speaker

leafless that's just amazing. you have the power to amaze. Here's my interpretation, since the liberals and conservatives and verging on the ndp are all pretty much the same thing, populist wannabes, it only goes to show that you can fool most of the people most of the time. The capitalists who bought off the political parties are using the game to rob everyone of their lifestyle and quality of life, and getting us to pay for it to boot.

I've read several of Orson Scott Cards sci-fi books. If he can combine work done for Patrick J.Michaels, with his own not inconsiderable imaginative powers and make a buck selling it as a column, more power to him. I can only suggest that he broaden his reading to include some of the other evidence including charts for the last hundred and fifty years that show the degree of change occurring. I haven't seen any press quoting a climate scientist as calling the deniers cranks, and I have seen more press attempts to put down the IPCC reports than I have for the other side. I haven't seen any evidence that fighting climate change would destroy the economy, though I have seen plenty of innuendo. I haven't seen any proof that the very people who have conducted the research into global warming "know" that efforts to minimize the negative impacts are pointless, quite the contrary. The evidence that Card does present concerning natural variability in the earths climate is probably very good research and will probably be useful in determining the impact of anthropgenic global warming as the scientists who are making that effort work out specifics of where, and when, and how agw will play out over the next couple of hundred years. However the material neither proves agw is faulty or even has anything to do with the current debate. I'm a little surprised that Orsen Scott Card can't see that.

Amai, gobbledy goop, Ok maybe the ipcc could do a better job by making a more user friendly home site.. Wikipedia has it pretty well covered in this article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report and for a scientific basis this one in particular. http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html talking turkey.

I don't know that ignoring the symbiosis between commerce and government is any more or less perilous to our standard of living than ignoring the symbiosis of us and the environment in general. The very problem of depending on a system designed for and requiring the subjugation and exploitation of people and resources, is the ignorance developed of the latter symbiosis. For example there is a common belief that one can deal with a specific problem in isolation if you have the right technicians working on it. The reality is that a holistic approach is the only one that has a chance of working. In this case the governmants of North America appear to believe that the necessary answers can be got without Innuit elders, Mexican peasants, or Inner city healers, or any number of other opinionated people outside of the corporate elite and academic ivory tower types. One more step in the development of aristocracy, and look what happened to them the last time around.

We all have our own thresholds for belief. You appear to believe that it is an all or nothing situation, either we surrender all authority over our economy and right down to law enforcement, to the corporate need for control or we should drive them out with pitchforks and burning brands. You may be right. I believe we have at present, an opportunity to impress upon our political parties and our bureaucrats the knowledge that they may be taking bad advice. At the least they are taking one-sided advice, and that is bound to get them and us into trouble.

I think that it is the differences that are a problem. That plus the notion that the corporate eggheads who are trying to minimize the differences are trying to do so on the sly, making it impossible for them to do because they are missing out on the input from the people most directly affected by their recommendations. I don't think it is possible in any working sense anyway. We have our separate histories and we will have our separarte futures. The liberalconservatives in this country must be very insecure and frightened little individuals to need to rely on foreign investment the way they do and to the extent that they do. Here's an interesting site that recognizes other problems. http://stopspp.com/stopspp/index.php

Shhh, don't tell them.

I figure if the conservatives who used to be alliance, and who used to be reform, and who used to be anything but part of that underhanded backstabbing conservative old boy network and jump-started the Reform, and the NDP went all out and became the co-operative commonwealth federation again, the Greens quit making deals with the underhanded backstabbing liberals, and the Bloc proceeded to get serious about governance inside Quebec, I think we might do away with the liberalconservatives and actually have a big party. Hey I'm buying. Ps it wouldn't hurt to have some of the real old-time social crediters out there too.

You see irony in one aspect, I see it in another. As one of Spider Robinsons characters once said God is an iron. That slave owners signed the constitution might be considered an irony if a somewhat heavy handed one. The loss of individual constitutional rights and national autonomy, in three countries that have been dedicated to them to the point of having corporate citizenship powerful enough to command an unilateral influence over the same governments goes beyond irony.

Well if I understood that, it means that it was ironic when Lincoln said it, because the civil war had just taken away the rights of confederate citizens to own slaves as property. Does anyone have any info on where the big corporate citizens live? Are Exxon, Archer Daniels Midland, Abitibi, etc. really unrepentant southern statists and is that why they are trying to gain ownership of the world? Revenge? Time to get a life guys.

socialist money sucking scheme, ya gotta love it. and comparing him to Dion is like comparing two peas in pea soup. both look washed out and devoid of nutrient.

Looking at the overall plan by the Greens I like what I see from reducing subsidies to fossil fuel producers, I think that would go a long way, to helping establish world wide standards for carbon credits and sequestration, conservation, and some of the other points the greens are making. I agree about the carbon tax though because I think it would be counter-productive in as much as many people will look on it as a tax grab, at least it is an unsustainable tax in that as the usage drops and we run out of oil and gas the government income will drop. The reasons carbon taxes are so prevalent in politicians and economists thinking is at least twofold, we can't seem to get ourselves motivated to clean up our act unless it's going to be cheaper than the present system, thus you tax the present system to encourage change. The second thing is that politicians of any stripe don't want to tackle the core economic plus in rampant consumerism, meanwhile it is the negative side of our lifestyle that is causing global warming, pollution, waste, etc. It is interesting that the same paper had this piece by David Suzuki and the foundations volunteering to participate in an ad campaign for Ontario Hydro encouraging people to cutback on electricity use. If Ontario Hydro is successful maybe our politicians will look on that as a sign that we have moved beyond the need to be punished for our destructive habits. http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki...4220429-ca.html

I don't think that my referencing it is ironic, it was intentional. What is ironic is that the country of it's birth is losing it's government as much as Canada and Mexico in this struggle with the SPP and corporate elitism.

lololol

It is so noted, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if those same multinationals have executives pushing for increased harmony of structures whether political, social, financial, or environmental in other countries, in order that trade in the world and world trade is made easier for them, even if it causes irritation and loss of freedom to the rest of us. At some point it stops being government of the people, by the people, for the people, and becomes the same for the multinationals. I don't mind particularily if it comes to that in the States but I would hate for it to happen in Canada and Mexico, because as I said earlier they are missing out on way to much of social value and social reality by being elitist.

Whereas you have a deep understanding that the agreement reached in Kyoto to combat Anthropogenic Global Warming wasn't an agreement, but was a con foisted upon all the other nations of the world by the Europeans who were simply trying to get an advantage over their North American cousins in the ongoing trade wars. aaallllrrrighty then. Perhaps this will help you get over your conspiracy theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kyoto...col_signatories Here's an interesting point of view that I enjoyed. http://ldesign.wordpress.com/2007/03/21/gl...-and-paralysis/

I think the point is that there is a difference. In fact as Drea points out there are a lot of differences. What is unfortunate is that we have a group of top executives of multinational companies directing efforts to take out differences that are slowing down their efforts to make everything part of the marketplace.

I was beginning to wonder where you saw cause and effect beginning to. But then I didn't know that the Europeans set up the Kyoto deal by themselves.

Telegopoly have a look at this, http://www.ipcc.ch/ for an indication of why people should worry about it this time. our scientists have found good reason to worry. Noahbody, in case you haven't yet got an answer to your question I think this article sums it up pretty well. http://techpolicy.typepad.com/tpp/2004/02/..._climate_c.html

Argus, the europeans were clever enough to throw their whole economies into chaos and regression by accepting Poland, E Germany, the Czechs and the Slovaks, etc. in order to get their ghg emissions down in order to suck North America into a battle over who could be more environmentally friendly. Wow. with that kind of deviousness it's no wonder our leaders have been a little confused on what we should be doing about global warming. Have I mentioned that I don't put much faith in this batch of liberalsandconservatives?

I expect that there are moderating influences even on a phenomenon like global warming. The oceans are able to absorb more heat, winds might change taking more heat over the poles thereby reducing the rate of global warming but in the process melting more snow and ice making the next warming season that much more of one. This chart is an example of what scientists are looking at for average temps. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/ This one shows how weather may be helping us out in the short term by spreading the global warming out over colder areas. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070531HuberNature.html

I don't think that Kyoto was pulled out of a hat, nor do I think it was chosen so that the Europeans could take advantage of the fall of communism to get a head start. A head start on who? the name of the game here is not one of international diplomatic oneupmanship. If the Europeans are thinking that way, which I doubt, given the serious attrempts being made over there, but if they are, well here's a flying raspberry for them. 1990 was chosen as a base year to start doing something about global warming. going back on that agreement will be what minimizes the gains that we might make in the effort.

That's a strange argument, I have a house as a resource, should I sell it to the highest bidder? What if the offered price is less than I think it is worth? Market force pressure for the best price is exerted upon both ends of the deal, buyer and seller. If we tie ourselves too tightly to one market, which deep integration with the US would do and which the security and prosperity partnership would do to us, we remove our ability to negotiate on equal footing with other markets. If I agree to sell my house to my neighbour using his system of evaluation and his market value estimates he might just have the inclination to take advantage of the situation. We are better to leave our options open.

Another thing the Europeans are doing, similar to Canadian and American strategies, is to import more of their manufactured goods from countries not currently subject to Kyoto protocols.. Kudos to all our political and business leaders for once again figuring out how to avoid responsibility and shift blame onto someone else. I know, just for a change lets all vote the same guys in next time too.

Sure, The Holocaust is a fact. It is also a fact that holocaust is still a usable word to describe a truly terrible event such as one that would see the extinction of large numbers of species, whether or no Manunkind is one of them. Because Rex says that the environmentalists are making reference to the slaughter of innocents in the Nazi concentration camps doesn't mean that they are. It might just mean that Rexs' mind may have taken too many analogy courses in the after hours. That does not mean that the destruction of biodiversity in the form of species extinction is not a holocaust. Through all of our destructive habits towards the environment many of them leading to Global Warming, we are causing that destruction. Denial is not a facet of 1930s central Europe, it is very much with us today. It was not the scientists that chose the 95% figure for the degree of surety that the scientists felt about their research into global warming impacts,. It was the politicians that want to appease people with a mentality of denial that came up with that figure.