and the political committees that run the scientific sessions then fabricate various positions that are specifically NOT HELD BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENTISTS

You're right here, but not in the way that you think. The current consensus is that the official estimates of warming from the IPCC are too low, and that the warnings and suggestions the IPCC issues are not adequate to solve the problem.

"None of this gives any indication that he's going to govern wisely or well. But one can HOPE, as the Obama campaign has repeatedly repeated!"

It surely gives a better indication than "Many of our imports come from abroad" and not being able to namify the leader of Pakistan. Doesn't it?

Thanks for the reminding all of zombies and their unborn undead babies. I am personally grateful, as a zombie mother with unborn undead child, to those of you, whom we affectionately refer to as "late night snacks," who remember us.

Sorry, saw you third response after I posted my second one. I was wondering about your anti-economic development argument. Some believe that our environmental regulations are such while others believe it just fairly apportions external costs. If you support the environmental laws (and their associated costs)that led to the improvement in our nations environment,why would it be any different for CO2. We presently spend large sums of money reducing S02, VOCs, Pb, CO, NOx and Particulates in our air, and a host of other pollutants in our water. Presently, the environmental community may be struggling to figure out how to control CO2, to what level, at what cost and how to deal with issues like China and India but on principal we are talking about regulating another pollutant. We regulated an enourmous number of activities over the last 40 years or so, and it hasn't stopped economic development.

That's OK. I didn't say you should ignore a consensus in your field, if you apply rigorous standards to it.

But in my field, for example, the consensus used to be that bacteria were not only unimportant, but at one time the consensus was that they didn't exist!

Not that many years ago, we used to think that stress was the major factor in duodenal ulcers and that rest in the hospital and drinking milk and cream were proper treatments for such.

It is, almost daily, that I find something entirely AGAINST CURRENT CONSENSUS in the medical newspapers, journals, or at conferences that turns out, after a little more investigation, to be true.

Consensus is NOT a reliable guide to determining scientific truth. It is one reason I am not in favor of cookbook medicine based on consensus guidelines for making medical decisions.

Speaking with Dr. Normal Kaplan, one of the more distinguished members of the JNCC, regarding treatment for high blood pressure, he told me that he didn't treat patients according to the guidelines (I think Number 6 had just been released) because they were ALREADY OBSOLETE.

I would think that, rather than count noses and voting with the majority, you would prefer to look for truth. But that's just me. I'd like to think that, were I a physician in the time of Semmelweiss or Lister, I would have had the courage to note the consensus and ignore it in favor of actual new data.

The output of a job is goods or services. Profitability is more a function of business, not employment per se. Even companies that are going out of business employ people in jobs. Government workers also have jobs and produce stuff...stuff you apparently don't value, like roads and scientific research and such.

People who work for the government do in fact have jobs, in spite of your private definition.