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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (26203)	12/3/2009 10:59:05 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36918

The Great Climate Crack-Up Is global warmism cooked? Institutional, political and cultural developments all point in that direction. "Britain's University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change," the Associated Press reports from London: The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented. Jones could just be a fall guy, but global warmists have also suffered a major political defeat, in Australia, the AP reports from Sydney: The Senate, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government does not hold a majority, rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air. The 41-33 vote followed a tumultuous debate in which the conservative main opposition party at first agreed to support a version of the government's bill, then dramatically dumped its leader and switched sides after bitter divisions erupted within the party. . . . Rudd had wanted the legislation passed before he attends next week's U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen so he could portray Australia as a world leader on the issue. The AP makes Rudd sound like an insecure high school student, doing something foolish merely in order to look cool. But what's really astonishing is that this is described as if it were a perfectly reasonable way for adults to behave. NewsBusters.org reports that Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, who is very liberal and often very funny, last night delivered a merciless monologue at the expense of global warmists on "The Daily Show." Sample: If you care about an issue, and want it to be your life's work, don't cut corners. It's disheartening for people inclined towards the scientific method, and it's catnip to these guys who are going to end up celebrating tonight drunk, roaming the Arctic Circle trying to [perform unnatural acts involving the eye sockets of] polar bears, which are quickly disappearing because of rising oceans caused now apparently by God's tears! The other day a boy described to us the way his middle school has inculcated children with global warmism: "My peers all say global warming is real and the right is stupid." Climate scientists really have influenced how peer review works! But those youngsters will know better by the time they're old enough to watch Jon Stewart. online.wsj.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (26203)	12/3/2009 6:57:11 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36918

In the 1980s I was a precautionary principle proponent, before the word was jargonized. It was logical to not foul the nest with obvious pollutants without knowing the consequences, at least to a reasonable extent. Lead and carcinogenic particulates for example. <Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence. > A very annoying argument which I constantly heard was "There is no evidence that such and such is harmful". My answer was that that was because no investigation had been done so of course there was no evidence of harm. There was also no evidence of safety. It should have been obvious that the absence of evidence was NOT evidence of absence. It was annoying the people would come out with the argument "there's no evidence of harm" when there was zero evidence of safety. But now the so-called scientists involved in climatology are abusing the idea of precautionary principle. The big faulty premise they make is that Gaia is loving and benign and wants only the best for Bambi and the happy creatures proliferating on the planet. They say we should, based on the precautionary principle, do no harm to the happy idyll created by nature. CO2 is NOT a pollutant. They call it a pollutant so that in itself shows they are clueless or liars. Gaia in fact is a suicidal maniac and the climate and the ecosphere are NOT in balance, never have been and is heading for catastrophe irrespective of people burning carbon or not. Gaia has been burying carbon, stripping it from the ecosphere for eons, burying it in stupendously huge graves of coal, limestone, shale, oil, tars and gas, denuding the atmosphere, leaving homeopathic amounts of CO2 for plants to breathe making it a struggle for them to exist. Plants have suffered a tragedy of the commons since the carboniferous era, with each plant having to strip what CO2 they can for their own benefit and to Hell with the collective good and survival of all. Plants have not organized a quota system to maintain CO2 at healthy levels. They have battled for survival like Easter Islanders stripping their environment of anything that could sustain life, then fighting each other to the death for the remnants. The precautionary principle doesn't mean people shouldn't burn carbon and that what level it was at was a good level. It does say it would be wise to keep it without the limits of what the atmosphere has been at over a few hundred million years, which is somewhere between 2000 ppm and 280 ppm [the all-time low before people starting rescuing carbon from its graves]. So far, CO2 is up to 380 ppm and plants are loving it, needing less water and breathing easier, increasing production. 500 ppm seems unlikely to be a problem. Nor 1000 ppm. But it would be worth doing some real science to see what will happen as CO2 levels increase. Not fake science by fake scientists. Real science. With data available on-line to anyone, not held "in trust" by priests in a self-dealing climate religion which threatens people who take a different point of view. What is needed is to figure out a good level of CO2. The suitable level is of course a political question because there are competing interests. Crop growers like CO2, some people won't. Aerobically limited athletes for example do better with lower CO2 levels. 2000 ppm would reduce their performance compared with 280 ppm. But it would be even for everyone so that's no problem really. There is nothing meritorious about 280 ppm instead of 380 ppm or 480 ppm or 580 ppm. There's no doubt that crops grow better with more. The precautionary principle doesn't apply to low levels of CO2. Mqurice