Twenty years ago I worked with a woman who made the statement that we never had "weird weather" like earthquakes, hurricanes, etc, before we starting sending rocket ships into space! She stated that because at the time the news was full of all sorts of those things. I asked her if she was religious, and she replied that she was. I then asked her if she remembered where in the Bible it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. I asked, "Wasn't that weird weather? And do you think that happened because someone launced a rocket into space?" She had no answer; she didn't have a clue.

Perhaps the modern day lefties are getting their sensationalistic news from the Weekly World News? (Which would be why they have such weird beliefs.)
Garry K | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 10:43 am | #

No one has explained whether Noah had to save kangaroos(or koala bears, for that matter) and how they managed to hop across oceans to his Ark. (The Flood could've been a local affair rather than global. The continents had drifted apart alrerady then, from what I heard).

Now the one who "created the Internet" becomes the tutelary environmental god of the Globe. Haven't heard of such mention of any tutelary god wrt environment in both the Mahayana Buddhism patheon or Hindu pantheon of such a one. Or ancient Grecian. Only now is one made.
wits0 | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 11:18 am | #

Hence my continuing search for Intelligent life on Earth. So far, I have found that most of the superficially higher life forms on earth fail to exhibit very much intelligence. They demonstrate very little awareness that there exists a history to learn from and they continue to act as if their fantasy and whim creates reality.
Lionell Griffith | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 11:42 am | #

This post exemplifies the problem of modern environmentalism. Since it has been co-opted by the Left for socialist and communist ends, conservatives must oppose it as a matter of ideology. Not that I blame them, but this is not an issue that should be as politicized as it is.
JonBuck | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 12:32 pm | #

Conservatives should oppose it as a matter of science. The science is not, I repeat not, on the side of today's current crop of environmentalists.
Gore gives further meaning to "Junk Science."
Dennis | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 1:16 pm | #

So we don't act as God desires so he rains down ungodly amounts of abuse on us. This is our fault because if we were only better he wouldn't abuse us.

What is it we tell woman in such a situation with a man? Oh yeah, that's right, we tell them to throw the bum out.

The Left does seem to have gotten a bit apocalyptic on environmentalism. Yet, those very ones who preach that we are too many upon this world, seem very reluctant to make a bold gesture an remove themselves from it. Like priest and shaman from times past, sacrifice is for the believer not the shaman. Funny how that works out.
JKB | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 1:28 pm | #

Dennis:

That's exactly my point. It's gotten so bad we can't agree on the basic scientific facts involved. I don't think that the climate scientists are totally off base, here. However, a while back Dr. Richard Lindzen, an MIT climatologist, published an article in the Wall Street Journal that skeptics like him are either derided as industry stooges and can't get funding for their research. I keep that in mind also.

I find the whole situation very frustrating. You can't act if you can't even agree on the facts.
JonBuck | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 2:34 pm | #

Anybody remember the Y2K scare?

Check for commonalities.

I had the same type of arguments against the rantings of those who wanted the world as we know it to end on New Years eve, with all the same weird rebuttals, pseudo-scientific "experts" refuting my rational explanations as to why such a thing could not happen, complete with the recurse to the all-too-prevalent ad hominem attack in place of logical argument to the position.

When the predicted problems and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it did NOT happen on January 1st, you couldn't find a single soul willing to admit that they had even entertained the idea and it was moveon.org(tm) to the next wildass conspiracy theory, of course.

"We have met the enemy and he is us!" -- Pogo


.
The Machine | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 3:12 pm | #

Yet, those very ones who preach that we are too many upon this world, seem very reluctant to make a bold gesture an remove themselves from it.

What are you talking about? They're in favor of removing themselves from the earth - they're all pro-abortion.
Michael Andreyakovich | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 4:17 pm | #

> Anybody remember the Y2K scare? Check for commonalities.

Well, that's not an honest analogy. The business world DID take Y2k seriously, and invested billions into checking its systems against potential problems. It's quite possible the primary reason it was such a "bust" was *precisely* because it WAS taken seriously.

I don't think that is the case at all with EcoDoom.

There is nowhere near the needed level of understanding of long term climate to begin to make any sort of worthwhile speculation, even, as to the proper direction for action.

It's as though we were, oh, doctors, and we decided to save the president's life from a bad cold by letting the blood out because of what we'd observed... and we all know what the results of that was (or should).

When it comes to long-term climate, "shamans" really IS the appropriate analogy. We have the inkling of the causes involved, but no grasp of how thoroughly they interact, nor if there are any we likely haven't noticed yet.

For example, the role of the ocean as a giant CO2 suck when CO2 levels go up (water absorbes CO2 and holds it -- think of flat Coca Cola. There's still CO2 in there). What happens when the ice caps melt juuuuuust a bit and fresh water goes into the ocean? Fresh water can absorb massive amounts of CO2. Right. It's a natural "control" over the level of CO2 in the atmosphere...

Who among you have ever heard or thought of such a thing? Climate specialists are aware of it, but they don't have good, reliable numbers on it sufficient to make an equation that they can trust well (chaotic elements come into play, like where things heat up, etc.)

I'd lay you damned good odds if you asked Mr. "I'm-expert-enough-to-write-a-book-and-make-a- movie-about-it" he's never even heard of this natural regulatory mechanism -- AT ALL. **Pfeh**
obloodyhell | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 4:54 pm | #

Heh heh...have you been reading "Godless"?
I am...Coulter is not exactly my cup of tea when it comes to style, but she's usually right on. Still, a bit hard to read - kind of like Streisand...I like Barbara Streisand as a singer - for one song. More than that and I find her annoying. Not any particular song, just I like her in very small doses. Likewise Coulter - her book is pretty slim, not exactly difficult reading, but I just find more than a half hour or so and I just have to put the book down for a while.
Her humor is "Saharan"..._extremely_ dry.
suek | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 5:03 pm | #

Speaking of Y2K....

I work with computers, and I remember how some folks (the non-Macintosh folks!) were issuing all sorts of doom and gloom scenarios about the power system, water supply, etc all going to fail because of computer glitches. I had to remind them that at least at the moment, that humans are still the masters of machines, and I believed that the engineers running the power systems, etc., were smart enough to be able to manually control things in the event that there were a few computer malfunctions (of which there were hardly any).

I think the Left needs to read the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf!" When you cry wolf one too many times, well, after a while nobody believes you any more. I stopped believing the lunacy issuing from the left years ago.

BTW, does anyone remember the "gasoline shortage" here in the US back in the mid-1970s? Remember when some folks predicted we only had at most 50 years of oil left to pump out of the ground. It looks like that prediction was wrong too.
Garry K | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 6:41 pm | #

Every year in NH people talk about how this winter is very strang - unlike any they have ever known. It never fails to fascinate folks that each year is different, and they draw conclusions from it.

I am struck by how mush Al Gore's "passion" on the subject fascinates people. Without making the explicit logical connection, they are using this a a proxy for accuracy.

Which is nuts.
Assistant Village Idiot | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 6:47 pm | #

Ur...Democrat/Lefties are "environmentalists", Republican/Conservatives prefer the tag, "Conservationists". Words mean things: the first is religion, the second is science. Just for the record!
Danny Lemieux | Email | Homepage | 06.18.06 - 11:42 pm | #

Garry, that all ties into the Club of Rome stuff, along with all of Paul Ehrlich's ever-mutating doom and gloom scenarios.

You want a good one, go look into the writings of Julian Simon -- esp. his 1980 to 1990 bet with Ehrlich. Hint: Ehrlich lost, big time.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Jul...n_Lincoln_Simon

The Doomslayer
http://www.wired.com/wired/archi...02/ ffsimon.html

Another book worth reading if you can find it (it's out of print but you can often find a copy through amazon's used book locator) is J. P. Vajk's "Doomsday Has Been Cancelled", ca. 1980. It, too, throws sand in the gears of ecodoom.

Other sources of good up to date info are
Greenie Watch -- http://antigreen.blogspot.com/
Junk Science -- http://www.junkscience.com/
and
Still Waiting For Greenhouse -- http://www.john-daly.com/

In particular, on the last link, read the entry about the Isle of the Dead.

Also on some distantly related issues there's always Michael Fumento (although he ventures more into "Frankenfood" and Fad Diets) -- http://fumento.com/weblog/
obloodyhell | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 2:50 am | #

JKB:
"Like priest and shaman from times past, sacrifice is for the believer not the shaman."

How stupid do you think we are? You're just quoting Jesus from the gospels: they bind up heavy burdens for others but do not carry them themselves.

Congratulations, you think just like a man who thought he was God. Of course, he is, but what excuse do you have?
vuljean | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 3:30 am | #

Very clever, equating environmentalism with primative non-scientific beliefs.

Except that the warnings about global warming *is* based on science.

Fact: Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared, ie heat. Thus a gas mix with a higher percentage of CO2 will warm up quicker than one with a lower %
Fact: There is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now then there has been in the past 94 million years.
Fact: It started increasing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and has significanty increased in the past 50 years. [can we say period doubling?!]

The conclusion should obvious even to creationests.

There is *not* an increasing number of scienests who don;t believe in global warming. 99.9% of the nay-sayers are media pundits, shucksters in the employ of the oil companies and 'experts' with junk science degrees bought from corrispondence course collages.
Syona | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:31 am | #

I think a big part of what makes AlGore rant is that he just got lonely and missed the media attention he once had; "I should be President!".
Tom TB | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:42 am | #

Fact is the period that had the highest concentration of CO2 was the period when the lowest temperature on Earth were recorded by ice core drillings and other dating methods.
The fact is that man is insignificant compared to the various cycles that governing us as a planet, solar storms, apohelion(sp)verse perihelion, the declination of the planet in relationship to the Sun, there is a 42 year cycle that I just cannot remember at the moment (senior moment) and that our yearly orbits are not the same. There are large nunber of "scientists" that work in the field that think Gore is not very conversant with the facts. I have read one by Tom harris of the Canadian Free Press, dtd 15 June 2006, where a number of Canadian scientist challenge Gore's meanderings.
One should also be careful in attacking faith for quantum mechanics may prove the compatibility of faith and science.
Dennis | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 9:15 am | #

That Wired article on Simon was excellent -- thank you very much, OBH.
Acksiom | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 9:24 am | #

"it doesn't usually generate any useful strategies that will have significant impact in the real world."

My deepest respects for Dr Sanity, but this isn't quite true is it. I mean, if a given population is given a paradigm in which to understand a cause and given a clear cut plan of action to respond (behave themselves, work together, etc) this DOES have real impacts on that community (otherwise why would this be so common a thing?).

Morale among refugees is tremendously important in any disaster. Feeling empowered to 'save' the world by working together can motivate a downtrodden people to pull together and help each other out.

Now whether or not the shaman, priest, or prophet is right is besides the point, the effect is that the given population pulls together rather than breaks apart in acrimony and mutually assured destruction.
John | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 9:53 am | #

Back in October of 2005, in Stockholm, Sweden, in response to a question about how the United States would be different if he had been elected president, he blurted out: "We would not be routinely torturing people."

[..]

February 12, 2006 speech at the Jiddah Economic Forum in Saudi Arabia. There, the former Vice President stated in a prepared speech that in the United States after 9/11 we have "indiscriminately rounded up" Arabs who are then "held in conditions that are just unforgivable." Furthermore, he accused the United States of inflicting "terrible abuses" on Arabs. Even using American standards of what constitutes "terrible abuses" and "unforgivable" conditions, which are far stricter than what they would be in Saudi Arabia, the questioning and sometimes detention (in perfectly normal American jails) of associates of the 9/11 hijackers, or the deporting of a few Arabs for being in the country illegally on expired visas, doesn't come close.

Al Gore said these things in Saudi Arabia, home of Wahabiism, and home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers. Indeed, Jiddah is the hometown of Osama bin Laden. Gore said these things in an atmosphere where all over the Muslim world, Muslims are demonstrating, often violently, about cartoons printed in an obscure Danish newspaper. What, exactly, was Gore thinking about when he prepared these statements? Was he more concerned about portraying himself and Democrats as enemies of the current American administration than he was about possibly inciting more violence against Americans and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan?

"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill

http:// www.allthingsbeautiful.co...angels_hav.html
b | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 3:16 pm | #

Fact: There is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now then there has been in the past 94 million years.
Fact: It started increasing at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and has significanty increased in the past 50 years. [can we say period doubling?!]

The conclusion should obvious even to creationests. What makes you think that everyone who disagrees with you is a creationist (I'm most certainly not).
I have several objections to the global warming alarmism:
1. Yes, the earth seems to be warming. We're also coming out of an ice age. Furthermore, global temperatues have hardly been stable throughout geological time. They've gone up and down, up and down, over and over again, with minor cycles as small as within human-historical timescales. The earth has been as much as 10C colder and 20C warmer than it is at present at various times in the past.
2. We don't even account for most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. I've heard that we emmit at about 15% the rate that natural sources do, and that we might be responsible for as little as 5% of the total concentration of CO2.
3. We'll have to deal with climate change, and the viscittudes of "mother" nature anyway (!!), because it's going to change no matter what we do. Even granting the premises that we're responsible for global warming, we'll be better able to deal with it if we're rich and industrial. We'd be at nature's "mercy" if we were poor and "sustainable", and we'd probably die a lot more from famines due to pre-industrialized agriculture than we would because of a long sloooow period of sea level rise. Man has built Venice and populated Holland for pete's sake! We built the Panama canal, what'll make sea-walls and reclaimation even difficult for us?

Fact: Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared, ie heat. Thus a gas mix with a higher percentage of CO2 will warm up quicker than one with a lower %

BTW, quick quip: infrared is a spectrum of light. It's not heat. Heat (at least in the sense that we're talking about here) is energy embodied in the thermal motion of the air. If something absorbed ultraviolet light, it would absorb heat from an ultraviolet lamp. And so on and so forth. (nothing special about infrared) The sun emmits most of it's energy in the form of yellow to green light. If we emmitted a dense yellow gas into the atmosphere, we'd be in far more trouble as far as global warming is conerned! :-P
Aaron | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 6:41 pm | #

> Fact: There is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now then there has been in the past 94 million years.

Fact. Please point me to your source for this ridiculous assertion, so that I may skewer it with the kind if derisive fisking it so richly deserves for you.

> [can we say period doubling?!]

Fact: Can we say "ignorance is no foundation for expressing an opinion?" I knew we could. When you've actually taken enough math and science to actually describe the basis for the concept, especially the fact that correlation and causation are not ONE AND THE SAME -- then your "facts" might actually match reality.

> The conclusion should obvious even to creationests.

Fact: Disagreement with Leftists == Creationist Ignoramuses. Right? AAAAANNNNKKKKKKK!!!!
True FACT: While I'm sure this crowd has its share, most of the posters are not creationists, at least not in the sense of "AH BelEEVE in tha Bibal, and Nowar duz it say nuthing 'bout no monkeys!"... which, of course, is the picture you attempt to equate, since it's the only one in your head. This, obliquely, is an ad hominem argument, and shows how little actual notion of either science, or, more critically, the principles of science, you grasp.

> There is *not* an increasing number of scienests who don;t believe in global warming.

Fact: Saying it *must* be so! "I SAY IT I SAY IT I SAY IT!! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo!"
As Alex said to his droogs: "Yarblockos to you!"

> 99.9% of the nay-sayers are media pundits, shucksters in the employ of the oil companies and 'experts' with junk science degrees bought from corrispondence course collages

Oh, come ON. Who the hell bought off Michael Crichton? The man's a hell of a lot richer than you, has SOME grasp of science, and spoke of the general problems of politicizing science (specifically with regard to Climate Science) to the audience at CAL TECH.

The man got a standing ovation. Were THEY all shills of the oil companies?

Earth to Syona,
Earth to Syona!!
Can you please let us know when your shuttle lands?

Need I say it?

OK:

WHACK WHACK WHAKKITY WHACK.

Why, YES, I *do* have a Vorpal pen.
OBloodyHell | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:08 pm | #

> I have read one by Tom harris of the Canadian Free Press, dtd 15 June 2006, where a number of Canadian scientist challenge Gore's meanderings.

This is here, for those of you who would rather listen to "obvious oil corporation shills" than ignorant imbeciles like Al Gore. I think the doc or one of the commenters originally put me onto it.
OBloodyHell | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:12 pm | #

> The sun emmits most of it's energy in the form of yellow to green light. If we emmitted a dense yellow gas into the atmosphere, we'd be in far more trouble as far as global warming is conerned! :-P

Actually, aaron, you've got it backwards. If something is yellow, it REFLECTS that form of light. This would trigger global cooling in your presumedly intended scenario. This is why the effect of CO2 is nowhere near as simple as idiot-girl imagines it.

Think: More CO2. More heat. More water evaporates. More clouds form. More sunlight gets reflected as a result of the increased cloud cover. Ice Age occurs.

Also:
More heat. Ice caps melt. More fresh water into the oceans means they absorb a LOT of additional CO2 (think flat cola -- it still has CO2 dissolved in it, just not as much). Which causes the CO2 levels to go DOWN. Which cools things back off.

We're talking about one of the three or four most complex systems humans have yet tried to gain an understanding of (economics and large scale social interaction being two others). We're currently at about the same level as those doctors who bled people in the 1700s. That is to say, sufficiently knowledgeable to know that waving the magic JUJU stick in the air going "OOGAH BOOGAH!! OOGAH BOOGAH!! BOOGAH! BOOOOOOGAH!" isn't likely to affect things -- but not a long ways beyong that.

...But Syona wants to establish long-term sociopolitical policy based on the results of bleeding the earth... LOL.
OBloodyHell | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:21 pm | #

Note, those two scenarios are not conclusive, either -- they are stated just to show how it MIGHT not work the simplistic way she imagines (I won't justify it with the moniker of 'thinking') that they do.
OBloodyHell | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:23 pm | #

Actually, aaron, you've got it backwards. If something is yellow, it REFLECTS that form of light. This would trigger global cooling in your presumedly intended scenario. This is why the effect of CO2 is nowhere near as simple as idiot-girl imagines it.


Oh well. Anyone can fumble their details.
Aaron | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 8:51 pm | #

However, Aaron, not everybody will admit to having done so.

In fact, far from it.

So, you know, kudos to you, after all.
Acksiom | Email | Homepage | 06.19.06 - 9:15 pm | #

Not to mention that the VAST majority of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are... wait for it... water vapor.

CO2 is not only a small minority of greenhouse gas, it's also plant food. We're simply introducing a minor schedule change in the natural cycle:

Plants consume CO2 and produce O2.
O2 concentration increases.
Fires start easier and grow faster, animals consume plants and reproduce, both events produce CO2, consume O2.
CO2 levels rise, O2 levels fall.
Plants take advantage of increased CO2 and grow faster, produce O2.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

If the plants could speak, they'd say "Build More SUVs!"
Merovign | Email | Homepage | 06.20.06 - 3:33 am | #