Thought you might be interested in this release from Glenn McConnell. Several points I’ll make about it:
- First, I don’t often see dramatic political statements from McConnell. He’s generally not one for public posturing in this particular way.
- What you see here is a particularly articulate expression of the extreme frustration that lawmakers have experienced with this governor. Sen. McConnell is fully fed up, and expresses why in no uncertain terms.
- McConnell is one of the most ardent libertarians in the General Assembly. It’s one thing for Bobby Harrell or Hugh Leatherman to be fed up with our anti-government governor, but a libertarian really has to try to turn the Senate President Pro Tempore against him to this extent.
- That said, Sen. McConnell is a passionate defender of legislative prerogatives and state’s rights, which makes the statement a little less remarkable. But only a little.
Anyway, here’s the statement:
SC Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell Responds to Governor’s LawsuitMcConnell: “Governor asks federal judge to usurp states’ rights in quest for more power”Columbia, SC – May 21, 2009 – South Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell today issued the following statement in response to Governor Mark Sanford’s lawsuit:
“Governor Sanford says this court case is about the “balance of power.” The truth is that this case is about his power. The Governor wants more of it, and he’s willing to trample over states’ rights to get it. He has run to the federal courts asking them to reinterpret our state Constitution so as to give him powers not granted to him by the people of South Carolina. While we have debated the 10th Amendment, little did we know the Governor was conspiring to ride over it in the federal courts.
For seven years Governor Mark Sanford has worked tirelessly to increase his power and the scope of South Carolina’s executive branch of government. While working to centralize power under one individual, the Governor has continuously attacked the General Assembly for what he describes as liberal tendencies. Never before have I witnessed such hypocrisy as I did today when Governor Sanford asked a federal judge to usurp South Carolina’s rights.Whether the stimulus money should have been appropriated by the United State Congress was a federal matter. But the question of separation of powers involves the duties of the executive and legislative branches of government as prescribed by the South Carolina Constitution. As such, the rightful arbiter is the South Carolina Supreme Court. Either he is fearful of a South Carolina court ruling or he is playing to a national audience.
I disagree with Congress’ stimulus plan, but I know that it’s fiscally irresponsible to let South Carolina tax dollars go to other states while we struggle to fund education and public safety at appropriate levels. We have received clarification from the United States Department of Education that if we do not formally apply for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund Program by July 1st, our stimulus funds will be allocated to other states. Governor Sanford’s move may ensure that our tax dollars will be caught up in legal proceedings for what could be up to two years. He may have finally found a way to send our tax dollars to New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Michigan. Governor Sanford’s lawsuit is an irresponsible move that tramples on the South Carolina Constitution and the future prosperity of our taxpayers.
South Carolinians need to know that Governor Sanford has already politically left this state, sometimes physically, but always mentally. This is just another press stunt to put him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and in front of Fox News cameras. Governor Sanford’s presidential aspirations and hunger for power are so strong that he is willing to put South Carolina’s future at risk. This lawsuit is a gift that keeps on giving – giving the Governor out-of-state headlines and giving South Carolinians uncertainty and discord.
As the elected voice of South Carolina’s taxpayers, the General Assembly has stated that Governor Sanford should now take all stimulus funds available for appropriation. Sadly, I believe that the end result of this lawsuit may be that on July 1, the people of South Carolina will be left with nothing but the bill. “###** This press release is sent on behalf of South Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell
See what I mean?
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By contrast, Jim Clyburn’s reaction was pretty mild:
“I have maintained that the South Carolina Legislature and the courts are the proper place to resolve this issue, and I will await those resolutions.”
That was it. That’s his entire statement about the gov’s lawsuit.
Thanks for posting this, grim as it is.
Surely there is some way around He Who Must Not Be Named. I wish I had done better and retained more from my Federal Courts class 26 years ago, but there just *has* to be some procedural move.
I would like all these whiners, legislators and their lobbyists, to tell us how much money would be enough that they would say, “We don’t need any more money.”
McConnell is one of the most ardent libertarians
Oh? I didn’t realize there were too many people out there who were both flag supporters and cultural liberals… I always assumed he was social conservative.
Seriously, Brad? A Libertarian would never spend other people’s money on his own personal hobby – a piece of junk that should have been left at the bottom of the river.
These people lie, day after day, about the budget. There is no budget crisis. The small percentage of the stimulus funds that Sanford wants to put toward debt relief would result in an increase in money available from the debt payments that would be saved. Do you deny that? It also is the governor’s duty to do what he thinks is best for the state of South Carolina as the elected representative. He’s doing that.
We have a do-nothing, spend-everything legislature that has been exposed for what they are by Sanford. Career politicians who line their own pockets are responsible for the economy of South Carolina, not Mark Sanford. When Sanford is allowed to do things his way, then you can blame him.
Rarely do I agree with McConnell, but in this instance, I do. Governot Sanford is playing to a national audience by filing a federal lawsuit instead of appealing to the state Supreme Court, one that does not know of his record of incompetence in South Carolina.
At 10 AM today, we will find out our position in the nation’s unemployment rankings: http://www.bls.gov/lau/
Just 600 days left for Sanford to run South Carolina further into the ground. Let’s hope that we don’t get a Sanford clone, even if this one wears a skirt.
Brad,
Before you get too caught up in humping Senator McConnell’s leg, you may want to read about his involvement in preventing a bill requiring a 24 hour delay between ultrasound and abortion from occurring. Your other BFF Jake Knotts and fellow Sanford basher Hugh Leatherman also felt it was more important to make a statement about Mark Sanford instead of saving unborn children. Wouldn’t want to let a fetus get in the way of slamming Sanford.
FITSNews, as usual, has all the details…
http://www.fitsnews.com/2009/05/21/msm-hangs-bright-out-to-dry-on-abortion-bill/
Governor Sanford has done nothing to increase unemployment in this state, but the legislature certainly has.
This federal pork money would not do anything to put people to work until near the end of 2009, and most of it will be temporary jobs, which will do nothing long term to improve the private sector economy.
I have been examining the unemployment data very closely, and I don’t believe that SC is much out of line with the other states. Our system reports more of the unemployment than a state like Nebraska or Iowa.
The more important things areL
* The unemployment rates of 20% to 40% that are occurring, and will occur, in places dependent on the automobile industry, which is being destroyed by the socialists in the Democratic Party.
* Millions of engineers and software developers could be put back to work by deporting the H1-B visa immigrant workers, who were brought here allegedly to supplement an “engineering shortage”. It was a lie then, and there is certainly no excuse for keeping them here now, with millions of engineers and IT workers unemployed.
In response to Mr. Barlow,
This article refers to Libertarian not liberal. These are two different terms with entirely different meanings.
A libertarian is a Classical Liberal.
Modern liberals are mostly socialists, without the uniforms and goose stepping.
In response to Mr. Barlow,
This article refers to Libertarian not liberal. These are two different terms with entirely different meanings.
Yes and libertarians generally believe in having the government out of people’s personal lives. I had just assumed that being a longtime-serving southern Republican, McConnell was a social conservative. And social conservatives and libertarians are two very different things.
Ah, the continuing downward spiral of Marshall Clement Sanford, Jr.’s hypocritical attention-grab.
If it weren’t so tragic, it would be hilarious.
He believes the Feds should leave SC alone, until he doesn’t get his way, and then he runs to the Feds. But he can do no wrong with the hardcore libertarians with blinders on. They’ll just look the other way while he fishes around for an activist judge to breathe some life back into his gubernatorial putrefaction.
It’s sad for our state, but in the long run, I wouldn’t mind Sanford winning the GOP nomination in 2012. It would be high comedy, and a wonderful study in what happens when an ideological Cro-Magnon steps into contemporary civilization. This is, after all, a man who thinks intelligent design creationism is “good science”.
Should South Carolina government be running golf courses or paying for teachers? The legislature says golf courses. Sanford says teachers.
Whose priorities are screwed up?
Why do people have to hook up Intelligent Design with the economic decisions of Mark Sanford?
The only problem I have with Intelligent Design is when people like jfx set up this kind of straw man and bash him.
If you’re going to bash Intelligent Design, then have it out with Michael Behe or some other molecular biologist.
If you’re going to bash Mark Sanford’s politics, well, there are plenty of people in this state who think like him and who don’t care a hoot about Creation, the Bible, or anything religious.
The two things are not related.
And I still believe that man is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” in spite of some of the evidence on this blog to the contrary.
Herb said:
“Why do people have to hook up Intelligent Design with the economic decisions of Mark Sanford?”
Because, Herb, it’s not a straw man, it’s an exceptionally lucid window into the way Mr. Sanford’s brain works. The man doesn’t respect sound science, in the same way that he doesn’t respect public education. These things are extremely related. Should there be a tax credit for people who want their kids to learn that, despite all evidence to the contrary, humans are not primates descended from other primates? Hell no.
Herb, you’re right that there are plenty of people in this state who “think like him”. We’ve been behind the curve for a very, very long time. Want to keep the status quo? Then let’s rally behind Mark Sanford and support this “principled” ideological obsolescence.
Anyone who buys into government policies based on “global warming” or “greenhouse gasses” has no room to criticize anyone else’s beliefs in junk science.
As an engineer and scientist, I think the $41,000,000 the legislature has thrown away on fuel cells to be junk science, and junk legislation.
Yep, there’s that mule-headed Sanfordian mentality right there. Good ol’ global warming denialism by good ol’ Lee Muller.
Lee, you’re a scientist? That’s terrific. We need more scientists. Unfortunately, you are not a climatologist. If you were a climatologist, you would know that there is a broad consensus among the world’s climatologists with respect to the HUMAN role in climate change. And it’s not a “majority” consensus. It’s an “overwhelming majority” consensus. Try roughly 97% of the world’s climatologists.
I like this quote:
“Since 2007 no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion. A few organisations hold non-committal positions.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
The demarcation between good science and junk science lies in broad scientific consensus. Shall we believe the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate experts? Or “principled” ideologues? Denialism is fashionable in certain circles, but it’s also dangerous.
Lee, there are legitimate scientific studies on global warming, not just “government policies,” and you know it. And as for your claims to be an engineer, a scientist, an economist, and whatever else, I personally believe none of it, joining a lot of other people who try their best to ignore your comments. If you were really all three of those, and had lived and worked in all the places that you claim, you wouldn’t be wasting your time pasting in talking points from right-wing sources on this blog.
I apologize in advance for that previous uncharitable paragraph, but sometimes the truth has to be said straight, especially to people who dish it out like they were the omniscient source of all wisdom.
And jfx, you are still setting up a straw man. I happen to believe in Intelligent Design (in spite of a few bloggers here), and have a healthy respect for evolution, though I don’t think macro-evolution has been as proven as people think it has, no matter how much you and others repeat that it has been proven. Keep repeating it. Over and over again. I still think Michael Behe, and others like him, have a case.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of those who are for vouchers are totally against macro-evolution. If we find that out, you might have a case. In the meantime, yours is just a straw man, nothing more.
The vast majority of climatologists reject the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming. I have been keeping track of this ever since the non-scientists switch from the Global Cooling Scare in the mid-1970s. The conventions of climatologists each each rejected this Global Warming Theory. Evidence now makes most of them agree we have been in a cooling period since 1998.
I have posted all sorts of links to this before, so I will stop with the digression in this topic.
But any of you who accept the junk science of non-technical “environmentalists” should not be criticizing any theories of evolution as being “junk science”.
And it is really dumb attempt at personal smears of those with whom you cannot debate the wasteful spending of Obama and our legislature.
Lee won’t get any argument from me about ending the H-1B Visa program. Unfortunately, corporations like hiring cheap engineering, computer, and technical people. Corporations can also afford to pay lobbyist and buy representatives and senators.
I thought that the medical profession was out-source proof, but I have read articles where insurers will pay for vacations to India for surgery.
Oh, I heard that Governot Sanford on a junket to Germany asked BMW to move their North American HQ from New Jersey to South Carolina.
That’s a novel idea! Uh, no, every governor from Campbell through Hodges has made the same request.
Yes, Herb, I a degreed and practicing engineer and economist.
I sometimes work in pure scientific research, or as part of a team of investors, engineers and scientists who are trying to create something new that will be a product.
If you don’t like my opinions, try to make an informed explanation of why you don’t accept the argument, or don’t understand it.
This quote is an outright fabrication, a political lie:
“Since 2007 no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion. A few organisations hold non-committal positions.”
Just go read the petitions against the Theory of Man-made Global Warming signed by the vast majority of climatologists at their national and international conventions.
Mr. Hightower,
Yes, the doctors, lawyers, and accountants are now finding their work being outsourced over the internet to India.
I believe that a major cause of this recession has been the Republicans and Democrats selling out the big business in the firing of American IT workers and replacing them with less competent, but cheaper, foreign H1-B workers.
Deporting all those H1-B workers makes sense, now that it is obvious there is no “engineering shortage” with 2,000,000 America IT professionals unemployed or underemployed.
South Carolina could do it right now, by the state agencies not hiring any foreign workers, and not contracting with any brokerage firms who are bringing in these workers.
Lee, you don’t have to post all sorts of links.
Just post one link that proves me wrong.
All you have to do is post one reputable link (I know, that whole “reputable” thing is tough, you can’t just rely on michellemalkin.com or townhall.com) that shows that “the vast majority of climatologists reject the theory of man-made global warming”.
As a reminder, here’s an example of what you’ll be disproving, from NASA:
————-
http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.html
Causes of global warming
Climatologists (scientists who study climate) have analyzed the global warming that has occurred since the late 1800’s. A majority of climatologists have concluded that human activities are responsible for most of the warming. Human activities contribute to global warming by enhancing Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect warms Earth’s surface through a complex process involving sunlight, gases, and particles in the atmosphere. Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are known as greenhouse gases.
The main human activities that contribute to global warming are the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) and the clearing of land. Most of the burning occurs in automobiles, in factories, and in electric power plants that provide energy for houses and office buildings. The burning of fossil fuels creates carbon dioxide, whose chemical formula is CO2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that slows the escape of heat into space. Trees and other plants remove CO2 from the air during photosynthesis, the process they use to produce food. The clearing of land contributes to the buildup of CO2 by reducing the rate at which the gas is removed from the atmosphere or by the decomposition of dead vegetation.
A small number of scientists argue that the increase in greenhouse gases has not made a measurable difference in the temperature. They say that natural processes could have caused global warming. Those processes include increases in the energy emitted (given off) by the sun. But the vast majority of climatologists believe that increases in the sun’s energy have contributed only slightly to recent warming.
———————–
Ready. Set. Go. And good luck.
Meanwhile, Herb…
…well, I’m speechless.
Almost.
You believe in Intelligent Design…AND have respect for evolution.
Bwuh?
Well, that sounds….quaint. I can only surmise you don’t know where Intelligent Design actually came from, aren’t familiar with the actual proceedings of the Kitzmiller trial in Dover, PA, didn’t read the conservative judge’s decision in that case, aren’t well read in the actual science…..OR…..you’re very familiar with all of the above, and are simply hedging.
I’m continually surprised how many people are unaware of this, or find a way to rationalize it as somehow not a big deal:
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.pdf
ID exists as a lame attempt to try and foment a false war between science and religion, and eventually replace science with religion. That’s all. This is why its goons try to sneak it into science class. It is clearly spelled out in the “Goals” section of the document linked above.
And it is super lame. Even Rush Limbaugh said it’s dishonest.
Herb, I can appreciate that you think Mike Behe has a case. But he’s a fraud. The whole movement is a fraud.
To bring it all back around, Mark Sanford wants to defraud South Carolina schoolchildren by teaching them anti-science. Not such a great resume builder for an aspiring President.
15,000 Scientists Urge Congress to Reject Global Warming Treaty
4/14/1998
More than 15,000 basic and applied American scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees, have signed a petition calling on the U.S. government to reject the global warming agreement negotiated last December in Kyoto.
Signatures are continuing to accumulate, as some 4,200 of the initial signers have requested more petitions to distribute to their colleagues.
“This petition marks the beginning of the end of the global warming scare,” commented Joseph L. Bast, publisher of Environment News and president of The Heartland Institute, an independent research institute that has been critical of the science behind the global warming scare. “Those who continue to predict catastrophic global warming can no longer claim to represent ‘mainstream science.’ They are, and always have been, an extreme minority voice in the scientific community.”
Real Scientists
Signers of the petition so far include approximately 2,100 physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, and environmental scientists who are especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s atmosphere and climate. Signatures have also been gathered from another 4,400 scientists whose fields make them especially well qualified to evaluate the effects of carbon dioxide on the Earth’s plant and animal life.
Nearly all of the initial 15,000 signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. In addition to these 15,000, approximately 1,800 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition.
The significance of the petition’s 15,000 signers is far greater than the “2,500 scientists” who allegedly endorse the 1996 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A survey of IPCC scientist-contributors and reviewers, conducted by the Science and Environmental Policy Project in 1997, found that about half did not support the Policymakers Summary, which famously claimed to have found evidence of a “discernible human influence” on global climate.
original source:
Details of the project, along with a periodically updated list of signatories, are available the project’s Web site, http://www.oism.org/pproject/. For further information about the Petition Project, call 541/592-4142; fax 541/592-4142.
Critics of Mark Sanford act like our governor is supposed to be a figurehead, or just an errand boy for the legislature.
It is his job, his authority, and his duty to stand in the way of their rampant waste of money.
Yes, jfx, I’m aware of all of that. But again, again, and again, it is always, “either — or.” Either you have to be right-wing, and then you have to believe, along with Lee, that global warming is a fraud, that Obama is the anti-Christ in person, and that the US medical system is just wonderful, and all the problems in this country are caused by illegal aliens.
OR, you have to believe that Obama is the Messiah in person, that our medical system is the worst in the world, and planet earth is in its last last throes of final extinction, and that all our problems are caused by right-wingers and rednecks living in the red states.
How about we evaluate each one of these issues, each on its own merits, and refuse to let it be highjacked by . . . whoever wants to use it for their own political ends?
How about we read the positions of others with an open mind (that is, those who present reasonable positions, not using fraudulent sources like Lee’s Maureen Dowd article, etc.
How about we discuss each one on its own merits, using the most cogent, well tho0ght through example of each? How about we evaluated Christianity, not on the basis of some Chick tract, but on the basis of the person of Jesus, what He actually taught, and who He is?
I could go on and on, but you get the point. For you guys, it’s either all or nothing. That’s convenient, because one doesn’t have to really read all the literature, or give each position a valid appraisal. Throw out the doctoral research on any subject, just ask Rush Limbaugh or whoever. They know, of course.
LIfe is more complicated than that. Science is more complicated than that, and science is constantly changing.
Which is why I will never place my total faith in science, nor will I place it in Barack Obama, even though, in the end, I voted for him.
Do any Sanford bashers care to refute the fact that the budget proposed by the legislature retains funding for the state to manage golf courses yet cuts funding for education?
All the money necessary to run the state exists already. Too bad Mr. Leatherman, Mr. Harrell, and Mr. McConnell care more about tee times than teenagers.
Herb said:
“Life is more complicated than that. Science is more complicated than that, and science is constantly changing.
Which is why I will never place my total faith in science, nor will I place it in Barack Obama, even though, in the end, I voted for him.”
And I absolutely agree with you.
You and I both know that science is complicated, and it evolves. My main point in going off on that ID tangent, with respect to the specifics of the ID movement and its origins, is that those zealous fools DON’T see science as complicated. They just see it as the root of all evil, and want it crushed.
And how silly is that? The ID movement was formed as a religious crusade to transform culture, ostensibly for the better, but according to them, “scientific materialism” is the root of our ills, and not “original sin”? Theological hogwash, leading to fake science, and dishonesty about the intent of the fake science. I do not think Christ would approve.
Of course, no one should place their total faith in science. But we should certainly have great respect for scientific accuracy, and broad scientific consensus, and in that respect, our public schools actually serve SC kids MUCH better than our current governor does. We actually have quite laudable state science standards, much more so than Louisiana or Texas (where ID has slithered back into contention), that’s fersure.
And again about science being complicated, and evolving….you’ll note that I challenged Lee to come up with one link, on the whole internet, disproving the proposition that the vast majority of climatologists now concede a human role in adverse climate change…
…and he dug up a petition fossil from 1998. That’s it. As if science doesn’t evolve. As if a petition in 1998 accurately reflects the global climatology worldview in 2009, or even accurately reflected it back then. This is just patently dishonest. We know where the overwhelming scientific consensus is in 2009. We also know it’s going to take concerted, aggressive international political cooperation to effect movement on this issue. It doesn’t even matter if the USA licks its own emissions problem. If the world doesn’t triangulate China and force their hand on controlling emissions, we’re screwed anyway. It’s funny that China is the real enemy on this, but here we are in America, still in the hand-wringing and denialism stage. Funny…as in not funny.
Holy cow, Herb.
Look at this.
Go to that 1998 petition link that Lee posted:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
Now scroll down to the bottom of the page.
There you will find another link.
This one:
http://www.discovery.org/v/30
And lo and behold, our global warming denialism is linked with evolution denialism, via the Dishonesty Institute, inventors and champions of intelligent design creationism, and apparently other forms of junk science.
Thank you, Lee Muller, for that wonderful link.
Now that was just a crazy bit of luck.
About McConnell’s libertarianism — you can always find exceptions to a general observation about someone. You can even find instances where Mark Sanford acts contrary to purely libertarian principles. There was his veto (successful, fortunately) of the bill that attempted to strip DHEC of the power to tell Lexington Medical Center it couldn’t have an open-heart program. More immediately, there is his decision to turn to the big, bad FEDERAL gummint in suing his own state — which poured gasoline on McConnell’s ire.
Earlier this session, there was a bill where McConnell actually favored more intrusive gummint. I forget the exact issue, but it had something to do with law enforcement, and it surprised me because it seemed inconsistent for him. But generally speaking, you can make three observations about Glenn McConnell that will usually be right on the money:
As for fiscal libertarianism, I refer you to this op-ed he wrote a while back supporting the idea of binding future legislators with arbitrary spending caps. An excerpt:
… etc. That is classic Glenn McConnell.
If it affirms the Confederacy (the Hunley, flying the flag, standing up for state’s rights), he’s for it.
He can be relied upon to oppose government telling folks what to do.
-Brad
Those 2 points are completely, utterly mutually exclusive. McConnell’s strong support of all this Confederacy stuff makes him, BY DEFINITION, someone who favors STRONG, DECISIVE government intervention on behalf of GOVERNMENT TELLING FOLKS WHAT TO DO. That is, he favors all means available to push his own particular agenda, ie, Confederate heritage preservation. That’s neither libertarian, nor someone who opposes telling people what to do.
Furthermore, since he is an ardent support of Goldwater and Reagan he’s tacitly rejecting libertarianism out of hand. These two men were solid Republicans with all the many government interference agendas that would entail. Goldwater favored strong military intervention into Vietnam. That’s what cost him the 1964 election. Debate the merits of Vietnam all you want but you cannot regard that thinking as liberatarian.
As for Reagan, budget deficits soared under his tenure by virtue of his strong “support” of the military. Hardly libertarian. His wife actively pursued tough anti-drug laws, and apparently Reagan approved of that. Reagan was no libertarian.
Brad, you’re simply obsessed with this libertarian stuff to the point that you’re not thinking things through. Stick with the main point: Sanford is foolishly throwing money away, through all means available, that could help our state recover from double digit unemployment. That’s the point here, not whether Glenn McConnell is libertarian.
I could have found a lot more links to that old news article about the 15,000 scientists petitioning our government to not sign the junk science Kyoto Accords in 1998. If you have access to Nexus, you could find lots of them.
But jfx and other Luddites have on response to the FACT of 15,000 scientists, including 90% of all climatologists, dismissing the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming.
So they dodge it by saying they found THAT archive linked to other things they dismiss. That’s why they are no more than followers of a pagan religion.
But I knew I wasn’t going to get any scientific debate from those who are illiterate in science.
Brad, you should refrain from using the word “libertarian” in childish attempts at smears, until you get off your lazy butt and learn something about libertarianism.
Our Founding Fathers were libertarians.
Barry Goldwater did call himself a “libertarian”, and he was. In fact, the Libertarian Party was founded by Republicans who had been Goldwater enthusiasts as members of the Young Americans for Freedom, the college Republican groups of the era.
That is your first history lesson on libertarianism, from a founder of the LP.
Lee, let’s go back and review.
You posted a link to oism.org, which is apparently a Crazy Person website where you can also buy Nuclear Survival Skills DVD sets, as well as a 24-cd set of religious music by George Beverly Shea.
The group that runs this site, despite having a very high-minded name of The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, appears to be a small group of people who operate out of a warehouse in Cave Junction, Oregon. They seem mostly to be obsessed with religion, pseudomedicine, and survivalism. The “faculty” lists eight people, two of whom are deceased, three of whom appear to be brothers, and none of whom are climatologists.
As for the petition…hey, petitions are fun. But I am not sure how many legitimate, reputable climatologists are on this 11-year-old petition. I searched some of the names that are listed as signers from South Carolina, and I discovered people who are medical doctors, and nuclear engineers. Tell me, what are the climate science credentials of medical doctors in Columbia who sign a petition?
The fact that your Crazy Person website had a link on it that led to another Crazy Person website, the Discovery Institute, was just icing on the Crazy Cake.
jfx,
You are in denial of the FACT that 15,000 scientists signed a petition against the bogus Theory of Man-Made Global Warming.
You are in denial of the FACT that the Earth has been cooling since 1998.
You are in denial that the Earth warmed up more in the 1600s and early 1700s, before the Industrial Revolution, than it has since then. That’s a FACT.
Leatherman gets a personal police force and teachers get laid off. Sanford’s fault?
Keep denying reality. That’s what the sheep herders want.
Good job with that link, jfx. I have found almost consistently that when one spends the time to probe Lee’s links, they almost always either turn up as ideological talking points, or misrepresentations of statistics (most statistics are misrepresentations anyway), or in worse case scenarios, flat out fraudulent, as in the case of the “Maureen Dowd” article some months ago. But of course he will give it his spin, so it’s pointless to argue, though I do, along with others, get caught up in the clash sometimes. It’s tragic, though, how many people swallow this kind of thing without thinking. Not that Lee is always wrong, but as several have already pointed out, one can usually assume that 1) he is going to comment on nearly every post, and 2) one can pretty much guess which direction tha content is going to go.
Since I’ve got back to the States in 2001, what I can’t figure out is, why everyone only reads or listens to their source of news or information that spins it the way they want to hear it. Well, I guess Jeremiah told us about that a long time ago. But I did find that Europeans tend to be a bit more observant of the facts, which is why I prefer the BBC or especially the Frankfurter Allgemeine for news information. It’s just hard to get the time to read it, let alone evaluate it. Oh, and I’ve gotten US News and World Report for decades now, and now have the on-line version. David Lawrence founded a pretty good periodical. Though it tended to be on the right, it has always seemed to me to be pretty fair. It seems now, though that The Economist has taken its place, but of course the Economist is somewhat more global in outlook.
I did want to say that I’ve never had a problem with evolution and the Bible–well, I take that back. I had my pre-Christian days where I thought they were incompatible, until I began to study Genesis in the original Hebrew (which one doesn’t have to do in order to get the meat of it, but one does get more still) and concluded that Genesis is after the “why” of our existence, and not the “when” or the “how.” Plus, Genesis is written for all generations (and often indirectly refutes polytheism or animism, as in the little reference in Genesis 1 (“he also made the stars”–undermining astrological determinism, etc.)and all cultures, not just our modern one, which we in our arrogance tend to forget (we may be more technological, but previous generations were a lot better at thinking, and at pondering the reason for their existence.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion, even if I do get a bit heated and inconsiderate at times, I enjoyed it.
I guess my sentences were longer than St.Paul’s in that last comment. Sorry about that, and the lacking parantheses, but I’m in a hurry.
Now there are over 31,000 scientists who have signed the petition denouncing “global warming” as a hoax.
Brad’s blog won’t allow me to paste the latest press release, but those of you who are not as lazy or dishonest as jfx or Herb can look it up for yourselves at…
http://www.petitionproject.org
In 1781, Thomas Jefferson made the following observations: “A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are becoming much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep.”
In an address to the Admiralty on November 20, 1817, the President of the Royal Society made the following statement: “a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.”
US Weather Bureau, 1922 – “The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot. Reports all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, while at many points well know glaciers have entirely disappeared.”
Sea Ice coverage satellite observations began in 1979. In 2007, records were set for most sea ice in the Antarctic and the least in the Arctic. The bulk of the world’s sea ice is located in the Antarctic.
The earth has been in a cooling cycle since 1998. There are records, graphs, and statistics that support this fact. If you are not too lazy, you can find them.
From the 1930s until the end of the 1950s, there was an average of 8 or more Category 3,4, & 5 hurricanes that hit the mainland United States for each decade. Since then, the decade with the highest number of hurricanes was in the 80s. Excessive hurricane activity has been one of the bellweather signs of AGW.
From 1991 thru 2000, US co2 emissions went from 4950 MMT per year to 5800 MMT per year. From 2000 until 2005, co2 emissions only increased to 5900 MMT per year but dropped to 5850 MMT in 2006 with a steady decrease since. The growth rate was the lowest during the Bush era than at any point since records were kept starting in 1949.
In 1998, El Nino caused a dramatic spike in global temperatures for a few months. The drop after El Nino was just as precipitous and by the middle of 1999, the average earth temperature was back to zero baseline. Post 1999, there was a rise and fall trend with the highest spike coming in January 2007 followed by a drop below the zero baseline coming in June 2008. Over the past 20 years, the UAH Globally Averaged Satellite-Based Temperature of the Lower Atmosphere has maintained a fairly even balance with the zero baseline.
For several years, since the temperature has been dropping, the activity of sunspots has been minimal but recently, sunspot activity has been on the uptick. Given all of the data relating to global warming, in almost every instance when sunspot activity has been at its highest, global tempertures increase. During inactive times, the temperature drops. In active times, it increases. 200 years ago, an astronomer made the connection when he observed the price of grain decreased when sunspots increased and vice versa.
On January 25,2005, Michael Crichton gave a speech at the National Press Club. The title was “The Case of Skepticism on Global Warming”. It can be found at his website, MichaelCrichton.com. For those who eschew Crichton as just another writer, read his bio. He is supremely qualified to speak on the subject. He was once on the warming bandwagon but once he investigated the claims on a scientific basis, he found them lacking and full of inaccuracies.
The famous “Hockey Stick” graph claiming the 1990’s to be the hottest decade of the last 1000 years was debunked by the National Academy of Sciences.
A 2005 study by Oal Hohannessen and colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.
Polar bears are not going the way of extinction but are holding steady with a population between 20,000 and 25,000. The population is actually greater today than 50 years ago.
A “consensus” of scientists agree with global warming. Does this mean that of this “consensus” are ALL climatologists with not one being a medical doctor, a genetic scientist, a biologist, or any of the other scientific disciplines? Are all who are in “consensus” involved or engaged in a life’s work of studying the climate? I don’t think so because if you look at the list of the “consensus”, you will find a wide range of non-climatologists who are involved just as you will on the list of 15,000.
As a side note, of the 15,000 or 19,000 whichever is correct, of that number, 2,600 have climate science credentials. This is according to Joel M. Kauffman, Emeritus, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, PA. (I guess he is another subscriber to the Crazy Person website as well.)
A group of 60 Canadian climatologists have joined the skeptics of global warming. I guess these people are members of the Crazy Person cadre who dare challenge the Al Gore religion of Global Warming.
There has been a “consensus” of scientists or those who claimed to be scientists since recorded time. At one time, a “consensus” claimed the world to be flat. Wow, poor Christopher Columbus, he must have been a member of the Crazy Person club at the time according to the “consensus” and their supporters.
As Michael Crichton stated in his speech, “Consensus is the business of politics.” It was politics when James Hansen in 1988 made his claim before congress that temperatures would rise by 0.3C by the end of the century but as it turned out, only 0.1C and the seas would rise by several feet but only rose by one inch. Weather and climate is at best chaotic and unpredictable just as Hansen’s predictions and his current ramblings as Obama’s chief consultant on global warming continue to be.
When computer models are developed, baselines are developed using specific criteria the modeler develops and incorporates into the program. When data is ignored like the Medieval warming period of 1000 was left out of the equation for the Hockey Stick graph, all conclusions are rendered inaccurate and questionable. When sunspots are not accounted for and the correlations between warming and sunspot activity is a proven fact, how can the claims be considered truthful?
Because this has become such a “political” issue and has nothing to do with actual science by the likes of Al Gore and jfx, honest criticism has been silenced by intimidation and actual firing of opposing voices. Six editors of Climate Research were fired…. “because they published a literature review on long-term proxy studies (Soon & Baliunas, 2003). The review included several studies in which contrary results were found, with regard to the great majority of studies cited. Thus the review did not selectively cite only studies with a desired result and was unbiased. The firings were reported by Zbignew Jaworowski, MD, Ph.D. (2007). Other prominent journals now routinely refuse to publish papers that do not support AGW.”….
This is the problem. Liberals, Democrats, and others including many Evangelicals are convinced that global warming is caused by mankind and refuse to accept any other explanation. They are convinced without questioning that co2 is the reason for the “consensus” of AGW. Yet, it is a fact that the oceans contain 65 times more co2 than is in the atmosphere itself. Natural events such as sunspots and other influences can and do cause an inordinate about of co2 to be released from the world’s oceans.
There are a significant number of credible climatologists and climate scientists who are not in agreement with the politically correct position of AGW caused by man and his selfish release of excessive co2 emissions into the atmosphere. Yet, their voices are silenced by intimidation and threats of firing. They are verbally insulted and assaulted by the likes of Gore and his toady, jfx.
Another issue to address. Go to BioLogos Foundation and read the questions presented about evolution and God. It may surprise you to learn that there are intelligent discussions about the correlation between the two and there is nothing to dispute either but enough common sense and intelligent reasoning to connect them with logic and admission of scientific evidence. Science and religion can and do go hand in hand. If one will stop and actually read the first description of the Creation in Genesis, and if you will consider the chronology of the description itself, there is a correlation on the timetable for the evolutionary process of the earth and all living things including plants and animal life.
When people like jfx uses attacks against those who disagree, they no longer have any credibility and give no reason to take them seriously in a debate.
In the end, about the only response they deserve is Blah! Blah! Blah! That seems to be the extent of their intellectual capabilities or willingness to explore the possibility of alternative answers and conclusions other than what one would expect to hear on the Jackass television series.
Herb, thanks for your comments. That is interesting what you mentioned about reading Genesis in the original Hebrew. It seems natural that over the course of may generations, and many human transcriptions, interpretations, and revisions, we tend to lose the universal essence of what seems to be a wonderful creation analogy. Yes, it is certainly frustrating when people try to apply, as literal, words that have been modified across many languages, and across thousands of years, since having passed into writing from oral tribal traditions so long ago. Evolution in particular, and science in general, can’t speak at all to the spiritual root of existence, only to natural mechanisms and processes, and so there’s no reason why people can’t be honest about empirical science AND religiously devout and tolerant all at the same time.
Also, I like BBC, too. I hit the BBC news and science websites often. I would classify it as pretty straight reporting. I never feel like I’m being bludgeoned over the head with somebody’s agenda when I’m reading the BBC.
Now then….speaking of agendas….let me address my dear Friend of this Thread, Lee Muller, one final time.
Lee, I want you to take a very good look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition
Lee, you might want to read that….and I mean really read it, before commenting, unless you really want to keep making yourself look like a hopeless fool.
Here’s some juicy quotes from that writeup:
“The 1997 version of the article states that “over the past two decades, when CO2 levels have been at their highest, global average temperatures have actually cooled slightly” and says that this was based on comparison of satellite data (for 1979-1997) and balloon data from 1979-96. At the time the petition was written, this was unclear. Since then the satellite record has been revised, and shows warming.”
“The article was written in the style and format of a contribution to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a scientific journal. Raymond Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Chicago, said that the article was “designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article…is a reprint and has passed peer review.” Pierrehumbert also said the article was full of “half-truths”. F. Sherwood Rowland, who was at the time foreign secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the Academy received numerous inquiries from researchers who “are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them.”
“In a 2006 article the magazine Vanity Fair stated: “Today, Seitz admits that ‘it was stupid’ for the Oregon activists to copy the academy’s format.”
“The petitioners could submit responses only by physical mail, not electronic mail, to limit fraud. Older signatures submitted via the web were not removed. The verification of the scientists was listed at 95%, but the means by which this verification was done was not specified.”
“Signatories to the petition were requested to list an academic degree. The petition sponsors stated that approximately two thirds held higher degrees, but provided no details confirming this claim”
“The term “scientists” is often used in describing signatories; however, many of the signatories have degrees in engineering or medicine. The distribution of petitions was relatively uncontrolled: those receiving the petition could check a line that said “send more petition cards for me to distribute”.”
“Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.”
“In October 2007 a number of individuals reported receiving a petition closely similar to the Oregon Petition. As with the earlier version, it contained a six-paragraph covering note from Frederick Seitz along with a reply card and a supporting article. The text of the reply card is identical to the previous petition. Below the text is a signature line, a set of tick boxes for the signatory to state their academic degree (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) and field, and another tick box stating “Please send more petition cards for me to distribute.” This renewed distribution has continued until at least February 2008.”
So there ya go. The petition is basically a worthless piece of junk. It’s conducted in an unscientific manner. People who respond to the petition can put whatever credentials they want on the card. And then, even if they are not actual “scientists”, the project still considers them “scientists”, even if they are just medical doctors, or engineers. You have people who are listed on the petition, some of whom say they wouldn’t sign the same petition today, and some of whom say they didn’t sign it in the first place! Some of the people on the petition are dead, and some of them don’t return phone calls! Just great!
What we have here is a junk science petition floated out by Crazy Person Fred Seitz and the Brothers Robinson (Arthur, Noah, and Zachary) of the Crazy Person Institute of Fundamentalist Survivalism located in a warehouse in Cave Junction, Oregon. If I could elbow 30,000 people with some form of nominal post-secondary education into signing a petition saying smog doesn’t cause respiratory problems, would that make it true? How about if my signatories aren’t experts on either smog or respiration, or no longer agree with the petition as stated, or don’t remember signing the petition, or are now deceased…or don’t return phone calls?
Junk.
Who ya gonna trust? NASA, IPCC, NAS, Scientific American, et al….?
…or Arthur, Noah, and Zachary in the warehouse?
Gee, Bart. Nice hit job. “Toady”. Well played.
I think you may have misunderstood my feelings on religion…or something. I have a problem with INTELLIGENT DESIGN CREATIONISM, that one particular virulent strain of dishonest creationism which has been trying to shoehorn “Creation Science” into public school science classes for many years now. That’s all.
I like BioLogos. I enormously admire Francis Collins. He and Kenneth Miller have written important and powerful books demonstrating the positive reinforcement of faith through science.
About Michael Crichton….well, here’s the bio you mentioned:
“Michael Crichton was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. His most recent novel, Next, about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton’s 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. He predicted future warming at 0.8 degrees C. (His conclusions have been widely misstated.)
Crichton’s interest in computer modeling went back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications included a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Crichton’s first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.
He had a lifelong interest in computers. His feature film Westworld was the first to employ computer-generated special effects back in 1973. Crichton’s pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1995.
Crichton won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer’s Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He is survived by his wife Sherri, his daughter Taylor and his son, John Michael. ”
Yes, it is clear that Mr. Crichton was brilliant, especially with respect to anthropology, biology, computer modeling…
…but we must resist the temptation to assume that specialized scientific brilliance in certain fields automatically translates laterally to other fields.
There are so many examples of this. The best I can think of, right now, at 1 AM, is the case of Mr. Linus Pauling, the most brilliant chemist of the 20th century, and a man who won two Nobel Prizes, solo (the only man to ever do that).
He was a chemist beyond compare.
But he was not a nutritionist.
However, he came to believe, based on his chemical expertise, that megadoses of Vitamin C had powerful curative capabilities, even including the ability to beat cancer. In fact, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he was so sure of the lateral application of his chemical expertise to his own nutrition that he began taking megadoses of Vitamin C to fight the cancer. He made pronouncements confidently asserting that the Vitamin C regimen was eradicating the cancer.
And then he died of prostate cancer in 1994.
And we now know that too much Vitamin C can actually PROMOTE cancer growth.
I hope my point is clear. Something like climate change is complicated enough that we absolutely need to be listening to the real experts, the climate scientists who have spent their entire professional lives studying the problem. It’s inside the brains of those people where we will find our best information, the best likelihood of consensus, and the best course of action. It doesn’t matter how brilliant all these other people are, if they haven’t been studying planetary climate change on a truly holistic level. Jim Hansen gets ripped for being so shrill about the urgency of the situation, and yet he’s actually one of the few people who has the lifetime expertise to know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s one of the few people on Earth who are experts not only on the atmosphere of this planet, but neighboring planets as well. That’s serious, deep expertise, and we dismiss it at our peril.
And for any lurkers who don’t know who I’m talking about, that would be this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
A lawsuit in England found that Al Gore’s film is filled with false claims.
The court rendered a 170 page finding of fact, which debunks all the myths of CO2 being a pollutant, there being global warming, etc.
Antarctic Sea Ice Up Over 43% Since 1980
Sea ice at Antarctica is up over 43% since 1980 and we hear nothing in the news, yet Arctic ice is down less than 7% and they’re all over it! We’ve been waiting for the main stream media to pick up on the increase of Antarctic ice but so far they’re been totally absent. Guess its doesn’t fit the plan.
From the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado:
Still no sign of the national media on the extraordinary growth of sea ice at the antarctic. They sure haven’t missed a chance to point out the relatively small loss of ice at the arctic. Did did it ever occur to them that perhaps there is a natural process at work that has shifted ice growth from one pole to the other? Do they not want to admit that there are things man doesn’t yet understand about how this planet works?
“The court rendered a 170 page finding of fact, which debunks all the myths of CO2 being a pollutant, there being global warming, etc.”
And that’s a flat-out lie. OK, one more response, since at this point Lee just wants to lie. Lying liar. Silly. And sad. Gore made a political film, with some errors in it. But the court found his central premise to be correct. Now why can’t you be honest about that? Why lie?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101102134.html
U.K. Judge Rules Gore’s Climate Film Has 9 Errors
“High Court Judge Michael Burton, deciding a lawsuit that questioned the film’s suitability for showing in British classrooms, said Wednesday that the movie builds a “powerful” case that global warming is caused by humans and that urgent means are needed to counter it.
But he also said Gore makes nine statements in the film that are not supported by current mainstream scientific consensus. Teachers, Burton concluded, could show the film but must alert students to what the judge called errors. ”
“Burton’s ruling said that there is “now common ground that it is not simply a science film — although it is clear that it is based substantially on scientific research and opinion — but that it is a political film, albeit of course not party political.” Burton said Gore’s errors “arise in the context of alarmism and exaggeration in support of his political thesis.” ”
“A spokesman for the Department of Children, Schools and Families said the agency was “delighted” that students could continue to see Gore’s film. It has noted that the judge did not disagree with the film’s main point — that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are causing serious climate consequences. ”
So there ya go, AGAIN. Lee, you went out of your way to tell an outright falsehood about what that court found, when in reality the court found the movie made a strong case that current global warming has a strong anthropogenic factor that demands serious action.
But…why? Why lie about that? Are you just bored? Is someone paying you to just make shit up?
And since Herb and I like the BBC so much, and since this has to do with a British court ruling, here’s the BBC take on it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
“Mr Justice Burton said he had no complaint about Gore’s central thesis that climate change was happening and was being driven by emissions from humans. However, the judge said nine statements in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus. ”
And that is actually a much better article than the Washington Post piece. Very detailed. BBC rocks.
jfx has not responded to a single fact yet.
All he does is attack the messengers, the reporters, the authors, the scienttists, PERSONALLY.
But jfx hides his identity. Is it any wonder?
FACT: Ice is increasing, not decreasing.
FACT: CO2 does not contribute to “global warming”.
FACT: Human beings only produce less than 0.3% of the world’s CO2.
CO2 is taken in by plants and used by them as food, to grow.
FACT: The Earth in in a cooling phase.
FACT: Mark Sanford is right to reject the federal pork money.
jfx, the “toady” reference was a reflex. Nothing personal.
AGW will continue to be a topic of heated discussion and disagreement. I for one am a skeptic in the current debate although I do acknowledge that through out the history of this earth, there have been and will continue to be warming and cooling cycles. I don’t think anyone can argue that point.
Ice core records indicate that warming trends have preceded increases in CO2, not the reverse. One of the earliest to recognize CO2 as a greenhouse gas was Svante Arrhenius of Sweden in 1896. His take on the issue was not a negative but a positive. Increasing CO2 would result in preventing a new ice age and a warmer earth would assist in feeding a growing population. Now, that is an idea we don’t hear bandied about do we? Think about it for a moment. A warmer earth would potentially result in longer growing seasons therefore allowing more crops to be grown and harvested annually, providing more food to feed the world’s hungry.
After reading as much on the subject as I can, it is obvious that honest, serious debate and respect for conflicting viewpoints will not be tolerated from devotees of AGW. Any time an article is published disagreeing with the concept that humans are the primary reason for any increase in CO2, their integrity, honor, and in the case of Al Gore’s mentor early on, their sanity is brought into question. They are accused of the equilivent of Holocaust deniers and other crimes against humanity because they dare to voice opposition to something that has truly NEVER been established or proven. It is still a THEORY, not a scientific fact.
When proponents start to use tactics like those, their intent and ultimate goals should be immediately brought into question and answers demanded. Al Gore has used global warming as a vehicle to gain whatever it is he is seeking and along the way, increase his personal wealth from a few million to over $100 million.
If we look at it objectively, both sides have legitimate agruments and valid points to make. We do need to take care of our planet and eliminate or reduce the poisons released into the atmosphere, waterways, oceans, and soil that threaten our health and lives. However, we need to take a reasonable approach and not overreact but do our due diligence before enacting expensive programs that will most likely not reduce CO2 emissions by any significant amount but will enhance the financial fortunes of the Al Gore’s of this world.
The scares about “global warming”, “climate change”, and CO2 are mostly ruses for socialists to attack business and personal freedom, for Red China and India to shackle the USA and European manufacturers, and for the UN to transfer wealth from the West to the lagging Third World.
Hi Bart. Thanks for your reasoned and civil follow-up post.
I’m done toying around with Lee for now, except to say that yelling that something is a “FACT” does not actually make it a fact.
I want to revise one thing mentioned earlier about the OISM survivalist kook-fringe organization run out of a warehouse in Cave Junction, Oregon . The Robinsons are not 3 brothers. Arthur Robinson is the “Dad”, and Noah and Zachary are his sons. My bad. I’ve already gone over just how inept and unscientific their “petition” is, but here’s a nutshell synopsis that I found on another site:
“The petition comes from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a small fringe group headed by Arthur B Robinson. His “Institute” has a faculty of 8, including himself, 2 sons, 2 deceased people. Robinson is not a climate scientist; but a biochemist with no published research in climatology. This petition was originally mass mailed to scientists in 1998 with a paper which had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field nor been accepted for publication. It was strongly refuted by the National Academy of Science.”
And now I’m going to throw out a few links, if anybody wants to do some reading. Incidentally, Bart, that “ice core” thing is dealt with in some of these:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
[This next one is an exceptional site, worth three links]
http://skepticalscience.com/
http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://skepticalscience.com/page.php?p=3
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed.html
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/
Nerd Alert:
You’re done, all right, jfx. I stuck a fork in your junk science long ago.
Spare me the hippies on YouTube.
And your pasting links to articles you probably haven’t read and wouldn’t understand is just your lame attempt at dodging fact that you cannot discuss any of the science or theories.
If you think all the evidence of global cooling is not FACTual, then trot out some facts to back up your position. Right now, I see nothing more than a pagan belief system which is part of the communism-in-remission.
The next time you try to hijack a thread, use your real name, and link to some other thread on the topic.
Lee, friend, those links weren’t for you. They were for Bart, and Herb, and anyone else who wants to bother actually reading reputable information, instead of relying on the Robinson family in the warehouse in Oregon.
If by some chance you decide to actually do some critical reading and critical thinking, you might start by going back and reading through this thread, and considering why, each time you cited garbage material, or lied, I called you on it, went and researched your sources, and came back and pointed out all the problems.
You don’t seem to have a problem with taking as gospel a dubious petition that considers anyone with a degree a “scientist”, and is sponsored by people with absolutely no climate science expertise.
You don’t seem to have a problem with lying about the findings of a UK court ruling.
You don’t seem to have a problem ignoring the FACT (there’s that word you love so much) that there is not one national or international scientific body of any repute that agrees with you.
You think everything in the world that you don’t believe in, or don’t want to believe in, is a “socialist” conspiracy. You’re paranoid. And dishonest.
Don’t want to bother with the hard science? Don’t want to bother with the positions of the NAS, AAAS, NASA, IPCC, and all the rest? Bad for business? That’s fine. It’s your prerogative to believe what you want to believe in this world. Like I said, those links in my previous comment aren’t for you. I don’t expect you to come around. I expect you to deny, deny, deny, until the day you die. And you’ll go to your grave thinking you fought the good fight against “Socialism”, even though it was all in your head.
G’night.
jfx, I did go to the sites you recommended and took the time to read as many of the articles and discussions as possible within the time frame I had.
Your first link to the BBC article where an attempt was made to debunk the skeptics argument was interestingly contributed to by Fred Singer and Gavin Schmidt. Two sides of the coin but if I had to go with the more credible of the two, I would have to choose Fred Singer. But again, it becomes subjective depending upon our own viewpoint and interpretation of the information available and an analysis of a history of the climate of the planet earth.
I went further and read some of the other links and as many of the comments I could to ascertain a common theme among the posters and commentators. About the only real thread I could find that is consistent is there is no consensus of meaning on AGW and the impact of CO2 on our climate and any adverse impact on the earth.
A simple fact is that if all of the ice in the Arctic were to melt, the sea levels would not change. Water expands in a frozen state and the resulting change back to a liquid state would be a negligible contribution to the water level in the worlds oceans.
The studies, models, and other resource information about the Antarctic ice is still disputed and the general conclusion with available data is that is has been growing in volume, has stabilized, and no honest conclusions can be drawn at this time.
The ice core information was dismissed out of hand but other credible climatologists and scientists who are skeptics place great value in it. So, in the end, who is right and who is wrong?
Of the 2000 scientists who were on the AGW bandwagon, less than 100 were actually credible climatologists and according to Fred Singer, they were not in complete agreement either.
What bothers me is that we have in the last several years tried to solve a problem that is apparently not a real one but one that has grown feet and gained traction without an honest debate between the camps. Al Gore lost his credibility when he admitted to using exagerations and enhanced or embellished statements to get his message across.
When an important time in the history of the planet is ignored or considered to be irrelevant to the argument supporting AGW, then we have a credibility problem of major importance. The Medieval warming period which lasted a few hundred years does have an impact on the discussion. Greenland was a farming community for centuries and during the Medieval warming period, Europe, especially England enjoyed a bountiful harvest and cultural growth. Yet, according to many, it simply doesn’t count. How can it not count?
I have studied the graphs recording temperatures over the past 20 years and the zero baseline has stayed consistent with ups and downs much like a sine wave. The only time the line has stayed above the zero line is in the past few years but now, it has plunged below it once again.
Cities have increased in population and without argument, cities are generally several degrees higher in temperature than rural areas. Yet, most of the temperature recording sites are close to or located within cities.
We could go on and on debating and discussing the pros and cons about AGW and CO2 emissions and the potential impact on humanity. But, it will end up the same. You will stick to your beliefs and me to mine.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend.
Agreed, Bart.
“Belief” trumps “truth”, and humanity hangs in the balance.
Hopefully it won’t rain all day today.
jfx, you failed to explain away the cooling trend of the Earth since 1998, and the increase in the total size of polar ice.
And you failed to use a real name.
At least jfx admits he is operating on his mere beliefs, even if you mistakenly believes that “belief trumps truth”.
The official policy of the American Association of State Climatologists is that it is impossible to predict climate changes beyond one season. Individual state associations have issued official policies rejecting the beliefs that the Earth is warming, the belief that man’s activities are altering the climate, and the belief that CO2 is a pollutant and that it contributes to the retention of solar energy.
Bart, if you happen to swing back by this thread, I want to say that I appreciate the time and effort you put into your long response. This turned into a good discussion.
I read back over your response and just want to address this one part:
“A simple fact is that if all of the ice in the Arctic were to melt, the sea levels would not change. Water expands in a frozen state and the resulting change back to a liquid state would be a negligible contribution to the water level in the worlds oceans.”
Right, if you are talking about sea ice….that is to say, the mass that is already in the ocean, the actual sea level is unaffected whether that sea ice melts or not.
But remember, the big sea level game-changer is not sea ice melting, it’s glacial melt and runoff. This would be ice that isn’t in the ocean yet…it’s still up on land. For example….Greenland.
Sometimes you will hear people say things like, “Oh, the ice in the interior of this or that ice cap is increasing, therefore there’s no warming going on…etc. etc….” People like to make this incomplete argument about Greenland. Take a look at this:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=7037
Sometimes a satellite image is worth more than a thousand blog posts. The “orange” is where Greenland ice has actually increased. The “blue” is where it’s decreased. There has been some inland increase in ice. But it’s dwarfed by the loss of ice across the entire eastern portion of the ice cap. It’s also clear that most of the southern portion is losing ice, and even a small portion of the western cap. And it’s not a little bit of ice loss. It’s major.
“According to one of the study’s authors, Jay Zwally of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “This is a very large change in a very short time. In the 1990s, the ice sheet was growing inland and shrinking significantly at the edges, which is what climate models predicted as a result of global warming. Now the processes of mass loss are clearly beginning to dominate the inland growth, and we are only in the early stages of the climate warming predicted for this century.”
So, where does all that ice melt go? It runs off the cap, into the sea. That’s a sea level game changer.
Sometimes you will hear people make the same argument about the other pole. “Oh, Antarctica is gaining ice, it’s not melting, there’s no warming, etc. etc….” Again, same fallacy:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-010
“Purple” areas are where most rapid loss is taking place.
The thing that’s bothersome about both of these is the speed of the loss. It’s not just that significant portions of both caps are melting and running off. It’s that it’s happening so quickly. It’s not the kind of thing where one day you wake up and walk outside and the beach is gone, but over the next few decades this is going to increase sea level in a way that will be noticeable, and, in some places, calamitous. We’re still talking decades away here, which I guess is why it’s so easy for people to shrug it off as no big deal.
But hey, it’s not all bad. With Greenland’s ice cap rapidly melting off, we’ll gain access to more and more of the Upper Devonian sedimentary layers that contain fossils of these marvelous creatures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acanthostega
Cold comfort, I guess.
There no “glacial melt”, except in localities. Overall, the northern glaciers have decreased by 7%, while the South Pole incresed its ice mass by 37 to 43%. Since 2001, northern glaciers have stabilized as the temperature of the Earth has fallen.
The 0.3% contribution of all of mankind to heating by burning fuels is insignificant compared to large events like changes in the tilt of of the rotational axis relative to the Sun, to solar activity like sun spots, and volcanic eruptions.
That is why only a few hundred climate scientists subscribe to the Theory of Man-Made Global Warming, and 15 to 20 times that number reject it. There certainly is no “consensus”, and not enough evidence to be making political decisions based upon mere conjecture. The proposals of extremists could make this recession permanent, and starve millions of people to death each year.
jfx, this has been a good discussion and I for one welcome all contributions and discussions from all parties. If we close our minds to what others have to say, we end up being the perverbial “stop sign” when it comes to listening and learning.
Lee doesn’t need me to defend him but he states his case with supporting information he believes is true and accurate. You do the same, so do I and most others who visit this blog. I do follow-up on links on subjects that are of great interest and when I do, I find either they support my beliefs, give me cause to question them, or I simply don’t accept them.
When I made the comment about sea ice melting, I apologize because I meant to say “if the Northern ice cap were to melt, it would cause absolutely no rise in the level of the ocean.”
If you will, consider this point. I go back to the Medieval warming period and during this time, glacial ice was at a minimum. Yet, the oceans were not at any precipitous levels that placed humanity in any danger. As the cooling period progressed, conversely, the sea levels did not drop by any significant amount either. When I study the cause and effect scenarios presented by differing climatologists and scientists (if I can follow some of their presentations which tend to become rather cumbersome) I try to put it in some perspective and use my background as an analyst to do my own correlations. I don’t pretend to be a climatologist or scientist, just someone who takes time to question the status quo when I find discrepancies especially when it is such a major political hot button. ((((Side note: I became interested in the subject when I was working for an architect while in high school. We had core samples taken for a new high school and the core samples indicated the area had been underwater on two different occasions, thousands of years apart according to preliminary indications. Once the samples were taken to the science department at NC State, I never heard from them again even after trying to contact the scientists who retrieved the core samples. Needless to say, it peaked my curiosity and I explored the surrounding area looking for additional evidence. The river running through our community had some rather steep banks and there were layers of shale, shells, and other sediment that indicated the area had been underwater at one time. If I remember correctly, there were at least two different strata of sediment and in the top one, we found dozens of sharks teeth along with mollusks and a few other sea creatures not expected 80 miles inland.)))) While this may seem contradictory to my skepticism, it is not. If anything it, in my opinion, correlates with the fact that all of this took place well before the industrial revolution and the introduction of man caused CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
I also put my background to use when I was actively involved in developing computer models for predicting trends and potential actions. Considering the fact that there are over 20 different models in use today and there may be many more, each one is developed according to the scenario and information input required by each modeler. I won’t make an accusation against modelers but I will acknowledge there is great temptation to slant a model in the direction of the results one greatly desires without being aware of it.
Well, this has been interesting and a good exercise for the gray matter. I have some ribs to put on the grill and spend time with my wife.
Thanks
Less than 1% of the Pelosi Pork Money has been spent to “stimulate” the economy. Less than 4% has been allocated. Most of it will not be spent until this time next year, just in time for the 2010 elections.