The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[scaeagles]

Another random thought....

El Presidente of Mexico met with the Govs. of AZ and CA, and basically said because immigration (he didn't say illegal immigration, but that is what he was referring to) is inevitable that we in the US need to allow for it by modifying our policies.

I have a better idea. Why doesn't El Presidente of Mexico fix the rampant corruption in his own country that assists in depressing the economic conditions there so that there isn't a need for his citizens to invade our country?

[scaeagles]

True indeed. Who will help? While the exportation of democracy has typically been unsuccessful, should the US or perhaps, being much closer, Japan or South Korea?

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

True indeed. Who will help? While the exportation of democracy has typically been unsuccessful, should the US or perhaps, being much closer, Japan or South Korea?

We're too busy wasting our resources elsewhere to help where we might actually do some good.

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

We're too busy wasting our resources elsewhere to help where we might actually do some good.

Does this mean you think there would be/should be support for an invasion of Burma, or for money and arms to fund the prodemocracy crowd?

Being the devil's advocate, that would be portrayed as contributing to and starting a civil war.

Politics being what they are today, there is no way we could do anything like this.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Does this mean you think there would be/should be support for an invasion of Burma, or for money and arms to fund the prodemocracy crowd?

Being the devil's advocate, that would be portrayed as contributing to and starting a civil war.

Honestly, I don't know enough specifics to advocate or oppose giving aid (in whatever form that might be). But in my mind they've met what I believe should be requirement #1 for considering that aid, namely a self-motivate populace that is willing to take action themselves but face an insurmountable gulf in armament, and it bugs the hell out of me that helping them isn't an option at all, whether it's the right thing to do or not.

Believe it or not, despite my opposition of the Iraq war, I don't hate freedom and am not adverse to aiding the push for freedom in countries that are ready for it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Heard an interesting theory on NPR based on the observation from ice core samples that CO2 and Methane levels seem to have been steadily increasing outside their normal cyclical rates for ~8000 years and ~5000 years respectively. Those happen to correspond to the points in human social evolution when agriculture (and thus deforestation) started to take hold (~8000 years ago), and the appearance of flooded rice patties (~5000 years ago).

[innerSpaceman]

face it folks, scaeagles is pwned.

[scaeagles]

I left Vancouver after 4th grade. I still hate rain.

No daily double, but I find this and all of the links therein very interesting, and I have more and more and more of similar type links with reasonable dissent to the entire man made global warming thing.

[Alex]

Do you do any looking into your sources, or is it just good enough that someone wrote it down? And if that is the approach, how do you decide which ones to believe if not simply on the basis of agreeing with what you've already decided.

Let's see what a little bit of research turns up.

Denier #1: Edward Wegman. This man is a statistician with no particular expertize in atmospheric sciences. He enters into the debate because a congressional committee (chaired by a congressman already on record as denying that global warming of any type is happening, and quite fond of reminding testifiers that he represented a coal state) requested an independent review of the statistical methods of a single article that attempted to reconstruct the global climate over the last millennium. Wegman's panel did find significant methodological flaws.

His panel was never asked, and so never said, whether, when corrected the ultimate conclusions of the original article would change. However, another committee asked for a broader review by the National Research Council (here's the report; I recommend at least page 2 and 3) and it found that while the methodological criticisms by Wegman were accurate then when those tests were removed or corrected the final conclusions were still reasonable and independent non-flawed studies had reached similar conclusions. So, this guy may be a denier but all he has ever said in his official capacity is that one article isn't properly founded and that federal granting agencies should make sure statisticians are involved in peer review.

Denier #2: Richard S.J. Tol. You'll see this pattern repeated in the following entries but Tol doesn't actually deny anthropogenic global warming. His research is entirely based on the notion that it is actually happening. But you might notice the realm of his research: economics. Yes, he is more than adequately qualified in atmospheric science but where he diverges from the "consensus" view is not in whether global warming is happening but how bad the impact will be. Particularly in the short term, he thinks the positives may outweigh the negatives. In other words, it isn't a scientific disagreement but rather a policy disagreement. And that is an entirely different debate. I didn't even have to research this one, it is all in the article you link to; apparently the author isn't so clear on what "denier" means. Also, he has really bad hair.



Denier #3: Christopher Landsea. Sadly, though he's on this list of "deniers" he isn't actually a denier. He believes that global warming is happening that that anthropogenic impacts are at least partly to blame. Here he is in October 2005 on PBS's NewsHour:

Well, we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit, and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming.

So, he isn't questioning the reality of anthropogenic global warming, just weather it is causing any significant impact on the level of hurricane activity. He also has bad hair:



Denier #4: Duncan Wingham. Yet another "denier" who doesn't actually deny global warming. Or even doubt it. Why, here he is in The Register saying "I am not denying global warming. For instance, Greenland, in the northern hemisphere, does seem to be going. But Greenland's ice cap - Greeland is quite far south - is a last survivor from the ice age and only its height protects it. The more that cap melts, the more it will continue to melt as it gets lower and warmer."

The only thing he doubts is whether ice thinning in Antarctica is an effect of global warming and then only because it is so far south that so far it is outside the realm of major impact.

====

So that is the first four "deniers." And only one of them can even reasonably be said to actually doubt the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Two of them question very narrow specific questions about it while the fourth agrees completely (though not with the worst case scenarios) and diverges on policy issues.

Somehow I suspect that if I continued down the list I'd find a similar proportion of real doubters to mechanical disagreements (but it is almost midnight and I've grown bored for now). Why? Because I've seen the same tactics in the evolution debate.

Creationists find 20 scientists arguing about narrow mechanical issues related to evolution (all of which rely on the basic assumption on the reality of evolution), add one real evolution denier and they trumpet this as evidence of serious scientific debate on the fact of evolution.

[scaeagles]

Well, Alex, you win. I am now convinced that global warming is in fact man caused and we are all going to perish.

Sarcasm aside, your research is valid and admittedly far more than I have the time to do.

I will offer that I consider the term "denier" to be those who disagree with major cataclysmic events related to global warming as well, as in "denying" that the world will come to an end because of it.