WIP

Many other species before us have grown exponentially before they became extinct; and we do not control all of the variables regarding our environment. We are collectively, about to discover shortly, the limits of the Green Revolution. If your notion that we can disregard the on-going mass extinction going on around us, as long as we have our hybrid plants and oil-based fertilizers had any basis in fact, attempts to create artificial biospheres, like the Biosphere Two experiments, would not have been such colossal failures. The most disturbing aspect of their inability to control simple ecological functions, such as maintaining optimal atmosphere levels, was that they could not figure out the reasons for continual failures when the biosphere was sealed. This is not only a bad omen for a race that carelessly and ignorantly disregards the health of the planet's biosphere, it is a crippling blow to the dream of long space voyages and permanent space colonies! The recent revelations that BP interfered with the Libyan terrorist held in a Scottish prison, indicates that corporate culture is worse than amoral, it is psychopathic. The actions of BP fit the pattern of abuses of multinational oil companies who set up shop in places like Sudan, even while in the middle of genocide. Corporations should be severely restricted in their power and influence, as the U.S. Founding Fathers intended. The problem today is that they are the ones wielding the power, and right wing fools that have elevated greed and avarice to a moral virtue, are big reason for the twisted thinking that corporations should be free of government restrictions and taxes. Libertarians are mindlessly supporting the monsters who are destroying our world. Loaning large sums of money to Third World dictators and demanding harsh terms for later repayment, which usually includes a demand that resource companies be allowed in to plunder their natural resources and buy up large tracts of land, is not "leave the place alone." It is just a ruse by libertarians to wash their hands of any ethical obligations to others. I should add that the ecological damage done by Western nations heavy use of fossil fuels, is another example of interfering with impoverished nations -- since there is only one atmosphere, and it covers the globe. So far, the most damaging effects from man-made climate change have occurred in the equatorial regions, where the poorest live, and have made the smallest contribution to the rise in greenhouse gases. The Copenhagen Climate Summit was supposed to address this problem by reducing Western contributions and compensate poor nations for damage done and assist them to develop without having to go the coal/oil route already traveled. Needless to say, collective selfishness led by propaganda from the oil industries scuttled any serious action on any of these issues, and the summit was a waste of time. It's not a problem that will be solved by finding more sources of energy.

There are a number of studies like the one I cited previously, which correlate anxiety with religious extremism, and moral outrage with support for suicide bombing. When someone perceives their culture is at risk, someone in the group may lash out in an extreme manner, such as a suicide attack. But, the most significant feature is the attitude and support for such an extreme tactic by their societies. The psychological study mentioned previously, showed that support for suicide attacks rises when the group considers their lives are at risk -- and especially when their culture is perceived to be at risk. The group that considers their society to be weaker, will justify any form of asymmetrical warfare (like suicide attacks), but is that any worse than the group who sees themselves as the dominant culture increasing their support for pre-emptive nuclear attacks, as in the Rutgers Study? Also, your theory that suicide terrorism is caused by a desire to dominate other cultures doesn't explain why suicide bombing tactics are such a modern phenomena that do not have historical precedent in Islamic interpretations of martyrdom before recent decades; nor does it explain why the largest number of suicide bombings in modern times have been committed by Hindu Tamils against Buddhist Sri Lankans -- so what is the religious reward for Hindu suicide bombers? No, just the opposite! The answer to the question of why someone would resort to suicide attacks is revenge and a perceived lack of power. The Chechen Black Widows did not volunteer to become suicide bombers to force their religious beliefs upon others -- they did out of revenge against Russians who stamped out their independence movement and killed their husbands and sons in the process.

Since when is justice blind? Justice is skewed by race, social status and money. As noted back during the O.J. trial, a millionaire has never received the death penalty for murder in America, even though there have been a few millionaires convicted of first degree murder. Having the money to afford a defense team that can turn corrupt, incompetent police departments inside out usually puts the heat on the D.A. to wrap things up before more bad publicity gets aired. So, why did Rush Limbaugh get away with paying a fine for drug trafficking, instead of getting up to 15 years in prison, like some less fortunate, less well-connected addicts have received in Florida for similar offenses? Why was the adjoining investigation into the allegations that he laundered money used for his drug buys dropped by the police? Some people seem to be above the law! No, the right wing squawking was about the case being downgraded from a criminal investigation to a civil case, which Adam Serwer pointed out was made in January when Bush & co. were still in charge of the ship. Now they are shifting the goal posts to complain about not pursuing a civil case. Face it, these morons didn't even bother to check the date of the first decision, and that's why they now have to feign outrage over a civil complaint. And in your brief quote, cut off in mid sentence, you added your own words at the end of it....some people get prosecuted for that kind of tampering! Why not post the complete paragraph anyway to provide proper context? Then again, why don't post Phil Jones complete answer for the same reason? A few commenters on my previous post about the Obama administration not being in office when the decision was made not to pursue a criminal case against the New Black Panther Party are arguing out that conservative outrage is over the subsequent decision, made in May, not to further pursue the civil complaint after obtaining an injunction against the individual who was holding a baton. That decision was made by a career official at the Justice Department after an evidence review and reportedly approved by an Obama political appointee, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli. The decision was still made by career lawyers in the section; there's no evidence, beyond J. Christian Adams' statements, that Perrelli had the case dismissed. At any rate, several conservative figures have suggested that the Obama administration refused to pursue a criminal case, and that's not what happened. But, as I've explained previously, the decision not to further pursue the civil case reflected long-standing practice regarding Section 11(, which prior to the Bush administration had last been used to stop a statewide voter-caging effort. The allegation that would have supported pursuing a broader case was the idea that there was a nationwide effort to place New Black Panthers at polling stations for the purpose of suppressing white votes -- the original complaint read that the NBPP "made statements and posted notice that over 300 members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would be deployed at polling locations during voting on November 4, 2008, throughout the United States." The career attorneys recommended dismissing the case on the basis that there wasn't enough evidence to support that claim. Not only did no voters come forward to say they had been intimidated by the NBPP that day, there were no further incidents on Election Day 2008 that would have suggested a large-scale effort to intimidate white voters. According to a letter sent to Rep. Lamar Smith by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, the NBPP "suspended" its Philadelphia political chapter over the incident and subsequently disavowed their actions, which seems like an odd thing to do for an organization that is supposedly disclosing its attempt to intimidate white voters in its publicly available materials. Show me your evidence for lies at MediaMatters! Are you serious? Did you actually read it? Brock admitted afterwards in a number of editorials and books that he was a hired goon just to write hit pieces for his benefactors....I'm surprised you would want to shine a light on strategy of big money right wing think tanks and their fake news and information sites! David Brock was getting payed 300,000 a year by the American Spectator, just to write editorials. That didn't include his royalties from writing books like the one you mentioned, which was created just to impugn the character of the woman who was in a position to derail Clarence Thomas from getting on the Supreme Court. How many other right wing mouthpieces are in it, not for what they believe, but because there is so much money to be made from these well-heeled benefactors? One thing for certain, David Brock doesn't have near as lucrative career today as an honest journalist, as when he was a right wing hit man. And when was the last time the Irish were a disenfranchised group in America? Certainly long before the Kennedys rose to prominence!

You are living in fantasy land if you think there is room for more people and more resources to plunder. We are part of an ecosystem that requires more than hybrid plants to function. The rate of extinctions so far have already severely degraded the biosphere, and there will be a population reduction one way or another, whether those with expansionist dreams are ready for it, or not. That is the crap dished out by gangster capitalists who are trying to figure out how to plunder what's left of Third World resources. The IMF and World Bank have set up a system of finance that deliberately bankrupts most Third World nations and then uses their debts to extract favourable commercial terms for large multinational corporations. The coming food crisis is already inspiring large agribusiness firms to buy up large tracts of land in Africa. The end result is that Colonial Age never ended; only the political structures of colonialism. So, all greedy libertarians, especially Ayn Rand fans, have no credibility in their self-reliance rhetoric on the world stage. They have a moral obligation to redress the wrongs that have been done to the poorest and most vulnerable regions of the world, even though it will never likely be a legal obligation. Do you think the Earth is just going to keep on expanding to accommodate a growing human population? Otherwise this is totally absurd.

The problems go way beyond distribution and money. The Green Revolution was a temporary stopgap that ended famines in India and some other Third World nations, but the agriculture system of hybrid plants, oil-based fertilizers and large irrigation projects, is taking a toll by depleting top soil and using up available water resources. The fight for clean water will be bigger than the competition for oil in a few years. The worst fallout of the Green Revolution is that it inspired a business-as-usual attitude that birth control programs could be scrapped, and a big factor in reducing the effectiveness of the U.N. programs was the unusual collaboration of the Roman Catholic Church, the Organization of Islamic Countries, and U.S. Republican administrations beginning with Reagan and ending with Bush, to defund abortion and condom distribution programs. It's not directly related to this issue, but it needs to be mentioned as a side point that Stephen Harper's government is stepping in place of the Republicans, by offering aid to maternal health programs that offer nothing for family planning and ban the abortion option for women....may he rot in hell. So now, along with environment policy, we have yet another reason to be ashamed of our Government's conduct on the world stage. Stephen Harper is doing his part to ramp up Third World population problems, all so he can have an opportunity to win more support from religious fanatics.

No, population reduction is not inevitable...except for the final crash when a population has exceeded available resources. There has been a slight reduction in population growth rates since the peak in the 1960's, but there has been an increase in the reproductive age demographic, which will likely mean a doubling of world population in less than 50 years. Combine that with the continued increase in resource consumption, and it's a matter of when, not if, there is a worldwide Easter Island type of crash awaiting civilization. The only chance of avoiding disaster is to reduce population and consumption.

That's a crock of !@#$%. You know as well as anyone else who chooses to be honest, that minorities can be marginalized in a political system that doesn't need their votes...especially when they don't have money. One of the duties of a judicial system is to protect minority rights from the tyranny of a majority. A quick scan of arrests, convictions, and incarcerations, would reveal that you are more likely to be arrested for an offense if you're black, and more likely to be convicted and incarcerated as well, especially if you are way down the economic ladder and have a public defender hired as your attorney. If law enforcement was really colour-blind and not skewed by money, Rush Limbaugh would be doing hard time for his two drug trafficking offenses! And as mentioned above, it is already in the present system. And just like Faux News, you cannot refute the sources MM provides which show how this new Black Panther Party is an FN creation designed to feed the frenzy of their fat, middle-aged white audience. MediaMatters, which in spite of all of the whining and bleating from your favourite millionaires and billionaires, is unable to demonstrate any inaccuracy in their analysis of the top right wing offenders, like Limbaugh and the assorted nuts and freaks on FoxNews. Most of what David Brock does...who pretty much is MediaMatters, with an assist from mostly volunteers who send in video....is take the most outrageous crap on popular right wing shows, and present it to us non-fans who don't watch their crap anymore. I'm sure you have well financed right wing media watchdogs like Accuracy IN Media, in your bookmarks, so don't act like it's an outrage for the opposition to have someone keeping track of right wing propaganda. I'm surprised you even bothered trying to respond to this, since as I pointed out yesterday, Adam Serwer of the American Prospect proved that DOJ decision took place before the Obama Administration was in office.....so blame it on those Bush Administration commies! And, in all of the manufactured outrage of Faux News, they never mentioned that fact.

I don't care for using sex to sell products or personalities, but the worst offenders are on your side who make the false claims of higher moral standards (that they fail to live up to) and try to censor the airwaves and repress all forms of sexual expression elsewhere. If you can't figure out the hypocrisy of conservatives using sex and sexual imagery for their messaging, you're either in denial or being deliberately deceitful.

No, it cannot! The best estimates I've seen indicate that we would need three planet earths to supply the natural resources for everyone to have an American-style living standard. This isn't rocket science! The Earth is a finite resource, while our population and economic demands are growing exponentially; both have to be reduced if we want future generations to have a good chance of continued success on planet earth.

Sometimes Grist has good information...but this isn't one of them! No doubt there is a racist angle to calls for population control, but to use that to deny the problem of overpopulation is the wrong advice to give nations that are already beyond the breaking point. This is similar to that British commie who made a climate change-denial movie a couple of years back, because he decided that taking action against global warming impeded Third World nations' opportunity to industrialize. It is stupid reasoning in both cases, because the larger problems related to natural resources don't give a crap about human political wishes. In India, there is a renewed effort to re-introduce the sterilization programs. Sterilization became a vulgar issue for decades because the authoritarian regime of Indira Gandhi tried to impose forced sterilization....which you may guess was targeted largely at lower class and lower caste Indians. The reason why they are talking about offering incentives for a voluntary sterilization system now, is because the general consensus is finally starting to realize that there are no more green revolutions to be had. In fact, mechanized agriculture based on hybrid plants and oil-based fertilizers has already degraded the topsoil in most of the good agricultural regions of the country. They are running out of sources for fresh water for the cities, and of course the changing climate (which many idiots here still deny) has put extra pressure on India's ability to feed its already oversized population. India, and the rest of the world, has no choice other than gradually bringing down the human population levels, or mother nature will bring them down for us! As a species, the human race is already living beyond the carrying capacity of our environment, and the rapacious level we are polluting this world and depleting its resources has to be balanced for the sake of future generations. Better to start now than leave our grandchildren with a world that may force them into extinction.

I make no apologies for going after the right wing for using sex to sell their messages, because these are the same hypocrites who call for sexual abstinence and bans on abortion and birth control. The sexually frustrated should not be allowed to get away with using sex to sell their advertising, their on-air personalities, and especially their politicians, while calling for sexual repression elsewhere....sometimes even on the same damn shows! Billo, for example, will get on his soapbox about immorality (when he's not busy making harassing phone sex calls) and show "immoral" videos over and over again on an almost continuous loop. And it's open season on the bimbos who degrade themselves by parroting foxnoise propaganda for a career move!

If there is any question about who is doing the most to fan the flames of racism in America, Mediamatters answers the question: FNC has hosted New Black Panther fringe group more than 50 times Fox News takes a radical fringe group and packages them so that they can keep average white dolts supporting the corporate mob who is robbing the country blind!

Every one of J. Christian Adams's allegations have been refuted, and the decision not to file a case was made before the Obama Administration took officeand Eric Holder was sworn in as Attorney General......there goes your racist narrative!

It's a ruse to blame environmentalists for the ecological collapse that this world is facing! Unless drastic cuts are made to our already too high carbon dioxide levels, all other environmental issues become meaningless. If CO2 stays over 350, there's no point bothering with the rest! Our planet becomes irreversibly altered, and almost certainly in ways that threaten extinction of our species as well. We know why there has been a retreat on environmental issues, and following the age-old wisdom of 'follow the money' the money trail leads to the massive profits that energy companies earn from the status quo. Especially the oil industry; last year Exxon/Mobil set yet another all time record, with profits over 40 billion dollars. Of the top ten corporations in the world today, seven of them are oil companies, and they are not going to let a little thing like mass extinction get in the way of making money. The Coal Industry spent 200 million last year on their various disinformation campaigns, all designed to create confusion and keep our present dependence of fossil fuels. All of this carping about windmills and solar panels ignores one simple fact: we are already using many times more energy than we need. Mostly because large agribusiness decided that cheap oil made specialization in agriculture their preferred option -- so today, we have these god-awful factory farms producing cheap meat products that are overconsumed by a fat, unhealthy population. And cheap oil made globalization possible, so it became feasible for our local factories to be shut down by the owners, and have production outsourced to sweat shops in Mexico, Bangladesh and China. Well, if we have to go back to localization of our economies, that may mean a drop in living standards for the already filthy rich, but most of us will be living better with re-localization. All that's standing in the way are these greedy psychopathic oil companies that are determined to double down and go for the last, dirtiest, and most dangerous sources of fossil fuels remaining. We need to have the courage to say good riddance to your goddammed oil drilling platforms, that are being towed out of the Gulf; they need to be shut down in the Arctic and especially in vulnerable Third World nations like Nigeria, where there are no government controls on the damage done by multinational corporations. We need to get on with developing a green economy, which will have to be done when the oil and coal runs out anyway!

Instead of this stupid crap about 'why is their religion so stupid'...as opposed to ours which has the God who sacrifices himself to himself because he requires blood offerings as atonement...anyway, here's a little insight into what can happen when increased anxiety levels, there is a heightened people feel their culture is under attack, courtesy of Terror Management Theory, which developed in the 80's, and was based on the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who believed that people deal with the knowledge that they will someday die by maintaining a strong belief in their cultural worldview. That faith provides meaning to their lives and a sense that their individual lives matter, as well as the promise of symbolic--or literal--immortality if they uphold their society's values. One consequence of the theory, according to previous studies by the researchers, is that reminding people of their own mortality--by asking them to think about their own deaths, for example--makes them cling strongly to elements of their worldview like religious beliefs or national pride. And what happens when they perceive that their cultural worldview is at risk? Such as the perception of many Muslims that their culture was threatened by European colonization, and subsequent American economic colonization, along with their military bases. I wonder if a little real insight into the causes of religious extremism will have any effect on the simple-minded, who just want to throw crap at the wall: A study conducted by Abdolhossein Abdollahian, PhD, a Professor at Zarand Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Pyszczynski, and colleagues at Skidmore College and the University of Arizona, investigated the effect of mortality salience on support for martyrdom attacks among 40 Iranian college students. Participants were randomly assigned to answer questions about either their own death or an aversive topic unrelated to death. Participants then evaluated materials from fellow students who either supported or opposed martyrdom attacks against the United States. While control participants preferred the student who opposed martyrdom, said Dr. Pyszcynski, participants reminded of death were more likely to approve the actions of suicide bombers following mortality salience and they also indicated they were more likely to consider such activities themselves. "These findings provide the first experimental evidence documenting the psychological determinants of the appeal of martyrdom," wrote the study authors. The reactions to mortality salience appear to be universal, Greenberg said. "Studies in the U.S. that involved showing people images of 9/11 or other scenes of death have resulted in a high percentage of people being willing to support the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. In Iran, the reminder of death increased support for suicide bombers." In a study of 127 Rutgers University students, participants were asked whether they would support nuclear and chemical weapons and pre-emptive attacks against countries that might be a threat to the United States. The students who were first asked to think about their own deaths expressed support for extreme measures against other countries. "Despite their differences, Americans and Iranians have something in common-thoughts of death increase the willingness of people from both nations to inflict harm on citizens of the other nation," according to the authors. "The current research represents a unique attempt to prospectively understand the reactions of people who were about to witness the collapse of their worldview," wrote the authors. "From a terror management perspective, worldviews are "standardized systems of death denial" (Becker, 1975, p. 154), and when worldviews come under threat, their proponents may feel that the road to eternal life has been obstructed. In this case, denial of the threat may be an effective way to shield oneself from existential terror. However, when denial ultimately fails, violence may be a preferred mode of coping because it constitutes a desperate attempt to salvage the disintegrating worldview. http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/genera_kathlyn__061226_could_understanding_.htm That last point is a key one to remember! A peaceful fundamentalist is still going to be prone to hostile reactions when he is placed in close proximity with fundamentalists who have an alternative model of death-denial, since a different path to eternal life is a threat to their own path to immortality.

It wasn't until relatively recently that I started to realize that this generally accepted position since 9/11 -- that Islam is different than other religions, and cannot be made compatible with Western values -- was fundamentally flawed. The first glaring error is that -- if Islam inevitably leads to terrorism, religious strife and wars, why is Islamism, Muslim terrorists and persecution of religious sects, such as the ones in this story, all recent phenomena of the last few decades? The other problem we can't ignore, is that Christianity in America (and now in Canada too) is developing its own militant strains. Mostly expressed as support for the military invasions, but it is spawning home-grown Christian militias who are expressing their independence and hostility to the government. Seems like if there is a revival of moderation in Islam, Christianity will be the problem religion! There have been a few studies in recent years linking economic downturns and uncertainty to growth in religion, and that anxiety leads to religious extremism. This report atScience and Religion Today makes a lot more sense of these issues than the good religion/ bad religion debates: Does Anxiety Lead To Religion Extremism? A series of studies by researchers at York University shows that it can. The researchers put volunteers in either neutral or anxiety-provoking situations and then asked them to rate the strength of their religious convictions, including whether they would die for their faith or support a war to defend it. When people were put in anxiety-producing situations (like working on a complex math problem), they became more extreme in their religious convictions. The reaction was strongest in people with “bold” personalities (eager and tenacious, with high self-esteem) who were already vulnerable to anxiety and didn’t feel empowered to achieve their daily goals. We shouldn’t be too surprised. Past research has shown that anxiety and insecurity can turn people to religion—and that religious conviction can act as a “buffer” against anxiety. And earlier studies by the researchers at York have shown that strong religious beliefs are linked to low activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain that becomes active when a person makes errors or experiences uncertainty. Psychologist Ian McGregor, who worked on those studies and the new one, notes in a write-up of the research that: Taken together, the results of this research program suggest that bold but vulnerable people gravitate to idealistic and religious extremes for relief from anxiety. If anxiety and social upheaval lead to religious extremism, that could provide an explanation for why groups like Sufis and other religious minorities, were able to live for centuries in Pakistan and have now become the targets of zealous religious purists. And it's an ominous warning for what we might face from some aspects of fundamentalist Christianity in the coming years!

I wish I had time to post on one of your other threads earlier about alternative energy. Because your whole argument against windmills and solar panels, for example, is based on the premise that we need to continue our trajectory of using large and increasing amounts of energy. And this is not going to happen, one way or the other. All fossil fuels will eventually run out; considering their environmentally damaging effects, the sooner the better! And most of the energy used is a colossal waste because cheap energy made globalization and factory farming possible. When energy prices started to rise, many of us re-discovered gardening and farmers markets. This trend is called relocalization, and it is how CO2 levels can be brought down to historic levels and give future generations time to solve other species-threatening problems.

Don't tell me...another guy who's figure it all out! The problem is still incomplete knowledge. This guy's whole cosmic plan starts with the premise that the Big Bang was a creation event; and there are a growing number of modern physicists who do not believe the Big Bang was the beginning of time. Physicists working with unified theory attempts -- String Theory and a popular alternative -- Quantum Loop Gravity, both conclude that the Big Bang was not a singularity, and that leads to the inevitable conclusion that our universe is not unique, but one of an incalculable number of universes. His other scheme -- that our consciousness can be downloaded on future advanced computers is fantasy. It seems pretty clear from discoveries in neuroscience that the mind is created by brain function. Take away that physical brain and you may be able to produce a computer simulation of it, but it will never be the original copy. The other problem he has in talking about immortality, is that our universe is not immortal! It is expanding at an accelerating rate of speed, and will either die a heat death billions of years in the future, or disintegrate when the space-time fabric rips apart at an earlier event. Either way, the end of the universe will end everything that is contained within.

The fact that we don't know how our universe came to be, only demonstrates we lack of knowledge of the universe, not proof that there was a supernatural agent responsible for creating it. My skepticism of a supernatural cause comes from some discoveries that indicate our solar system is a fluke in what is likely a barren, lifeless galaxy. In brief, most of the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy is too close to the center which emits lethal doses of gamma rays, that would kill off any start to life that might form. A little further out and there are no heavy elements that a solar system would need to form planets. Our solar system was almost certain formed closer to the Galactic center and then kicked out for some reason to its present location, which is just at the right place to remain in a void between radioactive gaseous galactic arms. These kind of lucky coincidences don't strike me as evidence for fine tuning, but instead a more likely example of one of the very few solar systems that beat the odds against being able to be suitable for the formation of life. And the fact that our universe is so ridiculously huge and wasteful, doesn't strike me as the kind of place an intelligent creator would go about making a home for living creatures.

Weren't you the one who was talking about adaptation? What sort of adaptation do you think is going to happen as millions of Africans and South Asians try to flee the effects of a changing climate? And that's why the CIA is studying possible security risk scenarios.

I mention it because I'm sick of right wing hypocrisy that is always decrying sexual immorality and pushing abstinence-only education, gay marriage bans, re-criminalizing abortion etc. while they continually use sex to sell their messages.

Lots a luck trying to reason with a Nazi-sympathizing, Jew-baiting White supremacist.

Show your proof that Rachel Maddow is a communist sympathizer.

For instance? You seem to be better at shouting slogans than providing evidence.

This is what's known as Projection sharkman, remember that term; it describes most of your criticisms of others.