[This message has been edited by Juju (12-18-2009 10:56 AM).]

-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

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Such extremes (whether "Global Warming is doomsday" or "Global Warming is garbage") don't prefer the truth.   They only prefer the exhibitionism of their own extreme and much ungrounded feelings of certainty about their extreme and trying to make the issue as one-sided to the exclusion of the other side as much as possible.  Both extremes may be far apart in their preachings, but they certainly share something deeply in common: stupidity.

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Summary

On Dec. 9, an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change ran in the Washington Post. Al Gore responded to Palin’s piece and made some fresh claims of his own later that day in an interview with MSNBC. We find that both engaged in some distortions and have been rightly called out by experts in the field.

    * Gore said that 40 percent of the polar ice cap is already gone. That’s an outdated figure — it has recovered in the last two years, and is now about 24 percent smaller than the 1979-2000 average.
    * Gore’s claim that all Arctic ice would "go completely" over the next decade is greatly exaggerated. The scientist he is citing was actually talking about nearly ice-free conditions, and only in the summer months.
    * Gore and Palin both left out information when discussing the economic impact of climate legislation. Gore dodged a question about job losses, and Palin ignored the potentially severe effects of doing nothing.
    * Palin misrepresented the contents of the leaked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit, saying that they show "fraudulent scientific practices." That’s not the case.
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The north polar ice cap is melting at rates that are certainly cause for concern. But it’s not going quite as fast as Gore says. Gore’s 40 percent figure is outdated. Arctic ice levels, as measured by the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Boulder, were 40 percent lower at the end of the summer of 2007 than the average observed from 1979 to 2000. But the totals have actually increased for two consecutive years since. According to a release from the group, the average ice cover was 5.36 million square kilometers for the month of September 2009, compared with the 1979 to 2000 September average of 7.04 million square kilometers. That’s a difference of about 24 percent, nearly half what Gore said.

And Gore was wildly off the mark when he predicted that all Arctic ice would "go completely within the next decade."
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One researcher, Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Post-Graduate School, made a projection in 2007 that a nearly ice-free arctic summer might occur as early as 2013, though he recently moved that back to 2020. But saying the north polar ice cap will be entirely gone is hyperbole. Even the most dramatic projections, such as Maslowski’s, do not say the ice would be gone during the winter months.

Gore noted these caveats himself a few days later while presenting at the U.N. Climate Summit in Copenhagen when he said:

    "Gore: Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap during some of the summer months will be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years."

Even here, Gore was being a bit aggressive with his claims of "ice free" summers. In fact, Maslowski, whose work Gore cited, complained to the U.K. Telegraph that "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this. … I was very explicit that we were talking about near-ice-free conditions and not completely ice-free conditions in the northern ocean.”
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Gore and Palin both made some roughly factual statements about the effect of climate change proposals on the economy. Palin said that proposed “cap-and-tax” [sic] plans will result in job losses, and she’s right. Gore, by contrast, said that "the response to global warming can bring jobs back" — and he’s right, too. Overall, nonpartisan experts, including Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, agree that proposed cap-and-trade legislation will kill some jobs, create others and ultimately have a small but negative effect on employment – probably.

But neither combatant gave the full picture here. Gore, when asked about the economic effect of climate proposals, responded: "I think that the losses of jobs started a long time ago with the outsourcing to other countries for a variety of reasons, including the cheaper labor costs," he said. "It’s not — not because of the response to global warming." That’s called dodging the question.

Palin, meanwhile, presented potential job losses and tax increases as evidence that “any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.” But if scientists are correct, the potential cost of doing nothing could be severe. The Congressional Budget Office said earlier this year:

   " CBO, September 2009: A strong consensus has developed in the expert community that, if allowed to continue unabated, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will have extensive, highly uncertain, but potentially serious and costly impacts on regional climates throughout the world. Those impacts are expected to include widespread changes in the physical environment, changes in biological systems (including agriculture), and changes in the viability of some economic sectors."
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Palin wrote: “The e-mails reveal that leading climate ‘experts’ deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.” As we said in our article on this subject, though, there are two ongoing investigations, but so far there’s no evidence that deception or blacklisting actually occurred.

The “decline” under discussion is well-represented in the scientific literature, not covered up. The e-mail in question refers to supplementing tree-ring data with direct temperature readings in order to avoid an artificial dip where the two diverge; the divergence is not fully understood, but it has clearly not been buried. And while it’s true that a few of the e-mails discuss the feasibility of barring skeptics from editorial positions, there’s so far no evidence that this actually occurred.

Palin also said that “the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd.” It is certainly fair to say that experts are not of a single mind about climate science. Groups of experts – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the national academies of science of 13 countries including the U.S., the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society and others — agree that the planet is warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that human activity is in no small part responsible for the increases. But the specifics are, as in any science, a matter of study, research and debate.

One e-mail exchange between Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientist Edward Cook and University of Virginia scientist Michael Mann shows what scientific debate can look like in the climate field. After some back-and-forth about Cook’s temperature reconstruction and his conclusions about the medieval warming period, Mann writes: “Lets figure this all out based on good, careful work and see what the data has to say in the end. We’re working towards this ourselves, using revised methods and including borehole data, etc. and will keep everyone posted on this.” Cook sums up:

    "I am quite happy to work this stuff through in a careful way and am happy to discuss it all with you. I certainly don’t want the work to be viewed as an attack on previous work such as yours. Unfortunately, this global change stuff is so politicized by both sides of the issue that it is difficult to do the science in a dispassionate environment. I ran into the same problem in the acid rain/forest decline debate that raged in the 1980s. At one point, I was simultaneous accused of being a raving tree hugger and in the pocket of the coal industry. I have always said that I don’t care what answer is found as long as it is the truth or at least bloody close to it."

Palin is right that not all climate scientists agree on everything. But she’s wrong to imply that this invalidates the field or undermines the conclusions on which they do agree. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/palin-vs-gore-climate-showdown/

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I don't agree with Grinch's conclusions at all

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Under the pretext of responding to a bombing on the USS Maine anchored in Havana, Cuba, the U.S. went to war with Cuba's colonial overlord, Spain, in 1899. After routing Europe's weakest colonial power, the U.S. made off with all of Spain's colonial possessions in Latin America and Asia, seizing control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines.

The Spanish-American War marked the entrance of the U.S. into the worldwide scramble for colonies among the advanced powers. Novelist Mark Twain made no bones about what this meant: How our hearts burned with indignation against the atrocious Spaniards. . .But when the smoke was over, the dead buried and the cost of the war came back to the people in an increase in the price of commodities and rent--that is, when we sobered up from our patriotic spree--it suddenly dawned on us that the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar. . . . that the lives, blood, and money of the American people were used to protect the interests of American capitalists.
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Whenever the colonial subjects of the U.S. fought back, the U.S. drowned them in blood. As Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war: We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God--and the phrase is the government's, not mine--we are a World Power. In the 1900-1903 war to conquer the Philippines, the U.S. killed more than 1 million people. In the midst of that war, U.S. Army General Shefter said: "It may be necessary to kill half of the Filipinos in order that the remaining half of the population may be advanced to a higher plane of life than their present semi-barbarous state affords."
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A century later, the U.S. stands alone as the world's superpower. It is the only country with the ability to go to war anywhere in the world. The U.S. attained its position of dominance through competition with other powerful nations. The U.S. and the world's other major powers--Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany--fought two world wars, threatened each other with nuclear annihilation and divided and redivided the world between them. http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155-history/25951.html

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I have nothing against Imperialism

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As a young girl I learned the poor countries would be dependant on the paternal countries in Europe and the US, because of foreign policies to conquer and these were disguised as something heroic to the general public.

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The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, and the Case for American Empire

Lawrence Summers, the dominant professor-politician of the Clinton years, used to say that the United States is history's only nonimperialist superpower. But is this claim anything to boast about today? The war on terrorism has focused attention on the chaotic states that provide profit and sanctuary to nihilist outlaws, from Sudan and Afghanistan to Sierra Leone and Somalia. When such power vacuums threatened great powers in the past, they had a ready solution: imperialism. But since World War II, that option has been ruled out. After more than two millennia of empire, orderly societies now refuse to impose their own institutions on disorderly ones.

This anti-imperialist restraint is becoming harder to sustain, however, as the disorder in poor countries grows more threatening. Civil wars have grown nastier and longer. In a study of 52 conflicts since 1960, a recent World Bank study found that wars started after 1980 lasted three times longer than those beginning in the preceding two decades. Because wars last longer, the number of countries embroiled in them is growing. And the trend toward violent disorder may prove self-sustaining, for war breeds the conditions that make fresh conflict likely. Once a nation descends into violence, its people focus on immediate survival rather than on the longer term. Saving, investment, and wealth creation taper off; government officials seek spoils for their cronies rather than designing policies that might build long-term prosperity. A cycle of poverty, instability, and violence emerges.

There is another reason why state failures may multiply. Violence and social disorder are linked to rapid population growth, and this demographic pressure shows no sign of abating. In the next

20 years, the world's population is projected to grow from around six billion to eight billion, with nearly all of the increase concentrated in poor countries. Some of the sharpest demographic stresses will be concentrated in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Palestinian territories -- all Islamic societies with powerful currents of anti-Western extremism. Only sub-Saharan Africa faces a demographic challenge even sharper than that of the Muslim world. There, an excruciating combination of high birth rates and widespread aids infection threatens social disintegration and governmental collapse -- which in turn offer opportunities for terrorists to find sanctuary.
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/57800/se  bastian-mallaby/the-reluctant-imperialist-terrorism-failed-states-and-the-case-f

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It reminds me of the "World Bank" a group of European countries with the goal of "helping the less fortunate countries."

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Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance

Hudson is a Wall Street economist who used to work at the Chase Manhattan Bank. In Part One, he describes the rise of the American empire. Part Two describes its institutions: the US-controlled World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, which all benefit the USA. The US has the sole veto power in all three. Part Three describes what Herman Kahn called `the greatest rip-off ever achieved', the way the US's ruling class levies us all to pay for its aggressive wars, just as the Roman Empire levied tribute to pay for its constant wars. Similarly Britain, Germany and Japan all pay for the US's military bases in their countries.

In 1945, as in 1918, Britain led Europe's capitulation to the USA's debt demands. The British ruling class chose dependency on the US ruling class. The USA insisted that Britain ended the sterling bloc, accepted IMF controls, did not impose exchange controls, and did not devalue. As Hudson writes, "The Anglo-American Loan Agreement spelled the end of Britain as a Great Power."

The 1945-51 Labour government's huge spending on unnecessary imperial, counter-revolutionary wars robbed our industry of investment. This excessive military spending meant that we had constantly to borrow from the IMF, increasing our dependence on the USA. Now Britain is the USA's Trojan horse in Europe, against Britain's interests.
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Imperialism-Origin-Fundamentals-Dominanc/dp/0745319890

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Perkins began writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man in the 1980s. In the book, he states that, "Threats or bribes always convinced me to stop".

"Covertly recruited by the United States National Security Agency and on the payroll of an international consulting firm, he traveled the world—to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries...Perkins reveals the hidden mechanics of imperial control behind some of the most dramatic events in recent history, such as the fall of the Shah of Iran, the death of Panamanian president Omar Torrijos, and the U.S. invasions of Panama and Iraq."[2]

According to his book, Perkins' function was to convince the political and financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID. Saddled with huge debts they could not hope to pay, these countries were forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues in his book that developing nations were effectively neutralized politically, had their wealth gaps driven wider and economies crippled in the long run. In this capacity Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including Graham Greene and Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an EHM as follows:

    Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly-paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

The epilogue to the 2006 edition provides a rebuttal to the current move by the G8 nations to forgive Third World debt. Perkins charges that the proposed conditions for this debt forgiveness require countries to sell their health, education, electric, water and other public services to corporations. Those countries would also have to discontinue subsidies and trade restrictions that support local business, but accept the continued subsidization of certain G8 businesses by the US and other G8 countries, and the erection of trade barriers on imports that threaten G8 industries.

In the book, Perkins repeatedly denies the existence of a "conspiracy." Instead, Perkins carefully discusses the role of corporatocracy.
“ "I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950s, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew the government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time‘s magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed—well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.[3] - Nov 4 '04 interview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man

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Your list of alternatives were your conclusion, Grinch.

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It appears your course of action would be to do something, even if you need it or not.

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I really don't consider you qualified to speak for Ayn Rand.

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I don't have a problem with imperialism,

I have a problem with 48% of the population that who claim they are against imperialism, but are convinced that it serves a greater purpose like "protecting the environment" or "Civilizing the Indians" or "Woman's rights" or "Weapons of Mass Destruction" or any reason we list to go to war.

I just find it really Ironic and kinda funny.

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-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

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No problem, Bob. Regard me as abusive or anything you like. Take my comments to others and attack me on them. That has been your modus operandi for some time now so have fun with it. My only error was giving your comments enough importance to mention them. I'll try not to let that happen again. By all means, live up to your obligations...

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But in general it is usually defined as some people have bad logic(serial killers their psych paths liers people in chronic debt), therefore the government has the right to enforce laws to prevent chaos.

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Many, many, many, conservatives believe in liberal economics, but There are some that believe in conservative economics.  Therefore someone who believes in political conservatism can also be an economic liberal.

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-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

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Why is it we call it global warming? why not pollution.

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You can eat too much and not be obese

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-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

[This message has been edited by threadbear (02-10-2010 10:56 PM).]

-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

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Whether or not we as humans are radically changing the environment - Global warming is used as an excuse to manipulate the public to accept taxation and US interference in the global economy that hasn't been seen since the early 1900s.

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The irony is that many of these plans by the government don't solve the problem, but makes it worse.

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When I practiced in a scientific capacity, I was a member of the same learned society as you, Professor Sir David King FRSC. I was a mere graduate then a member, but I do believe I have a much better grasp of climate science specifically and the principles of science in general than yourself. Yet you were at one time head of the University of Cambridge Chemistry Department and are still an acting professor. If I were a religious person, I would now be saying “God help us all.”

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[The UK] started off the industrial revolution and for many years were the major “polluter”, and should therefore pay the greater part of any reparations.

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On November 17, 2008 President-elect Barack Obama clarified, in a talk recorded for YouTube, that the US will enter a cap-and-trade system to limit global warming.

The 2010 United States federal budget proposes to support clean energy development with a 10-year investment of US $15 billion per year, generated from the sale of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions credits. Under the proposed cap-and-trade program, all GHG emissions credits would be auctioned off, generating an estimated $78.7 billion in additional revenue in FY 2012, steadily increasing to $83 billion by FY 2019.

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-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

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Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.

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Fusion wouldn't be bad either, especially if it could be done on a small scale and with minimal or no radiation.

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From Grinch's link: Despite optimism dating back to the 1950s about the wide-scale harnessing of fusion power, there are still significant barriers standing between current scientific understanding and technological capabilities and the practical realization of fusion as an energy source. Research, while making steady progress, has also continually thrown up new difficulties. Therefore it remains unclear whether an economically viable fusion plant is possible.

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No problem, serenity gal, and perhaps the government will allow us to just pretend we are going to pay all of the higher costs and taxes instituted in the name of battling global warming? THAT is the key behind this.

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Food riots were in the news; that much I remember . .

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-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos

-Juju

-"So you found a girl
Who thinks really deep thoughts
What's so amazing about really deep thoughts " Silent all these Years, Tori Amos