Thread: More global warming shown to be false!

I fear the government will stifle innovation by mandating a "solution" that isn't the best it could be.

Wildtim, you need to realize that in our democratic system, our government is only as good or as bad as you let it be. If you think our government is so evil, then you owe it to yourself and to everyone else to get involved and work to change it.

As for evolution, I presume you accept that man is capable of breeding animals and plants to such a degree that they are not even capable of reproduction on their own, let alone capable of breeding with their ancestral species. Do you think you would recognize wild maize as a form of corn? Or that, if you had no familiarity with dogs, that you would think a chihuahua to be the same sort of critter as an Irish Wolfhound, to say nothing of the ancestral wolf? Surely you can accept that over the course of thousands (or millions or 1.5 billion) of years of changing environmental conditions, the forces of nature could force such creatures to change in an even greater degree?

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

Wildtim, you need to realize that in our democratic system, our government is only as good or as bad as you let it be. If you think our government is so evil, then you owe it to yourself and to everyone else to get involved and work to change it.

As for evolution, I presume you accept that man is capable of breeding animals and plants to such a degree that they are not even capable of reproduction on their own, let alone capable of breeding with their ancestral species. Do you think you would recognize wild maize as a form of corn? Or that, if you had no familiarity with dogs, that you would think a chihuahua to be the same sort of critter as an Irish Wolfhound, to say nothing of the ancestral wolf? Surely you can accept that over the course of thousands (or millions or 1.5 billion) of years of changing environmental conditions, the forces of nature could force such creatures to change in an even greater degree?

We don't need to change our government, just put it back to work doing the only things it is supposed to do. Protect our borders and insure interstate commerce. Everything else it does is unnecessary and most importantly an infringement on the right of the people. See its not evil, it's useless and intrusive.

I believe species can evolve over time, however, I don't believe that evolution can account for the entire biodiversity of the planet. I also fail to understand the willingness to believe that "POOF" life has begun is a more sensible idea than that we are created by a higher being. Its more the latter than the former.

By the way a wolf can breed to a chihuahua or an Irish wolfhound and they can breed to one another and the produce viable offspring. So man with all of history to work on it has created the most diverse looking animal on the planet, yet has failed to evolve a new species.

If the planet had been evolving for billions of years, we would have no species filling overlapping niches in any single area, yet we do. You'd also think we could find at least one single complete evolutionary chain, yet every one proposed has been faulty or a deliberate hoax.

Originally Posted by Wildtim

We don't need to change our government, just put it back to work doing the only things it is supposed to do. Protect our borders and insure interstate commerce. Everything else it does is unnecessary and most importantly an infringement on the right of the people. See its not evil, it's useless and intrusive. If this is what you believe, then you need to get out there and work to change it. Kvetching about it on a blog is even more useless.

I believe species can evolve over time, however, I don't believe that evolution can account for the entire biodiversity of the planet. I also fail to understand the willingness to believe that "POOF" life has begun is a more sensible idea than that we are created by a higher being. Its more the latter than the former. Scientists are very close to achieving the spontaneous production of life from chemical precursors. They've already managed to synthesize necessary organic chemicals and structures from the conditions they believe predominated on the early Earth. If they manage to do so, will you admit that you are wrong?

By the way a wolf can breed to a chihuahua or an Irish wolfhound and they can breed to one another and the produce viable offspring. So man with all of history to work on it has created the most diverse looking animal on the planet, yet has failed to evolve a new species. Chihuahuas cannot naturally interbreed with wolves or wolfhounds without human intervention. This is one of the many definitions of a species, and it's not a particularly good one, as occasionally mules and hinnies are fertile, and the hybrid between the Blue and Gold Macaw and the Scarlet Macaw is always fertile. Heck, humans have created hybrids between people and mice and people and pigs. That's where our insulin comes from now. Surely you're not suggesting that people and pigs are the same species.

If the planet had been evolving for billions of years, we would have no species filling overlapping niches in any single area, yet we do. You'd also think we could find at least one single complete evolutionary chain, yet every one proposed has been faulty or a deliberate hoax. This latter claim is simply not true, and is a distortion of the fossil record. The evolution of the clade of Chordates is well documented in the fossil record. As for your first claim, species filling in overlapping niches is exactly what we would expect to find as that species adapts to its changing environment. It is always transitioning from its historical niche to the niches in its present environment.

A belief in the strong form of evolution, including the spontaneous creation of life from chemical precursors, is not a threat to belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator deity. If anything, it adds to the grandeur and foresight of such a deity that it could create such a marvelously complex, self-assembling system as the entirety of our universe.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

Thank you for making this point. The major difference between volcanoes and human activity (and yes, some volcanic eruptions do release more toxic and greenhouse gasses than the entirety of human activity, until recently) is that volcanoes dump all that stuff at once. Natural environmental cycles put much of that stuff back in the ground before it has a chance to really muck stuff up. Humans let it out slooowly and accelerate their emissions, so its effects have time to accumulate.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I could live for years, most likely a full span, smoking five cigarettes a day, but could die from smoke inhalation if I was in a burning building! Like wise I could die from downing a quart of vodka in one shop but live happy drinking a shot or two a day for the rest of my long years on this earth!


If this is what you believe, then you need to get out there and work to change it. Kvetching about it on a blog is even more useless.


Telling Tim this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black! While I'll admit to not knowing what you do outside of this forum I must say that neither do you know what Tim, or for that matter any of us do outside this forum!

Methinks you are a little too slick for my tastes.

Originally Posted by JMS

That doesn't make any sense to me. I could live for years, most likely a full span, smoking five cigarettes a day, but could die from smoke inhalation if I was in a burning building! Like wise I could die from downing a quart of vodka in one shop but live happy drinking a shot or two a day for the rest of my long years on this earth! This is not an either/or situation. Such natural disaster occur with fairly predictable regularity. Human emissions are are on top of this effect. It is rather more like taking on smoking on top of knowing that you will be caught in a burning building every month, or drinking a couple of shots every day knowing that you will be forced to down a quart every other week, and the expecting that the effects of all this won't end up being cumulative. Furthermore, you are not analogous to the Earth, so your analogy doesn't work.


If this is what you believe, then you need to get out there and work to change it. Kvetching about it on a blog is even more useless.


Telling Tim this is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black! While I'll admit to not knowing what you do outside of this forum I must say that neither do you know what Tim, or for that matter any of us do outside this forum!

I am intelligent enough to pick up on what he does from his posting history, both in this thread and in others. You ought to be able to figure out what I do from what I've posted as well. Furthermore, the claims we are making impose differential expectations. I have consistently expressed the view that our government is not evil or useless and does not require my efforts or criticisms to improve it. Rather, I have consistently defended our basic form of government and liberal beliefs and ideals of government. You and he, on the other hand, have consistently belittled it, and implicitly belittled those who believe, and strive, otherwise than you. I have merely pointed out that if your, and his, convictions were as strong as your, and his, posts suggest, then you have no excuse for not acting on them given our form of government, rather than demeaning the efforts of others and insulting those who, for all you or he know, are honestly working to improve things within socially agreed upon framework of our Constitution and law. It is one thing to argue that you do not experience these benefits, and that the costs imposed on you are too onerous to be worth it. But it is quite another to insult and demean those who work to implement the programs, and to ignore all evidence and argument offered to you so that you might retain your self-righteous attitude.

Methinks you are a little too slick for my tastes. Do you see what I mean by demeaning and belittling?

All I ask of you or him is that you give people the benefit of the doubt until you have convincing evidence otherwise, that you presume they are innocent until proven guilty, and that you make this determination on a case by case basis, rather than smugly presuming ignorance, greed and corruption and refusing to budge from that presumption and painting whole groups of human beings with the same brush.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

All I ask of you or him is that you give people the benefit of the doubt until you have convincing evidence otherwise, that you presume they are innocent until proven guilty, and that you make this determination on a case by case basis, rather than smugly presuming ignorance, greed and corruption and refusing to budge from that presumption and painting whole groups of human beings with the same brush.

My comments were not meant to be belittling or demeaning, it's just the way I see it!
As for the rest, I believe you have got me wrong!
Many times when when two groups are at odds over some matter, one group will use comments such as what I quoted to guilt the other group to capitulate. Is that what you are doing?
You should take a lesson from Jimbo! We don't see much eye to eye, but I have a great deal of respect for him as he is not only honest but very humble! As for you, like I said, you're a little too slick for me, meaning I can't make heads or tails of you!

The only capitulation I require is that you show some evidence of having an open mind and not playing "gotcha" with those who take a different position. Humility is a matter of recognizing that one could well be wrong. This recognition is both implicit and explicit in the posts I have made in explaining what I believe, from global warming to more arcane subjects of liberalism. What I am running short on is charity, and this because you and others have not shown such humility in return.

You have shown no such humility that I have recognized! I will no longer comment on this particular conversation in this thread, but will be glad to entertain further discussion through PM's!

Good night all, it is time for bed!

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

I tend to trust the scientists that have devoted their lives to studying these things over any politician who's buddy's stand to make a buck if we do or don't do something, or some overly skeptical internet persona who often seems more interested in starting and winning a fight than trying to understand. The vast majority of climate scientists not only agree that global warming is occurring, but that human activity is a significant contributor to it.

And yet, the scientists who are buddy buddy with the politicians? support your side of the story. As to your statement about internet persona...as a professor you should be above this high brow level of insinuation. Leave that to students in high school jockeying for the most prestigious colleges and trying to look "intellectual" to their friends. You are above it, and also should be above underestimating your audience, much as I did when skimming your post above wrt general relativity, which did indeed attempt to tie in the forces of gravity using Einsteins special relativity theory. I concede one point on that, although it still does nothing to support your beliefs that people are the primary causers of global warming. It also is a theory that has no real empirical evidence that has been tested in the strictest sense of the word-but it works on paper. It also has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

I respect the effort it took to get your philosophy degree, but a philosopher does not an astrophysicist make...no offense, and before making insinuations about those with opposing views, look in the mirror. You are just as married to your views and unwilling to consider the other side as I or anyone else on here is to ours. This does not good science make. Neither does tossing out solar activity (not just radiant but magnetic) or the fact that CO2 is a fraction of the estimated 5% of "remainder" greenhouse gases, of which water constitutes between 90 and 95%....or that to equal a change of even 1% of water vapor we would need to more than double the CO2 in the atmosphere. The temperature change shown in your own chart would require a vastly larger amount of CO2 and other gases to even come close to those results. I submit that there are other causative factors which are being ruled out, and that while government and media industry is throwing billions of dollars/euro/yen or whatever in support of their pet result, and when scientists who disagree are suppressed-then this is not true science.

I do not seek to "convince" you, only to get you to open your eyes to other possibilities than the widely supported (politically at least) beliefs concerning climate change. You will note I've not even challenged any of the notions that climate can/ does/is change[ing], only the suggestion that government regulation is somehow the answer.

Ultimately, I could sit here and paraphrase scientific documents all night which support my skepticism about causal mechanisms for climate change, and you can continue to do the same-it still does not make my pet beliefs or lack thereof wrong anymore than it does for yours.

This is obviously (from your writing) not something you are an expert on, nor am I-we are at the mercy of people whose job it is to not be influenced by money, politics, and such, and to keep an open mind. When this is not happening, such as with the current debate, the credibility of conclusions reached is gone.
Ultimately we both might as well be blind men arguing over what the proverbial elephant looks like.
When I or others disagree with you it is not, contrary to your above insinuations, because our concerns or indeed the evidence leading to them, is suspect. It is folly to follow something so widely supported by the government media complex, at the disregard of a requirement to consider all the empirical evidence, which has obviously not been done.
Faulting one simply for having reservations about your pet topic (which you are, in essence, doing to me or anyone else who doubts your pet belief) is like accusing me of drinking kool aid, while never putting down your own glass full. You are a student of philosophy...open your mind a bit. There is always room for doubt.
Personally, I doubt that the 5% of atmospheric greenhouse gases which include CO2 are the huge causative factor in climate change, nor that the 14% or so of that figure caused by actions of humankind is the oncoming freight train one would have us believe. A half-cocked theory, even if portions of it are correct, is still a half-cocked theory.

Originally Posted by Kantian Pragmatist

The only capitulation I require is that you show some evidence of having an open mind and not playing "gotcha" with those who take a different position. Humility is a matter of recognizing that one could well be wrong.

This is essentially all I ask of you. No more thinly veiled insinuations questioning my science education or anyone else's here, no more thinly veiled jabs at credibility. If you cannot take it, do not dish it out, as my grandfather used to say. We are not so simple as to miss them, please be polite enough not to include them in the future and I will return the same respect, to you, if not your ideas(when we disagree). I at least, would be much more receptive to ideas not thrown out as if anyone in disagreement was poorly educated and dealt only in manufactured ideas.

btw...have you noticed there are people posting about razors in this forum?

strange....
John P.

guys lets keep this civil please. thanks!