We need a strong global agreement on climate change…it’s not just a environmental issue, but also a moral imperative.  I wish our US delegation luck in Copenhagen.

According to one of Obama’s chief scientists, Dr. James Hansen, we would be better off if Copenhagen fails:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/02/copenhagen-climate-change-james-hansen

In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

“The whole approach is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation. If it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing then [people] will spend years trying to determine exactly what that means…”

Hansen is also fiercely critical of Barack Obama – and even Al Gore, who won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to get the world to act on climate change – saying politicians have failed to meet what he regards as the moral challenge of our age.

In Hansen’s view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics. “This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill,” he said. “On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can’t say let’s reduce slavery, let’s find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%.”

He added: “We don’t have a leader who is able to grasp it and say what is really needed. Instead we are trying to continue business as usual.”

Apparently blockquotes don’t work here.  Everything after the link is quoted from the Guardian.

According to the Guardian today, matters are in complete disarray in Copenhagen:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text  What was Obama thinking?????

IN lieu of the propaganda films featured at this event, then should have just sat back and taken a lesson from a 6th grader:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_G_-SdAN04&feature=player_embedded#

found this interesting….cap-and-trade originated in the Reagan administration as a market-oriented strategy for reducing acid rain pollution. Cap-and-trade was proposed to counter the one-size-fits-all, command-and-control rules that Democrats and their liberal environmental allies wanted to impose.

By giving power companies the flexibility to cut pollution in economically sensible ways, cap-and-trade worked to reduce acid rain, defying the predictions of bureaucrats that it would never work, the claims of electric utilities that its costs were unaffordable, and the wails of environmentalists that tradable emissions allowances were a morally suspect “license to pollute.“

Two decades later, Democrats have finally realized that the Republican idea was the better idea and have embraced it for reducing carbon pollution linked to climate change. What a great “I told you so” moment that could be for the Republicans. Instead, however, like Orwell’s character Winston Smith rewriting history, they say cap-and-trade is a liberal idea and always was a liberal idea.

http://www.rep.org/

Logic 101. One of these two things are true:

a) Anthropogenic climate change is a proven scientific theory and the thousands of scientists from around the world who have worked on this issue for decades are motivated by the need for academic excellence and a desire to contribute to society. We need to take action to mitigate climate change. The fossil fuel industry funds pseudo science and conspiracy theorist talking heads (and likely played a hand in the stolen emails) in order to distract citizens, distort information and prevent a transition that would compete with their monopoly on energy.

OR

b) Anthropogenic climate change is a global conspiracy theory perpetrated by thousands of scientists from around the world who have plotted against the fossil fuel industry for decades. The fossil fuel industry funds scientific studies in order to expose the truth about this global conspiracy theory. We don’t need to change energy policy or worry about climate change.

That’s the choice each of us has to make and it’s a pretty darn important one. What is a more reasonable assumption?

littlehawk - Sorry, i just don’t see it that way. Anyway, it’s always a good idea to refrain from name calling as it negates any validity your point may have had.

Gore stated that “global warming is not a political issue but a moral one.”

So I guess it was “morally correct” for Gore to drain water from a lake so he could get his PR picture taken in a canoe…or for Gore to spend more on electricity in a month for his 20-bedroom mansion than most normal people do in a year…or for delegates to fly 190 private jets to the Copenhagen summit…or to have over 2000 gas guzzling limos cart the delegates around…

And then, prostitutes of a Danish sex workers association will offer their services for free to delegates of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

http://www.calgarysun.com/news/world/2009/12/07/12072266.html

Morality in action.

If our bodies had a temperature change of +5 degrees we would die very shortly….... 

just as large parts of the globe are dying,  desertification, barrier reefs dying off,  etc  

that doesn’t bother you people?

I bet it doesn’t…..  you mean-spirited people are seriously lacking in empathy…...it’s called being sociopathic behavior…..

If Jesus came back today you rightwingers would call him a socialist and probably string him back up in a heartbeat!

of course the climate changes Littlehawk…..  but do we want to take the chance that global warming will result in a 5 degre rise in temperatures? 

that would kill off humans and most of the other developed life on the planet….

it’s funny 9-11 kills 3000 people and we are spending 30 billion a month and more(over a trillion already) to fight that but risk the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE and it’s all about money…..

you conservatives have your priorites mixed up…..

plenty of money for war death and misery, plenty of money for the banksters to rob us blind but one nickle to save the climate that allows humans to flourish and you’re against it…..

and don’t worry - Obama acting like a republican isn’t going to do anything -  so don’t worry…..

if you saw past your rascism you’d see Obama is more conservative than even Nixon was…....  but you can’t!

www.starvation.net

you think your money can buy you a bigger eye of the needle?

we are a part of the earth….....

I know you christians think evolution ended with humans -  and are trying very hard to make that come true….....

Dr. John Christy, a member of the IPCC that was awarded the Nobel Peace along with Al Gore,  reminds us:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119387567378878423.html

===============
My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit “global warming.”

Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.
=================

If woody saw past his racism that denies energy to the 3rd world, he might just understand what’s happening.  As I wrote above:

By Craig moore on 12-08-09

According to the Guardian today, matters are in complete disarray in Copenhagen:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text  What was Obama thinking?????

“Without access to energy, life is brutal and short.” 

...Not necessarily.

Oh sure, if you mean Any form of energy, but I assume you mean fossile fuel energy. Not solar, wind as that would’nt help your arguments. 

While I agree that spending on…

“micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification”

...is the best use of money, I don’t think the ‘right’ would support the increased foreign aid spending that would be needed there either.  (Though Bush’s spending on AIDS prevention in Africa was one of the few things he got right.)

(P.S. For ‘micronutients’ substitute the word ‘food’...

...It’s not as glamorous but it does help to shut out the pharmacutical companies while accomplishing the same thing.)

lh123:

Much of your “horrifying plight - mud pie” concern for the 3rd world countries is negated by the first line of your comment above….YOU have no intention of helping anyone.

Please, Leave it to us “bleedn’ heart lefties”.

Yeah, I’ve already ‘sunk my teeth’ into “Lord Monckton”...now’s THERE’s a speaker with whose rehetoric you could starve on.

“Watch the segment from the interview below where Monckton discusses…?”

What segment?

The last time someone here ‘threw-up’  a clip of

“Lord Monckton 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley”
it wasn’t Soo bad….‘till you watched the FULL 1 1/2 speech, the guy’s grade ‘A’ buffoon.

Littlehawk and craig moore are showing their lack of understandfing of 3rd world plight and a “short and brutal” existence…..

that is caused by colonialism, war and exploitation by the monied class…..

go read “the last hours of ancient sunlight” by thom hartmann

or as I’ve mentioned MANY MANY times “Confessions of An Economic Hitman” by John Perkins…....

they lay it all out -  unless of course YOU WANT TO STAY IGNORANT…..  it is safer that way for the rightwingers - 

the economic deveolpement of 3rd world countries - usually leads to increased debt, loss of the countries natural assets to large multi-nationals, loss of income,  skyrocketing murder and violence(especially if you’re in a union), life expectency dropping, education dropping,

in fact most tribal, indigenous peoples lived a far more peaceful and sustainable life -  and it only took them about 2 - 3 hours a day work for the community to survive…..that is until the expoiters came - stole their wealth and raw materials, moved them into the cities to become virtual slaves in a factory working 12 - 16 hours a day 7 days a week for 17 cents an hour…...

colonization and deveolpement thru the IMF and World Bank usually helps no one but bectel, halliburton, MAIN,  Harken Oil etc…....

I lived in africa in the early 1990’s while w/ the peace corp -  where did you find YOUR info craig?

The heritage Institution…...

for example -  the IMF said they’d “loan” mozambique 150 million in food aid IF they bought 150 million in John Deere tractors for farming…...

they did and less than one year later ALL of the John Deeres were broken down….because no parts were available…...John Deere took the money and ran…..

in a country w/ 70% unemployment -  that 150 million could have hired basically the entire country for a year….. and MORE WORK would have been accomplished…..besides the people would have made enough to BUY THEIR OWN FOOD…..  instead of depending on handouts…..

but that’s the way the World Bank and the IMF etc want it…..

craig moore is a modern day colonizer…..

Woody, you ask:  “I lived in africa in the early 1990’s while w/ the peace corp -  where did you find YOUR info craig?”

Obviously you didn’t read what I wrote. If you had you would see that Dr. John Christy, member of the IPCC that was a recipeint of the Noble Peace prize,  made that claim.  Futher, if you had read what I wrote you would have gone to the Guardian article that highlighted the 3rd world nations that were up in arms about YOUR colonizers that would enslave them with the agreement.  Now go back and do some real homework.

Oh Yeah John Perkins is such a marxist-

John Perkins the youngest VP ever at MAIN (the Halliburton of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s)

Nomi Prins….Managing director of Goldman Sachs


Wendall Potter…Vice President of Cigna-one of the largest health insurance compaines in the nation.

These people are all marxist?

You’re citing a source from Communist China?  Stunning.

Oh, dude!  That’s so totally zen.

It is amazing to me that people actually believe that we could so drastically impact the climate when the data shows that increased solar activity accounts for the rise in temps. Remember the 2012 thing? Nasa has lots of neat data on that. Amazingly enough, when Mt. St. Helens erupted, scientists claimed back then that it put more pollution in the air than man had since the dawn of the industrial age. Those of us who were in Montana then remember wearing the surgical masks to avoid inhaling the ashes.

Meanwhile, Mt. St. Helens is still the number 1 polluter in the state of Washington:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002105397_volcano01m.html

While this article towards the end is obviously slanted another way, it is interesting that at the end of the day, the volcano is classified as the number one polluter there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssBNmHObev0&feature=related

LH123:

Sources matter.  Especially when extensive cut and paste is used.

Earlier, to support your aurguments you quote Lord Monckton 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.

...then just as quickly discard him in your next posting with:

“It does not matter what Monckton is or isnt.”

Still later, you quote a Chinese source and state “everyone sees the truth…”

and this is followed by your latest condemnation of China’s
one-child policy.

For your own sake, seek a little consistency in your sourcing.

Vud Vud stick in the mud let LittleHawk help you back onto the Rock. With the world at our fingertips there is a world wide source of info.This is not a news column so let the opinions fly. The truth is out there in the mix and is plain for those who do not try to make it fit into their irrational existence.

A LITTLE discretion and consistency is all I ask.  I can’t get better unless my “opponents” get better.

Get better.

Not to completely change the subject or anything…but I just learned that Copenhagen has a Sex Workers Union! Hmm…I wonder what the benefits are?!!!

Thanks for the laugh Alice.

You probably have to limit your outside income when you go on retirement, Alice.

How about this. I will live a life that is intergral with the ebb and flow of natures rythms and will glean from natures bounty a harvest provided from our combined effort. God’s Earth, God’s Sun, God’s Rain and God’s Hands. Just keep your tanks off the garden. Go natural. Avoid petrochemicals. Boycott Monsanto and all genetically modified species and mammalian clones..

Alex Jones just said Prozac is being added to the water supply. You are being drugged; that’s why you are so docile and weak and will not resist the totalitarian shift. When they pull the Prozac, will we have a surge of mass insanity?
I promise I won’t bring up the other wacko conspiracy theories rattling around in my cranial echo chamber.Thanks Little Hawk.

Littlehawk says all his points are “consistant’ (sic).  Well, a lot of us think that is debatable, but his spelling is certainly inconsistent.  A few sterling examples, just from this overlong and quite boring thread:  “Coinside” instead of coincide; “alrite” instead of all right; “genious” instead of ???.  This last one is tough.  Perhaps he meant genius, thinking he is one, but the rest of us very much doubt it.  Besides, the sentence makes no sense if that is the word he intended.  Perhaps he meant to use “genre” which would at least make a coherent sentence, but we all know by know that coherence is not one of his strong points.

If you can’t even spell basic English words correctly and consistently, you can hardly claim to be educated, must less intelligent.

I thought LittleHawk got his education at the Hard Knocks School. If he did he’s got company.

I know I tend to be verbose, but…

...almost half the posts in this thread are yours lh.

Copenhagen is a pathetic joke. In fact, if I was a scientist dedicated to reality and to what science actually IS I would look with embarrassment at this entire boondoggle cloaked in the name of “science”. Of course any group of enviro-whackos who invite Iranian Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to speak obviously must be looked upon with disdain.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091212/ap_on_sc/climate_e_mails

Besides the cyber-theft, the out-of-context cherry-picking, nothing has been proven to undermine the robust discussion of the probability of climate change/global warming.  Read the article.

here’s a money quote:

One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: “I’ve just completed Mike’s (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren’t as warm as scientists had determined.

The “trick” that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

End quote.

All that was happening was a vigorous exchange of scientific discussions.  That is what people do, as a matter of course, when discussing issues.  They test each others theories and critique them.  That is productive and proactive collegueial discussion.  That’s the way it works, well above your dirt miner existence.

To use the opposite of your words in the ‘citizen grand jury’ comments”:

The path to Truth is narrow and rocky,and few are on it.The path to folly and lies is wide and smooth and packed with alot of people going down it. [close quote

The path to truth is an open mind.  How rocky this discussion may be only brings the truth to be more viable.

As a climate change/global warming dogmatic denier, you obviously don’t have an open mind.

And I pity you.

LH:

Just gonna post here so you don’t set a new record of 5 posts in an un-answered row.

Quoted from your post above:

” In reality, between summer 2007 and summer 2008, arctic ice at the North Pole grew by a staggering 30 percent, an area the size of Germany.”

That’s a very interesting time period to choose…

Could this be the END of summer 2007 to the BEGINNING of summer 2008?  We don’t know…You see MONTH’s REALLY do matter in this context.

And if so…that’s AMAZING…Arctic ICE grows in winter! ..and we STILL have seasons!

How can ‘climate change’ be true if we still have seasons ! !?

Be careful of relying to much on Hacky-facts.  They might let’cha down in the end.

LH:

Found this quote on the link you posted.

————————————————————————————————————————

“It may be mid June or later before Glacier Park’s ‘Going-to-the-Sun Highway’ opens.

“(Next week, we’ll take a look at what’s happening to the glaciers in the park. Are they also beginning to expand? Find out the truth in just seven days.)”

—————————————————————————————————————————-

But I couldn’t find the “truth” of 7 days hence…Could you find and post it?

I’ll warn you though…It seems that a lot of the postings of the authors on that site claiming “Growing Glaciers” were , in fact, posting their observations in May or early June.  So it appears their observations were over the Winter months.

rightiwnuts:

“so what if the risk of global warming is the extinction of the human race-  heck let’s not get carried away and do anything too drastic….

especially if it adds 10 dollars a month to you electric bill

no let’s just take the chance we’ll change the earth’s climate to where humans can no longer flourish”.....


BUT -  an attack by a few kooks in the mountains and we’re spending over a BILLION DOLLARS A DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and that’s totally fine -

you rightiwngers have your priorities all mixed up!

thank GOD you are firmly in the minority

in the kooky minority at that!

and i’m proud that littlehawk has mastered the tough task of copy-paste!

Woody just can’t read.  As I wrote above:

==================
By Craig moore on 12-07-09

According to one of Obama’s chief scientists, Dr. James Hansen, we would be better off if Copenhagen fails:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/02/copenhagen-climate-change-james-hansen

  In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.

  “I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,“ said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
=========================

Here’s a very revealing video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbUVBYIPlI&feature=player_embedded

Too hard to find, huh?  I gave it my best shot too.  No soap.

Ah well.  Here’s my response then…

http://www.glacierinstitute.org/glacier/courses/climate_chage.html

...another of your own sources thrown under the bus?...Again…?

Hee Hee Heeeeeeee!  Wind him up and watch him gooooooo.

That’s the problem LH.  You put up a link or a cut-n-paste then when questioned or challenged based on that (your) information, there’s a loud THUMP as you variously state:

“It does not matter what Monckton is or isnt.”

...or

“I did not need to look Vud.Glaciers Grow,Glaciers melt and disappaer.”

...and there were other non-China sources for the 1st story you posted about global warming…why wouldn’t you have used one of those? I saw the same report on local news.

Why would you follow that source the next day with a condemnation of China’s one-child policy?

It makes me wonder if you even read what your foundational sources are saying?

It needn’t be this way.  Just take a little more time with your posts.  (and for the love of God…consolidate ! )

Taz:

I don’t know what Al Gore’s “Doomday prediction” of :

10 years - 6 years 1 month and 14 days was but I’ll

Take that bet!

I’ll bet at the end of the 10 year period I WON’T be fried.

Is it a bet?

Winner gets a cool, clear Vintage bottle of MT glacier water.

MMMmmm…delicious glacier water….

spazman: I didn’t think it was possible for you to be any more intellectually dishonest, but you did it.

Those dogs died because they had an irresponsible owner who refused to care for them properly.  You don’t leave pets outside in below freezing conditions, ever.  They had no adequate shelter, at all.  They were left out in frigid conditions for days and nights on end.

To try to connect their deaths to global warming being a hoax is incredibly ignorant.

lh123: (dude or dudette or both) Where have I ever stated my agreement with Al Gore?  Nowhere.  You need to stop making stuff up in your head.

I have not admitted GW is hoax.  Again, stop making stuff up in your head.  I believe that forces greater than observable natural weather cycles are creating problems in our atmosphere and for the health of this planet.

I just don’t know exactly what yet.

Stellar logic, spaz.  It’s winter, it gets cold outside.  Pets need to be cared for properly in all types of weather.

You need to stop making up stuff in your head, as well.

geology- The scientific study of the origin, history, and structure of the earth.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/geology

I belive weather falls more precisely under climatology.

KN asked:

“Where have I ever stated my agreement with Al Gore”?

...or ANY of us “bleed’n heart liberals” for that matter…go ahead leaf back through the posts here…see who keeps referencing Nobel Laureate Albert Arnold Gore.

Last post for me in the thread…(smattering of applause…)

your words lh123:  @Kal-Gnat & Vud-Everyone knows who your source is-The Great Witch Doctor himself-Al Gore. [close quote

18 comments up.

You lose…again.

lh123: you’re not reading my comments very closely.  Look about 12 coments up.  I’m not a GW worshipper, I think there are forces in play beyond just atmospheric influences, but I am unsure as to what precisely.

That’s why having an open mind is more beneficial than being a close-minded absolutist and knee-jerk denialist.

Enjoy your upcoming week of dirt mining.

Are working at the Hecla mine at Greens Creek?  Regardless, what are you covered with at the end of your shift?  Dirt.  You get paid, but do you reap any gold?  No.  You’re just another wage slave, boy.

and something (one) STILL smells fishy. 

WHEEEEEEEEE!

sniff sniff LH.  Yup, fishy for sure

you know littlehawk….instead of copying and pasting that last post -  you could simply believe me when I say the same things…....

the more you learn littlehawk the more you’ll be in our progressive camp -  that is the ONLY camp that really cares about the working man….....

for example with all the bailouts there is only 1 country that doesn’t have a “buy their countries products only” clause in the agreements.

The USA is the ONLY country that does not make the bailout monies be spent in that country -  so the bailout monies spent in America are helping spur the economy in China…..

and that was a republican fillabuster that forced that law into effect…...

want to help the working man?  the democrats may not do much but the republicans will do EVERYTHING THEY CAN to destroy the working class…..

and by the way - the working class is the class that actually creates VALUE in an economy…..

bankers and other fatcat paper pushers create NOTHING OF VALUE -  they are only a siphon on the system

After reading many of these posts I am convinced, more than ever, that we really need to invest in math and science education in this country. The basic principles behind climate change are really not that hard to understand. What is difficult to predict is how climate change will affect us in the future and how we can mitigate it, which is where the debate has shifted for most of us.

As for the skewed logic of the deniers (it’s natural, it’s the sun, etc) the revolving door of alternate “theories” have been refuted repeatedly. realclimate.org is a good site to get detailed explanations of these flawed assumptions.

Oh and there was never a scientific consensus saying that the world was cooling in the 70’s. A Newsweek article alluded to this and admits that it was wrong. “The lesson to take from this is the obvious one: not to take your science stories from the mass media if you can possibly find better sources.”

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/global-cooling-again/