A Voice in the Dark

Brilliant, of course, because it isn’t mine.

A friend observed recently that he is skeptical of global warming for one and only one reason: nobody has changed his stripes over global warming.

I didn’t quite understand this until he explained that what it amounts to is, everyone who believes global warming is happening will somehow benefit from it. The most common benefit is political - people want to outlaw a behavior, or change a tax, or shut down an industry, and if global warming is actually happening… the rest of the world is more likely to agree to it.

For example, the peak oil crowd wants us to use less petroleum fuel. Petroleum fuel is used in internal combustion engines. Internal combustion engines generate greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases supposedly contribute to global warming. So the peak oil crowd leaps into the global warming tent, because it makes a good argument for what they want to do anyway.

Many other people want to halt deforestation and plant more trees. Trees consume carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and therefore help to combat global warming. They leap into the global warming tent, because it makes a good argument for what they want to do anyway.

Still other people want everyone to ride the bus to relieve traffic congestion. A bus generates fewer hydrocarbon emissions than a collection of cars transporting the same number of people, so it helps to combat global warming. So the public transportation crowd leaps into the global warming tent, because - you guessed it! - it makes a good argument for what they want to do anyway.

If global warming were really the case, people would be changing their minds. Instead, global warming is simply leading them to yell a little louder, and it’s the same thing they were always yelling. And while that doesn’t prove anything, it’s awfully damn suspicious.

Filed under: Global Warming, Politics
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The debate on global warming is not about how to save the planet. It is about how to protect ourselves from the planet’s wrath. It is, in essence, a global discussion on how best to appease the mighty Earth-spirit so that it may not destroy us all.

Isn’t that a pretty stupid discussion to have in this day and age?

 

Filed under: Global Warming, Philosophy
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First, anyone claiming Representative Foley is some sort of criminal is an idiot. What he has done is embarrassing, and distinctly outside the code of conduct for a Congressional Representative. He should lose his seat, which he has. But the fact is, he didn’t do anything illegal! In 33 states (including parts of his own represented state of Florida) and the District of Columbia the age of sexual consent is 16 or lower. Three states - Iowa, Missouri, and South Carolina - have the age of sexual consent set at 14, just as I recommend. Fully twenty-nine states explicitly provide the age of sexual consent as 16, without requiring partners to have a comparable age, and without explicitly specifying a higher age for homosexual relations. Since Foley has confined his activity to pages sixteen and older within the D.C. limits, our opinion of his behavior is irrelevant: sex with a sixteen year old is LEGAL in that jurisdiction, and since there are areas of his own state which provide a similar legal climate, it cannot be legitimately claimed that he has crossed state lines for the purpose of having sex with a minor.

Second, the Republican plan to build a 700 mile fence on the Mexican border is stupid. We are already seeing major repercussions in the farming community from a lack of migrant workers, because the increased scrutiny is making them afraid to migrate. This means that the migrant workers are poorer, the farmers are poorer, and the law of supply and demand sends the price of healthy food up. Manufacturers of crap like Twinkies and donuts, however, will be largely unaffected… thus encouraging the low-income American to eat less real food in favor of the much less expensive garbage that already makes us a nation of the obese. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Finally, Islam is not an aggressor. Islam is a victim. There is an irreducible proportion of violent assholes with terrorist tendencies in the world, and they need ignorant simple-minded people to take the actual risks in the battle against sensible humanity. While religion is not inherently ignorant or simple-minded, the ignorant and simple-minded are readily converted to religion, and it is in the direct interest of the violent assholes to convert those people to a religion which supports their goals. Islam is simply the latest in a string of religions which are supportive of those goals when appropriately twisted and misinterpreted; almost every religion on the planet has been so used. The criteria are simply an ability to claim that “God says you need to kill everyone” by twisting the scriptures, a sufficiently large population of ignorant and simple-minded people familiar with the scriptures, and a suitable mechanism to isolate people from rational discourse and critical thinking.

And on the unimportant front, Al Gore just said that cigarette smoking is a major contributor to global warming. For those who don’t happen to speak complete and total moron, that translates to “I invest no thought whatsoever in the words that come out of my mouth”.

Filed under: Gay Rights, Global Warming, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Religion
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A tale that I thought was worth spreading a little, excerpted from a post at Cross-Currents: 

An elderly Jew, well into his eighties, applied for a passport. He came accompanied by two people who knew him well, and could identify him. The clerk turned down his application, demanding a birth certificate. Now, such certificates had only been introduced in that country many decades after the birth of the aged applicant, a fact that he immediately pointed out. The clerk responded contemptuously, “Well then. Just go back to your town and bring two witnesses who were around when you were born.” [...] He didn’t simply dismiss the Jew, or express his intense hatred for him, but announced that logic was not a commodity that one wished to squander on sub-human Jews.

If you strip out the specifics about Jews, you find something I see very often - people who apparently do not consider it worth the time and effort to state a rational disagreement with your argument.

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Filed under: Global Warming, Politics
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Here’s an interesting view on global warming.

http://volokh.com/posts/1157001708.shtml

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Filed under: Global Warming
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