05-01-2007
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Owner, Green Bay Packers
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: SW Michigan
Posts: 10,322
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Some quick thoughts.
I took organic chemistry in high school for a full year. Took it again in college. Didn't go to grad school.
The thought that you have to be a climatologist, or even a scientist, to dispute global warming is a canard. Similar thinking implies that one must be a lawyer to understand the constitution or to be a legislator. A good educational background, with sufficient science to have a firm grasp of the scientific method, should be enough to debate the issue with a degree of intelligent insight.
Certain parties in the debate come to it with baggage. Mine happens to be an implacable belief in conservatism. I do not think that would disqualify me from the debate. Others, particularly scientists, should acknowledge their's. The government is a major funder of science, in a way and of a magnitude never before seen, and many of the scientists involved in the debate are counting on continued funding of this issue for their livelihood. If man's role in global warming is disproved, or found insignificant, their rice bowl is going to be empty. As long as it is held to be a "crisis" more research will be needed, the efficacy of which will be irrelavent, and rice bowls will overflow. I find that baggage to be much more significant than that carried by myself or others, perhaps funded by non-scientific organizations. I tend to feel that US flag merchant ships are the safest way to ship your cargo also. But then, I am a former US flag merchant marine officer. baggage.
Amoung many good points Ragnar makes, and admittedly ya gotta kinda dig for 'em in his delivery, is the state of education. The Wealth of Nations was written for teenagers, although before they were referred to as teenagers. The fact that one needs a four year degree to equal, possibly, the high school education of fifty or seventyfive years ago is fairly obvious.
The only serious disagreement I have with Ragnar is his seeming, and I do mean "seeming", view that religion is a corrosive effect upon man. Other than the disjointed method of his delivery he brings much to the table.
When discussing points of view, I am incredulous that anyone would cite the NY Times in a positive way. It was precisely the publication of such things as the Pentagon Papers that one can carbon date the decline of a formerly great paper. Today it is virtually impossible to not regard the whole rag as one editorial page, and that had nothing to do with Judith Miller. Objective news is published in the WSJ and, to a slightly lesser extent, in the Washington Post amoung leading papers.
I would certainly agree with the thought that this IS an off topic thread, but that personal attacks should not be made. If required we have a thread for that and your ass belongs there.
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“Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.”
Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.
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