–Secretary of State John Kerry, who served
Apparently 300,000-400,000 turned out for the People’s Climate March in New York City, Sunday.
NEW YORK — More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of New York City on Sunday in what organizers called the largest climate-change demonstration in history.
With banners, flags, floats and drums, protesters at the “People’s Climate March” overwhelmed midtown Manhattan in flocks of vivid color, demanding action ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit this week.
And as typically seems to be the case, the aftermath belies the message espoused.
Noah Rothman at Hot Air has the scoop:
“We live in a grotesque era where we have everything we want right now,” one protester told Foster, graciously packaging her entire movement up in one self-hating nutshell.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZlsKvOkHIY[/youtube]
There appear to be two strains of protesters who attended the People’s March. Some cling desperately to the ideals of Marx and who repeat rhetoric and slogans which have largely remained unchanged since the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. These folks ironically consider themselves “progressives.” The other strain of protester who spoke with Foster seemed lost, misplaced, left behind in a world which no longer made much sense.
It is a condition as old as time; the aimless in search of personal meaning complement the ranks of a movement which promises personal purpose. The revolution is over, but the tragically committed revolutionaries persist.
What Foster uncovered in New York City was what so many on the right have known for years, but the public rarely sees. The modern climate alarmism movement has been hijacked by the remnants of those who still adhere to the defunct tenets of revolutionary Marxism. It is no wonder, then, that so few climate change devotees in government and the media go out of their way to make sure you never hear from their grassroots supporters.
And today:
NEW YORK, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Hundreds of protesters plan to risk arrest on Monday during an unsanctioned blockade in New York City’s financial district to call attention to what organizers say is Wall Street’s contribution to climate change.
~~~ Flood Wall Street organizers said they wanted to use the momentum gained by Sunday’s march to “highlight the role of capitalism in fueling the climate crisis.”
I remember attending a couple of anti-war rallies in Los Angeles. These protests were full of fringies spouting all sorts of sideshow agendas that had little to nothing at all to do with what the rally was organized for.
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
The propaganda media said that the first Tea Pary rally in washington dc had 300,000 people attend. It was later proven that there were between 1-2,000 000 of us who were there. That means that they reduced the number down by 1\5. Using their math, and knowing how they always increase the numbers of liberals at an event, they probably increased the amount by a factor of 5. This means that there were probably only about 60,000, at the most, who were there.
Every liberal rally I know of has left their trash behind. Compare this to the Tea Party rallies, where we leave the place cleaner than when we got there. If your city needs a place cleaned up, have a Tea Party rally there.
http://goodsensepolitics.blogspot.com/2009/09/compare-garbage-after-tea-party-vs.html
The climate “movement” is a quasi-religion dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and the middle class in the US. Why didn’t they have this rally in China or India, which are the Earth’s biggest polluters? Because it’s not really about the climate, it’s about the transformation of America into a leftist dictatorship.
The next time a leftist tells you that capitalism is responsible for climate destruction, remind them that the world’s biggest polluter (China) is communist.
Climate change refers to change in the political climate and not real weather. It used to be Global Warming but then when the proof showed this was a total scam the political correct wackos changes it to climate change!! Even if it is changing, I see now proof as to what % is man made. ISIS is real and climate change is NOT!!
@Smorgasbord:
It probably smelled like a lot more than that.
@Angel+Artiste:
Plus, it’s really not as much fun having a protest and tearing other people’s stuff up if you get your head bashed in for it.
It’s not a movement. It’s a money and power grabbing scam that’s been orchestrated by the NWO global elitists. The proof of this is the fact that many of those elitists who yell the loudest about this scam are often, at the same time, those who create the most pollution with their limos, private jet-set lifestyles, and their empty mega mansions. These hypocrites give themselves away with the very lifestyles they live.
And to top it off, these same climate change scam hypocrites say nothing about the negative effects of illegal and legal immigration, Hollywood and political jet-setting, and the US aid given to nonproductive people and 3rd world nations that give the planet nothing but more nonproductive mouths to feed.
Meanwhile, these bum parasite protestors are using this scam as reason to make noise and cause trouble.
I don’t like either Left or Right politicizing climatology research. It should be about science; not politics. It’s why any article which mentions “Al Gore” (in either a negative or positive context) isn’t worth reading, much less considering.
But the real reason I logged onto F/A just now was to bring attention to something which I consider to be absolutely sick, to wit:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
I was a supporter of ObamaCare in the beginning, and I remain a (strong) supporter today. But I find it beyond disturbing that one of its architects (Ezekiel Emmanuel) espouses such rubbish. Emmanuel’s disturbed point of view really has nothing at all to do with the Affordable Care Law, as signed into law, but I can readily understand how opponents of ObamaCare will use Emmanuel’s piece to dredge up the old “death panel” thing again.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
If they really believe what they are protesting for, shouldn’t they be moving to higher ground? When those polar ice caps melt and NYC is under 10 feet of water as we’ve been told, they are all going to drown.
These people need to ”look with their eyes,” as my father used to tell me whenever I thought I’d lost something.
Capitalist countries have the LOWEST pollution of the earth.
China, good commies, have the highest.
You can see China’s man made pollution from space.
Poor places that are ”socialist,” use up or sell carbon in every form they can.
The old USSR dumped all of it’s pollution in its ”Satellite” Republics like Siberia and the Balkans.
The Soviet commies left East Germany a dump so toxic that schoolchildren were bussed out of the filth for two weeks a year just to breathe fresh air.
These protestors are ignaramuses if they think the world would be cleaner under socialism.
@Bill: #4
A long time ago, someone mentioned to me that most of the liberal protesters are homeless, and are being paid for the event. The said to just look at their clothes. At one local liberal protest I did look at them more closely, and most of them were in old and dirty clothes, and looked like they hadn’t bathed for a long time.
I still remember one event where a reporter was at the staging area of a liberal event, and asked one of the protesters what they were protesting. Their answer was, “I don’t know. They haven’t told us yet.”
@Nanny+G: #8
Right on, Nan. I don’t have any doubt that all 7+ Billion of us on this earth can do more to clean-up our act, like reduce our contribution to the trash that floats on the oceans, reduce pollution of our waters and air — and the West has led the way toward this process, however, we have allowed idiots to highjack the discussion and turn it into a socialist anti-capitalism diatribe that makes no sense and flies against human nature. They’ve turned it into a religion, leading the mindless toward a climate war, having no real clue as to cause and effect. A fully educated populace seems an impossibility.
It grates on the nerves to hear a couple of ignorants hold a discussion on “climate change” and the evils of the oil energy industry, then get into their Range Rover and drive home. Geniuses everywhere.
I have yet to see any calcs on how many gallons of fossil fuels were burnt and sent into the atmosphere so a bunch of hippies could protest our burning fossil fuels and sending the remains into the atmosphere.
I’m sure they all rode their solar powered bicycles to do their share to save the planet.
@Larry Weisenthal: #6
obama used to say he liked it being called obamacare. Now, does ANY democrat call it that?
Did you know that obamacare includes creating 111 NEW FEDERAL BUREAUCRACIES, and it includes an additional 16,000 new IRS agents to enforce the law? The taxpayers will be paying for them.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/02/house-republicans-new-bureaucracies-health-care/
Even democrats are complaining about parts of the bill THEY VOTED FOR. I was one of the demonstrators in washington dc the day before they voted on the obamacare bill. The democrats were still working on the bill into the night. THE NEXT MORNING THEY VOTED IT IN.
Instead of Social Security, the government should have mandated a certain percentage of income be put in a retirement account. If those of us who are now retired could have done that from our first job, we would have had several million dollars in our retirement account, but that would mean that WE would have control of OUR money, and politicians want to control it. If the money was in YOUR retirement account, they couldn’t use it to buy more votes, or for whatever other reason they want to use YOUR money. Social Security is the biggest Pongee scheme ever created.
As far as how long a person WANTS to live, I will leave that up to each individual, but I intend to go as long as I can.
@another+vet: #7
I have issued a challenge for ANYONE to find a coastline that the water level has risen higher. Show me where the water level USED TO BE, compared to where it is now. The Earth is constantly changing, and tectonic plates are constantly moving up, down, and sidewise, so the ones that are lowering don’t count. For example, ALL of the Hawaii islands are sinking, and will be gone, but there are new ones forming to replace them.
Not withstanding the tons of trash left behind by the “protesters of ‘climate change'” did any of you notice anything else? Perhaps the “whiteness” of the protesters? Remember how the left wing lapdog media complained how TEA Party gatherings were so “white”? Take a look at the pictures of the protest in New York.
@Smorgasbord: #12
Smorgasbord, agreed, nevertheless, the mental-accuity-deficient author of Obamacare, Emmanuel, is an egoistic zealot loon. The result of this defective mind is exactly what one would expect it to be — unsound, convoluted, complicated, bureaucratic, expensive, expansive, oppressive, and the best socialist’s tool available in a formerly free Nation.
@Larry Weisenthal:
Larry, perhaps you are awakening to the inherently sinister nature of obamacare.
May I ask you to consider the following:
1. Obama and the democrat party stated quite plainly before passing their legislation that we would be able to keep our doctors and our insurance plans if we liked them; that his plan was NOT a tax; that obamacare would bend the medical cost curve down; and that obamacare would decrease the yearly cost of health insurance for a family of four by $2500. We now know that NONE of these promises were true. Obama’s lawyers argued before the SCOTUS that his plan was constitutional as a tax, ultimately winning in court. How can something based utterly on lies produce anything good?
2. Despite having 2 years to prepare, the government website for enrolling in obamacare was a disaster. Even today, despite the insistence of obamacare defenders that they got their target of 8 million enrollees (while they claimed 40 million uninsured) there are estimates that 15% or more of these alleged enrollees have not paid their premiums, and there are all kinds of allegations of duplicate enrollments. The Obama administration will not release any numbers of paid enrollees, nor clear up the duplicate enrollment question. What confidence should anyone have with regard to effective medical care delivery given the track record of incompetency thus far shown?
3. Doctors are already refusing or limiting the number of medicaid patients they will accept, due to the payment rates that are lower than the cost to the physician to see the patient. Obamacare plans do not pay more than medicaid, and in California pay even less. What good does it do a patient to have insurance that physicians will not accept? Do you support forcing physicians to see patients at an economic loss?
4. A few months ago, an obamacare spokesman was.claiming it was not the intent to deny taxpayer subsidies to pay obamacare premiums in states that chose not to form state exchanges, despite multiple videos of this same spokesperson lecturing around the country saying the exact opposite – that obamacare was designed specifically to deny those subsidies to induce states to form their own exchanges. Does such blatant dishonesty not shatter the integrity of obamacare proponents?
5. Why is it that something propagandized as an “affordable care act” requires over 60% of enrollees’ premiums be subsidized by taxpayers?
I would ask you to consider these points which clearly call the motives of obamacare pushers into question. How on earth can anyone believe that a policy so based in lies and deception, further colored by the sstatement from Emmanuel which you referenced, have any beneficial outcomes?
This hypocrisy with regard to obamacare is replicated in the ravings of the AGW cult. They claim they have only pure motives concerning the alleged threat to the environment based on what they call science – their bottom line being that man-made burning of fossil fuels is loading the atmosphere with excessive carbon dioxide, and that rising CO2 levels cause warming temps. Yet actual scientific measurements show no rise in temps for the last 17-18 years, despite increased atmospheric CO2 levels. The actual amount of atmospheric CO2 content is less than 0.038%. Plants “breathe” CO2, yet the EPA has officially labelled CO2 “toxic”. The polar ice caps have set records this summer for increased size. This is being touted by climate alarmists as evidence for global warming, despite the fact that Gore and others were saying for more than 5 years that the polar caps were SHRINKING because of global warming.
Frankly, every pet theory of the left smacks of “emperor’s new clothes” mass manipulation totally ungrounded in reality. Scientific and economic truths are not changeable via majority opinion. It is telling that propagandists like RFK Jr are calling for imprisonment of those of us who disbelieve the AGW cultish hysteria. If their position had any scientific validity rather than the naked political ideology so glaringly evident, then the temps would still be rising and the caps shrinking as the CO2 levels continue to increase.
It seems destroying our economy to an even greater degree as demanding by the likes of Gore and DiCaprio for such a grossly unscientific and unproven theory makes as much sense as following a herd of lemmings over a cliff.
@James Raider: #15
I don’t think it is a “defective” mind. Sometimes we underestimate the minds of liberals. Some of them could be the brightest minds ever. It is like people and money. Some people only want enough to get along at a reasonable level through life. Some want it all. Each of us uses our minds to the best of our ability to get what we want.
The world’s dictators didn’t get there by having “defective” minds.
@Larry Weisenthal:
Don’t you realize that the purpose of Obamacare is not to improve healthcare for those who can’t afford insurance? If they wanted to do just that, it would have been much simpler to just subsidize those people. No, the reason the Dems took over the entire system is to control our lives. Zeke is just jumping to the next step in the process.
It’s interesting that many of our founding fathers lived productive lives into their 80’s and 90’s with the healthcare system of that era. But now Obamacare architect Zeke wants to cut everyone off at 75 to save our benevolent government a little cash. This sounds a lot like socialist George Bernard Shaw, who wanted everyone to justify their value to society every five years or face termination. What has this country become?
Every issue Democrats shrilly scream, protest and write laws “to address”, it is not really about the issue but about greater government reach, intrusion, control over and the lessening of rights, free will and power of individual citizens. This is because the heart of every die-hard Democrat beats in time to their mutual desire for Statist socialist-fascism. Because we will not accept their propaganda and frantic fear mongering dogma, they must seize total control, wrest away our free will and force their religion of “progressive” transformation down our throats and, following Obama’s lead, they now accept tyranny and lawlessness as the new norm to get their way.
@Ditto: #20
Can anybody name one democrat bill that the title is what says it is. For years they have named their bills something they think the public will want, but it sometimes is the exact OPPOSITE of the title of the bill. A perfect example is the Affordable Care Act.
Shortly after it was enacted, employers found out that insurance rates would be going up, because obamacare would pay less than the government payed then. A good example of this is when the AARP encouraged their members to to encourage their politicians to vote for obamacare.
The AARP knew the rates would be going up, meaning that they would make more off of the members who buy insurance through them. I wonder how the AARP employees felt when, shortly after obamacare was passed, they were told that their insurance rates would be going up, do to obamacare.
Because of obamacare, several conservative retirement organizations started to do what the AARP does, but with conservative values. They offer pretty much the same discounts, and they are fighting for what conservatives want from the government, not the liberals.
NY lawmaker schools Neil Cavuto for trying to minimize climate change protests
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/ny-lawmaker-schools-neil-cavuto-for-trying-to-minimize-climate-change-protests/
Jon Stewart: Talking to GOP about climate change is like ‘pushing a million pounds of idiot up a mountain’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/jon-stewart-talking-to-gop-about-climate-change-is-like-pushing-a-million-pounds-of-idiot-up-a-mountain/
@Smorgasbord: And no one has probably come forward with any evidence of receding coastlines. I wonder why. Another challenge would be to see how far they are willing to go to back up their claims. IF all of their assertions are true, it will take years to rectify this problem and those polar ice caps are going to melt. So before NYC is under 10 feet of water, it’ll be under 9 feet of water. Before it is under 9 feet of water, it’ll be under 8 feet of water etc., etc. One challenge then would be to ask them why we haven’t begun evacuating our coastal areas. Another challenge would be that since China is a major contributor to “AGW” and hundreds of millions of lives are at stake, why don’t they push for a declaration of war? Surely killing all those people would be legitimate grounds. Ask the lefties if they would volunteer to go fight the Chinese for the sake of installing wind farms and other “green” technology in China. Watch how fast they side step the issue.
@This+one:
Trying to keep a leftard from being stupid is like trying to keep a million pounds of idiot from falling off a mountain. ( I know that doesn’t help the discourse, but sometimes you have to go for the cheap shot, just to maintain your sanity. :-/
@This+one:
Off your meds again, I see…..
@This+one: Just wondering, by your assessment,:
Why do environmental activists trash (literally) the areas in which they protest trashing the environment?
Why do environmentalists dump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere to go to environmental conferences (that could be conducted via web conference)?
Why does the environmental activist in chief buy a $9 million mansion (probably not the most environmentally friendly way to live in itself) directly in the path of the rising oceans he is making his house payments predicting?
Why do warmist zealots continue to believe the dire environmental predictions even though NOT A SINGLE ONE has ever come to pass?
And then, in light of all of the above, why do warmists supporters view everyone that notices all the above are the STUPID ones?
@Larry Weisenthal: Great to once again read your studied input Dr. How’s life in H.B? Keeping up your workouts?
Dr. Pete, from the right, should keep you busy.
Do all realize the incredibly adverse affect that factory farming has on the environment?
The problem I have is that all this wacky ‘climate change’ stuff weakens valid concerns over the environment. It’s the “boy who cried wolf” problem. There’s also a problem with activist groups trying to remain relevant after they’ve done their main task by continuing to push long past the point of sanity. Both labor unions and greenie groups are guilty of this.
Hi Richard. Greetings. F/A always has a way of totally taking over my life, when I get involved. It’s a credit to Curt, that he created and so ably manages such an addictive platform. It’s worse than addictive computer gaming to me. So I’m just going to be one of those dump and runners, for the most part. When I have a random thought, I’m just dumping it and running off. But I still sign my own name and I’m very easy to contact, by anyone who wants to provide (hopefully only verbal) retaliation.
To answer the personal questions, yes, I’m still reasonably fit. Work is going well. Both kids got married within the last year — one is an OB-GYN resident and the other a 2nd yr med student. Wife and I trying to age as gracefully as possible. Don’t like Dr. Emmanuel laying on guilt and telling me (in so many words) it’s my duty to die at age 75. Here’s the comment I made to Emmanuel’s article published on The Atlantic web site: Larry’s comment
Cheers! – Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Smorgasbord: My brother’s farm pond has risen 21 inches this summer due to the rain in Pennsylvania! LOL I also have a small garden pond that has over flowed the banks several times this summer after some rains. My beach house in Western Nevada isn’t any closer to the Pacific.
@Smorgasbord #13:
“I have issued a challenge for ANYONE to find a coastline that the water level has risen higher. Show me where the water level USED TO BE, compared to where it is now. The Earth is constantly changing, and tectonic plates are constantly moving up, down, and sidewise, so the ones that are lowering don’t count.”
Rather than argue about which particular flake of the Earth’s crust is rising or sinking due to tectonic movement, perhaps you would do well to consider the prospect of what the end result would be if all of the Earth’s ice were to melt. There are approximately 6 million cubic miles of ice presently on Earth, and the Earth has an area of just under 197 million square miles. Were all of the Earth’s ice to melt, yes, there would be some tectonic flexion due to the redistribution of mass, but the approximate net effect on sea level would be the addition of around 150 feet of water.
Worrying about the politics of “climate change” seems like a fools errand. The vast majority of scientists couldn’t care less about politics. If the Earth’s climate is indeed warming at the rate that MOST scientists are saying it is, the World Population is going to be in a very real mess, regardless of who or what is causing the climate change. The bad news is that if human activity IS causing part or all of climate change, we are never going to agree to do enough to change it, pure and simple. Survival of the fittest. Better that those who cannot cope die and decrease the surplus population, to borrow one of Dickens’ themes. The good news is that it won’t be an extinction event.
In the mean time, I wouldn’t be investing your grandchildren’s trust fund in water-front property.
@Bill #26:
“Why do warmist zealots continue to believe the dire environmental predictions even though NOT A SINGLE ONE has ever come to pass?”
It has long been predicted that global warming would result in a trend of melting polar ice, which would in turn cause a rise in sea level.
NASA reports that sea ice in the Arctic has been declining at a rate of nine percent per decade for the past 30 years, while Antarctica has been losing land ice mass at a rate of more than 100 cubic kilometers per year since 2002.
Where do you suppose this melting ice goes?
Have you seen the pictures from space? I guess not…
@another+vet: #23
As I have mentioned before, I go by FACTS. I might not like some of the facts, but if I believer they are true, I will go along with it. One FACT is that I have never heard or read about someone’s shoreline disappearing because the water is rising further up it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the global warming people go to the parts of the planet where they know the tectonic plates are being pushed down into the mantel, like the have been since they were formed, and use those to show how the waters are rising. It doesn’t matter that many mountain ranges around the world are still rising.
The Earth has been changing since it was formed. There are sea plant and sea creature fossils at the top of some mountains, and in the deserts. Where you live right now was completely different millions, or even hundreds of thousands of years, and will be completely different many times as time goes on.
@Bill: #26
Why is there usually record cold and snow during their conferences?
That is a BRILLIANT question. That reminds me of one of the liberal talk show hosts on Air America. I try to be fair, so I listened to the shows sometimes. EVERY show was hate, hate, hate hate, hate. One talk show host even said, “If you’re a republican, you’re stupid!” I don’t belong to any party, but that was the last time I listened to the show. George Soros probably wonders to this day why not even ONE company wanted to advertise on HIS network. I’m guessing that the show doesn’t exist any more, but I don’t care.
If republicans are stupid, what are those of us who don’t belong to any party?
@Smorgasbord: You go by facts LOL–Don’t belong to any Party–funnier still– I do applaud your support of gay rights. RW
@This+one: #22
Trying to convince open minded people that the seas are rising IS pushing a million pounds of idiot up a mountain, but liberals are experts at pushing idiocy.
@Richard Wheeler: #27
The biggest problem with trying to go back to the old fashioned rotating the fields farming is that the residue from the chemicals won’t let it happen. One chemical sprayed on one field to kill the weeds, will kill a farm crop it is planted there the next year. It would take many years for the chemicals to leave the ground.
I grew up in Iowa, and it seemed that most of the farms had to have rural water put in, because the farmers were poisoning their own wells with their chemicals. How long will it be before those same chemicals start showing up in the deep wells that many cities pump there water from?
@Randy: #30
Wait until the excess water from your brother’s farm pond, and your garden, filters down to the Pacific Ocean, then you will be closer. Are you sure it is water, and not chemical runoff? LOL
@George+Wells: #31
Why would I want to worry about it NOW, when there is more ice than in many, many years? Any changes that happen, will take more years than I will have left on this planet, so nobody alive today will have to worry about it, especially since I live over 2,000 feet above the oceans.
Studies have shown that if the Earth warms up, there will actually be more tillable land than before. Countries like Canada will have a climate more line the USA, and more food will be raise than there is now. The people who had to move away from the coasts will move inland where the new warmer climate has med Canada and other northern and southern countries more livable.
Check back with me in 100,000 years, and tell me what you think of the new Earth.
Are you talking about the scientists who sent emails to each other telling how they changed the numbers, and did other things that helped their cause? What about the weather stations that are being put near heat sources, like sidewalks, parking lots, on the roofs of buildings, and even near the exhausts of air conditioners. Are you conveniently omitting anything that doesn’t agree with the liberal agenda?
Do you agree that the weather stations should only be put where there is no manmade heat source. Every city is almost always warmer than the rural area around it. You have the sun heating the buildings, parking lots, cars, and everything else it shines on. You also have the water heaters, commercial and residential refrigeration equipment to keep food cold, the heat created for some process, and all kinds of other heat sources the rural area doesn’t have.
Forgetting about the global warming lie, I do believe we do need to do more about pollution. When we have an election system where the ones who donate the most, get what they want, this won’t change, because the wealthiest companies donate the most, so they get what they want, and that is less pollution control.
To be fair, we need to make other countries accept our pollution standards before they could do business with us. They would have a certain number of years to accomplish this.
@Richard+Wheeler: #35
I understand why liberals don’t want facts to make their decisions. Facts can get in the way of an agenda. Why is it so funny that I don’t want to belong to either party, when neither one has:
(1) Put Social Security in a SEPARATE account, and only those who pay in would get any back?
(2) Reduced the size of the government?
(3) Made sure the military is funded enough to wage at least two wars at the same time?
(4) Paid off the national debt?
(5) Stopped illegals from coming into the USA?
(6) Stopped giving foreign to those who shouldn’t get it?
(7) Reduced welfare?
At your party’s national convention, the delegates voted to take God out of the party, but the teleprompter already had the speech in it that said the vote was yes, so the speaker said the “Yeas” have it. Do you agree that God should be taken out of the democratic party?
Keep in mind that I am not an atheist, but I’m not a church goer either, so it really doesn’t matter to me. I go by moral values, and I have more of them than most church goers I know of. Shouldn’t there be a moral clause in EVERY political party, and EVERY part of government?
@Richard Wheeler:
Not giving up meat Rich. Do you realize that many “factory” farmers have started creating their own electricity by harnessing the methane created by the animals?
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2008/06/26/methane_digester
Next year you’re going to have to find a different reason to blame meat.
@George+Wells:
Indeed, that WOULD be catastrophic. It would also be catastrophic if all the oceans froze solid. What would also be bad would be if the atmosphere froze and fell on us. The question is, is it happening?
Currently, there is more ice at the poles than before. There was more last year; in fact, an expedition to measure how much ice had melted got stuck in the ice. There has been no warming for 17 (and counting) years. Again, none of the dire predictions made by warmists happen; there are so many polar bears that they are becoming a nuisance.
I can’t see spending trillions of dollars that need to be spent elsewhere on “what if’s”.
@George+Wells:
Three decades at 9% per decade is 36% loss. Gone (supposedly).
More ice. Earlier ice. Thicker ice. Lack of warming. Lack of rising sea levels. No lack of unsubstantiated fear mongering. No lack of wealth made from selling fear mongering. Do the math.
The planets warm (it is happening throughout our solar system). The planets cool. If someone can make a buck off that, more power to them. They just ain’t going to make it off me.
@<a href="http://floppingaces.net/2014/09/22/what-is-the-climate-change-movement-I grew up in Iowa and was just back there. I don't know what part you come from but I come from some of the richest soil in America including the Missouri river bottom and the Loess Hills of Northwest Iowa. What you say about wells and ground water is NOT even a part of any discussion or issue there. What is a part of the discussion is the massive waste and cost of 0blamacare. In fact Iowa will have a Republican Governor after this next election. She is pro farmer, served in the military, uses common sense, and hopefully will bring it back to this wonderful state!!
@Smorgasbord: Well said Rich. Hope all is well in the OC. This old corpsmen finally hung it up. Retired now and more time for real important stuff like getting a few laughs from these sites. Actually, I would content the climate issue is 99% political and that’s why it comes up before most of our election cycles and then calms down after. This year has NOT been a good year for Democrats to include the failures of Obamacare. If it was good legislation and good for America then why are all Democrats running for office not declaring their support for it?? I guess because of the slaughter they took in 2010 on the same topic. We also know Obama failed on international policy and his attempts to look like something different now are lame and late. I believe in what he is doing in Syria and Iraq but I also believe the reason for the strength of these terrorists rests on his shoulders. Before the last election cycle he declared them on the run, Iraq with a stable government, and the need to remove our troops according to his political time frame vs. reality. Be interesting when/if he places Boots on the Ground to do the job they must do to stop those who would harm us. Regards and all the best!!
Until and unless China and India embrace climate change the idea of making a human difference is crazy. America’s business economy is already in the sewer due to unions, regulations, and taxes. . India and China account for a 1/3 of the worlds population and growing. Finally until there is proof that this phenomenon is mad made and that man can have a significant impact, it remains a political discussion as it always has been to date.
@Common+Sense: #43
Your link had a flaw in it, and didn’t go to the web site. I always try to try the link before I post it, to make sure it goes to the web site.
I grew up in northwestern Iowa, and moved off of the farm when I was in the 3rd grade. Sometimes I would hear on the news how a land sale brought record a price because of the fertile soil.
obamacare is a problem for everybody, even the ones who voted for it. obama doesn’t even call it obamacare any more.
I hope Iowa goes republican, but don’t expect things to get much better if the republicans win congress and the white house. When they had control, the economy usually went up, but so did the national debt. Neither party want to pay it off, because some of their donors are making a lot of money off of it. Neither party will ever pay it off.
@Smorgasbord #39:
When I was a boy, I had the pleasure of flying across the country a number of times, with a good part of several flights occurring at night. Back in the 50’s, there were but so many cities and towns (they were lit up at night), and a whole lot of “vacant” land in-between (not lit up at night.) Now, save for some pretty barren land in the Southwest, the country is amazingly bright at night, from one end to the other.
Over the intervening years, the country’s population has doubled. The result: “Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.”
Over the SAME period, the state of Maine went from being entirely covered with old-growth forests to one that has been largely clear-cut deforested, with the minor tracks that have been re-planted being covered with fast-growing pine meant to be harvested in 15 years for the pulp industry.
Over the SAME period, the Amazon basin lost 270,000 square miles of jungle to human settlement, farming and other non-forest uses, an amount sufficiently large to influence global weather.
The infestation of Earth with a large and continually increasing human population does not occur without consequent. We are more and more rapidly killing off the majority of other higher life forms (flies, cockroaches and rats not-with-standing) and we are polluting more and more of the Earth’s natural ecological systems with our filth.
When I was born there weren’t dead, acid lakes down-wind of power plants, and there weren’t dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico where farm fertilizer run-off fed algae blooms that robbed the water of oxygen and suffocated the fish. There are simply too many people, and we’re turning the whole world into our septic drain field.
Whether or not humans are the cause of global warming, or even if the globe IS warming, it is too late to do anything about it. Al Gore and friends mean well, but their effort is wasted. We are much too addicted to wasteful consumption and wanton reproduction to ever gain rational control of our planet.
Per your comments regarding pollution: AGREED. The political and economic pressure to pollute is irresistible, and the result is depressingly predictable. I think that predictions of calamitous epidemics that spread uncontrollably as a result of over-crowding will eventually have a “calming effect” on World population. Perhaps we are getting a tiny taste of that now with Ebola.
As far as feeding the World’s growing population is concerned, I AM confident that science and human ingenuity will manage to stay ahead of the total demand for food, but I think that at some point the people who HAVE the food will simply give up trying to feed the billions of people who do not. Futuristic sci-fi movies romanticize such times by focusing on characters who manage to beat the system and live happily ever after, but in reality, it’s not so nice…
Hi George, thoughtful, if depressing. Superbly succinct summary. Larry W
@Smorgasbord:
Come on now. The Earth didn’t start changing until the industrial age. : )
@George+Wells: #47
I used to say this jokingly, but now I mean it when I say this: If it weren’t for humans, the Earth would be a nice place to live. I also used to say that the ex and I had two kids, so we just replaced ourselves. We didn’t add anything to the population.
Then I started thinking my statement through, and figured if we started with a one square mile of land, and two couples on it, and each couple had two kids, then the kids got married and had two kids each, and so on, using average numbers of marrying age, and age at having kids, how long would it be before the one square mile would be shoulder to shoulder and back to front with people? I don’t know how to figure the problem out, but I would like to know.
Every country that starts developing into a manufacturing county goes through the same precesses: The solution to pollution is dilution. There is plenty of water in the rivers and oceans, so they do like the USA and other manufacturing counties and used the oceans as a toilet.
Remember many years ago when the Inuit women of Alaska had many missiages, and it was found out that they had massive amounts of mercury in them from the seals? Remember how the northeastern factory’s smoke was turned to sulfuric acid by the time it fell on the Black Forest, and it was killing the forest?
Somewhere between the west coast and Hawaii there is an area many miles across that is nothing but floating junk. The normal way to get to Hawaii by boat is to follow the ocean current south, then up to Hawaii. One man in a sailboat decided to go straight across and found the junk. There is so much that he couldn’t see across it.