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November 9, 2010 - 9:51pm
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Another nitwit who doesn't understand the constitution.
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I am having trouble with the link and cannot find the constitutional issue in what I can link to...can you summarize?
According to the article linked, Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who will seek the Energy and Commerce Committee chairmanship, maintains that we do not have to worry about climate change because God promised in the Bible not to destroy the world again after Noah
Grr. Link worked well last night.
The issue is that the guy who is running for the head seat in the energy committee says global warming isn't a problem because god promised never to do another great flood.
Which is just so deranged that words probably should fail me.
The consititional issue is recognizing biblical inerrency in federal government policy, which is what he's wanting to do.
Link worked for me right now. Duno.
It worked for me, but it was really slow to load. This sort of thing brings to mind a couple of quotes from James Madison:
So, you use the argument from ignorance to avoid the fact that this dingleberry wants to make biblical inerrency into national policy, as well as to excuse the imbicility of warming deniers.
The amount of money spent on avoiding the testable, verifiable facts of global warming (note, I didn't say AGW), rather than spend the money on understanding the issue, is truly atrocious.
Furthermore, it is simply dishonest to represent science as a religion, which is one of the favorite ploys of the people who hate the USA and who want to destroy the philosophy (the enlightenment and the scientific method) that made the USA great.
Why do these people hate America and the founders of America, and want to go back to the same old system we had with state religions and the dark ages they sustained.
I would say it is dishonest to purport religion as science.
A bit of honesty and humility is needed. 99% of the folk who speak to science on this issue simply do not understand the science they parrot. They take it on faith.
Is it faith to accept the word of somebody who has actually tested and examined something in a falsifiable fashion?
So, if Linus Pauling won a Nobel Prize for physics, he's an expert on Vitamin C?
Don't forget, Lamarck was a "scientist."
There's a great old saying....
"It takes a great mind to fail greatly."
I don't mind the AGW deniers, I don't think we could fix it anyway. Weird they think Bill O'Reilly is a viable climatologist, however, and that they oppose the idea of AGW based on economic concerns rather than scientific data.
I think most people haven't a clue about the science, methodology or the repercussions of all this. Nobody could possibly be expected to be particularly qualified to form opinions on such complicated topics of advanced math and science and areas of specific concentration. Because the average Jane and Joe aren't the least qualified to judge for themselves, they must turn to the people who they have trust in that are qualified to sort through all the data, politics and science. And, there's nothing wrong with that.
However, because they aren't capable of forming an educated opinion, they become fodder for those who would rather manipulate or manufacture public opinion through hyperbole and rhetoric and all the doom and gloom scenarios, just to name a few of the tactics being employed.
I'd love to hear or read a reasonable discussion between both sides in a manner that is presented impartially. Is anyone aware of such a resource?
It was the falsified version that killed the idea in Climategate...the supposed scientists goosed their data to reach a desired result.
It is not a disgrace to admit the obvious, that the ideas and actual science invlved are so complicated and cover so many disciplines that 99% of folk simply do not have the background to follow it. It is a disgrace when they produce dumbed down talking points and charts as though they understood the science behind them and then dump them on internet forums as though they were doing anything more than taking the ideas on, yes, faith, exactly as does the parishioner at Sunday services.
I object to the folk with a level of knowledge below most high school science teachers pretending to understand subjects as complicated as the mathematics of Hawkings.
I admit my limitations...I do not embrace my ignorance and then demand the planet plunder their treasuries in the name of the ideas I do not and can not grasp.
Why do you think ClimateGate was such a disaster for the faith? It was the equivalent of discovering the Pope spends his Sunday nights ravishing little children. If folk were operating beyond simple faith, they could take their priests failures.
I also object to those same folk operating entirely on faith pretending their demands are in any significant way different than the dogma of any other church. You would object loudly if Congress demanded a tax in support of any religion but are quite all right when the same Congress decides to demand a tithe in the name of this cult.
Do you really want some more codeine?
Yes, everything you need to know about the universe is in Catch-22. People are just no damn good.
It's an age old rule: Never buy codeine from a guy named Lamont.
Un, no, they didn't. Maybe you should stop reciting the truthiness that Glenn Beck puts in your head and find out just how wrong you are.
The "climategate" was a deliberate, dishonest, and debunked attempt at hurting the other side. It was, in short, misrepresented, and you, dearest dip****, need to stop regurgitating that Koolaid.
Was that an offer from you for illegal drugs?
No, I don't think I want anything you offer, "Lamont".
Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting:
One should not reference Koolaid when one is so obviously imbibing...
This is a scheme whose time has passed. Heck, I read yesterday that Gore is in deep trouble with his carbon credit scheme. The folk making money or gaining political power from the scheme have been outed.
I thought codeine was a legal drug.
Codeine is a controlled substance
And it's the most fun you can have while constipating yourself.
Amen, brother. There should be a law requiring laxitives be issued with this prescription. I went an entire week without doing the number 2 while on a similar pain med. I had rather have had the original pain than go through crapping a bale of hay again.
Glad to see my "full of shit" reference didn't go unnoticed.
Buddha was kidding.
Far less effective in pain control that morphine, far more nasty side effects and just as addictive. The authorities who police all this are more than a little bit irrational.
IT WAS A JOKE!
Sorry, but on this you are just plain wrong. If you read what the Founding Fathers wrote, the separation between Church and State enshrined in the US Constitution is clearly based on what they saw as the need to prevent any one Church from becoming Established. That way, they wanted to ensure that the new State would avoid the bloody religious-based conflicts that had plagued Europe.
That many people believe that mankind is playing a role in global climate change does not make them part of a Church. By contrast, Representative Shimkus's invoking the Christian and Jewish Old Testament in a governmental context is indeed unconstitutional, as JJ said.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Sort of. There was the problem of the power of the Church of England and the War of Independence more at heart here. If you read the opening pages of the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayers you will find the answer.
They really didn't give a fuck about the Spanish Inquisition at the time.
Sorry, but on this you are just plain wrong. If you read what the Founding Fathers wrote, the separation between Church and State enshrined in the US Constitution is clearly based on what they saw as the need to prevent any one Church from becoming Established. That way, they wanted to ensure that the new State would avoid the bloody religious-based conflicts that had plagued Europe.
That many people believe that mankind is playing a role in global climate change does not make them part of a Church. By contrast, Representative Shimkus's invoking the Christian and Jewish Old Testament in a governmental context is indeed unconstitutional, as JJ said.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Really? What is a 'church'? I contend it is defined in a near mystic belief in things that cannot be proven or actually understood.
Now tell me how the global warming cult is different? They believe in things that cannot be proven and in ideas that they cannot understand. That is faith, even when they label it 'science'.
As to the Founders...I believe you are spinning a bit. First, note the wall of separation does not exist in the Constitution but was enshrined there by the US Supreme Court in 1947. Read the letter FROM the Danbury Baptists. They were not concerned with protecting government from evil religion but in assurance their religion would not be screwed with by government. Jefferson wrote in response to that fear:
He is saying the Baptst's have nothing to fear from Government.
Further, at the time the letter was written, several states DID have an established state religion. The prohibition you note was a limit on the feds, not the states.
If the Founders had believed as you write, they would not have allowed such establishments in their own states.
I have very little religious interest but I have a great deal of Constitutional interest and get excited when folk misapply it.
I fail to see any real difference between established religions and the new Global Warming cult. It has dogma no one can explain, relies on faith, has its own priesthood called "scientists", expects government tithes in the form of taxes and punished heresy...How is that not religion?
Simply relabeling religious dogma 'science' does not change its essence. The cults priests cannot prove what they claim. Folk must take it on faith.
Buddah, I agree creationism should not be taught as science.
State sponsored religions died a natural death over time and arguably were killed as a Constitutional idea with the 14th in 1866
Bull...its high priests have missed prediction after prediction. Heck, the hot trend today is global cooling. The problem is not with the concept of climate change, as the climate has changed repeatedly over the last 100,000 years, but the idea that man caused it or can stop it and the answer to varying and undefined threats is massive government intervention and crashing economies, mostly on the part of the most energy efficient nations. Politics is not science.
Religion has all kinds of the same data. Sun worshipers are sure the sun rises every day because they worship it. Hindu's believe in reincarnation while the climate cult believes in carefully selected data they call science, all stirred by the priesthood, to reach dogma that, oddly enough, grants the cult power, money and status.
It is not that religion has no data, it is just that the skeptical reject the interpretation of the data, exactly as climate cult skeptics doubt the data used to support the cult.
I say again, no one knows what will happen to the earths climate next year much less 100 years from now and that is enough to make folk who believe in the cult either self serving (in it for the money, political power, social approval, etc) or actually religious, though they deny it.
The glaciers have been doing what they have always been doing since the end of the Ice Age. They melt, form mountains, move rocks, you know, shit like that.
I threw some ice cubes on my roof. You won't believe it. They melted. So, I did it again and again. Each time they melted.
I was once miles upon miles away from the nearest glacier. I asked the park ranger, "how did God move that rock the size of my house in the middle nowhere?" He replied, "A glacier put it there". I said, "you've gotta be shittin' me?" He said, "nope!".
I'm down with that.
A few months back I was watching a program on the Discovery or History channel about the history of the planet. One item in particular struck me as interesting. It seems the earth has predictable wobble that plays havock on the ecosystem every 10,000 years or so. This very slight wobble causes the Sahara to go from desert to rain forest and back again in cycles.
According to the program, scientists are discovering all sorts of aquatic fossils in the Sahara and evidence of a repeat cycle that coincide with the wobble.
Now, that's climate change I can sink my teeth into.
But that would mean that the last wobble occurred before the Universe was even created.
Yeah, apparently we have trees older than the universe as well. There must be some flawed science standing in the way somewhere.
The most interesting thing I have read in the last decade has been about the Black Sea flood some 7-8000 years ago. I also read that something similar happened to the Med far longer ago after another ice age let up.
The area where I live was subject to a massive thousand foot deep flood when Lake Bonnyville drained and again when the great ice dam in Montana failed.
You in Moses Lake (i.e. downstream from the Dry Falls) or was the lake that went from the Grand Coulee into Montana a different lake?
I admit to forgetting the names of prehistoric lakes.
I wonder how the inerrency types deal with the fact that we can show a flood from much earlier than they say the earth was created?
You mean, if we are to be factual, that they CONCLUDE, based on externally verifiable, testable, and reproducible measurements, that the climate is warming.
This is not faith. It is both testable and verified.
Now, AGW is a bit tougher, one must also realize that one can measure the effects of CO2 on atmospheric transmission of infrared.
But that, as well, is testable and verifiable.
Still, I'm not 100% convinced of AGW, but GW is undeniable, Crush Bimbo and the Old Testament whatever...
There, fixed that for you.
I have noted a few have referenced the idea that there is a religious timeline out there. Admittedly there have been attempts by mostly evangelic's of 150 years ago to date the earth but no one aside from a few of their advocates at the time buy into that. The largest Christian churches don't, the Mormons don't, Muslims, Hindus, eastern faiths don't.
I believe the pretense that those poor idiot religious types believe that (chuckle, knowing chuckle, wink wink-nod nod) is simply an exercise in pretending one is part of a far smarter group, defined to include themselves. It is 'smarter' because, well after all, they are in it. It also demonstrates an amazing lack of historic or religious knowledge.
It is exactly like the folk who quote select short phrases from the Declaration of Independence when speaking of the Constitution and confuse Madison with Jefferson, and who have never read either.
This a great site to separate the BS.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/some-climategate-conclusions/
I am not sure I understand this. Southern Baptist is a pretty large Christian church and very fundamental.
A far as I know there is no tenet of the Southern Baptists that gives a date to the earth...do you have a link?
No, but my sister and brother-in-law and they are Southern Baptist and believe in a "young earth" and all of the Southern Baptist I know believe in a young earth. Anecdotal but I think most fundamentalist reject evolution and believe the earth is around 6-10k years old. I don't know if it is in their doctrine, but if a large majority of their members believe it and it is preached from a majority of the pulpits, then that is good enough for me that is part of their belief system.
I will see if I can find a link.
Edit, here is an interesting article that I found. Not definitive but gives insight.
http://www.gofbw.com/news.asp?ID=12220&fp=Y
Seems to be there is an ongoing argument between 'old earth' and 'young earth' folk and that no position involving a date is doctrine.
No, I believe the folk who pretend there is a date certain as a part of the doctrine of most major religions simply do not understand the idea.
The found a fellow who said such a thing over 100 years ago, laugh at the conclusion self importantly, and assign this view to the religious of every sort. It is as valid as noting Maxine Waters is a Marxist and then saying, ergo, all members of left are Marxists...
I think he means something like scientists have been testing Darwin's Theory since Darwin, whom spent his entire life fighting skeptics. So, the science still hasn't found any tangible evidence that Darwin was correct. We just assume he is correct. Why, I don't know. There is no data that makes him correct. Just like there is no data that makes man-made global warming correct. However, there is data that leads us to conclude that the Medieval Warming Period did exist. It was determined in the 1930s that the period existed between the 16th and 19th centuries. But the causes have never been proven. Nevertheless, the best scientific guesses are low solar radiation, volcanic activity, and oceanic circulation. All three of which have been impacting the climate of the Earth to this day. So, where are the plagues, destruction of crops, and deaths associated with the current global warming that can be compared to the Medieval Warming Period? Also, scientists that are not in a rush to prove man-made global warming naturally realize, through their scientific regiment, that sudden tendency in fluctuations of Earth's climate might explain past variability. If so, as the argument concludes, what is currently being brought before the table is not caused by man but is the normal ebb and flow of the variability Earth's climate. I'm not saying that man is not contributing to the climate. He may just well be but there is nothing in the data that suggests mother nature is not the overwhelming and uncontrollable influence. That if man stopped everything we would see no difference in Earth's climate other than the smell of death from all the rotting corpses.
Huh? That's not the case.
Sorry, but telling that lie doesn't make it so, it just puts you on the same level as other revisionists.
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