All Roads Lead To Rome
Dave Price
Or, in this case, home (link at link may still be off by one post).
Other times, though, they all seem to point toward Kyoto.
“One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.The list of problems not caused by global warming seems to shrink every day.
Moments later, when asked by a reporter if he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.
Another of the odd and telling similarities between Iraq coverage and global warming coveraqe is the heavy, anti-empirical emphasis on bad news. Stories about deaths projected from global warming are much more common than those about lives saved, even though the latter by many estimates is larger.
As with Iraq, I don't think this is entirely driven by the media's political bias; there is a bias for prioritizing bad news over good in human nature, a product of our inherited evolutionary psychology: the more paranoid early humans, living in a dangerous environment as they did, were more likely to survive and reproduce, and so they're the ones we're descended from.
This does mean that while the media is giving us what we want, we're often getting a too-pessimistic view of events. Remember the reports of cannibalism and piles of corpses after Katrina? Why do most Americans think we're in a recession, but say their own personal financial situation is better? If you want to arrive at truth, it's best to always keep in mind that your conclusions can only be as objective as your view of the data.
And before Reid tries pulling the AGW chain, he should wonder about his very own 1997 Kyoto vote...
Next up will be mudslides this winter and spring, in Malibu. Heck, it happens even without the fires. Pacific Coast Highway will be shut down.
If Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear burn a lot, when real estate hits it's bottom in a few years, that'll make for some excellent buying opportunities.
Right now I have my windows all shut, and there's ash in the air and on the ground, and I'm a long ways away from the fires. My eyes hurt, and I've been indoors all day. I'm so close to the ocean (about 500 feet) that I'm not too worried, but if they don't get it under control things could get bad. Heck, the Marines evacuated camp Pendleton.
We should claim it's a terrorist attack by Iran. Some Persians flicked some cigarettes, therefore the Iranian government has launched multiple terrorist attacks. Hey, they use that type of logic on us.....
That's a bad thing when you're talking about Eucalyptus in California. It's a
badgood thing when you're talking about staples that can feed otherwise starvinglittle brownpeople.Somehow, I just can't wrap my mind around CO2 always being bad.
OK... It's good to see a right winger accept evolution.
It's bad to apply evolutionary psychology to everything without evidence.
A suicide bomber killing 10 people is news.
And we didn't save any lives by invading Iraq.
This has nothing to do with evolutionary psychology, and everything to do with your deranged sense that "good news" is just as important as "bad news". it isn't.
Furthermore, those fighting the fires in California have reported a marked shift in the climate (yes, that would be "climate change") resulting in much drier conditions than normal.
As irresponsible as it is to attribute individual events to climate change, it's more irresponsible to categorically deny the effect of climate change on such events.
One position is based on science, the other, denial. I'll take science (even if it can't be definitive) over obstructive denial (due to politics not science) any day.
He was one of the four not voting that day. Strangely Feinstein was another, as was Harkin and Bryan, the other Nevada senator at the time.
All four were Democrats.
buk buk buk...
Missed that one...
Damned self-correcting Internet medium!!!
Yeah, it's called Santa Ana winds, and according to the Indians it's been happening long before the industrial revolution.
I just love it when scientists point out the correlation between CO2 and temperature. The same scientists that taught us "correlation does not mean causation"... Consider this, temperatures rise because of a change of brightness of the sun (it happens), so life on earth thrives more, and produces more CO2.
CO2 is a wimpy greenhouse gas, unlike methane, which itself is nothing compared to water vapor (clouds).
Please explain how humans caused the drastic global warming of the past, before humans existed.
There's groupthink going on in the science circles, and there's more to the story than they let on.
This is not to say there isn't a problem. Taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere is certainly foolish, but there's more to the story than the wonderful media lets on.
We should destroy the market for oil, in order to save the environment. Oh, and we can take down some of our enemies while we're at it. I declare Jihad against oil
Sure we did, just ask the Kurds and Shia still digging out mass graves.
By the numbers: the average number of people killed by violence during Saddam's reign was 7,000 per month. The average since is much lower, around 2500 by most estimates.
Anyway, the reason the fires are getting seemingly worse is population growth and developers building in the canyons, along with idiots setting fires. Arson in this situation should be subject to immediate hanging, ideally from an about-to-burn eucalyptus tree; those bad boys are essentially silos of gasoline and go up like giant Roman candles...
When I was a kid, I never liked October, because it was always the month for fires, earthquakes, and stock market crashes.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.