The issue with Kyoto is that it puts undue strain on the US to conform with worldwide CO2 emission standards, while allowing developing nations like China and India to slide. You also can’t blame the US non-participation solely on Bush; in 1997 the Senate voted 95-0 that the US should not sign Kyoto without targets and timetables for developing nations as well. In 1998, Bill Clinton refused to submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification.

Like I said, if you want to save money by buying Priuses (Priusi? Priusen?) and fluorescent bulbs, be my guest. But don’t get the government to require me to do it too, especially based on flimsy, heavily disputed evidence. Let’s prove something first! Then I and my conservative friends will listen, I promise!

Kidding aside, Pascal’s wager is a vital piece of logic here, and I wish more people would consider it.

The problem is we are being fed the Al Gore lines as fact, when reputable scientists disagree about whether or not our CO2 emissions are affecting the environment in any measurable way. Our most recent Nobel laureate claiming that there is no disagreement on this point is a blatant and provable lie.

Let’s be honest here. We’re not talking about patching the dam. We’re talking about the government mandating you move your house, brick by brick, out of the flood zone, at your expense, with their only proof being small cracks that may very well be nothing. What Gore and those like him want is a serious and dramatic rollback of human industrial progress, and we should not condone that without the most concrete and indisputable evidence.

If you want to use fluorescent bulbs and drive a Prius, you are more than welcome to. But don’t tell me I am required to because you bought into the enviro-hype.

Also, Martin: You should check your facts as well. American involvement in WW2 and Vietnam were both initiated by Democratic presidents; Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson respectively. Exactly what “right wing” slaughter policies were in effect then, under two of the more liberal presidents of the last 100 years? Are you also implying that WW2 was a “slaughter” and wasn’t worth it? I think a large number of your countrymen would disagree.

But I must say, I am pretty disappointed that you are in favor of slaughtering people.

Care to also show your facts for the earth getting colder? Lets lay down some logic here. Looking at temperature fluctuations and CO2 levels over 10s of 1000s of years we can see that global temperatures are linked pretty heavily with CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Each ice age corresponds with a sharp drop in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. So greenhouse gases cause the earth to warm up and cool down. This is the fundamental fact that keeps the earth warm enough for life to exist.

Next bit of fact is that CO2 levels have been rising since the industrial revolution. And the rate at which they have been rising has grown massively since then. Industrialisation led to better standard of living, led to increases in population, led to increases in usage of fossil fuels.

Next fact is that fossil fuels produce CO2, so an increase in usage of fossil fuels would lead to an increase in CO2 levels.

So we have to ask ourselves, what happened at the start of the industrial revolution to start CO2 levels rising, which in turn help raise global temperatures? It was humans starting to burn large numbers of fossil fuels. Now you may try to claim there is some natural force doing it but to that I have two questions for you:

1. Wouldn’t it be a really big coincidence that some natural force starts producing lots of CO2 when humans start producing lots of CO2?
2. If it’s nature that’s causing CO2 levels to rise then where is the huge amount of CO2 humans are producing going.

And to end on I’ve got some more questions about various other things in your posts:

• Europe is pretty socialist, how many people are slaughtered each year over here?
• How many people have been slaughtered by right wing policies such as during WW2, Vietnam or Iraq?
• What is it that liberal people have to gain from putting out a “myth” of climate change, compared to conservative people, who are often in charge of big companies that produce lots of greenhouse gases?
• Even if climate change isn’t happening (despite the overwhelming evidence that it is) what is wrong with saving $1000s upon $1000s of your hard earned cash over your lifetime by getting more energy efficient appliances?

And that is the point I keep trying to hammer home to the doubters. You can go and live in a cave you want, but really all you need to do to save the planet it get more energy efficient stuff. It’s actually more advanced than the polluting stuff (so it’s further away from said stone age) and saves you money. If we’re wrong about climate change you’ve saved a hell of a lot of money, if we’re right you’ve helped save the planet and also saved a hell of a lot of money. It’s a win-win situation really.

If the dam’s breaking, but not in the near-term, it might be better to wait a while and build a much better dam, at much less cost, when the science and engineering of dam-building have improved. And, as a side-issue, there may be a second dam, which could also flood the village, but that dam is maintained by a second village which refuses to act regardless of what the first village does with the dam they control.

This is quite a complicated issue, and it’s contentious precisely because there are huge costs to being wrong, in either direction.

I will not disagree that doing things to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we dump into the atmosphere is a good thing, and we do what we can to be energy efficient and friendly to the environment. But I will not agree that draconian measures to reduce carbon dioxide production are entirely necessary – and you sure won’t find me buying any of those ridiculous “carbon dioxide offset credits” – because I’m not convinced that we have any control over what’s going on.

This is a mathematical proof that all government programs increase misery, if they are perfetly efficient, and manufacture misery wholesale if they are less than perfectly efficient.

Government is a disease, masquarading as its own cure.

This is especially true in the environmental sector– who is the number one entity creating pollution and environmental damage in the US? The US Federal government, by a long stretch.

Government always seeks power to fix problems, and it didn’t take too long for them to realize that they could manufacture problems simply for the opportunity to sieze more power (or to demand more money to fix the same things tehy demanded money to fix in the past– every year we get new road taxes, but the road taxes 50 years ago are still in effect– why arent’ they paying for the roads?)

“Climate Change” is a scam, a scare tactic to get people to tolerate even more government control over their lives…. and thus increased human misery and massive death.

People who say either a) “all reputable scientists agree on climate change” or b) “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” always trigger my BS-detector. People who say both have an agenda I cannot support.

Is the climate changing? Almost certainly.

Are humans responsible? We are definitely contributing, though there are other factors.

Does the climate change threaten our very existence? Perhaps.

Should we reduce our impact on the environment? Absolutely.

Should we give carte blanche to government agencies to protect us? Never, no matter what the (alleged?) threat.