Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (154532)	6/20/2001 1:18:51 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Jonah Goldberg Take hot air out of Global warming debate jewishworldreview.com -- SOMETIMES the fastest way to fix a problem is to ignore it. For example, the quickest way to send a man to Alpha Centauri (the nearest star after the Sun) is to do nothing for at least a century. Right now, if we sent a manned rocket to visit Alpha Centauri, the occupant would die centuries before he got there. And when the rocket did arrive, people from Earth would probably already be there to greet it, hopefully in Star Trek uniforms. That's because some future generation will be able to do in days or hours what today's technology can only accomplish in centuries. Of course, some problems can't wait. If your house is on fire, who cares that five years from now they'll come up with a much better way to put it out. If you're dying today, it doesn't do you much good to know that they'll come up with a cure for what ails you tomorrow. In short, this is the real debate over global warming: Fix it now or fix it later. And, if you look at the facts, it's hard to see the case for fixing it now. The National Academy of Sciences recently released a report - at the request of President Bush - summarizing what we do and, more importantly, do not know about global warming. The report found, among other things, that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures to rise and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." But even deniers of global-warming don't dispute that. The relevant questions are: How much warming is there? Is the warming a problem? How responsible are humans for it? And what should we do about it? The answers are: Not much; not much; not much and, you guessed it, not much. The NAS study was hailed by lazy journalists and opportunistic activists as definitive confirmation of the danger of global warming and irrefutable evidence that President Bush is an evil corporate stooge for killing the Kyoto treaty on global warming. But the real news in the report is that scientists don't have a very good idea of what's happening to the climate. For example, satellite data still don't show any warming at all and haven't for more than two decades. And all of the computer models that "predict" future warming can't explain past climate trends. Sure, pretty much everyone agrees that the Earth has gotten about 1 degree warmer over the last century. But that warming doesn't actually track human activity very closely. From the 1890s to the 1940s - when greenhouse emissions were low - there was a big warming trend. From the 1940s to the 1970s, things got cooler even as we pumped lots of gasses that were supposed to make things warmer. Don't you remember all of those predictions in the 1970s of another ice age? You see, "climate change" is a redundancy, like ice cold or slimy lawyer. The Earth's climate has been running hot and cold like a shower in a Third World hotel from the get go. For centuries, Europe was warm enough to support agriculture in places like Greenland and Iceland. But in the Middle Ages, Europe was much colder than it is today. The "Little Ice Age" of the 1300s to 1400s ruined northern agriculture, shortened growing seasons and helped hack a decade off life expectancies. As of now, it is impossible to tell how much of the current warming is simply part of the natural variation of a massively complex global climate. But let's stipulate that human activity is driving a significant fraction of global warming. And let's assume that global warming is bad (longer crop seasons and milder winters were once considered boons for the poor and the hungry). And let's disregard the fact that even the most dire warming estimates wouldn't have particularly dire consequences. And let's ignore the fact that Kyoto-style solutions are political impossibilities. Even after you do all of that, the solutions being proposed are still like sending the space shuttle to Alpha Centauri today. The Kyoto treaty's restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions would cost the United States about 3 percent or 4 percent of its gross domestic product every year - and that's according to rosy Clinton Administration estimates. Meanwhile, India and China are exempt from any restrictions even though they will be the biggest producers of such gasses in the years to come. The Chinese and the Indians reject emissions curbs because, as developing nations, they believe such limits would keep them impoverished. Well, that argument goes for the United States, too. Economic progress is a barometer, albeit a crude one, for human technological progress. The richer we get, the more we can afford to study and improve the science of global warming and all sorts of other things, like alternative fuels. In a hundred years, the world may be a bit warmer, but we may be able to fix the "problem" in a day. jewishworldreview.com

To: calgal who wrote (154532)	6/20/2001 2:16:51 PM
From: Neeka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

June 21, 2001 / 1 Tamuz, 5761 Ann Coulter Consumer Reports Jefferson met Hemings in Vietnam jewishworldreview.com -- So now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally Hemings while serving in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War. In a stupendously humiliating episode this week, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian -- and author of the pre-impeachment report, "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child" -- was exposed in The Boston Globe as having lied about his service in Vietnam, in the civil rights movement, and even on the football field. For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph "Full Metal Jacket" Ellis had been regaling students, interviewers and friends with gripping stories of his service in Vietnam. He claimed to have been a platoon leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. He said he served in Saigon under Gen. William Westmoreland. Ellis was recently forced to apologize for "having let stand" the "assumption" that he served in Vietnam. In fact, he whiled away the Vietnam War in his college dorm room, presumably, like most academics, smoking pot and listening to the Beatles' "White Album." Among the "assumptions" Ellis had "let stand" was his claim that after witnessing the horror of Vietnam, he came home and enlisted in the anti-war movement. He also boasted of having helped David Halberstam with his 1972 best seller, "The Best and the Brightest," by sharing his vivid recollections of Vietnam. He had no involvement in the anti-war movement, and Halberstam says he's never talked to Ellis. The fantasy life of this deskbound Walter Mitty didn't stop at Vietnam. He has also bragged about his work in the civil rights movement. He claims that while on the Freedom Trail in Mississippi, he was the victim of racist Southern cops banging on his door late at night and following him in his car. He wistfully recalled his years as a high school football star, describing to a reporter last year how he once scored the winning touchdown. He wasn't in Mississippi, and his greatest moment on the football field involved a clarinet. Between 'Nam flashbacks and Freedom Rider reunions, Ellis co-authored the groundbreaking 1998 report, "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last Child." You may remember this report if you weren't on the moon when it was released. It was the Clinton flacks' giddiest "Gotcha!" moment. The report was unveiled to instant acclaim -- as luck would have it -- just weeks before the House impeachment vote. Bill Clinton wasn't a pervert, liar and felon after all! Rather, he was part of an honorable history of venerable men molesting the help. As report co-author Ellis put it: "It is as if Clinton had called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S. history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished presidential pedigree." Ellis claimed the new testing proved "beyond any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship with his mulatto slave." As the author of the award-winning "American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson" -- and a Vietnam veteran -- Ellis spoke with some authority on the matter. He dismissed the likely protestations from "die-hard Jefferson worshippers," proclaiming the debate over. "Now we know," he said. Unfortunately, proof of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison was as fanciful as Professor Ellis' war service. Two months after the report's "findings" had been published in every news outlet where English is spoken, there was a slight correction. One of Ellis' co-authors, pathologist Eugene Foster, admitted to the British science journal Nature that they had not proved Thomas Jefferson fathered any children by Sally Hemings. What they meant to say was "Jefferson could have fathered the slave's last child." Just like Ellis could have served in Vietnam. The scientists had compared the DNA from descendants of Hemings' last son to the DNA of descendants of one of Jefferson's paternal uncles. The report established only that some Jefferson male had fathered a child with Hemings. That isn't as incriminating as it might sound. There were 25 Jefferson males with the same DNA alive when Hemings conceived her last son. Seven of them were at Monticello during the relevant time period. The report's title was a lie. This point was being screamed from the rooftops by various Jefferson scholars -- presumably the "die-hard Jefferson worshippers" ridiculed by war hero Ellis. But their protestations didn't get much farther than the rooftops. The American press wasn't interested. Nor was the American press interested when the co-author of the study later disavowed the report's purported conclusion in Nature. Only eight newspapers even mentioned the correction, and only four admitted that the report had actually narrowed the paternity list to Jefferson ... or one of seven other Jeffersons. Around the time that Ellis was promoting the phony Jefferson report, he pompously declared in The New York Times that "a poll of the Founders would produce a clear majority" opposing Clinton's impeachment. So now I'm wondering -- did he meet those guys in 'Nam? JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here. Ann Coulter Archives