Leading Global Warming Skeptic changes mind after watching Al Gore Speak

[naz]

thanks for the spelling lesson

What does this mean?

they were once carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Yep.

Who are "they"?

[multi]

Originally Posted by Drakonix

From Wikipedia:



These are excellent examples of socialism in practice and they illustrate how it does not work.

the corporatist plutocracy that is western democracy can only work if there is strong balance between socialism and capitalism.. these sorts of kelptocratic dictatorships have no relationship modern western socialism but.. of course it is a good example though... from the violently suppressed anti-government protests to the few elite that make all the money on fuel.

ie.
Our government in the west is just a refined version of these Mugabe,Castro Burma et al . regimes, socialism plays a small part in either really.. but get this.

Humans are social creatures, it is sort of what got us from point A to point B , so you can never really eliminate the social aspect from politics but you can misrepresent it as being something evil when the evil is clearly caused by elements that are corrupt and anti-social .

[multi]

Are humans "wired for empathy"? How does this affect what Chomsky calls the "manufacturing of consent"?

by Gary Olson

Throughout the world, teachers, sociologists, policymakers and parents are discovering that empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.
—Arundhati Roy

The official directives needn’t be explicit to be well understood: Do not let too much empathy move in unauthorized directions.
—Norman Solomon

The nonprofit Edge Foundation recently asked some of the world’s most eminent scientists, “What are you optimistic about? Why?” In response, the prominent neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni cites the proliferating experimental work into the neural mechanisms that reveal how humans are “wired for empathy.”

Iacoboni’s optimism is grounded in his belief that, with the popularization of scientific insights, these recent findings in neuroscience will seep into public awareness and “… this explicit level of understanding our empathic nature will at some point dissolve the massive belief systems that dominate our societies and that threaten to destroy us.” (Iacoboni, 2007, p. 14)

While there are reasons to remain skeptical (see below) about the progressive political implications flowing from this work, a body of impressive empirical evidence reveals that the roots of prosocial behavior, including moral sentiments such as empathy, precede the evolution of culture. This work sustains Noam Chomsky’s visionary writing about a human moral instinct, and his assertion that, while the principles of our moral nature have been poorly understood, “we can hardly doubt their existence or their central role in our intellectual and moral lives.” (Chomsky, 1971, n.p., 1988; 2005, p. 263)

In his influential book Mutual Aid (1972, p. 57; 1902), the Russian revolutionary anarchist, geographer, and naturalist Petr Kropotkin, maintained that “… under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly abandon it are doomed to decay.” Species cooperation provided an evolutionary advantage, a “natural” strategy for survival.

While Kropotkin readily acknowledged the role of competition, he asserted that mutual aid was a “moral instinct” and “natural law.” Based on his extensive studies of the animal world, he believed that this predisposition toward helping one another—human sociality—was of “prehuman origin.” Killen and Cords, in a fittingly titled piece “Prince Kropotkin’s Ghost,” suggest that recent research in developmental psychology and primatology seems to vindicate Kropotkin’s century-old assertions (2002).

The emerging field of the neuroscience of empathy parallels investigations being undertaken in cognate fields. Some forty years ago the celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall observed and wrote about chimpanzee emotions, social relationships, and “chimp culture,” but experts remained skeptical. A decade ago, the famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal (1996) wrote about the antecedents to morality in Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, but scientific consensus remained elusive.

All that’s changed. As a recent editorial in the journal Nature (2007) put it, it’s now “unassailable fact” that human minds, including aspects of moral thought, are the product of evolution from earlier primates. According to de Waal, “You don’t hear any debate now.” In his more recent work, de Waal plausibly argues that human morality—including our capacity to empathize—is a natural outgrowth or inheritance of behavior from our closest evolutionary relatives.

Following Darwin, highly sophisticated studies by biologists Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson posit that large-scale cooperation within the human species—including with genetically unrelated individuals within a group—was favored by selection. (Hauser, 2006, p. 416) Evolution selected for the trait of empathy because there were survival benefits in coming to grips with others. In his book, People of the Lake (1978) the world-renowned paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey unequivocally declares, “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food and their skills in an honored network of obligation.”

Studies have shown that empathy is present in very young children, even at eighteen months of age and possibly younger. In the primate world, Warneken and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute at Leipzig, Germany, recently found that chimps extend help to unrelated chimps and unfamiliar humans, even when inconvenienced and regardless of any expectation of reward. This suggests that empathy may lie behind this natural tendency to help and that it was a factor in the social life of the common ancestor to chimpanzees and humans at the split some six million years ago (New Scientist, 2007; Warneken and Tomasello, 2006). It’s now indisputable that we share moral faculties with other species (de Waal, 2006; Trivers, 1971; Katz, 2000; Gintis, 2005; Hauser, 2006; Bekoff, 2007; Pierce, 2007). Pierce notes that there are “countless anecdotal accounts of elephants showing empathy toward sick and dying animals, both kin and non-kin” (2007, p. 6). And recent research in Kenya has conclusively documented elephant’s open grieving/empathy for other dead elephants.

Mogil and his team at McGill University recently demonstrated that mice feel distress when they observe other mice experiencing pain. They tentatively concluded that the mice engaged visual cues to bring about this empathic response (Mogil, 2006; Ganguli, 2006). De Waal’s response to this study: “This is a highly significant finding and should open the eyes of people who think empathy is limited to our species.” (Carey, 2006)

Further, Grufman and other scientists at the National Institutes of Health have offered persuasive evidence that altruistic acts activate a primitive part of the brain, producing a pleasurable response (2007). And recent research by Koenigs and colleagues (2007) indicates that within the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex or VMPC is required for emotions and moral judgment. Damage to the VMPC has been linked to psychopathic behavior. This led to the belief that as a rule, psychopaths do not experience empathy or remorse.

A study by Miller (2001) and colleagues of the brain disorder frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is also instructive. FTD attacks the frontal lobes and anterior temporal lobes, the site of one’s sense of self. One early symptom of FTD is the loss of empathy.

We know from neuroscientific empathy experiments that the same affective brain circuits are automatically mobilized upon feeling one’s own pain and the pain of others. Through brain imaging, we also know that separate neural processing regions then free up the capacity to take action. As Decety notes, empathy then allows us to “forge connections with people whose lives seem utterly alien from us” (Decety, 2006, p. 2). Where comparable experience is lacking, this “cognitive empathy” builds on the neural basis and allows one to “actively project oneself into the shoes of another person” by trying to imagine the other person’s situation (Preston, in press), Preston and de Waal (2002). Empathy is “other directed,” the recognition of the other’s humanity.

***

So where does this leave us? If morality is rooted in biology, in the raw material or building blocks for the evolution of its expression, we now have a pending fortuitous marriage of hard science and secular morality in the most profound sense. The technical details of the social neuroscientific analysis supporting these assertions lie outside this paper, but suffice it to say that progress is proceeding at an exponential pace and the new discoveries are persuasive (Decety and Lamm, 2006; Lamm, 2007; Jackson, 2004 and 2006).

That said, one of the most vexing problems that remains to be explained is why so little progress has been made in extending this empathic orientation to distant lives, to those outside certain in-group moral circles. Given a world rife with overt and structural violence, one is forced to explain why our deep-seated moral intuition doesn’t produce a more ameliorating effect, a more peaceful world. Iacoboni suggests this disjuncture is explained by massive belief systems, including political and religious ones, operating on the reflective and deliberate level. These tend to override the automatic, pre-reflective, neurobiological traits that should bring people together.

Here a few cautionary notes are warranted. The first is that social context and triggering conditions are critical because, where there is conscious and massive elite manipulation, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get in touch with our moral faculties. Ervin Staub, a pioneering investigator in the field, acknowledges that even if empathy is rooted in nature, people will not act on it “… unless they have certain kinds of life experiences that shape their orientation toward other human beings and toward themselves (Staub, 2002, p. 222). As Jensen puts it, “The way we are educated and entertained keep us from knowing about or understanding the pain of others” (2002). Circumstances may preclude and overwhelm our perceptions, rendering us incapable of recognizing and giving expression to moral sentiments (Albert, n.d.; and also, Pinker, 2002). For example, the fear-mongering of artificially created scarcity may attenuate the empathic response. The limitation placed on exposure is another. As reported recently in the New York Times, the Pentagon imposes tight embedding restrictions on journalist’s ability to run photographs and other images of casualties in Iraq. Photographs of coffins returning to Dover Air Base in Delaware are simply forbidden. Memorial services for the fallen are also now prohibited even if the unit gives its approval.

The second cautionary note is Hauser’s (2006) observation that proximity was undoubtedly a factor in the expression of empathy. In our evolutionary past an attachment to the larger human family was virtually incomprehensible and, therefore, the emotional connection was lacking. Joshua Greene, a philosopher and neuroscientist, adds that “We evolved in a world where people in trouble right in front of you existed, so our emotions were tuned to them, whereas we didn’t face the other kind of situation.” He suggests that to extend this immediate emotion-linked morality—one based on fundamental brain circuits—to unseen victims requires paying less attention to intuition and more to the cognitive dimension. If this boundary isn’t contrived, it would seem, at a minimum, circumstantial and thus worthy of reassessing morality (Greene, 2007, n.p.). Given some of the positive dimensions of globalization, the potential for identifying with the “stranger” has never been more robust.

Finally, as Preston (2006-2007; and also, in press) suggests, risk and stress tend to suppress empathy whereas familiarity and similarity encourage the experience of natural, reflexive empathy. This formidable but not insurmountable challenge warrants further research into how this “out-group” identity is created and reinforced.

It may be helpful, as Halpern (1993, p. 169) suggests, to think of empathy as a sort of spark of natural curiosity, prompting a need for further understanding and deeper questioning. However, our understanding of how or whether political engagement follows remains in its infancy and demands further investigation.

***

Almost a century ago, Stein (1917) wrote about empathy as “the experience of foreign consciousness in general.” Salles’ film The Motorcycle Diaries addresses empathy, albeit indirectly. The film follows Ernesto Guevara de la Serna and his friend Alberto Granada on an eight-month trek across Argentina, Peru, Columbia, Chile and Venezuela.

When leaving his leafy, upper middle-class suburb (his father is an architect) in Buenos Aires in 1952, Guevara is 23 and a semester away from earning his medical degree. The young men embark on an adventure, a last fling before settling down to careers and lives of privilege. They are preoccupied with women, fun and adventure and certainly not seeking or expecting a life-transforming odyssey.

The film’s power is in its depiction of Guevara’s emerging political awareness that occurs as a consequence of unfiltered cumulative experiences. During their 8,000-mile journey, they encounter massive poverty, exploitation, and brutal working conditions, all consequences of an unjust international economic order. By the end, Guevara has turned away from being a doctor because medicine is limited to treating the symptoms of poverty. For him, revolution becomes the expression of empathy, the only effective way to address suffering’s root causes. This requires melding the cognitive component of empathy with engagement, with resistance against asymmetrical power, always an inherently political act. Otherwise, empathy has no meaning. (This roughly parallels the political practice of brahma-viharas by engaged Buddhists.) In his own oft-quoted words (not included in the film), Guevara stated that, “The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

Paul Farmer, the contemporary medical anthropologist, infectious-disease specialist and international public health activist, has adopted different tactics, but his diagnosis of the “pathologies of power” is remarkably similar to Guevara. He also writes approvingly of Cuba’s health programs, comparing them with his long work experience in Haiti. Both individuals were motivated early on by the belief that artificial epidemics have their origin in unjust socioeconomic structures, hence the need for social medicine, a “politics as medicine on a grand scale.” Both exemplify exceptional social outliers of engaged empathy and the interplay of affective, cognitive and moral components. For Farmer’s radical critique of structural violence and the connections between disease and social inequality, see (Farmer, 2003; Kidder, 2003). Again, it remains to be explained why there is such a paucity of real world examples of empathic behavior? Why is U.S. culture characterized by a massive empathy deficit of almost pathological proportions? And what might be reasonably expected from a wider public understanding of the nature of empathy?

Hauser posits a “universal moral grammar,” hard-wired into our neural circuits via evolution. This neural machinery precedes conscious decisions in life-and-death situations, however, we observe “nurture entering the picture to set the parameters and guide us toward the acquisition of particular moral systems.” At other points, he suggests that environmental factors can push individuals toward defective moral reasoning, and the various outcomes for a given local culture are seemingly limitless. (Hauser, 2006) For me, this discussion of cultural variation fails to give sufficient attention to the socioeconomic variables responsible for shaping the culture.

“It all has to do with the quality of justice and the availability of opportunity.” (2006, p. 151). Earlier, Goldschmidt (1999, n.p.) argued that, “Culturally derived motives may replace, supplement or override genetically programmed behavior.”

Cultures are rarely neutral, innocent phenomena but are consciously set up to reward some people and penalize others. As Parenti (2006) forcefully asserts, certain aspects of culture can function as instruments of social power and social domination through ideological indoctrination. Culture is part and parcel of political struggle, and studying culture can reveal how power is exercised and on whose behalf.

Cohen and Rogers, in parsing Chomsky’s critique of elites, note that “Once an unjust order exists, those benefiting from it have both an interest in maintaining it and, by virtue of their social advantages, the power to do so.” (Cohen, 1991, p. 17) (For a concise but not uncritical treatment of Chomsky’s social and ethical views, see Cohen, 1991.) Clearly, the vaunted human capacity for verbal communication cuts both ways. In the wrong hands, this capacity is often abused by consciously quelling the empathic response. When de Waal writes, “Animals are no moral philosophers,” I’m left to wonder if he isn’t favoring the former in this comparison. (de Waal, 1996b, n.p.)

One of the methods employed within capitalist democracies is Chomsky’s and Herman’s “manufacture of consent,” a form of highly sophisticated thought control. Potentially active citizens must be “distracted from their real interests and deliberately confused about the way the world works.” (Cohen, 1991, p. 7; Chomsky, 1988)

For this essay, and following Chomsky, I’m arguing that the human mind is the primary target of this perverse “nurture” or propaganda, in part because exposure to certain new truths about empathy—hard evidence about our innate moral nature—poses a direct threat to elite interests. There’s no ghost in the machine, but the capitalist machine attempts to keep people in line with an ideological ghost, the notion of a self constructed on market values. But “. . . if no one saw himself or herself as capitalism needs them to do, their own self-respect would bar the system from exploiting and manipulating them.” (Kelleher, 2007) That is, given the apparent universality of this biological predisposition toward empathy, we have a potent scientific baseline upon which to launch further critiques of elite manipulation, this cultivation of callousness.

First, the evolutionary and biological origins of empathy contribute hard empirical evidence—not wishful thinking or even logical inference—on behalf of a case for organizing vastly better societies.

In that vein, this new research is entirely consistent with work on the nature of authentic love and the concrete expression of that love in the form of care, effort, responsibility, courage and respect. As Eagleton reminds us, if others are also engaging in this behavior, “. . . the result is a form of reciprocal service which provides the context for each self to flourish. The traditional name for this reciprocity is love.” Because reciprocity mandates equality and an end to exploitation and oppression, it follows that “a just, compassionate treatment of other people is on the grand scale of things one of the conditions for one’s own thriving.” And as social animals, when we act in this way we are realizing our natures “at their finest.” (2007, pp. 170, 159-160, and 173) Again, the political question remains that of realizing a form of global environment that enhances the opportunity for our nature to flourish.

I’ve noted elsewhere, Fromm’s classic book The Art of Loving is a blistering indictment of the social and economic forces that deny us life’s most rewarding experience and “the only satisfying answer to the problem of human existence.” For Fromm, grasping how society shapes our human instincts, hence our behavior, is in turn the key to understanding why “love thy neighbor,” the love of the stranger, is so elusive in modern society.

The global capitalist culture with its premium on accumulation and profits not only devalues an empathic disposition but produces a stunted character in which everything is transformed into a commodity, not only things, but individuals themselves. The very capacity to practice empathy (love) is subordinated to our state religion of the market in which each person seeks advantage in an alienating and endless commodity-greedy competition.

Over five decades ago, Fromm persuasively argued that “The principles of capitalist society and the principles of love are incompatible.” (Fromm, 1956, p. 110). Any honest person knows that the dominant features of capitalist society tend to produce individuals who are estranged from themselves, crippled personalities robbed of their humanity and in a constant struggle to express empathic love. Little wonder that Fromm believed radical changes in our social structure and economic institutions were needed if empathy/love is to be anything more than a rare individual achievement and a socially marginal phenomenon. He understood that only when the economic system serves women and men, rather than the opposite, will this be possible (Olson, 2006).

***

The dominant cultural narrative of hyper-individualism is challenged and the insidiously effective scapegoating of human nature that claims we are motivated by greedy, dog-eat-dog “individual self-interest is all” is undermined. From original sin to today’s “selfish gene,” certain interpretations of human nature have invariably functioned to retard class consciousness. These new research findings help to refute the allegation that people are naturally uncooperative, an argument frequently employed to intimidate and convince people that it’s futile to seek a better society for everyone. Stripped of yet another rationalization for empire, predatory behavior on behalf of the capitalist mode of production becomes ever more transparent. And learning about the conscious suppression of this essential core of our nature should beg additional troubling questions about the motives behind other elite-generated ideologies, from neo-liberalism to the “war on terror.”

Second, there are implications for students. Cultivating empathic engagement through education remains a poorly understood enterprise. College students, for example, may hear the ‘cry of the people’ but the moral sound waves are muted as they pass through a series of powerful cultural baffles. Williams (1986, p. 143) notes that “While they may be models of compassion and generosity to those in their immediate circles, many of our students today have a blind spot for their responsibilities in the socio-political order. In the traditional vocabulary they are strong on charity but weak on justice.”

Nussbaum (1997) defends American liberal education’s record at cultivating an empathic imagination. She claims that understanding the lives of strangers and achieving cosmopolitan global citizenship can be realized through the arts and literary humanities. There is little solid evidence to substantiate this optimism. My own take on empathy-enhancing practices within U.S. colleges and universities is considerably less sanguine. Nussbaum’s episodic examples of stepping into the mental shoes of other people are rarely accompanied by plausible answers as why these people may be lacking shoes—or decent jobs, minimum healthcare, and long-life expectancy. The space within educational settings has been egregiously underutilized, in part, because we don’t know enough about propitious interstices where critical pedagogy could make a difference. Arguably the most serious barrier is the cynical, even despairing doubt about the existence of a moral instinct for empathy. The new research puts this doubt to rest and rightly shifts the emphasis to strategies for cultivating empathy and identifying with “the other.” Joining the affective and cognitive dimensions of empathy may require risky forms of radical pedagogy (Olson, 2006, 2007; Gallo, 1989). Evidence produced from a game situation with medical students strongly hints that empathic responses can be significantly enhanced by increased knowledge about the specific needs of others—in this case, the elderly (Varkey, 2006). Presumably, limited prior experiences would affect one’s emotional response. Again, this is a political culture/information acquisition issue that demands further study.

Third, for many people the basic incompatibility between global capitalism and the lived expression of moral sentiments may become obvious for the first time. (Olson, 2006, 2005) For example, the failure to engage this moral sentiment has radical implications, not the least being consequences for the planet. Within the next 100 years, one-half of all species now living will be extinct. Great apes, polar bears, tigers and elephants are all on the road to extinction due to rapacious growth, habitat destruction, and poaching. These human activities, not random extinction, will be the undoing of millions of years of evolution (Purvis, 2000). As Leakey puts it, “Whatever way you look at it, we’re destroying the Earth at a rate comparable with the impact of a giant asteroid slamming into the planet…” And researchers at McGill University have shown that economic inequality is linked to high rates of biodiversity loss. The authors suggest that economic reforms may be the prerequisite to saving the richness of the ecosystem and urge that “… if we can learn to share the economic resources more fairly with fellow members of our own species, it may help to share ecological resources with our fellow species.” (Mikkelson, 2007, p. 5)

While one hesitates imputing too much transformative potential to this emotional capacity, there is nothing inconsistent about drawing more attention to inter-species empathy and eco-empathy. The latter may be essential for the protection of biotic communities. Decety and Lamm (2006, p. 4) remind us that “… one of the most striking aspects of human empathy is that it can be felt for virtually any target, even targets of a different species.”

This was foreshadowed at least fifty years ago when Paul Mattick, writing about Kropotkin’s notion of mutual aid, noted that “… For a long time, however, survival in the animal world has not depended upon the practice of either mutual aid or competition but has been determined by the decisions of men as to which species should live and thrive and which should be exterminated. … [W]herever man rules, the “laws of nature” with regard to animal life cease to exist.” This applies no less to humans and Mattick rightly observed that the demands of capital accumulation and capitalist social relations override and preclude mutual aid. As such, neuroscience findings are welcome and necessary but insufficient in themselves. For empathy to flourish requires the elimination of class relations (Mattick, 1956, pp. 2-3).

Fourth, equally alarming for elites, awareness of this reality contains the potential to encourage “destabilizing” but humanity-affirming cosmopolitan attitudes toward the faceless “other,” both here and abroad. In de Waal’s apt words, “Empathy can override every rule about how to treat others.” (de Waal, 2005, p. 9) Amin (2003), for example, proposes that the new Europe be reframed by an ethos of empathy and engagement with the stranger as its core value. The diminution of empathy within the culture reduces pro-social behavior and social cohesiveness. Given the dangerous centrifugal forces of ethno-nationalism and xenophobia, nothing less than this unifying motif will suffice, while providing space for a yet undefined Europe, a people to come.

Finally, as de Waal observes, “If we could manage to see people on other continents as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would be building upon rather than going against our nature.” (de Waal, 2005, p. 9) An ethos of empathy is an essential part of what it means to be human and empathically impaired societies, societies that fail to gratify this need should be found wanting. We’ve been systematically denied a deeper and more fulfilling engagement with this moral sentiment. I would argue that the tremendous amount of deception and fraud expended on behalf of overriding empathy is a cause for hope and cautious optimism. Paradoxically, the relative absence of widespread empathic behavior is in fact a searing tribute to its potentially subversive power.

Is it too much to hope that we’re on the verge of discovering a scientifically based, Archimedean moral point from which to lever public discourse toward an appreciation of our true nature, which in turn might release powerful emancipatory forces?
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/1...ctual-progeny/

cue the copy/paste police in 3.....2.....1

[multi]

...Moar

[multi]

Man Made Climate Change Advocates Say Challenge To Gore Film Is Huge Industrialist Conspiracy
Outrageous response to High Court's inconvenient ruling
Steve Watson

Advocates of the man made global warming theory have jumped on an article in yesterday's London Observer which insinuates that a recent court case which attempted to stop Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth being shown to school children in the UK is part of a vast conspiracy secretly being implemented by big industry insiders.

The Observer article, via a series of tenuous claims, suggests that the school governor, Stewart Dimmock, who challenged the screening of Al Gore's climate change documentary in secondary schools, calling it "tantamount to brainwashing", was funded by "a powerful network of business interests with close links to the fuel and mining lobbies."

The claim has seemingly arose from the fact that Mr Dimmock says he received some financial backing from a small Scotland-based political party which campaigns for lower taxes and the expanding nuclear power. The report also says Dimmock was backed by (gasp, shock, horror) "a local Conservative Party figure".

The Observer then claims that this Scotland-based party received some funding three years ago from a non-profit body called Scientific Alliance , composed of scientists and non-scientists, which aims to challenge many of the claims about man made global warming.

The Observer then makes a leap of faith by claiming that this group is linked to Exxon Mobil as it once co-authored a report, which questioned climate change claims, with the George C Marshall Institute, a US body that has been funded in the past by the energy giant Exxon Mobil.

Ever heard of the "you're only five steps away from any other person" theory? In short, advocates of man made climate change have decided that this series of unverified claims and distant links confirms that the kingpins of the big energy companies are involved in a secret plot to discredit Al Gore and his legion of man made global warming fans.

In truth, as the afore mentioned court case found , it is Al Gore's film itself that discredits the theory of man made global warming, as it is chock full of provable errors and junk science:

A British High Court judge this week exposed nine inaccuracies in former U.S. vice president Al Gore's award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, labelling it "a political film" and calling many of its claims about climate change "alarmist" and "exaggerated."

Though it stopped short of preventing the film being shown in schools, the High Court ruled that the documentary would have to be screened with guidance notes because it is unbalanced. Perhaps the judge involved in the case also has some distant and tenuous link to someone who once knew someone who worked for an energy company?

We have previously shown that although the UN's IPCC and Gore's film claim that "a consensus" of all scientists endorse the man made warming theory, studies have shown that in truth less than half even tacitly endorse it.

We have also shown that the common charge that questioning the official orthodoxy of the global warming religion equates to acting as a stooge for the western establishment and big business interests is a complete reversal of the truth. In fact it is the high priests of the elite and kingpin oil men like chairman of British Petroleum, Peter Sutherland, that continue to fan the flames of global warming hysteria.

Global Warming is being used by established western industrial nations in conjunction with globalist groups such as the CFR, Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, which are populated with heads of corporate industry, to place draconian restrictions upon developing countries and force up energy prices. Industrial globalists have everything to gain from perpetuating the man made theory, the logic that they would conspire against climate change advocates is impaired.

..More
(some of which is already posted above)

[Drakonix]

Gore Cashing in on $6T Energy Business

Former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore is joining forces with a venture capital company that’s seeking to profit from the move toward “clean technology” in the $6 trillion global energy business.

Gore is becoming a hands-on partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm where an old friend, John Doerr, is a partner.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s move comes as the company “makes a risky move beyond information technology and healthcare investing into the fast-growing and increasingly competitive arena of ‘clean energy,’” Fortune magazine reports.

Within several years more than a third of Kleiner’s latest fund, which totals $600 million, will reportedly be invested in technologies that seek to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Among the companies the fund has already invested in are firms that make microbes to scrub old oil wells, build large-scale solar-power farms, develop solid-oxide fuel cells, and design equipment for use in electric car batteries.

Doerr, meanwhile, will join the advisory board of Generation Investment Management, the $1 billion investment company Gore began three years ago with David Blood, former head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, to invest in environmentally friendly companies.

Gore, along with Doerr and Blood, insist that halting global warming will require “a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business,” according to Fortune.

“Coal plants, gas stations, the internal-combustion engine, petrochemicals, plastic bags, even bottled water will have to give way to clean, green, sustainable technologies.”

Asked why he is combining his environmental advocacy work with a profit motives, Gore — who is already an advisor to Google and a director at Apple Inc. — told Fortune: “We all believe the market must play a central role.”

Note how Gore/Doerr/Blood state that “halting global warming will require a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business”. No doubt that Mr. Gore’s firm(s) are poised to provide the only “solution”. It must be nice to create a need and then profit by selling the fix. $6 trillion is a lot of motivation.

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/G...1303.html?s=al

Yeah, it’s a right hand (conservative) source - I figure it’s just as good as the left leaning copy and paste articles posted within this forum.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Gore didn't "create the need" for methods of improving our impact on the planet, and he will hardly have a monopoly on the fixes. The fact that you're just bitching about his good business sense now (and common sense in general), is pure petulance, apparently.

Realizing the market will have to play a pivotal role is one thing, but this creating a need and cornering the market on the fix thing is something best left to the masters, someone with no conscience, like Halliburton.

Meanwhile, in other cut and paste news:

UN Panel Gives Dire Warming Forecast
By ARTHUR MAX, AP


Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to an eventual rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.

"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China - the world's two biggest polluters - to do more to slow global climate change.

"I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role," Ban told reporters. "Both countries can lead in their own way."

Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.

Climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet," he said, and the effects are "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must work together."

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-thirds of the world's species.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and go down after that.

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will gradually rise over the next 1,000 years to reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period, or about 1850.

"We have already committed the world to sea level rise," the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.

Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent droughts, and could drive up to 70 percent of plant and animal species to extinction, according to the panel's report.

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes - and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

"The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice," Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, next month. "I expect the world's policy makers to do the same."

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global climate change treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

"This report will have an incredible political impact," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, told The Associated Press. "It's a signal that politicians cannot afford to ignore."

The United States opted out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the science was unproven and that the burden of mandatory emission cuts was unfair since it excluded fast-growing China and India.

Chief U.S. delegate Sharon Hays said doubts have been dispelled. "What's changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening," she said in a conference call late Friday. She did not indicate that Washington would abandon its policy of voluntary emission cuts.

China and India have said any measures impinging on their development and efforts to lift their people from poverty were unacceptable - a point likely to be heeded at the Bali talks.

The report offered dozens of measures for avoiding the worst catastrophes if taken together - at a cost of less than 0.12 percent of the global economy annually until 2050. They ranged from switching to nuclear and gas-fired power stations, developing hybrid cars, using more efficient electrical appliances and managing cropland to store more carbon.

Ban said a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries develop clean energy resources, adapt to climate conditions and give them the technology to help themselves.

He said he witnessed the devastation of climate change in disappearing glaciers of Antarctica, the deforested Amazon and under the ozone hole in Chile.

"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," said Ban. "But they are even more terrifying because they are real."

Key Findings of UN Scientific Report

The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

Of course, it's only a UN thing--it's not like a bunch of obsolete terrorist-loving foreign liberals could actually have valid information about the planet. Too busy trying to turn us all to spineless EuroZombies with their HomoRays.

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Too busy trying to turn us all to spineless EuroZombies with their HomoRays.

for real? christ like i don't have enough to worry about.

[JackSpratts]

cheery thoughts: if we disappeared today (i hope we don't, i'm looking forward to a nice meal). great book btw.

- js.

[vernarial]

Interesting little timeline there, Jack. Thanks for the link.

[albed]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Gore didn't "create the need" for methods of improving our impact on the planet, and he will hardly have a monopoly on the fixes. The fact that you're just bitching about his good business sense now (and common sense in general), is pure petulance, apparently.

The sale of indulgences didn't end up well for the catholic church and Gore certainly acts like the popes and bishops of old with his own obscene "global impact". Is Drak the new Martin Luther?

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Realizing the market will have to play a pivotal role is one thing, but this creating a need and cornering the market on the fix thing is something best left to the masters, someone with no conscience, like Halliburton.

So are you bitching about Gore's scam now too?

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Meanwhile, in other cut and paste news:



Of course, it's only a UN thing--it's not like a bunch of obsolete terrorist-loving foreign liberals could actually have valid information about the planet. Too busy trying to turn us all to spineless EuroZombies with their HomoRays.

But the U.N. has such a reputation for integrity that it's word absolutely cannot be doubted and of course it has no interest at all in expanding its influence by using vaguely defined environmental scares.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Is Drak the new Martin Luther?

Nailing feces to the door doesn't count.

[Drakonix]

Nailing feces to the door doesn't count.

I don’t need to post derogatory comments to state my point(s).

Give it a rest.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Good for you, that should make the fact that you're not making any point(s) even easier.























And I apologize, I had completely forgotten that you have no sense of humor.

[Drakonix]

I see you completely disregarded my polite suggestion for your insults to stop.

I did not join this board to trade insults, especially with one of the board moderators.

I feel that it is egregious for a moderator to engage in flaming and trolling - such is your conduct.

I have a sense of humor, but only to things that have merit as being humorous. That does not encompass being flamed and berated by a moderator.

If you feel I have acted inappropriately and should leave the board, just say so. Say it right here, in a public area of the forum for all to see. Cite the reason(s) behind the decision. If you tell me to leave, I’ll do it.

[multi]

I don't think Romana is a mod on this subforum... I was under the impression this was a free-for-all unmoderated part of the forums but I might be mistaken.

Generally in life I have found just because you act a certain way it doesn't mean others will act the same with you,in regard to flaming and trading insults. I think you are great like that personally and never have (that I remember) needed to get defensive and flame you back in any discussion even though we would seem to have opposing views on most things discussed here. Anyway Drak, sorry man but I don't really see anyone asking you to leave?

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Originally Posted by Drakonix

I have a sense of humor, but only to things that have merit as being humorous. That does not encompass being flamed and berated by a moderator.

Yeah, you sound like a regular laugh riot there chief. Did the lump of coal you had up your ass while you typed that turn into a diamond yet?

Sorry to upset your girlish plans for martyrdom, but there'll be no exile for you. As far as I'm concerned you'll just have to continue to take your insults like everyone else here, and count yourself luckier than some if it doesn't occur every single time you post. And quit pretending you don't contribute, you can out-smug and out-condescend the best of us.

My awesome moderator powers (which consist entirely of deleting one spam post from the music forum per average month) really needn't intimidate you so. They don't grant me any special privileges to call bullshit bullshit, I can do that all by myself. But your hissy is noted, and who knows, maybe your petition to the higher powers will be heard and they will intervene on your behalf and try to assuage my cruel and unfair reign of terror over you. Let me know how that works out for you.

As way of making amends however, I'll try to roll back time to the point you were making before my outlandish interruption. I believe it was something like: "Al Gore has cooties so global warming has cooties too, nyah nyah nyah."

Please update your bookmarks everyone and let's try to carry on.

[albed]

Oh ffs quit your whining Drak. You did make a point and Moaners 'nailing feces' crack wasn't the least bit witty so you had a win but you had to go and start with the poor poor me victim crap and you lost the round.


Learn to counterpunch and stop whining.

[naz]

[Mazer]

If you're all done being dramatic, give this little talk posted at www.ted.com a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/192

This guy makes two important points that to my knowledge no other climate scientist has publicly spoken of: that global warming won't harm everybody and may indeed help some people, and that because there are people who benefit from global warming, nobody will ever be able to agree on the proper way to use forthcoming global climate control technologies.