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Krugman and “treason against the planet” — 116 Comments

  1. Of course he does. He has always maintained that dissent is treason, except when dissenting against the Bush Administration, then it’s the highest form of patriotism.

    We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

  2. Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”…from the diary of N S Rubashov, a former high Soviet official who has now been arrested by the regime:

    “A short time ago, our leading agriculturalist, B., was shot with thirty of his collaborators because he maintained the opinion that nitrate artificial manure was superior to potash. No. 1 is all for potash; therefore B. and the thirty had to be liquidated as saboteurs. In a nationally centralized agriculture, the alternative of nitrate or potash is of enormous importance : it can decide the issue of the next war. If No. 1 was in the right, history will absolve him. … If he was wrong. … It is that alone that matters: who is objectively in the right. … For us the question of subjective good faith is of no interest. …”

  3. Uh, my money is on “hoax”.

    That term may well be less precise than “stalking horse created with the ultimate goal of amassing controlling political power over a gullible electorate”… but I think the semantic value is the same.

  4. The more I see and read, the more I believe (alleged) AGW to be a hoax. Either way, the science is far from settled, but the way I see it, it has yet to pass the smell test.

    I’ll be waiting for the guys in trench coats for my “treason”. Oh…I’ll be armed.

  5. Paul Krugman writes, “Krugman decrees the nay-sayers as hostile to “hard science.”

    Even if the hard science was hard Paul, the “solutions” offered in the cap and trade bill do not solve the problem. In fact, they make it harder for the United States to address the problems and cause other problems.

    1) It is easier to address global climate change issues when prosperous. Hurting the economy worse hurts our ability to address the climate.
    2) There are 3 easier solutions to green-house gas problems and foreign dependence on oil. Nuclear Power, Outer continental shell drilling, natural gas.

    Spending more and more dollars (for solar and wind) is the definition of inflation. It raises energy costs for everyone – makes the costs of all goods and services rise and hurts the poor.

    Hurts the poor.

    To which Democrats say there are subsidies for lower income families for energy costs.

    That raises the costs for the 95% of Americans that you keep saying you are for. You Democrats are not FOR anything but destroying the economy and weakening this nation.

  6. The amazing thing to me is that even those without the slightest technical background don’t detect something awfully convenient (aka “fishy”) that leftists are now flogging an unfalsifiable assertion as a vehicle to justify…exactly the same policies for which they’ve been agitating for more than 40 years.

  7. Put me down in the “hoax” column.

    To Mr. Krugman I say the only science I am hostile to is the dismal science, not least because of practitioners such as himself.

  8. Krugman is a partisan hack.
    There is a substantial case against global warming.
    Specifically against man-made global warming.
    Infact, the most prominent names in climatalogy are skeptical.
    I don’t have the time right now to provide the requisite links. Perhaps someone else could?
    In the mean time here’s an article still worth the read

  9. Oh it is a hoax alright, and one with the most vicious of intent. These villains want to roll back centuries of progress and could well end up blighting billions of lives for generations. They ceretainly want America destroyed as a superpower and leader of the West. You are quite wrong about that. There is no “science” to it at all, at best it is just scientism, at its worse it is a vile plot against capitalism and individual liberty. There maybe a few naif sin the crowd, but then if so, what sort of scientists are they?

    The politicization of it should tip you off. It a political idea that has sought to wrap itself in the Mantle of science.

    Where is the “science”? Please show me? How can their agruments be falsified? What experiments can we run? What exacly is their “scientific theory”? (I know what their opinionis.)

    How can we deal with this empirically?
    There is in fact no such real thing as “climate science”, is there? Just another bogus “Scientific Disciple” created to give jobs to Academics. Pure Scientism.

    We cannot even predict the weather 3 years ahaed can we?

    CO2? They even prove that part of their
    theory”. If a Physicist tried a bunko act like this, he would be laughed off a podium.

    The debate cannot even be addressed “scientifically”. Any attempt at this is met which slander, obfuscation and is completely ignored. We have now seen federal agencies actively suppressing conflicting research. is absurd on the face of it. Imagine a theory or an experiment in Physics, or Chemistry being treated this way. Consensus? Of what? Is that how science works?

    It is a notion, AGW, not a scientific theory.

    The truth of the matter is that the academic “scientific community” has departed from science altogether. They are just bagmen and another special interest group now. They do not even care about their own reputations. I can assure you that one day it will be shown to be a complete fraud, and all those “scientists” that hustled it and the institutions that supported these people wlll have destroyed their reputations.

    The is whole matter show a society on the brink of insanity, a society flailing and flying apart. Can you imiaging them trying this even 15 years ago. It is a sad state of affairs.

    There is no AGW and most likely not even any long term GW.

    Once priests banged drums to chase away the “dragon eating the sun”, which was, of course, a solar eclipse. The priests new full well what it was–their astronomy predicted it–but it sure impressed the commoners.

    If they get away with this fraud then anything is possible. Soon there will be taxes on those fairies and leprechaiuns in your back yard.

    It is shear insanity, and if the American people accept this obvious fraud as true then there is little hope left for us as a nation. We deserve to be led to the slaughter house.

  10. …(aka “fishy”) that leftists are now flogging an unfalsifiable assertion as a vehicle to justify…exactly the same policies for which they’ve been agitating for more than 40 years.”

    That fishy coincidence is just one of the things about this whole proposition that doesn’t pass the smell test.

    When the whole socialism/Marxism thing utterly and definitively failed the smell test 20 years ago those so inclined to believe it were cast up high and dry for a time. But, in global warming, they’ve found a newer and even better train to climb aboard. It’s either unfalsifiable or only falsifiable on such a time scale as to be irrelevant to our current existence. Heck, if it hadn’t existed, they would have had to invent it. (Oh, wait a minute….)

    Other smell-inducing elements:

    * Global warming -> Climate Change (Global warming was dangerously specific, in hindsight.)
    * Computer models that should be taken as 100% true (even though they have never predicted anything accurately or reproducibly)
    * A track record of 0% in long-range climate predictions (i.e. there is no dataset concerning concerning the accuracy of future climate predictions)
    * Debates that are over before they start
    * Charges of heresy against people with honestly held dissenting opinions
    * False claims of consensus (even assuming consensus is a meaningful term in this context)
    * Politicization of science by those who have no hope of actually understanding the research

  11. Hard science, indeed. That sounds like someone repeating something that they heard in the faculty lounge.

    I woner if he even knows what a “hard science” is?

    It would be wonderful if it was hard science. Then this could be resolved ASAP. That is just the point, it is not. Hard science implies empirically proven natural laws built out of a vast interplay of theory, data and experiment. They have in fact none of this.

    Just some notions. Climatology is no more a hard science than is Sociology.

    But of course the American people hear this nonsense and believe it. “Hard Science” indeed. You would think that some one at a authoritative level in the science would see the dagers to science it deceptive rhetoric like this and call him out. But we just do not see this. Why?

    It is just criminal that the media will not allow real dissenting opinions up there, and that they will not call people like this out when they slander people how disagree with them. We cannot go on much longer as a nation with this sort of madness. This goes beyond political tyranny. It shrugs off the very things that have built up this great civilization. Pure madness.

    It is as if they have sold the Ameican people on the idea that the Sky is paisley.

  12. Leftist goons like Krugman have always been hostile to people having cheap, plentiful, and potent means of generating power, whether it’s nuclear power stations or the internal combustion engine. AGW is just the latest iteration. Why? Because power generation in both the micro and macro realms increases people’s autonomy from the all-powerful state, enables them to move freely from one place to another, and enables them to hook up to the grid and reliably start productive businesses that use electrical power, all with minimal involvement of the state. Just can’t have the prols getting uppity with their liberal betters now, can we?

  13. The best way to combat global warming would be for Paul Krugman to assume room temperature.

    A chilling effect pour encourage les autres and a distinct lessening in human emitted hot gases.

  14. I agree that global climate change may be a cyclical thing not related to man. However, even if that is the case something is going on and we cannot [or should not] ignore it. Krugman is sort of incorrect when he says the planet is in trouble. The truth is people and life on earth ultimately could be in trouble. The Earth will survive long after we are gone.
    He write:
    Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about.
    That is the heart of his argument.

    If we have a problem then we need to find a solution. You mention nuclear power. I agree that is an option worth considering. But most Americans do not want nuclear waste stored in their state. So what to do? Recycle the stuff, maybe?

  15. “So what to do? Recycle the stuff, maybe?”

    What to do? Well, we can grow up, man up as a nation, and accept that “every rose has a thorn” and quit pretending we can get energy from unicorn farts.

    The waste goes to Yucca Mountain or gets recycled or both.

    We’ll probably have to be at $15 a gallon and sitting in the dark with one 25 watt florescent before we get the balls to deball the bozos who got us there, but the day will come along.

  16. Krugman works for the Times, so he could lay a reasonable claim to being an authority on treason.

    Screw science. Just go back ten … or even twenty years, and review the predictions in vogue then about where we would be now.

    I survived the population bomb, the late seventies ice age, the end of oil, and I am too tired to pour more piss out of the same pair of boots.

    The only mythic human fail I see happening right now is this insane fad of Marxism we are so sadly embracing. It ultimately will kill a lot more people than desperate, displaced polar bears ever will… not even counting the numbers from last century, which will pale against the cost of the coming collapse.

    But AGW? Bullshit. The only objective factor that correlates directly is solar output, and that is on the way down and has been these past few years.

  17. Krugman works for the Times, so he could lay a reasonable claim to being an authority on treason.

    My thought exactly. I’d defer to his views on treason, given his greater familiarity with it, but not on science, which he knows nothing whatever about, being only an economist.

  18. The truth is people and life on earth ultimately could be in trouble.

    This is not a truth, this is a tautology.
    This is just the point, there is little one can say about this.
    It is an assertion.

    One could just as well assert

    The truth is people and life on earth ultimately could not be in trouble.

    and it would be eqaully as “true”; This does not make it a truth.

    I would ike proof that there is even long term GW, let alone AGW.

    Nothing is happening to “the earth” right now that is going to put the human race at risk. The machinations of the Marxists, well now that is a different story.

    This is just the latest Left wing hustle.

    There is no ecological Climate Crisis. It is just bizarre assertion. Humans do not have the power to change the climate.

    It is just nonsense.

  19. its a hoax, and a great huge example of how collectivists can almost seem to make something real which isnt all to control the issue and achieve an outcome without ever haveing to find a real issue.

    you can see other incursions into other science. notice the dialogue with ‘new genetics’ rather than genetics…

  20. I think not a hoax, but a mass delusion and another example of the madness of crowds.

  21. “Treason against the planet”

    The chutzpah of Krugman et al is just amazing. My parents had graduate degrees in ecology. As scientists, they were not people to spout unproven theories. I was an eco-activist back in the day.

    My household electrical energy comes from wind. My clunker gets nearly 30 mpg city driving. IOW, unlike Al Gore, I walk the walk.

    The global warming people have as yet an unproven case, IMHO, and like TmjUtah I recall the predictions of past decades.

    I agree it is an attempt to shove something down our throat. Control, control, is what they want.

  22. AGW is the modern equivalent to the false legacy of the Hope diamond and for the same reasons. The Hope legacy appeals to the masses who cant get enough of the small and meek punishing greedy European plunderers. A curse upon monied aristocrats and rich robber barons who get fat of the toils of the common man. Its a great theme. That’s why this hoax gets traction.

  23. I am always hesitant about being overly absolutist in my assertions. I don’t think one should wholly dismiss the findings of the many intelligent scientists and individuals who subscribe wholeheartedly to this theory. But I also tend to think people, especially in today’s day and age, are quick to make conclusions about cause and effect for financial reasons, social reasons, political reasons, and even for existential reasons. We are very egotistical. We don’t have records on the earth for billions of years, but based on the little records we have, we assume we KNOW what’s really going on and that if we don’t make certain policies in our own period of time, the very fate of humanity may be at stake. Not just humanity, but the entire world.

    So let me say I am an extreme skeptic when it comes to the claims of global warming or man-influenced climate change as is the term du jour.

    However, since I respect your judgment and intellectual honesty, Neo, I was wondering if you could provide any links that have informed your opinion on this subject, both pro and con.

  24. anthropomorphic climate change

    With respect, neo, that should be “anthrogenic climate change

  25. M: I’ve written a couple of posts on the subject, with links. Take a look at this, this, this, and this.

    There are also a number of discussion boards dedicated to the topic, with a lot of very science-savvy people arguing pro and con. I don’t recall the URLs at the moment, but I’ve gone there and read comments for hours on end, and I’ve been impressed by the quality of the arguments on both sides. It seems clear to me that there are a number of very technical issues involved, and that the science is FAR from settled.

  26. Hattip
    Nothing is happening to “the earth” right now that is going to put the human race at risk.

    You’re kidding, right?
    Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change. [And that is just one example].
    While I don’t think we have to take a sky-is-falling attitude [like some do with the economy or gun control] it is a fact that humans do have affect on climate. Now, it may be only localized like 19th century London or 20th century Los Angeles – but you have to be kidding to think that car emissions or smoke plumes [or Chernobyl] don’t affect the Earth, the land and people. They do.
    More importantly human actions to their environment [hence the Earth] do affect humans. The question is by how much. Believe me, if we were not here the world would be a different place. But, as I said, the Earth will survive long after we are dead and gone.

  27. Matt, I think you’re one of those guys we’ve addressed in a prior post that equates polution with “climate change”. One has nothing to do with the other. I dont hear anyone arguing that polution is a hoax and neither do you.

  28. Matt: Lots of things are tied in with lots of other things, but that has zip to do with causality. Lots and lots and lots of folks have asthma and have always breathed clean air. That humankind should be shoved into the ditch because climate change, unlike Obonga’s policies, is bad, is insanity. Always follow the money: it will flow from us to them, as surely as winter follows summer.

  29. If Godzilla were here, the earth would be a much different place, too.

    We are here. We have a gleam of a sliver of a razor’s edge worth of human history up against the mass of geologic time by which to judge what works, or what doesn’t…

    … and I’m thinking that freedom trumps tyranny every time it’s tried.

    Obama = tyranny. He’d like to be a tyrant, at least. Unfortunately, his brownshirts can’t be pried away from American Idol long enough to build the damn camps.

    I’m buying a few cases of incandescent light bulbs this week. I have room next to the ammo and fresh water.

  30. The problem is the new definition of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. It’s almost as ridiculous as the urban legends about people writing science papers about the dangers of H2O, except the House just voted in favor of making an effort to ban it.

    We spent billions of dollars requiring cars have catalytic converters to make them generate CO2 instead of smog, but now we’ve decided CO2 will destroy the world and smog will actually shield us from global warming, so are we going to mandate that they be taken back out now? What about the billions of dollars already spent on controlling acid rain? Reverse that, so we have acid rain but at least we have no CO2?

  31. Just starting this thread, so I don’t know what others have said, but I’ll say this:

    I think AGW is a hoax.

  32. Yes, I’m in very good company. Aside from neocon, the one person on this thread who thinks there may be some truth to the anthropogenic global warming HOAX is the one who confuses AGW with the problem of pollution control.

    Two different subjects!

  33. Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change.

    With all due respect, which is not much, this is in the intellectual level one expects of global warming acolytes. Pollution and “climate change” have nothing — nothing whatever — to do with each other. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, any more than oxygen is.

    …it is a fact that humans do have affect on climate. Now, it may be only localized like 19th century London or 20th century Los Angeles – but you have to be kidding to think that car emissions or smoke plumes [or Chernobyl] don’t affect the Earth, the land and people. They do.

    I salute you: this is the stupidest thing I’ve read this month, and I’ve surfed any number of leftist sites. Can you see why this is moronic? (Rhetorical question, obviously.) The premise and the evidence adduced in its support have no necessary relationship to each other. If I eat a burrito and fart, everyone in the room would attest (between gasps for air) that I’ve affected the atmosphere, at least as far they’re concerned. (I’ve done this experiment, btw.) Have I affected the Earth? Now I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. But if my golden retriever had eaten the burrito…well, that’s another story.

  34. An INCONVENIENT TRUTH for the Green NAZIS is that planet earth has been COOLING since 1998 . Now you can make two conclusions from this :-

    1) As CO2 emissions globally have NOT fallen at all since 1998 either the whole man made Global warming BS is a colossal hoax .

    Or 2) We are somehow now producing TIME SENSITIVE CO2

    Another unfortunate FACT is that CO2 is not a pollutant it is an essential part of the life cycle it feeds plants and trees and sea life and these in turn give us oxygen. In fact what we need is MORE C02 so we can grow more plants and feed more fish so people do not starve.

    Another INCONVENIENT FACT completely overlooked by the stupid MSM and of course deliberately overlooked by the Green NAZIS is that we should ask GEOLOGISTS to tell us about Climate Change not Meteorologists who cant even tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow.

    Geologists confirm the FACT that Global Warming always PRECEDES atmospheric CO2 growth NOT vice versa. INCONVENIENT I know for the green NAZIS which of course is why they try and bury this FACT.

    So is Global Warming a HOAX no of course not Climate Change is happening all the time and has done since the dawn of time its the SUN and sunspot activity which is the major factor influencing Climate Change. Low sunspot activity is why the earth has been COOLING for the past 10 years

    No what is a COLOSSAL HOAX is the Green NAZI claim that man made CO2 is a pollutant and is causing Climate Change.

    Its all about a left wing Socialist Green NAZI power grab and the stupid MSM and general public are falling for the con job.

  35. Matt:

    Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change.

    Here is a presentation by a New Zealand epidemiologist on Why is Asthma Prevelance Increasing?

    For example, this slide shows a negative association between air pollution and asthma prevalence in Asia. (013)
    It is unlikely that air pollution is protective, and it is probably just a marker of the level of economic development. Nevertheless, there is little evidence that air pollution is positively associated with asthma prevalence, either between or within populations. On the other hand, it is associated with exacerbations of pre-existing asthma. (013)
    This evidence has given rise to the “hygiene hypothesis” which argues that increases in asthma prevalence are due to changes in immune function, because our cleaner environment means that we have lost the previous protective effect of infant infections. (025)
    This is supported by evidence that small family size is a risk factor for developing asthma.(026)
    Thus, the hygiene hypothesis is more consistent with the epidemiological evidence, and may account for global increases in asthma prevalence (slide 28)

    When Matt is dead wrong on his claims on asthma, it increases our skepticism on his other claims. Sorry, Matt, that’s the way the ball bounces.

    That those who voted for the bill didn’t read it beforehand does not assuage my anxiety. Perhaps Matt prefers our lawmakers not to know that they are voting for.

  36. OK, now for my wall of text. A topic that is near and dear to my heart.

    Nearly all science done today is politicized – has been for years. Anyone who tells you different is either lying, isn’t involved in the process enough to know, or is in one of the VERY rare jobs that isn’t and has their head in the sand (the latter will rant about lack of publications and other “scientist” caring what they say and thus not disagree with the statement).

    Even where I worked – research staff at Oak Ridge National Labs in the Computer Science and Mathematics division – was politicized. We did scalable computing – how do you run a job on 10,000 machines. That *should* be about as non-political as you get, yet a great deal of my bosses time (the person who wrote proposals and was the project head) was figuring out what the funding *agent* (not, not agency) wanted to hear. We worked on inter-lab projects to reduce cost, Homeland Security, and a few other wildly different goals and we never once actually changed what we were doing.

    Further, having the pleasure of working with the climatologists using our clusters I got to ask questions. They feel into pretty much three categories.

    The first were the naive young-uns. Never really knew what “hard-science” meant (that means it’s difficult), when you pointed out that if they sought to prove the world was cooling they could do it just as easily they were confused as to why that matters. Most of the younger ones saw the scientific method as something you filled in (as I was also taught by most of my teachers – luckily I has a few older ones that taught what it really was). If they had the appropriate sections and they held information that was relevant to that section – SUCCESS!!!!

    The next were the true believers – they generally got angry. Most (some politely some not so much) duly informed me that when I became as learned and smart as them I would understand. Usually they also informed me that my profession (computer science) was obviously inferior as they were climatologist and wrote programs that worked just fine (the thought that then ran through my head – yea then why does you stuff only run on the head node half the time instead of the hole cluster and then *if* you can figure out how to do real distributed processing you crash the system 3/4 of the time). I have MANY stories about them. This was probably about half the people.

    Then you had the ones that said “Well, yes I could but then I wouldn’t get funding”. Their reply was “inconclusive” and, well, pretty much mirror what many say here. Not enough data, computer models can be munged too easy and are a tool not an ends and/or proof, and then usually ranted about the state of science education in this country (and through one of them is why I now call what we give our children edumacation). I would say a over a third were this way (they were also almost wholly and universally the only ones we allowed in their group unfettered access as they almost never crashed the clusters or tore them up).

    I’ll also add that in most cases the politicization of the sciences is not a planned strategic plan. Indeed even in one of the highly politicized one (say climatology) a great deal of it runs around peer reviewed publications. You have to say certain things because that is what the peers require and the peers require certain things because that is what is said. It’s sorta a feed back loop. It is why in today’s scientific world change is so hard to come by and when it does it is usually drastic. The system runs in that feedback loop until something totally breaks it and then the whole system collapses only to rebuild the feedback loop again. Most know this on some level, some protect it, some play it, and some (usually younger and I fear when they finally become the middle aged core) think this is the way things are supposed to work.

    Ahh well, it’s now been about 5 years since I worked there so I can’t say how the ratio’s have shifted. The group I worked with no longer does the same thing so they do not work with the climatologists.

  37. I with you all on this climate crap! The oceans are pristine, the landscape unaltered, and even the rumors of space junk in low Earth orbit are exaggerated. I mean, it just follows that man leaves no trace or effect.

    Nothing to worry about folks.

  38. Matt Says:
    June 29th, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change. [And that is just one example].

    Actually, in my case it’s tied in with cats, but that’s another story.

    I can’t add much to the earlier comments here. I’ve thought that “global warming” was a fraud since I first heard of it. It seemed transparently obvious to me that the real purpose was to destroy capitalism and increase governmental control over economic activities, i.e., our lives.

    Anyway, here is an article I found a little while ago. Scroll down a bit to see an interesting graph of CO2 vs. temperature in the distant past.

  39. A couple of quotes from my link:

    There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm — about 18 times higher than today.

    The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today– 4400 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

  40. Another thing: Water vapor is actually a much more important greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So if we grant the premise that human activities are causing global warming, then modern cleaner-burning engines may be exacerbating the problem more so than older, dirtier engines. And hydrogen-powered cars would be the worst mistake we could make. Oops!

  41. “”I mean, it just follows that man leaves no trace or effect.
    Logern””

    Here we get to the feelings that drive liberals to “believe” AGW as some religious doctrine. Which is basically an indoctrinated guilt complex around the perception that Man is unfairly advantaged in comparison to other species. A helluva burden to carry through life, especially while non believer hominids go about their lives unburdened by these same life limiting convictions.

    One has to at least be humored by the irony of all ironies, in noting the same people who protested the massive oppression in Christianity based Sunday blue laws, have no qualms whatsover about shoving mandatory Tuesday and Thursday recycling days down the throats of the people that don’t share their religious fanatacism.

  42. One has to at least be humored by the irony of all ironies, in noting the same people who protested the massive oppression in Christianity based Sunday blue laws, have no qualms whatsover about shoving mandatory Tuesday and Thursday recycling days down the throats of the people that don’t share their religious fanatacism

    Yeah, guilt, man. Before Neo’s heart got cold and small she probably grew up with this too:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ozVMxzNAA

    Remember Neo. Remember? Come back! Remember your humanity. (Neo struggles to remember)

    “I… I.. don’t know.”

    Before you went to the dark side Neo. You were human.

    “Ah … no.” Fangs appear.

    Aw crap, throws garlic at Neo and holds up recycling symbol.

  43. “Loophole benefits GE in bank rescue.”

    They own NBC and the mini clones, and now own the history channel, where they are changing history before my very eyes. I watch the history channel a lot. Have for years. It is amazing what statements are inserted sideways here and there.

    So, keep your wits about you, but do buy GE stock. They are on the green gravy train, and are holding hands with Obama and Gore ideals. As always, follow the money.

  44. SteveH: It is the Marxist version of Original Sin.

    It is Doctrine in the Church of Anti-Western Collectivism, all done in the name of “science”. It is a founding doctrine: Man is inherently evil and must be contained by the State.

    These folks cannot make their own way in the world and face their own failures. So it must be the fault of “the human race”. It is not themselves that keep them down, it is the rest of us. It is the sober adults who face the harsh realities of existence that are to blame–they “just do not get it”. No, these tender “sensitive soul” who “love the earth” are the ones who “get it”.

    Of course they do not really “love the earth” at all. They have no idea what “the earth” or “nature” means in the face of human existence. If one dumped them in the real natural world, they would straight away march to the nearest motel, or die trying.I doubt if they would part with so much as an Ipod to “save the earth”. Of course, should they have their way, they would find themselves thrown back 300 years nto the lives of serfs, for that is what their project would ultimately lead.

    It is like talking to teenager–or savages.

    They mean to take us all down with there sniffling self-delusions and rationalizations for their own lot in life.

    We need to understand that this is really a sort of psychosis, or at best a parody or heresy of Christianity. Most of these folks will not ever face this. We will have to see this if we are to turn things around. Public debate about this needs to focus on deflating their rhetorical and exposing them for what they are to what sane people are left. One hopes that the broad mass of people are open to suasion for the Collectivists are not.

    For them to face this would require them to face the fact that 90% of what they believe is not only untrue, but is intentionally 180 degrees from the truth. Their beliefs are not merely untrue, but they are design to obscure the truth.

    It is rhetoric, sophistry and casuistry cloaked in the jargon of science. It is the worst sort of superstition. It is barbaric.

  45. “The island of Java needs to go.”

    No! Not for the next few years while I’m living here, anyway.

  46. “Treason against the planet” Anybody else smell a whiff of the Stalinist purge trials here?

  47. The almost 1,400 page cap and trade bill that just passed the House, the bill that nobody read, that nobody on the Republican side could read, because the Democrats made only one copy available to them a few hours prior to the vote (and how was it that the Republicans stood for that?), the bill that had a 300+ page amendment added to it at 3 A.M on the morning of the vote, the bill that is what many have said it is; the most important and far reaching piece of legislation in this generation or perhaps the last several generations.

    Even looking at just a few provisions in this mammoth bill shows just how massive a federal power grab and intrusion into our lives it will be if passed. Watched Beck last night, who highlighted just two of the myriad of provisions in this massive bill (and, by the way, how come all of our other news media aren’t publishing large analyses and breakouts of this bill’s provisions instead of saccharine tributes to Michael Jackson?):

    One provision requires federalization of all state and local building codes, to make them conform to California’s building code.

    Another provision calls for an “energy audit” to be made of all homes prior to sale–I’d imagine that, if your home fails to get a good score, you are going to have to spend your money to bring the score up by adding insulation, replacing windows and doors or adding new, more energy efficient appliances, or you risk having a house with a low score that won’t be as marketable as competing houses for sale that have better energy efficiency.

    There is apparently another dandy provision trying to regulate the amount of water your shower head will provide, and we all know how well Congressional meddling to decrease the amount of water used by flush toilets has worked out, don’t we?

    I am sure that there are all sorts of such goodies on every page. The bottom line, the federal government, by regulating energy in minute detail, regulates all aspects of your life in minute detail and also, by the way, grabs an enormous fraction of the power of each state to go it’s own way.

    Why the Republicans did not try every tactic in the book–fair or foul–to stop this bill from coming to a vote, or to persuade the Republicans who voted for the bill not to–for their Republican votes gave the Democrats some cover, and allowed 8 Democrats who would be thrown out of office if they voted for this bill to skate–is simply beyond me. My local Republican congressman’s office staff claims that he has made all sorts of speeches against Democratic bills, but that the press will not report them. Perhaps this is so, and the Republican members of Congress have been working their asses off to defeat the entire Democratic agenda, including this bill. But, if so, I have seen no signs of such activity either in print, on TV or on the Web.

  48. Commenter M was looking for informative URLs regarding climate change. Check out http://www.wattsupwiththat.com and, if you visit, don’t skip the comment threads — many well-informed people with a range of points of view comment in a spirit of rational, science-oriented debate.

  49. “Perhaps this is so, and the Republican members of Congress have been working their asses off to defeat the entire Democratic agenda, including this bill. But, if so, I have seen no signs of such activity either in print, on TV or on the Web.”

    Well, yeah, if the media is determined to do everything they can to push it through, you won’t. It’s like the reporter they protected in Pakistan, by forcing even Wikipedia to delete any and all word of his kidnapping, while they happily make headlines about aid workers and other “non-people” who also get kidnapped. The media has a plan, and they control nearly all information sources we have. If they don’t want you to know about it, they will stop you, and the only clue you have is the fact that the narrow passage of the bill in the House means that at least a few Dems had to have voted against it themselves.

  50. Tatterdemalian–my point is that had the Republican members of Congress pulled out all the stops and tried, say, to block access to the tally machines on the floor of the House, to stage a mass boycott and walkout at the time of the vote, tried to obtain a copy of the bill somehow and pass the most damaging parts to bloggers beforehand, tried in any way to dramatically call attention to the details of this bill and to the Democrat’s perversion of the democratic process that allowed this massive bill, deliberately staged so that Republicans and the public had no comprehensive idea of what it contained (and after a massive 300 plus page amendment was added at 3 AM, a few hours before the vote), to come to the floor for a vote after only 5 hours of debate, we would have heard about it somehow, despite MSM attempts to block any coverage of such an extraordinary political event.

    The fact that we didn’t hear about any such extraordinary efforts indicates to me that there were none of note, and that the best the Republicans were able to do was to say something like “that’s not fair” to the Democrats in charge, and then leave it at that. Republicans are apparently too afraid of offending the Democrats, who even when they were in the minority were never afraid of getting in their face and offending Republicans, Republicans afraid of soiling or damaging their expensive suits, afraid to get down in the dirt and of getting bloody, of fighting for principle and their constituents, perhaps believing the old adage that “ya gotta go along to get along.”

    The RNC has millions of dollars in it’s advertising budget, how come no massive ad campaigns against the bill and highlighting it’s most pernicious provisions, or how come not even one RNC ad highlighting Democrats bad faith in the way they rammed this and the prior stimulus package through Congress in disregard of or in a perversion of the rules and the supposed “comity” that prevails in Congress? Yet, we see not one ad.

    If this bill is as bad as it has been said to be–and I believe it is–then the lack of any Republican opposition significant enough to make some splash, if only on the Internet, means that the Republicans are both out of ideas and out of guts, and it appears that their primary loyalties are to their fellow lawmakers in Congress–“ya gotta go along, to get along”–and to their positions and perks in the club of Congress, and not to their constituents—to use the old cliché, “they are part of the problem and not part of the solution,” and we need to look elsewhere for help; either to a new party or to a completely new slate of term limited congressional candidates, or perhaps, to outraged citizens marching on Washington.

  51. I also like http://www.icecap.us
    And the book “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 15,000 Years.”
    Yes, the climate changes. The sun has a lot to do with it, the Milankovick cycles have a lot to do with it. Humans? Not so much, expect we’re probably the first species to keep records and talk about it. And make a religion out of it.
    Part of my work includes paleoclimatology and studying the effects of the end of the Little Ice Age, and believe you me, I’d just as soon not spend winters on the Great Plains of North America if the weather returns to that of the late 1800s. Being cut off from the rest of the world for weeks at a time because of blizzards that extend into north Texas does not appeal to me. But that may be happening, because of reduced solar activity. So am I a traitor, Mr. Krugman?

  52. Matt,
    Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change.

    no… its tied to parasites and change in environment from the one they were used to living in for so long.

    they have different effects. some help the condition, some sensitize the condition, etc…

    but its not from what you said… (in general the liberal society is not normal, and so unnatrual living conditions come with negative effects. the more we liberalize, the more unnatural our lives become and the more negatives we get, which they then try to blame on the outpourings of capitalism, and not the influx of utopia)

  53. Promethea,
    The island of Java needs to go.

    hey! i am hoping to retire in indonesia…

  54. “hey! i am hoping to retire in indonesia…”

    You might try Manado, on the northern tip of Sulawesi. Great scuba diving, predominantly Christian area, cost of living much lower than Jakarta or the oil towns in Kalimantan. Just 2 golf courses, though (a major negative for me). Semoga sukses dengan pilihan Anda, in any event.

  55. Logern,
    I with you all on this climate crap! The oceans are pristine, the landscape unaltered, and even the rumors of space junk in low Earth orbit are exaggerated. I mean, it just follows that man leaves no trace or effect.

    it all depends on what time span your looking at. comunists, socialists, leftists, liberaps, progressives, utilitarians, collectivists, etc… ALL have short term short views!!!!

    it doesnt matter if they belive that they are long term thinkiers, belief wont make taht so any more than it can help them fly unassisted.

    whats your time preference? humans have had complicated societies (burials, public buildings, etc), for about 10k years.

    you try to find things more than 300 years old and see how much we leave behind.

    if your time span is yuor life time… then your going to waste your whole lifetime on things that have little meaning to those with a logner view, and more realistic view.

    take nuclear waste. we are on teh verge of commercial space flight… why store it for 50k years? we are spending money to store a material for 5 times longer than man has had civilization when we are within 100 years of ubiquitous space flight and can eject the crap into the sun.

    and pollution… its also time based… we have a bizarre preference that things have to revert to a condition they will never revert to within 100 years. again… short term view from people who have no spiritual or longer way of looking at the world. let me know how many edifices like gothic cathedrals atheists are building… (none, and where i live they are still working on one that wont be finished for another 150 years).

    in fewer than 100 years, garbage dumps will be the largest most productive mines on the planet. duh. in less than 200, the worst stuff will be ejected ot the sun… the new worst stuff will be made in space and not a problem.. in 1000, it would have mixed up and neutralized itself on its own…

    the whole concept that your progressive and forward thinking if you can use all your money and energy to make the world and society stagnate

    saving species is stagnation. pollution control and social justice and all that is stagnation. global warming is attempting to stagnate weather…

    and logern is so serious… he cant see that the contental plates are shifting and that the contenent will be folded into the core of the earth and then were will his pollution be?

    the US is so much cleaner because logern doesnt realize that polluition remediatino and control and all that is a bourgegious luxury!!!!

    that socialists are the worlds worse polluters. i mean they make our tales of chemical dumping in the west look like nothings. and yet their effects are only short term temporary.

    how is alaska doing after the oil? much better faster than they thought. how about japan after nuclear bombs? how long before peopl emoved back in? chernobyl…

    manmade disasters and things are really really tiny compared to nature…

    but thats another thing the liberal leftist morons dont get. scale. on one scale they can say we are affecting everyting (liek logern) and on another scale they can promote an idea that would use a whole states worth of land to meet less than 1% of their goal.

    they cant even tell that they are so contradictory that their movements and desires amount to a schizoid waste of their life energies!!!!

    but at leasdt they are not focuse don real things and really competing and really educating and really learning… they actually might be a real force to make the world better. instead they are giving their power to despots enabling them to pretend to do for them.

    Here is an example of how long it takes garbage to break down:
    plastics take 500 years
    aluminum cans take 500 years
    organic materials take 6 months
    cotton, rags, and paper take 6 months.

    and hows this for “pollution”
    Breeze carries about 100 Million tons of sand particles around the earth yearly. That means if you live in America-you could have Sand that came from the Gobi desert in China

    100 million tons of silica always flying around… and you dont even notice it…

    The Early Earth and Plate Tectonics
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDqskltCixA

    life operates on billion year scales, and logern and his ilk are thinking in 100 year scales. even at 1000 year scales, they are still way too small to grasp how things really work.

    and i will bet that these same people will have the concept that one shouldnt ‘pollute the sun’, and they will have concepts like polluting the solar system and galaxy.

    and yet, tehy cant see that all we are doing amouns to moving sand from one area of a sand box to antoher area of a sand box and in so moving it, declare it good or ill.

    meanwhile all if it will be turned under way after we are dead…

    but you can see that despite that,

  56. I love your opening sentence. What is it about Nobel prize winners that they feel qualified to talk like experts on any subject that interests them.

  57. logern
    \Remember Neo. Remember? Come back! Remember your humanity. (Neo struggles to remember)

    the noble savage was a myth… the reason we were constantly on the move in the past was we crap and piss where we eat and until we solved that problem, moving was the best thing we could do to get away from our own filth.

    http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/517976/
    Early California: A Killing Field

    come back… come back to reality… leave your religious myths from roussau that have no basis inreality any more than the devil planted fossils to trick you…
    That assumption now is collapsing because University of Utah archaeologist Jack M. Broughton spent seven years — from 1997 to 2004 — painstakingly picking through 5,736 bird bones found in an ancient Native American garbage dump on the shores of San Francisco Bay. He determined the species of every bone, or, when that wasn’t possible, at least the family, and used the bones to reconstruct a portrait of human bird-hunting behavior spanning 1,900 years.

    Broughton concluded that California wasn’t always a lush Eden before settlers arrived. Instead, from 2,600 to at least 700 years ago, native people hunted some species to local extinction, and wildlife returned to “fabulous abundances” only after European diseases decimated Indian populations starting in the 1500s.

    so your indian destroyed the native species here by eating them… drove them to extinction, and the coming of the white man from europe saved the species from extinction…

    come back.. come back… do not go into the light of stalinist revisionist fake history… come back logern…

    Broughton’s study of bird bones, published in Ornithological Monographs, mirrors earlier research in which he found that fish such as sturgeon, mammals such as elk, and other wildlife also sustained significant population declines at the hands of ancient Indian hunters.

    Biologists long assumed that the abundant wildlife in California some 200 years ago had existed for thousands of years — an assumption “that is ultimately used to make decisions about how to manage and conserve threatened or endangered species,” says Broughton, an associate professor of anthropology.

    “Since European discovery, California has been viewed by scholars and scientists, as well as the general public — as a kind of utopia or a land of milk and honey, a super-rich natural environment,” he says. “This perception has long colored anthropological research on the state’s native peoples. The harvesting methods and strategies of native peoples have been suggested to have promoted the apparent superabundance of wildlife, and have been proposed as models for the management of wilderness areas and national parks today.”

    Broughton says his study challenges “a common perception about ancient Native Americans as healthy, happy people living in harmony with the environment. That clearly was not always the case. Depending on when and where you look back in time, native peoples were either living in harmony with nature or eating their way through a vast array of large-sized, attractive prey species.”

    The study may have broader implications. Broughton speculates that “utopian perceptions” of a pristine California teeming with wildlife “probably even influence how Californians view themselves, and how the world views the Golden State. The dream world of Disneyland, the glamour and glimmer of Hollywood, the Baywatch fun-in-the-sun culture — all of this may trace a link to early historic descriptions of the land that now appear to be worlds apart from pre-European conditions.”

    so logern… your wrong… wrong… and so far out from reality..

    your living the social ideas and beliefs of a white man from the 1870s…

    and thats the truth… thffffppppppptttt!!!! 🙂

  58. For his doctoral dissertation at the University of Washington, Broughton analyzed fish and mammal bones taken from the Emeryville shellmound, an ancient Indian site on the east shore of San Francisco Bay between Oakland and Berkeley.

    About 2,600 years ago, California’s native people started living on the site and using it to dump residential waste such as shellfish remnants, bones, soil, rocks, ash and charcoal, and artifacts such as stone tools. The mound slowly grew until it was more than 30 feet tall, as long as three football fields, and as wide as the length of one football field. Then, in the 1800s, the top layers were flattened to make way for a dance pavilion, eliminating debris from recent centuries. What was left was a record of refuse containing the kinds of things native Californians hunted and ate from 2,600 to 700 years ago.

    Emeryville was the largest of some 425 shellmounds identified along San Francisco Bay by 1900. It was made up of distinct layers, which allowed dating of its bones. In 1902, 1906, and 1924, scientists excavated thousands from the shellmound, recording the layer in which each bone was found. The shellmound then was destroyed by a steam shovel to make way for a paint factory, which was razed in the 1990s and replaced by retail stores. The shellmound bones were stored for decades at the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

    bet you didnt know about this logern…

    why let facts get in the way of a totalitarian power fantasy/grab?

  59. waltj,
    You might try Manado, on the northern tip of Sulawesi. Great scuba diving, predominantly Christian area, cost of living much lower than Jakarta or the oil towns in Kalimantan. Just 2 golf courses, though (a major negative for me). Semoga sukses dengan pilihan Anda, in any event.

    my wife is from probalingo… and nearby her sister has a farm that i want to buy in the mountains. i didnt like jakarta or jojakarta or even bali…

    I liked the places where westerners didnt go… and having a native for a wife made that much easier.

    I LOVE the people and country… they remind me of the US in the 50s… and in odd ways reminds me of my childhood even though i grew up in the US inner city…

    of course i will have to accept that i cant get great sapi, but the ayam is good…

    i figure that by the time we poison it with the poison given to us, i will be long gone.

    i will send a few images of indonesia to neo, and she can share them with you…

    i literally went everywhere in the three weeks i was there. (4 internal plane flights). bali, jakarta, jojakarta, bromo, probolingo, and lots of other places..

    even had time to do some hiking in the mountains… finding orangutang droppings along the way (and hoping not to bump into one). cant wait to go back and do it again.

    the trip brought out the big differences between my son and myself… he didnt get raised with me, and so didnt learn my families sense of adventure (and acceptance of deadly risks as par for the course of living).

    now you have me wanting to go back so badly… i am afraid that obama may make that impossible…

    and thank you for wishing me good luck!!!!

    terima kasih!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  60. Artfldgr . . .

    What you mean to say is that Logern has the perception of a fruitfly.

  61. Remember the artfldgr coefficient? Divide the number of characters in Neo’s post with Art’s post and you get some number (usually) less than 1. Usually it’s close to .001

    Look up concise in the dictionary and you find the antonym is artfldgr. 🙂

  62. @ http://www.dictionary.com

    Main Entry: concise

    Part of Speech: adjective

    Definition: short, to the point

    Synonyms: brief, compact, compendious, condensed, curt, …

    Antonyms: expansive, lengthy, long, long-winded, redundant, repetitive, wordy, Artfldgr

    🙂

  63. yes baklava that is true, but you havent noticed that recently others have quashed my best (longest).

    though if you look carefully i do have a concise post on the hondura event (just as it happened). i only posted one word, but alas, it was three sylables.

    to your second post, i can only say:

    Why “Too many words”? When I used to write for USS Clueless, a common complaint was that I never used one word where ten would do. I kept getting told that my posts would be a lot better if they were shorter. Just trim out a lot of the words.

    It reminded me of a piece of dialogue from the movie Amadeus:

    Emperor: Well, I mean, occasionally it seems to have… How shall one say… How shall one say, Direktor?
    Direktor: Too many notes, Your Majesty?
    Emperor: Exactly! Very well put. Too many notes.
    Mozart: I don’t understand. There are just as many notes, Your Majesty, as are required; neither more nor less.
    Emperor: My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. [hesitates] I think I’m right in saying that, aren’t I, Court Composer?
    Salieri: Yes. Yes. On the whole. Yes, Your Majesty.
    Mozart: [indignant] This is absurd!
    Emperor: My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
    Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

    🙂

    you realize that if you just understood what i mean in every case i would only need one word…

  64. Climate science is decidedly not settled. What is generally agreed upon is the “greenhouse” effect of gases such as CO2. It must be noted that the experiments supporting this concusion, were, by definition, performed under carefully controlled conditions. Climate is anything but carefully controlled. Hence, the inability of very good scientists to model climate.

    It’s the epitome of foolishness to base policy on current climate science. We quite simply don’t yet understand how climate works. There are many brilliant and good people working in the field. It’s a shame that Al Gore and others have so grossly politicized the science–so much so that it’s extraordinarily difficult for the scientific process to advance.

  65. Well, dammit, the Emperor was right! The Abduction from the Seraglio does drag in spots. He was not speaking as a stupid amateur either; the Habsburgs of that era were highly accomplished musicians, as Beethoven would attest.

    OK, back to discussing the left’s coup d’etat of our Republic.

  66. I’ve long thought that Rousseau had an awful lot to answer for. “Noble savage,” indeed.

  67. Artfldgr, you’re on to something with the liberals and their lack of scale. I’d go so far as to say there may indeed be a form of mathematical dyslexia residing in the synapses of these people. Certainly explains their stereotypical inability to grasp economics.

  68. Artfldgr –

    I will let various companies know that you think long term, so to save them money they can dump their dangerous waste products on your ground or into your water supply.

    Also, the sewage treatment plant nearby (if you have as much) could simply be shut down. They can just pile (literally) the shit up.

    Maybe your family members will be lucky and not suffer too much from mental or physcial defects.

    I am sorry I never thought of this idea. For you!

  69. armchair pessimist: I beg to differ, it does not drag at all, you must have the John Eliot Gardiner rendition.

    And other thing: I imagine that those Habsburgs would think twice about tell Beethoven that he had to many notes.
    That would be an altogether different “conversation”

  70. Logern, that is a complete non sequitur.

    Nobody is saying that waste should not be processed properly. They are saying that is this is properly done, then there are not long term problems. And this is true.

    Please stick to rational argument and cease the histrionics.


  71. What is generally agreed upon is the “greenhouse” effect of gases such as CO2.

    Prove that. This is one of the problems, there is no proof of causality here. There is not even substantial proof of effect. And if there is it is not true, then the whole argument falls apart.

  72. Hattip: I’m afraid that if logern stuck to rational argument and ceased the histrionics he’d be left with nothing.

  73. Hattip:

    IMHO, The Abduction is uneven. The aria “Wenn the Tranen fliessen” is stiff and priggish stuff, and if that’s what the emperor was referring to (assuming he ever said it and not the Amadeus playwrite), then I agree with him. I can’t resist including this link to the finale, where you can see the blood thirsty mussleman carrying on much as they do today. What we sing in jest…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoUOxn8pd5k&feature=related

    cheers,

    a.p.

  74. Hattip:

    Let me be clearer about the “greenhouse” effect. CO2 has been proven experimentally to absorb infrared energy. That’s not seriously contested. What is contested, though, is how CO2 inluences temperature in a complex system (such as our climate) over time.

  75. Hattip: the only non-sequiter is your fail to figure out what I was responding to. Artfreaker was going on about the meaninglessness of short term effects on civilization, because as such, everything reverts (dust to dust) so to speak. So, obviously he doesn’t mind living in a dump until it degrades.

    So, why do anything about the environment when it will change in 20 40, or 300 years? Eh, for instance because usually humans don’t have enough patience (or do very well at all in some cases) to put up with unusual droughts or dust storms when they occur over as little as decade. Usually their families are affected by toxic chemicals before any serious degrading process gets under way.

  76. I’m afraid that if logern stuck to rational argument and ceased the histrionics he’d be left with nothing.

    You’re no fun.

  77. SteveH,
    Certainly explains their stereotypical inability to grasp economics.

    thanks for the reply. in the case above i think its more a case of why learn something we are just getting rid of. that is why learn how to use the computer your throwing out? and they are always kept on the verge, just on the edge, in a few months it will be here. somehow they maintain a never ending crescendo, so they never relax and get to learning, understanding, and living life in its real details. (which is why they tend to worship certain negative types. the people who are prisoners of their own minds and morals look up to those who transcend that and seem to have meaning).

  78. Logren, I did not realize that you were an imbecile. I have been filled in; now I know.

    My mistake, sorry to bother you

  79. Hattip, I believe you’re new here, but you now appreciate why most of us don’t bother responding to him.

  80. I will let various companies know that you think long term, so to save them money they can dump their dangerous waste products on your ground or into your water supply.

    dont like when someone can out snark you?

    what you said in your post makes you look very foolish in that no one would really think thats what i meant at all, even if they never read what i wrote.

    on another note, you give me the perfect introduction to make a slam dunk with a pirouete while wearing combat boots…

    here is a link to a list of the “Dirty Thirty” most polluted places on the planet.

    http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/wwpp2007/finalReport2007.pdf

    i will let you tell us about all the places listed that are in the US, UK, etc.

    Linfen (China)
    La Oroya (Peru)
    Dzerzhinsk (Russia)
    Norilsk (Russia)
    Chernobyl (Ukraine)
    Kabwe (Zambia)
    Sumgayit (Azerbaijan)
    Vapi (India)
    Haina (Dominican Republic)
    Ranipet (India)
    Mailuu-Suu (Kyrgyzstan)
    Rudnaya Pristan (Russia)

    how many are in socialist states or were created when socialists were running their command economies? before you sound off the document at the link has detailed information on each site.

    Sumgayit, Azerbaijan – Sumgayit was a major Soviet industrial center housing more than 40 factories manufacturing industrial and agricultural chemicals. 275,000 people affected.

    unlike the west, you cant sue them! got that logern, the reason they did this is that they dont have liability. before you start ranting about US companies and what they do, remember civil proceedurs allow you to argue damage and stuff and has been argued and awards given for damage done in other countries.

    Linfen, China – Shanxi Province is at the heart of China’s enormous and expanding coal industry,
    providing about two thirds of the nation’s energy. Within this highly polluted region,
    Linfen has been identified as one of its most polluted cities with residents claiming
    that they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings. 3,000,000 million affected.

    and what are you going to blame here logern? the USA? the leaders in those countries do not care about the people or if many are sacrificed, and so this is how they run the place. centralization means that they also dont distribute things, get it, central no distribute…

    Sukinda, India Sukinda Valley, in the State of Orissa, contains 97% of India’s chromite ore deposits and one of the largest open cast chromite ore mines in the world. Twelve mines continue to operate without any environmental management plans and over 30 million tons of waste rock are spread over the surrounding areas and the Brahmani riverbanks. Untreated water is discharged by the mines into the river.
    2,600,000 affected…

    here is a picture of Novokuznetsk, circa 1990
    http://www.izo.com/images/street_star.jpg

    The World Bank reported that China is home to twenty of the world’s thirty most polluted cities. China’s 2006 CO2 emissions surpassed those of the USA by 8%.

    “at least 300 million people in China do not have access to clean drinking water.” – greenpeace

    i guess that means that unlike the US, their political system was not able to provide interstate highways, clean water, safe and for the most part honest police (if you traveled the world and to places like java, you would know better to say something), and safe postal (same here).

    the socialist idea to plan and to rush and hurry the future as if they are missing out on the latest and greatest if they are not the farthest in the future now, not later. (but they never realzie that whatever it is, is whatever it is, even if they rush it).

    what is so sad is that you will never see that because of the opposition of socialism and its failure, we have some serious problems which are the same as the problems before wwii.

    which is these states are still backwards compared to the western states. the political games have stunted them and prevented them from creating economies that are based on productive capacity, and so never had reason to really favor stability.

    their leaders were also always ready to write huge numbers of them off and still are. its hard to care for people you dont care about (other than having the least headaches, being safe).

    ultimately liability keeps our companies cleaning things and becoming cleaner and cleaner. the clean technology has mostly been created here in the US way before any state mandates for it.

    its just good business in capitalism. a economic system which seeks to make people happy in exchange for a bit of their stored labor.

    socialists suck at making people happy they excel at making them miserable to a degree that you cant comprehend logern.

  81. what you said in your post makes you look very foolish in that no one would really think thats what i meant at all

    This from the dude who can trot out more crap ideas about what things really mean than any 3 people on this site.

  82. Also, I am not a socialist. When you stand way to right, even the middle appears left.

  83. Matt Says:
    June 29th, 2009 at 10:39 pm

    Ever heard of asthma? It’s not a hoax. And it is tied in with pollution and climate change.

    rickl Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 3:24 am

    Actually, in my case it’s tied in with cats, but that’s another story.

    Artfldgr Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 10:23 am

    no… its tied to parasites and change in environment from the one they were used to living in for so long.

    I’ve developed a theory that cats are highly evolved and very efficient parasites.

    Think about it. 🙂

  84. Armchair: Don’t see this at all. Is it the Hogwood recording?

    Get the Fricsay or the Solti. This might liven things up a bit.

  85. Also, I am not a socialist. When you stand way to right, even the middle appears left.

    What are you, Logern? Why aren’t you a socialist? I mean, what do you think is wrong with being a socialist? I know many self-described socialists, and they are all happy to be Democrats, faute de mieux. What is your story about what you are defending? What are you for, affirmatively?

    Your demeanor on this site doesn’t suggest any kind of moderation.

  86. Now that Logern can see that Obambi Socialism is so very wrong he tries to pretend he is not a Socialist. Or is he trying to tell us the LIAR Messiah is not a Socialist either just an ordinary middle of the road guy like him who nationalises the Banks and Car industry and medical industry and wants to cap and trade CO2 as a pollutant when it quite clearly is nothing of the sort and who cosy’s up to left wing South American communist dictators and Iranian Theocratic dictators but insults Western Democratic leaders and bows down to Mohammedan autocrats like the Sordid King of Saudi and licks Mohammedan ars* in general and belittles Israel. Is that the Obambi you admire Logern who is not a Socialist?

  87. Hey Logern

    where did all your wind go? whats a matter?

    This from the dude who can trot out more crap ideas about what things really mean than any 3 people on this site.

    can only think of one dumb idea at a time? after all, one brain cell does not give one the ability to see more…

    however, a critic is one who cant… and i will take that you are a critic… however, your a critic with ZERO standing. which means your opinions are less than worthless, they are just a waste of time.

    not beause they cant be better or they cant become valuable, but bcause of the type of anarchic critic you are. the kind that hates themselves so much they critique everything but themselves hoping to distract everyone from seeing what a pathetic individual they are.

    they even come up with moriarties and convoluted explanations as to why they are in some arbitrary place of grace.

    Also, I am not a socialist. When you stand way to right, even the middle appears left.

    when you stand so far to the left, the middle appears to the right.

    which is waht stalin said. you have no idea logern. that is obvious. when your with the other ignorant idjits your posing form with no substance can carry you. like all the others your faking your merit to get through life.

    but here, amoing those who can actually think. among the islands of those who actually understand and have enouh information to actually discuss things, your an empty shell.

    a potempkin person whose false self confidence has managed to get them to enter a situation in which they cant handle it. so they thrash about. they try to apply the fake substantial way, and it doesnt work. they whine, they use ad hominem. they threaten banishment from some collective.

    what they cant do is actually talk clearny about the subject.

    this is evident mostly in their inability to understand what others above them say.

    logern… ever thought that you see things as crap for the same reason a primitive sees the refined polish of kabuki?

    that it is not us who are how you say, but you?

    unlike your fakir friends and contemporaries, we know where your stealing your ideas and whose shoulders you stand on and then deny exist.

    you had no answer to the fact that the thirty most polluted places on the planet are a home to your political ideals.

    so you threw your label under the bus… 🙂

    you could no longer argue that socialists were best at being green and helping people, you had to accept that they are the worst, and so you abandoned their label.

    next we will hear taht he is a synonym. even if he doesnt know it!!!

    high brow comedy doesnt get better…

  88. hoax

    1 : an act intended to trick or dupe : imposture
    2 : something accepted or established by fraud or fabrication

    I’d say the more accurate term for Anthropogenic Global Warming is controversial hypothesis. Keep in mind that the latest IPCC report claims only 90% certainty that recent global warming is caused by humans.

  89. you could no longer argue that socialists were best at being green

    I’ve never said any such thing.

    you had no answer to the fact that the thirty most polluted places on the planet are a home to your political ideals

    Really, when did I say they were home to my political ideas?

    your opinions are less than worthless, they are just a waste of time

    If so, why are you responding?

    Write Artburger. Write your long posts. It’s what you do best.

  90. The flaw in that logic, Huxley, is that you take the IPCC at its word.

    But that study is quite controversial

    http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3506

    This is a great deal of political ledgerdermina here.

    It there any reason at all to believe these people?

    Certainly it is not true that there is a
    “90% certainty that recent global warming is caused by humans.”

    It is only true that the IPCC has said so.

    So if they are pushing nonsense, then it is a hoax.

    If they are wrong, and someone else is using this to push nonsense, then it is a hoax.

    But, most importantly, if the Democrat Party is involved, you know it is a hoax.

    So you reasoning is flawed here. It is built on the notion that the IPCC report is made by impartial scientists, when in fact there are considerable politics in play.

    Don’t you think that given the power this gives a very small group of decidedly left wing elites that there has to be a very strong case made?

    Sure look like a hoax to me.
    It is just a hustle to get control of energy and wealth.

  91. hattip –I don’t assume the IPCC scientists are impartial, anymore than I assume that participants on neo-neocon are impartial.

    My point is that there is difference between being biased and mistaken, and being complicit in a hoax.

  92. Perhaps Logern can explain why we should trust anything the Socialists he admires so much say or support when the three greatest mass murderers of the 20th Century were all socialists too Mao, Stalin and Hitler.

  93. Huxley: Well my point is that you have offered no proof otherwise, and given the history of the left caution is warranted.

    But you really prove my point when you say that the IPCC is not impartial, how could a scientific study by a supposedly authoritative agency tasked with getting to the truth of the matter be anything but impartial? For it to be otherwise would be to say that it is pretending to be something other than what it is. This is a hoax, ipso facto.

    Certainly wrapping your arguments in moral relativism is a pure rhetorical dodge. It really does not matter what the “biases” of the participants in a “scientific debate” are. And it is also irrational: because one side is not engaging in a hoax does not mean the other side is not. It is a red herring and beside the point.

    Moreover, by playing the moral equivalence card, you are actually underlining your position. In science the onus is on those who would put forth an idea to prove their point, and there are accepted protocols and forums. in politics it is a different matter. The vociferous personal attacks on “dissenters” and the needs for nonscientific forums, not to mention the reliance on emotional appeals and propaganda, are a telling aspects of this “debate”.

    This sort of thing was used constantly by Western “apologists” for marxism during the Cold War, BTW, and we now know that many of these people where acting as agents for the Communists ir where hte dupes of those agents.

    I really do not think that you are thinking this through.

    I will also point out that basing you positions n the “IPCC” findings may be necessary, but it is hardly sufficient.

    One would have to look at the whole basis of “Climate Science”, and i for one do not think that if there even is such a discipline it is a very developed one. Seems like a lot a mischief here.

    If it is just a “theory” then why all the underhanded suppression of deissent? Why are political lines drawn? Why all the hype and sloganeering? Why the rush to action? And why do all the schemes result in Marxism redistribution of income?

    By taking the IPCC report in isolation and out of the broader context you do no service to your position.

    I see no evidence to support your position, and a great deal that flies in its face. At best, it seems like a woefully misplaced sense of fair play on your part. The Left is playing for keeps here, and it has nothing to do with global warming.

  94. hattip — Global warming and the opposition to it cover a vast range of information, positions, and politicking.

    In this discussion I’m disagreeing with the claim that global warming is a “hoax.” That’s all.

    I have no interest whatsoever in all your mind-reading about whether I have thought this through etc.

  95. Mind reading? What are you talking about?

    What a childish response. What foul manners, worse than your capacity for critical thinking.

    Let’s be concise: You thus far have very poorly defended you position, and,comically, you just keep repeating yourself, which evidently you somehow think is meaningful argument. But it is not. You fail to address the issues and in fact evade them. I pointed out several glaring faults with your position, and in terms of evidence, logical construction of that positions, and your general argumentation defending it. Ergo my conclusion was that you “have not thought it through”.

    Hardly mind reading, merely a reasonable deduction. It is intellectually dishonest of you to pretend that I meant anything else but this.

    And my conclusion is further buttressed by this childish little red-herring that you have just thrown out.though in what i guess you imagine is a “response”.

    You have now several times refused to rise to the occasion and defend you position in a rational, reasonable and adult manner,. My point still stand: You appear not to have thought this through.

    As to the matter of this little bit of foot stomping:

    I have no interest whatsoever in all your mind-reading about whether I have thought this through etc.

    Well really now, this is neither here nor there. If you cannot defend your positions you should keep silent.

    I could care less what you are “interested in”. What a childish response. Man up. This is a conservative board, not a Leftist one.

  96. If AGW were real, there is no way Obama and Michelle would have taken separate planes to Denmark to lobby on behalf of Chicago for the Olympics. If the world really is, as Matt Yglesias says, “poised on the brink of catastrophic climate change,” the Obamas would have plane pooled to their presentations in Denmark. As important as their speeches were, nothing could be more important than saving all of the carbon dioxide emitted from each of their large jets and their entourages from entering the environment. Right? I mean, we’re on the verge of a man-made catastrophe here, aren’t we?

    Heck, we’re all supposed to take the bus and ride our bikes to work. They can’t coordinate getting on the same 747 for a trip to Europe and back in order to help save the world from the impending doom?

    If the fire department comes out to your house and says that as a result of all of the dead brush around your property, starting the BBQ will most likely lead to a catastrophic burning down of all your belongings, you don’t respond, “Well, I’ve got this big party planned and I promised the people Carne Asada done on the grill. Let me just take care of this and then we’ll worry about that catastrophic stuff later. This meat is way too important.”

    So, until all these people who believe in the Loch Ness monster start actually acting like the thing is going to escape from the lake and wreak havoc on the earth, I don’t think I’ll take their designation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant too seriously.

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