WIP

Currencies are based on nothing beyond the confidence of the buyers and sellers. The real fundamentals of China's economy is that they did not begin with the available resources that the U.S. had, and other nations had through colonial expansion. And unlike Japan, they have had to industrialize at a time when commodity prices are already high and going higher. It didn't take China long to go from an oil exporter to an oil importer. And they are also importing larger and larger quantities of coal from Australia and other natural resources to fill the supply gaps. And let's not forget that the cities have become so polluted that Beijing had to virtually shut down all nearby industry for two months before the Olympics just to meet a barely acceptable air quality standard. And, then we have the topsoil erosion and declining water tables from the introduction of unsustainable food production methods. China has made a huge mistake (like India) in trying to make automobiles widely available, but many of the goverment planners are indicating that they would like to change course and get back to expanding public transit and discourage car sales. The industrial revolution in China and India has produced the same results as in the West - polluted air, land and water, and a rapid hollowing out of available natural resources in a short period of time. The problem is that China and India represent about one third of the entire world population, so the impacts of market-driven capitalism have greater impact for them and the rest of the world.

Yes, let's do that! First of all, that wiki article using some FAO reports fails to note that the year they begin their calculation of the last 40 years - 1970, was a time when China looked much like North Korea today. And a flood of refugees after the Cultural Revolution of the late 60's, told of widespread famine and death back home. The rest of the world knew that things were bad inside China, but no outsiders were in there at the time to examine the state of food shortages and malnutrition. The UN reports of the time were at best - guestimates based on refugee testimonies. I recall at the time that the opening up to the world by China in the early 70's, included deals for buying low cost western grain. One of the first trade missions from Canada came along at an optimal time when China was in short supply while we had silos full of grain that would rot sitting out west! Be that as it may, a number of environmentalists who are concerned about population growth, have noted that the rise in world population has not followed a long, exponential growth curve, but has followed the growth in food supply, so as more food has been made available through nitrogen fertilizers courtesy the invention of the Haber Process over 100 years ago, the addition of oil-based fertilizers, and the green revolution high yield seeds with massive irrigation projects, the response in world population has been to grow in a short time after greater abundance has lowered food supplies. And this is likely because except for China, and India for a brief period in the 70's, efforts to curb population growth have mostly been kicked back by religious conservatives in Muslim and Christian...and Hindu countries. When women have control over planning children, they invariably have fewer than the men have intended. The trick has been to make planning possible for them. So, since populations without readily available means of control, will increase to use whatever food is available, what the Green Revolution did was to only curb hunger and malnutrition for a brief period of time. Throughout most of the modern era, about 15% of the world population is experiencing malnutrition, and we are back and passing that number as it looks like the present rise in world population is going to experience some sort of crash or dieoff in the coming decades. The only wiggle room available now is that a large percentage of the new agricultural land in Africa (the only continent where there actually is large tracts of land available for farming) are being used for biofuels. If the biofuel experiment was abandoned, then there would be more food available. But since we passed peak conventional oil some time around 2005 or 2006, that's not likely going to happen, since declining available conventional oil makes biofuels a betteer investment than growing food for many landowners. If optimism is based on fantasy, then it actually makes problems worse, as people lash out looking for targets because of rising prices and declining wealth. When it comes to food, it's like the world is heading into a perfects storm where every factor that governs food production: available land, water supplies, topsoil erosion, costs of nitrogen fertilizers, growing droughts and unstable weather in wetter zones etc., keeps getting worse as the years go by! This Wall Street Journal article I kept from two years ago doesn't seem to be available at the original source anymore. Only place I could find excerpts is from the blog Market Skeptics Harvest Shocker Rattles Wall Street. The full WSJ article notes that world grain production per capita actually peaked way back in 1984 at 342kg per annum, and that the gap between supply and demand has been filled mostly by drawing from carryover stocks. In the modern era of free trade, no one has been keeping significant grain stocks, and there's been an assumption that if there are bad harvest in one or two areas, someone else will have a bumper crop to feed the world...and that presumption is falling flat when we consider that most of the grain grown in India, China, Australia, has been produced through overpumping ground water. Even the U.S. is falling into this trap as this year's disaster has only been prevented from turning into a complete rout by drawing down more of already dwindling water supplies like the Oglala Aquifer. Going Against the Grain of Complacency Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests So, if you want optimism, it depends on whether you own oil or grain futures. Any dips in world prices will only be temporary, and the long term trend can only go one direction - UP.

Since this thread inevitably turned into the abortion debate...perhaps in record time....let's add this story that comes to us from a Reuters newswire piece from Argentina: (Reuters) - Rape victims have a right to abortion under Argentine law, but the nation's Supreme Court was forced to intervene this week to ensure that a woman who says she was kidnapped, forced into prostitution and raped could end her pregnancy. "Abortion is banned in much of Latin America, home to about half the world's Roman Catholics. Argentina is among the countries that allow abortions in cases of rape or when a woman's health is in danger........................... This woman was the victim of human trafficking, she has been raped and she doesn't want to continue with her pregnancy, which is now in the ninth week of gestation," Vicente said. "She had to endure a protest at her home and her family didn't know the whole story of what had happened to her, so she has unnecessarily had to relive humiliations of all kinds." In an urgent ruling on Thursday the Supreme Court overturned the lower court's decision and said the abortion could proceed. The woman, whose name has not been made public, could terminate her pregnancy as early as Friday. Rights group Amnesty International said the delays amounted to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." No kidding! But see what happens when you put priests and conservative men who get all in a lather about "loose" women, in charge of a woman's reproductive decisions! I would expand the criteria of allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest to be up to the pregnant woman (or girl...let's not forget how early some have become pregnant!) in the early stages of embryo or fetal development. And if there are exceptions to the rule, it would be regarding sex-selection, minor defects that can be easily dealt with....I don't really believe it happens very often, but there might be a few women who think they need perfection, and will keep trying till they get the perfect sonogram. But, see what happens to that exception of rape and threat to life, when it comes time to apply it in real world circumstances. The last time I got involved with the abortion issue, I came across a couple of stories from New York City, where pregnant women taken to Catholic hospitals because of hemorhaging from internal bleeding were denied treatment by doctors fearing that the guys in the dresses would charge that they had killed the fetus, rather than applying that mumbo jumbo from Aquinas's Law of the Excluded Middle....which is supposed to allow the doctor to allow the fetus to die while saving the mother's life. In real life, after Rowe v. Wade is rescinded and U.S. conservatives get their long sought re-criminaliziation of abortion, women who don't have means to fly out somewhere where they can have the abortion done will once again face that game of russian roulette that women through the history of the human race were exposed to....and many still are in poor countries...while many who are determined to have an abortion whether it's legal or not, will be going back to the dodgy blackmarket abortionists or taking dangerous drugs that have a high level of causing miscarriage.....and this may be history where we live, but in many third world countries, like a radio report on the subject I heard last year from the Philippines, it's the logical result of what happens when you turn a product or service with a high demand into something illegal! Criminalizing street drugs, prostitution, loansharking, and gambling, didn't make them go away, and neither will abortion in the real world we actually live in!

From what I understand, he's in a safe Republican district; but notice the story about Davis - the Democrat who ran against him two years having his own name stricken from the voter rolls! A lot of what I've been hearing about the dysfunction U.S. election system, is that the Republican Party is responding to changing demographics (rising numbers of latinos and asians) by purging voter lists, voter caging schemes, demanding new picture ID, like driver's licences, that will be less common among lower income earners. A system like we have here in Canada - with a national election commission, cannot be gamed to remove large segments from the population. Here, if you file your taxes every year, you get your election notice sent to you in the mail telling you where your polling station is when the next election is coming up. There have been a few examples of election fraud - mostly fraudulent robo-calls trying to send people to the wrong locations, but just about everyone can exercise their right to vote...if they want to. The first big step is a national election commission that applies uniform rules regarding voting lists and voting methods nationwide; and why the U.S. has never taken that step, is beyond me....although it looks right now that Republicans are likely feeling that they would lose power unless they could game the system to remove enough blacks, latinos, college students, and low income voters of all colors. Why most of the Democrats have done so little in the face of obvious election fraud by Republicans in Florida and Ohio is another mystery! But, it may break down to the fact that their base has less money than the Republicans, so rather than fight for them, many Democrats try to triangulate their way to curry favour with the same monied interests that support the Republicans. Things could get ugly when some of the Democratic base -- who have their interests ignored time and time again, begin to realize that they have no representation in Washington with the present two party duopoly, and never will by any democratic means. Notice that he went in hiding when the story first broke! The local paper in Chatanooga couldn't get a hold of him or talk to him until he did his Friday morning press conference. It seems it took two days for him and his helpers to come up with this story that he was trying to get her to admit to not really being pregnant. And, for what it's worth, the other woman has never come forward. In the transcript, Desjarlais is trying to coerce her into having an abortion because he says he's trying to reconcile with his wife and doesn't want to be involved with her. So, the story that she wasn't really pregnant and didn't have an abortion is his story, the word of an admitted serial philanderer and liar. Another thought pops up when I read a story like this, is that it's another example of the old double standard - one law for the rich, one for the poor. If abortion is ever completely outlawed, it will only be applied to those who don't have money and influence. Exceptions will be made for those with money and power to take care of the little problem.

One of the liberal political podcasts I listen to...which consists of mostly unemployed former reporters/now bloggers and podcasters, was all abuzz with a story of mind-boggling hypocrisy of a Republican tea party-endorsed Congressman named Scott DesJarlais representing a district in Tennessee -- Scott DesJarlais, Pro-Life Republican Congressman And Doctor, Pressured Mistress Patient To Get Abortion The messy, sordid story comes out of the release of audio evidence that his ex-wife used in divorce proceedings against him in 2001, in which the absolute pro-life...even if the woman's life is at risk congressman and then-practicing MD, had an affair with one of his patients and got her pregnant. This is what Mr. Pro life had to say to her back in 2001: "You told me you'd have an abortion, and now we're getting too far along without one," DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in the call while negotiating with her over whether he'll reveal her identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as "sacred." Among the astonishing factoids of this story is that the recording of the call was made by Scott DesJarlai himself...not the other woman; so he provided the court the evidence that was used to hang him. But, the facts of the case were kept from the public in Tennessee, although we are told that his Democratic opponent in 2010 was given a transcript of the call three days before the election, but says he didn't use it because it was too close the Election and there wasn't time to verify the story. Another question that needs to be addressed is how could Mr. Pro life keep on practicing medicine with no investigation from a medical review panel? Since having an affair with a patient, regardless of consent, would have been a serious violation and would have been grounds to remove his licence to practice medicine. An equally sordid backstory in light of all of the Republican-led voter suppression tactics that are already under way across the U.S., is that Davis was contacted by the Congressman's ex-wife and informed about the story after Davis himself had his name stricken from the voter rolls: Davis said he ultimately confirmed the authenticity of the transcript himself last spring, almost by accident, when he met with Susan DesJarlais. Davis had been purged from his local voter rolls in a crackdown on voter fraud by the local GOP. He said that DesJarlais had heard about the purge, and wanted to talk to Davis, suspecting her ex-husband was behind it. "He had nothing to do with that -- it was just some local pols," Davis told The Huffington Post. But when he met with Susan, it gave him the opportunity to discuss the transcript and the phone call, which the doctor apparently thought would help repair the marriage. "She said he did it himself. She said the doctor did. She said, 'He recorded it and let me listen to it,'" Davis said. "She confirmed to me that Scott DesJarlais is the one who actually did the recording, and let her listen to it." In yesterday's update of the story, Huffpo informs us that the Congressman offers up an alibi that everything's okay because the woman didn't end up having an abortion: Scott DesJarlais Admits Romance With Patient, Denies She Had Abortion In an email to backers Friday evening, DesJarlais -- an anti-abortion, "family values" congressman -- acknowledged they had reason to think poorly of him. But he pleaded for understanding, claiming his fling with the patient occurred while he was legally separated from his then-wife. "You have probably seen the recent media coverage regarding details of my divorce from over a decade ago. I had genuinely hoped this election would be about my record in Congress -– not a 12 year old divorce," DesJarlais wrote. He charged that his opponent in next month's election, Democratic state Sen. Eric Stewart, was using dirty tricks against him. "I know that many of you were disappointed to hear the news regarding allegations of a relationship I had while separated during my divorce proceedings," DesJarlais said. "I am deeply sorry for that." So, Scott DesJarlais feels that his supporters should accept his apology and forgive him his trespasses, even though he tried to coerce a woman he got pregant into having an abortion 11 years ago, while he has been campaigning against other women having the right to an abortion, regardless of circumstance! How is the GOP reacting to their latest David Vitter? So far it's hard to say. Over at Romneyville, the Romney 2012 campaign website scrubbed the Congressman from their list of endorsed candidates, but hasn't offered an explanation or comment on his removal; while in Congress on Friday, Boehner handed DesJarlais the ceremonial gavel to start...or conclude the proceedings...I forget which it was, and I don't care enough to look it up, but safe to say that Republican cockroaches won't go scurrying away into the crevices unless DesJarlais becomes radioactive and taints other Republicans that are seen with him or heard endorsing him. And, will Scott DesJarlais get re-elected in his safe, tea party red state district? That is also hard to say, because just checking around the rightwing rumpus room, I'm noticing that this story doesn't show up on Drudge, Foxnews, Red State, or any other right wing "news" sources! If you put DesJarlais's name in Foxnews search term box, all you get is the last story on him written in April; it's like this giant billboard of sheer hypocrisy with the flashing red light can't even be seen through right wing goggles! And loyal, tea party, god-fearing right wingers who won't even look at anything other than their trusted right wing information sources, may never even hear a word about the story....until after the election maybe!

The atmosphere and the oceans are being poisoned by industrial agriculture and all of the carbon (over half of the petroleum in the ground) we have released into the atmosphere....and yet there are still fools who think that endless growth in population, carbon emissions, land use, and resource exploitation can go on forever in a finite world. Facts have a way of intruding into future plans and favourite arguments! And that facts that every pro-growth capitalist...whether they call themselves liberal or conservative, is that the party is coming to an end, and the longer we live in denial of the fact that we are going to have to radically scale down the exhorbitant lifestyle we have come to accept as the norm, the worse the final outcome will be! Up until the late 90's, the fixing poverty through growth meme had to be taken seriously by techno-critics, but in the last 12 years, as the world population has grown from six billion to over seven billion, the number of people in the world who cannot get enough food has doubled; so the argument that wonders of Neoliberal economics and green revolution industrial agriculture will fix the third world and raise them up to first world standards cannot even be taken seriously today in new century of shortages. World grain production - decade over decade, has actually fallen over the last 30 years while the world population has increased. So, growing famines and food riots in wealthier urbanized nations like the ones that were actually behind the Arab Spring revolts...it wasn't that bullshit about wanting democracy or facebook or the internet that caused it, it was the doubling of basic food prices from Algeria through to Egypt that was the catalyst of the revolts. And food prices are still high, so there will be more revolts as soon as there is some significant flashpoint that causes mobs to form in city squares. The worse thing happening to the Third World over the last 30 years has been the industrialization of China, India and other large impoverished nations....simple fact that China and India are just now coming to realize is that their populations are so large, that they will never be able to access the quantities of cheap energy to keep the economies they have created in recent decades, growing into the future. China and India are both facing serious water shortages right now, and losing topsoil at an alarming rate because of the change to high-yield, oil-intensive agriculture. Now that multinationals and rich petro-states like Saudi Arabia, have started moving into buying up large tracts of land in Africa for cash-cropping industrial agriculture, there is almost no place left in the world that can easily adapt to the post-industrial future that is coming our way in the next 10 to 20 years.

Have you even considered that petroleum is becoming more scarce and more expensive as the years go by, and therefore the prices have to rise. Even if we ignore environmental impacts of exploiting tar sands, shale oils and deep sea drilling, the costs of going after the harder-to-get oil keeps increasing. Even tar sands extraction costs are rising, because the startup operations in the late 70's, took the top layers first, and as they pump hot water deeper and deeper, to drive out that bitumen, the energy and financial costs of these operations will inevitably increase. Even right now, energy has become too expensive to maintain the smooth operation of the modern capitalist economies that depend on oil. Notice that every time the world price of petroleum takes a big jump, the world's economies...and that includes us, even though we are net producers, the Americans, the Europeans, and those supposedly rising world economic powers - China and India, are going into recession. And, in the coming years (until supply starts making big declines), world recessions ease demand for oil and bring the price back down under $100 per barrel. So, we have already reached a period in our history where oil supply cannot be substantially increased and has become an inelastic market - price dependent on demand alone. And yet, there are people like you, who think we can just keep on going business-as-usual!

Like I said before, there is more money and more evil on the side of the deniers, but I don't trust the intentions of business interests trying to paint themselves green; whether we're talking about Munich RE or investment banks like Goldman-Sachs, who are supporting Cap and Trade as the next big market opportunity for them to enrich themselves. In some ways, the green capitalists are even worse than the dead-enders like big oil; because they shift public attention towards solutions that are weak at best, and keep the fiction going that capitalism and endless growth economies are possible in a finite world. What it all boils down to is that 97% number of expert consensus. If the numbers were closer to 50-50, I would agree that there isn't enough evidence for the public to accept on the climate issue. But, when we consider that the title of this thread is "Climate scientists keep getting it wrong" and we discover that most of what the scientists are actually getting wrong is that they are dangerously underestimating rising temperatures and CO2 increases, then the built-in biases of the monied interests are less relevant in finding the truth. The problem is that the denier side, representing only 3% of climatologists, is the one that is carpet-bombing the airwaves and all forms of media with false and misleading propaganda designed to encourage the average, low-information consumer to go back to sleep and agree with suicidal policies like increasing the exploitation of tar sands for oil.

I suspect the same actually! When I was young, the media and politicians of most parties, continually assaulted us with the threat of the Red Menace: Soviet missiles and backfire bombers were going to fly over the Arctic Ocean and bomb North America with nuclear warheads; Soviet tanks were going to roll over the West German border and invade Europe; and Soviet-backed revolutionary movements in the third world, would overthrow Western-friendly governments one after another until they were at our doorstep....so we had to fight them over there...in Vietnam, or Cuba, or the Congo, wherever they were, the Red Menace had to be stopped before it took over the World! Anyone see some parallels with the modern hysteria generated about Islam and Muslim governments? Except for Daniel Ellesberg's releasing of the Pentagon Papers, the public new almost nothing about what the leaders knew of any actual threats. In fact, most U.S. governments were only concerned about the accidental, inadvertent start of nuclear war. They were confident that the Soviet Union's economic growth had stalled out permanently in the 1960's and would not be able to finance a military to rival the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex. Beginning back in 1960, John F. Kennedy tried to outflank the Republicans by going to the right and creating hysteria about a "missile gap" with the Soviets. He decided to run with a story concocted by a House defense appropriations committee and the weapons manufacturers that he knew was fake even before that first televised presidential debate with Richard Nixon because he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and had access to top secret information. Nixon couldn't call him on his bullshit because that would have alerted the Soviets to how deep CIA informants had penetrated their government. It was devious and deceitful, and likely the all time most cunning campaign tactic! It veers off-topic, but I thought it would be worth mentioning the background story since JFK was turned into something equivalent to a saint who would have brought world peace after his assassination, while the real truth was more likely that all of his motivations came from the constant search for political advantage. And today's supposedly "liberal" politicians will also play that foreign threat card whenever they see it work to their advantage.

A famous quote made by Benjamin Franklin way back in 1759 "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." is all that needs to be said regarding issues like what happened to Omar Khadr. Regardless of all the blathering by rightwingers who are so scared that they quickly hand over freedoms in exchange for security, the simple fact is that the case against Omar Khadr has been filled with illegalities right from the time he was arrested in Afghanistan right through to the present. The case against Khadr has no merits except for the suspicions of the paranoid, fearful conservatives who will dump legal and due process overboard to fight Muslim terrorism. And, just as in the U.S. right now, Canadian governments will use special extra-legal procedures claimed to be necessary to fight terrorism, to be used against other individuals or groups who are deemed hostile by the government. Harper is already starting down this path in declaring environmental activists opposed to tar sands exploitation to be "environmental terrorists."

Here's what was missing from the network broadcast (which I had no intentions of watching to begin with)....I finally got around to listening to the audio podcast version of Expanding The Debate - a special 3 hour episode of DemocracyNow on Thursday, which included two of the "fringe" parties excluded by the collusion of the Republican/Democrat Parties. The 3 hour broadcast actually starts with a half hour segment on how the two major parties have conspired to shut out third party participation in the debates. The presidential debate begins about 31 minutes in the episode. Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party were provided the opportunity to answer Jim Lehrer's mostly softball questions at the Duopoly's debate. For some reason, Gary Johnson - the Libertarian Party candidate, declined the opportunity to appear and have his say. Whatever his ideological reasons, it's a stupid tactic by a candidate who is also being ignored by the mainstream media, which wants to portray Democratic and Republican politics as the be-all and end-all of political opinion in the U.S. And the reasons why expanding the debate and challenging a two party duopoly of the political process is so important, has a lot to do with what IS Not said, rather than what the candidates said during the debate. Here's a brief look at some of the issues that neither Romney nor Obama even mentioned, but have been mentioned by some of the observers I consider important, like Glenn Greenwald: poverty, climate change and the environment, declining wages, NDAA and related threats to civil liberties, corporate financing of candidates etc.. Americans who believe that Romney and Obama or the Democratic and the Republican parties actually represent all the issues and the spectrum of political opinion in their country are complete fools!

As far as I am aware, Munich RE's concern for their bottom line doesn't extend as far to hire PR firms to create front groups and hire lobbyists and encourage a few scientists to produce dodgy and confusing studies of the climate issue! So, the conduct of the oil companies is especially egregious. But what else would we expect from corporations who deliberately poison land and ground water to save money -- i.e. Texaco (now Chevron) operations in Ecuador, or the reckless disregard for safety to save money that caused major offshore oil spills by BP first in the Caspian Sea, and then in the Gulf of Mexico...both are still leaking btw. And then there's the poisoning of the Niger River Delta region in Nigeria, where big oil (backed by the CIA) handpicked a despotic government to repress the local population in the Delta and brutally suppress any uprisings. The oil corporations are reckless psychopaths who have no concerns beyond immediate obscene profits and where to make even more money. The least of their concerns is the survival of Planet Earth and the welfare of future generations who will have to inherit what's left here.

I guess you're a jackass who's not worth trying to talk to, because anyone who disagrees with you or argues against jumping to conclusions is subject to personal attack -- as you are when you pull out a paper indicating that there might have been a rapid decline in sea ice with factors causing Arctic temperatures to rise at twice the rate down here. I've actually thought about this issue and changed my position over the last 10 years, and a big part of the reason is because the side you represent has no theory or proposal for a theory to explain how rising CO2 levels will not increase temperatures; and no one in the little club that you follow zealously even mentions the likely greatest environmental problem of increasing CO2 levels - ocean acidification. The half of all man-made carbon absorbed by the world's oceans was first connected with damaging effects on shellfish and corals; then discovered to impair fish sonar abilities, and is also connected with the deforestation of the world's oceans - the rarely covered crisis of declining plankton and other ocean plant life. Paleontologist - Peter D. Ward, who's research has specialized in the Permian/Triassic Extinction, believes that the gradual poisoning of the oceans today is following the same pattern (at an accelerated rate) that he has found in analyzing sedimentary rocks all over the world from that period 250 million years ago...and it seems that the case for drawing attention on the world's oceans is very strong for what its worth. So, what significance should I draw from your evidence that, at least a portion of the Arctic Ocean was warmer 9000 years ago? Maybe it was those Milankovitch Cycles you warming deniers are always yacking about! But today, we have converging evidence from all directions that carbon levels are rising...and even at an increasing rate still, the oceans are dying, topsoil is eroding in all of the world's major agricultural zones at rates many times the ability to build new soil, fresh water is being pumped at an unsustainable rate in over 70% of the world's grain production regions....and there's other problems I could list if I wanted to take more time...the point is that the world is facing an ecological crisis from all directions, and yet the deniers want us to keep building more pipelines, blasting out tar to extract and upgrade as oil...in short, just keep on with business as usual. And this is the policy that is killing us! There is not enough vested interest like we had 40 years ago to take an honest, hard look at the way our economy works, and whether we need changes to our whole way of life. The proposals advanced by the mainstream environmentalists are actually tepid at best, and likely fall way short of staving off a future crisis. For example: Electric cars 'pose environmental threat' In short, this story reported on the BBC, for the first time does a complete analysis of the carbon footprint of electric cars by factoring in the environmental costs of electric car production. They note the problem of electric cars in areas where electricity comes from coal-fired generating stations, but even if the electricity was provided by windmills (though new windmills also have a high carbon footprint to produce), when the environmental assessments take production into account, the benefits are severely reduced. So, once again, I don't think either side in this debate: the deniers or the mainstream environment lobby, are actually dealing with the issues which would have an impact - starting with a drastic reduction in energy use and industrial output worldwide. Nothing short of putting an end to ever-increasing energy use and resource exploitation will solve the environment crisis.

Islam is more political at this point in time, but you don't even address the 30 year long growing partnership between rightwing evangelicals and the Republican Party in the U.S., nor do you address the fact that one religion happens to be the one representing the colonizers, while the other is predominant in the places that have been colonized and have had oil and other resources extracted - backed up by U.S. military power supporting some tinpot dictator, and with little benefit for the local population. All things being equal, I feel that a theocracy representing the richest and most powerful men in the world is far more dangerous than any theocracy rising up among the dispossessed. And.... You have taken it upon yourself to decide that politics can't be mixed with Christianity....whatever that's supposed to mean! But, except for the fringe Christian sects who share a millenialist interpretation of history and will not take part in any part of the political process...even voting, the bulk of Christians in the world are totally schizophrenic about their religion and what role their beliefs and principles should play in government. And, the hardline theocrats, like the New Apostolic Reformation group, can pull out just as many bible verses to justify their desires to Christianize American government, bring in rule by Mosaic Law and remove Christians from political office as the more laid back, more secular Christians who claim to park their religion at the door when they contemplate the down and dirty world of politics.

If such a policy became law in a future secular government determined to improve its people by stamping out religion, this 20 year old essay by Richard Dawkins would still likely provide the ideological underpinning to justify such an aggressive policy: Viruses Of The Mind

Let's get things in proper context first: Jesus Christ was a doomsday preacher who was telling his disciples that they were the last generation living in the end times. And his disciples carried on the millenial tradition in the early years after his crucifixion by claiming that Christ would return before the last of them had died. It wasn't until after the last of the first generation of followers had died that the Christian Church began to realize that they had to establish permanent institutions and an organizational hierarchy. They had to establish a code for what would be a Christian application of government and law and even war. And that's why later Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas had to do so much borrowing from Aristotle and the Stoic traditions of Ancient Greece. You could almost say that they became honorary Christians in the eyes of the Church because they had become so essential for filling out Christian theology. So, it's a little disingenuous to just state that JC never governed anything, because he said that Satan had dominion over the kingdoms of this world and wanted his followers to have no part in it. His kingdom was supposed to be established with his 2nd Coming...which would have established a theocratic government...no different than Islam....but Jesus didn't come back...at least not yet...so aside from the eccentric, nonconformist cults, the bulk of Christian churches had to find some way of deciding how they would rule and govern themselves. In the case of Islam - from what little I know, I don't know as much about this religion as I do about Christianity, the Prophet Muhammed claimed to be called by God to establish divine government and law on Earth, and a book with a whole set of rules was produced. But, even that book - the Quran - left followers with unanswered questions; so a whole collection of hadiths were included by some Muslims. So, today you can say that Islam is more than a religion, like the creator of this thread and most Muslims themselves will say. But, what exactly they mean by having Islamic rule and law in Muslim majority nations is a whole different question, as we can see right now with Turkey and now Egypt electing governments who claim to be following Islamic principles. The real truth is that Islam is a lot more complicated than the anti-Muslim groups want to portray it and has more variation; while Christianity can also mean a multitude of things to the thousands of different Christian churches in the world. There are theocrats among modern day fundamentalist Christianity coming out of the U.S., and they not only believe in Christian government of "anointed" Christian leaders -- check out New Apostolic Reformation and this movements connection with the rise of Sarah Palin and that other ill-fated dimbulb - Gov. Rick Perry -- but they also believe in applying Christian Law...just check out the term Theonomy and you find no substantial difference between what this extremely weathy and politically powerful group would do and what you fear that Muslims would do if they ruled!

I noticed that too! Actually, I hadn't looked at their website in a couple of years. Back when I first heard stories that they were trying to factor in effects of climate change to claims costs, their website wasn't exactly on the front line of the green revolution. I'm glad they are taking a public interest in promoting attention to the problem.

I hope you realize that trying to quantify happiness is difficult in itself. It depends on what we choose to measure as indicators of a subjective experience of happiness. But there are general rules that apply. Certainly if rates of mental illness and stress disorders are rising, that would be a sign of unhappiness. And in modern times, the 1950's are generally recognized by social researchers as America's peak decade for life satisfaction and personal wellbeing as numbers which would indicate personal satisfaction have actually declined in the midst of all of this material prosperity and new invention. When it comes to the pre-industrial world, it should be pointed out that the notion that backward hunter/gatherers and subsistence farmers needed to be civilized and were better off under colonial occupation, is not backed up with anything factual, and is obvious self-serving propaganda designed to deflect any self-doubt from cropping up among the colonizers or former occupiers. As Jerry Mander wrote on this subject over 20 years ago in "Absence Of The Sacred" : I am still astonished when intelligent people describe life in pre-industrial times as dirty, miserable, poor, and subject to the awful expressions of nature. Surely they must be aware that indigenous people of the temperate zones of the planet -- long before the harshness of the 16th and 17th century Europe -- lived very pleasant and relatively easy lives.... Our mythology has been that native people live with the awful oppression of "subsistence economics" -- a term that by its mere utterance invokes fellings of pity and images of squalor..... Pre-technological peoples, living hand to mouth in a never-ending search for food and protection from the elements, need and want what Western society brings. So goes the story. Given this logic, most Westerners are shocked to find that the majority of indigenous peoples on the Earth do not wish to climb onto the Western economic machine. They say their traditional ways have served them well for thousands of years and that our ways are doomed to fail....... The familiar assumption that everything before industrialization was pain, poverty, slavery, and victimization by nature is the assumption that works best for the technological-capitalist agenda and its massive invasion of these "afflicted" societies. It makes it seem as if capitalism and industrialization were altruistically motivated, do-gooder activities. Even if I accepted your opinion at face value, I am also aware that the industrial revolution and the economic system it has powered, have a shelf life, and we are getting close to the expiry date! Too many natural resources to mention are running in short supply, and unless some great motherlodes are found in the melting Arctic, will be virtually exhausted within 50 years at present rates of economic growth and increased resource and energy use. If some recognition isn't made by the human race as a whole, the future (barring complete catastrophe like nuclear war) will mirror the past - as industrial production declines from lack of available inputs, cars are permanently parked by lack of fuel and resources to keep millions of cars running on the roads, and surviving populations are back to an agrarian, pre-industrial lifestyle. Finding and being able to utilize resources from the Moon, asteroids etc. was taken as a given back when I was young and the Space Race was still ongoing. But, we were also expecting moon colonies, manned Mars landings, and permanent space stations in Earth and Lunar orbit! The reality of the last 40 years has seen a gradual unwinding of space flight and even in public interest in going into space. Lately, we are getting news that the Russian Space Program is heading into a precipitous decline, and will have to be abandoned entirely as they have not built new booster rockets and put the money into the program in recent decades to keep it viable. And I don't put a lot of stock in SpaceX and Elon Musk's proposed future plans that libertarians are so enamored with these days as the "private enterprize" solution to our earth-bound status again. These private ventures are still depending on government funding to get off the ground, and if they decide that costs outweigh financial returns from their ventures, that's the end of the private space industry, even for the billionaire tech bubble enthusiasts who are trying to make their childhood dreams a reality. 40 years ago, I would have said that our environment and resource problems associated with our modern way of life could all be solved by going beyond Earth....today, when I look at the energy required and the costs of space launches, I don't see any of this being any more likely than the flying cars (which were also theoretically possible) becoming a reality either.

What exactly do you mean by "can't be measured accurately?" What degree of accuracy do we need to understand that we are on a trend for more catastrophic weather, and depending on where we live or how unlucky we are, we will feel its effects. This statement from Munich RE in the Insurance Journal shows that they are fully aware that the situation is complicated by the fact that in third world countries already trying to deal with floods and droughts caused by a changing climate, the actual property damages can arise from internal turmoil associated with violence and mass migration. Even with rising property values in some areas factored in, climate change remains as the underlying factor raising insurance claims costs: Munich Re Highlights Climate Change Link to Extreme Weather Events Munich Re also noted that its natural catastrophe database “shows a marked increase in the number of weather-related events. For instance, globally there has been a more than threefold increase in loss-related floods since 1980 and more than double the number of windstorm natural catastrophes, with particularly heavy losses as a result of Atlantic hurricanes.” The explanation for the increase in insured losses, however, is more complex than just more storms of greater violence. Munich Re explained that the “rise in natural catastrophe losses is primarily due to socio-economic factors. In many countries, populations are rising, and more and more people moving into exposed areas. “At the same time, greater prosperity is leading to higher property values. Nevertheless, it would seem that the only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change.

I recall several years back, reading that the world's largest insurance underwriter - Munich RE, was starting to factor in the increasing costs of storm damage in calculating the costs of insuring property; and in some cases, advising abandoning areas where the risks were getting too high. While the oil and coal companies were hiring PR firms to run disinformation campaigns trying to tell everyone to go back to sleep, Munich RE was calculating the rising damage costs, and attributing the rise....and more important - projecting increasing costs in the future, to the effects that a warming atmosphere is having on weather patterns. But, as far as I know, Munich RE has done nothing equivalent to alert the general public to the dangers. They, like the Kochs and other oil barons, are just in business to make money; and their primary concerns over climate change are business-related i.e. raising claims costs and making the calculations of future risk more difficult.....may they all burn in hell! Yes, in highly specialized fields that require years of training, we're usually stuck with using the consensus of expert opinion to find the truth. As much as I love reading about science and new discoveries, I don't have blanket trust in scientists or engineers either! Especially when it comes to new technologies, the creators and designers of the new invention are going to promote it to the hilt as the holy grail, and there is little in the way of skeptical challenges (even for new pharmaceutical drugs) when all sides of the debate and a sycophantic media are all on one side. It's usually a few years later that we find out that the new invention or product has negative health or environmental effects, which are usually dealt with by inventing counter-technologies to counter the bad effects of the original product. But, in the field of climate research, Tim G has made a claim that there is money to be made by climatologists like Michael Mann, James Hansen, Phil Jones and others who receive less attention (primarily because they haven't been targeted by rightwing media and front groups) are in it for the money. As far as I am aware, a researcher at one of the major climate research units can earn a good salary befitting the credentials; but when it comes to money, there are bags of loot offered by the oil-funded groups for any scientist claiming to be a skeptic or a detractor from the general consensus for whatever reasons. I'd like to see a comparison between what Roy Spencer, John Christie and the Pielke's have earned over the years. And it's worth noting that they will elevate the credentials of their deniers -- I'm thinking in particular of this clown - Tim Ball, a retired meteorologist who is passed off on right wing talk radio shows as a climate expert. Spencer and Christie are for all intents and purposes working for the Koch Brothers, aside from what they make on the lecture circuit and writing books that are bought up by right wing think tanks, since their Earth System Science Center was built for them by grants from the Koch's and other financial interests with an interest in keeping the status quo. And it's not like Huntsville is a university campus starved for cash! This place has been one of the hotbeds for missile and weapons research, as the bulk of their funding comes from the defense dept. Naomi Oreskes noted that the first group of climate change denier experts came out of the missile defense industry....now there's a group of scientists I would expect to be biased by political ideology! But do the climate researchers trying to do honest research have the kind of deep pockets to draw upon as the expert deniers? I doubt it! There may be some money coming from Big Green environmental lobbies with interests in building windmills and solar panels, or taking financial positions whenever cap'n trade schemes get off the ground. But, 7 of the 10 most profitable corporations in the world are still the big oil companies. And they have decided that there is still more money to be made extracting the last bits of fossil fuels out of the ground than there is in any alternative energy sources. So, comparing the money and motivations from all sides, that 97% consensus on anthropogenic climate change is especially significant.

No, your link does not claim to explain anything beyond the region they studied: the Chukchi Sea. The local geology of the Niagara Peninsula (the area I am most familiar with) is still not completely understood except for the basics, like sheets of ice covered this area 12,000 years ago. For some reason, the eastern glacier that covered this area took much longer to recede than further west; even Alaska was losing its ice while my area was still ice-bound. So, the thawing of sea ice in the area between Siberia and Alaska may have indicated a wider thawing of the Arctic Ocean...or maybe not. There was still a lot of ice sheets covering Canada at the time. What is clear is that those were much different circumstances than we are living in today. Atmospheric CO2 levels dropped to less than 200 ppm at the peak of the last ice age, and would still be much less than our present 400 ppm 9000 years ago. Your theory seems to be that all weather patterns are cyclical, and you have pulled that study out to try to advance this claim. But, there are too many things today that are unprecedented about the state of the planet, and the level of human activity today to just say there's nothing to worry about because at least one zone of the Arctic Ocean was likely ice free 9000 years ago. For one thing, even if this was true, our civilization that is already straining the planet's resources to feed 7 billion people, is dependent to a precarious degree on having stable, dependable weather. And the reason why grain production has only had one good year in the last 10 - 2007, is because of the floods, the droughts, the heat waves, the sudden unexpected frosts (that wiped out a lot of fruit trees in my area this year), are all occurring in one or more of the major food-producing regions of the world. And if there was an open Arctic Ocean 9000 years ago, that's one thing for a few hundred thousand paleolithic hunter-gatherers to deal with. But an opening of the Arctic Ocean and the resulting effects on weather down here mean dangerously unpredictable weather, and low grain and other crop yields.

I used to read Ali Sina's website and Spencer's and most of the other anti-Islam sites in immediate aftermath of 9/11. But, if this is all you are reading, along with the Jewish anti-Muslim sites (who seem to overlook extremism in their own religion)then you are only getting one side of the story. I'm not here to defend Islam any more than I wish to defend any religion. I don't belong to any of them and they have to stand or fall on their own merits. But, those four points that you pulled from Sina's article could be applied to Christianity and Judaism, and likely most religions as well. Some forms of religion are progressive and at least somewhat open to change when circumstances on the ground argue for change, other religions obstinately stake themselves to the ground and refuse to change for any reason...Catholic Church would be the first example. The main reason why I no longer follow the Muslim-bashing bs today is that there is no mention made to the fact that one body of religion (Christianity) is at least in some of its forms, tied itself with the political and economic interests of oppression, while the other despised religion (Islam) is the one adhered to by many of the conquered peoples...and during the 20th century, much of the Muslim World has reacted in all sorts of negative ways to foreign domination. The mistake of these propaganda sources is that they make no mention of the cultural forces at work below the surface, between a religion of the oppressors and the religion of the conquered peoples.

This is total bullshit pure and simple! And this meme that Christianity in all its forms has been "civilized" needs to be kicked down and set straight. According to Muslim critics from left to right, from rightwing Catholic Islam-bashers like Robert Spencer, to empty headed progressive religion-bashers like Bill Maher (who, like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc. have established some hierarchy of worse religions with Islam being numero uno) even the most aggressive and beligerent forms of rightwing Christianity today are forever constrained by secularism, and so the only religion that we have to worry about is Islam. The real truth is that Christianity and Islam have branched out into a multitude of interpretations of their scriptures and how their religious beliefs apply both at a personal level and to the world. And, religions are not static forces in society. Conflicts within a society and with other nations, social forces and undercurrents of unrest, misery caused by poverty and deprivation, or on the other hand - material success and prosperity are all reflected in how these religions are taught and applied to adherents, and whether there are attempts to project and enforce these teachings on others. Most of what the West sees as dangerous and scary about Islam is tied up with suicide bombings, which is a modern development in asymmetrical warfare, and did not begin with Hamas or Al Qaeda, but started with Tamil Rebels in Sri Lanka. Will Islam become more open, progressive and secular now? That depends on what's happening on the ground. One thing that is being overlooked by all of those Christian fundamentalists and atheist secularists focusing on Islam is that right in our own backyard, fundamentalist Christianity is becoming more aggressive, intolerant, and vocal in its acts on some aspects of modernity like feminism, gay rights, immigration, and is becoming more determined to overthrow secularism in favour of Christian government. A recent piece by Tom Rees at Epiphenomena a week ago, looks at this trend which is only being considered so far as individual fights over school prayer, abortion battles, or religious schooling; but the trend in many areas across North America and in Europe, show that reactionary movements are taking the upper hand and working towards theocracy: The rising tide of religious protectionism in the West When he looked at discrimination against minority religions, he found a clear trend. As shown in the graphic, the average level of religious favouritism in the west has been increasing. Fox found that: The most common restrictions are on building, maintaining or repairing places of worship and registration requirements for minority religious institutions. Also, over a quarter of Western European countries place restrictions on proselytizing by foreigners. For example, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, and the UK require special visas for missionaries and/or religious workers and/or have denied such entry to some missionaries or religious workers. He also found that this trend is quite widespread. Almost all countries (including the USA) engage in at least some form of religious discrimination, and since 1990 discrimination has increased in 12 out of 27 countries assessed (and gone down in only 2). So there are still plenty of votes in religion. But what about discrimination of minorities. Well, again to me this looks like the dominant culture protecting their own. In particular, hostility towards Muslim minorities in Europe seems to be driving legislation that is specifically attacking minority faiths. This discrimination is less about religious fervour and more about hostility to immigrants. And if you heard that story last week about the Family Research Council and other right wing Christian fundamentalist groups gathering in Philadelphia, here's what the MSM failed to mention: Radical Rally: Religious Right Meets In Philadelphia To Demand `Christian Nation' The Religious Right's 2012 Ground Game So, what I see is a slight-of-hand deception being played out here, as our political, economic and cultural rulers and opinion-makers try to focus our attention on the foreign threat that was elevated to foreign threat status after the Soviet Union fell and everyone became a capitalist. And while our attention is focused on the foreign religion of many immigrants and impoverished regions of the third world, the approved religion is elevated to state sponsored religion status again for the first time since the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Although, which fundamentalist branch of the right wing christian tree becomes state religion may vary from place to place, as no form of Christianity is powerful enough or has enough adherents to dominate the U.S. or Canada. Maybe we'll have the regional theocracies that Margaret Atwood predicted in The Handmaid's Tale.

Thanks! I appreciate information provided to increase understanding of an issue, but when it's just dumped out there to confuse or cloud the issue, it's just another form of propaganda. I haven't read her book Merchants of Doubt, but I have heard so many interviews with historian-Naomi Oreskes on the history of industry-supported denial strategies, that I have likely picked up the essentials: one of the biggies being that the public relations firms hired first by the cigarette manufacturers in the 70's, decided that they did not have to convince the public that 2nd hand smoke was harmless; all they had to do was hire a few experts motivated by political ideology, to dump enough complicated and confusing information out there claiming to be rebuttals, that the public would decide that the results were inconclusive. And they've followed the same tactics on subjects like creationism, the efficacy of antiballistic missile systems and climate change. No attempts are made to propose serious alternative explanations, or alternative climate models that fit the data, just here's Roy Spencer, or Richard Linzen, or Tim Ball, or John Christie...and they have a different opinion on climate change. And even though they don't even agree with each other, the low-information interviewer gets to tell his audience that this is a scientist who says we can keep burning all the oil we want until the end of time!

One and only shot for what? If we're tracking happiness and personal satisfaction, the industrial revolution marked a great leap backwards for the human race. Whatever kind of civilization is sustainable for the long term future, it's not one that requires hoovering out all of the natural resources in the ground.