Enemy of the Planet

Key word....EDITORIAL...that makes it an opinion.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Schmika @ Apr 17 2006, 04:53 PM) [snapback]241038[/snapback]</div>

Key name .....KRUGMAN....that makes it an opinion from an economic dunce!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Denny_A @ Apr 17 2006, 01:13 PM) [snapback]241049[/snapback]</div>

Wow, we must be amongst some pretty astounding posters. May I ask what are your qualifications for passing such a sweeping judgement? Are you a writer or perhaps an economist? By the way, if you read the article you might have noticed that this was not an economic article, it was a moral judgement. Are you really defending the practice of deliberate disinformation about the effects of global warming to support Exxon's greed? Or are you just attacking out of habit?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Begreen @ Apr 17 2006, 11:12 PM) [snapback]241272[/snapback]</div>

From the Krugman article, as quoted in the original post:
"But the fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because Exxon Mobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science. And that, not the paycheck, is the real scandal of Mr. Raymond's reign as Exxon Mobil's chief executive."

First: Global warming is the altar at which environmentalist's worship. Global warming has not been established as a “scientific fact†and is NOT good science. The 20th century has seen both warming and cooling cycles, which has been the norm for eons. Read (for example): http //www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml Opening para below:

Second: From just one paragraph (I refuse to buy access to the Dowd/Krugman rants, so that’s all I have) Krugman is taking his usual shot at evil corporate profits (IMO) for, as he asserts, “trashing good scienceâ€, as if it were settled that global warming is fact. Profits earned are generally considered to be the result of ‘greed’ when a political axe is being ground and Is almost always asserted without factual evidence to support the assertions (Krugman’s style, IMO). Assertions, absent facts, should not be treated as either true or false, but rather ignored as meaningless.

Third: Krugman (former Enron economic adviser) has gone over the edge since Pres. Bush ‘stole’ the presidency. Here’s an example of his grasp (partisan political) of the current tax-cut generated economic boom, as vetted by Don Luskin:
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_luskin/...00601090951.asp Excerpts below:

The point is, because of his Bush hating, Krugman often flat out lies about the economy, the veracity of which anyone can check for himself.

For example, annual spending and annual tax receipts are converging monthly – and the trend line indicates a balanced budget will likely occur around Oct 12, 2008! Whoops. October surprise?
http://www.optimist123.com/optimist/2006/0...er_surpris.html Click to enlarge the chart.

 

Sooner or later what we're doing to our planet is going to catch up to us. We can't expect to keep alterring the Earth and dumping CO2 and pollution into it without at least an eventual change in equilibrium. In response to the counterarguments this author puts against global warming, I give you this link with an emphasis to look at the last graph:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/etc/graphs.html

"Graph showing a 450,000 year record of carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the earth's atmosphere. This record was compiled from analyzing bubbles of fossilized air trapped in ice cores. The fossilized air shows the levels of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere throughout this 450,000 period. The last 100-150 years of the 20th Century show a significant rise in CO2."



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As for the rest of your post ~ this prolific liberal vs conservative bashing (and our penchant to assign ourselves to one or the other label) is getting us nowhere - not in politics. Not in evaluating issues like global warming. And certainly not in much else.

 

Wow, here is some more information to make the whole global warming debate/issue more complicated:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

"New evidence that air pollution has masked the full impact of global warming suggests the world may soon face a heightened climate crisis."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/about.html

"Scientists have long known that increasing air pollution—the smog that clouds urban skies—endangers our respiratory health. But they had underestimated the impact of pollution on the amount of sunlight reaching Earth. Some scientists now believe that global dimming may also disturb rainfall patterns such as the Asian monsoon. If they are right, global dimming may be one of many factors that contributed to severe droughts and famines in Africa during the 1980s.

The good news is that pollution controls have slowed and possibly even halted global dimming during the last decade. The bad news—and the ironic twist in NOVA's story—is that without pollution, more sunlight is reaching Earth, revealing the full impact of global warming. Although all climate models have important uncertainties, the unsettling implication is that, with dimming fading away in many regions, global temperatures may rise even faster than most models have predicted."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Apr 19 2006, 11:22 PM) [snapback]242436[/snapback]</div>

Ah, yes.....the old "hockey stick" graph (attached from your PBS url). Has been discredited...bad programming.

Rather than engage in an endless tete-a-tete, ending in total disagreement, I'll just recommend you view the following video concerning global warming.....Climate Catastrophe

 

The group Friends of Science looks legit from what I can tell. Seems like I have to rethink my views on global warming through this link you gave.

I'm not arguing for global warming in a teet for tat manner, but with all the emissions (not just CO2) and land use I find it a bit senseless to go out on a limb and say we have no affect on the planet. For example, what percentage of the Earth's land used to be forest? I would garner that is very high, but I could be wrong.

 

some time ago I decided:

YOU can NEVER beat a multimillion dollar company, so why not join them!
bought some oil company stock on a dividend reinvestment plan. trash those emails you get about don't but this or that- the oil companies are so big it's like a flea biting a herd of elephants....

OK- I'm not a major stock holder , but I try to buy my brand of gas so that I am paying myself back at the pump! an dnow, with my PRIUS I'm even more happy

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Denny_A @ Apr 19 2006, 03:41 PM) [snapback]242265[/snapback]</div>

Even so, can't you logically agree that blowing all this extra CO2 in the air might be bad? And might lead to something bad if we don't decrease it a little?

According to Times Magazine, April 3 2006...

CO2 at last ice age - 180 ppm
After the glaciers retreated - 280 ppm
Today - 381 ppm

Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 have occurred since 1980. 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century, according to NASA.

It's getting warmer-period.

 

Sir,

May I suggest that you check your sources as well. The group "friends of science" would appear to have their own agenda.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ends_of_Science


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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Denny_A @ Apr 20 2006, 05:44 PM) [snapback]242818[/snapback]</div>

 

The group does offer some fascinating insights, but I think they go a bit farther than necessary. IE they seem to completely reject the notion that humans have an impact on the climate. Otherwise, they seem to offer some compelling ideas and data... and I hope that this would spur greater scientific inquiry into climate change (perhaps I'm wrong and there is sufficient data on climate change to deduce whether or not human produced CO2 is having an impact).

I can give one counterpoint to this attitude: one in which humans were the cause of regional atmospheric change beyond the effects of natural variation. I took an ecology course that rather extensively studied the ozone hole over the antarctic (as well as global warming). There is beyond enough evidence to say that humans, through the production of CFC's, tremendously increased and perhaps started the hole (I have a NASA poster which shows the hole beginning from the 40s or 50s or 60s or 70s... I don't remember which decade it started... but the poster shows this ozone hole's changes over the years since and how large it has become).

"These observations reinforce concerns about the frailty of Earth's ozone layer. Although production of ozone-destroying gases has been curtailed under international agreements, concentrations of the gases in the stratosphere are only now reaching their peak. Due to their long persistence in the atmosphere, it will be many decades before the ozone hole is no longer an annual occurrence," said Dr. Michael J. Kurylo, manager of the Upper Atmosphere Research Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1023

I am concerned with the attitude that this group "Friends of Science" may help promote: people who are trying to decide on the issue, and then saying something along the lines: "Oh it's not real we can do whatever we want... this environmental stuff is crap." What happens then if a few decades down the road we do find that humans accelerated the cyclical change of the earth towards global warming... and by then if global warming is enhanced by human activity it would be well beyond too late for us to reduce our impact. Our efforts then would potentioally have to be extremely drastic.

As a counterpoint to what I just said... there could actually be positives to global warming (this would require much change in terms of people shifting where they live and changing their ways of life due to climate change... along with other negatives)... for one there may be resources under thick ice that may be more recoverable as ice melts. This is iffy, but we can't just abhor change if it is to happen.