WIP

I came across a story that in northern China, underground water levels are dropping one meter per year, aquifers are being overpumped to the point where sea water is starting to flow in India; Saudi Arabia will stop all wheat growing within five years due to water shortage....it's not hard to see how world grain prices are going to be affected.

I heard about Clinton doing a partial backtracking on his Haitian Policies, but his apology was equivocal, and only mentioned in one interview. If Clinton was really interested in righting some past wrongs, why didn't he fly down there himself and voice his support for a real, free and open elections? On this and many other issues, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are examples of how Democratic centrists are worse than Republicans! It's like a game of good cop/bad cop, as on almost every issue, the Democrat tells us how their extremely limited difference with the Republican corporatists is the best the people can expect, and you'll just have to settle for the crap they call change and reform.

Since you have not addressed the issues of imposed trade agreements, debt collection, and foreign ownership, your explanation for Haiti is patently obvious.

Thanks for adding to my argument that Haiti was never given a chance to succeed right from independence from France! Although I was referring to the ironic fact that after independence, the other colonial powers - including France's major enemy and rival - England, plus the other new nation in the hemisphere that overthrew a colonial government - the U.S.A., supported France's demand for reparations from Haiti after getting kicked out.

Occasional blips! Where are the new technological innovations in agriculture for example? There has been nothing new to significantly advance crop yields in the last 40 years. If you think new inventions can pull a rabbit out of the hat, you're only fooling yourself. The only way you will have a standard of living outstripping anything in the past, is if you are part of that fortunate minority at the top of the economic pyramid. But, the fundamental problem that Herman Daly was addressing is how do you keep increasing consumption and economic growth when there is conclusive evidence from studies on resource depletion, land and environment degradation, and water shortages, that the world economy has hit natural limits imposed by the Earth's biosphere. Economic theory is worthless if it doesn't address these kind of real world problems. Economic proposals like steady state economics or another alternative called "resource-based economics" may end up in economic stagnation, but what is the alternative? The vast majority of people have been living with economic stagnation for more than 10 years now. Economists and politicians try to play games with the numbers...such as omitting food and gas prices from inflation numbers, but who are they kidding? A decline in production and resource use could be managed without negatively impacting most peoples' lives, if we consider that the chaotic, impulse-driven consumer demand for products does a piss poor job at teaching consumers the difference between frivolous desires and real essentials. A lot of people are motivated to go in debt to buy the right car, or the right clothes, without putting any logical thought into whether they have a real, or imagined need. When it comes to city-dwellers, there is no need to own a car if you live in a city with a decent public transit system. If public transit was improved....even to the level it was at prior to WWII and the highway lobby eviscerated transit to increase car ownership...the automobile would be a luxury, rather than a necessity, and there would be a large drop in energy demand without decreasing the quality of life.

And, he was fully aware that Chretien was not president-for-life...which is what we will have when corporate psychopaths like Black completely consolidate their control and formally abolish all democratic pretense...Black cared more for having a title than he did for being a Canadian citizen. I'll make one deal with all of you slavish conservatives who worship the worst examples of the human race -- give Black his Canadian citizenship back, and then open up a real, forensic investigation into all of the money that this kleptocrat stole from other companies while he was here, like Dominion and Massey Ferguson!

I'm twice your age, so my apologies for my personal contribution to the debt and other miseries that younger people are going to face in the future. My thinking is that our entire economy is one giant ponzi scheme that cannot be sustained much further into the future. One example would be the building of suburbs, which at first enrich city coffers but leave them saddled with greater infrastructure costs over the next 50 or 100 years. New cities like Mississauga are doing fine, but in 50 years they will be in the same position as all of the older cities trying to maintain roads, water, sewer and garbage services. I'm thinking that an economy based on continuous growth is bound to fail because of natural limits that economists have ignored for the past couple of centuries. Economists think of nature as a set of extractive subsectors of the economy - forests, fisheries, mines etc.. And the economy, not the biosphere, is seen as a whole, while nature is just a collection of parts. Nature, however, doesn’t do bailouts, so at what point does growth actually become uneconomic? That is, when the social, health, cultural, and environmental costs outweigh the “benefits” of further resource depletion. For a way out, I'm looking right now at an article by economist Herman Daly about how to create a "Steady State" economy posted on...of all places...The Oil Drum. I've come across a couple of articles proposing ways out of the mess of growth-based economics, I hope to get a thread up about them over the weekend.

It's not much of an issue..but thanks for showing us that this thread came from something more than a drug-induced hallucination.

It can also be changed, just like the Constitution. We are not governed by the rules of the BNA Act. In case you missed it, the big contending issue dividing Liberals and Progressive Conservatives in the old days was regarding the incremental increase in federal powers that the Federal Government was assuming after WWII. It's not a matter of veto power, but what should or should not be governed by the Federal Government. I pointed out some of the drawbacks to giving states equal votes regardless of population...if you don't like it, too bad! I am getting sick of Conservative/REform advocates acting like this is manna from heaven. If you can't see a downside to giving less populated provinces and regions greater voting power than those living in more heavily populated areas, then there's no point talking to a zealot.

Oh, every thread gets derailed here; I don't expect mine to stay on topic any more than the others do. I just wish the ones who turned this into bashing Haiti would admit that their underlying theory for Haiti's, Africa's, and Black America's problems is because they are black....and then they could address the history...which in Haiti's case also includes the fact that Haiti was saddled with debt by France when it became the first, and possibly only colony to successfully revolt against their colonial masters, and the U.S. enforced the payment of those debts....and the rest is history.

I'd like to see a second opinion from a constitutional expert before I agree that we're stuck with the albatross in the Red Chamber. As for the magic of bicameral parliaments -- if division of powers between federal and provincial governments could be agreed upon and kept in check, there wouldn't be a need for this body of "sober second thought" to be sitting there in Ottawa...elected or not. The provincial governments, and the first nations governments would have enough independence to provide the regional balance. Looking on the U.S. example -- their Congress is the template that the Reform Party used to create the triple E senate proposal back in the 80's. I would argue that the U.S. Senate has done more harm than good, since it has given small, largely rural states too much power in setting the Nation's agenda. It's the Senate that stifles reforms that mayors of large cities across the U.S. have been calling for for decades, while making the feds pay for the subsidizing of infrastructure to rural areas - increasing urban sprawl, and stupid, wasteful multibillion dollar farm bills, that make those supposedly rightwing republican keep-the-government-out-of-our-lives Red States the ones who draw more from Federal Government services than they actually provide in federal taxes. The Senate created to equalize power provides states like Wyoming and North Dakota the tail to wag the dog!

The first time I heard about Olestra was back in the 90's on Rush Limbaugh's show...believe it or not...Blimpbaugh was celebrating the news of this great new invention that would allow pigs like him to eat as much junk food and never get fat...based on his test study of one, it doesn't appear to be working! At the time, Limbaugh was frothing about meddling science review panels that were delaying the introduction of this miracle food because of the concern that Olestra would interfere with absorption of other vital nutrients besides fat. I've read a number of articles that say artificial sweeteners have a similar problem as olestra -- it actually increases cravings for sugar. Just goes to show that anything we eat that is radically different from natural foods, whether it's hydrogenated oils, refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, and others mentioned here, always have negative effects that are worse than their supposed benefits.

I know weather modification experiments have been conducted, but there is no evidence for the kind of large scale chem trail/con trail conspiracies that Coast To Coast and Alex Jones feature on a continual basis. One thing I am sure of: if they are more than the usual jet engine exhaust, and are part of global conspiracy to mitigate the warming effects of increasing greenhouse gas levels...it sure has hell isn't working!

All it took was a quick google search to discover that Reagan had to have a veto overridden by Congress to abandon his support of apartheid South Africa. You got caught trying to reinvent history on behalf of your hero: Ronnie Reagan again, and now I suppose you're going to shovel more crap to try to divert attention away from your false claim.

I want some examples of lies, before I take a statement that climatologists might be lying about evidence for global warming seriously! Since there have been so many examples of: CO2 projections, ocean acidification, sea ice loss and permafrost decline, that have turned out worse than originally projected in climate models -- the evidence should point in the opposite direction -- that the threats have been dangerously underestimated.

Screw Harper and whatever bullshit con game he's planning; here's your real Senate reform: NDP says Senate should be starved of funds

Haiti is a basket case because of globalization and the neoliberal economics that you celebrate! Before Clinton became U.S. President, Haiti was self-sufficient in food production,except for the occasional hurricane or other natural disaster. When Clinton made arrangements for Jean Bertrand Aristide to return as President of Haiti after a military coup overthrew his government, the one concession that Clinton demanded of Aristide, was that he accept the so called free market reforms of the military government that removed tariffs on cheap imported rice and other foods. Small farms crashed...just like in Mexico and other places discovering the wonders of free trade...and newly landless and unemployed Haitian farmers flooded the cities....just like Mexico...and were soon looking for opportunities to emigrate in search of places where they could live and work....sounds like Mexico again! So, Haiti is a basket case because of the economic system that will likely collapse a few years from now. Interesting to note that Aristide was barred from running for president in the last Haitian elections. To keep international aid flowing, Haitians had to accept a rigged election with a handpicked candidate for leader....some democracy! Why do they even bother with this charade any more?

I hate to break more bad news, but the flooding situation in China is getting even worse! A couple of days ago, a new report on the flooded areas says that over 5 million people have been forced out of their homes by flooding. The areas being flooded were having record droughts up until a few weeks ago, and this is in a region that China depends heavily on for food production. A recent FAO Report on global food production has been "cautiously optimistic" as they say, for this year. They were expecting a slight improvement and stabilization of world grain prices; but, right in the report it states that their projections are based on the assumption of "relatively normal weather" -- situations like the one in China and many other major food producing regions throw the monkey wrench into plans to get things back to normal. And this is the most obvious indication that global warming is already becoming a factor in our lives.

You are pointing out nothing, except that your positioning as moderate and bipartisan is disingenuous! You still haven't provided an example of the errors you claim to justify maintaining a cautious middle-of-the-road position on climate change; you just tossed it out as a truism. I could mention that you did the same thing claiming that there are no harms from population growth, even though the U.N. report that world population will top out at 9 billion, and then decline, has been discredited by more recent information on rising birth rates in some nations, and rapidly declining water and arable land. The calls for caution and moderation to scientists reporting on climate change are based on two factors: a. There is an extremely well funded lobby in the business of denying climate change, or creating confusion among the public. and b. some self-proclaimed moderates who voice the opinion that we need to be careful about how much bad news we dump on the public, for fear that they will become despondent and fatalistic about the future. That second reason for sugar-coating the bad news is totally without merit, since the evidence indicates that a large percentage of the population are in denial anyway; and it has less to do with perceived hopelessness as it does to the fear that taking action to save future generations will require great short term sacrifice....and it will, in my opinion, because our present globalized growth-dependent capitalist way of life cannot be carried on in a sustainable way because of the limits on human activity imposed by the natural limits of our biosphere. We are already bumping up against those limits now, and the choices of this generation will determine the outcomes for those following after us.

That was another of the arguments used to support apartheid. I won't go in to the issues of continued economic colonization and how that affected Black Africa after the end of colonialism, but re: Israel, I'm not pretending to know whether peaceful resolutions are possible in the Middle East, but when I see Israeli troops shooting down unarmed demonstrators in the Golan, I'm thinking that there is not enough difference between Israel and its Arab neighbours for me to jump in on Israel's side...and the fact that our Government has taken the position of unqualified support for Israel is what really bothers me.

Difference is that when I checked for info. my recollections coincided with the record, while you got caught with your pants down just making up bullshit.

Someone, somewhere is going to say something that can be hoisted up the flag pole by energy company-funded deniers. Considering that this #1 poster featured a misleadingly edited comment from Phil Jones for months here, why should I give this one any more credence? Regardless, I get sick of trying to point out time after time that the only thing misleading on comprehensive reports like the IPCC reports is that by the time they are released, they are out of date, and the predictions have underestimated increases in greenhouse gas levels and other changes. And the liberal, CNN type of response of looking for the truth somewhere in the middle is worse than being an outright denier. If your car is heading over a cliff, the liberal solution of making a slight turn to the steering wheel does nothing except create the illusion of trying to actually address the problem!

There were no humans living on Earth when these 5 extinctions occurred. Even less catastrophic extinctions often mentioned by deniers, such as the PETM of 55 million years ago, occurred long before we were around. A climatic change caused by a supervolcano in Indonesia approx. 70,000 years ago, is believed to be responsible for a collapse in the early human population down to as few as 2000 survivors, according to evidence taken from our DNA genetic record. Paleontologists have long been mystified by a gap in human fossil discoveries until about 50,000 years ago; now it appears that the reason for the disappearance of fossils was a result of a near extinction for the human race. So, even less extreme changes to climate can be catastrophic; and what's really troubling today is that a short period of the Planet's history called the Holocene, is a time of unusually stable and consistent weather over the last 10,000 years. By the end of this year, Earth will be supporting a population of 7 billion people. Our agriculture...especially Green Revolution hybrids that are widely used around the world, are dependent on what were assumed to be "normal" weather conditions. Even right now, around the world, record floods and droughts are having devastating effects on crop yields, and are expected to drive food prices up two to three fold over the next decade. Keeping this in perspective, what are the odds that there will be enough survivors to maintain breeding populations in the more distant future, if we push greenhouse gas levels to numbers last seen when those mass extinctions occurred?

No, he is basically making a false analogy, since he is declaring that one wrong prediction on future climate effects negates all other research; and you are basically playing your usual bullshit game of looking for the middle ground, which in this case is a subject where middling responses and solutions serve no one. So What! People who want to live in denial because it interferes with a. their political ideology b. their religious notions about having dominion over the world and c. they don't want to make any personal sacrifices for the common good, are going to continue looking for any and every reason to believe the same bullshit they've been following since global warming became acknowledged as a problem to deal with 20 years ago. Scientists are asked for statements all the time, and what have you got to say about the predictions that are off because CO2 rates are rising faster than expected, and in this case, that damage to the world's oceans is happening more rapidly than expected even 10 or 20 years ago? Which shows that your charge of "extreme claims by environmentalists" is the typical liberal retreat from making hard choices!

So, according to #1 poster logic: someone at East Anglia made a comment that deniers interpreted as a prediction (assuming that your story is based on fact), therefore all predictions by climatologists....and in this case - oceanographers are wrong or misleading....did I miss anything? And can I apply this same logic to rightwing conservative and libertarian predictions that have done a face-plant when applied to the real world in the last 30 years?