ChrisE said:
So, it was just a coin flip or a coincidence that your views fall in line with the prevailing opinion of the GOP? I don't really buy that, especially in this sense when the evidence is overwhelming that temps are increasing at a faster rate. But then again I don't buy you are a Bill Clinton fan so what do I know.
I think you survey the landscape to see who thinks what and then you form your opinion, as opposed to thinking for yourself without influence.
I personally think that throughout time there have been swings in temperature, but I also think what we are doing to the atmosphere can't be helping. I am also not scared of what conservation will do to industry, and I work in energy. Retrofitting existing plants, more efficient processes, R&D of more efficient engines, alternatives to fossil fuels all lead to business opportunities. The jobs in this industry that may be lost, and I say may because I am not convinced and I don't buy the sky is falling the right trots out daily when somebody suggests they do the right thing on a corporate level, would just develop into other emerging industies. If only the horse carriage lobby was as powerful as the oil and gas lobby we wouldn't be having these problems.
The problem is, and somebody said it upthread, is that the oil and gas industry funds much of the opposition of the non-partisan science, even indirectly. Just today on the front page of the Houston Chronicle there is a story about a paper written by a Rice professor about rising levels in Galveston Bay being editted/censored by one ot the state agencies that asked him to research/write the paper.
Now, if this guy was being paid by ACME wind farm company that is one thing. But, he is not. He is being silenced by a state agency whose appointees are results of campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobby, whose business may be hurt by publishing this report. A large portion of the opposition is also funded by oil industry think tanks.
Politics, legislation, and political discourse in this country is run by lobbyists and corporate owned media outlets. They influence legislation, and the people are too stupid to realize this. They are too busy being manipulated by emotional issues to pay attention to what is really screwing them over.
On a tangent, I am sure the OWS people that have been discussed the last few pages will run and vote for Obama like good little sheep, with his cabinet full of people like Geithner and Summers who helped cause the mess they are protesting against lol. Idiots.
Climate change is whole other can of worms, however, when Scott's home becomes beach front property I'm sure he will be thrilled.
Not being a scientist I don't know what's really taking place, although it seems as you say that human industry and travel pumping massive amounts of carbon waste into the atmosphere can't be exactly what Mother Nature had in mind 6.5 or so billion years ago. In any case, its like the science of doping controls in cycling being organized by the UCI, instead of a completely independent and neutral third party member. There's a conflict of interests inherent in having the energy industry hiring science to report on the effects of that industry's consequences for climate change. That should be outlawed.
Now I can't say that Scott is wrong, just that I have little faith in the unbiased science that's put into the stuff in which he finds merit. The weakness of his position, therefore, is that he wants science to confirm his ideology, not that which may force him to reconsider everything. This, however, is practically impossible for a conservative, for which
implacability and obtuseness are simply in their nature.
As far as your last points go, couldn't agree more with the first, though believe you have underestimated the devalued many of the protesters in the last's regard. I think one of the primary driving forces behind the protests was a rather dejected dissatisfaction with Obama's constant caving into republican pressure on all the issues he said he would change during his campaign.
At the same time, however, in the US two party system, a third party candidate has about zero chance of winning. So what does one do? Don't vote I suppose. Ok, fine, but that will bring about as much change as voting will, which means zilch.
If this isn't disparaging enough, then neither is the fact that the protesters are in the minority (even if the mass media would make them into practically the Red Army). Yet behind them lies a terrible reality. The recession of 2007-2009 has left 25 million Americans without a job and has cut by 3.2% the earnings of those who still have one. After that explosion things have not gotten any better: from June 2009 to June 2011 the earnings of middle class families has descended by 6.7%. In the meantime for the rich nothing has changed. And it doesn't matter whether they are incompetent. Léo Apotheker, the disastrous chief executive of Hewlett-Packard unseated by the board of directors last month, was awarded a "step down prize" of 13 million dollars that's to be added to that which he earned in his normal salary: 10 million dollars in 11 months.
His colleague, the chief executive of Amgen (bio-tech), gladly pocketed a 21 million dollar annual stipend after the value of the firm at the stock market dropped by 7% and the guy had fired 2700 employees. Just obscene...
So the "trickle-down" effect that Reagan and his entourage preached to the nation when all the creative financial madness and deregulation began in earnest in American capitalism, has proven to be a base and vapid lie that was merely ideologically driven.
Meanwhile China holds something like 35% of US debt in treasury bonds. I ask you now: how can any of this be reasonably termed
civil progress?
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