I’ve held off as long as I can with commenting on the presedential election, as it tends to suck all the oxygen right out of the room, but this issue needs to be aired. There’s more to Obama’s energy plan than bankrupting coal power plants. He also intends to make energy prices “skyrocket”:
This doesn’t sound sustainable to me. Hat tip to Jon Jewitt.
UPDATE: here is video from the San Francisco Chronicle of the actual interview:
Hat tip to Fred for this one.
And you are really deluded if you think that Irak is now a democracy or will remain a democracy.
It’s actually an excellent democracy with a well worked out constitution. And it gives every indication of remaining so. And they are about to request that we leave. We will.
As for Rome in Iraq, Trajan initially snagged the place and then Hadrian swapped it to Persia three years later for a secure border. (When did Rome or Byzantium ever simply leave a “protectorate” by request?)
History tells us that democracies are not suites cut out and worn on nations, but spontaneously evolve when the conditions are ripe.
You are forgetting about Japan and West Germany.
evan
West Germany is a bad example, because it is a part of the west, and western culture has no frontiers in europe. That they had a dictatorship interlude was unfortunate for the world, but so did spain and portugal and they evolved out of it.
Japan is a different story, it was decimated after the war and demoralized by the bombs, and emerged into a new paradigm in the same way as animals will do if shocked and awed. It is a bad example:” I will devastate you so that you become like me”.
I do not think that this has happened in Irak, and I live much closer to it than you do.
anna v
“They have a long way to go to evolve into democracies.”
Well, that’s not a reason to not get started.
I get the feeling you’re saying Iraqis and Moslems are neither capable nor developed enough to have a democracy. Such a view is elitist and arrogant. People living there ought to be insulted by that.
I respect you for your scientific skills, but please do spare us from this brand of European sophistication- the sort you demonstrated above. Hopefully you did not intend it that way.
Democracy and freedom involve hard work. But that’s not a reason to give up on them before trying.
Now, now, moptop. The economic realities come hard. Pamela has made pretty fair progress, I think. Besides, her climate skepticism has, perforce, cast her adrift.
She’s an exile in her own party, though she may not fully realize it yet. When one defects from what passes today for liberalism on the AGW subject, one is truly alone. Conservatives have lots of company.
She should be cut some slack and given the benefit of the doubt.
UCLAri has it right. The House reps and Senators you elect today will be your runners for the presidential election. Do you know how yours voted? Do you support what they did? There has been an extreme apathy in our local voting. Many places just revote the same person in over and over despite corruption because either no one else will run or they recognize the name. Find out who you are voting in on local and state levels. Its from those little choices that we can initiate the fix we need, weeding out the corrupt and insane hopefully.
Lets face it folks the presidential position does not hold as much power as the House and Senate do. They have the power to initiate and regulate and if the bailout is any indicator they intend to do what they dang well please no matter what we say or how loudly we say it. That needs to change and right now! I wonder if anyone from the current congress would be elected if folks spent half as much time researching them as they did reading about Pallins new clothes. How many of your votes went to someone who already voted yes to cap and trade before it got shot down by a fillabuster? How many of them voted yes to sneeking it into the bailout package?
As for our presidential candidates? I wouldn’t vote for either if I had a viable third choice. Which of them has ever had to plastic their windows to keep out the cold???
I previously thought that most AGW-science sceptics were sceptic because of the science. Now it has become obvious to me that there is more than a fair amount of partisanship in whether people believe in AGW or not.
Making posts here about patriotism, partisanism or politics unrelated to AGW issues pollutes this site completely.
I think I’ll stick to reading posts from McIntyre or Svalgaard and their likes.
anna. Germany was only briefly democratic and only that as a result of defeat in WWI. And they made a pretty poor job of it if the 1923 Ruhr crisis and letting Hitler slip into power is any indication.
Japan resisted to the very end. They did not surrender after the second atomic bomb. It took a 1600 B29 raid on Tokyo, and three other fire raids plus the threat to continue ’round the clock bombing. And even then it would have been a no-go if the emperor had not been allowed to remain in place as titular head of state. (And even then, they tried to assassinate the emperor’s messenger carrying the surrender message.)
Iraq was not anywhere near destroyed to the extent of Japan or Germany. But they had a huge voter turnout every time, outstandingly honest voting procedures. And even a new visible symbol of freedom: The purple ink-stained finger. I bet they do just fine. We’ll see.
But none of that alters my previous point: if they lose their democracy, that will not be in US interest. Primary US interest IS democracy. Not oil. Not territory. Not military bases. And Iraq will not have democracy as WE know it. They will have it as THEY know it. That’s why they call it democracy. They get to decide.
Both Turkey and Indonesia are successful Muslim democracies. Why not Iraq?
And one more thing,
as an American living in Europe I’m insulted by you comparing the USA to Communist China. The USA does not go around taking freedom away from people, it goes around spreading freedom.
Our soldiers don’t die overseas so that people like you can be oppressed; they die so that people like you have freedom – even to make twisted comments like yours. Be happy you are not speaking Nazi German or Stalinist Russian. It’s American “imperialism” that allows you to enjoy the freedom you have today. You comments insult the families of the soldiers who died on your behalf.
If you are even half the person I think you are, you’d have the human decency to apologise.
And take a trip to Normandy or Ausschwitz if you need a lesson in history.
Joachim,
“Making posts here about unrelated to AGW issues pollutes this site completely.”
Patriotism, partisanism or politics are not pollution. They are elements of an open society.
This post by Anthony is a political topic – so discussion will not be necessarilly be scientific. You are free ignore the comments here, but please do so without calling those participating polluters. It’s bad enough that CO2 is unjustly called a pollutant. Constructive opinions are not.
I’m so sick and tired of people with more than one field of interest, and who comment on such fields in their correct place, ie, under posts that have to do with the issues that interest those people.
I think both Obama and McCain have jumped on the AGW bandwagen. Now that is boring climate change out the way now the fun stuff, politics.
Retired Engineer (10:25:27) : said
>>Maggie Thatcher made a very good point in her preface to “The Downing Street Years”, setting the Conservative party in opposition to the idea that ‘the gentlemen in Whitehall know better how the people should live than the people themselves.’<>We’ll know in about 36 hours if we’re following Britain down the road to freezing in the dark.We’re already in danger of blackouts & brownouts<>and the recognition worldwide, including in the ‘Old Country’, of America’s benignity and necessity in the maintenance of a peaceful and civil world<>The only one of those bases that we would not immediately remove on request is Gitmo!<<
You wouldn’t move out of Diego Garcia either immediately. But I’m more interested on your thoughts on the war in Iraq, this is a war which was not about creating a democracy in the Middle East, the USA has been more than happy not to have democratic governments in the Middle East for the last 30 years, including when it supported Saddam in the 1980’s, so that is poppycock. The war was about WMD’s that didn’t exist and striking back at targets where you could, trying to claim a democracy being formed as a result of your actions is hijacking a good reason when all the actual reasons are bad.
The Republicans in two terms have invaded the wrong country on wrong intelligence, got distracted from the correct region so that Afghanistan is still a problem and Bin Laden has not been caught, failed to cope after Katrina and finally has let finances get so bad you are having to partially nationalise the banks and give them massive bailouts of taxpayers money (1 $1trillion plus)
How Socialist is that last sentence … ha… and Pierre Gosselin is worried about Obama. That’s like worrying about the heat from a candle when you are standing next to a blast furnace.
Also, what happened to America, the land of the brave? You guys sound scared and frightened and full of doubt. Golly, you sound like us Europeans !
Regards
Andy
Regarding evanjones (02:00:10’But none of that alters my previous point: if they lose their democracy, that will not be in US interest. Primary US interest IS democracy. ”
The reason this is a primary US intrest is because the history of the world indicates that only democracies have stable relationships with their neighbors.
Please google Rudolp Rummel talks about the miracle of liberty and peace.
Evan Jones said again
“Primary US interest IS democracy. Not oil.”
That’s not true, as my example of the USA supporting Iraq in the 1980 Iran – Iraq war showed. That’s not to say it’s about oil though, though that can play a part. What the primary US interest is, along with the other great superpower Russia in the 20th C, is balance of power mixed with putting caps on regimes that are seen not to be in the interest of the USA or Russia.
This is why Russia swatted Georgia and went over the top with it’s response when Georgia started an aggessive military campaign in South Ossetia, this is why the USA freed Kuwait from the Iraq invasion in the early 1990’s but then didn’t take the ideal chance to instigate a democracy in Kuwait as well. All they did, quite rightly, was correct the power balance and limit the anti US interests at that time.
The problem with invading Iraq is that the power balance has now shifted again but this time it has shifted it in Iran’s favour. Bush therefore even screwed that up, took away the bulwark of an admittedly horrible secular government against a horrible theocratic one. Oh the irony.
There’s quite a few countries in East Africa that could do with a good dose of democracy right now, but I don’t see much intent by Bush to send in the troops there.
Regards
Andy
My first post got horribly mangled there, lost my chance of attacking Maggie Thatcher on the coal mners to posterity .. sob sob …
Andy
Joachim: I completely agree. The good point is that it might show most people that skepticism really is all about politics and not science. Which might sound funny, because that’s exactly what they accuse “warmers” to do.
In this current age of Islamic Revival , I don’t think democracy is going to work in a society that gives any room to Sharia law. Islam rejects manmade law as an affont to Allah on the level of idoltry.
Turkey’s ruling party is Islamist and is steadily Islamicizing what it can get away with and will continue to do so bit by bit until they are so entrenched that the courts and military will not be able to roll it back.
Hopefully the Iraqis ordeal in being the victims of sunni and shia extermists will unite them in a non-religious nationalism but until the govt of Iran is taken care of, there will be constant destablization by Iran.
We should not leave until all threats to Iraq are neutralized.
History tells us that democracies are not suites cut out and worn on nations, but spontaneously evolve when the conditions are ripe.
I for one am getting rather bored with this argument that the North should have never freed the Slaves in the U.S. via the Civil War. Perhaps it should have waited for them and/or the South to “spontaneously evolve”?
And was the freeing of Eastern Europe a result of “spontaneous evolution”?
As to South Korea, why its existence as a democracy is just wrong, I say, wrong!
People have apparently forgotten what Imperialism is really like. We’re not even close.
I am curious, what other country has over 250 army bases in foreign countries?
Right. I say we withdraw from Europe post haste. We’ve got about 100,000 military there now, and in the past have averaged 250,000 for decades. This hegemony must end! Same goes for S. Korea.
Really, anna, I’ve heard about these vast numbers of “bases” now for about six years, but I’ve never heard anyone thinking that this is some kind of dig against the “imperialist” U.S. go any further, that is, to examine what those bases actually are and why they exist. Since it’s your argument, perhaps you are the one who should make some actual sense out of it instead of simply repeating an otherwise empty meme. [Somewhat mysteriously, the alleged total number of bases even keeps on going up.]
The last guy who threw this factoid at me didn’t seem to get the point of my rejoinder to the effect that, “Yeah, and don’t forget about all those massive naval forces spread out all over the World, either.”
Comprende?
Mike Bryant (23:40:59) :
“October Mauna Loa is out … big jump”
Thank you MIke,
An increase in Mauna Loa CO2 is normal from September to October, as the seasonal decline in CO2 ends, along with the summer growing season. ML CO2 will now increase until Northern Hemisphere Spring (it peaks in April or May).
However, as you correctly point out, this increase in CO2 from September to October is larger than recent numbers:
2004: +0.28 ppm
2005: +0.11
2006: +0.22
2007: +0.41
2008: +0.65
The simplest emplanation is that Autumn weather arrived sooner in 2007 and 2008 than in past years. Is this more evidence of global cooling?
ML CO2 data at
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
Regards, Allan
Physicist and long time reader of this blog , I must make my first post in this thread .
First Anthony you were perfectly right to disclose the news object of this post .
The climate debate has both a scientific and a political dimension and there is nothing to gain to ignore one of those dimensions . Of course the fact that the political dimension is marginaly also mentionned doesn’t impair in any way the credibility of the scientific dimension of the blog .
Second , indeed , the debate concerning Obama goes much farther than only AGW .
It is primarily an internal US matter because it is you who are voting but if you will be in the first line to suffer the consequences , whether we non US citizens like it or not , we will feel the heat too .
To say it bluntly , I am sickened and disgusted by the Obamaniacal hysteria in Europe .
To be fair it doesn’t concern so much the ordinary citizens but massively the media and the show business .
The dumb journalists (pleonasmus) and dumb movie actors (another pleonasmus) are simply going nuts because the US could elect a black president who will at last see the right way of the wealth redistribution and of the fight against the climate change
Why being black should be some quality insurance and the fight against the climate change something else than a bottomless idiocy is generally left unexplained .
However if somebody dared to say in public that Obama is a catastrophe waiting to happen , he’d be immediately lynched . The atmosphere in the media is thick and insane . The atmosphere during the Moscow trials was of similar composition .
So what is my principal reason to hope that reason will prevail and Obama will be sent back where he belongs ?
Because it is for the first time in the world’s history that there is a socialist having a real chance at becoming the POTUS and having the Senate at his boot .
We , europeans , are good at recognising a socialist when we see one .
During more than a half a century we had on our own soil a huge socialist concentration camp .
I happened to live in one part of this concentration camp and if there were barbed wire and mine fields around it , it was to keep the people in .
A socialist has as a primary characteristic the conviction that he must achieve economical equality pompously called “social justice” .
Hence the statements about “wealth (re)distribution” are indeed paramount .
Or like the saying went in my former country “The socialists have promised to take from the rich to give to the poor . But half of the rich ran away and the other half was killed because they objected . So only poor were left in socialismus .”
Do not be mistaken – the USA are not immune to this illness and Obama is the proof .
Sure the timing is unknown and the things don’t always begin by arresting people or stealing property .
The timing is the matter of tactics and personnal preferences but there is no ambiguity about the targets to be achieved .
Achieving “social justice” always involves a degree of constraint and violence .
And here again let’s quote “the masters” who expressed the philosophy in very similar terms , Trotski and Hitler : “There is no question that can’t be solved by applying the adequate level of violence . The only problem is to have the will to apply it .”
Before some simple mind misinterprets – I absolutely don’t compare Obama to Trotski or Hitler , that would be utterly ridiculous . The environment is different , the times are different , the geopolitics are different , the personalities are different .
Much more the intent is to show that a socialist and a true champion of “social justice” doesn’t question the necessity of constraint and violence because for him it is necessary . He only questions matters of degree , timing and opportunity .
That is why any kind of socialist philosophy (regardless if it is marxismus , fascismus , anarchism etc) is intrinsically evil because it necessarily leads to the negation of individual freedom at a level that is much deeper than the mere contractual mutually accepted way commonly called “laws” .
I think that this part really has to be well understood because that’s how your dumb average socialist argues .
Any life in a society implies laws that are by definition constraints on personal freedom so what’s the problem with “socialist laws” ?
Well the problem is that normal laws are contractual matters where both parties have interest to follow them (I will not kill you if you don’t try to kill me) and those where the mutual satisfaction is not clear can always be undone .
Socialist laws are all submitted to one dogma : the target of the society is to achieve economical equality (or a society without classes or social justice or whatever wording) . And you will be never allowed to undo this one .
On the contrary , trying to undo the dogma was generally punished by death .
If Obama is elected , would he transform the USA like the raving lunatic Chavez transforms Venezuela ? Probably not in only 4 years .
But he will take steps in a very wrong direction that I hoped to never ever see reappearing on the face of this Earth .
JP (13:31:46) :
This could be the last time US voters go to the polls so uninformed.
————–
How will the public get informed. The Democrats are going to pass an expanded version of the Fairness Doctrine. They have already talked of expanding it to the internet and cable.
If Obama wins. All of the measures that have been passed in recent years will be outlawed. Democrats fought hard against them passing, and will be eager to get rid of them now that they have the chance.
If Obama wins, not only will the many electoral shenanigans that have occurred not be investigated, but they will be encouraged next time.
I honestly fear for the future of this republic should the Democrats win the White House and get enlarged majorities in Congress. I truely believe that if Obama wins, this will be the last honest and open election in this country for many generations.
John D. (13:33:09) :
As far as deconstruction of the Constitution and threatening Checks and Balances, nobody in U.S. History has done what Cheney-Bush have in the last 8 years.
I’m looking forward to more scienctific discourse and sure will be glad when this miserable campaigning-mud slinging is over-with. Whichever candidate wins this time, let’s just hope it’s better than the last round!
John D.
——————–
Ironic, even while decrying mudslinging, he engages in it.
Bush did nothing to “deconstruct the constitution”. Not even close.
Of course those on the left are swift to claim that anything that opposes their goals is evil.
Obama has no credibility on any issue economic. McCain isn’t great, but at least he tried to reform Freddy and Fannie back in 2000. A move that was blocked in part by Obama.
You might want to rephrase; Obama wasn’t in the Senate in 2000.
———
Sorry, meant 2005. 2000 was when the Community Reinvestment Act that started this mess was signed. By Clinton.