Jeff Alberts (10:09:37) :
What does this have to do with science? You can go around listening to Chicken Little if you want to, but I choose not to. And who made you, or Al Gore, or the IPCC the chief engineer of the planet? It’s God who created the heavens and the earth.

Wow, now THERE’S some science for ya! Which experiments and verifications show that there is a god to have created the “heavens” (whatever that is) and the Earth?

You can go around listening to fairy tales if you want, I’ll stick with reality.

Jeff, I’m not claiming that my belief in God is science. It’s faith, pure and simple. But Dennis put forth this silly argument about the “chief engineer” of a plane telling us we’re all going to die. I happen to believe the chief engineer of the planet is God. I know for a fact that it’s not Al Gore or the IPCC. So Dennis’ analogy is meaningless. If you don’t believe in God and would rather believe that the universe is the result of mindless chance, that’s your business. But if you happen to buy into the consensus argument on global warming, then you might also consider that it is the overwhelming consensus of all people on the planet that there is a God.

Back to science – The point of my posts is that global warming computer models based on parametric equations loaded with fudge factors do not follow the scientific method and are therefore not science. If you would like to engage on that, feel free.

The case can be made that both WWI AND WWII were unnecessary. I’ll not try to justify non-involvement in WWII. But certainly WWI was unnecessary. Plus, the US involvement in WWI led to WWII.

I am no hippy, but for purely practical reasons, we need to give peace a chance. It is war (and the fear it causes) that gives power to the wicked.

I am not saying we should isolate ourselves from the world but to quit interfering in their affairs. By all means, let’s have a strong DEFENSE.

I suggest reading Ron Paul and http://www.lewrockwell.com for more info.

As for terrorists, the only solution is to quit making enemies around the world.

This is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

The US has been chastised for waiting so long to enter WWs 1 and 2. To us these were foreign wars (until certain events occurred to change that). So, now that we’ve become the world’s policeman, we get chastised as well. No matter what we do, there will be those vocal people who will blame us for any outcome, whether good or bad. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perfect cases in point.

What does this have to do with science? You can go around listening to Chicken Little if you want to, but I choose not to. And who made you, or Al Gore, or the IPCC the chief engineer of the planet? It’s God who created the heavens and the earth.

Wow, now THERE’S some science for ya! Which experiments and verifications show that there is a god to have created the “heavens” (whatever that is) and the Earth?

You can go around listening to fairy tales if you want, I’ll stick with reality.

Until recently and perhaps still, Bush had the power to detain even native born Americans indefinitely without even appearing before a civilian judge. How is that for a lost civil liberty?

I used to believe as you do Evan, so i sympathize. Don’t worry, there is another world view that is completely coherent, peaceful, and strong.
Learn about Ron Paul’s views. Perhaps in 2012, we can choose a man who will lead us out of the wilderness. Otherwise, I see an earlier end to the world.

We have nuclear weapons. As long as we can deliver those we will always be safe from an attack by a foreign country. As for terrorists, the only solution is to quit making enemies around the world.

some questions for neocons

Does the Golden Rule apply?
If not, please tell me why.

Richard: All science starts off with theory, accumulation of data and calculation. Einstein is a good example.

You forgot experimentation and verification. Without those, theory, data, and calculation don’t mean much of anything.

Funny you should mention Einstein. When Einstein wrote the theory of Special Relativity, the scientific consensus was that light propagated through the “ether” because no one had a better theory. No one had ever observed the ether but they couldn’t imagine how light could propagate without it – so it must be there. When Michelson and Morley did their experiments that proved there was no ether, they kept repeating them because they figured they must be missing something. Einstein came along, accepted that these repeated and verified experiments proved there was no ether, and theorized that the speed of light was a constant regardless of the frame of reference of the observer – the result being that time and distance dilate and speeds approaching the speed of light. His theory has been verified experimentally in many ways, the most dramatic of course is the atom bomb.

With global warming, the predictions are not verified, they are falsified. But instead of rejecting the “theory” the computer modelers tweak the fudge factors in their parametric equations (because they don’t know how to solve the real equations) and boldly proclaim new disasters. Nothing could be further from real science (except maybe evolution). It used to be the psychics like Jean Dixon that went around proclaiming disasters every year. Today’s psychics are the Global Warming prophets of doom.

Climate change science is no different to any other science, apart from the fact that it is at present far more important than most others. But if you had your way with all science as you wish with climatology, no progress would ever have been made in medicine or any other scientific issue.

I’ve made my case as to how Climate Change hysteria is not science. Please give me some examples of how my definition of the scientific method is faulty and has prevented all progress in science. And some examples of how your method that excludes experimentation and verification has yielded “scientific” progress.

So what theory do you have that temperatures were so much warmer 200 million years ago when the sun’s output much less than it is today?

I don’t have one and frankly I don’t care what happened 200 million years ago because no one is ever going to know.

And if your children were going to board an airplane and the chief engineer said there was a 90% chance of the plane crashing would you still let your kids get on it? After all it is only an unproven theory that the plane will crash.

What does this have to do with science? You can go around listening to Chicken Little if you want to, but I choose not to. And who made you, or Al Gore, or the IPCC the chief engineer of the planet? It’s God who created the heavens and the earth.

The present meaning is those who are “conservative” on foreign policy (i.e., non-isolationist) and the economy (a common sense not a value issue) but who tend to be more “liberal” on value judgments.

And yes, those are the sort who will write the history. As always.

Evan, we’ve lost all sorts of civil liberties in an ENDLESS war with Muslims.

I keep hearing that. Yet I can’t name a single person who has lost a single liberty. I look back at civil liberty restrictions during other US wars and the current version is pretty darn milksop by comparison.

We must choose: Quit intervening in other countries OR become a police state.

The way i see it that makes us like Spider-Man allowing the criminalwho would later kill Uncle Ben to escape.

Not :”interfering in other countries” is what allowed the rise of the monstrous regimes of Hitler and imperial Japan.

I have two answers:

With Great power comes great responsibility.–The Spider-Man

Doing nothing IS doing something.–Tony Blair (specifically referring to Iraq)

It’s not on Sweden to do these things. They can’t. It’s on US. Why? Because we CAN.

I think both wars against Saddam did great good in the world, and that they will engender lasting and enduring good. It was moral. Just. Responsible. Yes, I know this is not the majority view.

Only if neo-cons write it.

Evan, we’ve lost all sorts of civil liberties in an ENDLESS war with Muslims.

We must choose: Quit intervening in other countries OR become a police state.

fear is the fee

I used to be annoyed,
in fact, paranoid
but then i found it best
if enemies i made less.
This lesson do I give
to the country where I live:
the US.

I deeply admire the man for all sorts of quiet liberal reasons.

He saved the economy with the tax cuts. Flat out. Plain and simple. Anyone who has taken the trouble to look at the year-by-year comparison of tax cuts vs. revenues KNOWS the tax cuts had NOTHING to do with the drop in revenues. Revenues today are at huge record levels. (Unfortunately, so is spending, but that’s another story. Even though the deficit is diddly-squat in percentage terms, even including the war.)

He had the courage to liberate the people of Iraq in spite of craven world opposition. And he stayed the course. No one seems to account for the 50 to 100,000 per year being starved by Saddam, not to mention 100-200/day murdered by death squads. PLUS the hundreds of thousands in mass graves. The only war crime about Iraq is that we didn’t invade ten years earlier. (Don’t even mention the ridiculous Lancet report, it makes Jim Hansen look like a lowballer!)

Now Saddam is gone and a very successful democracy is in place with far greater voter participation than in any western country. Freedom has a new symbol: the purple finger. He also had the courage to do the surge thing which has been a wild success, and has turned around the war every bit as thoroughly as the fall of Atlanta.

And all those allies that are supposed to have “abandoned” us have been having cat-fights among themselves over who is the best ally of America. Nearly all of Europe is now under pro-US governments and is moving closer to the American economic model. Only Spain and Russia are actively anti-US these days. (Hint: winning COUNTS.)

Dubya also staunchly resisted the temptation to “steal the oil”, as any of the US critics would have done, and though you don’t read it in the papers, Europe is impressed by that.

Don’t forget that Truman’s popularity ratings were a lot lower than dubya’s when he left office. I disagree with dubya on a lot of issues, but in the big things he was magnificent. Unless we find a way to throw away our victory in Iraq, history will view him far more kindly than we do now. Mark my words.

Something tells me you missed my joke. Should I blame that on me or you? You did manage to punctuate my point that an editor is in order though, so thanks for that.

I hope they catch him and cook him. But who would eat em?

“Sometimes the only purpose of a life is to serve as a warning to others.”

Also, it is lucky Greenspan is not an honorable Japanese central banker.
That would smart!