peter_puck

George Bush has been correct about almost nothing during his presidency - and I am an economic conservative. While I suppose I do support drilling ANWR it is nowhere near a solution. Go look at home much oil consumption has been rising. This reminds me of the IBM commercial where a company board tries to hire a rock bank to write a jingle because they have serious structural problems, and a cute jingle just might make people forget. Thats all ANWR is - a cute jingle. The problem is that the US has to dramatically lower its oil consumption and change its lifestyle. Everyone is afraid to say this however. Instead they resort to lies like corn ethanol, or blame scapegoats like the gas tax or greedy oil companies. Short sighted is thinking ANWR is going to make a difference. The problem is world wide. Some guy in China can do the same job anyone on this board does. Over the long run, that means he can afford the same lifestyle we do now. Problem is that there is not enough oil, copper, platinum, rare earths, for both of us to comsume the same amount of materials that we do now. Oil is a global. It would be skyrocketing if ANWR was drilled or not. Oil prices are based on the WORLD market. The jobs would be a drop in the bucket, especially considering there is a huge unfilled labour shortage in that industry now anyways.

So far, I have seen you attack Obama for his middle name, his primary school education and the fact that one of his supporters shares the same name as somebody who called a crime hotline. Whats next ? Are we going to explore the views of his barber ?

As for the detax stuff, people go to court and get punished all the time for not filing tax returns. Name me one court case where a judge has agreed with your "no right to tax" theory. No, I am not a liberal, nor a Nazi. I believe in the free market - whose judgement can be far more cruel than either the Nazi's or the liberals. The basic fact is we are running out of oil. Its not taxes, its not greedy oil companies, its supply and demand. As for one vehicle per family limit, I think that would be to crude a tool (two lawyers using one car). You could put a huge premium on SUV's and Hummers. No one should drive back and forth to work with that much steel. We can limit urban sprawl, promote public transportation etc... Someone down my street just bough a Hummer - we should increase gas taxes until people stop doing that.

Yes the government DOES have the legal right to impose income tax. No, I don't want to here your twisted logic about why they can't, or about the Jewish conspiracy that supposedly hides the truth from us. As for the gas tax, we should increase it if anything. In the long run, gas is going to cost a whole lot more. If someone has to pay 1.40 a litre now, it may save him from buying a Hummer and paying 4.4 a litre 5 years from now.

A minority would preserve the status quo as far as the government goes. It would also cost alot of money and perhaps result in a new/more popular Liberal leader. It might technically be a win, but it would be an empty one.

Ummm....I think you needed to listen to the Grewal tapes after the little edits were removed. Nothing on that tape was criminal (I would have loved to hear the Stronach tapes - but they don't exist). IF the Conservatives offered $1 million dollars for Cadman's vote - that would be criminal. They are both in the gutter, but the Liberals had their toes on the line, the Cons went over (if the story is true)

Sure it was...

I have gotten very drunk, but I have never started to find men attractive. The moral here ? Drunk or not, I am what I am, a hetrosexual male. Drunk or not, he is what he is, a homophobic bigot.

This happens because there is a very small, but real, minority of these people in the Conservative party and conservative movement. When someone says something REALLY stooopid, it drowns out the more sane voices. We need to move beyond not saying things like that to not tolerating them. Years ago it worked with the racists, now we need to apply that to the homopobs as well. I am not suprised that the guy said what he said, what is shocking is that he felt free to say it. I know lots of conservatives and I don't know one who would laugh at a joke that involved the "n" word. We need to apply the same concept of shame to the jerks like him.

Gays did not cause the AIDS epidemic. It was caused by socially awkward 15 year old boy in the jungle who was left at home to take care of the monkeys while his parents were away. In North America it spread rapidly in the homosexual population, but in most other parts of the world the spread is mostly hetrosexual. If you blame anyone blame the people who used dirty needles (or the people who prevented the people with dirty needles from getting clean) ones. That is now it moved from gay men to all those women who refuse to date me.

I really don't know if you are joking or not. Nobody made it through the North West Passage until 1900 something. Even then it took a few years. Go a certain distance, got locked in the ice, continue on in the spring. Perhaps my history was influenced by some of these climate thugs (who must have built a time machine since this debate was not arround when I was in school), but I don't remember the Vikings actually making it through the North West passage.

Gangs of chemists with shanks in their pocket protectors trying to keep people from talking ? This is not how the world works. I know people in this type of environment and this does not exist on the scale you are talking about. If there is any intimidation, it goes the other way. The Bush administration and the Canadian government (before their conversions and probably after) have told their scientists to shut up. Canada's leading anti-AGW "scientists" Dr Ball launched a slap suit against his critics. That anti-AGW guy in the US congress threatened to launch a public inquiry into the finances of two prominent scientists testifying before congress. What matters is that other scientists who look at the sceptics work don't think it has merit. What also seems inportant is that sceptics arguements have a very short shelf life. There arguments today are different than what they were a few years ago. Remember the 11 year solar flare cycle that used to be all the rage ? How about that satelite that showed the earth was cooling ? Okay, cool. It was alot warmer today that it is supposed to be according to the weather channel. Now, since their model must be crap,I am going to go kinny dipping when their obviously refuted model says there is going to be a hurricane. The models are meant to describe behavior over time. It is easy to pick holes in a rough model, but why don't these anti-AGW types come up with a model of their own ? Really ? Not that I am a fan of government spending, but I can point to a whole host of cases where the government needed to spend money and didn't (cause they wanted to spend the money on a goose museum or something like that)

American oil production has declined since the days of $2 a barrel. If there was so much available oil, why was it not drilled long ago ? Oil is at 100 plus a barrell...I don't think it needs marketing There is HUGE money going into the oilsands. That is VERY expensive oil to extract. The oil companies don't seem that uncertain. I would agree .....nuclear is the only thing that is going to tide us over until some of those things you see on Star Trek come on line

QUOTE(peter_puck @ Mar 30 2008, 08:35 PM) I am not saying that there are not legitimate scientists who hold anti-AGW views. They are just a rather small minority. I am sure that this has been posted before, but all accross the globe where any scientific organization has looked at the AGW question, they have supported the AGW view. Name me one country that holds an anti-AGW view, name me one national scientific society, name me one major scientific organization. Country---->The Excited States of America, Canada I am afraid you are wrong. Both these countries have supported the basics of AGW. They are interfereing in Koyoto because it is not in their economic best interests, but both Bush and Harper have come out support the concept.

I am not saying that there are not legitimate scientists who hold anti-AGW views. They are just a rather small minority. I am sure that this has been posted before, but all accross the globe where any scientific organization has looked at the AGW question, they have supported the AGW view. Name me one country that holds an anti-AGW view, name me one national scientific society, name me one major scientific organization. Futhermore, if you look at most of the legitimate scientists who hold anti-AGW, they do not use words like "hoax" and "conspiracy" to describe the other side. Al Gore is a TV pitch man. AGW is a scientific question. It should not be a debated between a TV pitchman and a scientists on television. It should be a debated between scientists in peer-reviewed research. THAT is where the anti-AGW people chicken out. I don't really care about how many "facts" you have, I want to know why the scientific community seems to ignore them. And please, don't tell me about some giant liberal conspiracy. Bush and Haper have switched sides, would you call them liberal ? While there are legitimate anti-AGW scientists, all I seem to hear is defense lawyer reasoning and strawmen.

I don't think we are going to have the same problem with electricity as we are with oil. In the long run, however, it is a better idea to generate electricity with nuclear power. Coal's polution downside goes far beyond C02 (atleast with the generating plants we have now). If you taxed the coal going into a coal plant, it would encourage more nuclear. Besides, coal could become a problem for our grandchildren if the rest of the worlds fuel consumption catches up to the US. (especially if oil prices get to the point where they start making gasoline out of coal). Not that I am in favor of a broad based carbon tax. There are much more surgical ways to do things.

You don't need shares to profit from Airbus ...ask Mulroney :-)

Again, they would inflate the prices in THE SHORT TERM. Oil is a finite resourse. The more we consume, the higher the price will be. I am not afraid of some silly tax, I am afraid of supply and demand. For all its downside, the oil shock of the 70's probably lowered what we pay for gas today.

As I suggested earlier - educated and intelligent people have their doubts about this man-made global warming phenomenon, but poorly educated - unstable - and not very bright people have embraced it wholeheartedly. Do you have any evidence to back this statement up ? Most of the anti-AGW posts and blogs I have read demonstrate an amazing lack of critical thinking skills (this forum seems to be an exception). The proponents of AGW are governments, scientists and scientific organizations. Most of the opponents seem to be conservative talk show hosts and their callers. Does it make me "not very bright" to believe scientists rather than talk show hoasts

The problem is that most of the earth is in the stone age compared to us. Most people in China (and the rest of the world) don't have cars. You cannot go to Africa and tell someone who walks 10 miles to work that he can't have a moped because it would wipe of the carbon you saved by buying a smaller SUV. In the past most countries have been unable to afford fossil fuels. Right now there is no reason that someone in the third world cannot engineer the same car or write the same computer program that we do. Soon they will be able to afford the same energy. As for "Why should we even bother". 1) If we continue to consume ever more expensive fossil fuels it will sap our economic strength. 2) Smog is a bad thing. 3) A portion of every oil dollar goes to fund A) Chavez, B)Iran, C) Sudan D) Bin Laden (yes I know Canada is a net exporter, I am speaking of the world here). 4)If you believe global warming will have a large negative impact, decreasing our consumption will help.

Hate to break it to you, but cheap energy is gone. I doubt the politicians could really deny the world cheap energy, but I KNOW the markets will. It is simple math, you have a limited supply and rapidly growing demand. There is no way we can continue to consume like pigs and the third world develop at the same time. While many of the "green measures" cost more with todays energy prices, they will be cheap by tommorrows. We should not be building houses with 100 year lifespans that are energy pigs.