Back to the good old days US energy and climate plans would drag us back to 1905 or 1862 by Paul Driessen
Today, President Obama wants to prevent runaway global warming, by slashing US carbon dioxide emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. According to Oak Ridge National Laboratory data, this reduction would return the United States to emission levels last seen in those halcyon days of 1905!
But Americas 1905 population was 84 million, versus 308 million today. We didnt drive or fly, or generate electricity for offices, factories, schools and hospitals. To account for those factors, wed have to send CO2 emissions back to 1862 levels.
The Civil War was raging. The industrial revolution was in its infancy. Malaria, typhus and cholera killed thousands every year. Life expectancy was 40 half of what abundant, affordable energy have helped make it today.
No matter. The 648-page Waxman-Markey climate bill would compel an 80% CO2 reduction, by imposing punitive cap-and-tax restrictions on virtually every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
Thats making some legislators nervous, as they ponder the health, economic and employment effects of restricting energy supplies and driving up the cost of everything we eat, drink, make and do especially in 20 states that get 60-98% of their electricity from coal.
So to prod Congress into action, or achieve the 80% target via regulatory edict, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency has decreed that plant-enhancing, life-sustaining carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare.
The authoritarian actions it is contemplating would regulate cars, trains, boats and planes; pave the way for regulating farms and factories, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, malls and lawn mowers; and send energy prices skyrocketing.
Thousands of climate experts say there is no crisis, computer model scenarios and predictions are meaningless, and CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 48% of American voters now believe climate change is caused by natural forces; only 34% now think its due to humans.
Climate realists also recognize that, even if America eliminated all of its greenhouse gas emissions, soaring Chinese and Indian carbon dioxide emissions would promptly offset our draconian cuts.
This alarms climate alarmists. They fear its now or never to wrest control over energy and the economic, manufacturing and transportation activities it fuels. Now or never to profit from cap-and-tax laws and renewable energy mandates.
Corporate groups like the Carbon Offset Providers Coalition are banking on passage of Waxman-Markey. They want a rigorous and efficient CO2 scheme, to foster high carbon prices, maximum subsidies and strong profits.
President Obama says cap-and-trade will raise $656 billion over the next decade. The National Economic Council and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. The wealth will be extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family.
The intrusive energy rules and taxes will clobber households, manufacturers, farmers, truckers and airlines. The poorest families will get energy welfare, to offset part of their $500-3,000 increase in annual heating, cooling, transportation and food expenses. Everyone else will have to trim health, vacation, charity, college and retirement budgets to pay the higher costs.
Every increase in energy prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more families forced into welfare, more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink. Exactly how will they eliminate 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050, and pay skyrocketing fuel bills?
Where will we site hundreds of thousands of towering onshore and offshore wind turbines to replace electricity we get from coal? Where will we get billions of tons of steel, concrete, copper and fiberglass to build and install the expensive, unreliable, subsidized monsters?
My grandmother used to say, The only good thing about the good old days is that theyre gone.
Few Americans will be enthralled by the prospect of returning to that era. Fewer will relish the hefty price tag and damage to their freedoms, budgets, jobs, living standards and environment.
The White House, EPA and Congress need a serious reality check.
_______________
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality and Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.
Nobody wants to reduce our energy consumption to 1905 (let alone 1862) levels. Nor is that mandated by Waxman-Markey or any other proposal. This article completely ignores alternative energy sources that don't use fossil carbon.
And by the way, this statement:
Thousands of climate experts say there is no crisis, computer model scenarios and predictions are meaningless, and CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change.
is a flat-out lie.
This message has been edited by jrooth on May 18, 2009 3:21 PM
A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting in a street cafe watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. Ten minutes later they reappeared together with a third person.
- They have multiplied, said the biologist.
- Oh no, an error in measurement, the physicist sighed.
- If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again, the mathematician concluded.
and the deniers would consider each as an example of why they are comfortable taking good money to say do nothing.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
It wouldn`t surprise me if Exxon is joining others in pushing for oil & gas development at home, but for now they`re no longer funding climate denial shops - and like Jim Hansen actually calling for carbon taxes!
So where is their money going? How about the Stanford University-centered Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP), the world`s largest privately-funded effort to conduct basic research on energy technologies to reduce GHG emissions, which they are funding over 10 years to the tune of $100 million?
Exxon is now a climate change story that the right no longer wants to hear, and is one of the reasons I`ve been banned from the MasterResource blog.
Comment by TokyoTom 11 May 2009 @ 9:21 PM
edited to also add another long discussion from the thread.
James said: the implicit assumption that the only use for a forest is as a source of lumber. If instead one sees it first as an ecosystem that provides many other benefits (besides existing for its own self), and incidentally allows occasional timber harvesting, one reaches different conclusions as to utility.
Rene said: And a market takes these into account. Those who own a forest are not compelled to harvest it against their wishes.
Consider the case of old-growth forest in Northern California and Oregon, which was bought up by various Wall Street junk bond dealers in the 1980s. From the perspective of a Wall Street trader, unharvested old growth forest is a stranded asset - a full size redwood can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars, but only if cut down and processed into lumber. When faced with large losses in their other deals, those junk bond dealers demanded that the forests be cut down as fast as possible so that they could pay off their debts. This led to years of protests and conflict over the issue.
The increased logging clogged many salmon streams, in many cases permanently degrading them. This has been a large factor in the collapse of West Coast salmon fisheries (along with increasing diversions of water to agriculture and rising river water temps).
Now, if the salmon fishermen owned the redwood forests that surrounded all the salmon streams, they might have had a very different take on what the best thing to do was - a very different view from Wall Street bond traders. Which one is right?
Wall Street will take a short-term profit on the deal and destroy long-term economic health, while the salmon fishermen would likely do the opposite - until Wall Street offered them a few million for the trees, and a few of them would take the money and head for Malibu - so local ownership is not really a solution.
Thats why you need government regulations and laws, Rene. Without that, civilization reverts to tribalism, rule-by-warlords and the like. I would bet that on Easter Island, tribalism and inter-clan conflicte preceded the total destruction of the tree stock.
However, we cant simply say that this is greedy capitalism in action - because what would we then say about the Aral Sea disaster - greedy communism?
The Aral Sea in Kazakhstan was once one of the largest inland seas - think Mono Lake, only much larger. After the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union agricultural planners, it shrank rapidly, destroying the local fishing communities. From the Soviet Central Committee perspective, it was a good deal - they were getting more grain out of their colony in Kazakhstan, so their economic picture was rosy - the local ecosystem and the local economy were not a concern. As a result, the sea shrank into sections and the salinity rose so high that most of the fish died, thereby wiping out the local communities (and also creating huge toxic dust storms).
If you know about Mono Lake and the Owens Valley, you can see that something similar happened there, with the Los Angeles Water Department being the political force behind water diversions. Unlike in the Soviet Union, political action by citizens opposed to the plan halted it, and Mono Lake was largely restored. The Owens Valley dust storms are still a problem, but one that is being reduced. Ownership was not the issue - responsiveness of government to citizen concerns was the issue, i.e. the democratic process.
Has the democratic process failed with respect to the U.S. energy supply? James Hansen says so, and he has a point. 75% of the public supports rapid development of renewable energy and action on climate and pollution issues - but the fossil fuel industry seems to control well over 50% of both House and Senate votes on energy issues.
In the larger picture, what we can see here is that neoclassical and Marxist economic theories both revolve around the notion of ownership as the central issue.
Adam Smith, on the other hand, first stated the ecological and physical limitations (climate, soil, land area, natural abundance) and then went on to discuss how human economic activity could act to improve the quality of life for all citizens of a nation.
From that, it is pretty clear that economics is a rare field of study - one that has actually regressed over the years, rather than progressed and did you know that J.D. Rockefeller played large roles in the establishment of the UChicago school of economics, and in the establishment of the Nobel Prize in economics? Or that Stalin relied heavily on Marxist economic ideology to justify his grip on power? The comment element? Greed - the basic inability to override the food/hunger stimulus/response pathway when ones needs have been met. Some people eat a full meal, see more food, and feel hungry, and eat more - and then they get sick. Its a bit pathological.
In the old days, the kind of authoritarian power that could support greedy habits was often justified by religious arguments and supported by the clergy, who benefited thereby - the prince bishops of Old England were the ones who started the coal monopoly, before the Queen took over with assistance from Newcastle.
In the modern secular world, the religious justification for rule and ownership comes not from the clergy, but from the Marxist and neoclassical economic theorists, who are given lucrative public perches from which to proclaim their true creeds to a compliant and unquestioning press corps - and yes, Marxist theories (not labeled as such) are often trotted out - to justify the natural monopoly of coal-fired electric utilities, for example.
Comment by Ike Solem 12 May 2009 @ 11:45 AM
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
This message has been edited by j2saret on May 18, 2009 6:34 PM
This week Congress is set to release the details of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, a bill that purports to combat global warming by setting strict limits on carbon emissions. I'm not a candidate for any office -- now or ever again -- and I've approached the "climate change" debate with an open-mind. But it's clear to me that the nation, and in particular Indiana, my home state, will be terribly disserved by this cap-and-trade policy on the verge of passage in the House.
The largest scientific and economic questions are being addressed by others, so I will confine myself to reporting about how all this looks from the receiving end of the taxes, restrictions and mandates Congress is now proposing.
Quite simply, it looks like imperialism. This bill would impose enormous taxes and restrictions on free commerce by wealthy but faltering powers -- California, Massachusetts and New York -- seeking to exploit politically weaker colonies in order to prop up their own decaying economies. Because proceeds from their new taxes, levied mostly on us, will be spent on their social programs while negatively impacting our economy, we Hoosiers decline to submit meekly.
The Waxman-Markey legislation would more than double electricity bills in Indiana. Years of reform in taxation, regulation and infrastructure-building would be largely erased at a stroke. In recent years, Indiana has led the nation in capturing international investment, repatriating dollars spent on foreign goods or oil and employing Americans with them. Waxman-Markey seems designed to reverse that flow. "Closed: Gone to China" signs would cover Indiana's stores and factories.
Our state's share of national income has been slipping for decades, but it is offset in part by living costs some 8% lower than the national average. Doubled utility bills for low-income Hoosiers would be an especially cruel consequence of the Waxman bill. Forgive us for not being impressed at danglings of welfare-like repayments to some of those still employed, with some fraction of the dollars extracted from our state.
And for what? No honest estimate pretends to suggest that a U.S. cap-and-trade regime will move the world's thermometer by so much as a tenth of a degree a half century from now. My fellow citizens are being ordered to accept impoverishment for a policy that won't save a single polar bear.
We are told that although China, India and others show no signs of joining in this dismal process, we will eventually induce their participation by "setting an example." Watching the impending indigence of the Midwest, and the flow of jobs from our shores to theirs, our friends in Asia and the Third World are far more likely to choose any other path but ours.
Politicians in Washington speak of a reawakened appreciation for manufacturing and American competitiveness. But under their policy, those who make real products will suffer. Already we observe the piranha swarm of green lobbyists wangling special exemptions, subsidies and side deals. The ordinary Hoosier was not invited to this party, and can expect at most only table scraps at the service entrance.
No one in Indiana is arguing for the status quo: Hoosiers have been eager to pursue a new energy future. We rocketed from nowhere to national leadership in biofuels production in the last four years. We were the No. 1 state in the growth of wind power in 2008. And we have embarked on an aggressive energy-conservation program, indubitably the most cost-effective means of limiting CO2.
Most importantly, we are out to be the world leader in making clean coal -- including the potential for carbon capture and sequestration. The world's first commercial-scale clean coal power plant is under construction in our state, and the first modern coal-to-natural gas plant is coming right behind it. We eagerly accept the responsibility to develop alternatives to the punitive, inequitable taxation of cap and trade.
Our president has commendably committed himself to "government that works." But his imperial climate-change policy is government that cannot work, and we humble colonials out here in the provinces have no choice but to petition for relief from the Crown's impositions.
aw but the blind fly in his ointment is this: No one action does much to halt the looming disaster, but the lack of action assures it. The place to lead is from in front. The motto of the Infantry, at least when I was in, was "follow me" The perceived disadvantage assumes that no one else makes any effort, and this is patently false. Just another excuse by the smug and comfortable to be selfish and refuse to budge. In the long run they will regret their inaction. Unfortunately a lot of other people will also have too.
edited to add from the actual intelligent, informed guys' blog:
Often it is the words we use that limit understanding of a problem. We use ownership as if it were clearly defined and applicable to the atmosphere. Economic modeling must stumble if ownership is misused or misunderstood.
Property is defined as the right to exclude others from use. So we can own airspace above the ground we own, and property rights in that airspace are enforceable by legal action for example, to prevent adjacent property owners from building into it. But we dont own the atmosphere that passes through that airspace, and we cant exclude airplanes from flying above us. So a coal plant does not own any atmosphere at all, and it has no legally enforceable right to pollute unless Waxman-Markey passes. Cap-and-trade is an attempt to create property rights in the atmosphere, and thereby to moot the jusrisdiction of the EPA to enforce the Clean Air Act to prevent pollution by CO2 emissions.
Nuisance is another legal term, which should be more applicable than property or ownership to the climate change problem. When you create a condition on your property which interferes with the enjoyment of other property owners, there is a remedy at law to interfere with your ownership to abate the nuisance.
Another legal concept to bear in mind is the trust. A trust imposes an obligation on a fiduciary, known as the trustee, to manage the trust property for the benefit of some other, called a beneficiary. When the fiduciary diverts the benefit to himself, that is called embezzlement, or breach of fiduciary duty.
You can see how this applies to corporate governance, CEO compensation, and to the management of the atmosphere. Free enterprise as an excuse for self-enrichment by fiduciaries has never been tolerated.
A free market in pollution allowances should not be tolerated either. The beneficiaries are the public who will be affected by CO2 emissions. The polluters are the trustees both with respect to their shareholders and to the public which permits the creation of the corporate fiction.
So heres an idea for discussion: strictly enforced fees for CO2 emissions, with no grandfathering, no indulgences, no offsets for tree planting, etc. just a straight fine for each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. But isntead of paying that fine in money, pay it in stock of the emitter. The public, i.e. the beneficiaries of the atmosphere trust, thereby gradually takes control of the trustee, i.e. the emitter, unless the emitter can come up with a solution to CO2 emissions.
-----there you go an alternative to cap and trade, would that be better?--
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
This message has been edited by j2saret on May 18, 2009 7:55 PM
So heres an idea for discussion: strictly enforced fees for CO2 emissions, with no grandfathering, no indulgences, no offsets for tree planting, etc. just a straight fine for each ton of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. But isntead of paying that fine in money, pay it in stock of the emitter. The public, i.e. the beneficiaries of the atmosphere trust, thereby gradually takes control of the trustee, i.e. the emitter, unless the emitter can come up with a solution to CO2 emissions.
Umm...General, every single breathing human, and mammal on the planet is a CO2 emitter. I wonder what the collective gross tonnage of their daily output is? How are we going to tax this particular criminal element?
Umm...General, every single breathing human, and mammal on the planet is a CO2 emitter. I wonder what the collective gross tonnage of their daily output is? How are we going to tax this particular criminal element?
Interesting point gus, how long does it take you or I to emit a ton of carbon?
You're the eco-whiz kid, you tell me. I would expect that number, multiplied by the world population, then added to by every warm-blooded vertibrate on the planet, would add up to an impressive amount in a short amount of time.
You're the eco-whiz kid, you tell me. I would expect that number, multiplied by the world population, then added to by every warm-blooded vertibrate on the planet, would add up to an impressive amount in a short amount of time.
I don't know what the number is, Gus, nor do I care to waste the effort to calculate it because you see the source of that carbon that we and every other living animal exhale is plants and they get their carbon from the atmosphere. It's part of the carbon cycle, which you may vaguely remember having learned about in high school biology (if you were awake during that class.) So the carbon dioxide we exhale adds nothing to the total CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is a completely different situation from digging up carbon which has been sequestered underground and pumping that into the atmosphere, which adds carbon to the total in the carbon cycle.
Edit: One can consider fossil carbon to be a long-term part of the carbon cycle too, but the point is that we're upsetting the short-term balance by diging it up and burning it.
This message has been edited by jrooth on May 18, 2009 9:22 PM
Nope gus, here you are the idiot still in denial. As for the c02 question, unless you can show that the tax on a tonne of carbon will add a serious cost to individuals, then just stay out of the discussion, you have nothing germaine to add. Sure I could look it up, but its your contention that the tax will be budensome to individuals so prove it ya dead weight asshole.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
I don't know what the number is, Gus, nor do I care to waste the effort to calculate it because you see the source of that carbon that we and every other living animal exhale is plants and they get their carbon from the atmosphere. It's part of the carbon cycle, which you may vaguely remember having learned about in high school biology (if you were awake during that class.) So the carbon dioxide we exhale adds nothing to the total CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is a completely different situation from digging up carbon which has been sequestered underground and pumping that into the atmosphere, which adds carbon to the total in the carbon cycle.
I see, so fluctuations in either population numbers, or total plant area over however many years has *zero* bearing on this cycle? It just somehow magically resets itself to compensate, and maintain it's balance? And all that sequestered underground carbon, wasn't it part of this cycle at one time?
Nope gus, here you are the idiot still in denial. As for the c02 question, unless you can show that the tax on a tonne of carbon will add a serious cost to individuals, then just stay out of the discussion, you have nothing germaine to add. Sure I could look it up, but its your contention that the tax will be budensome to individuals so prove it ya dead weight asshole.
LOL... Taxes and firing squads, that's your two-part solution to all the world's problems, general. Your world again... *chortle*
I see, so fluctuations in either population numbers, or total plant area over however many years has zero bearing on this cycle? It just somehow magically resets itself to compensate, and maintain it's balance?
Yeah ... apparently you did sleep through that class.
The answer is yes, Gus. And if you would bother to think just a tiny bit you'd understand why.
And all that sequestered underground carbon, wasn't it part of this cycle at one time?
Yes it was. And back then, the surface temperature of the Earth was about 15 degrees Celsius higher, Antarctica was a tropical Continent populated with dinosaurs, there was no permanent ice anywhere, and the sea level was about 100 meters higher than it is today. Oh and what is now the American Midwest was a shallow sea.
Actually I posted a second proposal besides cap and trade which was being disputed as not good for existing industries (well duh, existing industries are not good for the climate so big whoop) I prefer cap and trade because it puts a market cost on using fossil carbon and thus spurs innovation.
However another proposal was at hand. I posted it and you had a problem with it, the problem being that you, just off the top of your head, posting out of ignorance thought it would burden individuals for exhaling. I asked for data, you refused. I guess we all can see you for what your are: ignorant and kneejerk, afraid to learn.
Not a pretty picture gus. It would kill your mother to see you end up this way.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
I see, so fluctuations in either population numbers, or total plant area over however many years has zero bearing on this cycle? It just somehow magically resets itself to compensate, and maintain it's balance?
Yeah ... apparently you did sleep through that class.
The answer is yes, Gus. And if you would bother to think just a tiny bit you'd understand why.
Oh I understand why allright, which is somewhat of an embarassment to the "ka-whump" theory of "a world choked into crisis by man-made carbon emmisions". It's called having one's cake, and eating it too.
And all that sequestered underground carbon, wasn't it part of this cycle at one time?
Yes it was. And back then, the surface temperature of the Earth was about 15 degrees Celsius higher, Antarctica was a tropical Continent populated with dinosaurs, there was no permanent ice anywhere, and the sea level was about 100 meters higher than it is today. Oh and what is now the American Midwest was a shallow sea.
More "ka-whump" theory? Never mind that it took a few billion years, in which nothing on the planet was any more static than it is now? Or that the process is on-going as we speak, so to speak? That's very common with the thinking of the Left. Everything on the planet dances to the tune *they* call, instead of the reality of the other way around. People, politics, economies, human behavior, atmospheres, plants, animals(wolves), etc. The examples are everywhere, and it's fascinating, if nothing else.
"President Barack Obama's push for a climate-change law this year has set off a lobbying boom on Capitol Hill, where companies are registering to weigh in at a rate of about one every business day
." So far this year, 82 firms, trade groups, and companies have signed up to lobby on climate change, which is four times as many as are registered to lobby on the Employee Free Choice Act.
A growing number of coal users, like Alcoa Inc, "one of the world's biggest aluminum smelters," have come to acknowledge that "with the right tweaks," President Obama's plan to address climate change "would not only help the environment but boost their profits." Climate legislation "will assist in restoring growth and provide the means for America to be the global leader in low-carbon technology
http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/er.aspx?s=785&lid=21456&elq=CC51E7BCE30F47B18A527FA70DC49EBF
," Alcoa's global issues director said last month.
edited to add: or we could conceede the lead to Austrialia. Business would not care. They'd rather some one else paid the price and then locate over there.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia plans to build the world's largest solar power station with an output of 1000 megawatts in a A$1.4 billion (US$1.05 billion) investment, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Sunday.
The plant would have three times the generating capacity of the current biggest solar-powered electricity plant, which is in California, Rudd said during a tour of a power station.
Tender details will be announced later in the year, and successful bidders will be named in the first half of 2010. Rudd said the project was aimed at exploiting the country's ample sunshine, which he called "Australia's biggest natural resource."
It was also aimed at helping the country become a leader in renewable, clean energy, he said.
"The government plans to invest with industry in the biggest solar generation plant in the world, three times the size of the world's current biggest, which is in California," Rudd said.
"Why are we doing this? We are doing it in order to support a clean energy future for Australia, we're doing it to boost economic activity now and we're doing it also to provide jobs and much needed opportunities for business as well."
The project should eventually lead to a network of solar-powered stations across the country, Rudd said, with locations chosen to fit in with the existing electricity grid and ensure good access to sunshine.
"We don't want to be clean energy followers worldwide, we want to be clean energy leaders worldwide." Rudd said.
The A$1.4 billion dedicated to this project was part of a wider A$4.65 clean energy initiative by the government, he said.
Rudd also said Australia would become a full member of the International Renewable Energy Agency, which will have its first global meeting in June.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan
I believe that every right implies a responsibility, every opportunity an obligation; every possession, a duty. - John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
This message has been edited by j2saret on May 18, 2009 10:38 PM
You'll have to explain what the "ka-whump" theory is - I have no idea. The rest of your answer is pretty incoherent too.
I suppose a scientific term might be selective sampling, or selective modeling. And it's kind of ironic. The buried carbon, for example. Billions of years in the making, involving such complexity that we can never know the extent of the process, and you dismiss it with a "ka-whump", involving dinosaurs, and midwest oceans. You see, is all so very complex for the layman, *until* the shoe winds up on the other foot. Hence the irony. That's what I mean by the Left's mentality of just assuming the universe dances to the tune *they* call.
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