Czech-mate!

[Fragony]

Ya who put applejuice in these glaciers.

[PBI]

Socialism; let's heavily regulate industry and the economy!
Greens; Let's heavily regulate industry and the economy...for the trees!

IIRC, there are connections between some green and socialist groups.
CR

Here we go again.

Actually, the way it works is this:
Socialism; let's heavily regulate industry and the economy!
Greens; Let's heavily regulate industry and the economy...for the trees!
Communism; let's heavily regulate industry and the economy, and also severely restrict freedom of speech and of the press, and imprison or execute anyone who questions us!

The repulsive thing about the Communist governments of of Eastern Europe was that they were authoritarian dictatorships with appalling human rights records. The fact that they also happened to be socialists (at least in terms of economic policy) is entirely incidental.

The fact that so many on the right seem unable to tell the difference is frankly quite scary. Perhaps it goes some way to explaining "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation"? After all, these aren't socialist human rights abuses, so they must be OK, right?

The link being made between environmentalism and human rights abuse is both spurious and opportunistic. Badly-thought-out policy is enacted all the time. If some of it happens to be environmental policy, the problem still lies with the policy itself, not environmentalism as a whole. If someone happens to enact a stupid economic policy, does it follow that economics itself is stupid?

You want to debate the validity or otherwise of climate change? Go ahead. Just please try to do so without making absurd links to human rights abuses, all it achieves is to cheapen the message of those who think human rights are an important issue in and of themselves.

[Fragony]

You want to debate the validity or otherwise of climate change? Go ahead. Just please try to do so without making absurd links to human rights abuses, all it achieves is to cheapen the message of those who think human rights are an important issue in and of themselves.

Hitler liked nature, do you want to be like Hitler? Nuff said discussion over.

[PBI]

Hitler liked nature, do you want to be like Hitler? Nuff said discussion over.

And on this, at least, we are in total agreement.

Can there be a surer sign of total victory in a debate than forcing your opponent to resort to Godwin's Law?

[Fragony]

And on this, at least, we are in total agreement.

Can there be a surer sign of total victory in a debate than forcing your opponent to resort to Godwin's Law?

It's all yours mia muca, don't spend it all on candy

[Ja'chyra]

Environmentalism shouldn't affect human rights if it is managed prorerly.

Proper environmental mangement and sustainable development is all about balance, not banning things.

Oh, and global warming is a real thing, it's not caused by mankind we just aren't helping.

[Viking]

Alignment of planets affecting earths orbit and solar activity are the most likely candidates. CO2 probably don't help, but most of all it helps the eco-nostra

SO, basically anything but what that could be caused by humans is to be considered a cause. That road you're taking is the shortcut to loose this discussion, have fun as the roads goes bumpy.

Then why aren't the alternatives being used? Or if they are, why aren't they working?

I'd rather save human lives now and work on developing an alternative later than what we have now.

Before doing something, it could be clever to make certain that the help actually is helpful and does not have dangerous side-effects. There are always other methods if there is enough decication.

It is probably the best way, but because of environmental hysteria being blown out of proportion, it was banned in a knee jerk reaction. People died because of environmentalists being alarmists, because the best anti-malaria weapon was taken away.
CR

So we are know suddenly knowing that DDT is NOT dangerous? Last time I checked, this was a controversial topic; certainly not the correct topic for a besserwisser attitude.

Oh, and global warming is a real thing, it's not caused by mankind we just aren't helping.

Bollocks, the only scientific view that has gathered any kind of consensus at all is that the global warming is man made.

[Fragony]

Yeah because that is the idea that needs to be promoted. Tons of scientists who oppose it but they don't get to eat microphone.

[Viking]

Yeah because that is the idea that needs to be promoted. Tons of scientists who oppose it but they don't get to eat microphone.

Tons of scientist opposing it for thousands of different reasons will never lead to a consensus.

[Fragony]

Tons of scientist opposing it for thousands of different reasons will never lead to a consensus.

Only one. It's bull.

[Ja'chyra]

Bollocks, the only scientific view that has gathered any kind of consensus at all is that the global warming is man made.

So there haven't been warm periods and ice ages before man?

link

Link

[Fragony]

So there haven't been warm periods and ice ages before man?

They can predict ice-ages and warm periods up to a hundred years with the planetary allignement model I mentioned earlier. But that is all a bit scientific.

[Viking]

Only one. It's bull.

All of them do not claim that; some of them are serious in approach and do not make unfounded conclusions. And beyond that, creativity does not rest.

[Fragony]

All of them do not claim that; some of them are serious in approach and do not make unfounded conclusions. And beyond that, creativity does not rest.

Ok so we have established that there is controversity surrounding global warming, still it's presented as an absolute fact, in schoolbooks, the media, say what you want about the war on terrorism but at least something blows up from time to time, and they are supposed the scaremongers yeah right.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Here is a cute and well written summary of many of my opinions on the issue.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Moving Toward Energy Rationing
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere, but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing. The doomsday scenarios posit a cascade of events, each with a certain probability. The multiple improbability of their simultaneous occurrence renders all such predictions entirely speculative.

Yet on the basis of this speculation, environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation. "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity," warns Czech President Vaclav Klaus, "is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

If you doubt the arrogance, you haven't seen that Newsweek cover story that declared the global warming debate over. Consider: If Newton's laws of motion could, after 200 years of unfailing experimental and experiential confirmation, be overthrown, it requires religious fervor to believe that global warming -- infinitely more untested, complex and speculative -- is a closed issue.

But declaring it closed has its rewards. It not only dismisses skeptics as the running dogs of reaction, i.e., of Exxon, Cheney and now Klaus. By fiat, it also hugely re-empowers the intellectual left.

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment -- carbon chastity -- they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

Just Monday, a British parliamentary committee proposed that every citizen be required to carry a carbon card that must be presented, under penalty of law, when buying gasoline, taking an airplane or using electricity. The card contains your yearly carbon ration to be drawn down with every purchase, every trip, every swipe.

There's no greater social power than the power to ration. And, other than rationing food, there is no greater instrument of social control than rationing energy, the currency of just about everything one does and uses in an advanced society.

So what does the global warming agnostic propose as an alternative? First, more research -- untainted and reliable -- to determine (a) whether the carbon footprint of man is or is not lost among the massive natural forces (from sunspot activity to ocean currents) that affect climate, and (b) if the human effect is indeed significant, whether the planetary climate system has the homeostatic mechanisms (like the feedback loops in the human body, for example) with which to compensate.

Second, reduce our carbon footprint in the interim by doing the doable, rather than the economically ruinous and socially destructive. The most obvious step is a major move to nuclear power, which to the atmosphere is the cleanest of the clean.

But your would-be masters have foreseen this contingency. The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo.

Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing?

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Copyright 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

[Viking]

So there haven't been warm periods and ice ages before man?

link

Link

That's not a consensus.

They can predict ice-ages and warm periods up to a hundred years with the planetary allignement model I mentioned earlier. But that is all a bit scientific.

Heh..provide me with a source. Planetary alignments come and go and do not last very long.

Ok so we have established that there is controversity surrounding global warming, still it's presented as an absolute fact, in schoolbooks, the media, say what you want about the war on terrorism but at least something blows up from time to time, and they are supposed the scaremongers yeah right.

Controversy, yes, but how real is it? Something that there is scientific consensus on is something that enter text books; and on GW there is.

[Fragony]

Heh..provide me with a source. Planetary alignments come and go and does not last very long.

Neither do ice-ages, pick one http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=...G=Zoeken&meta=

[Viking]

Neither do ice-ages, pick one http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=...G=Zoeken&meta=

The only thing in that search that had the slightest resemblance to scientific notes was the self promoting web page of a scientist that cannot even be found on wikipedia.

[Fragony]

If you actually clicked you would have found many websites refuting it, it's a theory, that is the thing with theory's they aren't presented as facts. Like global warming is.

edit, ice ages http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=...G=Zoeken&meta=

gulfstream and allignment are supposedly linked, http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&sa...gnment&spell=1

[Viking]

If you actually clicked you would have found many websites refuting it, it's a theory, that is the thing with theory's they aren't presented as facts. Like global warming is.

I did click it; but I did not find any scientific reports. I do not count secondary publishers; apart from the purely scientific ones like Nature, Science etc; to be reliable sources on controversial topics. Everything in science is a theory; nothing is considered to be 100.000% true. Doesn't the theory of general relativity ring a bell, not even the slightest?

[Fragony]

100% sure my taxes went up over something nobody knows what's going on, that's my science. So now we aren't even sure why, all theory after all?

more; http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[Ja'chyra]

con·sen·sus
1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.
2. general agreement or concord; harmony.

There is no consensus on the subject and if there was it would change every other week, or has there been a vote on the subject.

[Viking]

There is no consensus on the subject and if there was it would change every other week, or has there been a vote on the subject.

Of course consensus is relative; but most science that is done nowadays support the theory that an increase of the atmospheric level of CO2 is the most likely cause for the heating. A list over major (relevant) scientific institutions that endorses the IPCC conclusion can be found here.

100% sure my taxes went up over something nobody knows what's going on, that's my science. So now we aren't even sure why, all theory after all?

Yes, it is presumed that we know what is going. A scientific theory can be disproved; the more tests it stands, the more likely it is that it is the truth.

[PBI]

Well let's face it, thermodynamics and electromagnetism are just theories.

So you should sell your car and computer and live in a tipi eating mung beans, right? After all, it's just a theory that engines and electronics won't explode or eat your babies, isn't it?

Dissent is important in science and should always be present. However, when it comes time to make policy based on science, why on earth would it make more sense to follow the dissenting minority opinion instead of the majority?

[Fragony]

It are the scientists who oppose the political inconvenient ' truth'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...global_warming

aren't the least.

[LittleGrizzly]

It are the scientists who oppose the political inconvenient ' truth'.

Its stupid when are people going to realise that scientists just hate oil companies, electric companies, car companies and electricity suppliers. They hate energy and new technology that requires power to run, the reason they are against all these new things which you assume scientists would like its because they are all secretly luddites....

[Fragony]

It are the scientists who oppose the political inconvenient ' truth'.

Its stupid when are people going to realise- that scientists just hate oil electric and car companies and electricity suppliers-. They hate energy- and new technologies- that requires power to run, the reason they are against all these new things- its because they are all secretly luddites....

Look what I did I made a rap from it

[Viking]

It are the scientists who oppose the political inconvenient ' truth'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scienti...global_warming

aren't the least.

There are scientists opposing everything; but there is no reason to give them any credit just like that.

[KarlXII]

I get it now!

Environmentalism leads to Stalinism, kind of like how the theory of evolution leads to Nazism

[Crazed Rabbit]

So we are know suddenly knowing that DDT is NOT dangerous? Last time I checked, this was a controversial topic; certainly not the correct topic for a besserwisser attitude.

Of course it has dangers, like nearly everything. But the banning was not rational.

The repulsive thing about the Communist governments of of Eastern Europe was that they were authoritarian dictatorships with appalling human rights records. The fact that they also happened to be socialists (at least in terms of economic policy) is entirely incidental.

Or maybe they had to resort to being authoritarian dictatorships to implement those socialist policies. Like, how Ukrainian farmers resisted the collectivization schemes of Stalin, resulting in their brutal treatment and mass famine.

That's not to say other authoritarian dictatorships haven't become so for completely unrelated reasons, or that Stalin was brutal in part to simply to secure his power. But it's not entirely incidental.

Anyway, to the global warming consensus - how come the world hasn't warmed since 1998? How come it didn't warm between (IIRC) 1940 and 1970? Carbon levels rose during both these periods.

CR