Posted on 02/04/2006 2:47:45 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In our urgency to deal with really urgent stuff over the past few weeks, we have been piling up news articles regarding what some regard as a universal urgency. That would be global warming or Global Warming or GLOBAL WARMING, depending on one's perspective, provided that one has a perspective.
Bill Clinton, speaking last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that mother of all junkets for rich folks who take themselves very seriously, said that GLOBAL WARMING bothered him a bunch. "It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible," Clinton was quoted as saying.
Since that pronouncement came only one week after it was announced that Al Gore is publishing a new book on GLOBAL WARMING in April, it could have simply been Boss Clinton putting Mr. Earthtones in his place, which is down.
Several weeks earlier, Reuters published a story that got infinitely less notice but is ever so much more important. That story concerned observations by German scientists at the Max Planck Institute (where scientific rather than political credentials are generally preferred). The scientists found "a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere," sayeth the Reuters story.
The story went on. "David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial." Why? Because scientists had previously believed that "plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen....[T]he story also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it."
How indeed? It's 2006. We have been led to believe that scientists know so much about global warming that we should abandon our SUVs on the streets and immediately stop heating our abodes. Now they find that live plants are a culprit, producing "incredibly large plumes of methane" above rainforests?
Another recent study, involving clouds and sunlight reflected by the earth back into space (something called albedo), raises additional, complicated questions about retained atmospheric heat, "a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate," in the words of Philip R. Goode, the study's leader at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Interviewed by Robert Roy Britt for Livescience.com, Goode also said, "No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing. No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, are there other things going on?"
Ah, yes, "scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate," of which there seemingly are some, as opposed to those already pronouncing Modern Man as murderer of the planet.
With those real-questions-about-real-science stories in mind, we were not at all shocked to see the following headline in the February 2 Washington Post: "Evangelicals Will Not Take Stand on Global Warming."
Here's the first paragraph of Alan Cooperman's story: "The National Association of Evangelicals said yesterday that it has been unable to reach a consensus on global climate change and will not take a stand on the issue, disappointing environmentalists who had hoped that evangelical Christians would prod the Bush administration to soften its position on global warming." (Emphasis added)
Thus did Evangelicals - frequently derided as delusional, obsessed whackos by those who disdain their beliefs - acknowledge exactly what "scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate" are acknowledging. Despite environmentalist political pressure, propagandistic distortions and a media juggernaut, we simply do not yet know enough about "global warming" to be undertaking radical, costly, global public policy positions. Perhaps we should put a little high octane speed on our understanding, but while waiting we leave you with yet another science story in the making.
Since you were a wee tyke, you have been assured that our solar system has nine planets. Well, as it turns out there may be 10, depending on how scientists decide to categorize a space blob discovered last year. It's bigger than Pluto, but is awaiting the culmination of scientific deliberation as to what actually constitutes a "planet," as also reported in the February 2 Washington Post.
Currently designated 2003 UB313, it's an ice dwarf, 1800 miles in diameter covered with water and methane ice. Come to think of it, 2003 UB313 seems like the perfect place to send those who make scientific pronouncements before the science is sure. While there, they could read Michael Crichton's State of Fear, the bestselling polemic-as-novel against environmentalist extremism.
I'm more concerned about LOCAL WARMING, of the nuclear kind!
The end of the world may be near though it hasn't got anything to do with what the !#$% ^&* President has to say.
And to think it was just ten years ago that we were told that we only had ten years before we destroyed the planet.
And it was just twenty years ago that we were told that we were all dead in ten years.
And it was just thirty years ago that we were told that mankind would destroy itself within ten years.
Anybody see a pattern here?
Didn't he actually place the Utah coal off limits with the Escalante Staircase National Monument?
As far as "Heritage Rivers" is concerned, Clinton can cram that one up his butt. That sort of crap should be done by Congress (preferably through a Constitutional amendment), if at all.
Actually, I accept a lot of the science behind global warming. Like I've posted to other threads, the weather is going to get hotter- and colder. The ice sheets are going to retreat- and advance. The ocean level is going to rise- and fall.
Net result- serious instability in the global real estate market over the next thousand years or so.
We humans have survived ice ages and worse- at least, the smartest, toughest, and most resourceful humans did.
The only warming the Toon should worry about is when his butt gets to Hell.
Agreed. But those occurences happened over thousands of years, if I remember correctly. These egomaniacal scientists think they've got it all figured out, as if we're all gonna die in the next few decades. What a bunch of bozos. If I were them, I'd be more concerned about civilization (Western that is) being wiped out by whacked out muslims rather than Mother Nature.
You got that right, pardner.
You got that right, pardner.
Maybe the biggest problem the Impeached One and his fellow Demofear-mongers face is, well, with snow on the ground
here and temps below freezing, most of us above Mason-Dixon line respond: "Global warming? F*** yeah, bring it on!
"It's the only thing that I believe has the power to fundamentally end the march of civilization as we know it, and make a lot of the other efforts that we're making irrelevant and impossible," Clinton was quoted as saying.The LSM did not include the full quote. He also said, "Oh, wait! I can think of something else even worse; having The Hildabeaste elected President. And while I'm about it, there's absolutely no truth to the rumor that I want Annan's job."
Precisely. Mother Nature ("Mom") loves us and wants us to be happy, healthy and prosperous. If we trash our 'room' (Earth) we just have to live with the mess.
Radical Islam, however. . .
Chicken Jefferson Blythe Little Alert!
It's a damn good thing that this all depends upon your definition of "is," huh?
That's the way I feel about Leftism.
Why doesn't GWB cancel the Order?
Come on, John...you were far too easy on this cretin.
To think that he was once President of the United States almost defies belief.
Of almost equal shame is the fact that the Bush family will have anything to do with Clinton. That one really tears me a new one!
That's right up there with jimmie carter giving up OUR Panama Canal to the commie chinese. Must be where the most corrupt president in our history got his ideas.
Ain't democraps great!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.