WIP

What I've read from climatologists, they give serious consideration to the complexities and unknown factors in trying to analyze the global climate picture; but if there is anything inconsistent, it is the fact that the eventual results of rising CO2, methane levels, declining sea ice, and rising average temperatures are occurring much faster than the climate models predict. For some reason you and the deniers think that's a reason to think they don't apply, rather than the fact that things are more likely worse than climate projections indicate. The changes in the Polar Vortex are a good example of what can go wrong unexpectedly if you just screw around with nature without anticipating any negative consequences. And, in case you're not paying attention, it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking, but you likely won't hear that on Sean Hannity's show when he sends some stooge out with a camera to see how much snow is outside! The fact that the expert consensus of opinion is 97% for what you call CAGW, that means the tools you consider to be climate authorities have to explain how the facts like: rising Co2 rates, increasingly violent storms, and shrinking ice, can be dealt with without taking action against human-produced carbon emissions.

We have choices! The ones that the oil and coal companies are trying to prevent funding for, so that they can collect all of the tax benefits for oil development. Also, those claims of oil being the only alternative, use the in-built assumption that we need to carry on present rates of energy usage. It seems that we have no choice about reducing energy consumption regardless of which picture you are looking at: from a climate impact perspective, or just considering the fact that oil, gas and coal are non-renewable and running out real fast. The smart thing to do would be to start reducing oil use drastically right now, because we need oil for other things besides gassing up the car! The only reason why it is even possible to feed seven billion people in the world today, is because of oil-based fertilizers; and just about everything we use these days is made of oil-based plastics....so, instead of trying to go deeper under the ocean floor, or using the dirtiest sources: tar sands and proposed shale deposits, the smart thing to do would be to make a pre-emptive strike against Peak Oil. This could be done by putting on a carbon tax that factors in the environmental costs of burning oil and coal, and subsidizing energy sources that deserve the attention, but interfere with the billions of dollars in profits that the large oil producers are still raking in. Delusional crackpots like Stephen Hawking I presume? The only new angle he adds to the picture is that he believes we have to establish our species beyond Planet Earth by that time to prevent extinction. The 200 year window has to be taken seriously when the problems of overpopulation, soil depletion, and increasing climate change are factored together. Biologists who are taking a hard look at the human species, believe that we face extinction perils similar to any animal that undergoes a sudden crash in population, where starvation gives rise to virulent new diseases, and scatter weakened populations so that they do not have enough genetic diversity to remain a viable species. According to molecular biologists, our DNA record shows evidence of having hit a population bottleneck between 60 and 70,000 years ago, possibly related to a supervolcano eruption that went off in the Indonesian Archipeligo. The human family dropped to as few as 2,000 in a short period of time. Any lower, and the human population would have never recovered and eventually died out completely. Here we are looking at environmental factors that are going to force a population crash sometime in the coming decades if nothing is done to stop it, plus we have the added factor of nuclear weapons to add to the mix.

Yes, nevermind the man behind the curtain! TIME Swampland Blog Environmental Influence on Violent Psychotics The media are now in full backlash against the idea that the alleged shooter in Arizona, Jared Loughner, was motivated to shoot Gabrielle Gifford by the violent content of the country's political discourse. Completely disassociating Loughner's violence from its political environment at this early stage is as wrongheaded as asserting a direct cause and effect between them. The relationship between environment and violence in the mentally ill is poorly understood. That there is a relationship has been scientifically established. For example, a recent study by psychiatrists at Duke, Yale, Chapel Hill and Columbia found environmental factors like family conflict, joblessness and victimization, combined with paranoid ideation, increased violence among schizophrenics. In an article on the study in Psychiatry News on July 7, 2006, one of the study's authors, Marvin Swartz, M.D. of Duke, said, “These findings reinforce the view that violence risk reduction should be an important goal and component of community-based treatment for schizophrenia and that risk reduction needs to focus on clinical as well as nonclinical factors that may contribute to violence.” (My emphasis). When people who are psychotic (either organically or through drug-use or a combination of the two) get violent, they can be reacting and responding in part to their environment. Would Loughner have become violent in any event? We don't know what, if any, psychiatric problems Loughner has and whether they are organic, drug-fueled or both or neither. But let's say he is just a “nut”. That doesn't mean it's irrelevant that he was exposed to violent political rhetoric. On the contrary, precisely because environment is related to violence in psychotics the fact that his web postings include rantings about the constitution, currency and other hot political topics that have been tinged with violent rhetoric legitimately raises the possibility that his target was chosen in part because of the political environment. Put more simply, if you are a violent paranoiac and someone tells you someone else is a threat to you, you may believe them and act on it. Does that mean Sarah Palin's targets caused Loughner to shoot Gabrielle Giffords? No. But it does mean he could have been influenced in the choice of his targets by those and many other politically violent messages combined with paranoid ideation. And there is a big difference whether violent psychopaths focus on political figures or not, because it brings violence into our national political life. Which is dangerous for everyone. Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2011/01/10/environmental-influence-on-violent-psychotics/#ixzz1DD4Jp4H3

Wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but my son's band does mostly Zep covers; you have to respect the band, even if you don't like Robert Plant's singing. They didn't rip off the blues; they, and the other Brit bands of the early 60's were the ones who introduced their fans to their musical influences. It was the 50's rock n rollers like Elvis, who were the ripoff artists; because they pretended that they created it. Total horseshit! Even if you didn't get classical music, which provided their main jumping off point, you have to respect what they accomplished. Steve Howe won the annual Guitar Player magazine poll five years in a row. Who can argue that Rick Wakeman wasn't the greatest on keyboards of any rock band? And Chris Squire revolutionized what could be done with the bass....just listen to the bass lines in Roundabout for example. After the 70's, the collective attention span was too short for concept albums and five movement album-side songs that Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd were doing, so they had to start making shorter, FM radio-friendly songs, and Progressive Rock died.

No.

Most overrated band of the 70's and 80's! How many of those stupid rockumentaries did these tools make anyway?

Abortion, abortion, abortion! How's the weather today? It would be great if we could stop all of those women from having abortions! Who's going to win the Superbowl? Dunno, but legal abortion means that a child did not have the chance to grow up and become a football player and have a chance to be on that winning team! Is there any issue that cannot be spun into going after women who choose to have an abortion? I'll add that most people don't consider any fetus to qualify for talk about unborn babies until it is actually at that late stage that it looks like a baby, and has enough brain development to have even be capable of feeling pain. Until then, the person who has to lug it around for 9 months should have the default authority of what to do with it. There are already too many people on this Earth today, and the population needs to come down to arrive at sustainable levels. We don't need surplus babies brought into this world, so the most dangerous cranks around today are the conservatives who are trying to bring back the old patriarchy. The attack on legal abortion is also a general attack on birth control, by using the label "abortifacient" to classify most contraception as early abortions. Let's not be fooled by who is behind these organizations that are so full of concern for human life....until it comes out of the birth canal. Wherever women have control over if and when to have children, birth rates fall dramatically. Where religious patriarchy bans abortion and birth control, no surprise that they are the places that are now facing food shortages and food riots.

Yes, but you're not following the logic of these Ayn Rand disciples. They didn't say anything about making sure that your partner's needs are fulfilled. They say: "lasting romance comes when you are certain about yourself, your needs and your worth," A lot of the relationship claptrap these days goes on about self-esteem and self-worth, and that's certainly important; someone with low self-esteem, who is looking for a partner to lift them up, is more likely to drag the other person down, but it takes more than that outside of Rand World. You seem to be reading a different book than the one that's quoted in this advert. They quote from Rand: "it is one's personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love," doesn't say anything about focusing on what makes the other person happy. Where I think Rand philosophy really falls down here, just as much as in the economic realm, is what happens during hard times. In a long marriage, health is very likely to become a factor. How does focusing on personal, selfish, happiness provide the right way to act if your partner becomes ill for a prolonged period of time, or becomes disabled by illness? Following the selfish path to happiness by these 'survival of the fittest' thinkers means tossing them overboard if they become a burden, not following the "for better or for worse" portion of the wedding vows. But as we all know, that's what many people (usually the men) do these days when their partner's health declines.

The call for eliminating government regulation and limiting government, provides a convenient tool for corporations to do the regulating and social engineering! We have more misery and dysfunction in today's society from half a century of being used as tools for product marketing. Most people don't have clear explanations for why they need a newer, larger house at a time when their kids will be leaving home, if they're not gone already....the next excuse is "nest egg," and that nest egg is never big enough. Next comes the cars, or more correctly the urban tanks that most people want to drive around in today that get 10 miles per gallon. Then, there's the home theater...who the hell needs an HD TV? Or a TV that covers most of the wall of the average livingroom? And on and on and on until we get to clothing and personal products that are almost identical except for the brand name, and does everyone really need a cellphone these days? After I had mine stolen 10 years ago when my car was broken in to, I didn't bother replacing it and as long as there are still payphones out there I won't miss it.....so why do most people spend so much for so much crap, and never able to earn enough to buy everything they want? The answer can be found at the same source that has left most people with too short attention spans to bother reading, or thinking for themselves. The most rigorously engineered members of our society are the church-going, gun-toting, libertarian followers of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck, and are marching off to the nearest Tea Party rally, so they can spend a hundred bucks to watch Sarah Palin babble some word-salad speech.....and they're worried about the Government and the Liberals taking away their freedoms! The only restraint on the ability of corporations to manipulate the consumer, has been taxation, independent public broadcasting, and laws and regulations to protect the consumer for exploitation. The goal of libertarian anti-government think is to kick away all of these protections, and put the consumer completely at the mercy of the unscrupulous marketer. And the well-being of society will hinge largely on how equal that society is. The main reason third world societies are often violent and dysfunctional is because they range from extreme wealth to extreme poverty. The wealth class does not interact with the poor, except for their hired servants, and feels little more than hostility to them as they drive to their gated communities with security guards, and the poor have a strong motivation to go for broke and try to steal, rob or extort that wealth from the tiny, privileged rich class. And needless to say, after several decades of declining gaps in income, since 1980 the return of the income inequality is sending us in the direction of being a third world country. Do you volunteer your property taxes to your local government? If you refuse to pay your taxes and they end up foreclosing on your estate to pay back-taxes, they are going to send the police to haul you away if you don't leave of your own accord....and that doesn't sound very voluntary to me! No doubt that many people on the margins of our society are free riders, and that's what really pisses off average taxpayers....so much that they are willing to accept policies to benefit the rich, just so they have a chance to punish those welfare bums! Anyway, didn't Jesus say something to the effect of 'the poor will always be with you?' Regardless, in any large, urban society there will be some who are, for a variety of reasons, unemployable. They may have developed severe drug or alcohol addiction problems and burned out. They may have developed severe clinical depression or some mental illness and become unemployable.....whatever, the cause, there are going to be people in our society who are not providing for themselves and require support from the rest of us. I would rather have the peace of mind to know that I live in a society that takes care of the poor, instead of leaving them to scrounge for something edible at the food banks, because general welfare and disability payments aren't keeping up with a minimum living standard in most cities today. And here's an example of where rightwing rhetoric is self-contradictory. If living on welfare, including the psychiatric disabilities that most of the addicts and mentally ill eventually graduate to, is degrading, then that is the strong disincentive for living off the system right there! If their problems are just of a temporary nature, such as divorced or separated women who end up on mother's allowance, they are going to go back to work as soon as it's possible, just to have a decent income and to get away from the surveillance of social workers and move out of a subsidized home to have the freedom to choose where and what to live in. The criminals we have to worry about are the ones at the top of the pyramid, who have the money and power to rig the tax codes and other asset-protection laws to their advantage, and to grow ever-larger and more powerful corporations that buy politicians and own the media that we depend on for our information. This way of thinking is driven more by the desire to kick down people we see below us on the rungs of the social ladder, than to go after the ones who are significantly above us. If you talk to some devoutly religious fundamentalists who have left these "tithing" churches that gobble up 10%+ of their income after taxes, while they are under the spell of conniving preachers who demand 10% plus other special offerings, it feels just as forceful (perhaps more so) than anything the government does to them....because their whole social life has been consumed with being a member of that church, and besides, the government may be able to send you to jail, but they can't send you to hell. Dealt with above....no way to eliminate the free rider problem completely without causing undue pain and hardship to those most vulnerable.....which conservative social policies are doing right now btw....it's just kept out of sight and out of mind of the rightwingers. Then, what you are doing is criminalizing poverty! There are people who may appear able-bodied and capable of working, but are essentially unemployable. You don't help someone's self-esteem by cutting off support. That is just going to be an incentive to them to become real criminals. Do you consider the churchgoers who donate to shelters and food banks to be self-righteous? You can throw that charge at anyone who gives to charity. Nobody knows for sure how pure their own motivations are; but forcing the poor to depend on voluntary charity from better-off people is what the right is advocating; instead of giving us the peace of mind of living in a society that takes care of those on the margins. My "welfare state" is what we had for a few brief decades until all of this conservative/libertarian crap started about "a rising tide raising all boats", and "free trade will increase everyone's living standards". It was a time when most people expected that the rich should pay more taxes, because they earn and are able to accumulate more wealth, and derive greater benefits from an orderly, well-managed society than any other demographic group; and that's the welfare state we need to return to. But, people who are single-minded about focusing on gaining wealth, are (not surprisingly) very likely to turn out to be greedy bastards who want it all! So, they have created this new welfare state for the rich, that you apparently approve of! Freedom is more than a matter of legal rights and freedoms. Without an economic capacity to live beyond subsistence level, many of these freedoms are useless because they are only available to those with a significant amount of wealth. My welfare state has a government that can restrain corporate power from abusing the individual citizen.

To get serious for a moment, there have been a string of young conservatives and children of top Republican politicians, who have taken sides against their parent's views on gay rights issues. A lot of polling data does demonstrate that opposition to gay marriage and gay rights in general is skewed by age, much more than political views, religion, gender, race, economic level, or any other significant marker. That makes the fight against gay rights a loosing cause for any social conservatives to plant their flags on. Even young evangelical Christians are turning away from them on all of this "defense of marriage" crap. As older generation dies off, extending equal rights to everyone regardless of sexual orientation will be considered as basic as equal rights for women and racial minorities. Be prepared in the coming years for conservative rightwingers to try to wrap themselves in this issue, just like they now pretend they always supported womens rights and minority rights also. Hopefully in the future, acceptance of equal rights will also mean a culture that accepts gays and lesbians on their own terms and stops trying to shame them, and force them underground, or to be banished to the gay ghettos that are part of every major city. It would be nice if someone who's gay could feel right at home in Peoria as much as they would in San Francisco.

To get back on topic: Arizona massacre suspect to be tried for shooting Gabrielle Giffords and government staff before facing charges over other victims As has been pointed out numerous times, interest in shootings and murders, and how seriously they are dealt with by authorities is dependent on how important the victims are; and you can bet that even Republican gun nuts are still quaking after a colleague on the other side of the aisle got shot. Peter King of New York, is a typical Republican, with no interest in gun control, but is trying to draft special legislation that will make it a crime to carry a gun within a certain vicinity of the political class. The right to bear arms is okay when they're running around your neighbourhood, but not near them. Hopefully, that trial of Jared Loughner will also deal at least vicariously with the issue of how this and other past cases of crazy assassins have been motivated by over-the-top rightwing rhetoric. Most of the mainstream media in the U.S., including the major news networks and the NY Times, have been disgustingly spineless in failing to grill top Republican and conservative media leaders for their use of violent rhetoric and imagery in recent years. Was the toxic rhetoric of the right a factor in motivating Jared Loughner? Lot's of circumstantial evidence says yes: he was targeting this Democratic Congresswoman for at least two years prior to the shooting; his incoherent rants about language, the Constitution, and currency, have their roots in libertarian writings; and unless we make a leap to the absurd, there's no doubt that he was aware of the use of violent rhetoric by political candidates, talk show hosts, and tea party spokesmen in recent times. There are other shootings that have clearer links to the right, such as the gunman involved in the California highway shooting that was on his way to shoot up the hq of the Tides Foundation....an organization that was almost unknown outside of Glenn Beck's hysterical rants about them taking over the world; or the gunman who walked in to a Unitarian/Universalist church in Tennessee, and killed an usher before being disarmed of his gun...his home turned out to be a warehouse of rightwing popular literature from O'Reilly to Beck....and of all of the churches he wanted to take vengeance on, it happened to be about the most liberal church that can be found....quelle surprise!

I'm a little clouded on what you mean here. If there is even a limited welfare state provided by government, that makes it an essential service. And why is it unhealthy for government or any agency to demand some level of social responsibility from its citizens? The right wing perspective that the only social safety net available should be based on private charity, places the poor in a precarious situation, as charitable giving drops during recessions, just when it is needed most. Is the rightwing solution to have the poor, who have no family support, to just go out and beg on the streets...and either survive or die based on what they are able to get for themselves? There are many people who would rather restore the progressive income tax system to what it was before the Mulroney "reforms", and have some peace of mind that there are not people falling through the cracks of the welfare state. Could you tell me why it is usually considered okay be rightwingers for churches and other religious institutions to push the importance of charity on their adherents, but it's not okay for government to do the same? Or why it is morally repugnant to get messages calling for support for the poor, but it's perfectly okay to highlight the examples of freeriders who have managed to manipulate the welfare system as an excuse for denying welfare to anyone?

I just got a reminder in my email from the Ayn Rand Institute about how ludicrous this enlightened self interest ideology is. This is what A.R.I. is offering for Valentine's Day: The Selfish Path to Romance Detailed Description By Edwin A. Locke and Ellen Kenner Preorder now for expected shipping in early February Most people believe that finding love and making a relationship work involves sacrifice, and think that lasting passionate romance is the result of luck, chemistry, trial and error, or emotions of the moment. In the new book The Selfish Path to Romance, psychologists Edwin Locke and Ellen Kenner argue just the opposite. According to their view, real, lasting romance comes when you are certain about yourself, your needs and your worth, and is the result of thinking—including identifying the causes of your emotions—and being proactive about enhancing your relationship. Inspired by Ayn Rand's belief that "it is one's personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns and derives from love," The Selfish Path to Romance offers a mindful alternative to the contemporary view of love for those who are serious about finding and sustaining a lifetime romance. (Softcover; 282 pages) Now that's $16.00 I won't be wasting! Ayn Rand's personal selfish path to romance didn't go so well! I'm thinking that there are too many Ayn Rand disciples running around already that are only interested in their own selfish pursuits. Most of them don't realize that there is a philosopher that provides moral justification for their actions.

Forget rising sea levels! Over the last 10 or 15 years, we have learned that the planet has much graver concerns than coastal flooding. You don't have 50 to 100 years to dawdle and fiddle around with this issue. That's what the first proponents of global warming believed many decades ago because the concept that human activity could change the environment was still an incredible claim. But now, we are living with it, and it's getting worse, and cutting edge science is telling us that positive feedback loops like melting permafrost, are already underway. From Joe Romm: U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm In the last two years, our scientific understanding of business-as-usual projections for global warming has changed dramatically (see “M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C” and “Hadley Center projects 5-7°C warming by 2100“). Yet, much of the U.S. public — especially conservatives — remain in the dark about just how dire the situation is (see “Gallup poll shows catastrophic failure of media, conservatives still easily duped by deniers“). Why? Because the U.S. media is largely ignoring the story. Case in point: Where was the coverage of the Copenhagen Climate Science Congress, attended by 2000 scientists, which concluded with this Key Message #1: Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts. And last month, the Royal Society compiled this report of a hellish vision of what to expect over the next 50 years: "In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world." Four of the articles of the report are available free online. In the abstract of "When could global warming reach 4°C?" : Using these GCM projections along with simple climate-model projections, including uncertainties in carbon-cycle feedbacks, and also comparing against other model projections from the IPCC, our best estimate is that the A1FI emissions scenario would lead to a warming of 4°C relative to pre-industrial during the 2070s. If carbon-cycle feedbacks are stronger, which appears less likely but still credible, then 4°C warming could be reached by the early 2060s in projections that are consistent with the IPCC’s ‘likely range’. Now, keep in mind that right now, during our present time, most of the World is trying to deal with food shortages and rising food prices. The world food supply and delivery system is only able to meet the minimum needs of our 7 billion population during optimal conditions (like 2009). Every time there are significant major weather events like droughts, flooding, heat waves, hurricanes/cyclones etc... there's a collapse in food supply. One of the big, overlooked aspects of the riots and calls for regime change in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt, that are now spreading throughout the Middle East, is the impact that rising food prices are having on societies that are already struggling to feed the populace during the best of times. So now let's consider what Rachel Warren sees for what we will have to adapt to in a 4 degree C world: The role of interactions in a world implementing adaptation and mitigation solutions to climate change 3. Discussion Table 3 shows that a 4°C world would be facing enormous adaptation challenges in the agricultural sector, with large areas of cropland becoming unsuitable for cultivation, and declining agricultural yields. This world would also rapidly be losing its ecosystem services, owing to large losses in biodiversity, forests, coastal wetlands, mangroves and saltmarshes, and terrestrial carbon stores, supported by an acidified and potentially dysfunctional marine ecosystem. Drought and desertification would be widespread, with large numbers of people experiencing increased water stress, and others experiencing changes in seasonality of water supply. There would be a need to shift agricultural cropping to new areas, impinging on unmanaged ecosystems and decreasing their resilience; and large-scale adaptation to sea-level rise would be necessary. Human and natural systems would be subject to increasing levels of agricultural pests and diseases, and increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events..............As climate changes, the drier regions of the planet are projected to become less and less habitable owing to increases in drought and desertification. Many humans and ecosystems would be expected to be forced to adapt by attempting to move into areas remaining sufficiently wet and not inundated by sea-level rise. This would result in a concentration of the human population, agriculture and remaining biodiversity in a contracting land area, leading to increasing competition for land and water. Integrated models could usefully be applied to determine when land and water supplies may become insufficient to satisfy the needs of human systems and the ecosystem services (such as wetlands, forests and biodiversity in general) supporting livelihoods. In such a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world. Hence, the ecosystem services upon which human livelihoods depend would not be preserved. Even though some studies have suggested that adaptation in some areas might still be feasible for human systems, such assessments have generally not taken into account lost ecosystem services. Climate change impacts, especially drought and sea-level rise, are likely to lead to human migration as people attempt to seek livelihoods elsewhere. Now, faced with the evidence that changes are occurring, and occurring at an accelerating rate that's beyond the conservative projections of many climate reports of the past, I would conclude that we have to err on the side of the maximum projections of climate change models, and insisting on denying them for technical reasons is a head-in-the-sand reaction that is the actual irrational response. Like I said before, there are sometimes reasons for being an alarmist, and refusal to hear the alarm bells is the response of lunatics who want to live recklessly! There are clearly no capabilities for most of the World's poor to manage future changes, and I doubt that any but a small handful will be able to adapt to a 4 to 7 degree warmer world. But, being the cynic that I am; after reading Gwynn Dyer's book: Climate Wars, I am convinced that we have a political and wealth class that sees the danger, and wants to pacify their slow-witted followers, as they prepare themselves and their families for a future hellish world!

Now I recall hearing something about that before! Maybe Jenna looks older because she's rougher looking.

This thread is missing something very important: the short video of Barbara Bush's endorsement of this marriage equality bill. I always thought she was better looking than her older sister Jenna, but damn, she could sell me on just about anything! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7JPji2hp4

Okay, let's say we take your advice and go with the Lomborg Solution of doing nothing about rising greenhouse gas emissions, and just spend the money to deal with the consequences.....so where does it end? Assuming that we just keep adding to CO2 and methane levels because it's too expensive and difficult to deal with them directly, what sort of adaptations will we have to deal with in the future, when CO2 levels are over 400 ppm, 800, a thousand, two thousand...I guess the sky is the limit when it comes to this sort of advice, because the advocates of the do-nothing strategy never have a plan for the more distant future, after the ice caps have melted, and the tropics are incinerating all plant and animal life with daytime temperatures over 140 degrees farenheit. It's happened in the past, and it will be happening in the future, if we just keep on doing exactly what we are doing now. This is a matter of survival, not economics! What is the cost/benefit analysis of making sure the human race doesn't become extinct in 200 years? Aren't conservatives and libertarians always telling us 'you get less of what you tax, and more of what you subsidize?' How come that doesn't apply here also, instead of just being pulled out for rightwing policy?

Certainly, if we had a method to measure temperatures going all the way back to the beginning of the Earth, we would have a median and a mean average temperature numbers. But, would they be of any value if earth history did not establish any clear temperature trends, either up or down? Over a short term, you may have an equilibrium to return to, but what equilibria do we find in between Snowball Earth and the hothouse planet where ice caps disappeared, and tropical vegetation covered most of the earth? From what I gather, the large scale volcanic activity that caused the formation of features like the Siberian Traps and the Deccan Traps in India, was closely tied to the movement of continental plates. It's not something that's tied in with the needs of the biosphere, and would not have followed any sort of regular pattern of activity. It's the hot times, like the Permian/Triassic, which caused the mass extinction death spirals. And since we are causing a warming event that is occurring more rapidly than anything in the past, it's not a stretch that our current warming has plunged us into a death spiral already, based on species extinction stats that are being gathered by zoologists and biologists around the world. As for Gaia, and life always returning to a state of balance, one of my favourite scientists over the last few years is paleontologist - Peter Ward, who has a habit of kicking over sacred cows that are taken for granted...starting with life being ubiquitous in the Universe -- which he attacked in collaboration with astrophysicist Donald Brownlee in the book: Rare Earth - Why Complex Life Is Uncommon In The Universe, and recently with The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?. Some big problems for Gaia presented in the geologic record are: * Methane poisoning, 3.5 billion years ago * The oxygen catastrophe, 2.7 billion years ago * Snowball earth twice, 2.3 billion years ago and 790–630 million years ago * At least five putative hydrogen sulfide-induced mass extinctions, such as the Great Dying, 251.4 million years ago Instead of going with the common wisdom that life is self-sustaining and trying to regulate its environment, it's worth asking if the catastrophes of the past aren't evidence that life is instead self-destructive, through it's attempt to dominate an environment and consume all available resources.

At a basic level, most conservatives do not value democratic principles as often claimed. Democracy was important in Iraq, but nowhere else in the MiddleEast apparently. They prefer the reliable despot, who can be bribed to carry out U.S. policy objectives too much to risk it all on a democratic society that might seek their own national interests instead.

First, let me say that I am glad that you share some of the concerns of the writers of those articles I collected on secular/orthodox tensions in Israel. There seem to be others who have a large blindspot regarding this problem in spite of the growing militancy of the orthodox communities, and it's implications for any serious peace negotiations. Don't forget that the writer was quoting Frank Luntz - the notorious Republican pollster, who was commissioned by some wealthy Jewish zionists to find out why young American Jews were not as vigorously defending Israel as they would like. He's the one who considers open debate, an aversion to using military force, and commitment to human rights to be liberal values.....and he doesn't consider them to be the values shared by his brand of conservatives. To Luntz and his Republican cohorts, these are exclusive values of liberal surrender monkeys! I've heard it said that Judaism is a religion of practice, rather than a religion of belief and confession. In my teenage years, I worked in a restaurant owned by a concentration camp survivor who lost all of his immediate family and almost all of his relations from the village in Poland where they lived; he said that he could not understand how anyone could believe there was a God who was concerned with man after what he had seen....and yet he was an observant Jew, married a Jew, and raised his children to carry on the tradition. Some of the paragraphs that I edited out in that long article were regarding Israeli politics. In particular, the author sees a rise in extremist opinions that want to expel Arabs, most notably the Foreign Minister - Lieberman, who is mentioned as having been a member of Meir Kahane's Party in his younger days, and today, wants to force Israeli Arabs to swear a loyalty oath to Israel, and expel those who refuse. Since this is coming from someone already in the Government, how effective should we consider those safeguards of liberty you mention, if this sort of policy becomes law at a future date. There's not much I can work with in this criticism, since you criticize the author's subjective sense of how other Jews feel about Zionism with your own subjective interpretation of how the students, and "most Jews" regard Zionism. I have no way to evaluate this sort of argument. He was referencing the leaders of major organizations and lobby groups like AIPAC, for supporting the most aggressive, hardline policies for dealing with Palestinians and Arab states, while, according to polling data, being totally out of synch with the wishes of American Jews, who expect Israel to be making every effort to seek a peaceful resolution to the neverending war. In the U.S., groups like AIPAC seem to be devoting most of their attention to the whacked out Christian Zionist elements, who are anxious for Israel to fulfill their vision of Biblical prophecy....in other words blow up! I can recall one big example of how the growing power of the orthodox in Israel changed the whole strategy after the 6 day war. Specifically, up until the Likud of Menachem Begin took power, most members of the previous Labour governments were more interested in keeping the Sinai, or as much of the Sinai as possible, than they were about planting a flag in the West Bank. The only part of the West Bank that Labour considered important was East Jerusalem; the rest had a large population of Arabs, and was not worth much from an economic perspective. On the other hand, the Sinai was a big, empty stretch of desert, that could be developed and farmed in many locations, and had mineral resources. Today, the Egyptians have the oil that's been developed there, as well as the Israeli resorts, that are now owned by Egypt and collect big returns from Israeli tourists. But the orthodox who supported Likud and Begin, decided that was the land to bargain away for peace, because it had no religious significance. Instead they wanted the already crowded "Judea and Samaria", and have to displace Palestinians to build new settlements on "holy land!" It seems to me that the pragmatic, secular Labour Party would have unloaded most of the West Bank for a future Palestinian state, and instead tried to keep at least a chunk of the Sinai as war reparations. It would have been more likely to negotiate a peace agreement from pure economic motives, than the religious motivations of Likud's supporters. Well, I don't see it as faux concern here. Any time there are religious zealots talking about their holy land, there's no room to negotiate anything. If Israel is becoming more orthodox and more theocratic, it looks more and more like those Islamic fundamentalist states than it does with a western, democratic society.

Oh yeah, how's this for starters: Tucson Terror, Right-Wing Demagogues, and Targeting Democrats Chip Berlet Right-Wing Terrorism Stoked by Conservative Leaders Again Bob Cesca from a year ago I might add Right-Wing Terrorism: Murders Grow on the Far Right The American landscape is pockmarked by the wreckage left behind by angry, white male extremists. so who should we really be profiling?

My example was strictly anecdotal, based on my own experiences. I should have also added that during my conservative phase I was living in a new suburb, and I think where you live and who you interact with, has a lot to do with your cultural attitudes. In an all-white upper middleclass suburb, you don't come in contact with people on welfare, racial minorities and natives, Muslims, or any group that is the usual target of suspicion and contempt of rightwing ideologues and media; so it's easier to objectify them as something other than yourself. If you end up having to give up that expensive house and move into an older neighbourhood and be closer to work, you are likely to come in contact with these same groups. It doesn't mean that you are all of a sudden going to be their friends, but you have a new perspective on the propaganda that you've been fed to inspire fear and contempt for them. So, my path may be unique, since most people who move to the burbs stay there until they either die or get carted off to the nursing home.

It means that you have no reason not to kill them (drop laser-guided bombs on their villages for example) if you decide that it would suit your purposes. To Germans before the end of WWII, who had been indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda and Lutheran tradition, Jews were subhuman; and they saw nothing more to object to living next to a concentration camp, than they would to living near a slaughterhouse. That could start a side discussion of its own, since most people today wouldn't be able to eat meat or consume dairy products, if they had to visit the factory farm facilities that make cheap meat possible....but I'll leave that for another day. That opening post linked article does not say that infanticide is a culturally valued custom in any part of Pakistan, but that did not stop the usual rightwing bombthrowers from repeating the refrain "barbarian" over and over again! The same factors that favour male babies over female exist in China and India, and have resulted in populations that now have a gender imbalance. But when it comes to who the rightwingers decide to focus attention on, the enemy of the day is a barbarian, and that makes it easier to kill them, bomb their villages, use illegal methods of torture etc.

I came across something awhile back from physicist and science educator Paul Davies, who ponders questions that most physicists wouldn't bother with. Anyway, he came up with a simple model to demonstrate that, in theory, a supernatural existence outside of space and time would be possible, but such a creature would not be able to just drop in to the physical universe and interact with time-constrained creatures like us. It would either have no awareness of our universe and the goings on in it; or if it did manage to drop through, it would no longer be supernatural. One of the gaps that has been used for ages by creationists is the astronomical odds of creating a DNA molecule from naturally occurring organic chemistry. But, although little money and time goes to research on how life could have been sparked, there is a growing consensus that the highly perishable RNA, which is easier to make, was the origin of self-replicating lifeforms. DNA is so sturdy, that it likely took over the job of gene replication because it could survive the harsh environmental conditions. Long story short, is that during the primordial Earth, there may have been zillions of possible combinations of simple RNA life forms that could only exist for short durations. But when the jump to DNA occurred, whoever was first to start DNA-based gene transfer, would have flourished and diversified. The researchers in abiogenesis today believe that they will likely find multitudes of possible avenues for life, rather than one pathway to what we have today. Looking at the big picture, creationists aren't wise to plant their flag over this gap any more than the "human eye","bacteria flagella",the "blood-clotting cascade", or any other of a host of gaps that disappear once "irreconcilable complexity" vanishes as soon as rungs are found on the ladder between the starting point and the finished product. Most of the real scientists who are Christians, like Francis Collins and Ken Miller, advise their fellow Christians to refrain from trying to blend science and religion together. Science may not provide a good way to find meaning and decide ethics (I'm not convinced by Sam Harris's latest effort), but it does do a good job of piecing together the facts of what goes on in the natural world. And if the religious really have as much confidence in their faiths as claimed, they shouldn't feel such a need to try to prove them through science.

We're still waiting for that creationist theory, that explains the geologic and fossil record, as well as the new problems presented to creationism by genetics -- which can wind back the clock and trace ALL life on Earth back to a common ancestor.