WIP

Yes, when I was young, my grandfather lived with us until he died in 1965. Back then, the Canada Pension Plan may have been started...I've never looked up the details...but I do know that whatever money he had coming in was not enough for him to live on his own after he got too old to work the farm....his land was too worthless to return much money, since farms on the Gaspe were all being abandoned at the time, and is still not worth much of anything....too long of a detour to make the point that my grandfather, like most elderly before the CPP were living on the edge of starvation if they didn't have family members supporting them. And, looking towards a future of diminishing returns, elderly altruism would certainly take a hit. I guess the difference now is one of demographics -- since we hear endlessly about the costs of an aging population....much of which could be alleviated if people maintained healthier lifestyles, but that's another issue...the stories mentioned on the Science and Religion website show that there is another side to the accepted wisdom that most people inevitably become more conservative and rightwing as they get older. I have understood the source of my own change in outlook as something that occurred because of moving out of an all-white upper middleclass suburb to an ethnically and racially mixed lower middle class neighbourhood...but, maybe just getting older played a significant role in the desire to re-evaluate my thinking on a lot of issues. I was very idealistic and did a lot of volunteer work when I was young too, but for a few decades I didn't think of many things beyond personal or family concerns. The problem today is that we are facing a future of rising food prices, gas prices, stagnant wages; so there are a lot of external factors to influence people to become more selfish and xenophobic, and less concerned about social responsibility or the environment.

I knew this would be hoot when the very first question is framed in the terms:"If economic globalisation is inevitable,"! How about a question like:'if a populist uprising against our corporate overlords is inevitable....' Point being, right from the start I can see that the economic questions are skewed towards neoliberalism, so they can come out with overall results that lean further to the economic right. Statisticians note that framing issue-related questions play a big part in the results. Polling on issues like abortion in the U.S. can produce contradictory results for whichever advocacy group needs them. My hunch is that this group is some centrist bullshit, since they follow that annoying, superior line that the truth is always somewhere in the middle between the extremes on the political scale. For example, in their explanation of the poll, they make the claim regarding authoritarianism that: In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily "right wing", with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger.....total horseshit, since Pol Pot is the only one on that list who didn't allow any capitalism. I could point out that psychologists who specialize in the study of authoritarian movements like Robert Altemeyer (on another thread) show conclusively, that in our society, the people who are authoritarian by nature, and attracted to authoritarian leaders are decidedly on the right wing of the political spectrum, since that is the territory where the traditions of nationalism and religion are located. There is no ideological foundation in our society for building a left wing authoritarianism. On the other hand, we are already witnessing the slow, incremental application of fascism of the right, whether we choose to believe it or not. Regardless, I'm Economic Left/Right: -8.12 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.44 according to this chart, for what it's worth.

According to psychologist - Elizabeth Midlarsky, older people who have raised their families and have personal finances in order, start shifting focus to larger, wider concerns....I hope she's right! Every other factor in modern life: growing gaps in wealth and income, fights for available natural resources, consumerism and advertising induced hedonism, is pushing in the other direction....that would also explain all the crap now about Ayn Rand....who provides a thin veneer of moral justification for selfishness. As long as people have sufficient health and finances to meet their daily needs, they do seem to behave more altruistically as they grow older. Our research indicates that older adults (65 years plus) express the need to help others both for social reasons (they prefer to be engaged with others) and for altruistic reasons (they really want to be of help to others), and are willing to expend their own resources (time, money, effort) to do so. http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2011/06/08/do-we-become-more-altruistic-as-we-get-older-and-have-less-of-our-own-life-to-protect/

The wikipedia article notes isotopic evidence of a spike in carbon levels at the start of the PETM; what other explanations do we need? I've seen a few convoluted arguments that rising CO2 levels only increase air temperatures to some sort of equilibrium level, but I see no reason why the effects shouldn't continue, or why it hasn't worked this way in the past. The other carbon problem that doesn't get enough attention is ocean acidification...which is presently bleaching corals and killing many species of crustaceans; the problem of ocean acidification during the PETM must have been the significant factor in a die-off of ocean life. Even without the problem of increasing global air temperatures, this problem is also an important reason to reduce carbon emissions -- since about half of the carbon we put in the atmosphere ends up absorbed by the oceans.

Early on, I figured it was a waste of time trying to track the flow of information coming from Fukishima, because...just as a lot of cynics suspected, it was all bullshit trying to minimize the damage and the future risks. Eventually the truth finds a way out in such a continuous, slow-rolling disaster. So now we find that they lied or were talking out of their asses when they ruled out the risk of core meltdown early on, and the actual radiation levels were at least double what the government reports indicated, and we are learning that large areas around the plant have radioactive cesium and strontium, which will make them virtually permanently inhabitable...this is a disaster in such a small, crowded nation that is already short on available space. I'm also troubled by the apparent willingness of the government to put the population of Fukishima City at risk...raising the acceptable radiation levels so that they don't have to evacuate a city of 300,000. What really gets me though, is that the emerging pattern gives the appearance that Tepco is either deciding government policy, or has veto power over the government. It looks similar to the situation in the Gulf Disaster, where BP was telling the residents, the Coast Guard, and the MMS what to do. It looks like we are living in a world where multinational corporations give the orders, and the people we elect to government take the orders from them - not us!

Every time there is concern raised about the alarming increase in greenhouse gas levels, caused by human activity, someone, somewhere is going to toss out a comment that it's nothing to worry about, and the world went through something similar back during the PETM. Well, nevermind that the PETM marked a mass extinction of between 30% and 50% of ocean sea creatures, our present civilization is dependent on the weather we have now, and new evidence from carbon isotope research is indicating that NOW is in fact the era of the largest, most dramatic rate of increase in carbon levels: The present rate of greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions through fossil fuel burning is higher than that associated with an ancient episode of severe global warming, according to new research. The findings are published online this week by the journal Nature Around 55.9 million years ago, Earth experienced a period of intense global warming known as the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which lasted for around 170,000 years. During its main phase, average annual temperatures rose by around 5°C. Based on their carbon isotope measurements and computer simulations of Earth system, the researchers estimated that the rate of carbon emissions during the PETM peaked at between 300 million and 1,700 million metric tonnes per year, which is much slower than the present carbon emission rate. "Our findings suggest that humankind may be causing atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase at rates never previously seen on Earth, which would suggest that current temperatures will potentially rise much faster than they did during the PETM," concluded Dr Harding. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110607121525.htm

So, you're telling me I have to itemize all the money that think tanks and lobby groups get from oil and coal companies, while you have no proof that Al Gore really is going to spend 300 million on an ad campaign....you call him a shyster and a liar, yet when it's convenient for your rhetoric, you'll take his word on it! Did you read Jeffrey Sinclair's Counterpunch report that a lot of that Sourcewatch article's information is based on? You would have discovered that Big Oil is also one of the funders for Big Green: "ARCO, Ciba-Giegy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Exxon, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Mobil Oil, Monsanto, Penzoil, USX, Waste Management and Weyerhaeuser." Sourcewatch's report on the Environmental Defense Fund gives us a laundry list of major corporate donors as "partners." What's most disturbing, and why EDF is not considered legitimate by environmentalists, is that they take money from the worst corporate citizens in the U.S. - like Massey Coal...remember them...the company responsible for the mine disaster that killed 26 miners, and engages in the worst environmental practice of all "Mountaintop Removal," to get the coal out at lower cost -- we learn that EDF board members are heavily invested in Massey. That would also explain why they lobby for the issuance of air permits for coal plants and sewage sludge plants....so how do you think they are getting paid so well? If you read the actual reports on the fake environmental groups identified as "Big Green" you find that they will carry out Big Oil and Big Coal's agenda for a price...which is why major oil companies are also funding them! The energy conglomerates get to have it both ways: they fund a disinformation campaign denying that pumping carbon in the air will change the environment, and as a backup plan, they also fund the lobbyists who can put a green sticker on their operations! What doesn't get funded is real environmental action that takes an honest look at the problem and informs the public of what needs to be changed. It always amazes me that climate change deniers can't fathom that Mother Nature cannot be lobbied or lied to, and is going to react to the increases in greenhouse gases, and the overabundance of human population in its own manner, whether we like it or not! If reducing CO2 is not technologically feasible -- that only tells us that there is too much inertia and unwillingness to make those cuts. We could, and should reduce the amount of carbon we are adding to the atmosphere and the oceans; if we choose not to, carbon levels will be reduced the same way they have in the past, when natural processes like volcanic activity drove carbon levels too high -- mass extinction! A lot of people are busy living in denial, while a small number of ecologists and zoologists have noted that the human race is at a point now where many successful but isolated species of animals are when they dominate their environment, and use up all of the available resources -- at the precipice of extinction. It's a thought that the vast majority refuse to consider, but it has to be put out there regardless of how unpleasant it is, because it's the only conceivable way to motivate people to make short term sacrifices for the benefit of future generations.

You are a total moron timg, so don't go throwing insults at other people, just because the world isn't turning out according to your plans! First, you posted a link to a Huffop article on Al Gore's initiative, which only referenced his big spending ad campaign; while there was no mention of how much of a promised 300 million was actually being spent; now we get to the source with pictures of windmills and when I go to the tab which details what Gore's group is actually doing, I find: Repower America which features lots of talking about how average Americans share their stories about how they are transitioning to "a new clean energy future," I can't find anywhere where Repower America is putting up funds for design and research in alternative energy -- just lots of people talking about how important it is. The Climate Project more talk about how important it is to transition away from burning fossil fuels: "TCP’s mission is to educate the public about the harmful effects of climate change and to work toward solutions at a grassroots level worldwide. TCP supports more than 3,000 diverse and dedicated volunteers worldwide. These volunteers are known as TCP Presenters and have been personally trained by Nobel Laureate and former Vice President Al Gore to deliver an updated version of the slide show featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth." Would I be wrong to assume that the mission of the Climate Project has more to do with promoting Al Gore, than anything else? The reason why Gore is the focus of attention for climate change deniers is largely because he has made himself the focus. There are lots of actual scientists who are grounded in statistical analysis and have done the research that Gore reads the bullet points from - those are the people who should be giving the lectures and presenting the evidence for the obvious. Repower At Home Average Americans talk about what they are doing to conserve energy...I don't see anything where Repower At Home is reimbursing any of their expenses though. Inconvenient Youth: "is a place where teenagers can share their inconvenient actions and ideas to help solve the climate crisis and lead our society to a sustainable future." Sounds like the jr. version of repower at home...moving on... The We Campaign: Combining an unprecedented mass media campaign with an award-winning online organizing effort, the WE Campaign demonstrates the importance of people coming together to solve the climate crisis. Some of the most popular WE Campaign advertisements include the “Unlikely Alliances” campaign, which paired together such seemingly polar opposites as Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich and Revs. Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton." This was apparently the focus of the Huffpo editorial, and likely where most of the spending is going, because mass media with paid spokesmen is an expensive combination. This is where most campaign spending dollars go in political campaigns, so I don't know whether you are braindead or just too dense to figure out the Alliance for Climate Protection is not much more than a giant ad campaign, rather than And the final link - "Reality" has nothing on it besides "Reality, it's not an opinion" seems lame and wasteful to maintain a website for the purpose of hosting a slogan...maybe it was scrubbed or hacked or something. Is there anything more than Al Gore talking about renewable energy and conservation? This is what could be expected from a politician looking for self-promotion! With a 300 million dollar budget, he could be investing money in wind, solar and other alternative energy startups that could provide some tangible benefits besides a lot of noise trying to counter the noise produced by the oil company-funded deniers. To a bonehead like you, presenting an overview of the think tanks and advocacy groups that focus on a range of rightwing issues including climate change denial, is a "non-response." There are specific examples of oil company money getting to the deniers, and my point is that tracing the money is equivalent to the RCMP or FBI trying to trace laundered drug money that ends up buying restaurants, hotels, and high priced condo developments. The money that can be traced back to the source is only the tip of a giant iceberg. Here's some specific examples featuring Exxon: Who is behind climate change deniers? B.P.: Tea Party climate change deniers funded by BP and other major polluters and the Koch heads: Greenpeace Unmasks Koch Industries' Funding of Climate Denial Industry Those three examples present an opposite situation as Al Gore's main hobby. Gore's promotions are out front...likely because he wants his name front and center in every campaign he's working on. On the other hand, these oil companies are working covertly, just like the tobacco companies did 30 years ago. They don't put funding so called climate skeptics on their websites, and it takes a large amount of sleuthing just to find some of the money. Considering what they are putting their money behind, all of it is dirty money, that has been used to stall and delay the inevitable, and make the future of humanity more precarious! No, the scientists who are trying to predict what we should expect now and in the near future, need to be heard first. It may already be too late for human civilization to engineer its way out of the jam we are in now. The world is facing overpopulation, declining resources, global warming all at the same time! There may be no way out but a total collapse such as those suffered by previous civilizations that thought they had it all figured out, and if that's pessimistic, it does no good living in denial and trying to paint a smiley face on our predicament.

To you! Since you are totally in the tank for every rightwing cause, whether it's neoconservative military policy, denying climate change or believing every lying bullshit claim that came from the Japanese utility company - Tepco, and the Japanese Government that has mostly taken orders from them. The significance of the lobby group funding is that hundreds of rightwing lobby groups all take the same sides on a range of political, economic and environment issues, and they in turn have hundreds of corporations - most notably the energy conglomerates, which generously support their comfortable lives of writing stupid editorials, and appearing for every MSM interview they can get in front of camera for! The buying and selling of influence is a complicated rats nest managed by third party advocacy groups, and it's set up that way for a reason -- it's the same strategy the tobacco companies used back in the 70's, but applied on a much larger scale. But, the most serious and most dangerous buying of influence in America today is the corporate money from energy companies, drug companies and others, which are replacing government in the funding of state university research programs. It's all supposed to "arms length" with "no strings attached," but maybe it's just my natural cynicism that makes me call Bullshit when the U.A.H's environment research department, just happens to have the only climate research deniers on staff - Roy Spencer and John Christie, and appears to be the sole source of the denial side cited by clowns like Sen. James Inhofe as expert evidence. They are swimming in research grants, as are the universities designing new deep sea drilling technology for the oil companies and coal sequestration technology for the coal companies, and the ones working for the drug companies; while the public universities that have been doing basic research in a number of fields, are watching their funds dry up and having to scrap or consolidate departments. No, on the contrary, you are the one who continually shows your ignorance by attacking anyone who just ask for links, and like Betsy, you don't seem to bother reading the stuff yourself! Otherwise you would have noticed that it plainly says "ad campaign" in the title, and mentions that this "bipartisan" ad campaign paid everyone from Al Sharpton to Pat Robertson to appear in the ads. This tells me two things: 1. advertising is extremely expensive and ineffective as a tool for sustained public influence. If he was going to spend 300 million, why not create think tanks and lobby groups to counter all of the rightwing propaganda we get bombarded with...so far, George Soros is the only one on the left who is funding a lobby on the left, and the obvious danger is that everything is tied to what George Soros wants and doesn't want to promote! 2. Al Gore is a waste of time, and if he actually did spend 300 million...remember the article only states that he's promised to spend that amount in total, not that he'll actually see it through...if we have to depend on Al Gore to bring about a real carbon tax or even a cap and trade scheme, it will never happen. The only thing that will happen is that Al Gore will try to promote himself as much as possible, and profit as much as possible from his green efforts...and that's why he is more important as a strawman for climate denial crackpots to fight against, than he is as a champion of saving humanity from environmental destruction. The actual climate research units around the world, which have published the research you and your oil company heroes are trying to deny, are mostly funded by government university research. As far as I am aware, the leading climate researchers like NASA's James Hansen, Phil Jones, or Michael Mann, are not billionaires or even millionaires! Unless you have proof to the contrary, they seem to be living the typical standard of living that fellow academics enjoy. The only thing you can prove is that there are people like Al Gore looking to cash in.....and as I said before, who gives a shit? The final word is that your point that climate change gets more money than climate denial cannot be validated because there are billions of dollars involved in the rightwing buy-up of commercial media, and funding of rightwing think tanks and lobby groups. It's impossible to unravel what dollars go to climate change denial, and what goes to lobbying for more corporate and estate tax cuts, or fighting health care reform, lobbying for increased privatization of government services etc. etc., since it is distributed in such a complicated and convoluted manner. In the end, it's up to the science to prove or disprove its case, and many scientists felt that James Hansen climbed out on a limb back in 1988, when he said that there was evidence for the signal that human activity was changing the climate....but since then 97% of the people who study climate research have joined him out on that limb! Once again, the consensus of expert opinion is clearly on one side, while a tiny minority of extremists, who have more often than not, had to backtrack on their previous claims (like Roy Spencer's analysis of satellite data) provide the only expert opinion for those who say "do nothing." And this issue has more at stake than denying evolution or similar crazy ideas that are able to buy influence in the public square. This time, the future of the human race is at stake because of the wager being made by greedy industrialists who put short term profit ahead of the public good, a handful of paid experts with no conscience, and a large population of reactionary morons who would rather stick with the answer that says do nothing rather than make some monetary sacrifice in the interests of future generations, and people living in the equatorial regions that are already being stressed by the floods and droughts caused by what we have already done to change the world we all have to live in.

Take a look at the more than 50 think tanks and special interest lobbyists compiled on the Exxonsecrets list. And that's just what's funded by one oil company! We're not including the Koch's or the aggressive denial lobbying done by the coal companies, and more than 50 lobby groups dedicated to a variety of conservative and libertarian causes, all promote climate change denial when the subject comes up. Down the list, there's one I never heard of before called "Doctors For Disaster Preparedness"....sounds like a good idea....but when I check their bio, most of their lobbying is on behalf of ramping up spending on military and homeland security...and global warming denial. The talking heads sponsored by these groups saturate the media, giving the impression to the public that there is a scientific case for doing nothing, and everything's fine on our present course. It's worth noting that even without the money, there are enough rightwing clowns who would go out and deny climate change for free, because taking action invites government regulation of energy producers and international cooperation. The founders of the George Marshall Institute, Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg, took on Ronald Reagan's proposed SDI initiative because they saw it as fighting Communism, and after Star Wars started flaming out, they turned their attention towards denying evidence from NASA and NOAA regarding global warming. In her book on the history of global warming denial, Naomi Oreskes says that there is no definitive evidence that the founders of the Marshall Institute were working on behalf of energy companies; they provided their support for ideological reasons....but the end result is the same damn thing! I don't pay much attention to what Al Gore does or does not do, so feel free to provide the specifics of Gore's latest windfall. I never said there isn't money to be made on the other side. Some of the so called Green Entrepreneurs are just looking for ways to cash in on a transition to renewable energy sources, and would be just as happy to live on government grant money as actually design and build something of value....which is also what happens when governments pay for domestic oil development...if you recall the days back in the 80's when Dome Petroleum was making a living off of a 130% capital cost allowance on oil exploration, and never found one drop of oil that could be developed!

Show us some numbers! We all know how much money the big multinational oil companies earn, as they make up 7 of the world's 10 most profitable corporations, and have seeded millions of dollars through lobbyists, direct funding to universities, and the assorted think tanks and front groups that fund the small handful of deniers. Atmospheric CO2 levels will reach and surpass 400 ppm in just 3 or 4 more years, and that's one number that deniers can't fudge their way out of -- the only alternative is the totally ludicrous -- that somehow increased levels of greenhouse gases and water vapour in the atmosphere will have no effect on climate, or will be magically balanced out by some other unproven weather effect. Meanwhile, we're still waiting for the smoking gun from the stolen CRU emails that you claimed would prove a global warming hoax, since no evidence of wrongdoing has been proven, and in recent news we also learned recently that the Wegman Study...mentioned again and again as if it was some sort of silver dagger for deniers, has been proven to be a fraud, and retracted by the journal that published it....that rush to publication is also being investigated, and both Wegman and the chairman of the journal that published his research under investigation for possible fraud and collusion. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/05/16/208108/wegman-scandal-rocks-cornerstone-of-climate-denial/ The only evidence for cheating and fraud seems to be coming from the well-funded deniers who have taken the money to support a campaign of lies and disinformation. So, what do you end up with to support your position that we should just sit back and keep burning fossil fuels and wait for the climate change issue to go away? This recent headline: Natural disaster refugees more than doubled to 42 million sure doesn't help the case to just sit back and do nothing...especially after considering that it doesn't include numbers for this year's disasters. Nor does the evidence that Arctic sea ice is melting faster than forecast in the IPCC reports. If the deniers are right about IPCC not being accurate, it appears to be only on the side that they are underestimating the rates of change.

I don't see any posts mentioning the significance of these G8/G20 summits. They pretty much represent the only form of international cooperation that's acceptable the Right -- globalism in the interests of multinational corporations! It seems that rightwing conservatives and libertarians start pulling out their nationalism and isolationism whenever international action is called for regarding issues like: reducing carbon emissions, prosecuting war criminals, ensuring livable wages and better working conditions in nations where manufacturing has been outsourced -- but when it comes to the corporate globalization, national boundaries just melt away like they don't even exist! Since these summits are where the real policy decisions are made behind closed doors, the protests are the only way for voicing dissent...and they should be allowed within proximity of the VIP's and the media who follow them around, not relegated to special protest areas miles away from the summit locations. How much further proof do we need that democracy is dying in this country, if not already dead?

Do you have a favourite piece of classical music? No

After the recent massacre of unarmed Palestinians on Israel's border with Syria, our newfound policy of supporting everything Israel does is not moral leadership; it's the exact opposite!

Of course; because just like America, the Canadian Right represents the minority who control the Nation's wealth. After months of seeing rightwing attack ads constantly on TV, only 60% of eligible voters bothered turning up for the federal election; and of those, less than 40% were needed to guarantee a majority government. So, a Party supported by one quarter of Canadians is claiming that they represent the majority! After they cancel the 27 million dollar campaign financing, we can expect the Money Party to have total power....now do you understand protest, civil disobedience, and possibly revolution if things really turn to shit in the near future?

I was gone for awhile and didn't see anything under new comments from that thread. Glad to see someone else noticed it.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, it looks like Canada is going to join the U.S. in the building of foreign military bases. Now, if I'm not mistaken, isn't the Harper Government the same one that's calling for budget cuts and austerity measures at home? Somehow, there is always enough money for weapons and new military spending! Our Conservatives are following every stupid idea that their Republican advisers hand them. So now we are going to join the U.S. military madness, and go plunging over the cliff along with the failing empire south of our border. OTTAWA — Canada is looking to expand its military reach by setting up small bases in Germany, Jamaica and elsewhere to support humanitarian and combat missions abroad, officials and media said Friday. Jay Paxton, spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay, told AFP: "Military planners are pursuing logistical agreements to ensure Canada is ready to respond quickly to future humanitarian disasters and international crises." The military bases would support "high-tempo expeditionary operations in places such as Afghanistan, the Middle East, Haiti, Africa and most recently in protecting civilian life in Libya." http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/03/canada-plans-to-open-military-bases-abroad/ It wasn't enough that the Harper Conservatives wanted to copy every other failed U.S. rightwing policy like low taxes for the rich, building more prisons and unqualified support for Israel, now we've got to go the full nine yards and spend money the government doesn't have for more military spending.

How is it that all of these rightwing freedomlovers are so quick to put security and patriotism and just plain fear, ahead of individual rights and freedom? And, they are willing to pay any price when it comes to policing...in case anyone missed the overtime charges that out-of-town police billed us for. My main objection isn't the costs of policing though; it's secret laws, unlawful detentions, police in full body armor not wearing identification etc.. The G8 G20 Summit looks like a test run for our future police state, where all signs of civil disobedience are brutally suppressed.

Betsy, you're just getting around to what is most disgusting and toxic about modern evangelical Christianity -- it has turned centuries of Christian doctrine on its head and become the spiritual justification for materialism and greed. The modern evangelical worships accumulation of wealth as a sign of blessing from the divine, and heaps scorn on the poor, somehow leapfrogging all of the bible verses condemning the rich and giving aid to the poor, just to get to that Parable of the Talents - reinterpreted as an economic parable. As long as the billionaire gives his tithes -- just like the Pharisees you mentioned earlier, he is now the pillar of the Christian community, lauded for his public show of piety, and his wealth and ability to give vast sums of money to the church....which would pretty much make them the modern day pharisees! It seems that the modern evangelicals have created a religion to provide them with some sort of cheap, easy spiritual fix on Sunday, until they go back to their suburban silos and live the rest of the week like greedy, unconcerned libertarians....which would explain that strange partnership the political Christian Right has with the Ayn Rand Objectivists.

Michael! Take your patronizing moderate bullshit act and your unreferenced "science" source that only deals with tropical storms and shove em where the sun don't shine! It's a simple rule of thumb -- every one degree increase in global temperature adds a 7% increase to moisture carried in the atmosphere. More energy + more water vapour = more severe storms; it's as simple as that. Most shocking, states a new Met Office report, is global warming will start to “emerge as a force that everyone on planet Earth will have to reckon with, with the storms in America as a clear indicator that global weather patterns are out of control and extremely dangerous.” Research by the famed United Kingdom Weather Service, that’s nicknamed “The Met Office,” predicts much of North America and Europe will remain cold and snowy into the New Year. In turn, the GWPF has dire warnings for all people with its forecasts for 2011. “There will be parts of the world where life as we know it will be impacted to the point where it no longer will be safe to live. Weather patterns have changed to the point where no human can be fully safe from the results of global warming that, unfortunately, will only get worse,” states the GWPF report following recent winter storm bashing of Europe and the U.S. http://www.huliq.com/10282/weather-outside-frightful-worldwide-getting-worse-new-year Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11—it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation3, 5, 7. Because of the limited availability of daily observations, however, most previous studies have examined only the potential detectability of changes in extreme precipitation through model–model comparisons12, 13, 14, 15. Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. These results are based on a comparison of observed and multi-model simulated changes in extreme precipitation over the latter half of the twentieth century analysed with an optimal fingerprinting technique. Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming16. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v470/n7334/full/nature09763.html

We don't know how serious the Republicans are about supporting Herman Cain, but based on past evidence, they like to have at least one token black candidate...as long as he throws his people under the bus in favour of the rightwing pro-business agenda. As for the Tea Party....this clown show was never a real populist movement from the start. It was mostly astroturf - fake grassroots, with nothing but a few old cranks who get bussed around to demonstrate with signs that are already made for them in advance. and it looks like the joke has worn thin, judging from this ridiculous story in a South Carolina newspaper about their supposed tea party favourite Governor - Nikki Haley, speaking before an enthusiastic crowd of 30 people in front of the state capital, because Donald Trump cancelled his appearance....at least so we're told! Tough week for Tea Party ends with fizzling rally

The American Meteorological Society does not want to take a position on climate change, and meteorologists themselves are just as likely to be on the denial side as the general public...if not more so! A likely reason is because their training is focused on explaining weather changes in terms of regular, cyclic activity, and they are still following a premise started in the early 60's, that understanding and predicting weather is just a matter of knowledge, and gaining more knowledge of weather systems would enable more accurate and longer term predictions. I noticed too that one of the TV meteorologists looked rattled in a brief video clip; and I think it may have something to do with how quick and unexpected the tornadoes developed in certain areas. And, when it comes to the records - whether it be record temps, droughts, rainfalls, snowfalls, floods, tornadoes etc. - the local weatherman seems to be more inclined to brush off the new record as an anomaly or just something made to be broken, like the record for the 100 m sprint, than consider that it is part of a pattern of increasingly unstable weather that is not going to go back to the regular, dependable weather cycles that we enjoyed for several decades!

Nice try! But your analysis of doomsday cults is no better than your understanding of climate. This group is more closely compared with anti-nuclear activists who have the Doomsday Clock....which is the likely inspiration for their 100 month deadline, than with someone using obscure passages in the Bible to predict the end of the world. The homepage, which you linked states that:"we could be beyond our climate's tipping point," by the time of the deadline. That's not a chronological prediction, and the truth could be just as easily that our climate is already beyond the tipping point - based on recent events, such as increased methane levels in the atmosphere; the mild Arctic winters and warm summers that are increasing the rate of sea ice loss; the dramatic increase in all sorts of severe weather globally, whether it be the record tornadoes in the U.S., record flooding on the Mississippi and the Assiniboine out west, coinciding with the record droughts in China, Western Europe and West Texas...just on the other side of where record rainfalls are being experienced; and here's a prediction for you: the accelerating rate of increase in atmospheric Co2, which as of April 9, was above 393 ppm. will be over 400 by the start of 2016! There are valid reasons based on clear evidence that the entire planet's climate is changing in a way that will be bad for our civilization...especially high yield agriculture, and the deluded fools are the ones with their heads in the sand who want to ignore the storm that is already happening around us, and pretend we can just go on continuing the same crap for the indefinite future. The only thing 100 Months may be wrong about is that there are still ways to prevent the climate-forcing changes that are going to make weather an even more exciting topic in the future. Some of the clowns on the climate change denial side, like Bjorn Lomborg, have framed an argument around the theme that changing our gas-guzzling way of life is just too hard, and we need to "adapt" to climate change of the future. Well, it sure as hell looks like these assholes have had their way, and we will all have to adapt to extreme weather, and doubling or tripling of food prices very soon. The reductions in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions look like they are going to come the hard way: because of declining and increasingly expensive oil to develop, and a collapsing world economy....enjoy deniers....you're getting exactly what you asked for! It's easy to ridicule sources such as the one you provided, since he inspired your analogy that green activism is equivalent to doomsday cults, by mocking Harold Camping for most of the piece, and then going back 40 years to deride Paul Ehrlich for concluding that population breaking point would happen by the late 70's. The only reason why Ehrlich wasn't right, is because Green Revolution hybrid plants were just being introduced into Mexico, India and Indonesia during that time. Even the biologist who created the Green Revolution...died recently, I forget the name...stated that his improvements to agriculture were just a stopgap measure to buy time, and not a permanent solution to the World's population problems. He still considered the need to bring down population levels as essential...which unfortunately were abandoned by many Third World nations on the advice of their religious leaders in the 80's. The U.N. has had to revise it's numbers upward in a report earlier this year that I commented on last month. NO matter what this clown blogger you discovered thinks about the "Cult of Malthus", Malthus is still correct that unchecked population growth is exponential, while food availability is arithmetical. It's also worth noting that looking through his blog, this anti-ecology blogger does not directly address any climate issues during the entire month so far. He complains about politics, pop culture, and someone designing tiny houses....but there's nothing dealing with the climate issue....and that puts him right in the pack of fellow climate deniers who have as much to say about science as creationists do on the same subject.

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First, Hudak needs to tell us what he would propose instead of a green energy strategy. His brand of conservatism doesn't seem likely to push any incentives for conservation...are they expecting to build new nuclear or coal-fired plants? And, he needs to explain what went wrong the last time the Tories were in power. One of Mike Harris's flops...aside from Amalgamation, was the privatization of Ontario Hydro. It was supposed to bring down electricity prices and motivate private investors to build new power stations. The simple truth is that the private sector will agree to build a power plant under the same terms that they agree to build a highway (like the 407): loan them the money interest-free, and then give them a 35 year lease where they can raise prices for the user whenever the hell they feel like it...and then you'll "unleash the private sector!"