# OT:Climate Changes



## Guy Schlicter (May 3, 2004)

I'm posting it because its important and could eventually affect us all.Lake Mead which is 110 miles long supplies a good portion of water in the west.its drying up!.They predict by 2021 it may be empty.I took a look at the photos and its frightening to see how low it is.This is global warming and negative changes to our enviroment.I drove by there in November 2006 over the Hoover Dam and noticed it was low then.I figured it was a temporary thing.I've noticed the changes in the weather.Last January 2007 is was in the 70s in New York.We just had the least snow in the month of January in 75 years.I'm sure some of you have noticed the changes to the weather and enviroment.I sure have.This is an interesting and frightening but important subject.But its something thats important to all of us.Guy S


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

Whatever you do, don't look up! The sky is falling! 

Ha! I made you look! :jest:


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

Your confusing weather with Global change. 


Whatever happened to all that rock, earth n stuff before it became the grand canyon? Ya think the earths surface has any effect on the Jet Stream? 
What about the sun..............

If we use a nuke to cut a hole deep inside the earth, do you think we'd crack the mantle and it might expel a MOON into space? (Crack in the World)


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

I've seen some information about the greater probability of our brief warming spell of the last few decades to be just a glitch on the road to another ice age.

This is beginning to sound like that old _Twilight Zone _episode.


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## Ohio_Southpaw (Apr 26, 2005)

Look at it this way: If the climate never changes...the planet is dead. It's all cyclic my friend.


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## John P (Sep 1, 1999)

When did Al Gore register here?


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Yeah, don't worry at all about Global Warming. Just because that goofy Al Gore (and a whole bunch of scientist) say it's something to be alarmed about isn't proof it's real. And just because the same guys that say Global Warming isn't real have also been consistantly wrong about almost everything for the last seven years or so, doesn't mean they aren't correct about this.


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## El Gato (Jul 15, 2000)

Hmmm... which side to choose:

On the one hand we have an almost universal chorus of geologists, climatologists and a few other types of propeller heads that say there something unusual is going on in the Earth's climate cycles 

And on the other hand we have crackpots and people who have something to gain financially denying that climate change is real.

So.

Who to choose to believe? Who to choose?


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## ClubTepes (Jul 31, 2002)

The funny thing about the people who say that global warming is more a natural process and that we don't have that much to do with it, actually unknowingly argue that its more important than ever for us to change.

Hypothetically, if we only account for say 10% of global warming, Then if we act, that is 10% more time that we can give ourselves before we're totally screwed.

Individually and in small groups, we humans can be pretty intelligent.

But as a whole, we're pretty stupid.


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## sbaxter (Jan 8, 2002)

John P said:


> When did Al Gore register here?





Scotty said:


> How do we know he didn't invent the thing?




Qapla'

SSB


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## modelsj (May 12, 2004)

*changes*

If a politician is going after this you can bet there is more behind than an actual issue. Especially if it is the democrat side 'o politics. Just a plot to raise taxes. Let the planet do what it will- we cannot control what happens with a planet but we can control things like starvation, poverty, jobs, economy. Just my OPINION.


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

No reason to think that warming of Venus and Mars has anything to do with the warming on Earth. Perhaps the SUN??? 


Ya got any scientists who aren't taking bucks for research who says it's really mans fault.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

modelsj said:


> If a politician is going after this you can bet there is more behind than an actual issue. Especially if it is the democrat side 'o politics. Just a plot to raise taxes. Let the planet do what it will- we cannot control what happens with a planet but we can control things like starvation, poverty, jobs, economy. Just my OPINION.


I can't think of any reasonable reason why Al Gore and the majority of the scientific community would have fabricated Global Warming. On the other hand, the folks who insist it's a load of hoey are either A)On the payroll of Big Oil and other corporations B)folks that always insist what's good for corporations is best for America, or C)those who always insist anything first proposed by _anybody_ in _any_ way associated with the Democrats is obviously a commie un-American plot to promote gay marriage and/or higher taxes.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

This is the best example of_ bipartisan_ mass hysteria since the UFO scare of the 1970s.


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## modelsj (May 12, 2004)

I Vote "c"


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

PerfesserCoffee said:


> This is the best example of_ bipartisan_ mass hysteria since the UFO scare of the 1970s.



Ahhhh, mass hysteria is why the polar icecaps are shrinking at a unprecedented rate. Or why over 50 people were killed in America last week by tornados, a fact that got less attention from the media than the latest Britney fiasco. And Al Gore and his minions sneak out every night and hack away at Greenlands glaciers with snow shovels, because he gets a dollar from every CFL bulb or hybrid car sold!


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> Ahhhh, mass hysteria is why the polar icecaps are shrinking at a unprecedented rate. Or why over 50 people were killed in America last week by tornadoes . . .



Such an illogical interpretation of such events proves my point! :thumbsup:

While you're at it, can you tell me what the weather here will be June 10, 2008?


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Hmmmm, why does this sound familiar:



> Sen. Inhofe Compares People Who Believe In Global Warming To ‘The Third Reich’
> Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is the nation’s most prominent global warming denier. He famously declared that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Now, he’s taken the argument a step further. In an interview with Tulsa World, Inhofe compared people who believed global warming was a problem to Nazis:
> 
> In an interview, he heaped criticism on what he saw as the strategy used by those on the other side of the debate and offered a historical comparison.
> ...


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

It seems that the World is moving forward with the assumption that Man can help alleviate the effects or causes of global warming. It's interesting to me because I see populist movements like Universal Healthcare and alternative energy moving ahead despite the best efforts of our great leaders (and their followers) telling us that France is BAD!!!! Lead, follow, or get out of the way.


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

Does Oklahoma have a lot of oil wells? Just asking.



PhilipMarlowe said:


> Hmmmm, why does this sound familiar:


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## modelsj (May 12, 2004)

*Global*

France IS bad. I have a friend from there who had to have major surgery and almost died from socialized medicine! I wonder...... could the planet finally be thawing out from the great flood of Genesis?


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## jtwaclawski (Aug 7, 1999)

I don't believe in Global Warming as touted by Al Gore and the rest, ESPECIALLY since scientist who once signed on to it are now rethinking their positions. (the same ones who were predicting a ice age in the early 70's). Oh and you won't see that on the evening news. Don't believe me, look it up. Here's a few.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200712/NAT20071211a.html

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/...lobal-warming_debate_isnt_over_until_its_over

ANY scientific study that does not look at solor activity is flat out missing the mark. Everything must be taken into consideration and not dismissed because of who is paying for it. And yes there is BIG money to be made in research grants.

As for politicians, you all know that the UN is trying to impose a World Wide Tax because of Global Warming right. (Also AIDS and anything else they can look at). You're aware that upcoming economic powers like China and India are to be exempt from Kyoto though they are pumping green house gasses out close to if not more the US levels right?

You are aware that the Middle Ages experiance a heat wave that was hotter then what we are feeling now. That Greenland was once green and NOT covered with ice. That at one point the entire earth was like a rain forest when the dinosaurs were here. Archeology (how ever it's spelled) show warming and cooling taking place over the centuries. That's an undisputed FACT. 

As for reservores drying up, maybe people should stop drinking water and taking showers. All areas experience draught once in a while as jet streams shift. What about the other areas that are getting record snow and rain falls? Don't hear about them do ya.

I do however, agree to move to other forms of energy that lower carbon emissions and help keep the air cleaner is a good thing. But alarmist, political crap is not the way to go about change. Education about how much better life could be with cleaner air would be a good start. How about how if we didn't depend on oil then those freaking terriorists funding would dry up. 

BTW SUV Owner ( Dodge Durango) and proud of it!!!!!!!!


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## modelsj (May 12, 2004)

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:Woo Hoo Yah!


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> Hmmmm, why does this sound familiar:


Thanks for (once again) making my point! :thumbsup:


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

While a long and complex article, this shows where most of the anti-Global warming crowd gets their arguments,why they are wrong, and who funds them:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html

Some Like It Hot 

WHEN NOVELIST MICHAEL CRICHTON took the stage before a lunchtime crowd in Washington, D.C., one Friday in late January, the event might have seemed, at first, like one more unremarkable appearance by a popular author with a book to sell. Indeed, Crichton had just such a book, his new thriller, State of Fear. But the content of the novel, the setting of the talk, and the audience who came to listen transformed the Crichton event into something closer to a hybrid of campaign rally and undergraduate seminar. State of Fear is an anti-environmentalist page-turner in which shady ecoterrorists plot catastrophic weather disruptions to stoke unfounded fears about global climate change. However fantastical the book’s story line, its author was received as an expert by the sharply dressed policy wonks crowding into the plush Wohlstetter Conference Center of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI). In his introduction, AEI president and former Reagan budget official Christopher DeMuth praised the author for conveying “serious science with a sense of drama to a popular audience.” The title of the lecture was “Science Policy in the 21st Century.”

Crichton is an M.D. with a basketball player’s stature (he’s 6 feet 9 inches), and his bearing and his background exude authority. He describes himself as “contrarian by nature,” but his words on this day did not run counter to the sentiment of his AEI listeners. “I spent the last several years exploring environmental issues, particularly global warming,” Crichton told them solemnly. “I’ve been deeply disturbed by what I found, largely because the evidence for so many environmental issues is, from my point of view, shockingy flawed and unsubstantiated.” Crichton then turned to bashing a 1998 study of historic temperature change that has been repeatedly singled out for attack by conservatives.

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases emitted by human activity are causing global average temperatures to rise. Conservative think tanks are trying to undermine this conclusion with a disinformation campaign employing “reports” designed to look like a counterbalance to peer-reviewed studies, skeptic propaganda masquerading as journalism, and events like the AEI luncheon that Crichton addressed. The think tanks provide both intellectual cover for those who reject what the best science currently tells us, and ammunition for conservative policymakers like Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who calls global warming “a hoax.”

This concerted effort reflects the shared convictions of free-market, and thus antiregulatory, conservatives. But there’s another factor at play. In addition to being supported by like-minded individuals and ideologically sympathetic foundations, these groups are funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company. Mother Jones has tallied some 40 ExxonMobil-funded organizations that either have sought to undermine mainstream scientific findings on global climate change or have maintained affiliations with a small group of “skeptic” scientists who continue to do so. Beyond think tanks, the count also includes quasi-journalistic outlets like Tech CentralStation.com (a website providing “news, analysis, research, and commentary” that received $95,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003), a FoxNews.com columnist, and even religious and civil rights groups. In total, these organizations received more than $8 million between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which records are available; all figures below are for that range unless otherwise noted). ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Lee Raymond serves as vice chairman of the board of trustees for the AEI, which received $960,000 in funding from ExxonMobil. The AEI-Brookings Institution Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, which officially hosted Crichton, received another $55,000. When asked about the event, the center’s executive director, Robert Hahn—who’s a fellow with the AEI—defended it, saying, “Climate science is a field in which reasonable experts can disagree.” (By contrast, on the day of the event, the Brookings Institution posted a scathing critique of Crichton’s book.)

During the question-and-answer period following his speech, Crichton drew an analogy between believers in global warming and Nazi eugenicists. “Auschwitz exists because of politicized science,” Crichton asserted, to gasps from some in the crowd. There was no acknowledgment that the AEI event was part of an attempt to do just that: politicize science. The audience at hand was certainly full of partisans. Listening attentively was Myron Ebell, a man recently censured by the British House of Commons for “unfounded and insulting criticism of Sir David King, the Government’s Chief Scientist.” Ebell is the global warming and international policy director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has received a whopping $1,380,000 from ExxonMobil. Sitting in the back of the room was Christopher Horner, the silver-haired counsel to the Cooler Heads Coalition who’s also a CEI senior fellow. Present also was Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise ($40,000 in 2003). Saying he’s “heartened that ExxonMobil and a couple of other groups have stood up and said, ‘this is not science,’” Driessen, who is white, has made it his mission to portray Kyoto-style emissions regulations as an attack on people of color—his recent book is entitled Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death (see “Black Gold?”). Driessen has also written about the role that think tanks can play in helping corporations achieve their objectives. Such outlets “can provide research, present credible independent voices on a host of issues, indirectly influence opinion and political leaders, and promote responsible social and economic agendas,” he advised companies in a 2001 essay published in Capital PR News. “They have extensive networks among scholars, academics, scientists, journalists, community leaders and politicians…. You will be amazed at how much they do with so little.”



THIRTY YEARS AGO, the notion that corporations ought to sponsor think tanks that directly support their own political goals—rather than merely fund disinterested research—was far more controversial. But then, in 1977, an associate of the AEI (which was founded as a business association in 1943) came to industry’s rescue. In an essay published in the Wall Street Journal, the influential neoconservative Irving Kristol memorably counseled that “corporate philanthropy should not be, and cannot be, disinterested,” but should serve as a means “to shape or reshape the climate of public opinion.”

Kristol’s advice was heeded, and today many businesses give to public policy groups that support a laissez-faire, antiregulatory agenda. In its giving report, ExxonMobil says it supports public policy groups that are “dedicated to researching free market solutions to policy problems.” What the company doesn’t say is that beyond merely challenging the Kyoto Protocol or the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act on economic grounds, many of these groups explicitly dispute the science of climate change. Generally eschewing peer-reviewed journals, these groups make their challenges in far less stringent arenas, such as the media and public forums.

Pressed on this point, spokeswoman Lauren Kerr says that “ExxonMobil has been quite transparent and vocal regarding the fact that we, as do multiple organizations and respected institutions and researchers, believe that the scientific evidence on greenhouse gas emissions remains inconclusive and that studies must continue.” She also hastens to point out that ExxonMobil generously supports university research programs—for example, the company plans to donate $100 million to Stanford University’s Global Climate and Energy Project. It even funds the hallowed National Academy of Sciences.

Nevertheless, no company appears to be working harder to support those who debunk global warming. “Many corporations have funded, you know, dribs and drabs here and there, but I would be surprised to learn that there was a bigger one than Exxon,” explains Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which, in 2000 and again in 2003, sued the government to stop the dissemination of a Clinton-era report showing the impact of climate change in the United States. Attorney Christopher Horner—whom you’ll recall from Crichton’s audience—was the lead attorney in both lawsuits and is paid a $60,000 annual consulting fee by the CEI. In 2002, ExxonMobil explicitly earmarked $60,000 for the CEI for “legal activities.”

Ebell denies the sum indicates any sort of quid pro quo. He’s proud of ExxonMobil’s funding and wishes “we could attract more from other companies.” He stresses that the CEI solicits funding for general project areas rather than to carry out specific sponsor requests, but admits being steered (as other public policy groups are steered) to the topics that garner grant money. While noting that the CEI is “adamantly opposed” to the Endangered Species Act, Ebell adds that “we are only working on it in a limited way now, because we couldn’t attract funding.”


EXXONMOBIL’S FUNDING OF THINK TANKS hardly compares with its lobbying expenditures—$55 million over the past six years, according to the Center for Public Integrity. And neither figure takes much of a bite out of the company’s net earnings—$25.3 billion last year. Nevertheless, “ideas lobbying” can have a powerful public policy effect.

Consider attacks by friends of ExxonMobil on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). A landmark international study that combined the work of some 300 scientists, the ACIA, released last November, had been four years in the making. Commissioned by the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that includes the United States, the study warned that the Arctic is warming “at almost twice the rate as that of the rest of the world,” and that early impacts of climate change, such as melting sea ice and glaciers, are already apparent and “will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals, and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.” Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) was so troubled by the report that he called for a Senate hearing.

Industry defenders shelled the study, and, with a dearth of science to marshal to their side, used opinion pieces and press releases instead. “Polar Bear Scare on Thin Ice,” blared FoxNews.com columnist Steven Milloy, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute ($75,000 from ExxonMobil) who also publishes the website JunkScience.com. Two days later the conservative Washington Times published the same column. Neither outlet disclosed that Milloy, who debunks global warming concerns regularly, runs two organizations that receive money from ExxonMobil. Between 2000 and 2003, the company gave $40,000 to the Advancement of Sound Science Center, which is registered to Milloy’s home address in Potomac, Maryland, according to IRS documents. ExxonMobil gave another $50,000 to the Free Enterprise Action Institute—also registered to Milloy’s residence. Under the auspices of the intriguingly like-named Free Enterprise Education Institute, Milloy publishes CSRWatch.com, a site that attacks the corporate social responsibility movement. Milloy did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article; a Fox News spokesman stated that Milloy is “affiliated with several not-for-profit groups that possibly may receive funding from Exxon, but he certainly does not receive funding directly from Exxon.”

Setting aside any questions about Milloy’s journalistic ethics, on a purely scientific level, his attack on the ACIA was comically inept. Citing a single graph from a 146-page overview of a 1,200-plus- page, fully referenced report, Milloy claimed that the document “pretty much debunks itself” because high Arctic temperatures “around 1940” suggest that the current temperature spike could be chalked up to natural variability. “In order to take that position,” counters Harvard biological oceanographer James McCarthy, a lead author of the report, “you have to refute what are hundreds of scientific papers that reconstruct various pieces of this climate puzzle.”

Nevertheless, Milloy’s charges were quickly echoed by other groups. TechCentralStation.com published a letter to Senator McCain from 11 “climate experts,” who asserted that recent Arctic warming was not at all unusual in comparison to “natural variability in centuries past.” Meanwhile, the conservative George C. Marshall Institute ($310,000) issued a press release asserting that the Arctic report was based on “unvalidated climate models and scenarios…that bear little resemblance to reality and how the future is likely to evolve.” In response, McCain said, “General Marshall was a great American. I think he might be very embarrassed to know that his name was being used in this disgraceful fashion.”

The day of McCain’s hearing, the Competitive Enterprise Institute put out its own press release, citing the aforementioned critiques as if they should be considered on a par with the massive, exhaustively reviewed Arctic report: “The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, despite its recent release, has already generated analysis pointing out numerous flaws and distortions.” The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute ($60,000 from ExxonMobil in 2003) also weighed in, calling the Arctic warming report “an excellent example of the favoured scare technique of the anti-energy activists: pumping largely unjustifiable assumptions about the future into simplified computer models to conjure up a laundry list of scary projections.” In the same release, the Fraser Institute declared that “2004 has been one of the cooler years in recent history.” A month later the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization would pronounce 2004 to be “the fourth warmest year in the temperature record since 1861.”


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Part II:

Frank O’Donnell, of Clean Air Watch, likens ExxonMobil’s strategy to that of “a football quarterback who doesn’t want to throw to one receiver, but rather wants to spread it around to a number of different receivers.” In the case of the ACIA, this echo-chamber offense had the effect of creating an appearance of scientific controversy. Senator Inhofe—who received nearly $290,000 from oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, for his 2002 reelection campaign—prominently cited the Marshall Institute’s work in his own critique of the latest science.



TO BE SURE, that science wasn’t always as strong as it is today. And until fairly recently, virtually the entire fossil fuels industry—automakers, utilities, coal companies, even railroads—joined ExxonMobil in challenging it.

The concept of global warming didn’t enter the public consciousness until the 1980s. During a sweltering summer in 1988, pioneering NASA climatologist James Hansen famously told Congress he believed with “99 percent confidence” that a long-term warming trend had begun, probably caused by the greenhouse effect. As environmentalists and some in Congress began to call for reduced emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, industry fought back.

In 1989, the petroleum and automotive industries and the National Association of Manufacturers forged the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory actions to address global warming. Exxon—later ExxonMobil—was a leading member, as was the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for which Exxon’s CEO Lee Raymond has twice served as chairman. “They were a strong player in the Global Climate Coalition, as were many other sectors of the economy,” says former GCC spokesman Frank Maisano.

Drawing upon a cadre of skeptic scientists, during the early and mid-1990s the GCC sought to emphasize the uncertainties of climate science and attack the mathematical models used to project future climate changes. The group and its proxies challenged the need for action on global warming, called the phenomenon natural rather than man-made, and even flatly denied it was happening. Maisano insists, how ever, that after the Kyoto Protocol emerged in 1997, the group focused its energies on making economic arguments rather than challenging science.

Even as industry mobilized the forces of skepticism, however, an international scientific collaboration emerged that would change the terms of the debate forever. In 1988, under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and government officials inaugurated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific body that would eventually pull together thousands of experts to evaluate the issue, becoming the gold standard of climate science. In the IPCC’s first assessment report, published in 1990, the science remained open to reasonable doubt. But the IPCC’s second report, completed in 1995, concluded that amid purely natural factors shaping the climate, humankind’s distinctive fingerprint was evident. And with the release of the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged: Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.

Even some leading corporations that had previously supported “skepticism” were converted. Major oil companies like Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum, as well as automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, abandoned the Global Climate Coalition, which itself became inactive after 2002.

Yet some forces of denial—most notably ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, of which ExxonMobil is a leading member—remained recalcitrant. In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.” The document stated: “Victory will be achieved when…recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’” It’s hard to resist a comparison with a famous Brown and Williamson tobacco company memo from the late 1960s, which observed: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”

Though ExxonMobil’s Lauren Kerr says she doesn’t know the “status of this reported plan” and an API spokesman says he could “find no evidence” that it was ever implemented, many of the players involved have continued to dispute mainstream climate science with funding from ExxonMobil. According to the memo, Jeffrey Salmon, then executive director of the George C. Marshall Institute, helped develop the plan, as did Steven Milloy, now a FoxNews.com columnist. Other participants included David Rothbard of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Myron Ebell, then with Frontiers of Freedom ($612,000). Ebell says the plan was never implemented because “the envisioned funding never got close to being realized.”

Another contributor was ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol, who recently retired but who seems to have plied his trade effectively during George W. Bush’s first term. Less than a month after Bush took office, Randol sent a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The memo denounced the then chairman of the IPCC, Robert Watson, a leading atmospheric scientist, as someone “handpicked by Al Gore” whose real objective was to “get media coverage for his views.” (When the memo’s existence was reported, ExxonMobil took the curious position that Randol did forward it to the CEQ, but neither he nor anyone else at the company wrote it.) “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the U.S.?” the memo asked. It went on to single out other Clinton administration climate experts, asking whether they had been “removed from their positions of influence.”

It was, in short, an industry hit list of climate scientists attached to the U.S. government. A year later the Bush administration blocked Watson’s reelection to the post of IPCC chairman.



PERHAPS THE MOST SURPRISING aspect of ExxonMobil’s support of the think tanks waging the disinformation campaign is that, given its close ties to the Bush administration (which cited “incomplete” science as justification to pull out of the Kyoto Protocol), it’s hard to see why the company would even need such pseudo-scientific cover. In 1998, Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, signed a letter to the Clinton administration challenging its approach to Kyoto. Less than three weeks after Cheney assumed the vice presidency, he met with ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond for a half-hour. Officials of the corporation also met with Cheney’s notorious energy task force.

ExxonMobil’s connections to the current administration go much deeper, filtering down into lower but crucially important tiers of policymaking. For example, the memo forwarded by Randy Randol recommended that Harlan Watson, a Republican staffer with the House Committee on Science, help the United States’ diplomatic efforts regarding climate change. Watson is now the State Department’s “senior climate negotiator.” Similarly, the Bush administration appointed former American Petroleum Institute attorney Philip Cooney—who headed the institute’s “climate team” and opposed the Kyoto Protocol—as chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In June 2003 the New York Times reported that the CEQ had watered down an Environmental Protection Agency report’s discussion of climate change, leading EPA scientists to charge that the document “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus.”

Then there are the sisters Dobriansky. Larisa Dobriansky, currently the deputy assistant secretary for national energy policy at the Department of Energy—in which capacity she’s charged with managing the department’s Office of Climate Change Policy—was previously a lobbyist with the firm Akin Gump, where she worked on climate change for ExxonMobil. Her sister, Paula Dobriansky, currently serves as undersecretary for global affairs in the State Department. In that role, Paula Dobriansky recently headed the U.S. delegation to a United Nations meeting on the Kyoto Protocol in Buenos Aires, where she charged that “science tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.”

Indeed, the rhetoric of scientific uncertainty has been Paula Dobriansky’s stock-in-trade. At a November 2003 panel sponsored by the AEI, she declared, “the extent to which the man-made portion of greenhouse gases is causing temperatures to rise is still unknown, as are the long-term effects of this trend. Predicting what will happen 50 or 100 years in the future is difficult.”

Given Paula Dobriansky’s approach to climate change, it will come as little surprise that memos uncovered by Greenpeace show that in 2001, within months of being confirmed by the Senate, Dobriansky met with ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol and the Global Climate Coalition. For her meeting with the latter group, one of Dobriansky’s prepared talking points was “POTUS [President Bush in Secret Service parlance] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you.” The documents also show that Dobriansky met with ExxonMobil executives to discuss climate policy just days after September 11, 2001. A State Department official confirmed that these meetings took place, but adds that Dobriansky “meets with pro-Kyoto groups as well.”



RECENTLY, NAOMI ORESKES, a science historian at the University of California at San Diego, reviewed nearly a thousand scientific papers on global climate change published between 1993 and 2003, and was unable to find one that explicitly disagreed with the consensus view that humans are contributing to the phenomenon. As Oreskes hastens to add, that doesn’t mean no such studies exist. But given the size of her sample, about 10 percent of the papers published on the topic, she thinks it’s safe to assume that the number is “vanishingly small.”

What do the conservative think tanks do when faced with such an obstacle? For one, they tend to puff up debates far beyond their scientific significance. A case study is the “controversy” over the work of University of Virginia climate scientist Michael Mann. Drawing upon the work of several independent teams of scientists, including Mann and his colleagues, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2001 report asserted that “the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years.” This statement was followed by a graph, based on one of the Mann group’s studies, showing relatively modest temperature variations over the past thousand years and a dramatic spike upward in the 20th century. Due to its appearance, this famous graph has been dubbed the “hockey stick.”

During his talk at the AEI, Michael Crichton attacked the “hockey stick,” calling it “sloppy work.” He’s hardly the first to have done so. A whole cottage industry has sprung up to criticize this analysis, much of it linked to ExxonMobil-funded think tanks. At a recent congressional briefing sponsored by the Marshall Institute, Senator Inhofe described Mann’s work as the “primary sci- entific data” on which the IPCC’s 2001 conclusions were based. That is simply incorrect. Mann points out that he’s hardly the only scientist to produce a “hockey stick” graph—other teams of scientists have come up with similar reconstructions of past temperatures. And even if Mann’s work and all of the other studies that served as the basis for the IPCC’s statement on the temperature record are wrong, that would not in any way invalidate the conclusion that humans are currently causing rising temperatures. “There’s a whole independent line of evidence, some of it very basic physics,” explains Mann.

Nevertheless, the ideological allies of ExxonMobil virulently attack Mann’s work, as if discrediting him would somehow put global warming concerns to rest. This idée fixe seems to have begun with Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Both have been “senior scientists” with the Marshall Institute. Soon serves as “science director” to TechCentralStation.com, is an adjunct scholar with Frontiers of Freedom, and wrote (with Baliunas) the Fraser Institute’s pamphlet “Global Warming: A Guide to the Science.” Baliunas, meanwhile, is “enviro-sci host” of TechCentral, and is on science advisory boards of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Annapolis Center for Science-based Public Policy ($427,500 from ExxonMobil), and has given speeches on climate science before the AEI and the Heritage Foundation ($340,000). (Neither Soon nor Baliunas would provide comment for this article.)

In 2003, Soon and Baliunas published an article, partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute, in a small journal called Climate Research. Presenting a review of existing literature rather than new research, the two concluded “the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” They had, in effect, challenged both Mann and the IPCC, and in so doing presented global warming skeptics with a cause to rally around. Another version of the paper was quickly published with three additional authors: David Legates of the University of Delaware, and longtime skeptics Craig and Sherwood Idso of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change in Tempe, Arizona. All have ExxonMobil connections: the Idsos received $40,000 from ExxonMobil for their center in the year the study was published, while Legates is an adjunct scholar at the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis (which got $205,000 between 2000 and 2003).

Calling the paper “a powerful new work of science” that would “shiver the timbers of the adrift Chicken Little crowd,” Senator Inhofe devoted half of a Senate hearing to it, bringing in both Soon and Legates to testify against Mann. The day before, Hans Von Storch, the editor-in-chief of Climate Research—where the Soon and Baliunas paper originally appeared—resigned to protest deficiencies in the review process that led to its publication; two editors soon joined him. Von Storch later told the Chronicle of Higher Education that climate science skeptics “had identified Climate Research as a journal where some editors were not as rigorous in the review process as is otherwise common.” Meanwhile, Mann and 12 other leading climate scientists wrote a blistering critique of Soon and Baliunas’ paper in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos, noting, among other flaws, that they’d used historic precipitation records to reconstruct past temperatures—an approach Mann told Congress was “fundamentally unsound.”



ON FEBRUARY 16, 2005, 140 nations celebrated the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. In the weeks prior, as the friends of ExxonMobil scrambled to inoculate the Bush administration from the bad press that would inevitably result from America’s failure to sign this international agreement to curb global warming, a congressional briefing was organized. Held in a somber, wood-paneled Senate hearing room, the event could not help but have an air of authority. Like the Crichton talk, however, it was hardly objective. Sponsored by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition, the briefing’s panel of experts featured Myron Ebell, attorney Christopher Horner, and Marshall’s CEO William O’Keefe, formerly an executive at the American Petroleum Institute and chairman of the Global Climate Coalition.

But it was the emcee, Senator Inhofe, who best represented the spirit of the event. Stating that Crichton’s novel should be “required reading,” the ruddy-faced senator asked for a show of hands to see who had finished it. He attacked the “hockey stick” graph and damned the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment for having “no footnotes or citations,” as indeed the ACIA “overview” report—designed to be a “plain language synthesis” of the fully referenced scientific report—does not. But never mind, Inhofe had done his own research. He whipped out a 1974 issue of Time magazine and, in mocking tones, read from a 30-year-old article that expressed concerns over cooler global temperatures. In a folksy summation, Inhofe again called the notion that humans are causing global warming “a hoax,” and said that those who believe otherwise are “hysterical people, they love hysteria. We’re dealing with religion.” Having thus dismissed some 2,000 scientists, their data sets and temperature records, and evidence of melting glaciers, shrinking islands, and vanishing habitats as so many hysterics, totems, and myths, Inhofe vowed to stick up for the truth, as he sees it, and “fight the battle out on the Senate floor.”

Seated in the front row of the audience, former ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol looked on approvingly.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

modelsj said:


> France IS bad. I have a friend from there who had to have major surgery and almost died from socialized medicine! I wonder...... could the planet finally be thawing out from the great flood of Genesis?


Hey, I've got French Hugenot ancestry! I find that very offensive! 

Not really! I'm not French, obviously. 

You've got to admit one thing about France: their nuclear energy program keeps the lights on.:thumbsup:


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

Being that I work at NASA, and can talk to the various scientist who have to read all those scientific papers and evaluate the 'SCIENCE' involved. The FACT IS we don't know for sure yet. The Sun does run in cycles. The Global warming chumps don't want facts to get in the way of guilt and politics. Can you explain why the CO2 rises AFTER a temperature rise, and not before? This suggests that CO2 isn't driving the warming. The suns output isn't stable, but highly variable. Obviously, you guys don't know your science, or you wouldn't fall for this BS in the first place.

Global warming is just another guilt driven cause for emotional liberals. Save the whales, Save the trees, and all the other guilt driven causes on the left just prove the pattern. 

Explain why it warmed up after all the other Ice Ages when man was not in existence.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

Y3a said:


> Explain why it warmed up after all the other Ice Ages when man was not in existence.


Because the earth felt guilty?


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Y3a said:


> Being that I work at NASA,



:freak:

Lets see, over the years I've been on the board, at various times you've claimed to work for 1)Lockheed's "Skunkworks"(where you worked on retrofitted UFO's, 2)The State Dept(where you saw a laptop that confirmed Saddam had WMD's) and 3)"Internet DJ". And now you work for NASA?

I'm curious, just what exactly do you do for NASA? And what an exciting career arc you've had!


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> . . . you work for NASA?
> 
> I'm curious, just what exactly do you do for NASA?


Not that it will mean anything but I can assure you that I've seen more than enough evidence to substantiate his claim.


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

Which claim? The alien stuff?


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> :freak:
> 
> Lets see, over the years I've been on the board, at various times you've claimed to work for 1)Lockheed's "Skunkworks"(where you worked on retrofitted UFO's, 2)The State Dept(where you saw a laptop that confirmed Saddam had WMD's) and 3)"Internet DJ". And now you work for NASA?
> 
> I'm curious, just what exactly do you do for NASA? And what an exciting career arc you've had!



And since you would like to discuss past history...HOW MANY TIMES have your threads been locked? How many times have you been banned? How many warnings does it take?


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

> The Global warming chumps don't want facts to get in the way of guilt and politics. Can you explain why the CO2 rises AFTER a temperature rise, and not before?



Because rises in temperture cause more CO2 to be released, which causes the temperature to rise more, thus releasing even more CO2, if our planets temperature rises enough that the permafrost in Siberia thaws completely, unprecedented amounts of methane and CO2 will enter the atmosphere in a unprecedentedly short period of time. And permafrost is thawing more each year, in the seventies, the roads in Alaska stayed cold enough to be drivable almost 300 days of the year, now it's less than 60 days.

That "CO2 rises after" is another disinformation technique employed by those with an agenda, and has as much validity as the "I didn't come from no monkey" theory of those who oppose evolution.


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## Trek Ace (Jul 8, 2001)

Guy, 'taint 'Global Warming' that is responsible for the level drop in Lake Mead, but rather the multi-fold population explosion of Las Vegas. Clark County has been growing at an astonishing rate for many years. More population = more water consumption. It's as simple as that.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Y3a said:


> And since you would like to discuss past history...HOW MANY TIMES have your threads been locked? How many times have you been banned? How many warnings does it take?


Why are you insisting I doubted your claims about working on retrofitted UFO's, the State Dept, and NASA? Or are you saying you never made those claims?

And yes, I am aware that it's your belief that nobody should ever dispute anything you say, and that you think all arguments that disagree with your opinions are somebody else "being political." Yes, you and your Right Wing Star Trek Sewing Circle buddies can knock Al Gore and Global Warming all you want, and those of us that disagree should just keep our mouth shut, no matter how asinine and wrong your arguments are.

That's the American way.................?


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## modelsj (May 12, 2004)

*global*

Soooo, is it possible that the planet is only thawing after the great flood froze at the top and bottom of the planet, since the flood IS a fact in history?


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*I know one*



PhilipMarlowe said:


> I can't think of any reasonable reason why Al Gore and the majority of the scientific community would have fabricated Global Warming.


Read up on how Al Gore is on his way to becoming a billionaire by capitalizing on Global Warming Hysteria by way of investment in pollution credit trading ventures, speaking engagements, etc. Al is a phoney, as is the Nobel Peace Prize (look who else has gotten it). If he was a true believer, would he live the way he does? If you think Al is for real, I have some real estate in the Everglades I HAVE to talk with you about. :dude:

That being said, there are plenty of excellent reasons to use less fossil fuel. We Americans are indeed pretty wasteful, thereby becoming dependent on foreign oil. Do the oil companies care? Hell no. So we have to. But believing in demagogues and hacks will not help.


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

AND Dinosaurs were pets!!!!


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

If the bottom line really is "It's better for Americans to be less dependent on oil" Does it matter at all how we reason with ourselves why? There are hundreds of reasons to wean ourselves from Oil, none of them having anything to do with Global warming. So, WHAT exactly is the argument against going green (er)?



Doctor Debit said:


> Read up on how Al Gore is on his way to becoming a billionaire by capitalizing on Global Warming Hysteria by way of investment in pollution credit trading ventures, speaking engagements, etc. Al is a phoney, as is the Nobel Peace Prize (look who else has gotten it). If he was a true believer, would he live the way he does? If you think Al is for real, I have some real estate in the Everglades I HAVE to talk with you about. :dude:
> 
> That being said, there are plenty of excellent reasons to use less fossil fuel. We Americans are indeed pretty wasteful, thereby becoming dependent on foreign oil. Do the oil companies care? Hell no. So we have to. But believing in demagogues and hacks will not help.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Doctor Debit said:


> Read up on how Al Gore is on his way to becoming a billionaire by capitalizing on Global Warming Hysteria by way of investment in pollution credit trading ventures, speaking engagements, etc. Al is a phoney, as is the Nobel Peace Prize (look who else has gotten it). If he was a true believer, would he live the way he does? .


Let's say I agree with you about Al Gore personally, that doesn't change the fact that scientific evidence suggest he was right. That's the equivalent of saying Sir Isaac Newton was a wastefull glutton, so therefore the Theory of Gravity is a bunch of bull.



> If the bottom line really is "It's better for Americans to be less dependent on oil" Does it matter at all how we reason with ourselves why? There are hundreds of reasons to wean ourselves from Oil, none of them having anything to do with Global warming. So, WHAT exactly is the argument against going green (er)?


Exactly. And why does Exxon feel the need to spend millions to discredit it?


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> Because rises in temperture cause more CO2 to be released, if our planets temperature rises enough that the permafrost in Siberia thaws completely, unprecedentated amounts of methane and CO2 will enter the atmosphere. And permafrost is thawing more each year, in the seventies, the roads in Alaska stayed cold enough to be drivable almost 300 days of the year, now it's less than 60 days.
> 
> That "CO2 rises after" is another disinformation technique employed by those with an agenda, and has as much validity as the "I didn't come from no monkey" theory of those who oppose evolution.



It's only disinformation to those who believe the AlGore farce. 

That CO2 levels historically increase after warming events is a basic tenet of climate change science. Why? Because carbon dioxide has traditionally not been a "climate driver", but limited to an amplification effect, whereby warming temperatures (eg. from increasing solar radiation, etc.) 


IceCaps
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/southern_hemisphere_ice_cover_remains_well_above_normal


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

F91 said:


> Which claim? The alien stuff?


The NASA job. The rest of the accusations are probably hyperbole.

However, I did half-verify the alien stuff. The other half is human, I think


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

I'd love for us to get our cars off oil products--IF it's really more economical and safer.

I'm thinking the water cracker is going to be the way of the future for a lot of applications.


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

Doctor Debit said:


> Read up on how Al Gore is on his way to becoming a billionaire by capitalizing on Global Warming Hysteria by way of investment in pollution credit trading ventures, speaking engagements, etc. Al is a phoney, as is the Nobel Peace Prize (look who else has gotten it). If he was a true believer, would he live the way he does? If you think Al is for real, I have some real estate in the Everglades I HAVE to talk with you about. :dude:
> 
> That being said, there are plenty of excellent reasons to use less fossil fuel. We Americans are indeed pretty wasteful, thereby becoming dependent on foreign oil. Do the oil companies care? Hell no. So we have to. But believing in demagogues and hacks will not help.


Your post oozes guilt.


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## Guy Schlicter (May 3, 2004)

Maybe Trekace is right about population growth in the Las Vegas area.That could be a big factor in why Lake Mead is drying up.I connected the changes in the earths climates to what was happening to Lake Mead.Still though its been snowing in Florida.Places are getting unusal weather they've never had before.


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*Self Interest of Course*



PhilipMarlowe said:


> Exactly. And why does Exxon feel the need to spend millions to discredit it?


While capitalism as an economic system is the best we have found so far, lots of capitalists are greedy bastards. Many of the oil companies getting rich from American gas guzzlers are based in Europe, where they drive much smaller cars. We got to quit being so dumb about how we use energy. :freak:

I mentioned jokingly to my club that we need to start a hybrid class. Formula 1 is doing it starting in 2009 (dumping energy into a flywheel as they slow down). Maybe its not a bad idea. 

As to the science, I say the data is what it is. I don't know for sure that global warming isn't man made, but the argument needs to come out of the political arena. Watching Al get rich barking about global warming while he jets all over the world and lives in a mansion turns my stomach.


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

The friendly reminder to ALL:

Obviously this thread is off-topic, but I'll allow it to continue as long as the debate remains civil. To that end, kindly limit your comments to the discussion of global warming and climate change, and please refrain from cheap, below-the-belt personal attacks. If this is asking too much I suggest you stay away from the discussion altogether.

I'm not big on banning, time-outs and all that other diciplinary crap, but I WILL NOT STAND FOR PERSONAL ATTACKS. Those who violate this simple and reasonable request will quickly be shown the exit.


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*There Isn't One*



F91 said:


> If the bottom line really is "It's better for Americans to be less dependent on oil" Does it matter at all how we reason with ourselves why? There are hundreds of reasons to wean ourselves from Oil, none of them having anything to do with Global warming. So, WHAT exactly is the argument against going green (er)?


There is no argument against going green. The problem is motivation and perception. When the most visible spokesperson is perceived to be a fraud, the argument is assumed to be a fraud  

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22663

Americans could reduce the use of fossil fuel for motor transport by a third with no pain at all and very little effort. However, Big Al makes it easy for the oil companies and their minions to score points with large segments of the public by pointing out his hypocrisy :hat:


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

Doctor Debit said:


> When the most visible spokesperson is perceived to be a fraud, the argument is assumed to be a fraud


So if I understand correctly, the fact that Al Gore is wealthy and travels by jet invalidates his argument re: Global Warming. Is that what you're saying?


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*Sure About That?*



Carson Dyle said:


> Obviously this thread is off-topic


I have a different perspective. Look at the goodies we use in our electric race cars: Computerized motor controllers, high energy density batteries, etc. etc. How similar is that to state of the art motor transport?

If we want to, we can make our sport a way to educate and excite upcoming generations about cutting edge technology as it relates to motorized locomotion. Small and green can be cool :wave:


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*Not Exactly What I Said*



Carson Dyle said:


> So if I understand correctly, the fact that Al Gore is wealthy and travels by jet invalidates his argument re: Global Warming. Is that what you're saying?


The fact that Al is getting rich from peoples' belief in global warming compromises his credibility as a spokesperson for the cause. It's no different from the oil companies motivation to make you not believe in GW.


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

What's this "our sport" stuff?

Dude, this is the sci-fi forum.


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## Doctor Debit (Oct 8, 2007)

*OK - You got me on that one*

Yep - I'm busted. Sorry, HT has re-organized its page layout a little bit and I wandered into a thread from another forum. Oh well, you guys have fun without me. Kirk out. :wave:


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Doctor Debit said:


> The fact that Al is getting rich from peoples' belief in global warming compromises his credibility as a spokesperson for the cause. It's no different from the oil companies motivation to make you not believe in GW.


Yeah, I'm sure Al knew up front his documentary about climate change was going to make millions at the box office, _and_ win an Oscar and the Nobel Prize. Don't all documentaries? And let's face real facts, _nothing_ guarantee's boffo box office like Al Gore and the weather!

There's a huge difference between Gore's motivation and Big Oils. It's amazing to me that Exxon's greed is looked on by some as "capitalism at it's finest", yet Gore making a few bucks because his documentary was a surprise hit has "compromised" him as a spokesman for something he brought to most folk's attention.


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

Doctor Debit said:


> The fact that Al is getting rich from peoples' belief in global warming compromises his credibility as a spokesperson for the cause.


I find the notion that Al Gore dreamed up the Global Warming crisis as a sort of "get rich quick" scheme to be an amusing one. For one thing, the guy was already rich. For another, he was banging this particular drum for a couple of decades before it became a "best seller." If A.G. wanted to score some extra pocket change he couldn't have picked a less likely arena in which to do so.

I'll concede that some of Gore's conclusions are subject to debate, but the assertion that he's motivated by an overriding desire to bilk the public of their money just doesn't ring true.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Carson Dyle said:


> I'll concede that some of Gore's conclusions are subject to debate, but the assertion that he's motivated by an overriding desire to bilk the public of their money just doesn't ring true.



On the other hand:



> Exxon: How much is too much?by Bruce Watson Feb 13th 2008 @ 3:00PM
> 
> Filed under: Transportation, Wealth
> 
> ...


And:




> Last year, Exxon Mobil made $75,000 a minute in profit. In the history of the world, no single company made so much in any given year. And this is just one of many mega oil corporations' obscene profits for the year.
> 
> 
> Yet despite this obscenity, last month the Republicans filibustered an attempt by the Democrats to pull out of an appropriations bill a $14 billion subsidy to big oil. That's $14,000,000,000 in U.S. taxpayer's money to the gas industry the same year Exxon posted 40.6 billion in _profits_.


And:



> Oil: Exxon Chairman's $400 Million Parachute
> Exxon Made Record Profits in 2005: Lee Raymond's retirement package -- worth nearly $400 million -- is one of the largest in history. (ABC News) April 14, 2006
> 
> Soaring gas prices are squeezing most Americans at the pump, but at least one man isn't complaining.
> ...


Yeah, that Al Gore is one greeeeedy SOB.


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## justinleighty (Jan 13, 2003)

Guy Schlicter said:


> Maybe Trekace is right about population growth in the Las Vegas area.That could be a big factor in why Lake Mead is drying up.I connected the changes in the earths climates to what was happening to Lake Mead.Still though its been snowing in Florida.Places are getting unusal weather they've never had before.


It's not just the Vegas area (though the Google Earth photos of Vegas from 30 years ago vs now do a great job of illustrating the growth). The intense growth all over the western U.S. is causing water issues. Colorado's having an increasingly tough time with water supply issues, due largely to the intense growth there. Tighter supplies are then more vulnerable to weather fluctuations, be they normal or abnormal. 

Sometimes it's just a dry year, though. Several years ago the small town of Beulah, Colorado, in the foothills of the Wet Mountain range, ran out of water and had to have it trucked in from other towns due to a dry summer. Things got better.


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## jtwaclawski (Aug 7, 1999)

Gore's family made their money from Oil companies. Gore used the documentary as a vehicle to market his Carbon Offsets business which he is using now to make millions. He rides in Limos and flies in private jets. If he was TRUELY climate conscience he's fly coatch with the rest of us and be driven to events in electric or Hybrid Cars. 

Now, take Daryl Hanna as an opposit to Al. She believe this stuff and has a small 2 bedroom house, not multipal mansions to heat and cool like Al. If you want a living example of going green, look at her (plus she's much better to look at anyway!). Al is a "do as I say, not as I do" guy. 

Part of the problem is NO ONE is looking at the picture right. How do we get from point A (oil) to point B (green) without completely devistating our way of life? If Al and the others laid out a well though plan I'm sure that most of us would be interested. But when the Greenies like the Kennedy's use their political clout to prevent an off shore wind farm because it will ruin their view of the ocean, yet rant about big oil, can you see the hypocracy? 

I conside myself a conservative. I work with a woman who is a liberal. We don't see perfectly eye to eye on anything. Funny part is we sit, discuss and work it out to mutual agreements. That's where politics gets it all wrong. You want less dependants on foreign oil, I'm all for that. Till the tech is fully there and reasonably priced drill in ANWAR. Couple the drilling to money being invested in solor, wind and Hydrogen. There needs to be a plan and NO ONE, not even the MIGHTY GORE is giving anyone a plan. I see you guys arguing to death but I'm not seeing any plans. None that make sense and give details anyway.


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

I'll grant you Al Gore is no Darryl Hannah lol, but taking the man to task for not having an all-encompassing Master Plan for saving the planet seems a bit unreasonable. 

No one person is going to have all the answers no matter how enlightened they are. As a liberal I'm certainly not blinded to Al Gore's faults, but what cracks me up is the extent to which those who loathe the man for his political views are unable to credit him for the good he's done. Few individuals have done so much to raise the public's awareness of issues related to global ecology, and for that he's to be commended.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

I'm working on a water cracker but no one will invest 

I can't get over the elitist nature of the "carbon offsets." A bunch of guilty rich people tithe themselves with offsets so they can fly their jets all over the place all year long and promote the Kyoto treaty and other onerous and fraudulent laws that cause the poor folks and middle class have to pay more in taxes and plane tickets and gasoline just to get to work or go on vacation once a year (if they're lucky).


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

George Soros - Noted liberal/socialist billionaire has been paying Hansen to lie as much for his side as the oil companies have on theirs...
==========================================
The Soros Threat To Democracy

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 24, 2007

Democracy: George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire's backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.

George Soros & MoveOn.org: Exclusive Series

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?

That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?

Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

PerfesserCoffee said:


> I can't get over the elitist nature of the "carbon offsets." A bunch of guilty rich people tithe themselves with offsets so they can fly their jets all over the place all year long and promote the Kyoto treaty and other onerous and fraudulent laws that cause the poor folks and middle class have to pay more in taxes and plane tickets and gasoline just to get to work or go on vacation once a year (if they're lucky).


Gosh Perfesser,your concern for the poor and working class sure is commendable, but don't you think Exxon execs giving each other 400 million dollar retirement bonus's on top of their 51 million dollar annual salaries might have something to do with with the pinch the poor and middle class are feeling at the gas pump? And couldn't we help some of those poor and middle-class folks with some of the 14 billion we gave to big oil in tax subsidies last year, the same year all five big oil companies posted record profits? And don't you think the fact we shell out over three times as much for corporate welfare and subsidies than we do for all the social welfare programs _combined_ might affect those poor and middle class folks you want to save from that global warming boogeyman, Al Gore?


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Y3a said:


> By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 24, 2007



Wow, with a name like INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, they must be a serious hard-hitting news organization.


Oops, maybe Not:



> Investor's Business Daily: "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?"
> 
> Summary: An Investor's Business Daily editorial claimed that "the core" of Sen. Barack Obama's "faith -- whether lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two -- is African nativism" and asked: "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?" The editorial's claims about Obama's faith being "lapsed Muslim, new Christian or some mixture of the two" echo widely debunked allegations that Obama is or ever has been a Muslim.
> 
> ...


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

Okay guys, let's please stick to one off-topic topic at a time. For the record, we were discussing CLIMATE CONTROL. Kindly leave Obama and the _Investor's Business Daily_ out of it.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

Carson Dyle said:


> Okay guys, let's please stick to one off-topic topic at a time. For the record, we were discussing CLIMATE CONTROL. Kindly leave Obama and the _Investor's Business Daily_ out of it.


Sorry Rob, I was only making the point about their accuracy, and their dubious value as a source.


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## Zorro (Jun 22, 1999)

I know! Global Warming is caused by all those WMDs that were trucked out of Iraq completely undetected and buried in the Syrian desert.*

*The above assertion makes about as much sense as does the claim that those who are concerned about Global Warming are motivated by greed, ego or hypocritical self-interest.


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## Krako (Jun 6, 2003)

Ooops! 

Thought I was on the Hobby Talk forum. 

The forum about hobbies and models. 

In the science fiction section. 

Must've clicked on that link to the forum on explosive political topics by accident...


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## X15-A2 (Jan 21, 2004)

The issues seem to be highly confused on this thread.

We have those who hate corporations because they make huge profits providing the products that we as a nation demand, en masse.

Those who either hate or don't understand that politicians use crisis issues to grab power/fame/money (and that there is no limit to this avarice).

Those who don't seem to understand that there is NO "normal" temperature for the Earth, at any time period, latitude or altitude.

Those who don't seem to realize that the UN is a political body, not a scientific one, which is composed almost entirely of despots & dictators.

Those who don't know that scientists get grant money from political agencys for agreeing with the sponsoring government agenda, not by challenging it (this helps politicians achieve their goals as mention earlier).

Those who don't seem to know that CO2 is a MINOR greenhouse gas and reducing its production will have virtually no effect on temperatures here on Earth. The REAL greenhouse gas is water vapor in the atmosphere.

Those who don't seem to understand or accept that the very polar ice-core studies quoted by Al Gore et al, show that CO2 only rises 600-800 years after temperature increases, not the other way around.

Those who seem to think that no matter what the cause(s), an increase in temperature will somehow mean the end of the world.

Those who don't understand that so-called "environmentalists" can have many agendas too, far beyond that of simply being concerned about the "environment".

Those who don't understand that "scientists" get paid by both sides, therefore the knowledge of who pays them only indicates which side they are on, not which one is right.
_____________________________________________________________________

Certain things are actually beyond debate, the temperature of the Earth is never constant, Al Gore is not a scientist, and warmer temperatures have not destroyed the environment in the past.

Personally, I've lived long enough (50 years) to have heard so many of these end-of-the-world claims by politicians (which include "environmentalists" who are nothing more than un-elected politicians) that I no longer run blindly after their latest "fad".

When the believers of this "religion" prove that CO2 increases BEFORE temerature or that the Earth has a normal "constant" temperature or that the environment has been destroyed (or even severely damaged) by increased temperatures in the past or that temperature increases on the other planets are not caused by the same forces that increase the temperatures here on Earth or that the UN is body concerned with the welfare of the human race, THEN I might get onboard. But until then, count me out of this "crusade".

Phil


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

X15-A2 said:


> Al Gore is not a scientist


Even if he was he’d most likely be on some rich liberal’s payroll. Damn those greedy Nobelaureates !



X15-A2 said:


> warmer temperatures have not destroyed the environment in the past.


“This ship can’t sink!”



X15-A2 said:


> Personally, I've lived long enough (50 years) to have heard so many of these end-of-the-world claims by politicians (which include "environmentalists" who are nothing more than un-elected politicians) that I no longer run blindly after their latest "fad".


For the record, my friend Phil is not a smoker.


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

I flew up to Fairbanks last October. While landing in Anchorage, the approach takes you past Portage glacier, or what's left of it. Damn thing has receded for miles. It was actually breathtaking how much was gone.


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

Superb post Phil! (X15-A2)


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

What about mine? My posts have been 100% factually accurate, without "opinion" for the most part, but something tells me, that because they don't fit your ideology, my posts aren't superb!!!

Edit- How about I throw in a couple of Al Gore is stupid shots along with a democrats are socialists and scientists are stupid? THEN will my post be superb?


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## Zorro (Jun 22, 1999)

F91 said:


> Edit- How about I throw in a couple of Al Gore is stupid shots along with a democrats are socialists and scientists are stupid? THEN will my post be superb?


Don't forget to add that Michael Moore is fat.


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## Y3a (Jan 18, 2001)

Begging.....How pathetic! LOL


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## Dr. Brad (Oct 5, 1999)

One thought here: whether you think we are causing global warming or not, whether you actually believe it's real, we really are running out of oil. There is a finite amount of oil in the earth's crust, and whether we run out of oil in my lifetime or not, we will run out. 

So it makes sense to conserve it and work like heck to come up with alternatives to oil. Because like it or not, at some point in the future we will need these alternatives to oil. Badly.


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## SteveR (Aug 7, 2005)

X15-A2 said:


> We have those who hate corporations because they make huge profits providing the products that we as a nation demand, en masse.


I think it's self-loathing then, being one of the masses.



X15-A2 said:


> Those who either hate or don't understand that politicians use crisis issues to grab power/fame/money (and that there is no limit to this avarice).


Or they make crisis issues. Orange alerts, anyone?



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't seem to understand that there is NO "normal" temperature for the Earth, at any time period, latitude or altitude.


Temperatures go up and down. But by how much and when seems to be under discussion.



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't seem to realize that the UN is a political body, not a scientific one, which is composed almost entirely of despots & dictators.


Not ambassadors?



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't know that scientists get grant money from political agencys for agreeing with the sponsoring government agenda, not by challenging it (this helps politicians achieve their goals as mention earlier).


All scientists? If so, then wouldn't all scientists agree with the government?



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't seem to know that CO2 is a MINOR greenhouse gas and reducing its production will have virtually no effect on temperatures here on Earth. The REAL greenhouse gas is water vapor in the atmosphere.


Interesting. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't seem to understand or accept that the very polar ice-core studies quoted by Al Gore et al, show that CO2 only rises 600-800 years after temperature increases, not the other way around.


Hm. Gotta check that one out.



X15-A2 said:


> Those who seem to think that no matter what the cause(s), an increase in temperature will somehow mean the end of the world.


No, just coastal cities and a whole lotta wildlife. I guess it depends on what one means by "world".



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't understand that so-called "environmentalists" can have many agendas too, far beyond that of simply being concerned about the "environment".


As can anyone. Personally, I don't trust anyone. 



X15-A2 said:


> Those who don't understand that "scientists" get paid by both sides, therefore the knowledge of who pays them only indicates which side they are on, not which one is right.


Indeed. What is objectivity?
_____________________________________________________________________



X15-A2 said:


> Certain things are actually beyond debate, the temperature of the Earth is never constant, Al Gore is not a scientist, and warmer temperatures have not destroyed the environment in the past.


Indeed. But the degree and pace of these climate changes seems to be a little different this time around.



X15-A2 said:


> Personally, I've lived long enough (50 years) to have heard so many of these end-of-the-world claims by politicians (which include "environmentalists" who are nothing more than un-elected politicians) that I no longer run blindly after their latest "fad".


Yep. Water pollution. Smog. DDT. All fads. I guess we know where we stand on nature, then ... something that was here long before us, and to which we owe our existence.



X15-A2 said:


> When the believers of this "religion" prove that CO2 increases BEFORE temerature or that the Earth has a normal "constant" temperature or that the environment has been destroyed (or even severely damaged) by increased temperatures in the past or that temperature increases on the other planets are not caused by the same forces that increase the temperatures here on Earth or that the UN is body concerned with the welfare of the human race, THEN I might get onboard. But until then, count me out of this "crusade".
> 
> Phil


Everyone has his own religion. For some, it's technology. <shrug>


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## F91 (Mar 3, 2002)

SteveR- Superb post.


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## Zorro (Jun 22, 1999)

.... except that you forgot to call Anne Coulter a cadaverous shrew.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> Gosh Perfesser,your concern for the poor and working class sure is commendable, but don't you think Exxon execs giving each other 400 million dollar retirement bonus's on top of their 51 million dollar annual salaries might have something to do with with the pinch the poor and middle class are feeling at the gas pump? And couldn't we help some of those poor and middle-class folks with some of the 14 billion we gave to big oil in tax subsidies last year, the same year all five big oil companies posted record profits? And don't you think the fact we shell out over three times as much for corporate welfare and subsidies than we do for all the social welfare programs _combined_ might affect those poor and middle class folks you want to save from that global warming boogeyman, Al Gore?


Well, since I _am_ one of the working poor, I suppose I do have a _little _self-interest at heart

As for the other implied accusations, you're setting up yet another straw man to rape and mutilate. Go at it, buddy, 'cause you ain't talking about _me!_

I'm _consistent_, my friend. :thumbsup: I'm against *ALL* forms of welfare. 

That includes welfare to wacko-environmentalists, corporations (who also, strangely enough, donate to wacko-environmentalists to cut down on their competition),farmers, people who are more than able to work and yet do not due to their own sorriness, universities, small businesses, foreign countries (which go to the rich people there), illegal aliens who steal our jobs and depress my and others' wages, etc. That's all fascism and you're welcome to it.:thumbsup:

You see, I'm cynical enough to not believe ANY of the crap coming out of D.C. If you have to pick sides and stand on the 50 yard line screaming "RAH-RAH!" go for it! I feel no obligation to participate in politically inflicted false dilemmas.


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

> I can't get over the elitist nature of the "carbon offsets." A bunch of guilty rich people tithe themselves with offsets so they can fly their jets all over the place all year long and promote the Kyoto treaty and other onerous and fraudulent laws that cause the poor folks and middle class have to pay more in taxes and plane tickets and gasoline just to get to work or go on vacation once a year (if they're lucky).


Ahhh, I get it now. You're only concerned if those "poor folks and middle class" are being screwed out of their vacations and tax dollars by those elitist liberals promoting Kyoto. Sorry, I thought you were actually worried about them as a whole. My bad.

'Course, we didn't even participate in Kyoto,so I'm not sure how it cost anybody anything, kinda like all those people that lost their houses to snail darters, another urban myth with absolutely no basis in fact.


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## StarshipClass (Aug 13, 2003)

PhilipMarlowe said:


> Ahhh, I get it now. You're only concerned if those "poor folks and middle class" are being screwed out of their vacations and tax dollars by those elitist liberals promoting Kyoto. Sorry, I thought you were actually worried about them as a whole. My bad.
> 
> 'Course, we didn't even participate in Kyoto,so I'm not sure how it cost anybody anything, kinda like all those people that lost their houses to snail darters, another urban myth with absolutely no basis in fact.


You're not just tearing up a strawman here, you're rolling in the hay.

You're engaging in some very transparent mental stroking here.

Let me try:

"Okay, YOU're only concerned with promoting a fascist super state that takes away guns and individual rights so that it can take care of everyone as if they were infantile nincompoops!"

Gee, PM, that was SUCH fun! I see why you enjoy it so much, now  :freak:


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## PhilipMarlowe (Jan 23, 2004)

F91 said:


> SteveR- Superb post.


Superb post, Rich


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## ClubTepes (Jul 31, 2002)

modelsj said:


> France IS bad. I have a friend from there who had to have major surgery and almost died from socialized medicine! I wonder...... could the planet finally be thawing out from the great flood of Genesis?


Socialized medicine doe not make France bad.
Nore is socialized medicine as a concept bad. Its how its implimented.
Relatives from Norway love their medical programs.

We will eventually have socialized medicine (it inevitable).
But since we really can't do anything right, it probably won't be the best it can be.

And Having the cleanest air in the industrialized world must mean they [France] are doing something right.


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## Carson Dyle (May 7, 2003)

In the interests of self-preservation I was willing to give this off-topic thread a fair shake in the hopes that one of you geniuses would proffer a brilliant solution to our planet's various and sundry ecological woes.

What was I thinking?

:wave:


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