Sorry, didn’t see (not syria). My bad.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Sep 4 2013 13:48 utc | 3

Maduro might as well get used to things like this..
..http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/04/power-cut-paralyses-venezuela
The Norte Americanos can’t tolerate a govt. that actually helps it’s peons, sets a bad example ya’ know.

Posted by: ben | Sep 4 2013 14:25 utc | 5

4) worth watching: “business in this town depends on nothing getting done …”

Posted by: somebody | Sep 4 2013 15:01 utc | 7

By the way Uncle$, the message from EJS read by Jacob Appelbaum was extraordinary and gives me a little hope and reprieve from the feeling of poppies.
Thanks, as always,
John

Posted by: juannie | Sep 4 2013 15:35 utc | 9

@ guest77
Yeah I watch Max Keiser a lot as well. As an anti-capitalist, I do find some of what he says off the ball but generally think he is one of the good guys. I’ve noticed that he can change views depending on who he interviews. He has had some epic rants against Neo-Liberalism and free market economics, but can just as easily rail against central planning (think his main problem with central planning governments is usually about Central Banks like the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.
Either way he probably rips into Banksters more than any other TV personality, and is no friend of the US Empire. Plus he is funny.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Sep 4 2013 16:03 utc | 11

Thanks Noirette, That’s good news about our friend, r’giap. I’m pleased to hear that he’s doing better.

Posted by: Copeland | Sep 4 2013 16:33 utc | 13

Lybia, not Syria. .. Disaster.
Oil production/export has dropped 50 – 70%.
The Independent states that new, private groups have been selling / trying to sell oil on the black market with ‘private tankers’. Selling privately is possible on a small scale – siphoning off and trucks out of Iraq for ex, but this scale is major business that has major political consequences.
from the Independent
http://tinyurl.com/nzb3ru8
Don’t pretend to judge the ins and outs, personalities, but e.g.
from almonitor
http://tinyurl.com/l4ocnrp
from Foreign Policy
http://tinyurl.com/nf8ttuz
Ppl often blame Big Oil for various meddling, nasty aims at control, and so forth, but this is a red herring. The Oil industry can only function in conditions of stability, because of the very long lead line in projects (5-10 years is standard), the vulnerability of the industry as dependent on qualified workers, population on the ground acceptance, endless matériel and spare parts, deliveries etc. of these, i.e. roads and so on; transport, pipeline and shipping routes, all of which are vulnerable, and, lastly the reliance on the solidity and upholding of ‘sharing contracts’ (usually between private/public) which necessitates stable Gvmts, some kind of solid ‘rule of law’ that guarantees going forward without too much hazard. Err, risk as it is now called.
I’m no fan of Big Oil. I’m aware of the argument ‘create strife so the oil can’t be brought up or sold to capture it later’ but in Lybia, for ex., that does not work, unless one is talking about some mystical ideal future decades down the road, imho.

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 4 2013 17:26 utc | 15

The Independent states that new, private groups have been selling / trying to sell oil on the black market with ‘private tankers’. Selling privately is possible on a small scale – siphoning off and trucks out of Iraq for ex, but this scale is major business that has major political consequences. 

What the majors hate most are independent co’s or State Oil Cos, not part of the cartels, willing to lower prices or increase production. Libyan oil is some of the best there is. And it’s quite cheap still, to pump it out of the ground
Ghaddaffi was preparing future deals with Gazprom thus cutting out any future prospects for the majors/cartels in Libya. They REALLY don’t like that.
Anyone not part of their cartels is precieved as a major enemy.
Leaving Libyan oil in the ground is not a problem for the Majors, suits them just fine. Forget whatever you have heard regarding current or projected future oil shortages, it’s all nonsense

Posted by: hmm | Sep 4 2013 19:05 utc | 17

@hmm #1
FYI:
Re Lindzen

“of all the skeptics, MIT’s Richard Lindzen probably has the most credibility among mainstream scientists, who acknowledge that he’s doing serious research on the subject.”
Lindzen is perhaps best known for his “Iris hypothesis”, which proposed that, like the iris of an eye, the earth’s cloud systems will act to lessen global warming. Other climate researchers believe that further research has not supported this hypothesis; Lindzen disagrees.
…
Lindzen wrote that “his research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.”
Ross Gelbspan, journalist and author, wrote a 1995 article in Harper’s Magazine which was critical of Lindzen and other global warming skeptics. In the article, Gelbspan reports Lindzen charged “oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; [and] his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled ‘Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,’ was underwritten by OPEC.”
A decade later Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam reported, based on an interview with Lindzen, that “he accepted $10,000 in expenses and expert witness fees from fossil- fuel types in the 1990s, and has taken none of their money since.”

Posted by: juannie | Sep 4 2013 19:31 utc | 19

looking at the source of your ad hom article juannie I notice it is from sourcewatch
Sourcewatch is nothing but a silly wiki that anyone, idiot, genius or obsessive, can contribute to.
Indeed had you bothered to check, juannie, you might have noticed that one particular obsessive called ‘bob burton’ seems to have cobbled that together. Who he?
It is no more valid than any crap one could find on Wikipedia. The thing about wiki’s is that any clueless fool can contribute and it will sit there unless removed by another, who could be equally clueless.
If all you have is a Wikipedia-like ad hom hatchet job, I think Lindzen is safe enough
I notice you zero’d in on funding, juannie.
The CRU, (Climate Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK) holder and collector of much of the data used by the Climate Lobby, was founded by money sourced from both SHELL and BP – as well as generous contributions from the Nuclear industry and many other Large energy Producers, to the tune of several millions pounds Sterling, juannie.
What have you to say about that?
Did those MILLIONS come from the “Good Oil Money” as opposed to the ‘Bad Oil Money’, juannie?
Do you think the Oil Co’s keep the “Good Oil money” in a separate pile from the “bad Oil Money”, juannie?
How would one distinguish the Good Oil Money from the Bad Oil Money?
The global warming institute at Princeton was founded using massive donations from Oil Companies,juannie. Those Oil Co donations, totalling at least a hundred MILLION DOLLARS by now, did they come from the “Good Oil Money-pile” juannie, or the “Bad Oil Mopney-pile”?
Greenpeace has an annual operating budget of 10’s of millions at the least, juannie – much of that from Corporate Donors, many of them too Oil Co’s, energy co’s and other nasty corporate pirates. Did all that come from the “Good Corporate Pirate Profit-pile”, juannie?
The WWF (World Wildlife Fund NOT the World Wrestling Federation) also has mostly Corporate Donors. Are those funds from the “Good” Corporation profit-pile, jannie? How would you know?
How would you distinguish the “Good” Corporate Profit-pile from the “Bad” corporate Profit-pile?
The WWF’s operating annual budget for the US alone is approx 500 MILLION DOLLARS per year, juannie.
They don’t get that sort of income from individual donors or street collections, juannie.
If you are going to discuss funding, juannie, at least have the basic common decency to address the funding of BOTH SIDES.
Otherwise you run the risk of just ending up looking like a partisan hypocrite, and I’m sure you are not a partisan hypocrite, juannie, are you?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 4 2013 21:42 utc | 21

Sorry about the multiple posts, but there really is so much one could write on this subject that as soon as I finish one post I remember a whole new set of relevant info, so please bear with me, and accept mu apologies for the multiple posts, since that seems to greatly irritate some here,.
It is not intentional I assure you.
===========
Let’s address the source of the crude Ad Hominem hatchet-job that juannie posted.
The source-site, from which he lifted his copy&paste-job, is named “Sourcewatch”
Sourcewatch is project of something called the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD),
CMD is funded by George Soros, a corporate pirate if ever there was one. The man almost-literally rapes the economies of various countries that he targets.
the same man funds many of the “Fake Democracy” and “Fake human Rights” orgs that spring up in countries in which the US is about to launch “Colour Revolutions” or “Arab Springs”. His well-funded Fake orgs very often work hand in hand with the US State Dept funded NED, considered by many to be little more than a front for the CIA.
THIS is the source you are using as copy&paste material to launch an Ad Hominem attack on Lindzen, juannie?
Really?
Did the Sourcewatch funding come from the “Good 3rd World Ecomonic-Rape Profit-pile” or the “Bad 3rd World Economic-Rape Profit-pile”, juannie?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 4 2013 22:21 utc | 23

@ 20 I said

one particular obsessive called ‘bob burton’ seems to have cobbled that together. Who he?

I should have said

one particular obsessive called ‘bob burton’ seems to have cobbled most of that together. Who he?

my apologies.

Posted by: hmm | Sep 4 2013 22:37 utc | 25

yes, thank you noirette. good to hear news that r’giap is doing better.

Posted by: lizard | Sep 4 2013 23:55 utc | 27

thank you beq for that info, though I would be a bit hesitant using that platform. that said, I contribute to a blog called 4&20 Blackbirds and besides being a thorn in side of servile Democrats, I also feature weekly poetry posts, sometimes original work, often times the work and news of others. hashtag shameless plug.

Posted by: lizard | Sep 5 2013 1:54 utc | 29

@noirette – thank you for news of r’giap … please give him my best.

Posted by: Siun | Sep 5 2013 3:24 utc | 31

Israel’s cluster bombs continue to kill and maim in Lebanon

More than 400 Lebanese civilians — one quarter of them children — have been injured by Israeli cluster bombs since the end of the 2006 war.
“Every day we find cluster bombs in between the houses and in the fields,” said Ali Shuaib, community liaison manager at the Mines Advisory Group, a British organization clearing landmines and other remnants of war in Lebanon. “There are tens of villages like this all over the south.”
Although Lebanon has been plagued by landmines since its 1975-1990 civil war and subsequent Israeli occupation, it faced unprecedented contamination levels from cluster munitions after Israel launched a 34-day war in July 2006. According to Human Rights Watch, Israel’s use of the weapons was the most extensive anywhere in the world since the 1991 Gulf War.
These are the most indiscriminate weapons of modern warfare; 95 percent of all victims of cluster munitions are civilians, according to the organization Handicap International.
Since the cessation of hostilities five years ago, 408 Lebanese civilians have been killed or injured by cluster munitions, 115 of them under 18 years old. Unless properly disposed of, the weapons keep killing and maiming for decades.

What sort of Nazis would drop MILLIONS of cluster bombs in civilian areas where they KNEW what the end result would be?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 5 2013 4:00 utc | 33

Danish Physicist Henrik Svensmark has offered a convincing alternative to the almost-dead-in-the-water CO2 theories pimped by the Oil Company funded Global Warming Lobby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffgUxIFnNWM

Posted by: hmm | Sep 5 2013 13:21 utc | 35

@35, so you’re saying the Oil Lobby is funding the “Warmists”? Does not compute.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 5 2013 22:01 utc | 37

The CRU was founded in 1971 as part of the university’s School of Environmental Sciences. . . . . . . . Initial sponsors included British Petroleum,the Nuffield Foundation and Royal Dutch Shell.

Source: Michael Sanderson (2002), The history of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, p. 285, 
ISBN 978-1-85285-336-5

Posted by: hmm | Sep 5 2013 23:19 utc | 39

The CRU actually had a list of funders on their website for several years.
But in 2008,at the height of the Global Warming media-frenzy, they suddenly removed it.

Posted by: hmm | Sep 5 2013 23:27 utc | 41

I guess if the millions of autos and factories and power plants spewing gases into the air are such harmless things, I’d suggest “hmm” runs a little experiment for us: go spend a night in your garage with the door closed and the car running. If you don’t respond we’ll take it that the experiment was a failure.
I can’t possible imagine any reason to not want to move towards clean energy alternatives and move away form strip mining, deep water drilling, auto exhaust and every other poison these processes generate – global warming or not.
Ruralito said it right: “erring on the side of caution is a given.” There is no downside. The best that happens is we clean up our environment and save the world from global warming, the worst that happens is we clean up our environment.
But god forbid.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 6 2013 0:31 utc | 43

Until the 19th C. man shared the atmosphere with other critters, whales, algae. A situation that had remained unchanged since the proverbial Beginning of Time. But no lung can compete with even the smallest internal combustion engine. And there are billions of them churning night and day all over the world. Not including turbines in ships and jets. And all in a century and a half, give or take. That must give one pause.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 6 2013 1:06 utc | 45

@42
Not prepared to address in your comment the funding by shell an bp and Oil Co funding in general of these Global Warming advocacy organisations?
That was what you were questioning in you previous comment, no?
Does it still not compute
I never said global warming is bunk, i just suspect something other than CO2 is causing most if not all of it. What i think is bunk is the co2 theories. So if the co2 theories are useless, we are still left with climate changes to deal with either way. Deindustrialisation won’t have anyeffect on that at all then.
@43
Your climate/garage metaphor just really realy illinformed. It’s a very poor methaphor
I’m all for clean energy. How do you propose to achieve this?
Solar cannot produce anything even close to what we need just to survive the winters, nor can wind nor hydro, neither separately nor all three combined.
Bar hydro, which requires a massive energy investment to start, all the renewables in the world combined could not produce enough energy to smelt the ores needed to make the equipment needed to make the windmills, the solar panels etc.
Only large hydro instalations could poissibly produce enough enery to reproduce a similar installation, but sites suitable for hydro are few and far between, using current tech.
Basically renewables are ok if you don’t actually need reliable energy supply. In which case say goodbye to hospitals, any industry at all, winter heating etc
Imagine trying to run an operating theatre on wind-power. Middle of heart surgery and the wind stops blowing, but i digress.
And you both are confusing environment and climate. Different things. Not the same thing at all, and certainly not interchangable in the manner you to seem to uee them.
If CO2 is not responsible for temperature changes, and it looks more and more like it may not be, or certainly no where near as much influence as has been claimed by the Warmist Lobbyists, then this link you both make between climate and environment is essentially spurious.
If your only solutions to environmental issues are malthusian population slaughter dystopias, which are a given under the “de-industrialisation” solutions that you both seem to be proposing, then how different is that to the war-war-war solutions of the Uber capitalists?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 6 2013 1:20 utc | 47

A quick question
What have each of you personally done remove your “privilieges”
How are any of you different from palmer?
You are all “here” courtesy of the “privilege” of electricity, courtesy of the privilege of owning a computer,and all that signifies in terms of resource exploitation etc etc.
Other than the dystopian malthusian outlook, you both seem to favour, what makes you essentially different from Palmer in your day to day behaviour?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 6 2013 1:31 utc | 49

Guilty as charged. I even have grand children.

Posted by: dh | Sep 6 2013 1:47 utc | 51

I’m not a malthusian. Killing a lot of people is too easy. It will be difficult to ameliorate the situation. But doing the hard thing improves the species. Outlawing the private automobile would be a start. The fuel saved could go into keeping the hospitals warm, and much else. Elon Musk’s Hyperloop train scheme looks promising. More savings. Cutting back on carrier groups. Savings.
what privileges have I forgone? Now you’re just trolling.
My difference from Palmer? Well, I’m not a “billionaire mining magnate.” Did that not pop out at you?

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 6 2013 2:04 utc | 53

btw – you mentioned privileges not me. What was your point?
And why does it not seem apply to you in the here-and-now?why only to Palmer? To me that sounds very Agustinian : “lord save me from myself, but tomorrow, not today”
As Palmer is to you, so you appear to a 3rd worlder,

Posted by: hmm | Sep 6 2013 2:27 utc | 55

“Kind of like a post-modern masochistic guilt-ridden masturbation frenzy.”
You are not a serious person.

Posted by: ruralito | Sep 6 2013 2:50 utc | 57

A post-modern masochistic guilt-ridden masturbation frenzy is what happens after Malthusian soma induced multi-tasking..

Posted by: dh | Sep 6 2013 2:59 utc | 59

Paranoid, or just not paranoid enough? …

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 6 2013 3:46 utc | 61

Global Warming Scientists and Oil co funding:

The alliance between the oil giant BP and the University of California, Berkeley, stands out because of its $500 million price tag, its commercial scope and the potential for BP to exert excessive influence over the academic research. But it isn’t an isolated case.
The second largest such partnership is a 10-year, $225-million deal Stanford University signed with Exxon Mobil and other energy firms in 2002 to fund a Global Climate and Energy Project.

Tin-foil hats? anyone?
Let’s hope that all that funding came from the “Good” Planet-Raping Profit-pile”
Rather dwarves Mr Lindzen’s paltry 2,500 per day, no?

Posted by: hmm | Sep 6 2013 11:20 utc | 63

dih @64 first not block text should read: “your garage in which you’d quickly die of C0. Now multiply it times 1000000000 and you have all those cars, trucks, factories, plants into our atmosphere whit, like the garage’ contains finite space.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 7 2013 8:50 utc | 65

“You also seem to be claiming that co2 is a pollutant, if have understood correctly”
It is a pollutant in the sense that its very abundance in the atmosphere caused by man (even if you don’t believe global warming is related to that).
But for the again: What is the nefarious plan behind off of this? What is the main goal behind those who would so recklessly try and develop renewable energy.
As you don’t believe global warming is am actual phenomenon, I wouldn’t imagine you care about renewables.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 7 2013 10:10 utc | 67

What you do or not imagine is immaterial, but you clearly know little about any of the science

Posted by: hmm | Sep 7 2013 10:16 utc | 69

@68 your lack of of honesty is truly astonishing. Of course there are more dangerous gases that we cannot eliminate without a serious program to eliminate CO@. And I’ve never called it a poison, though it is a form of pollution.
If all you have to do is o claim you are some kind of expert on the matter, with the rest of us being dupes, it’s not really very convincing.
For the second time you’ve attacked my word usage when the meanings are obvious to someone having an honest discussion. The “Abundance” meaning, more than it likely it is more abundant today than at anytime in recent history.
So do you have an honest argument? You still can’t seem to manage the “why” of your theory. If you don’t believe in the science, that’s of course your opinion. But if you try to spread your ideas but can only answer questions by alluding to vague matters of funding followed by accusations that we somehow support some kind of massive culling of humanity, then I’m not sure that you’ve got much of anything.
Again, what’s the plot? Someone wants to get rich? Holy shit, in the USA?

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 7 2013 11:20 utc | 71

Again, calling co2 “pollution” is pure nonsense. Voodoo science if ever i saw it.

Posted by: hmm | Sep 7 2013 11:58 utc | 73

primarily to ruralito and guest77,
Please be aware that you have engaged (you are feeding) a troll. I am not responding to hmm. I won’t engage him/her. I started to respond to his first post after my reference to Lindzen but then discovered a rash of defamatory posts immediately following and recognized the signature of disruptive trolling. So I declined to even answer him/her as his/her loud shouting would only drown out any of my attempts at rational discourse. So this post is for you two only and not the arrogant know it all.
First, as I was beginning to reply to hmm when he/she so shrilly disrupted me, my reference to Lindzen was not an Ad Hominem but merely to point out the possibility of conflict of interests and to alert him/her to that possibility (I thought I was being informative and cordial before I experienced him/her in his/her attack mode) . I actually respect Lindzen (admittedly reserved) which was obvious, if one were to be astute enough to pick up on the first line of my reference. His long standing contribution to Atmospheric Science is quite worthy of respect. However, even the most esteemed can go astray as I, and many others in careers of Atmospheric Science believe. Lindzen has been trying to refute, maybe honestly, the CO2 global warming scenario since I first became aware of him in the early 90’s. But most every theory he has accordingly presented has been refuted by many in the field. I won’t spend my time searching out these rebuttals and referencing them. If you are really interested just google (I actually prefer the more secure duckduckgo.com search engine) something like “Lindzen refuted”. You will find yourself in a plethora of links which if followed will substantiate my claim. Lindzen lost credibility to most in the field when he first denied receiving funding from energy companies and was found to be lying (see my post at #19 this thread) and then when it was discovered that he had been denying tobacco’s link to lung cancer. (Also see the link at my #19 post) My best bet is that he is an ideologue of the flavor that has to discredit any evidence that to circumvent a social disaster, massive government and world cooperation is required. Something the profit oriented free market (i.e. corporate free reign) is unsuited to solve.
Global warming is not really a debatable subject any longer. A year ago it was published in a study by the historian of scientist Naomi Oreskes that over 97% of scientists working in the field of Atmospheric Science accepted the evidence that global warming was happening and that accumulation CO2 in the atmosphere was the main cause. The latest I’ve seen is that out of 13,950 peer reviewed climate articles between 1991 and 2012, only 24 reject global warming. Way past 97%. Keep in mind that the thousands of scientists who are in agreement about global warming come from all national, ethnic, ideological and political persuasions. That makes nigh impossible for me to accept the deniers claim that it is a massive conspiracy to get more government funding for their careers.
As was pioneered by the tobacco industry, there is a large industry (if need be I will supply company names in the field) that uses the finely tuned PR techniques of creating doubt and uncertainty that hire out to any corporations who are in need of distorting the truth or outright lying to support their profits from government action to protect people. If challenged (not by hmm, I won’t respond to or engage him/her in any way even in the almost certain event of his/her defamation and taunts) by anyone interested in honest discussions I will supply references to back up any of my claims, except of course those which I honestly own as my beliefs or opinions. (e.g. hmm is a troll; of course that is denied by him/her but what troll wouldn’t make that denial. It is only my suppositions based on the tactics of loud, bandwidth eating, arrogant, defamatory posts. I actually believe he/her is an old troll that got banned here some time ago, but I accept that as only my supposition and don’t claim it a fact.)
Oh and one more thing. Green energy is viable, see:
German power exports soar amid green energy revolution
or:
Germany Continues Exporting Electricity: Renewables Driving Down Prices Despite Closing Reactors
or the search: Germany energy exports
Thank you for your efforts to counter hmm but I would advise that that is a useless exercise. Best to ignore the taunts and useless rhetoric and just scroll past anything with that name attached. That’s what I will be doing from now on so I won’t even see any of the of his/her almost certain vitriol.

Posted by: juannie | Sep 7 2013 19:24 utc | 75

Oh what a tangled web . . . .
“. I actually respect Lindzen (admittedly reserved) which was obvious”
Well of course you do, dear.
Why, simply everyone knows that posting excerpts from a very obvious ad hom hatchet-job is the very very highest mark of respect anyone could show toward Dr. Lindzen.
Oh yes indeedy.
And furthermoar, anyone even hinting otherwise is clearly nothing but a well paid Oil Co shill.
You’ve outdone yourself in ridiculousness on this one, juannie.

Posted by: hmm | Sep 7 2013 20:37 utc | 77

“(I remember PoA getting chastised as out of order or too persistent or something)”
Yeah, its why I commenting here. It made no sense to me that b would offer an “open” thread that wasn’t really “open”. Lost alot of respect for him.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Sep 8 2013 1:29 utc | 79

@1 I have to say hmm, if self-aggrandizing irritating dicks like yourself are the face of “climate truth” no wonder it is a tough sell.
I love that you seem so very dearly attached to the free market. Which is funny because with your comment about “well-fed greenies” I had to assume your making all of your million comments on MoA hunched over in some rice paddy in Vietnam.
But anyway, the article. Man, proving once and for all that the vile poison of the American political system seeps into to every crevice it can.
The article reads like some serious cranky neo-liberal bullshit. I’m not surprised he’s been busted not once but twice hiding his corporate pay checks from the public. This isn’t a debunking of climate science, it’s a four page complaint about the “system” that he has to somehow find an excuse that he’s been left out of it. Shit, and he must have spent like 15 minutes coming up with that clip art model of how “scientists”, “the media”, and “politicians” interact. Very thorough, extremely detailed.
Sorry, this is just a peek through the eyes of a scientist with a particularly politicized worldview, that’s all. He should have left it for the sociologists.
I’ve heard you “there-is-no-way-billions-of-people-and-millions-of-cars-and-factories-and-power-plants-working-everyday-24-hrs-a-day-could-possibly-change-this-planet” folks make some outlandish excuses for your untenable position, but I think describing Climate Science as a modern day example of Nazi Eugenics science takes the cake. I don’t even know what to say. I don’t see any other way of reading it except as Dr. Lindzen must feel that the extermination of millions in a massive terror war is pretty much the moral equivalent of, say, millions of people deciding to buy a Prius?
I will say though that his trying to combine Global Warming, Nazi Eugenics, and a misrepresentation of Soviet science made my bullshit meter hit red. I thought I was suddenly reading a Glenn Beck newsletter or something.
But he really hits it here:
He claims another cost is that global warming has become “a religion” that “gives meaning to peoples lives”? He gives no evidence of a single person that treats it that way, but lets give him the benefit of the doubt. Is that really awful that people see some calling to reducing their carbon footprint? I mean, on the scale of crazy things that people do to add meaning to their lives, where does “trying to use less plastic bags this week” fit in exactly? Maybe somewhere between becoming a Hare Krishna and going to Guyana and drinking poison kool-aid?.

“Global Warming has become a religion. A surprisingly large number of people seem to have concluded that all that gives meaning to their lives is the belief that they are saving the planet by paying attention to their carbon footprint. There may be a growing realization that this may not add all that much meaning to one’s life, but, outside the pages of the Wall Street Journal, this has not been widely promulgated”

Funny that he notes that the Wall Street Journal is the vanguard of the movement to deprogram these poor brainwashed liberals who don’t want to use as much gas. Rupert Murdoch, saving the world from using less gas one article at a time.
Then right after stating that global warming becomes some people’s “religion” though he can’t seem to point to a single person who has done so, he then says “people with no other source of meaning will defend their religion with jihadist zeal.” So it follows: people who believe in global warming may end up becoming jihadists. Okay, is YOUR bullshit meter going off yet?
In spite of it being a proven fact that government funding of research has made THE big contributions to electronics, aerospace, and many other branches of science by their having “essentially a monopoly” on science funding (yeah, because corporations, by and large, avoid r&d like the plague…socialize the costs, privatize the profits is the name of that game). But the author, ever the optimistic little cow heading over to where he knows the grass must be greener feels this limits “freedom” and makes scientists into something more resembling lazy government funded slum lords. Did Ayn Rand write this shit? This guy wants to go back to the days when Ben Franklin was flying kite in a storm, he should switch from climate science and start building a fucking time machine.
In conclusion:
Global Warming Hippies: The Saddam-Assad-Hitler.
……..
Yeah man, have fun out in the political wilderness with this bullshit. No wonder you’re such a bastard. I would be too if everyone thought I was crazy.
Anyway, I’m sure Exxon will personally thank you when they make their billionth dollar this month. Count on it.

Posted by: guest77 | Sep 8 2013 2:22 utc | 81

Unfortunately though, most normal people cannot recall the fact that global warming was an issue for environmental campaigners detested by the capitalist system for several decades before it became an object of big business manipulation, phony ‘carbon taxes’ etc.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Sep 8 2013 3:52 utc | 83

Rowan – the CRU was founded in 1971.
Quite a few decades ago now.
Shell and bp were in there from the start.

Posted by: hmm | Sep 8 2013 4:23 utc | 85

So, Tokyo has been awarded the opportunity to host the Olympic Games.
Think there has been a media curtain over the situation at Fukushima??? Think the Japanese government has been purposely hiding the severity of this crisis from the rest of the world?
You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. It will be almost impossible to get accurate info about the Fukushima nuclear emergency now.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Sep 8 2013 15:16 utc | 87

@88 CTuttle, thanks so much for posting. I have to read it a little at the time, such upsetting info…
——-
Case Against Assad Based on ‘Common Sense,’ Not ‘Irrefutable’ Evidence
Taking the White House campaign for a military strike on Syria to the Sunday morning shows, chief of staff Denis McDonough admitted that the administration lacks “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” connecting Syrian President Bashar Assad to the use of chemical weapons.
AP via Time:
“This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way,” White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said during his five-network public relations blitz Sunday to build support for limited strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“The common-sense test says he is responsible for this. He should be held to account,” McDonough said of the Syrian leader who for two years has resisted calls from inside and outside his country to step down.

Posted by: crone | Sep 9 2013 2:01 utc | 89

how it all started……
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge , 1895
*We have a record of conquest, colonization and expansion unequaled by any people in the Nineteenth century. We are not about to be curbed now.*
http://web.archive.org/web/20080224083801/http://pnews.org/ArT/Xray/EmPire.shtml

Posted by: denk | Sep 9 2013 12:30 utc | 91