Politics

Yeah, but how many dictators have they funded in recent times?

America needs to keep fighting the enemies we create!

Besides; do you want to see a CEO go to bed without a proper meal? Pity them.

 

Even President Bush acknowledged that global warming is happening. The consensus among climate scientists is that man-made climate change is happening. The melting glaciers don't lie. It is very hard to find any serious scientist who is not paid by an oil company who will say that global warming isn't happening.

It's very telling how libertarians, whose philosophy is political, all can look at a scientific question and objectively say that they know more than the scientists and that global warming is not happening.

So why do libertarians pick global warming and not, say, gravity to disagree with scientists about?

The answer is obvious. The problem of and solutions to global warming present the ultimate rebuttal of libertarian dogma:

The market alone can solve all problems

Regulation is evil

Collective action is wrong and counterproductive

Since these "principles" preclude any reasonable way of dealing with the crisis of global warming, libertarians must insist that there is no crisis, lest they have to admit that their worldview is anachronistic and absurd.

 

You guys can believe in the hype and rheotoric if you want; I'm tried of jousting windmills over these issues.

I say put Obama in and see how well he does. Let him raise taxes, spend on social programs, punish "Big Oil", and implement plans to fight Global Warming.

Let the Liberals have their chance to fight the world, the evil corporations, the sinister Christians, and Carbon Emissions.

 

haha, no, come back, i'm very curious to hear your justification of your . . . interesting . . . views on separation of powers & the role of the executive.

 

Krs, I think that maybe Plague had his sarcasm switch set to on... maybe.

 

Oh ; - ;

I posted quickly anyway haha. Not even sure I agree with all I said either, just posted quick-like. Arguing about politics is always an endless ordeal, so I'm not sure about doing it online especially lol.

 

Just PM me and I'll give you a civil answer. The people in this thread are convinced of their opinions and arguing over it is pointless and potentially detrimental. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not the type for fights or excessive conflicts. Even Sebo knows that.

 

No sarcasm. That's really what I want. KrsJin is right on. To expand just a little, I've heard from a lot of people that "it's good to have a president that fought in a war - our country NEEDS that kind of experience." I'd like to try supporting and following a person who has experience with peace.

I agree with Sebo, too. US foreign policy can be generalized to read "let's fuck with other countries in ways that are (supposedly) in our best interest." We want to set up military in Pakistan so we influence the government by propping up some asshole that almost the entire country despises. The impoverished oppressed turn to radical Islam as it offers hope and rewards those who would attack the US and its citizens.

If we spent what effort and money thats going toward the occupation of Iraq to humanitarian efforts instead, I think proponents of radical Islam would have great difficulty (or even no reason at all) to inculcate followers bent on harming US people.

Seriously, Dan, do what you want as far as private or public discussion. I'd rather see you post it in this thread, mainly because it's relevant and I'm interested in views that differ from my own (bonus that you intend to be civil about it). It doesn't mean everyone will go easy on you.

 

My mistake. I thought you were being sarcastic bc of the way you mimicked Unsafe Dan's reply.
I can't say I fully agree with your opinion on the "imminent danger from Iraq". I do believe that we are in danger of terrorist attacks but I do not believe we need to strenghten our offense but instead strenghten our defenses. Better security at airports, our borders, etc.
I don't want to get into 9/11 but an attack like that should never happen again. I agree that this war has been a gigantic disaster and huge hoax: "They've got W.M.D.'s, let's get em!... oh wait, the don't... ok, well, let's bring down that tyrant Saddam Hussein! ... ok, he's gone, well let's get these people some damn democracy!... ok, now that's done... well, now we need to stay to make sure that they keep it going..." /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

I also don't agree with what our government has been slowly doing throughout the years: occupying foreign lands with U.S. military forces in regions it goes to "help" and even some regions it does not "help".
We have military forces in countries that don't need us and/or don't want us and even some countries that we would never allow to occupy our land.

I fully agree with you on this:

That's the way I feel about everybody's opinion. I could go to CNN to talk about politics but I'm not really interested in those people's opinions. I am interested in what you and other fellow VFers think about current affairs and other interesting and entertaining topics.
Even though we may not always agree, I appreciate you guys sharing your opinions.

 

yeah it wouldn't be any fun if everyone thought the same things about an issue, we need those different viewpoints that people like unsafe_Dan bring about. Doesn't mean we won't still question the views, but it at least brings them in to discussion.

 

Did a quick check in Wikipedia:

"Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century."

So according to this model, at worst, the estimated increase in temperature is 6 degrees Celsius by 2100. Likely to be less, somewhere between 1 and 6. Is that really so bad?

It seems to me that the damage caused by 6 degrees is insignificant compared to things like another war. World War 1 killed 40 million people, and World War 2 killed another 60 million, so not including other wars and conflicts, that's at least 100 million deaths from war in the last century.

With the advances in technology, do you think in the worst case scenario if we did nothing and the temperature rose by 6 degrees, that 100 million people would die? Compare this to another worst case scenario, where we do nothing with dictators, tyrants, who end up starting another war, would 100 million people die? Especially when one has already happened before, and the other is a predictive model?

People want to fight against damage to Earth, environment and global warming, but they don't seem to want to fight against people who want to destroy the world with conventional weapons and warfare. Especially when the consequences of wars are much more terrible than a 6 degree warmer planet.

It's all about political correctness and believing in the best of people, instead of thinking rationally and seeing people for what they are. Believe it or not, not everyone is as enlightened, tolerant or peace-inclined as you. There are plenty of folks out there who believe in religious intolerance and racial hatred, and nothing you can say to them can change this. While you're busy thinking about how to reduce CO2 emissions so your grandkids don't get too hot, there's someone out there thinking about how to bomb your home into the ground so you don't get grandkids at all.

I don't believe that the US is right in the Iraq situation or in every international policy it sets. But with great power comes great responsibility, and it's better to do something you believe is right and make mistakes than to sit back and do nothing. You leave them alone, give them what they want, and in a few years, a war breaks out bigger and worse than before and you have to deal with it anyway. Look at what happened when you appease a small time dictator like Hitler, and see what he eventually became and dragged the world into.

I can see why Unsafe Dan doesn't want to talk about this, there is some sort of liberal mob mentality going on here. Funny how far witchhunts have come in the last couple of hundred of years, people used to get attacked for not worshiping God, now people get attacked for not worshiping the environment.

 

LOL.

You made an account for that... are you the same guy? (MrBowTie=Tucker Carlson?) -edit- Reading the response below: Dan's Alter?
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6 degrees not a big deal? Ask people who live in elevations at 20 feet above sea level (and under).

I don't think you're looking at the bigger picture (i.e. the nation of Bangladesh or the east coast of Usa).

Of course this won't displace millions upon millions of people forcing them inland, further developing land and destroying an already fucked up environment.

Whatever. It won't compare to world war (20 millionish died in WW1, get your numbers right), and the Spanish Flu didn't kill that many people.

 

Well let me first get this straight since some of you are mistaken.

I'm not a Republican, I'm a Libertarian.

I don't support the war in Iraq as it's wasteful and as of right now largely unnecessary (Iran is more of a problem now).

I'm not a fan of the current administration other than the tax cuts and Afghanistan (which WAS correct to do).

I'm even less of a fan of the current Democrat run Congress, according to polls I'm not the only one.

I'm not a crazy right wing Evangelical Christian as I don't believe the government has the right to stick it's nose into other peoples lives.

I DO believe in the free markets CAUSE THEY ARE RIGHT. All of the problems we face now can be fixed with free market solutions, including healthcare.

I DON'T believe in Global Warming because of the hypocrisy and lies of those who advocate it and the absurd belief that it's going to lead to some apocalypse in 10 years.

Those who advocate reduction in carbon emissions themselves produce enormous carbon emissions themselves (Al Gore's private jet and huge mansion, the Governators private jet flights EVERY DAY).

The high gas prices today are because of HIGH DEMAND and LOW SUPPLY. Not "Big Oil" gouging people.

drbowtie: How dare you bring logic into this thread, shame on you. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/shocked.gif

 

6 degrees from an ecological standpoint is actually a lot, especially if it's occurring in <u>all</u> climates. Think about this: Picture there's a habitat out there that functions at ~28 degrees and relies, in some way, on liquid water being frozen into ice. If this habitat is suddenly 34 degrees and all of that ice melts, all of the animals in that habitat will die because they cannot survive without it.

People say it all the time but polar bears really are a perfect example because they need the perfect mix of ice floats and water. This is highly dependent on the climate and is a much more sensitive system than some others because it relies on very specific conditions. With out ice floats for them to hunt and rest on they will certainly die, all of them... gone forever like the dodo, just a children's story from a long-gone past.

The problem with your viewpoint is that it values the fate of humans exclusively over all other life on earth. We didn't make the world or all of it's beautiful plants and animals and it's not ours to destroy.

I don't see how our right to pollute the air outweighs the extinction of thousands if not millions of species that we can NEVER, EVER get back. Once they are gone it is too late, they are gone forever.

The drastic effect of 6 degrees on humans could be violent storms (as heat is really nothing more than energy) because the energy from the extra heat will exponentially increase the storms power. We will face water shortages as more of the earth's water will stay suspended in the air in its vapor form when it used to condense. Can you imagine what the effect of a world-wide water shortage would be??? I don't even want to think about it.

You nor I can know for sure what will actually happen if the situation comes to that point. I don't think the risks outweigh the benefits. It's either, do what we can to stop this problem WE created and unleashed onto the world or do nothing and cross our fingers... that's not a hard decision...

 

I'm talking about the general attitude and panic politics surrounding global warming.

Global Warming advocates are like nut-job churches that tell you you're going to hell for not drinking their Kool Aid.

According to these guys, the world was very hot back in the 1920-30's Dust Bowl Era. In the 1940's MASSIVE industrial growth, war, and nukes were introduced into the environment. So how come the world never reached it's peak temperature till 1998? Hell in the 1960's people were warning the public of the "New Ice Age" cause the world was cooling too much. Now the world is getting too hot? Sounds like a bunch of Physics students who keep getting results wrong cause they are using a protractor to try to get an accurate reading of trajectory.

 

So war is deadlier than an environmental debacle. That's interesting. But wait, it seems like you are stating that the way to prevent wars is too launch more wars.

Who are the dictators with the power to launch wars that could kill hundreds of millions? Surely you aren't saying that Hussein belonged in that category. His country was a crumbling shithole before we came in and made it even worse (Go USA!).

It's not like I, or anyone I know, want anyone to be attacked for not worshipping the environment. The hope is that enough people recognize that the scientists are making better, more informed arguments than the wingnuts who know as much about climate science as I know about particle accelerators. And in a democracy, ideally the people making the best arguments win out. Obviously this doesn't always happen (see the Presidential election of 2004).

One thing about the Bush years - they have truly exposed the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of American "conservatism."

 

First of all, I am not Dan.

Secondly, I do not outright deny global warming. I am only skeptical about its cause. The scale of Earth's timeline is over such a long and extended period of time, there's bound to be some fluctuation in the environment and temperature. It could be caused by humans, sure, but in a few thousand years of time you could also see that something like this happens every x number of years. Nobody knows, and I think it's too presumptuous to assume that humans are the center of the universe, and that everything that happens on Earth is because of us. It's not so different from the "Earth is the center of the universe" belief that came with the witch hunts and stoning.

That being said, I do have some confidence in the model and the prediction that the temperature will rise 1-6 degrees by 2100, even if I cannot be sure that humans are the direct cause. Will it cause rising sea levels and extinction of plant life and animals? Perhaps, I would not be surprised if that happened.

But I have absolutely no doubt that if someone dropped a couple of nuclear bombs on various cities that people, animal and plants would die too, in a more extreme manner than the global warming scenario. With money being a limited resource, we should spend it on preventing the more likely and dangerous scenario, which is the one that has already happened before.

And unfortunately, yes, sometimes small wars are required to prevent big wars.

You are correct in saying that Saddam, at the time he was taken down, isn't a dictator with the power to launch nukes and start a world war. But consider this - if Saddam woke up one day and magically found an arsenal of nukes and a modern, high tech army to back him up, would he hesitate to use this on the rest of the world? Looking at his past history with chemical weapons, it appears that this possibility is not out of the question. So what do you do, just leave him to pursue obtaining these nukes and army and hope he doesn't get that far?

You don't tell your local cop "don't arrest that guy, he was only an attempted rapist", so the same should apply to bad leaders with dubious history and intent, regardless of how much power they currently have. Again, just to remind you, Germany was a crumbling shithole after WW1 too, but that didn't stop Hitler eventually building it up to a world-conquering, holocaust capable power.

If you don't agree and don't want to spend the money on weapons and wars, that's fine too, but don't spend it on preventing global warming either. That's just one example. Spend it on education, crime prevention, healthcare, the economy, or even give it away as international aid, any of these options are more beneficial to mankind than attempts to preventing global warming.

Remember, money is a finite resource, and every dollar you spend on preventing a 6 degree rise in temperature in 100 years time is a dollar less for your child's education right now, a dollar less for that nurse in your local hospital, or another night of starvation for some kid in Africa tonight. There are simply more important and pressing issues that needs to be dealt with right now, and that's not going to happen if people keep worrying about something that may or may not be diasterous a century later.

 

I agree with gernburgs that even if global warming might be attributed to us only to a small degree, why not make efforts to try and limit our effect on our planets climate change? What really is there to lose in doing so? If it's just so companies make money, they're already making profit not fixing the problem and are the main forces resisting the change to more eco-friendly things.