Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
It’s beyond me why so many Democrats are falling for the idea that Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is some kind of progressive knight in shining white armor. The truth is that Ron Paul is far from progressive.
Just take a look at how Ron Paul’s campaign for President is dealing with the environment… or rather, how the Ron Paul 2008 campaign is not dealing with the environment.
Ron Paul doesn’t even seem to understand that the environment is an important issue at all. The Pentagon has identified global warming as a threat to America’s national security at least as grave as terrorism, but Ron Paul hasn’t gotten the news.
On the issues page the Ron Paul campaign has put up on its web site, the following issues are discussed:
The environment isn’t discussed at all in Ron Paul’s campaign for President. Ron Paul doesn’t seem to think that there are any problems with the environment. In fact, if you look through Ron Paul’s campaign materials, he seems to be against environmental regulation.
Ron Paul is no progressive.
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June 23rd, 2007 at 8:16 am
People love and respect Ron Paul because he is honest. He wouldn’t sell you global warming on faulty science.
Scientist are divided on the issue. Ron Paul says we should do what we can to support a healthy atmosphere.
Global warming extremist don’t see any other issue and won’t even look at the science rationally. The fear tactics work in raking money and support for something that may or maynot be happening. Paul supporters understand how the negative fear mongering propaganda works to destory personal liberty.
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:28 am
“Liberals” are re-thinking the role of the Federal government in our lives, including regulation of the environment. As long as liberal thinkers were in charge in D.C., liberals were content to go along with the nanny state. What is alarming many progressives is this: the ominpotent state is not nearly as attractive when someone who does not share our ideals is at the helm. It is beginning to dawn upon many liberals that any institution that can take care of the you from cradle to grave is equally capable of abusing your rights. What good is clean air and water without liberty?
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 am
It is not honest of Ron Paul to continue denying the importance of climate change.
Saying that scientists are divided on the issue is like saying that California is divided between the mainland and Pacific ocean islands, just because a tiny portion of the state consists of small islands off the coast of Los Angeles. It’s technically true, but it distorts the nature of the state. Only a tiny number of scientists, many of them paid by big oil corporations, dispute that global warming is a serious threat and caused by humans.
As for clean air and water and liberty, who says that we have to make a choice between environmental quality and freedom? That doesn’t make any sense.
June 23rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Ron Paul, like libertarians in general, believes that private property rights are the key to environmental concerns. Progressives tend to believe that property rights are an obsticle in their plans to redistribute and regulate other people’s private property. Ron Paul is AWOL on centralized control, not the environment. The real difference is that progressives fear liberty. They always claim that the free market fails. But the truth is this: we do not have a free market. We live under fascism. It is called free market so that as it fails, they can say, “See! Free markets fail! What we need is more facism!” As Ron Paul has repeatedly pointed out, governments are the main and the biggest polluters.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:12 am
It is not honest to claim that
“Only a tiny number of scientists, many of them paid by big oil corporations, dispute that global warming is a serious threat and caused by humans.”
That is simply untrue. It is wishful thinking by people who want to end a debate they can not possibly win.
Debate ending is the tactic being used against Ron Paul as a candidate and against the thousands upon thousands of scientists who continue to protest the entire global-warming pseudo-science scam. I have noticed that the online fools who are loudest at proclaiming the debate to be over are ususally total amateurs when it comes to detailing the actual scientific controversies (hundreds of them) that make certainty impossible except for fools.
Global warming is a political movement by collectivists who want to attack the oil industry because they hate all big corporations, not because they have done their scientific homework and actually can prove anything about the environment. Taxing (robbing) the rich is always their chief concern.
I also note that these progressives tend to repeat old arguments that have been refuted by newer science. They ignore whatever throws doubt on their hysteria to take over control of all trade in the name of an environmental crises. Flash! The latest science news is that sunspot activity is now at the highest its been in 8000 years. That means some slight warming. And slight is what we’re getting.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:20 am
I love Ron Paul because he tells it like it is! He stands up to the science fanatics and kisses them off! I love Ron Paul, because he is the only one to care about us little people. Nobody else cares! Nobody! Thank you, Ron Paul, for being here for us like nobody else.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:51 am
John, show me the proof that anything more than a tiny minority of scientists disputes that global warming is a serious threat and is caused by humans.
Don’t just make claims. Show the PROOF.
As far Ron Paul standing up to scientists and kissing them off, well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? Do you REALLY want to have a government that says, Never mind the facts, never mind the science, we’ll just kiss that off and believe what makes us feel good?
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:13 am
Actually, Ron Paul has been pretty clear that polluting other folks air, water, etc… is an encroachment on their freedom and he’d handle it that way.
Also, it should be noted and stressed that ending military adventurism would drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally. The U.S. with it’s hundreds of bases and active military operations is continually burning an unimaginable amount of gas to both constantly position and reposition men and ‘heavy gear’ as well as resupplying those positions, men and materiel in all corners of the globe.
As far as global warming being a hoax or not being manmade… this graph will kill two birds with one stone… it shows man’s direct impact on temperature and illistrates the one of the largest rises in recent history, World War II.
http://netfluff.blogspot.com/2007/04/who-says-humans-cant-effect-climate-and.html
In essense, electing Ron Paul would greatly help the environment, even if it were mostly indirectly. I’m sure if more help were needed after that, the situation could be reassessed.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 am
Oops. Sorry about that that last posted before I was ready.
I think a lot of thinking liberals are wondering about the way global warming is being sold.
Saddam has WMD… He will nuke us if we don’t do something now! We will die! We must not wait or it will be too late!
That is that same frenzied hysteria we are hearing about global warming. Though it seems like a benign cause to be behind stopping global warming, the fact is when you give governments sweeping powers for a hysterical cause, a lot of horrible things can happen that are far worse, and can even aggravate the problems. Most all wars have their root cause in times economic depressions. (Hitler being elected because the average German had to take a wheelbarrow of money to the market to buy food.)
If we enact massive regulations to curb global warming in a mode of frantic thinking and it triggers a world wide recession all the governments around the world will be looking outside their borders for a scapegoat. It will be easy to sell wars to hurting populations. If the world is at war do you thing that greenhouse emissions are going to be a concern?
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 am
WE don’t want Ron to be seen as a ‘progressive’ although to me he is MILES ahead of any of those calling themselves that.
No one says to pollute the earth —– just that ‘global warming’ is natural and there is not much that man is doing that contributes to it, or much man can do to change it.
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:19 am
Who IS Ron Paul? Do your own homework.
NOBODY explains Ron Paul
BETTER than Ron Paul himself!
Here is an interactive audio archive of
Ron Paul speeches and interviews as a resource in chronological
order.
www.ronpaulaudio.com
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Thus enters the cult of Ron Paul, with followers demanding that we accept that Ron Paul is whoever he says he is - and no questions are to be asked.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:09 pm
The problem most enviromentalists fail to see is passing regulations empowers the corrupt and stifles the honest and conscientious who respect the environment.
For example, I own a gold mine in Eastern Oregon. I bought it from an old-timer for $700,000. Shortly after I bought it the environmentalists sued the forest service over a trivial mistake. Because of this lawsuit a judge ordered all mining to cease in that forest service district. Now I can do nothing to reap any productivity in 2006 and 2007 and I don’t know for sure when I will be able to in the future. They won’t even allow me to do sampling and exploration.
I have studied the law and I know that if I were to take them to court I could sue for damages and force them to allow me to mine but I cannot afford to. However, those who do have the money or paid legal staff will push forward and instead of winning their suit they will get some kind of special concession to mine while others cannot.
What this does is make it so that the big corporations have no competition from the small-scale miners. The same goes for loggers, ranchers, farmers, etc.
Middle-class America is being obliterated in favor of big corporations who will ultimately end up with the super-rich and the serfdom. Most environmentalists mean well but they are serving to create the web that only the super-strong can penetrate and escape. These super-strong are unconsciously motivated by profit and are in fact the most likely to violate the environment.
Because they are strong enough to penetrate the web they are also strong enough to thoroughly abuse the environment with impunity. While regulations are being passed they are actually giving allowance to certain amounts of pollution and negative impact which become nothing more than political bargaining chips that are sold for gain and used in back-room deals.
Ron Paul’s principles will do more good for the environment than harm because it would eliminate this web that is used to give the corrupt such power and advantage.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:26 pm
As for global warming. Do you really think that because I drive a surburban I am helping to melt the polar ice caps of Mars?
The warming trend is heliospheric, not just global! Thus, the conclusion should be the sun is what is driving global warming.
The presence of greater levels of carbon emissions in the environment corresponding with trends of higher temperatures in our earths history has to do with the environments response to the suns increase in heat. The sun is driving this and carbon is the response, not the other way around. If carbon emissions are a response to an increase in heat then it is actually quite likely that increased carbon emissions may IMPROVE our conditions on earth because this is the earth’s immune response. More carbon means more resources for plants and if we have more plants then more of the suns energy is converted into plant growth instead of temperature increase.
Anyone using the global warming issue to push most any agenda is either incredibly stupid and gullible or very corrupt. And, if the latter then its all of the above.
June 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
“Global warming” is BUNK pure and simple. The climate does change, yes. It gets warmer and it gets colder but man has NOTHING to do with it.
1) CO2 is a follower of climate change, not a driver. Check the ice core data. The temperature goes up and then 800 years later the CO2 goes up. What happens is that CO2 gets trapped in the ocean during cold spells and is released when the oceans gradually warm.
2) CO2 levels were higher in 1940 than they are today. The 1940 level was about 420 ppm compared to 379 ppm today. (See E.G. Beck for data.) What happened was that the earth cooled from then until around 1975.
3) The biggest driver of climate change BY FAR is cosmic rays (see Svensmark for data.) Cosmic rays ionize atoms in the atmosphere and these ionized particles form the basis of the “specks” that water vapor condenses on to form clouds. The influx of cosmic rays is affected by many factors including our position in the galaxy, the number of supernovea and the magnetic flux of the Sun. This is why there is such a profound correlation between sunspot cycles and climate change. More sunspots = more magnetic flux from the sun = fewer cosmic rays reaching the earth = slower cloud formation = warming. Fewer sunspots or shorter sunspot cycles = less magnetic flux from the sun = more cosmic rays = faster and more numerous cloud formation = cooling. The cosmic ray theory explains ALL of the climate change on earth since the beginning of time. There is a near perfect correlation between changes in cosmic ray intensity and past climate changes going back as far as the geologists can measure.
4) OF COURSE the Pentagon agrees with the “man made global warming” hoax. Keeping the people in a state of fear is what governments are all about. The Pentagon is part of the government and thus has a vested interest in doing whatever it takes to instill fear in the people.
5) Virtually all the disinformation regarding global warming comes from one source - The IPCC which is a POLITICAL body - NOT a group of scientists. There are scientists who are members, but their comments are often edited out of the final drafts of IPCC reports. This has caused many of them to leave the IPCC and become “skeptics.”
Ron Paul is the ONLY candidate in the race who actually understands the science. You are wrong, he is right - get over it.
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Dear me, Jason and Michael. You have taken a sip from the right wing kool aid.
The heliospheric claims for explaining global warming are easily debunked, and they have been debunked for years. Michael Mann, meteorologist at Penn State University, refers to the idea that global warming is all the sun’s fault as “one of the last bastions of contrarians”. He explains, “”The small measured changes in solar output and variations from one decade to the next are only on the order of a fraction of a percent, and if you do the calculations not even large enough to really provide a detectable signal in the surface temperature record.”
For a two-year-old thorough explanation of why this sun-centered theory of global warming is nonsense, see the discussion at Real Climate (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/#more-192)
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Paul has the most sensible and affordable way to help out the global warming problem (if indeed it is a problem): Stop subsidizing oil use with our extremely expensive foreign policy.
Yeah, he is skeptical on global warming. Can you blaim him? Politicized science is not good science, especially when the government creates so many jobs because of the perceived problem. However, I trust Paul to do what is right for this country, and I doubt his personal views on global warming would stop him from protecting it.
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:24 pm
jclifford is one of those debaters who is willing to lie about any position he disagrees with. He lies by characterizing my position and Ron Paul’s position as “never mind the facts”.
A few posts later he lies by suggesting that Ron Paul supporters are cultists who do not believe in questioning Ron Paul.
Claiming that evidence of the sun being the cause of global warming was refuted two years ago, he fails to mention all the new evidence appearing in the last year.
These are the kind of arrogant rhetorical tools that debate cheats use: consistently lying about any position he wants to discredit (straw man argument), demanding proof when he has offered none, and making arguments to authority instead of offering evidence.
He demands that I offer proof that scientists disagree with global warming. The Global Warming Petition reads, in part:
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan…
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
This petition has, so far, gathered over 17,000 signatures of scientists.
I’m certain jclifford can smugly dismiss them all as dishonorable or he can completely misrepresent their position.
Debate cheats never lose.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Ron Paul is a fool. He would let oil companies polute all they wanted and give away away public parks to them. Whats happens when aminijad gets a nuke. This man is a genocidal dictator who talks about destroying the west and “wiping isreal off the map” inbtween his building of a nuclear arsenal. When the nukes start going off in the US i would expect Ron Paul to respond by first assuring aminijhad that Iran will not be attacked. I then expect a prompt surrender followed by the promise we will all pray to mecca from now on.
June 24th, 2007 at 4:33 am
Well, John Reading, when it comes to The Global Warming Petition, yes, you see not to have minded the facts.
The fact is that the petition does not have over 17,000 signatures from scientists.
Take signer H. Scott Gingrich, for example. He’s not a scientist. He doesn’t have an advanced degree. The only thing he has published is a book review on Amazon.com.
The petition accepts people as “scientists” even if they only have a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts with a major in a scientific field, which in some colleges could include psychology.
Besides, even if the 17,000 signatures were all from genuine scientists, would that show a strong level of professional disagreement among scientists? No, it would show a weak level of amateurish disagreement among scientists. Does a geologist who specializes in analyzing basalt really have the special knowledge necessary to understand global climate change? How about a chemist who specializes in analyzing the content of dietary supplements?
Furthermore, the fact that someone has a scientific degree does not make that person a scientist. If a person with a PhD in biology is working as a waiter in a restaurant, is that person really a scientist?
Even if these were all signatures of genuine scientists, gathered over a nine year period, that would be a drop in the bucket. In the 2004-2005 academic year alone, just in the United States, 43,000 students became real scientists, with PhDs. The National Science Foundation cites the American Community Survey of 2003, which found 4,014,000 people working just in the United States as scientists or engineers.
This petition is not what you claim it is. More on that later…
June 24th, 2007 at 8:57 am
jclifford set himself up as the sole arbiter of who is qualified to have an opinion that counters his opinions. Disqualifying everyone who disagrees with you is another tool commonly used by debate cheats.
June 24th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
No, I’m not setting myself up as a sole arbiter. I’m talking about the standards scientists have set up for their profession. I’m also using critical inquiry, and if you actually have any substantive disagreement with anything I’ve said here, there’s this free and open comment forum, which is hardly a medium that would be set up by “debate cheats”.
But ah, John, you don’t seem to have any substantive response to give to what I’ve said about that hoax petition. That’s pretty telling, Mr. Reading.
Look at today’s article on the front page of Irregular Times on this subject for what others have to say and more.
Global Warming Petition is an Old Fraud -
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2007/06/24/global-warming-petition-hoax/
June 27th, 2007 at 1:22 am
I think say you took that apart quite thoroughly.
I’d say ’served’, but this is a formal forum. Or is it?
June 29th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Man-made global-warming is indeed another fear-mongering hoax to get the American people behind initiatives which will expand the size of the government and cut even more liberties away. The Iraq War is another recent example.
June 29th, 2007 at 7:58 am
The person writing this clearly anti-American rant may in fact be a terrorist or an extreme Muslim fundamentalist — how can we know? Why would anyone want to make this kind of blatantly anti-American “news” available to the American public?
Please verify the authenticity of the news sources that you read. Be watchful out there!
June 30th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Golfing Rothschild is clearly posing as a golfer but may in fact be a bowler or a tiddlywinker–how can we know? Why would anyone want to post the same piece of spam on one essay after another without even reading them first? Rothchild may not even be a Rothschild, he may be a Snodgrass–be watchful out there!
Animist, what on earth is “served”–tennis? lawsuits?
June 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
English, the people who perpetrated the lies behind the Iraq War and the people who are asking for Americans to pay attention to the genuine, scientifically-established problem of global warming are different people, political adversaries. How does this supposed conspiracy work, to have them arguing with each other even while they serve the same nefarious plot?
July 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
The people behind the iraq war and the people behind global warming are not necessary the same people but it is the hysteria that is the same. We all knew that we had a problem with extreme islam but did the mad rush to do something NOW, help our cause? Let us not leap with the same hysteria into a “fix” for global warming.
July 1st, 2007 at 2:18 pm
The people who say there is hysteria are the same people who say we should not study the global warming phenomenon further. These are basically people who think the Endtimes are near and they will be “taken up” into heaven, thus no need to look for any confusing facts about the here-and-now environment. Don’t these same people say there is no need to decrease our dependence on oil? How convenient for the oil industry. When private industry finds a way to make money off of non-oil energy sources, I predict the right-wing religious establishment, which is hand in pocket with the big oil politicians, will start bleating a different tune.
October 30th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
[…] so I discovered the web site, “Irregular Times“. Among several anti-Ron Paul postings, a post entitled, “Ron Paul is AWOL on the Environment” caught my eye. Not because of the author’s argument, but because of a comment made by Jason Wharton in […]