Quote from: StormBringer;224502Are you willing to bet your children's lives on that?  How about their children's lives?  Is that Big Mac in the SUV more important than gambling on it not harming anything?

You may be perfectly satisfied with the wager you placed with your bookie, Pascal, but your actions still affect everyone around you, and not just your family.  All that consumption eventually ends up somewhere.  Landfill, toxic dump, runoff into streams and aquifers, soot in the air, it eventually goes everywhere.

So, when you move your family next to the landfill, across the street from the nuclear waste storage facility, behind the coal plant, on land that is rich in hexavalent chromium, you can shout all day about how great things are.  But as long as you live in a neighborhood as far as possible from those things, you can shut the fuck up about how harmless pollution is.

Or, I'm sorry, is this the eminent Dr Skach?  Climatologist and noted ecological studies pioneer?  No?  Then you can, again, shut the fuck up about both of those topics.

You want to poison yourself and your family?  Fine, I won't stop you.  But it pisses me off that people like you are so fucking oblivious that you would rather have a dozen kids get lung cancer from coal soot than pursue any green initiatives that would require some sacrifice, no matter how small.

Tragedy of the commons, indeed.

And before you trot out whatever nonsense you have primed for this kind of discussion, I am going to respond to everything with various citations and links from Real Climate.org.

That's some great stuff, Dr. Stormbringer; great stuff.

I particularly like how you assume I'm some rich fat cat consumer - I mean, I must be to disagree with you!

Really, thanks, man. I needed the humor.

Quote from: jgants;224427* Engineer reports talking about our bridges, dams, roads, levees, and power infrastructure systems say they are getting very near the breaking point, will cost billions to repair/replace (which will take years), and we haven't even started.

I suppose I'm just imagining the bridge reconstructions and new bridges all over my state, then?  They're going bridge by bridge, closing a lane or two, rebuilding the decking, and then moving over and doing the other lanes.  They even have a nifty temporary bridge that looks like part of an Erector set in one place so they can keep more lanes open.

Quote from: jgants;224427* Our military capabilities are nearly exhausted.  We don't have the troops to maintain the levels they want in Iraq now.  Afghanistan is a disaster zone we've been ignoring.  And we are heading towards possible military issues with Iran, if Israel doesn't attack them first.

If you haven't noticed (i.e., haven't gotten to page A22 of the New York Times where they bury the good news about Iraq), they are already reducing the number of troops in Iraq.  I've been hearing rumors about how horrible things have been going in Afghanistan for a while now yet things don't seem to be changing all that much.  As for Iran, war with Iran is pretty inevitable and the possibility of an Obama victory is more likely to push Israel to act before the end of the year than to keep the peace.

Quote from: jgants;224427* We are spending billions developing things like the F-22 so we can take on the massive air forces of....

...anyone we need to attack.  The idea is for it not to be a fair fight.  But it's not simply air forces but anti-aircraft missiles and artillery.  That's why the F-117 was used as a bomber.

But of course you miss the other purpose of the F-22 which is to spend money on the high-tech domestic aircraft industry.  It's why they carefully spread the subcontracts across a broad swatch of congressional districts.

Quote from: jgants;224427* We have one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world.  We rank below Costa Rica and just slightly above Cuba (who would rank above us if not for our pointless embargo).

I question any ranking system that puts the US below Cuba and Costa Rica.  Seriously.  Try this article for a more grounded perspective:

   There were no over-the-counter remedies to be had. I asked the guide what Cubans did if they had a cold. The guide said that a Cuban would go to the doctor — a visit free of charge — who would write a prescription for aspirin. However, there would be no way to fill the prescription.

We visited a pharmacy later in the trip. Behind the counter five well-dressed Cuban women waited to serve, but the shelves were empty. The only items in sight were the monthly ration of sanitary napkins, 10 permitted per Cuban woman per month.

Or how about video smuggled out of Cuba that wasn't carefully prepared for the American media or filmmakers here and here or here (follow the other links on YouTube, too)?

Quote from: jgants;224427* Nearly every reputable scientist in the world is screaming about the dangers of the environment and impending catastrophe, while Dick Cheney twirls his mustache and plots to silence them.

Plenty of reputable scientists aren't screaming about the impending catastrophe and if their science is so reputable, why are they trying to silence the skeptics and why is their research so opaque?  Spend some time reading what both sides of this debate are saying (yes, there are two sides).

Quote from: jgants;224427* Billions of dollars in damages to the US economy from increasing floods and storms (likely the result of global warming).

It's currently in vogue to blame everything on global warming.  Warm winter?  Global warming.  Cold winter?  Global warming.  Floods?  Global warming.  Droughts?  Global warming.  During my Medieval History class, the professor talked about the seven years when the it rained in Europe throughout the summer and the crops rotted in the fields.  

This page does a pretty good job of summarizing the problem and goes into issues that were discussed in the very first meeting of the climatology class I took in college.

   Most folks view the world through egocentric eyes; they act as if their own personal experience is representative of the entire planet's experience for all time. For many, if they personally have not experienced something before, it must be an unusual and abnormal experience. This is so silly and superficial, it almost does not deserve mention here, except that many folks share this kind of implicit assumption about their experience. Whenever the weather exceeds someone's range of experience (and folks tend to have short memories, so their perception of their experience is often limited to the last few years), then it is loudly proclaimed as something "abnormal" or unusual, often tinged with dire forebodings about the future.

Quote from: jgants;224427* The housing market continues to deteriorate, and financial experts predict a very long and difficult time ahead.

It depends on which financial experts you listen to.  Watching financial shows hilarious sometimes because it's fun watching the experts make fun of each other and disagree completely about almost everything.  The housing market is still reasonably healthy near me and many of the people who are in trouble are people who got in over their head.  But this is hardly the first time the housing market has slumped and people thought it was the end of the world.  In the early 1990s, people were stuck with houses worth less than their mortgages.  And I worked with a guy who was in banking in the 1970s and they had a slump then, too.  

Quote from: jgants;224427* The dollar continues to plummet in value in the international market.

The dollar slumping isn't an entirely negative thing.  That's how trade deficits are supposed to correct themselves,  A big part of the problem is that the Chinese are not letting their currency float.

Quote from: jgants;224427* The price of oil continues to skyrocket.  And the US is very, very dependent on oil.

And which candidate wants to do more domestic drilling and promote nuclear power, which is used to generate less electricity in the United States than in many other Western nations?

Quote from: jgants;224427* An education system that continues to decrease in quality, with increasing cutbacks due to state and local budget shortfalls.

Education is largely a local issue.  Bush attempted to address the problem with No Child Left Behind and nobody seems very happy about it.  Seriously, what is the Federal government supposed to do about education other than throwing money blindly at the problem?

Quote from: jgants;224427* Decreasing of manufacturing, increasing in outsourcing and trade deficits.

A couple of points above, you complain about the weak dollar.  The weak dollar is how you make domestic American production and exports from America more attractive than foreign sources.  It makes outsourcing more expensive, too.

Oh, and how exactly are things like Kyoto and carbon controls supposed to help manufacturing?  Do you really think doubling the CAFE standards (as Obama is apparently talking about) is going to help the US auto industry that excels at big cars and trucks?

ADDED: You also complain about the F-22.  Where exactly do you think that's manufactured?

Quote from: jgants;224427* A ballooning national debt, with increasing debts to foreign lenders.

And the government taking over healthcare, education, and the climate is supposed to make that better?  Have you looked at how much spending Obama has proposed?  Do you seriously think he'll be able to raise taxes to make up for it?

Quote from: jgants;224427* High levels of joblessness.

Compared to what and when?  And how exactly are things that Democrats favor like an increase in the minimum wage, unionization, and employer mandates going to help improve unemployment?

Quote from: jgants;224427If anyone can look at all that and still think we're doing just fine and should stay the course - well, I don't know what else to say.  That person sees a completely different world than the one I see.

Again, I don't think you are Learning from History or the history you know is very short (like, stopping in the 1980s).  Have you taken a look at what the economy was like in the Carter years?  During the Great Depression?  

When I was younger, I used to wonder why my older relatives weren't alarmed by things like the threat of nuclear war and climate change and so on and they'd give me a look that said, "Oh you are so naive," and would tell me that they heard it all before many times having lived through a Depression and World War and so on.  And in retrospect not that I'm older, I understand why.  The sky is always falling.  The world is always ending.  And everything becomes a crisis in the hope that people will do something about it.  You say that we should learn from history yet your alarmism suggests very little historical perspective.

Quote from: Edsan;224443I checked your blog and liked it, Werekoala. It's been added to my bookmarked links.

Many thanks!

Quote from: StormBringer;224502Are you willing to bet your children's lives on that?  How about their children's lives?

Yes.  I have two.  How many do you have?

Quote from: StormBringer;224502Is that Big Mac in the SUV more important than gambling on it not harming anything?

Is the fear that it might harm something worth destroying the economy over?  And you do understand what an "interglacial period" is, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224502You may be perfectly satisfied with the wager you placed with your bookie, Pascal, but your actions still affect everyone around you, and not just your family.  All that consumption eventually ends up somewhere.  Landfill, toxic dump, runoff into streams and aquifers, soot in the air, it eventually goes everywhere.

One of the biggest detriments to the modern environmentalist movement is it's inability to distinguish degrees and types of harm.  I'm sorry but breathing carbon dioxide is not the equivalent of dumping mercury into a landfill.  And let's not forget the use of very real toxins being promoted in the name of environmentalism, whether it's the use of MBTE in gasoline or the mercury in compact florescent bulbs and the unusual metals used in rechargeable batteries.  

Quote from: StormBringer;224502So, when you move your family next to the landfill, across the street from the nuclear waste storage facility, behind the coal plant, on land that is rich in hexavalent chromium, you can shout all day about how great things are.

So to ensure that nobody has to live next to a power plant, a factory, or a waste dump, we should all abandon modern civilization and return to lives as nomadic hunter-gatherers, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224502But as long as you live in a neighborhood as far as possible from those things, you can shut the fuck up about how harmless pollution is.

...says the person using a computer for useless recreational purposes.  I suppose you use a special computer that doesn't use electricity, doesn't contain any toxic parts, wasn't built in a factory, and will never wind up in a garbage dump, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224502Or, I'm sorry, is this the eminent Dr Skach?  Climatologist and noted ecological studies pioneer?  No?  Then you can, again, shut the fuck up about both of those topics.

Appeal to authority.  How cute.  And your credentials to assess the reliability and accuracy of climatological claims are, exactly?  By the way, I did take a college level climatology class before global warming became a cause célèbre and took Medieval history before climatologists decided to ignore history and claim that the Medieval Warm Period didn't exist.  It's one of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of global warming claims.  The advocates of global warming say some really obviously stupid things about climate.

Quote from: StormBringer;224502You want to poison yourself and your family?

No.  I also don't want to repeal five millennia of human progress because you can't bear the idea of anyone living near a garbage dump.

Quote from: StormBringer;224502Fine, I won't stop you.  But it pisses me off that people like you are so fucking oblivious that you would rather have a dozen kids get lung cancer from coal soot than pursue any green initiatives that would require some sacrifice, no matter how small.

How many kids get lung cancer from coal soot each year in the United States?  Sources?

Quote from: StormBringer;224502Tragedy of the commons, indeed.

Yes, I'm well aware of it.  It's why government is not the right place to look for solutions unless you are falling for the allure of totalitarianism where, of course, you don't have to get the consent of the people who are being governed to get your way.

Quote from: StormBringer;224502And before you trot out whatever nonsense you have primed for this kind of discussion, I am going to respond to everything with various citations and links from Real Climate.org.

Yeah, like that's a non-biased source.  :rolleyes:

Does that mean I get to respond to your citations and links with refutations from ClimateAudit.org.  Yes, I'm sure you have all sorts of nasty things to say about Steve McIntyre, spoon fed to you, no doubt, by the fine propagandists at RealClimate.org, but have you ever actually sat down and read the claims and counter claims made by both sides to assess them yourselves rather than just trusting everything that one side says?

Quote from: John Morrow;224519:emot-words:

I love you, man.

Quote from: StormBringer;224494Well, I guess we should start by implementing some capitalism.  I don't know how the corporate welfare queens are going to take to getting off their lazy asses and working, though.

I agree.

Actually, I'm with John Morrow on this one.  

jgants' doomsaying was overblown and silly, even if I stand on the same side on many political issues.  The U.S. economy is having troubles lately, but we've had much worse times in the past.  The Iraq war was stupid and a mistake, but it's not like it's going to wipe out the country or bankrupt it.  Global warming is a catch-word nowadays that is often used stupidly, and is often claimed to be much worse than what reputable scientists project.  Four more years of the H.W. Bush administration or the equivalent would suck, but it's not the end of the world.  

(Conversely, there are people who claim that there is no global warming at all, which is also stupid.  It is quite clear that we're in a warming period, and that greenhouse gases accelerate this.  The scientific question is exactly how and how much.)

Quote from: John Morrow;224519Yes.  I have two.  How many do you have?

Four.  Do I win?

QuoteIs the fear that it might harm something worth destroying the economy over?  And you do understand what an "interglacial period" is, right?

Classic.  Destroying the economy.  Because, of course, if we don't continue on the path to ruining the environment, the economy will utterly collapse.

I wonder...  Maybe, some of these newer green technologies might not just fall from the sky.  Perhaps, there is an outside chance that some of these technologies may need to be...  I dunno...  Manufactured?  Almost as though some new sectors would be created and need to have people employed in them.  

QuoteOne of the biggest detriments to the modern environmentalist movement is it's inability to distinguish degrees and types of harm.  I'm sorry but breathing carbon dioxide is not the equivalent of dumping mercury into a landfill.

Cite the article (peer reviewed, please) that makes that statement.

See, this is exactly what pisses me off.  Some random bullshit statement presented as though it is gospel truth.  I am sure it won't be too hard to show where An Inconvenient Truth has slides pointing out that any amount of carbon dioxide whatsoever is exactly equivalent to mercury groundwater poisoning.  I'll wait.  Go ahead and find that article.

Before you go, however, do you know why carbon dioxide may be considered a problem?  

QuoteAnd let's not forget the use of very real toxins being promoted in the name of environmentalism, whether it's the use of MBTE in gasoline or the mercury in compact florescent bulbs and the unusual metals used in rechargeable batteries.  

By all means, let's go back to adding lead to gasoline.  And the coating for incandescent bulbs is certainly harmless, too.

Unusual metals?  Lithium?  Nickel?  Hydrogen?   Oh, wait, that isn't even a metal, because you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.  With several thousand recharge cycles, these batteries won't even find their way to the landfill for decades, cutting back far more on waste than the small amounts of 'unusual metals' will present as a danger.

QuoteSo to ensure that nobody has to live next to a power plant, a factory, or a waste dump, we should all abandon modern civilization and return to lives as nomadic hunter-gatherers, right?

Yes, that is exactly the point of conservation.  We are all neo-luddites, and would throw our sabots into the modern machinery if given the chance.

Or, wait, perhaps you missed something in the middle there.  Like, cleaner power plants.  Less waste to dump.  Factories that don't pour poison into the air.  Perhaps, we can actually keep a modern life-style, but in a more sensible and less harmful manner.

Yes, I think that might just be the goal.  Unless you are a raving anti-environmentalist that is too fucking lazy to change a few things.  In that case, the total destruction of modern life is the goal in not spewing carcinogenic poison over playgrounds so the CEO can pocket a few extra dollars.

Quote...says the person using a computer for useless recreational purposes.  I suppose you use a special computer that doesn't use electricity, doesn't contain any toxic parts, wasn't built in a factory, and will never wind up in a garbage dump, right?

Oh noes!  I use technology!  I have no basis for my argument!

I think I addressed your retarded anti-technology stupidity above.  In case you missed it, your argument is the fucktardism without peer.

To re-cap:  The processes are being improved every day.  They are getting cleaner and less wasteful.  No thanks to your ilk, mind you.

in fact, if these things are so harmless now, can I see your timetable for moving next to the coal plant?  How about getting your water from the toxic creek instead of having the municipal government in your area clean it for you?  Pussy.  Live what you preach.

Except your point relies on the very fact you are trying to dispute.  Because if you didn't think those things were bad, you wouldn't be mentioning them as harmful to the environment to make that point.

QuoteAppeal to authority.  How cute.  And your credentials to assess the reliability and accuracy of climatological claims are, exactly?  By the way, I did take a college level climatology class before global warming became a cause célèbre and took Medieval history before climatologists decided to ignore history and claim that the Medieval Warm Period didn't exist.  It's one of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of global warming claims.  The advocates of global warming say some really obviously stupid things about climate.

Yes.  An appeal to authourity.  But in this case, it's not a fallacy, because I am not disputing the IPCC.  I am agreeing with the 2000 peer reviewed scientists.

But clearly, your single course in Medieval History trumps all of that.

Or, perhaps you should take that course again, and grab some statistics while you are there.  NOAA findings.

Surprisingly, your judgement of what climate scientists are accurate about in their field of study is worth fuck-all.  I don't ask my kids to fix the computer, I don't ask the dentist what is wrong with my car, and the last place I would reference regarding climate science is someone who took one course in college in Medieval history.

Anti-warming advocates hew a bit too closely to the anti-intellectual stance of far right wing conservatives for me.  No one scientist has a full view of all science.  That is why they specialize.  Take your Medieval History bullshit and go pound sand up your ass.

QuoteNo.  I also don't want to repeal five millennia of human progress because you can't bear the idea of anyone living near a garbage dump.

This was stupid, retarded bullshit the first two times you trotted it out, it is getting more and more rank as time goes by.

QuoteHow many kids get lung cancer from coal soot each year in the United States?  Sources?

Medicinenet

Quote from: MedicinenetAir pollution
 Air pollution from vehicles, industry, and power plants can raise the  likelihood of developing lung cancer in exposed individuals. Up to 1% of lung  cancer deaths are attributable to breathing polluted air, and experts believe  that prolonged exposure to highly polluted air can carry a risk similar to that  of passive smoking for the development of lung cancer.

Quote from: MedicinenetPassive smoking
 Passive smoking, or the inhalation of tobacco smoke from other smokers sharing  living or working quarters, is also an established risk factor for the  development of lung cancer. Research has shown that nonsmokers who reside with  a smoker have a 24% increase in risk for developing lung cancer when compared  with other nonsmokers. An estimated 3,000 lung cancer deaths occur each year in  the U.S. that are attributable to passive smoking.

You can find other data at the American Lung Association.  But you may not want to, they are authourities, after all, and you may not want to appeal to them.  Well, except when you think you can score some points.


At any rate, some quick math (I know that isn't your strong point, they didn't have much advanced math until the Renaissance) shows highly polluted areas carry a higher health risk overall.  Children more often suffer from other lung diseases (as though cancer was the only risk) like asthma, tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis.

QuoteYes, I'm well aware of it.  It's why government is not the right place to look for solutions unless you are falling for the allure of totalitarianism where, of course, you don't have to get the consent of the people who are being governed to get your way.

Yes, environmentalists are looking for a return to the monarchy.

Good Lord, your post is like a whirlwind tour of logical fallacies.

QuoteYeah, like that's a non-biased source.  :rolleyes:

Does that mean I get to respond to your citations and links with refutations from ClimateAudit.org.  Yes, I'm sure you have all sorts of nasty things to say about Steve McIntyre, spoon fed to you, no doubt, by the fine propagandists at RealClimate.org, but have you ever actually sat down and read the claims and counter claims made by both sides to assess them yourselves rather than just trusting everything that one side says?

Except the counterargument side has been assesed.  Repeatedly.  And rejected by peer review, often because the counter-arguments couldn't even get the basic math and research parts correct.  Much like your argument here, they tend to attempt throwing a bad light on other papers by pointing out 'inconsistencies' that were already acknowledged and explained in the original paper.  Issues that a shallow read of the paper by an untrained reader might be convinced to see as 'controversial' or 'inaccurate', and sometimes evidence of a 'cover-up'.  That is why the climate change articles are peer reviewed and accepted, and the cranks are laughed at.  Because they think a 20 year career in climate science is the same thing as a single class in Medieval History 20 years ago.

I was going to ask you to shut the fuck up again, but on reflection, keep spewing your stupidity.  It makes my argument far better than I can.

Here's your Climate Audit guy:

QuoteHe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto. He studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford.

McIntyre has worked in hard-rock mineral exploration for 30 years, much of that time as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies. He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada. He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. When Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc., McIntyre ceased being a director. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.

Prior to 2003 he was an officer or director of several small public mineral exploration companies.

Again, if you want climate science, you may want to refer to a climate scientist, not a Bachelor of Science mathematician who drills for oil.  That source is Wikipedia, by the way, which appears to be roughly the only source of information.

The entirety of his site appears concerned with debunking the 'hockey stick' graph, as though the whole of climate science turns on that one point.  Clearly, he has no idea how science works, and neither do his readers.

Quote from: jhkim;224649jgants' doomsaying was overblown and silly, even if I stand on the same side on many political issues.  The U.S. economy is having troubles lately, but we've had much worse times in the past.

Actually, we almost haven't.  NPR reported that the job loss at the beginning of June was the biggest loss for that month since the Great Depression.  Not seeing starving vagrants in your neighborhood is not a reason to dismiss concerns.

Quote from: jgants;224427If anyone can look at all that and still think we're doing just fine and should stay the course - well, I don't know what else to say.  That person sees a completely different world than the one I see.

I've got to ask. With everything you've listed as reasons why things are bad, then why don't you just commit suicide and get The End over with?

Quote from: StormBringer;224494I know!  Let's institute more capitalism!  That will fix everything!

Well, I guess we should start by implementing some capitalism.  I don't know how the corporate welfare queens are going to take to getting off their lazy asses and working, though.

Capitalism has made it possible for a middle class small businessman to send you a free copy of Mongoose Traveller. Should you accept it even though it was purchased with dirty money earned by a Happy Capitalist? The moral and ethical quandry of this surely endangers your very soul.

Quote from: jeff37923;224792Capitalism has made it possible for a middle class small businessman to send you a free copy of Mongoose Traveller. Should you accept it even though it was purchased with dirty money earned by a Happy Capitalist? The moral and ethical quandry of this surely endangers your very soul.

No, like I said at the end, I think we should start by enacting some capitalism.  I would be interested to see how it works in the real world.  As it stands, the only thing that keeps large businesses from being pure socialism is that CEOs don't (currently) hold positions in the government.

Which has an impact on smaller businesses as well, really, but I think the discussion of the scope is a little beyond the means of this forum.

At any rate, I was agreeing with Werekoala; let's see how big business does when they have to actually compete instead of rely on corporate welfare.  I have a feeling that after a bit of shakedown, things will start getting better all around.  I really am a proponent of capitalism, I am just not a proponent of calling what America has by that name.  To quote Tom Metzger:  "All systems are oligarchy.  There is no other", playing off the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

Maybe a shakeup due to competition will bring some of these companies down to a managable size that undermines oligarchy.  On the other hand, I am not saying Michels is entirely correct.  I don't have the research to say one way or the other.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Four.  Do I win?

Congratulations.  Seriously.  Just making sure you aren't one of those people asking me to think about the children who has none.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Classic.  Destroying the economy.  Because, of course, if we don't continue on the path to ruining the environment, the economy will utterly collapse.

If we were to implement the Kyoto Treaty, for example, it would cause severe damage to the economy (which is why so many countries that have signed on to it are failing to comply with it).  But the Kyoto Treaty really does very little to stop the climate change that those who support it believe is happening.  To get the sort of change in carbon emissions that the proponents of man-made global warming argue are necessary to stop global warming would ruin the economy or any nation that adopted such limits.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Cite the article (peer reviewed, please) that makes that statement.

Why should I have to?  To political debate over the environment doesn't take place in peer reviewed journals.  It takes place in in the political arena where the statements are far less scientific and far more alarmist.  And of course right after you ask me for a peer reviewed article, you talk about An Inconvenient Truth, a move that repeatedly takes worst case projections as predictions rather than more mainstream values to maximize the alarmism, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Before you go, however, do you know why carbon dioxide may be considered a problem?

Sure, and you also know why others are skeptical that it's a problem, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652By all means, let's go back to adding lead to gasoline.  And the coating for incandescent bulbs is certainly harmless, too.

That environmentalists have done good things does not change the fact that environmental regulation were also responsible for adding MBTE to gasoline.

As for the coating of incandescent bulbs, it's silica.  Since you seem to be skeptical that silica is harmless, perhaps you should stay away from beaches.  Do it for your children.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Unusual metals?  Lithium?  Nickel?  Hydrogen?

How about cadmium, lead, mercury, manganese, etc?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Oh, wait, that isn't even a metal, because you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

It's not entirely true that hydrogen isn't a metal but, then again, I wasn't talking about hydrogen.  But I'm sure you knew that.  I can tell from this reply that intellectual honestly is not one of your strong suits.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652With several thousand recharge cycles, these batteries won't even find their way to the landfill for decades, cutting back far more on waste than the small amounts of 'unusual metals' will present as a danger.

I've never seen a rechargeable battery used for decades.  Have you?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Or, wait, perhaps you missed something in the middle there.  Like, cleaner power plants.  Less waste to dump.  Factories that don't pour poison into the air.  Perhaps, we can actually keep a modern life-style, but in a more sensible and less harmful manner.

I love this.  You make an excluded middle argument and then complain that I'm missing something in the middle.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652I think I addressed your retarded anti-technology stupidity above.  In case you missed it, your argument is the fucktardism without peer.

And you would know what that's like, wouldn't you?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652To re-cap:  The processes are being improved every day.  They are getting cleaner and less wasteful.  No thanks to your ilk, mind you.

Capitalism and Western civilization are lazy and bad which is why the environment is cleaner and safer in Western capitalist nations than anyplace else on the planet where they aren't living in grass huts, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652in fact, if these things are so harmless now, can I see your timetable for moving next to the coal plant?  How about getting your water from the toxic creek instead of having the municipal government in your area clean it for you?  Pussy.  Live what you preach.

Uh, I live in New Jersey.  When was a kid, I swam in the Raritan Bay (right across from factories and refineries) and played in a landfill and I've lived in apartment complexes sandwiched between all sorts of industrial businesses and factories.  I've also had the pleasure of living less than a mile from a gas main explosion that shot flames 300 feet into the air and currently live down the block (a few hundred feet) from that same 36 inch gas pipeline, with an oil pipeline running behind the houses at the other end of my street.  Yet New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States so it must be doing something right.

But remember the bit where I talked about an "inability to distinguish degrees and types of harm"?  Yeah, you are doing that here.  Just because I don't want a factory dumping mercury into a creek doesn't mean that I have to sign on to the most radical environmental agenda possible.  Yes, let's scare people with toxic waste as if that's all the environmental movement ever worries about.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Except your point relies on the very fact you are trying to dispute.  Because if you didn't think those things were bad, you wouldn't be mentioning them as harmful to the environment to make that point.

You keep confusing you straw man for my position.  I think some environmental regulations are quite sensible and totally support them.  I think that other environmental regulations are absurd and unwarranted.  The latter consists largely of carbon dioxide regulations and useless treaties like Kyoto, zero-tolerance regulations (where a huge cost is paid for a minor benefit to remove the final fraction of a percentage of some substance), and emotional alarmism (no, I don't particularly want to live next to an industrial site but a concern about toxic waste is only a small reason why).

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Yes.  An appeal to authourity.  But in this case, it's not a fallacy, because I am not disputing the IPCC.  I am agreeing with the 2000 peer reviewed scientists.

If you believe that their work has been "peer reviewed" in any meaningful way, then you haven't looked very closely at their work, how it's produced, and their critics.  How can you peer review work if you don't have access to the supporting data and software that generated it?  If a physicist told you that he could perform room temperature fusion but refused to share his data, information on how is apparatus works, claimed he lost some of his data, and nobody could reproduce the work, would you believe the claims?  Of course not.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652But clearly, your single course in Medieval History trumps all of that.

Yes, ignore the climatology course I mentioned because you aren't really interested in honesty, are you?  I've had plenty of experience with zealous thugs like you over the years who think they can bully their way through arguments with personal attacks and straw men.  Tell it to someone who takes you seriously and cares what you think.  You are a like the little yappy dogs that bark bravely behind a fence and think they actually scare people.

That nothing in your reply so far has risen above a straw man or an ad hominem attack is telling.  You really don't know what you are talking about, do you?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Or, perhaps you should take that course again, and grab some statistics while you are there.  NOAA findings.

Ah, the "hockey stick" that claims that the Medieval Warm Period didn't exist or was a local phenomena despite the fact that there's plenty of evidence that it did exist and wasn't local.  

I'm sure you don't find it the least big suspicious that not long after Dr. David Deming was told by a major researcher in the area of climate change that "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." that researchers, using cherry picked data ("You have cherry pick if you want to make cherry pie."), that relies heavily on unreliable tree ring proxies ("The ability to pick and choose which samples to use is an advantage unique to dendroclimatology."), and refuse to provide details about their data or how they process it to get those wonderful "hockey stick" graphs just happen to produce charts showing no Medieval Warm Period?  But I doubt you've really looked closely enough at the data or dissenting opinions to worry about any of that.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Surprisingly, your judgement of what climate scientists are accurate about in their field of study is worth fuck-all.  I don't ask my kids to fix the computer, I don't ask the dentist what is wrong with my car, and the last place I would reference regarding climate science is someone who took one course in college in Medieval history.

You like impugning the qualifications of others to comment or hold an opinion but what are your qualifications to assess the facts?  Oh, that's right.  You don't have any.  You're just a little yappy dog hiding behind an appeal to authority.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Anti-warming advocates hew a bit too closely to the anti-intellectual stance of far right wing conservatives for me.  No one scientist has a full view of all science.  That is why they specialize.  Take your Medieval History bullshit and go pound sand up your ass.

You've presented an argument so far that's nothing but straw men, ad hominem attacks, purposeful misrepresentations of what I wrote, pathetic bullying, and the simplistic argument that that we should just trust the specialists and you've but the chutzpah to claim that I'm anti-intellectual?  

Here's a quote from Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit from his book The Demon-Haunted World you might want to consider:

   

• Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the "facts."
  
• Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
  
• Arguments from authority carry little weight -- "authorities" have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities; at most, there are experts.
  
• Spin more than one hypothesis. If there's something to be explained, think of all the different ways in which it could be explained. Then think of tests by which you might systematically disprove each of the alternatives. What survives, the hypothesis that resists disproof in this Darwinian selection among "multiple working hypotheses," has a much better chance of being the right answer than if you had simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy. [...]
  
• Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours. It's only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don't, others will.
  
• Quantify. If whatever it is you're explaining has some measure, some numerical quantity attached to it, you'll be much better able to discriminate among competing hypotheses. What is vague and qualitative is open to many explanations. Of course there are truths to be sought in the many qualitative issues we are obliged to confront, but finding them is more challenging.
  
• If there's a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work (including the premise) -- not just most of them.
  
• Occam's Razor. This convenient rule-of-thumb urges us when faced with two hypotheses that explain the data equally well to choose the simpler.
  
• Always ask whether the hypothesis can be, at least in principle, falsified. Propositions that are untestable, unfalsifiable are not worth much. Consider the grand idea that our Universe and everything in it is just an elementary particle -- an electron, say -- in a much bigger Cosmos. But if we can never acquire information from outside our Universe, is not the idea incapable of disproof? You must be able to check assertions out. Inveterate skeptics must be given the chance to follow your reasoning, to duplicate your experiments and see if they get the same result.
  

Now tell me how much baloney you and the RealClimate.org people are shoveling.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652This was stupid, retarded bullshit the first two times you trotted it out, it is getting more and more rank as time goes by.

The ad hominem attacks are getting pretty old, too, but apparently that's all many of the self-righteous idiots here have to work with.  I guess they're appealing if  you don't have anything specific or intelligent to say.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Medicinenet

I ask you for a source about children getting lung cancer from coal-fired power plants and you give me a generic quote about "highly polluted air".  :rolleyes:  

You made a very specific claim, "you would rather have a dozen kids get lung cancer from coal soot than pursue any green initiatives that would require some sacrifice, no matter how small."  You claim that kids are getting lung cancer specifically from coal soot.  I don't want a generic quote about highly polluted air.  I want to know specifically how many children a year get lung cancer from coal soot.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652At any rate, some quick math (I know that isn't your strong point, they didn't have much advanced math until the Renaissance) shows highly polluted areas carry a higher health risk overall.  Children more often suffer from other lung diseases (as though cancer was the only risk) like asthma, tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis.

What's a "highly polluted area" in your opinion?  Your claim was about coal soot.  Stop trying to change the subject and hope I won't notice.  I've been in enough debates with ignorant jackasses like you to know a song and dance to change the subject when I see it.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Good Lord, your post is like a whirlwind tour of logical fallacies.

...says the person whose whose only tricks are personal attacks, straw men, and appeals to authority.  Project much?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Except the counterargument side has been assesed.  Repeatedly.  And rejected by peer review, often because the counter-arguments couldn't even get the basic math and research parts correct.

And you learned all of that by reading Wikipedia and RealClimate.org, no doubt.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Much like your argument here, they tend to attempt throwing a bad light on other papers by pointing out 'inconsistencies' that were already acknowledged and explained in the original paper.  Issues that a shallow read of the paper by an untrained reader might be convinced to see as 'controversial' or 'inaccurate', and sometimes evidence of a 'cover-up'.  That is why the climate change articles are peer reviewed and accepted, and the cranks are laughed at.  Because they think a 20 year career in climate science is the same thing as a single class in Medieval History 20 years ago.

Please describe to me what you think the peer review process involves for these articles.  I'm curious how you think they are reviewed.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652I was going to ask you to shut the fuck up again, but on reflection, keep spewing your stupidity.  It makes my argument far better than I can.

No, go ahead and ask me to shut up.  It would be a real step up from what you've offered so far in terms of honesty and logic.  Because when the truth is on your side, it's important to silence the opposition. :rolleyes:

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Here's your Climate Audit guy:

I know all about what his qualifications are.

Quote from: StormBringer;224652Again, if you want climate science, you may want to refer to a climate scientist, not a Bachelor of Science mathematician who drills for oil.  That source is Wikipedia, by the way, which appears to be roughly the only source of information.

Yes, he knows nothing, which is why Stephen Schneider invited him to review papers submitted to Climatic Change and why a National Research Council committee of the National Academies asked him to make a presentation, right?  And of course Wikipedia has no biases when it comes to Global Warming, right?

Quote from: StormBringer;224652The entirety of his site appears concerned with debunking the 'hockey stick' graph, as though the whole of climate science turns on that one point.  Clearly, he has no idea how science works, and neither do his readers.

Clearly, you haven't actually read anything on his site.  Let me guess.  You read a Wikipedia summary or an article on RealClimate.org.  Afraid looking at the dirty denier's website in any detail is going to give you cooties?

Quote from: StormBringer;224658Actually, we almost haven't.  NPR reported that the job loss at the beginning of June was the biggest loss for that month since the Great Depression.  Not seeing starving vagrants in your neighborhood is not a reason to dismiss concerns.

And we should believe anything we hear on NPR about the economy, especially during a presidential election year. :rolleyes:

Not seeing starving vagrants or tent cities of unemployed homeless people might not be reason enough to dismiss concerns about he economy but they are good reasons to laugh at NPR's comparison of the current economy with the Great Depression.  Here is another reason to laugh at NPR's characterization of he employment numbers.

Quote from: John Morrow;224837If we were to implement the Kyoto Treaty, for example, it would cause severe damage to the economy (which is why so many countries that have signed on to it are failing to comply with it).  But the Kyoto Treaty really does very little to stop the climate change that those who support it believe is happening.  To get the sort of change in carbon emissions that the proponents of man-made global warming argue are necessary to stop global warming would ruin the economy or any nation that adopted such limits.

It would, or it might?  "Damage" which may be fully offset by the introduction of new industries, or certain collapse of the economy?

What else does your crystal ball reveal?  You ask for people to ignore the real and accepted science on the climate, but insist that worst-case hypotheses from oil companies be taken at face value?

QuoteWhy should I have to?  To political debate over the environment doesn't take place in peer reviewed journals.  It takes place in in the political arena where the statements are far less scientific and far more alarmist.  And of course right after you ask me for a peer reviewed article, you talk about An Inconvenient Truth, a move that repeatedly takes worst case projections as predictions rather than more mainstream values to maximize the alarmism, which is exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes, but the science isn't carried out by journalists.  If your facts are so self-evident, then some information source should have pointed them out, if only to debunk them.  That source should have pointed back to a peer-reviewed paper.  Easy as that.  Provide that, and we are good.

QuoteSure, and you also know why others are skeptical that it's a problem, right?

First things first:  Why is carbon dioxide considered a problem?

QuoteThat environmentalists have done good things does not change the fact that environmental regulation were also responsible for adding MBTE to gasoline.

Whoa, there Chester!  Who was responsible for MTBE?  Did the environmentalists whip this stuff up and start sneaking it into gas tanks?  Or did they ask for cleaner processes, and the oil and car companies came up with a solution that turned sour?

Quote from: Lawyer siteAccording to a report last month on the CBS news program "60 Minutes," it is  happening and has been since at least 1990. That was the year Congress passed  the Clean Air Act. The law basically rewrote the formula for gasoline in parts  of the country where air pollution was a problem and required oil companies to  begin manufacturing reformulated gasoline, which enhances the octane in gasoline  and decreases carbon monoxide emission by increasing burning efficiencies. The  defining ingredient in this new type of fuel is a chemical known as an  oxygenate. The oxygenate almost all the major oil companies decided to use was  MTBE.
 
 But according to the "60 Minutes" report, even before President George H. W.  Bush signed the Clean Air Act into law doubts about the wisdom of adding MTBE to  gasoline had existed for years. In 1987, environmental engineers, government  regulators and oil industry scientists nationwide predicted publicly that MTBE  would get into groundwater. In 1988 the Maine Department of Environmental  Protection stated in a report that MTBE moved further and faster in groundwater  than any other contaminant in gasoline and recommended that use of the product  be banned.

QuoteAs for the coating of incandescent bulbs, it's silica.  Since you seem to be skeptical that silica is harmless, perhaps you should stay away from beaches.  Do it for your children.

So, finely ground silica is identical to grains of sand?  This is the fuzzy headed logic that keeps tripping you up.  I mean, you do know that fine particulates are more dangerous to the health than their normal form, right?

QuoteHow about cadmium, lead, mercury, manganese, etc?

Cadmium? Manganese? Mercury?  Lead?  I thought you were talking about some weird new type of battery with unusual metals.
"1899 - Waldmar Jungner invented the first nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery."
"1901 - Thomas Edison invented the alkaline storage battery."
"Alkaline batteries are a type of power cell dependent upon the reaction between zinc and manganese (IV) oxide (Zn/MnO2)... Over time, alkaline batteries are prone to leaking potassium hydroxide, a caustic agent that can cause respiratory, eye and skin irritation."
"Lead-acid batteries, invented in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Planté, are the oldest type of rechargeable battery."
"The mercury oxide-zinc battery system was known about 100 years ago but did not become widely used until 1942, when Samuel Ruben developed a balanced mercury cell which was useful for military applications such as metal detectors, munitions, and walkie talkies."

Yes, they are all cited from Wikipedia, because frankly, your arguments don't need much more than that.

QuoteIt's not entirely true that hydrogen isn't a metal[/URL] but, then again, I wasn't talking about hydrogen.  But I'm sure you knew that.  I can tell from this reply that intellectual honestly is not one of your strong suits.

I had no idea what you were talking about, because you seem to think that "lead" is some exotic material. ("...unusual metals used in rechargeable batteries.                 ")

QuoteTheoretical Predictions

 Metalization of hydrogen under pressure

Though topping the Periodic Table's alkali metal column, hydrogen is not, under ordinary conditions, an alkali metal. In 1935, however, physicists Eugene Wigner and H.B. Huntington predicted that under an immense pressure of two hundred and fifty thousand atmospheres (~ 25 GPa), hydrogen atoms would display metallic properties, losing hold over their electrons. Since then metallic hydrogen was the holy grail of high-pressure physics. The initial prediction about the amount of pressure needed was proven to be too low. Since the first work by Wigner and Huntington the more modern theoretical calculations were pointing toward higher but nonetheless potentially experimentally accessible metalization pressures. Professor Malcolm McMahon (Centre for Science and Extreme Conditions at Edinburgh University) states that they are currently developing techniques for creating pressures of up to five million atmospheres (ie, higher than the pressure at the center of the earth) in hopes of creating metallic hydrogen.

Five million atmospheres.  In the hopes of creating.  Keep reaching for those straws.

QuoteI've never seen a rechargeable battery used for decades.  Have you?

Yes.  My folks used to have the same rechargables for years.

QuoteI love this.  You make an excluded middle argument and then complain that I'm missing something in the middle.

I would call "Perhaps, we can actually keep a modern life-style, but in a more sensible and less harmful manner." pretty much dead on center.  How is that an extreme statement?

And you would know what that's like, wouldn't you?
I've read enough of your ill-informed tripe to become quite familiar with it.

QuoteCapitalism and Western civilization are lazy and bad which is why the environment is cleaner and safer in Western capitalist nations than anyplace else on the planet where they aren't living in grass huts, right?

Which is precisely what I didn't say.  Let me re-iterate from above:  
"Perhaps, we can actually keep a modern life-style, but in a more sensible and less harmful manner."
"To re-cap: The processes are being improved every day. They are getting cleaner and less wasteful. No thanks to your ilk, mind you."
Nothing there about a particular level of technology or hemisphere.  Although, a close reading shows that I acknowledge the processes are getting cleaner.  You can presume I was talking about some region exclusively, but we have already discussed what assumptions do to a person.

But, hey, look at the enormous air pollution levels over the less populated areas!  Well, unless you can properly interpret data.  In which case, your statement is not only false, it is the exact opposite of the actual conditions.

QuoteUh, I live in New Jersey.  When was a kid, I swam in the Raritan Bay (right across from factories and refineries) and played in a landfill and I've lived in apartment complexes sandwiched between all sorts of industrial businesses and factories.  I've also had the pleasure of living less than a mile from a gas main explosion that shot flames 300 feet into the air and currently live down the block (a few hundred feet) from that same 36 inch gas pipeline, with an oil pipeline running behind the houses at the other end of my street.  Yet New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States so it must be doing something right.

Appearantly, what New Jersey is doing right is having children develop cancer at a higher rate than the national average (Tables 2 and 3).  Go Jersey!

I am sure with the wealth of information on this page, you should have no problem showing how I mis-interpreted the data or something.

QuoteBut remember the bit where I talked about an "inability to distinguish degrees and types of harm"?  Yeah, you are doing that here.  Just because I don't want a factory dumping mercury into a creek doesn't mean that I have to sign on to the most radical environmental agenda possible.  Yes, let's scare people with toxic waste as if that's all the environmental movement ever worries about.

You should probably sign up for a class to recognize the excluded middle.  As a personal favour, I bolded it above, so you will have a head start in the class.

QuoteYou keep confusing you straw man for my position.

Are you sure that is me doing that?

QuoteIf you believe that their work has been "peer reviewed" in any meaningful way, then you haven't looked very closely at their work, how it's produced, and their critics.  How can you peer review work if you don't have access to the supporting data and software that generated it?  If a physicist told you that he could perform room temperature fusion but refused to share his data, information on how is apparatus works, claimed he lost some of his data, and nobody could reproduce the work, would you believe the claims?  Of course not.

Predictable.  The 'conspiracy theory' claim.  

You are in luck, however.  I managed to get past their firewall, and crack their cryptography.  I don't know how long it will be until they find my infiltration and shut down the port, so get the information quickly!

Or, well, a Google search.

QuoteYes, ignore the climatology course I mentioned because you aren't really interested in honesty, are you?  I've had plenty of experience with zealous thugs like you over the years who think they can bully their way through arguments with personal attacks and straw men.  Tell it to someone who takes you seriously and cares what you think.  You are a like the little yappy dogs that bark bravely behind a fence and think they actually scare people.

Oh, dear.  I was ignoring the "course" as a favour to you.  But since you bring it up, are you going to compare your course work against IPCC members[/i]?  I mean, seriously, would you suspect they might have more than a semester of introductory college level climate science under their belts?  Perhaps all the professorships and doctorates might give you a clue to the answer.

(As an added bonus, my operatives were able to make off with [url=http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf]a secret document  Many Bothans died to bring us this information.)

QuoteThat nothing in your reply so far has risen above a straw man or an ad hominem attack is telling.  You really don't know what you are talking about, do you?

No, clearly I don't.

Hey, that crystal ball show anything about new industry job creation to go along with a transition to different energy sources?  Anything?  Ok, I will wait.

QuoteAh, the "hockey stick" that claims that the Medieval Warm Period didn't exist or was a local phenomena despite the fact that there's plenty of evidence that it did exist and wasn't local.

I suppose that evidence too voluminous to cite.  Which is why you didn't.

QuoteI'm sure you don't find it the least big suspicious that not long after Dr. David Deming was told by a major researcher in the area of climate change that "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." that researchers, using cherry picked data ("You have cherry pick if you want to make cherry pie."), that relies heavily on unreliable tree ring proxies ("The ability to pick and choose which samples to use is an advantage unique to dendroclimatology."), and refuse to provide details about their data or how they process it to get those wonderful "hockey stick" graphs just happen to produce charts showing no Medieval Warm Period?  But I doubt you've really looked closely enough at the data or dissenting opinions to worry about any of that.

Yes, the opening statements:
"Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, and distinguished guests, thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor's degree in geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature and heat flow."
Well, you got the doctor part right this time, but neither of those even rhyme with 'paleoclimitologist'.  Or even 'climitologist'.  If this guy wants to talk my ears off about earthquakes and tectonic flow, I will buy lunch.

Perhaps you should alert the NOAA that they are jeopardizing that whole MWP cover-up thing.  

Oh, and the IPCC has a bit to say regarding the MWP also, assuming you can decrypt it from this highly secure site.

QuoteYou like impugning the qualifications of others to comment or hold an opinion but what are your qualifications to assess the facts?  Oh, that's right.  You don't have any.  You're just a little yappy dog hiding behind an appeal to authority.

Didn't you refer me over to Steve McIntyre's web site?

QuoteYou've presented an argument so far that's nothing but straw men, ad hominem attacks, purposeful misrepresentations of what I wrote, pathetic bullying, and the simplistic argument that that we should just trust the specialists and you've but the chutzpah to claim that I'm anti-intellectual?

I didn't misrepresent anything you wrote, I just pointed out the factual condition you were utterly wrong about.

And bullying?  Grow a spine.

QuoteHere's a quote from Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit from his book The Demon-Haunted World you might want to consider:

Now tell me how much baloney you and the RealClimate.org people are shoveling.

Oh, goodness.  You realize he was referring to 'spiritualism', right?  If he knew you were trying to attack the scientific establishment with his own words, he would shoot himself.

QuoteThe ad hominem attacks are getting pretty old, too, but apparently that's all many of the self-righteous idiots here have to work with.  I guess they're appealing if  you don't have anything specific or intelligent to say.

Actually, it was just to break up the monotony of finding citations refuting your feeble and long-debunked claims.  Like I did above.

QuoteI ask you for a source about children getting lung cancer from coal-fired power plants and you give me a generic quote about "highly polluted air".  :rolleyes:  

Well, I did provide some pretty detailed information about your home state their.  I didn't realize you would be moving the goalposts so far on your first outing.

QuoteYou made a very specific claim, "you would rather have a dozen kids get lung cancer from coal soot than pursue any green initiatives that would require some sacrifice, no matter how small."  You claim that kids are getting lung cancer specifically from coal soot.  I don't want a generic quote about highly polluted air.  I want to know specifically how many children a year get lung cancer from coal soot.

No, I made a specific statement, with 'lung cancer' as the stand in for any number of health related problems.

QuoteWhat's a "highly polluted area" in your opinion?  Your claim was about coal soot.  Stop trying to change the subject and hope I won't notice.  I've been in enough debates with ignorant jackasses like you to know a song and dance to change the subject when I see it.

Doesn't really matter what my opinion is.  The Washington Post cites the EPA levels as:

QuoteThe Environmental Protection Agency's new rule lowers the limit on how much fine particulate matter Americans may be exposed to over a 24-hour period, cutting the existing standard of 65 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 35. However, it leaves unchanged the annual limit for "fine particulate matter," or soot, in the air. That standard remains an average of 15 micrograms per cubic meter per day over the course of a year.

Quote...says the person whose whose only tricks are personal attacks, straw men, and appeals to authority.  Project much?

Well, those, and facts from a legitimate body of researchers and scientists.  I can see how that second part trips you up.

QuoteAnd you learned all of that by reading Wikipedia and RealClimate.org, no doubt.

No, I learned a fair bit reading Scientific American, but those two sites have the most layman-centric explanations.

QuotePlease describe to me what you think the peer review process involves for these articles.  I'm curious how you think they are reviewed.

Rather like this.  But, more accurately, like this (section

I know what you are thinking:  Science and Public Policy Institute, right?  Is that where you were going?  Let's review some of their other headlines:

    * 35 Inconvenient Truths: The errors in Al Gore's movie
    * Fallacies about Global Warming
    * Greenhouse Warming? What Greenhouse Warming?
    * "Consensus"? What "Consensus"?Among Climate Scientists, The Debate Is Not Over
    * Peer review? What peer review?

Yes, very fair and balanced.  Just like Fox News.

QuoteNo, go ahead and ask me to shut up.  It would be a real step up from what you've offered so far in terms of honesty and logic.  Because when the truth is on your side, it's important to silence the opposition. :rolleyes:

No, it's important to let people know that the opposition (in this case) is spewing nonsense that isn't worth consideration anymore, due to the tiring number of times it has been debunked.  And yes, someone, somewhere really does take the time to address these when they come up.  No matter how many dozens of times someone throws out "Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period were warmer than modern temperatures." (careful with that one, he cites sources for the data), or the more scientificy sounding "The Stefan-Boltzman law breaks the equations of global heating."  Also, watch your step, it's not RealClimate, just in case you thought I only had one source.

So, in fact, the truth isn't self-evident.  People who think it is or should be really aren't prepared for the rigours of actually living in the real world, and I suspect are routinely baffled by things like 'scientific process', 'peer review', and 'tying shoes'.  It's especially difficult when so many people uncritically regurgiquote statements made by bachelors in mathmatics, who also have a smattering of philosophy and economics, as the final word; more accurate than 2,000 peer reviewed scientists who are well regarded in their field and chosen by their governments to contribute.

See how long that took to read?  It took my twice as long to type out.  It's easier if I just stick with "you are utterly unqualified to discuss this", because the more you type, the clearer that is to everyone else.

QuoteI know all about what his qualifications are.

And yet, you went ahead and cited him anyway.  Ballsy, or really dumb.  I don't know which.

QuoteYes, he knows nothing, which is why Stephen Schneider invited him to review papers submitted to Climatic Change and why a National Research Council committee of the National Academies asked him to make a presentation, right?  And of course Wikipedia has no biases when it comes to Global Warming, right?

It's traditional to start the meetings with a stand-up comedian, as I understand it.

Of course Wikipedia is routinely vandalized, and depending on who last edited it, it will be biased in any number of directions.  But for quick citations, it works well, and has a nice little section at the end (usually) where you can find more information.

Is that all you have?  The unreliability of Wikipedia?  Surely, you didn't hang your entire case on the citation habits of one poster?

QuoteClearly, you haven't actually read anything on his site.  Let me guess.  You read a Wikipedia summary or an article on RealClimate.org.  Afraid looking at the dirty denier's website in any detail is going to give you cooties?

No, I read his site.  Aside from obfuscating his message behind scads of advanced math, there is little there other than cites to articles and pages of other deniers that have been thoroughly discredited.  I really don't need to cycle through the JunkScience Web Ring, thank you.