Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

One moment you're accusing me of attacking the sources, the next, you're dismissing the entirety of climate science as an elaborate plot engineered by a cabal of fake "environmentalists" with a decades-long scheme to drum up fear about global warming, then profit from it by setting up carbon trading schemes? This all seems rather Dr. Evil; all they're missing is sharks with frickin' laser beams on their foreheads.

I'm not dismissing those scientists who've raised issues about climate change, and the human contribution. What I'm saying is that "models" may or may not accurately portray our future, and so, really, we'll just have to see how it plays out. We should do *reasonable* things to reduce unnecessary human disruption of the environment. For me, this means everything from excessive green house gases, to dumping refuse from NYC into the ocean, and leaking oil wells off the coast of California just to name a few. However, unlike Al Gore, I believe that humanity should try to also design a solution that doesn't take us back to the caves. I believe we have the intellect to retain our standard of living, and be ecologically sensitive. The CO2 horse is out of the barn, so we are stuck with some level of damage. We have inaccurate models that may give us some range of possible futures. I'm suggesting that instead of "trading carbon credits" at CCX, that it may be more useful to directly use "carbon tax" money to build ecologically sound infrastructure in the USA. Screw GIM, and CCX, and let's figure out what has the biggest MW output for our eco-dollars and build it now.

Rep. Blackburn once confronted Gore about his involvement with Generation Investment Management. He pointed out that not only does he reinvest everything he makes from the enterprise into educational non-profits, but that it's simply absurd to claim that he has spend thirty years of his life investigating and campaigning for environmental causes as some obscure plot to make himself money. Gore may be right about the environment, or he may be wrong, but it's simply ridiculous to state, on nothing but connect-the-dots evidence, to suggest that this is some kind of decades-long plot. Scientists all over the world have been warning for decades that this is urgent business; are they all in it together with these (supposedly) carbon-corrupt politicos? This would be one hell of a conspiracy.

Since he failed to win the presidency, Al Gore has made his living off environmental fear mongering. Environmental fear mongering is nothing new.

The very first thing on the Realclimate page is a basic rundown of the draft of the "suppressed" EPA report. It contains nothing new, almost zero peer-reviewed science, and is little more than a grab-bag of well-known, mutually contradictory, denialist tropes.

So, yes, there are alternative view points that are suppressed then. Carlin seems like a credible guy, and not really a crack-pot. He is a guy, who has a PhD in economics, and a B.S. in physics and a long distinguished career. Here is the report, and you can check it out for yourself.

Edit: memory failing, Michele Bachmann, while completely looney tunes on the issue of climate change, was not the on to confront Gore on that particular occasion.

Not really "looney tunes", but against your position. I think if we are going to have a reasonable debate on the environment, it is helpful to omit the labels like "looney tunes" and "tree hugging eco-Nazi".