Comments on: Let’s Talk About Accuracy http://unscriptednews.com/your2cents/2007/12/19/lets-talk-about-accuracy/ A gloves off discussion of life. Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:41:24 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: parmsplace http://unscriptednews.com/your2cents/2007/12/19/lets-talk-about-accuracy/comment-page-1/#comment-18 parmsplace Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:44:29 +0000 http://unscriptednews.com/your2cents/2007/12/19/lets-talk-about-accuracy/#comment-18 Rycke is correct in stating that CO2 is not a toxic substance. What CO2 is, however, is a green house gas. As such it is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Gases which trap enery radiated from earth in our atmosphere are exactly what are driving the temperature into the stratosphere. The earth will survive whatever we do to it. It is we, the people, and the animals which share our planet, who will fail to survive our own ignorance. Anyone who thinks we can continue to add billions of tons of anything to our atmosphere without it having negative consequences needs a stiff refresher course in common sense. The "wafflers" waffle because they are making billions on the continued use of fossil fuels. We have one climate on this outpost in space and the "hubris" we share is our thinking money justifies the cripling of our atmosphere simply because nothing has the power to stop us. If we were viewed by an intelligent alien he would be certain to conclude we are a virus on this planet the planet would be well rid of. Rycke is correct in stating that CO2 is not a toxic substance. What CO2 is, however, is a green house gas. As such it is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. Gases which trap enery radiated from earth in our atmosphere are exactly what are driving the temperature into the stratosphere. The earth will survive whatever we do to it. It is we, the people, and the animals which share our planet, who will fail to survive our own ignorance. Anyone who thinks we can continue to add billions of tons of anything to our atmosphere without it having negative consequences needs a stiff refresher course in common sense. The “wafflers” waffle because they are making billions on the continued use of fossil fuels. We have one climate on this outpost in space and the
“hubris” we share is our thinking money justifies the cripling of our atmosphere simply because nothing has the power to stop us. If we were viewed by an intelligent alien he would be certain to conclude we are a virus on this planet the planet would be well rid of.

]]> By: Rycke Brown http://unscriptednews.com/your2cents/2007/12/19/lets-talk-about-accuracy/comment-page-1/#comment-11 Rycke Brown Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:36:20 +0000 http://unscriptednews.com/your2cents/2007/12/19/lets-talk-about-accuracy/#comment-11 Dear BB, I thank our leaders for their intransigence in this matter. I only wish they would be more vigorous about their opposition to this BS. Not the idea that the world is warming. Hardly anyone disputes that anymore, and certainly not the Bush administration. Unfortunately, being first-class wafflers with no real principles, they have gone along with the idea that CO2 is a pollutant. Pollutants are toxic substances. CO2 is no more toxic than water; you can drown in either. Like water, it is necessary to life, and we breath out more of it than we breath in. The BS comes in with the idea that it is at all proven that man has caused this warming, or that we can stop it, or that it is even a bad thing. There is plenty of data to show that solar output has increased. I am told that the ice caps on Mars are melting. Are we “polluting” Mars? The Fear Industrial Complex has taken hold of the idea of catastrophic climate change and run wild with it, the better to control us through our fear. They want to frighten legislators into passing, and people into accepting, taxes and controls to force them to change their behavior. These, like most uses of governmental force, will fail to achieve their objective, but will greatly increase the power of the State. Even the climate control advocates (That is what they are talking about. What hubris!) don’t expect all their controls on our behavior to have much effect on climate. They’re talking about crippling economies for a difference of a degree in a hundred years. The big UN conference that stated so unequivocally that man has caused global warming also said that we can’t even begin to turn the ship of climate around for a hundred years or more, that despite anything we can do, it will continue to warm for a long time. That’s assuming we can affect climate at all. If so, we will be far better off adapting to changing conditions, which is what our species does better than any other species on the planet. Not that other species won’t adapt to changing climate. That is what Life does: adapt or perish. Change is what climate does, continually, some times faster than others. The settlers of Greenland and Vinland were surprised and run out by a change in climate, the “Little Ice Age” in the Middle Ages. If man’s release of stored carbon as CO2 actually has warmed the globe, that is probably a good thing. We are overdue for an ice age, going by the last 100,000 years of ice ages. Global cooling, such as the “nuclear winter” scare of 20 years ago, would indeed be catastrophic for agriculture. Once the computer models started showing that the tropics would probably warm much less than the poles, a generally good scenario for agriculture, which can expand toward the poles, the scare shifted to the plight of the polar bears and the flooding from the melting of the ice caps. You say, “These people who dispute the findings have no scientific background and are therefore able to doubt the accuracy of the scientists and their instruments.” I doubt many things about scientists, but not the accuracy of their measurements. I doubt some theories, especially when propounded by people who are not experts in the field, who attempt to shout down and defame their opposition, calling them “global warming deniers,” the modern equivalent of “heretics.” My skepticism grows when governments get involved and push the theory and fund the studies, especially when said theory calls for draconian government action to save us from certain doom. There are a lot of scientists who support climate control. That doesn’t mean that they are all climatologists or know anything about the field. A lot of climatologists disagree, including the man who until recently called himself the Oregon State Climatologist, until Governor Kulongoski told him to shut up. How much climatology does Kulongoski know? I was taught Soil Science at RCC by a teacher who was an ardent Creationist. It didn’t affect his branch of science, basically working with chemicals. (His understanding of the life of the soil was sorely lacking. But I was able to use his data to show that chemical fertilizer is detrimental to the life of the soil.) Expertise in one discipline does not translate to others. And scientists are no more error-free in their judgments than the rest of us. Religion is what one believes is the truth about man’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe, what one thinks about, feels about it, does about it. Science is the pursuit of knowledge about the powers and principles of the universe. It is therefore a major component of any complete religion, namely cosmology. Morality, how men treat each other and the world they live in, is the other major component. Government is concerned with how men treat one another, since it is a legal monopoly on the use of force, and force only has moral relevance when used against other men. The only proper use of force is to secure rights, as it says in the Declaration of Independence: “…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,…” Any other government action can only violate rights, as any improper use of force does. Government has an inherent authority to tax, to collect money by force, to fund its proper activity of securing rights. It has no authority to charge a penny more than that, or to use taxes to change behavior by so much as an inch. Such “sin taxes” are inherently unconstitutional restraints on religious freedom. They also create a system of privilege, whereby the rich can “sin” with impunity, while the poor are sorely punished by the tax. Likewise, laws attempting to directly affect non-rights-violating behavior, to mandate or ban certain actions, violate our rights to freely exercise and enjoy our religious opinions and our rights of conscience, as Oregon’s constitution puts it. If some scientists want us to change our behavior to save the world, they should work on convincing people to change their behavior, not on convincing governments to pass laws to change behavior. The use of force only sets up resistance in the human heart, and stubbornness in the mind. Conversely, gentle persuasion can work wonders. Live Free and Prosper, Rycke Dear BB,

I thank our leaders for their intransigence in this matter. I only wish they would be more vigorous about their opposition to this BS.

Not the idea that the world is warming. Hardly anyone disputes that anymore, and certainly not the Bush administration. Unfortunately, being first-class wafflers with no real principles, they have gone along with the idea that CO2 is a pollutant. Pollutants are toxic substances. CO2 is no more toxic than water; you can drown in either. Like water, it is necessary to life, and we breath out more of it than we breath in.

The BS comes in with the idea that it is at all proven that man has caused this warming, or that we can stop it, or that it is even a bad thing. There is plenty of data to show that solar output has increased. I am told that the ice caps on Mars are melting. Are we “polluting” Mars?

The Fear Industrial Complex has taken hold of the idea of catastrophic climate change and run wild with it, the better to control us through our fear. They want to frighten legislators into passing, and people into accepting, taxes and controls to force them to change their behavior. These, like most uses of governmental force, will fail to achieve their objective, but will greatly increase the power of the State.

Even the climate control advocates (That is what they are talking about. What hubris!) don’t expect all their controls on our behavior to have much effect on climate. They’re talking about crippling economies for a difference of a degree in a hundred years. The big UN conference that stated so unequivocally that man has caused global warming also said that we can’t even begin to turn the ship of climate around for a hundred years or more, that despite anything we can do, it will continue to warm for a long time. That’s assuming we can affect climate at all.

If so, we will be far better off adapting to changing conditions, which is what our species does better than any other species on the planet. Not that other species won’t adapt to changing climate. That is what Life does: adapt or perish. Change is what climate does, continually, some times faster than others. The settlers of Greenland and Vinland were surprised and run out by a change in climate, the “Little Ice Age” in the Middle Ages.

If man’s release of stored carbon as CO2 actually has warmed the globe, that is probably a good thing. We are overdue for an ice age, going by the last 100,000 years of ice ages. Global cooling, such as the “nuclear winter” scare of 20 years ago, would indeed be catastrophic for agriculture. Once the computer models started showing that the tropics would probably warm much less than the poles, a generally good scenario for agriculture, which can expand toward the poles, the scare shifted to the plight of the polar bears and the flooding from the melting of the ice caps.

You say, “These people who dispute the findings have no scientific background and are therefore able to doubt the accuracy of the scientists and their instruments.”

I doubt many things about scientists, but not the accuracy of their measurements. I doubt some theories, especially when propounded by people who are not experts in the field, who attempt to shout down and defame their opposition, calling them “global warming deniers,” the modern equivalent of “heretics.” My skepticism grows when governments get involved and push the theory and fund the studies, especially when said theory calls for draconian government action to save us from certain doom.

There are a lot of scientists who support climate control. That doesn’t mean that they are all climatologists or know anything about the field. A lot of climatologists disagree, including the man who until recently called himself the Oregon State Climatologist, until Governor Kulongoski told him to shut up. How much climatology does Kulongoski know?

I was taught Soil Science at RCC by a teacher who was an ardent Creationist. It didn’t affect his branch of science, basically working with chemicals. (His understanding of the life of the soil was sorely lacking. But I was able to use his data to show that chemical fertilizer is detrimental to the life of the soil.) Expertise in one discipline does not translate to others. And scientists are no more error-free in their judgments than the rest of us.

Religion is what one believes is the truth about man’s relationship with the powers and principles of the universe, what one thinks about, feels about it, does about it. Science is the pursuit of knowledge about the powers and principles of the universe. It is therefore a major component of any complete religion, namely cosmology. Morality, how men treat each other and the world they live in, is the other major component.

Government is concerned with how men treat one another, since it is a legal monopoly on the use of force, and force only has moral relevance when used against other men. The only proper use of force is to secure rights, as it says in the Declaration of Independence: “…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,…” Any other government action can only violate rights, as any improper use of force does.

Government has an inherent authority to tax, to collect money by force, to fund its proper activity of securing rights. It has no authority to charge a penny more than that, or to use taxes to change behavior by so much as an inch.

Such “sin taxes” are inherently unconstitutional restraints on religious freedom. They also create a system of privilege, whereby the rich can “sin” with impunity, while the poor are sorely punished by the tax. Likewise, laws attempting to directly affect non-rights-violating behavior, to mandate or ban certain actions, violate our rights to freely exercise and enjoy our religious opinions and our rights of conscience, as Oregon’s constitution puts it.

If some scientists want us to change our behavior to save the world, they should work on convincing people to change their behavior, not on convincing governments to pass laws to change behavior. The use of force only sets up resistance in the human heart, and stubbornness in the mind. Conversely, gentle persuasion can work wonders.

Live Free and Prosper,

Rycke

]]>