ScottSA

[quote name='Canadian Blue' date='Mar 23 2007, 09:58 PM' post='199325'] What kind of logic is that? It's akin to saying, I've been smoking for the past 20 years and have developed lung cancer, if it's happening, why would it be bad? I hardly know where to begin parsing through the logic of even this simple statement. First, your premise is faulty. You are assuming that global warming is akin to lung cancer; caused by smoking. We don't even know if GW is occuring, much less whether we have anything at all to do with it. In fact it's highly unlikely that we have anything to do with it. Second, you are assuming that GW is bad, and claiming so in an effort to show that it's bad. That's a tautology that goes nowhere. I'm asking why it's bad, and you're saying it's bad because it's bad, like lung cancer. But we know that lung cancer is bad, and we know lung cancer is not Global Warming. Lung cancer is irrelevant to Global Warming. No, not really. Those guy's were independant free thinkers. Your scientists on the other hand are science fiction writers, and people funded by some massive oil company. Here we are again with baseless ad hominem. Crichton is not funded by some "massive oil company". He made his money because he writes. He writes what he writes because he's a Harvard medical doctor. Yeah, those poor tobacco companies have been taking a bad rap for nothing lately. Besides, what have tobacco companies ever done that has hurt people. And if we were talking about Big Tobacco, that might be relevant. Are you sure about that? Because all of the research I've seen has said that the climate is getting more CO2 pumped into it than ever before. That's because you haven't actually seen any research. Be honest. You haven't, have you? And really, you wouldn't know what it meant if you did, would you? The truth is that you've been told certain things and you choose to take them on faith...faith in numbers perhaps...faith in your sense of environmental responsibility maybe...whatever. I'm very far from a conspiracy theorist, but the fact is that the earth was quite a bit warmer numerous times in the past...think about it...how have several ice ages come and gone? For a fleeting instant, after one of the IPCC reports we thought it was warmer than it has been for the last 1000 years, due to statistical modelling by a fellow named Mann, until the infamous hockey stick graph was shown to be a joke. Did you know that CO2 makes up less than .05% of the earth's atmosphere? That's less than half of one percent. And that human made CO2 is a fraction of a fraction of that? Do you really imagine that cutting back on some fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the earths atmosphere is going to freeze the climate in place? That's because simple minded people think that seeing more snow on the lawn can refute scientific research. This makes no sense. Simple minded people are the folks who believe things because someone keeps yammering that it's true.

I'd like to point out that If you take the name "George Bush" and take away "g", "e", another "g", "b", "u", "s" and one of the "e"s, and add "a", d", "l", "f", "i", "t", and another "l", and then rearrange the letters, you get "Adolf Hitler". Coincidence? Perhaps. But what about the fact that both have been photographed wearing black shoes? Still think its just coincidence? Then think about this: both were men, both were white, both wore suits, and both ate tomatoes. Anyone who can call all of these similarities mere coincidence is just hiding from the TRVTH.

That's called logic, and it's not confined to creationists. Lots of people use it. It goes like this: There is not a consensus on Global Warming in spite of the best efforts of the Church of Global Warming to say there is, and even if there were, it is irrelevant. Science is not a voting endeavor, or else we would still be denying Copernicus and Galileo. Every day another scientist timidly stands up says "errr...well that's not QUITE true...", and it's only a matter of time before the same flood that saw the demise of the New Ice Age thesis starts. Remember the New Ice Age? That was the last crisis that we got all in a tizzy about.

I don't think a former Vice President and a former presidential candidate is just a "TV personality". As for the scientists who are librarian's, what's that based on. So far the biggest doubt has come from scientists who have been funded by big oil. I was talking about David Suzuki. Gore is not even worthy of mention. He has zero credentials and his reputation for honesty is in tatters. The "big oil" meme is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, "big oil" funds many of the foundations that support research on evidence of Global Warming, so one might just as profitably argue that the Church of Global Warming is funded by big oil too. Like most of the "quit smoking" programs are supported by tobacco companies, but whenever someone points out that "secondhand smoke" is less harmfull than standing on the curb at rush hour on any busy street in America, someone is always ready to point and holler that they must work for "Big Tobacco". It's just more cheap ad hominem. It's like me claiming you work for the Global Warming industry; it's meaningless and probably not true. The funny thing is that no one knows what's happening; THAT's the point Chrichton is making. Maybe the temperature is rising, and maybe not. We simply can't measure it with any degree of accuracy. The reasons for that are myraid and involve everything from the fact that climate systems are by and large regional (the north pacific is rising and the south pacific is lowering), some glaciers are melting and others increasing in bulk, parts of antarctica are breaking off seasonally and increasing seasonally; even urban encroachment on the measuring stations themselves throws historical measurements into question. On top of that, the upper limits of the atmosphere are doing precisely the opposite to what it's supposed to be doing according to the CO2 thesis. But the most obvious questions involve the predictive models used. We don't know what to put in, much less what we get out, and every margin of error is magnified exponentially with every year out we go. Think about it. We can't even predict three days into the future of a regional or even local system, and yet we are asked to believe that 100 years of predictions, varying by as much as 400% discrepancy, is "proven". No it's not. But let's assume that Global Warming is happening on earth. What makes us think we have any effect at all? Human output of CO2 is a fraction of that put out by natural sources. The IPCC report is of no help, since every day finds another "contributor" denying that he or she agreed to the conclusions, which happen to have been edited and rewritten after the fact in any event. So who do we believe? The Global Warming industry? How do they explain the same phenomenon occuring on Mars? How do they explain the Big and Little Optimums? Why did the Ice Age stop being the Ice Age? Well, because the earth was much hotter than it is today. A mere 800 years ago was warmer than it is today... Actually, the theory that seems to be gaining currency, IF the earth actually is warming, is that of solar activity, which seems to correlate much more closely with actual temperature measurements, for what they are worth, than the CO2 correlation, and all WITHOUT the 800 year lagtime that Gore forgot to mention. So yeah, maybe it's all a big plot by Big Oil. But it's much more likely that it's not. If there is a big plot involved, it's far more likely to be that of a self-serving grant industry that penalizes researchers who refuse to buy into the nonsense. In fact, it's a measure of the weakness of the Global Warming case that the new name is "Climate Change". That way we can blame hot, cold, warm and tepid on "Climate Change". In fact, the only thing we DO know for sure is that climate has always changed...since long before we discovered fire. But here's something to think about: Who says global warming is bad? If it's happening, why would it be bad?

It's hard to see how the numbers will change significantly in the weeks to come, barring a major unforeseen event. The Liberals platform since 1993 has consisted of "the other guys are scary", a platform which finally over-reached itself in the farcical "soldiers in the streets" nonsense. Then what was left of the Liberal shell went into meltdown while the NDP maintained its chronic struggle to stay out of rumphood, and Canadians got a chance to see that the Killing Fields and the Conservative government weren't synonymous after all. The truth is that Harper is by far the most intelligent PM we've had in living memory; similar to Trudeau in political smarts, but smart enough to know how not to make his personality a lightening rod...something Trudeau never learned. And his opposition is...well, to put it charitably...a used car salesman and a bumbling idiot.

No, you should watch the points he's making as a Harvard trained medical doctor who was invited by the Smithsonian Institute to address its fellows on the topic of complexity theory. Seems to me that makes more sense than "believing" a TV personality trained in biology and masquerading as an expert in climatology, or various "scientists" who turn out to be librarians. Ad hominem is fine if it works, but it sometimes has the effect of pissing into the wind, don't you think? There's nothing to "believe" or not believe. Crichton gives a succinct talk, not on climate change itself, per se, but more on the scientific merits of the case put forward by the alleged environmental "consensus". Watch it or don't watch it...it don't make no never mind to me. Only be aware that the case for manmade climate change is tumbling faster than the IPCC can rewrite findings, so it wouldn't hurt to pry open your mind to the possibility that heresy might not be false just because it's heresy.

Here is a set of videos of Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park and other techo-thrillers) presenting at The Smithsonian Associates and The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy. His 60 minute talk (plus Q&A) focuses on the topics of fear, misguided predictions and the impossibility of managing the environment with a mindset of linearity. Using the environment as an example of the ultimate complex system, Crichton exposes the inadequacies of conceiving the environment as a predictable and stable system. Extremely entertaining talk...the first section is mainly introduction, but bear with it till he comes on. Crichton is a scientist in his own right, but also a novelist, so he makes his point succinctly but with a great deal of humour. It's well worth a watch. His novel is one of the best researched I've seen. http://www.complexsys.org/crichton_movies/...hton_movies.htm Parts 1 - 8

I see that gridlock government is 'in' this year. Watch what happens when this kind of system has national emergencies to deal with or when there is a polarizing issue at stake. Oh wait, we know. See: Weimar Republic, French Third Republic, Liberum Veto...hell, look at the mess Germany would be in today if ever it wanted to move as a nation on anything. Europe and the allegedly "advanced" democracies have had the good fortune to evolve under the American deterrence umbrella and have been spared the need to actually make any far-reaching decisions of any national importance. Now they're attempting to solve that problem by merging into the EU, which amounts to complete and utter gridlock, ending almost inevitably in dissolution back into nationalist particulars.

...but based upon secularism, which may or may not accord with the wishes of the parents. Most notably in the increasing role public education is taking in the field of morality. You may believe that normalizing homosexuality, for instance, is a "rights" issue, but a great many people feel it's a morality issue. Yet secularism, and increasing the public school system, is encroaching upon belief systems that stand in opposition. Couching the debate in the terminology of 'rights' doesn't change that fact. In effect then, by seperating church and state on those terms is simply restricting all other belief systems in favor of the one you like. With respect, this is an ahistorical nonsense meme. The great secular atheisms of the 20th century killed more in one century than all the religious wars in history combined, ranging from the expansion of Islam to the 30 Years War. National Socialism alone is responsible for 50 million, Soviet Socialism for another 50 million or more, and God only knows how many Mao finished off in his sojourns across China. Pol Pot and his ilk are merely footnotes to the terrors of secular atheism.

Why, because they're Muslims? I assume you're just being silly.

We ? I think "they" have a problem, unless the perps use bombs...then it is we. How long until someone here blames Arar ? (where is mikedavid anyway) I'd say it's we, there is a problem with religious fundamentalists of all stripes, the evangelical christians give us prairie boys a bad rap. Something about an abortion doctor getting death threats a while ago. Something needs to be done to cap religious fundamentalism in Canada before it gets out of hand. Trying to draw moral equivalency between fundamentalist Christians blowing up an abortion clinic very occasionally and fundamentalist Muslims committing wholesale slaughter around the globe on a daily basis is trite at best.