Yes, please.

I think this is a wonderful idea.

Oops, hit "post" too quick. Another thought would be a day going over what the Constitution is all about, what the branches of government are for and what their powers are (and are not), what church/state separation means and how it protects both government and religious practice, how bills become laws and how the House and Senate works, how Congressional districts are formed, how (and for what reason) to amend the Constitution... Y'know, a class in civics, since I see so much ignorance (and apathy) towards these topics in non-political-blog-land.

Albert, I would encourage you to focus on what you have absolute control over: your own behavior and choices. Also, I'd encourage you to share with your friends, family, ect. what you're doing to be part of a solution. I'd encourage you to continue to let your voice be heard with elected officials.

But I gotta tell ya, your verbiage above is going to scare the living hell out of folks. And unnecessarily so. Re-education campaign? Seriously? This piece reads like a caricture of an environmentalist by ExxonMobile. Why not put a little more thought into what you write if the purpose is truly public persuasion.

MANDATORY indoctination training?

Welkome home komrade......

Re-education classes? Mandatory civics classes? Not a bad idea. Brilliant, in fact!

I remember when...

...I was in a Communist block country behind the Iron Curtain in the late 60s and early 70s, and they did have such classes in the local schools. One mandatory class was on how to put on gas masks and throw simulated grenades (purportedly against the evil USA) when the cold war became a hot war. Us kids (both the locals and my American siblings) enjoyed the class tremendously. But the teacher did not like it when we (the Americans) threw our mock grenades farther than the local kids. She obviously could figure out that the locals only played soccer (no arms involved) whereas the Americans grew up playing baseball and football.

Like I said, not a bad idea. In fact its Brilliant! But I think there might be a fight over the content and the teachers. I suspect some might want Al Gore teaching about Global Warming, and other would prefer George Taylor.

How about keeping it simple by encouraging adults to learn and adopt ethical principles and making ethics a mandatory course in middle school, high school and college?

With all due respect Albert, when you earn the right to be King, then you can impose your personal narrow perspective on other people.

Until then, millions of people are stuggling to survive and need help on their terms, not yours, without being recruited and indoctrinated into your own political beliefs.

Don't claim to be helping people, Albert, when you pretty much say "For one entire week, I'd like the entire country to do what I say. That would be great!"

To help others you have to ask them how they are, what they are going through and dealing with, and find out what they are most needing in their own lives. You're not even asking individuals what they need to survive the next three months of their struggles! That information has to come from people, not you.

Then, regardless of your political beliefs, put your own self-centered holy gratifications aside, and help them on their path, not yours.

Since you're not interested in asking people what they are actually going through, we won't tell you.

Yes, well, the problem is that when the decision is made to institute such an educational process, the program will be determined by whoever has influence with the government. Given the current balance of influence on the US government, none of your ideas are likely to make the cut. Instead we might study how to identify and report potential terrorists, followed by intensive instruction of the power of free markets to spread democracy.

It'd difficult for government to lead the way in solving a problem when government is captive to interests who profit from the existence of that problem.

First we need to tackle the problem of undue influence on government [and the media]. Then we have a real opportunity to deal with the other problems. The alternative is to always play a game rigged against progressive change.

<h1>1) The more you want to dominate others, the less support</h1>

you'll have from them.

<h1>2) The more you ignore and disrespect other people, the more you'll</h1>

dance, oblivious and disconnected, right past them and into a fuzzy, nice-feeling delirium that destroys their lives.

Hi Albert, Glad to see you have come clean with the real agenda of the progressives: To force others to live your idea of what is good for them and good for the earth. (can you explain how this is morally different from Bush trying to shove HIS religion down our throats?)

Further, I am appalled by the low level of condemnation of you ideas - must be that you are expressing the hidden dreams of the progressives on this forum.

I hope you realize that you are striving to join the long line of despots: Stalin; Hitler; Pol Pot; Mao; Castro who got millions of people killed. Is that really what you want? You know that it is the usual result of dictators, like you are dream of becoming.

Thanks JK

How old are you???

Hi Albert, Glad to see you have come clean with the real agenda of the progressives:

Rush Limbaugh, Lars Larsen, Ann Coulter and their ilk couldn't have said it better, but the fact is the individual desires of progressives are many and varied so it is nonsense to define one progressive's commentary as a manifesto for all.

I don't consider myself a harsh critic of journalism, but that was the WORST thing I have ever read.

Personally, I don't want to be talked into living like an animal. I don't want my BIG HAPPY family to be forced into living like animals. I don't want my only option at meal times to be to go graze in the fron yard. I don't want to be punished for being a consumer who contributes to other people's lives, incomes and jobs. I don't want to take the round-about bus routes. I don't want to ride a bike up my hill. I don't know what it means to "move myself from one place to another creatively." I play well with others as it is. My emotions and mentality are doing fine, thank you. I'm pretty sure if I NEEDED to be told how to have a good romantic relationship, I would have known that by now. "how to heal?" And a bonus day?! (am I supposed to be excited or something?)

I don't know... These environmental leaders seem very selective in the 'facts' they provide us with regarding the environment they are such experts about. Are they afraid we'll do some of our own thinking and figuring? Sorry, thinking comes natrual. (You guys like all things NATRUAL, right?)

This is sad, and this is scary.

Great ideas Albert. I'd suggest you get connected with the Obama and Hillary campaign and pitch your idea to them. I'd love to see Hillary endorse this platform. I can just imagine how the country would respond to Hillary suggesting a week of re-education for everyone! What would we call it; "No Wrong Thinker Left Behind" maybe?

On a related note, could we nominate this thread for stupidest idea yet on BO for 2007?

Re-education?

Are you kidding me? I don't know who I'm more embarassed for: Albert for writing it or Kari for letting it stand on his blog.

From what I can tell Albert, there is only one thing you left off:

Day 6: Implant a cardio device into all Americans that may deliver an electronic charge right into the heart if a subject strays from the re-education program.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown!!

You people need to

A: Get a grip

B: Chill out

and

C: Pull your heads out of where they don't belong!

Look, it isn't very hard:

Climate change AND peak oil are REAL. People who don't prepare for them are in for a world of hurt. Many people who DO prepare for them are going to suffer, terribly, anyway.

Everything Albert suggests teaching is stuff we ALL NEED to know, for our survival and that of our children. To deny this is putting your heads in the sand, fiddling while Rome burns, etc.

Everything he suggests teaching is stuff that is not only NOT being taught now, but, in fact, the exact OPPOSITE messages are being taught to us, not one week a year, but 24/7, 365 days a year. Buy more, buy now, don't worry about how you'll pay for it. Consume, consume, consume. Drive more. Put Band-Aids on problems (hybrid Escalade, anyone?, health-care "reform") instead of real solutions. Look! Over there! Brittany!

You all jump to images of Nazis and the Khmer Rouge--instead, think about post-Sputnik US. Math, science and physical fitness education. Massive public investment in science and technology towards the achievement of a largely symbolic goal which spun off the entire technological revolution of the late 20th century.

Think Kennedy, not Castro.

I can't speak for Albert, but I would guess that's more what he had in mind.

As far as all you libertarian, look out for number one, I've got mine, and the rest of you can f yourselves types, stop trolling on a site "for progressive Oregonians" and realize that we are all in this together, and that we are all going to need to get (trade, barter, etc.) everything we need to survive within a, say 20 mile radius, within the next 20-50 years, unless we seriously* change our ways and our priorities.

Jim, you wrote:

Glad to see you have come clean with the real agenda of the progressives: To force others to live your idea of what is good for them and good for the earth.

WRONG.

The "real" agenda of "the progressives" (silly, really, because we're not all in lock step--just look at BO!!!), in these areas is simple: government policies should promote the well being of people (the public interest) over the well being of corporations (private interests). Government policies should promote and ensure protection of the environment, including slowing and eventually reversing human-caused climate change, by, among many other things, encouraging non-automotive transportation, encouraging sustainable economic, development and energy policies. Government should discourage policies or activities that have a "get rich now, to hell with the consequences later" mindset. We are all in this together, and we will only survive the challenges of today and tomorrow if we work together for the common good. Kumbya, free love, etc.

I don't want to control you, your behavior, or your thoughts. But, if you're doing something that is going to f*** things up for me, my community and my environment (or those of my children), I'm going to have something to say about it. And if, through the democratic (small "d") process, I can get enough like-minded folks together to make it the law of the land, we might try make the worst such offenses against the law, just like we say you can't take a gun and shoot someone, we might say that you can't take a barrel of poison and dump it in the river. (Oh, I guess we already said that.) Or dump millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere if there are other ways of generating energy. Or whatever.

But, remember, it is the progressives who are fundamentally in favor of Democracy, of free speech, of the rule of law, and of personal freedom. It is the right-wing that favors rule by corporate elites, corporate -only speech, laws not applying to the rich and powerful, and personal freedoms only when they don't threaten to disrupt the status quo.

So, Albert, thank you for a well-intended post on things we all need to learn. Sorry so many wing-nuts had to get us all sidetracked from the real issues that you raised.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I'm 46, by the way.

My hope is for a better society, and one that lives through global warming to the other side. Without doing anything, I'm afraid the next generations are going to fry, and life is going to be a lot less pleasant than it is today.

I agree that people need to be asked how their lives can be improved, and I also think there could be some leadership to get us through the crisis we're in now - it would be great if we were all on the same page about this, but sadly, corporate interests like Exxon-Mobil that stand to make billions have done what they can to cloud the waters and convince a lot of us that there is nothing to worry about.

So, OK, admittedly - re-education classes is probably not the right title. But if you had a week of government sponsored classes that might get you thinking differently about our next steps as consumers, people, humans - what would the classes be in?

Or, do we just take a lot of individual steps to stop pumping CO2 into the air? I don't see that working. I think something bigger needs to happen - which is why I wrote the post.

Thanks for your input,

Dictator, Albert :)

And my mind went to a week-long mandatory class that every man, woman and child would be required to take, perhaps on a yearly basis.

Basically, "mandatory" is the only thing I have a problem with in Al's article. No matter how good any proposal may be it won't go very far in these dis-United States if it is forced on people. They have to be persuaded, and even there the chances of success will be very slim with many people. There will also be strong opposition from people who place their own contradictory interests ahead of the national interest. Otherwise, Al's points should be considered seriously.

I agree with the others who would like to see critical thinking taught in schools. That would take care of much of the problem. What we're all really talking about is getting people to lead examined lives, instead of being oblivious to the consequences of their decisions.

While Albert's ideas expressed here will probably never be implemented, I think we're in the beginning stages now of building a social agreement on overconsumption. Some additional courses in schools on civics and critical thinking might help to kick-start that.

if you had a week of government sponsored classes that might get you thinking differently about our next steps as consumers, people, humans - what would the classes be in?

Actually, I would argue for 12 years of government sponsored classes. I would call it "public education." We obviously couldn't (and shouldn't) teach all the things you talk about above -- why can't I eat wheat again, the staple of civilized societies since societies became, well, civilized? -- but there's no reason the public schools can't teach ethics, critical thinking, environmental science, nutrition, sustainability, economics, etc. In fact, we already do.

But this only works if we have the best public education possible. Well-funded, efficient, accountable. No one should send their children to private school due to the low quality of public schools -- only because they want their children to get a specific religious education, or they want an alternative learning environment. Everyone else should have access to high-quality public education, and I think if we achieved this you would be surprised at the impact it would have on the problems you mention.

Albert: My hope is for a better society, and one that lives through global warming to the other side. Without doing anything, I'm afraid the next generations are going to fry, and life is going to be a lot less pleasant than it is today. JK: I wish we could just achieve a fact based government. For instanced:

• Only those who are illiterate about basic economics believe the world is running out of oil.

• To believe in global warming you have to ignore the fact that the best historical data we have (maintained at NASA by Al Gore advisor jim Hanson) does not show that 1998 was the warmest year - it is tied with 1934. Also most of the warmest years were not in the 1990s, they are scattered throughout the decades. data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt

• Historically, antarctic ice core samples show CO2 has followed, not led temperature changes. realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

• The famous temperature chart that resembles a hockey stick is simply wrong. If fact it was probably a fraud. Wegman report, page 4 (http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/others/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf)

Albert: I agree that people need to be asked how their lives can be improved, JK: Albert, you need to read the constitution and quit reading Marx. This is a free country, not the dictatorship that you dream of. Be careful, once you create the government power, the other side night get a hold of it.

Albert: But if you had a week of government sponsored classes that might get you thinking differently about our next steps as consumers, people, humans - what would the classes be in? JK: You want classes how about these:

• How to identify Republican distortions of reality to further their agenda. Same for Democrats and environmental organizations.

• The world’s population is on track to shrink. Already some European countries are below replacement and the USA is growing only because on immigration. Soon the worry will be shrinking population.

• How to get large enough city lots to grow our own food and generate our own power - why we need to abandon the UGB and encourage one-five acre lots for everyone.

• How massive, directed from the government, societal changes have gotten many hundreds of million people killed. The list is long: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Castro.

• How you can spend $2 on gasolene to save $100 on food by driving 5 miles to Wallmart, Winco or Costco.

• How basic economics apply to the peak oil fallacy. In short, as the price goes up, people use less by getting more efficient cars etc. and supply goes up as it becomes economical to produce oil from tar sands, shale and coal. Of course the present high price is due to political, not supply shortages.

• How mass transit costs more than driving. How buses use more energy than small cars and even light rail uses more energy than hybrids. Cars are much cheaper than light rail, even if the price of gasolene goes around $10/gal.

• How the automobile has increased our standard of living and income.

Thanks JK

Probably the biggest problem for educating (or re-educating) the masses is that people prefer to listen to sources that are most often ultimately detrimental to the interests of the nation and themselves; that is, advertisers encouraging them to be consumers instead of citizens and the slop producers in the various media - tabloids, ideological radio hosts and television anchors, and mindless television shows and movies. That is where bloggers can be of service by trying to counter the effects of the preceding accused Pied Pipers of decadence.

I agree with this statemente: "Bloggers can be of service to counter the effects of (mainstream media, etc)".

In fact, even with the onslaught of counter points in the comments, even this post has been beneficial.

Education is good. Competition in the educational arena is even better... comparing Marx with the competition is a good thing. Education around who Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Brezshnev, Gorby, et al were is also a good thing.

The reason the US public educational system is sub par compared to other countries in not a lack of money, but a lack of competition. More Education is a good thing, depending upon....

JK: Let me ask a question:

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that the government should mandate a class that every man, woman and child would be required to take?

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that this is a bad idea?

Thanks JK

OK, Jim.

Tell me, why is it that you bother to spend time, here, "a place for progressive Oregonians"? Clearly, from the so-called "debunking Portland" site to everywhere else you show up on a quick Google search, you are not, by anyone's definition, a progressive. Is it that you like having people tell you, over and over, that you're full of it, or do you somehow delight in the fact that they will go to great efforts to do so, despite the fact that you are, clearly, never going to replace your muscle with brains? (Thank you, Gang of Four.)

So, I will try not to waste too much time on you:

Only those who are illiterate about basic economics believe the world is running out of oil.

So I guess that includes ExxonMobile, BP, and all the other oil companies, oil-consuming and producing nations, the UN, etc. Right.

To believe in global warming you have to... not turn a blind eye to the overwhelming scientific consensus that's been building for, I don't know, about 20 years or so. But, of course, you and your context-less factoids are smarter than all of the world's scientists, so we should just listen to you.

Why don't we teach creation "science" in public schools, while we're at it? Along with other fantasies like "how mass transit costs more than driving" (rebutted quite well here), how encouraging sprawl by removing the UGB will somehow preserve and encourage small farms, and your other right-wing delusions.

I'll tell you why. Because people don't want their kids taught LIES. So, Jim, please GO AWAY and preach to your wing-nut choir somewhere they are, because it sure isn't here.

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that the government should mandate a class that every man, woman and child would be required to take?

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that this is a bad idea?

How scientific or valid would responses to these questions be? If only one person responded with a claim to be a progressive and supported the idea of mandatory classes, others with dittohead mentalities would jump on that as evidence that all progressives want to adopt Stalinist or Maoist re-education camps.

Adios, JK

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that the government should mandate a class that every man, woman and child would be required to take?

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that this is a bad idea?

How scientific or valid would responses to these questions be? If only one person responded with a claim to be a progressive and supported the idea of mandatory classes, others with dittohead mentalities would jump on that as evidence that all progressives want to adopt Stalinist or Maoist re-education camps.

Adios, JK

How many Blue Oregon progressives think that the government should mandate a class that every man, woman and child would be required to take?

Probably about the same as the number of flat-earth conservatives who refuse to accept that humans have had an impact on global warming. Very small, and both wrong.

jaybeat: So I guess that includes ExxonMobile, BP, and all the other oil companies, oil-consuming and producing nations, the UN, etc. Right. JK: You don’t suppose that an oil company might claim shortage to encourage the price to rise do you? But you obviously don’t understand supply and demand because if you did you would know that rising price will reduce demand and increase supply. We will not run out - it will just get more expensive until people use less and substitutes become attractive like tar sands, shale and coal gasification.

jaybeat: To believe in global warming you have to... not turn a blind eye to the overwhelming scientific consensus that's been building for, I don't know, about 20 years or so. But, of course, you and your context-less factoids are smarter than all of the world's scientists, so we should just listen to you. JK: There you go again, relying on others to think for you. There are two kinds of global warming: 1) that which is occurring after the “little ice age” and the 2) “sky is falling” crap from Al Gore & his crowd, based entirely on crappy computer models. It is the latter that I am attacking. The former is natural and no cause for alarm. Why don’t you calm down until the last of those Viking farms emerge from under the Greenland ice.

jaybeat: Why don't we teach creation "science" in public schools, while we're at it? JK: Because that is right wing crap, just like global warming panic and is left wing crap.

jaybeat: Along with other fantasies like "how mass transit costs more than driving" (rebutted quite well here) JK: It was not rebutted. You are showing you lack of reading or lack of understanding basic numbers. You can find the numbers, all traceable to government data at DebunkingPortland.com/Transit/Cost-Cars-Transit(2005).htm

jaybeat: how encouraging sprawl by removing the UGB will somehow preserve and encourage small farms, and your other right-wing delusions. JK: Actually removing the UGB will make housing affordable again. I hope you remember that Portland used to have affordable housing - the artificial shortage of buildable land has destroyed that (along with a suge in government fees etc.)

jaybeat: I'll tell you why. Because people don't want their kids taught LIES. JK: Yes, but you are the one that got sucked in by the lis of Al Gore, the developers, Metro & TriMet etc. Too bad you can only look to others to follow, instead of look at real data and numbers.

jaybeat: So, Jim, please GO AWAY and preach to your wing-nut choir somewhere they are, because it sure isn't here. JK: Same to you. PS: do you even know what a wing nut is? Have you ever used one?

Thanks JK

Jim Karlock is correct about some things. We are not running out of oil. Based on historical production models, we have used about half the available oil. But this is not good news. The same models suggest we are at or very near peak production capacity, while demand increases as long as we are not in severe recession. Jim is correct that the price of oil will increase under such circumstances. It will increase a lot very quickly, enough to make many low income people abandon their cars and distant goods to spike in cost because of shipping expenses. Not much later, roads [made either of petroleum derived asphalt or energy intensive cement] will become too expensive to keep up - so Jim is wrong about mass transit; trains in particular, are the most energy efficient ground transportation besides bicycles, which will have a hard time without smooth roads.

At the same time, this second half of the oil supply will be much more expensive to extract from the ground. Much of that expense is as increased energy input, so the net energy produced is actually much less than that from the first [already used] half of the total oil supply. End result: Life gets much more expensive, especially in rural areas and where local economic production of basic goods is low.

Jim Karlock is also wrong about global warming. The overwhelming consensus of scientists and scientific bodies is that human-caused global warming is a significant problem. This is beyond whatever the earth, sun, planets, and vapors of the ninth dimension may be doing to warm the climate. Most alarming is that global warming changes have very often been found to exceed model expectations in recent years. This suggests that scientific consensus may not have caught up with just how bad things are. If you are not concerned with life of earth past the next decade, you might blithely ignore Global Warming. Otherwise, be afraid, be very afraid.

JK: Same to you.

Sorry, but I belong here, because I am a progressive Oregonian.

You, of course, have a right to believe that human-caused global warming is a hoax, that peak oil (I never said we "are running out of oil") won't cause massive changes in our energy use, consumption, and lifestyle, that driving cars is better than transit, that the urban growth boundary raises housing prices, etc. You're also free to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, that the World Bank is in the business of helping poor nations, that cutting taxes on the rich is the best way to help the middle class, or any other such absurdity.

BUT, you certainly cannot expect us to consider those to be "progressive" opinions. They are, in fact, either in the middle or to the right of the stated platform of the Republican Party.

Now, according to the header of this site, and I quote:

BlueOregon is a place for progressive Oregonians to gather 'round the water cooler and share news, commentary, and gossip.

So, since you are clearly not a progressive Oregonian, please GO AWAY. If you want to substantively contribute to the debate here, that's one thing. But you clearly do not and have not. No more than you have been substantive on issues like land use or transportation on the other blogs where you troll.

You are free to give yourself writers cramp on your own site, but, of course, no one would read it (at least not compared to BO), because your ideas are so sorely lacking. Which is why, I suppose, you troll away. Posting here is a chance for you to feel powerful and influential, because you can single-handedly piss off so many people, and you can feel superior to all of us because we will never be able to reason with you, since your opinions are so clearly beyond reason. (Though you love to throw meaningless or misleading facts around to support your contention that you are smarter than the world's entire scientific community or anyone else who disagrees with you.)

If, in the so-called "marketplace of ideas," yours had any merit, wouldn't it be us trolling your site, hoping to get a little attention, since BO would be an unvisited internet backwater? In reality, there are plenty of sites where you would get lots of "dittos" to your ditto-head-worthy ideas, and all I can do is hope that you'll spend more time there and less time here.

But, sadly, I know not to count on it.

Oh, and BTW, I do know what a wing-nut is, both in the current context (a [right]-wing nut), as well as the original hardware context. And I've been happy to use the latter and oppose the former, many, many times.

jaybeat: Along with other fantasies like "how mass transit costs more than driving" (rebutted quite well here) JK: No it wasn’t rebutted, despite transit supporter’s best efforts. But lets review the latest data.

To simplify thing, lets use the highball AAA data from aaaexchange.com/Main/Default.asp?CategoryID=3&SubCategoryID=9&ContentID=23&SearchString=driving+cost

(I say highball because the AAA makes selections based on their member’s habits, not the general public. For instance they assume that you buy a new car as soon as the current one is paid off. That puts their costs quite bit higher than typical cars.)

They show several vehicles and costs per mile for 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 miles per year. The cost per mile drops significantly as you go from 10,000 to 20,000 annual miles.

At 10,000 miles, the costs vary from 50-74 cents per mile for cars and 69.2 & 81.5 for minivan & SUV They say that the “Composite national average COST per-mile for 2007: 52.2 cents”, so we choose the “Small Sedan” at 50.5 (so that we can look at both 10,000 and 20,000 miles/yr - the error will be about 3%, no where near enough to make a difference in the conclusion.)

Lets begin: Looking at trimet.org/pdfs/ridership/busmaxstat.pdf, we find that the bus system costs $197,597,326 for 236,736,000 passenger-miles. I suspect that a lots of costs are left out here - certainly tearing up Portland streets are not included. Do the division:

$197,597,326 / 236,736,000 = $0.83 per passenger-mile. Notice that this is far above the $0.522 above (only the SUV number above is greater.)

But we are comparing bus passenger-miles with vehicle-miles.

We must account for the passengers per car. First how many passengers are in the average car? It depends on where you are. Nationally the number is 1.57. Oregon publishes passengers per car for accidents. If you assume that cars involved in accidents are typical, then the number for Portland is 1.27. I’ll show both:

“ Small Sedan”: $0.50 / 1.57 = $0.319 (Bus, at $0.83, is 2.6 times the cost) $0.50 / 1.27 = $0.394 (Bus, at $0.83, is 2.1 times the cost) Either way that is cheaper than the bus.

And if you drive 20,000 miles you get: $0.374 / 1.57 = $0.238 (Bus, at $0.83, is 3.5 times the cost) $0.374 / 1.27 = $0.294 (Bus, at $0.83, is 2.8 times the cost)

Of course the above neglects the fact that you only get one little seat on a bus (if you get a seat at all), so the fair comparison would be to a crappy little single seat car, with no air conditioning, no radio, no luggage space etc.

Thanks JK

Tom Civiletti: Jim Karlock is also wrong about global warming....Most alarming is that global warming changes have very often been found to exceed model expectations in recent years. JK: Take a look at the best historical climate data the we have. It is maintained by Al Gore advisor, Jim Hansen at NASA. It is government data and considered to be the best in the world : data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/US_USHCN.2005vs1999.txt

After looking at the actual data, tell me that we are much different than in the 1930s? (BTW, recent decades will be revised down again as they properly account for monitoring stations in the middle of parking lots, instead of the grassy fields that they are supposed to be in the middle of.)

Tom Civiletti: The overwhelming consensus of scientists and scientific bodies is that human-caused global warming is a significant problem. JK: That story is a gross exaggeration based on a, probably not peer reviewed, letter to Science or Nature. The judgement criteria were carefully chosen to make it look like there was consensus. A later study shows that the claim is simply not true (I do not know if it has been scheduled for publication yet.)

Thanks JK

Comments?

Look up the definition of communism.

End of comment.

Oh wow, forced reeducation.

I believe in Global Warming. In fact, I agree with many of those points (small families, self reliance, growing what you can in your own garden, etc.) But when you start throwing around "mandatory" and "re-education", well, that is why I've got an M4 assault rifle in my closet.

what happens if I refuse to go to this camp? Will I be shot or simply jailed?

Reeducation camps are easy to condemn, but their function is served quite well in the US in the propaganda disseminated by the corporate media. The American people have been reeducated to believe that, for example:

• Social Security is doomed to insolvency.

• Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

• Howard Dean was a dangerous wacko.

• People in other countries hate their single-payer healthcare systems.

• Iran will soon have weapons of mass destruction.

• Hugo Chavez is a dangerous wacko.

This reeducation is sponsored by the federal government, corporations and the media [more corporations] and is quite a bit more effective than reeducation camps in authoritarian countries because Americans believe they are getting good information. If Albert had the power to run his proposed camps, he would probably switch to the current mode of propaganda quickly enough to sooth the nerves of BlueOregon commenters.

Just try it. I wouldn't hesitate to use violence against anyone who tried to intern me. You, Albert, are no better than Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin. If you attempt to force your twisted beliefs on me; I will force you to back off. I would advise all you liberals who think this is a good idea to proceed very carefully; there are a lot of people who feel as I do.

Tom, thank you for a note of sanity. Real World to Blue Oregon Trolls! Hello? Anybody there?

onoyoudint, Spade, ru and Bernice: So glad you've shown us your ability to ignore the forest. This is about stuff we'd all better learn, and fast. It is not about "forcing" anyone, or prying the gun in your closet out of your cold dead (stupid) fingers, or liberals or communism or Hitler or any of the other crap you've tried to throw up to obscure the real issues.

Bottom line, do you want your government helping you or hurting you? Right now, the FORCED, MANDATORY BRAINWASHING that is going on RIGHT NOW is KILLING ALL OF US. You may not think so, but neither does the frog as it is being boiled alive until it is too late.

So to get your panties in a twist and make sure we all know that even if these are good ideas, you'll fight to the death to resist them if someone tries to MAKE YOU is as about as mature and rational as the kid who's willing to have his arm broken by the school yard bully because he won't say "uncle."

Only, Albert's not a bully, and he's not making you say "uncle," he's just wondering whether or not it might make sense to make sure people are prepared for what's ahead.

Seriously, when you ride in an airplane, they "make" you take off your headphones, turn off your phone, and at least pretend to listen to the flight attendants while they try and give you some information that might just SAVE YOUR ASS. See how seriously anyone takes you when you jump up and protest how "commies" are "forcing" you to be "re-educated."

Only, in this case, it isn't just a slim chance that you'll need to know that stuff in order to survive. It a certainty.

THIS plane IS going down.

Do YOU know where the nearest flotation device is?

Just remember Tom, those guys who you want to "re-educate" are the ones with the guns.

Guess you gotta ban those first, huh?

I totlally and wholeheartedly agree with Tom and jaybeat above.

Re-education is the only way to reverse the undo influence modern, materialistic society has instilled in children and adults in this country. I can only hope that more and more people see that in the end, we will simply have to round up the holdouts, by ANY means necessary, so that they do not continue to prevent real progress in this country. A good way would be to put people like this in camps in the woods where they could work to undo some of the ill that they have brought upon this country- a sort of "Work makes you free" typr idea.

Tom, some people are not going to want to go to utopia- some will prefer to stay in their primitive lives. Sonme may actively and violently resist. This is why it is IMPERATIVE that we have a state monopoly on the use of force.

To the rest of you: at least Tom has the guts to say what many of us think. Stop hiding behind others and have courage.

Posted by: jaybeat | Nov 27, 2007 11:47:14 PM

"Seriously, when you ride in an airplane, they "make" you take off your headphones, turn off your phone, and at least pretend to listen to the flight attendants while they try and give you some information that might just SAVE YOUR ASS. See how seriously anyone takes you when you jump up and protest how "commies" are "forcing" you to be "re-educated."

You have on your "own free will" elected to fly on a "commercial airliner". You have made the choice to fly on that plane.

The day you and the enlighten Herr Kaufman (German heritage perhaps) try to do that re-education camp week outside of Hippie City you had better be wearing snowshoes to walk over the pile of spent brass.

This is why we have a second amendment people. If you want to save the environment then take away private jets from left wing power elites that want us all to live in caves.

Are you out of your fucking mind?

I'm going to dump oil into a river today just to piss you off.

joe:

Have you "of your own free will" consented to being brainwashed by all the aforementioned commercial and political forces that have and are continuing to do so?

Do you even KNOW if you have free will any more?

Or, are you trying to PROVE it to me by getting all "over my dead body" puffed-up over someone just wanting to inject a little truth and common sense into your current diet of consumerist propaganda, perhaps because you're deathly afraid you don't have as much as you think?

Besides, the next time you live somewhere that you are not dependent upon the laws, customs and good will of others, you can lecture me about "free will" meaning you don't have to do your fair share to help keep all of us from being burned to a crisp or starved to death. Until then, STFU and pitch in. We're all in this together!

Sheesh...

What a brilliant idea! I think this ranks up there with Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." Yes, by all means let us herd all Americans into reeducation camps so that they may all become models of a utopian vision. And should they not conform with the ideals of The State by rescinding all dangerous independent thought, if they do not give up their elitist notions of private property, if they do not fall on their knees begging forgiveness from our wise, flawless law-makers for contributing to the academic catastrophe of global warming, if they do not acknowledge the sin of mocking the less fortunate by striving for excellence in their own lives, if they hold on to the antiquated notion of a God and do not acclaim that there is no higher authority than The State, then as a final recourse we can euthanize them, and turn their bodies into food to feed the starving masses, where they will serve a greater good in death than they ever could have imagined in life. "The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior." "Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

Nason,

Ha, ha, very funny. I swear. Do you people REALLY believe this crap, or are you just copying and pasting from some old John Birch Society flyer from the '50s you found online?

Note to moderators: Do you think this thread has been posted to some neo-Fascist, survivalist, nut-job site, or do we really have that many trolls here on Blue Oregon on a regular basis?

Registration, anyone?

Reeducation camps are easy to condemn, but their function is served quite well in the US...

Military training programs are a prime example.

Religion-based schools are another.

What's worse is the combination of military training and religion.

Then there is commercial television. If you want to watch a program you are almost forced to watch ten minutes of commercials to view 20 minutes of "entertainment." Admittedly, you can tune the commercials out to some extent, but some, nevertheless, get through to you.

Jaybeat, Your response is perfect. Thanks very much for making my point. No, I'm not a neo-Fascist, survivalist, nut-job. I don't even own a gun. So since I disagree with Albert's ideas in strongly sarcastic prose, you think I should be prohibited from expressing my opinions here? Is that what progressive thought means - all opinions are welcome, just so long as they agree with yours? I read Blue Oregon because I believe in the adage, "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."

Nason sez:

So since I disagree with Albert's ideas in strongly sarcastic prose, you think I should be prohibited from expressing my opinions here?

No. I think that you can and should read whatever you like. If you want to post, here, "a place for progressive Oregonians," then I think it is reasonable to ask that you follow some basic rules, much as many other blogs do (but which BO does not).

Democratic Underground (a wonderful site, especially if you consider progressives your "enemy" and want to find out more about our evil, librul schemes, bwahahahaha...) has the following policy:

Democratic Underground is an online community for Democrats and other progressives. Members are expected to be generally supportive of progressive ideals...

Treat other members with respect. Do not post personal attacks against other members of this discussion forum.

Do not post messages that are inflammatory, extreme, divisive, incoherent, or otherwise inappropriate. Do not engage in anti-social, disruptive, or trolling behavior. Do not post broad-brush, bigoted statements... But... people who are easily offended, or who are not accustomed to having their opinions (including deeply personal convictions) challenged may not feel entirely comfortable here.

Note that these rules don't state, "if you disagree with someone, you're outta here," and if you read DU, you'll see there's plenty of disagreement. What there isn't is crap like global warming deniers, or people taking Albert's well-meaning (if heavy-handed) ideas about helping make sure enough of us have a freakin' CLUE so that we all have some chance of MAKING IT, and comparing them to Pol Pot or Stalin or Hitler.

If you want to post right-wing talking points (as many have, on this thread alone), go ahead. I'm just asking you to no do it HERE. That's not the mission of this site, at least not as I understand it. (As I've said, just read the masthead.) Kari and Co.? Care to weigh in?

If, by contrast, you have a disagreement with a post that you are willing to address in something at least approaching a civil, rational, and at least half thought-out way, please join the conversation.

But calling someone a mass-murderer because they are wondering out loud if we ought to teach folks about the importance of recycling and saving energy, is, to my way of thinking, WAY over the top. As of now, Blue Oregon allows it, so troll away. But it is my opinion that such posts detract from the discussion and do not belong here.

But, it is only my opinion.

And, for now, if you want to call me names for it, nobody will stop you. Knock yourself out!

By being a publicly-accessed site, you are going to invite commentary. If you only want it soft-pedaled, then forget the internet; meet at Starbucks and discuss these ideas over coffee. I'm sorry you feel my comments are inflamitory, but some of the best orations in history were delivered in stinging fashion. But I will apologize right here for making you feel uncomfortable, and get right to the point. Albert's idea is so unbelievably over the top, that all progressives should discredit it. "US Societal Re-education Campaign"? I mean really! You should win people to your side through fact-based, well-articulated arguements, and invite critique. Suggesting the notion of mandated re-education means that at least someone recognizes that the LEFT's value system is not winning over believers in the public domain of competition for ideas. And that is the point we on the right are trying to make: you all want everyone to think like you. You can't do it honestly through debate, so you want to use the power of government to coerce peope to your way of thinking. And just to add on in response to Jaybeat: I am an urban-dwelling, higher-educated, reasonably well-read person, who does not own a gun, reuses zip locks, carpools to work, and believes that the best government is that which governs least.

By being a publicly-accessed site, you are going to invite commentary. If you only want it soft-pedaled, then forget the internet; meet at Starbucks and discuss these ideas over coffee.

Funny, DU is "publicly-accessed" (you have to register to post), and the threads there are anything but "soft-pedaled." Not particularly appreciating non-progressive posts on a blog for progressive Oregonians is not the same as not wanting "commentary."

And there's no need to apologize for making me "uncomfortable"--I'm not, not at all. I AM disgusted that there are so many trolls who will jump all over Albert's choice of words and the very idea that Americans need to learn this stuff, and yet won't address the fact that all of us are brainwashed, indoctrinated and mis-educated everyday by corporate interests so that we end up making all kinds of decisions that benefit them at our own expense! Asking someone to learn a little bit about how their choices may be affecting their future and that of the entire world brings calls of "Get my gun!" (no, not by you, Nason), but none of the same posters seems to have any problem with the fact that BILLIONS of dollars are spent EVERY DAY to convince all of us to everything possible to speed up the end of life as we know it.

You should win people to your side through fact-based, well-articulated arguments, and invite critique. Suggesting the notion of mandated re-education means that at least someone recognizes that the LEFT's value system is not winning over believers in the public domain of competition for ideas.

BULLSHIT. Ask people about single-payer health care. Paying more in taxes to protect the environment. More social services paid for my more taxes on higher incomes. Reducing greenhouse emissions. Alternative energy research instead of wars for oil These are MAINSTREAM ideas supported by large majorities of Americans. But according to you and the MSM, these are "fringe" ideas that have to be "forced" on people. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Some people think it is OK to kill someone if they have dishonored their family. If I don't, and I support laws against it, does that mean that I "want to use the power of government to coerce people to your way of thinking"? If so, I submit that it is not such a bad thing.

I can't speak for Albert, but I suspect that the idea of making this stuff mandatory (which I don't support, but I also don't think he's the Devil for suggesting it, nor do I think it proves that what he wants to teach doesn't have merit) may come from a similar "we have to stop people from killing each other" sense of urgency. Literally, we cannot afford to keep living the way we are living now. It is killing us and the world. But, if only the people who really believe and understand this change, it won't be enough. Even if only the 20-30% of fringe, wacko, climate change deniers keep their old ways, it will still mess up things for the rest of us, because our consumption and pollution rates are so out of balance compared to our population. If we rely only on "voluntary compliance," like George Bush's so-called plan to address climate change, most people and businesses will look at each other and say "after you."

In WWII, the government forced a lot of people to do a lot of things. Rationing. Requisitioning. Build this, not that. Because, above all, we empower our government to protect us. Some things (like internments, and McCarthyism during the Cold War) went too far. WAY too far. But there was still a sense that, we are either all in this together, or we will all die alone.

That, I think, is what we are up against with the 1-2-3 combination of climate change, Peak Oil, and the violent conflicts they will instigate. A threat easily as bad as Hitler, Stalin and Imperial Japan put together.

If you want to have a thoughtful, progressive debate about what's the best approach to this threat, bring it on. You can even try, if you want, to convince us that a "less-government," "market-based" approach is the best way to protect ourselves, our world and our children, knock yourself out. (Though be aware that we recognize that those are right-wing codewords for "I've got mine and the rest of you can go F*** yourselves," so we might not be too easy to convince.)

But if you want to tell us that there really isn't a problem, or that trying to fix it would be worse than doing nothing, then, please, do it somewhere else, a "place for libertarian Oregonians," or whatever.

In the mean time, we'll be trying to save your sorry ass, though at times like these I seriously wonder why.

Re-education camps?! Congratulations on your sensationalism and exploitation of past horrific events to make a rather silly statement on the over exaggerations of climate changes. This type of nonsense is doing little to shed a positive light on environmental awareness and change.

Welcome back, mein fuhrer!

How was Argentina?

Ha ha! Albert really stirred up the ...uh...wasp nest. To recap:

I am not in favor of forced reeducation camps. I am not in favor of "state monopoly on the use of force." I am not in favor of taking away peoples' guns.

I am in favor of breaking the corporate media stranglehold on information. I am in favor of schools teaching [young!] people how to think for themselves. I am in favor of dealing with Global Warming and Peak Oil before they deal with us.

That is all.

Fucking stupidest idea I have ever heard of. I just bought another 1000 rounds of ammo in your name so i can shoot those like you when they show up at my door.

TS

How come whenever I hear about an environmentalist talk about changing your diet for the environment they never talk about hunting.

Hunters consume meat from game equal to about 2 million cattle annually (I read in a hunting magazine recently). Game is local, minimally processed and "organic" as it gets. Hunters prepare and preserve their own food through smoking, "jerking" and other means.

My family's consumption of beef has gone from ~75 pounds per year to maybe 10 lbs per year since I've been getting venison on a regular basis.

Here's a link to a National Geographic magazine article about hunting and all of its benefits to wildlife and conservation of habitat.

http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-11/hunters/poole-text.html

Instead of writing this crap, why dont you pick up a book and read what those Dictators you mentioned did in their re education camps. Go hug a friggen tree and close your pie hole you putz. This country does not need to change at the civilian level, it needs to change at the top. I bet you think gun control stops crime too.

My dad told me about those re-education camps he saw in central Europe a few years back. Sounded interesting, if you weren't on the re-education end. How bout you come on over and give me a ride to your concentration er...re-education camp.I promise you a ride you soon won't forget.

I pray the ghost of McCarthy sweeps over this land before it is too late.

Pat You are totally ignoring what Nason is actually saying. I'm reading his objections as being directed at the insanity of the idea of mandatory.......whatever.....for adults. I'm totally with Nason on the point.

Am I? Read what Nason wrote:

Nason Suggesting the notion of mandated re-education means that at least someone recognizes that the LEFT's value system is not winning over believers in the public domain of competition for ideas.

Then read my next 5 paragraphs, which cover the following points:

1) What Nason calls "the LEFT'S value system" is in fact that held by the majority of Americans.

2) Making some values the law of the land is how our system works, especially when public safety and well being are concerned.

3) Climate change/peak oil are such large threats to our safety and well being that mandatory measures may indeed be appropriate.

4) When society has faced major threats before (WWII), government has made all kinds of things mandatory that would otherwise not be considered reasonable.

5) Climate change/peak oil are easily as big a threat as the military aggressors of WWII.

Pat Don't argue with things that he did not say.

I think the above shows that I argued with exactly what he said.

Pat That makes you look as crazy as Albert.

Funny, because I was thinking that Nason is the crazy one, for thinking we can voluntarily free-market our way out of this mess (that unrestrained capitalism, concentration of wealth and unfettered exploitation of human and natural resources has in fact created). Like thinking George Bush is the one to "cure" our nation's "addiction to oil." Now THAT'S ROTFLMAO crazy.

And speaking of crazy, I think I should mention Nason's fellows in the "burn Albert at the stake" crowd. (Not that he's responsible for what they say, but he hasn't chimed in to tell them they are wrong, so I think his silence can reasonably be assumed to mean assent.) Shall we tour the high, er, low-lights?

Tim I just bought another 1000 rounds of ammo in your name so i can shoot those like you when they show up at my door.

Greg Go hug a friggen tree and close your pie hole you putz.

Fucking Annoyed I'm going to dump oil into a river today just to piss you off.

James B Norman ...left wing power elites... want us all to live in caves.

joe The day you... try to do that re-education camp... you had better be wearing snowshoes to walk over the pile of spent brass.

Bernice I wouldn't hesitate to use violence against anyone who tried to intern me. You, Albert, are no better than Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, and Joseph Stalin.

But, of course, Albert and I are the crazy ones! Because we want to save humanity and the world and have the outrageous temerity to wonder, out loud, whether asking everyone nicely will be enough.

Two or three years ago, I heard some far righties talking about how great it'd be to set up camps for women who've had abortions, special psychological help centers to help gays, lesbians, and bisexuals lead moral lives in accordance with God's word, capitalism centers to show socialists the error of their ways, etc.

That talk - and their sincerity - sickened me enough that it helped me to leave the Republican Party and become a Libertarian.

Today, I'm just as sickened seeing the left engage in the same garbage as I did with the right. You might argue that such things are necessary to save the planet. Have you considered that the other side believes that their proposals are just as justifiable? Are you aware that Republicans are just as likely to maintain power as Democrats are to gain power?

It is my sincere hope that there is organized resistance - if necessary, armed - to any proposal or any law mandating attendance at "education centers" run by either "blue" OR "red" interests.

Just a visitor You might argue that such things are necessary to save the planet. Have you considered that the other side believes that their proposals are just as justifiable?

But, newsflash, the other side is WRONG. Bat-shit-crazy wrong. There is nothing close to a consensus (even among evangelical Christians, not to mention scientists, psychologists, or any one else who knows anything about anything) that the issues you hypothesize about are real. A complete and total straw-man.

But there IS world-wide, growing, scientific and (in most of the developed world, outside the US) political consensus that we have to get off our butts or we're doomed.

We can argue about whether or not "mandating attendance" is a good or effective way to try and do this. Fine. But to say that it is the SAME as some of the craziest ideas out of some of the craziest of the crazy, is just, well, crazy.

Newsflash.

Not EVERYTHING that is "mandatory" is bad. You have to learn how to drive to be given that privilege. If you screw up driving badly enough, guess what? You have to go get RE-EDUCATED. It's MANDATORY.

Ah, but our libertarian friends say, "But you don't HAVE to drive. That's a choice." Not since, I'd say, about 1950. When the same right-wingers who are saying climate change mitigation should be voluntary were tearing up our streetcar lines and running the railroads out of business with taxpayer-financed highways. Which helped get us into this mess in the first place.

So, sure, we can talk which are the best tactics for success all you want. But if you want to demonize any and all things that society makes mandatory (when our survival and well-being is at stake), then you'd better be prepared to live a life without a lot of things, and with a lot of extra anarchy and hazards.

But we'd have our freedom, gosh darn it. The freedom to be mowed down by a 50-time drunk driver that no one "forced" to be "re-educated."

And the freedom to wear shorts in January without risking frostbite, even in the soon to be mis-named Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. Just thank God we have Moose and Squirrel to protect us from those damned commies.

Jaybeat- "...so I think his silence can reasonably be assumed to mean assent." Dude, I had work to do. It's called earning an honest dollar to support my family. Then I rode my bike 29 miles home in the rain because I believe in doing my fair share to reduce oil consumption (voluntary, not government-mandated bike riding). You must have tons of time on your hands to be watch-dogging this forum. I would then assume you don't work for a living and don't know what it's like to pay nearly a third of your wages in taxes - some of it spent on useless government programs like a Societal Re-Education Campaign. -Nason

Nason,

Really, can't we all just get along?

I (fortunately or un-, I tend to think the later) did not have to work today, and certainly have wasted too much time and energy on this thread. But to presume that I therefore don't have to work at all, ever (what do you think I am, a welfare queen? How Reaganesque of you!), or don't know what it is like to pay taxes??? Puh-leez. I would have thought you'd be above such knee-jerk, right-wing "I pull myself up by my own boot straps so get a job, low-life!" pronouncements.

Look I think it is great you ride your bike. And, if you really care, I wouldn't make bike-riding mandatory. I would make the choice to use a car cost the end-user something a lot closer to what it ultimately costs all of us and the planet than it does now. Use that to fund renewable energy research and you both discourage destructive behavior and encourage constructive. But I'm sure that's too "socialist" for you. Bet you love the part of the Constitution that says "provide for the general welfare."

I've certainly paid (and continue to pay) my fair-share of taxes; more, really, since I've never been rich enough to get the really good tax breaks. But for every dollar I pay in taxes, I easily get more than that back. Less, some years, like when Republicans are in office. And less still when we have stupid laws like the kicker that give $15 million dollars back to the 20 people who need and deserve it least.

But, I digress. Just like the bumper sticker that says "I wish schools had all the money they wanted and the Defense Department had to have bake sales to buy a new tank," I would love to live in a world where my tax dollars went to helping citizens learn more about what they can do to live more sustainably and help lessen climate change. I doubt they'll ever be used for "Re-Education" as such, but if they even slightly pushed back against the non-stop drumbeat of CONSUME! that drives us like lemmings to our own destruction, I would gladly pay double. As long as you did, too.

I sure am getting tired of people who think they are smart and only THEY "Get it," and everyone else is simple and cannot be trusted to decide how to live their lives.

Guess what, even if there is truth to your concerns and fears, likely I and my childrens children will be dead and buried before the "sky falls".

Ergo, I could care less.

Stop trying to tell everyone else what is best for them and sort out your own issues, moonbat.

Oh dear, emotions and science, never the two should meet. Al Gore, the meglomaniac savior of a people who couldnt find anything to complain about one day.

If, and it's a big If, global warming is a real, man-made phenomenon, then how do you know the world won't be a better place for everyone after it's finished "warming"?

Tom Civiletti -- WRT Hugo Chavez, perhaps you're referring to right-wing propaganda such as this article, "Venezuelans Struggle to Find Food". I consider myself progressive, but that is not among my desired outcomes. Perhaps I haven't been sufficiently re-educated.

Were you the lead Pig in Animal Farm.....you sure sound like him.

Stick your globally warmed finger up your re-educated ass.

"well, this has certainly been an interesting thread. still not fully caught up, but I have to agree with everyone that the title should be changed. How about an education campaign? Anyway, wow, never seen so much contention before - but societal shift away from what we're doing isn't going to be easy - so, I guess this is to be expected. More to follow, I'm sure."

Doesn't matter whether you call it education, re-education, un-education, up-education or down-education. Essentially, here's what you need to think about. As one who is a liberal - someone in support of freedom of thought, speech, and more - you must recognize that difference of thought is a fundamental driving force behind this nation.

Hence, there are those who present evidence to the contrary, that global warming is not happening, or that it isn't caused by human activity. There are those who are strongly in favor of capitalism, feeling that it is best to reward the best people in society. And there are those who feel that they should be able to eat, drink, and smoke whatever they wish to because it's their body and they don't hurt anyone else by doing so.

These people may be wrong, or they may be right. The wonderful thing about this country is that we can disagree and argue, allowing people to come to their own conclusion based on facts and their opinions on what's the right way to deal with problems [plus, what the problems really are, anyway!]. This is independent thought.

The moment that you REQUIRE people to be 'educated' in what one little side thinks in hotly contested issues, you are close enough to shake hands with totalitarianism.

You can't force people to follow your beliefs. That's Tyranny. The only way you'll get me and mine into the brainwashing camp will be by FORCE. Bring guns. Lots of them. You people don't have any concept of what freedom is.

Jaybeat:

You might argue that such things are necessary to save the planet. Have you considered that the other side believes that their proposals are just as justifiable?

But, newsflash, the other side is WRONG. Bat-shit-crazy wrong. There is nothing close to a consensus (even among evangelical Christians, not to mention scientists, psychologists, or any one else who knows anything about anything) that the issues you hypothesize about are real. A complete and total straw-man.

...and they say that you're wrong, and that this is all GAWD'S WILL, and...

Hey, they say you're wrong. You say they're wrong.

Newsflash: The desire or action toward forcing people to enter into re-education camps for an agenda is WRONG no matter the agenda.

Personally, I'll take my freedom and all of the "negatives" that go along with it than be forced into a social engineering program mandated by anybody to advance ANY agenda.

as noted, there have been all kinds of people who thought that "re-education camps" were a great idea. these were the very same people who, upon the realization that MOST of the world didn't actually share their opinion, started killing everyone who didn't agree with them.

you may have read your history, but you clearly didn't learn from it. if i remember correctly there is some old quote about people who fail to learn from their history...

Does anybody over the age of six take these environmentalist wacko doomsayers seriously any more?

Especially when you look at who wrote the papers and find the same names over and over again, like this one:

Stephen H. Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change (and Professor by Courtesy in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it? But he's not even a meteorologist. His degree is in mechanical engineering.

Nonetheless over the past 35 years his is one of the names that keep popping up when you look into exactly who has declared that America has SINNED against GAWD AND MAN by aspiring to create a future that is better than hunting rats by candlelight.

In the 1970s, Schneider and others were telling us that POLLUTION was about to cause a new ICE AGE and it was going to KILL US ALL in TEN YEARS.

In the 1980s, Schneider and others were telling us that POLLUTION was creating something called ACID RAIN that was going to KILL US ALL in TEN YEARS.

In the 1990s, Schneider and others were telling us that First World civilization was creating GLOBAL WARMING and it was going to KILL US ALL in TEN YEARS.

And no matter how many times they're proven to be flat-out wrong, you can depend on the Red-as-a-baboon's-arse American newsmedia to breathlessly repeat whatever loopy prediction the Environmentalist Wacko Doomsayers have proclaimed this week. And you can also bet that people like Stephen Schneider will never get called on their lies, and no reporter is ever going to ask them just why the rest of us should take anything they say seriously after their dismal 35-year track record of being proven wrong in every prediction every single time.

Here, let's read a revealing quote from one of the leading minds of the environmentalist wacko movement:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest..." Interview in Discover Magazine, October 1989

This isn't even propaganda. These are confabulations from honest-to-god madmen who believe their own lies and who want us all to go back to the caves. If Stephen Schneider had been born a hundred years earlier, he would have been one of those kooks who wandered the streets of American cities, ringing a bell and wearing a crudely hand-lettered sandwich board that said "REPENT! THE END IS NIGH!"

And this is why every word that comes from the environmentalist wackos is a lie, including "a," "an," and "the." If they told me the sun was rising in the East tomorrow, I'd wonder what their angle was. And the fact that they have the Democratic Party licking their boots is highly disturbing.

But ya know, Mr. Kaufman, to bring this back on track, the only way the Nazis and the Reds were able to send millionsn of people to "reeducation camps" was by the trick of having all the guns. Want to come and try to take mine? MOLON LABE.

Joel H.,

I have never known a world leader of whom I approved completely, Hugo Chavez included. If, however, you are willing to look beyond the US corporate media, as well as the rightwing sites such as the one to which you link, you will find that the rest of the world has a much different take on Chavez's effect on Venezuela. You will find that the average Venezuelan is much better off now than before Chavez took office. You will also discover the heinous meddling of the US government in Venezuelan internal affairs, including a failed coup against Chavez and an ongoing effort to subvert an upcoming constitutional referendum that multi-national corporations do not want passed: Venezuela Threatens to Expel US Official.

"The media's the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

Malcolm X

"Does anybody over the age of six take these environmentalist wacko doomsayers seriously any more?"

Most intelligent and well educated people do, Leonidas of Sparta. Think over a few things:

Meteorologists or not the only discipline involved in studying global warming. Much of the work involves population science, botany, zoology, geology, archeology, and paleontology, all with good reason.

Science is science. Using science to inform politics and economics is not science, but it is vital if we are to have reasonable policies.

There has been significant environmental regulation that have reduced the amount of particulates released into the air as well as the amount of acidifying gases released into the air, much of it in response to the "wackos" you deride.

You sound like a wacko.

How is Jim Karlock forcing anybody to do anything?

You get upset that you are not--not yet, anyway--allowed to drag the rest of the human race back to the Stone Age at gunpoint, and you sound like some medieval witch-burner. "The King is oppressing us by not letting us burn witches!" Keep on drinking that Kool-Aid.

Well, I just couldn't help myself. The arguements here go between "You're all a bunch neo-Fascist, survivalist, nut-jobs" to "You'll have to pry my gun from my dead body." I really wanted to just stay on the issue of using government for indoctrination, but I must say no one is challenging the Global Warming alarmists. To quote Joseph Geobbels, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." The following are some of the reasons I am labeled a Global Warming denier. These are listed in not specific order. I hope you'll read to the bottom, because there I offer a bit of intellectual honesty. 1. One detail the alarmists verbally parade before us is the reference to the vast number of scientists who say that there is no question that man is affecting climate change. Each time I hear this citation by The Left, the number of scientists varies by several hundred. Just how many scientists are there? And who are they? 2. Related to #1 – if we are speaking of the same cited group of “UN authorities”, it turns out that many are NOT scientists, but lawyers, political appointees and bureaucrats who have little scientific credibility, and a lot of vested interest in growing the size of domestic and international government. 3. Another so-called fact is the research about the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere versus historical and the correlation to global temperatures. Let me put my engineer’s hat on and give you the other side of the argument. First of all, a scientist should never draw a conclusion from one track of test and observation. Where’s the parallel independent path of scientific study to back up the conclusion? That is what we call “bad science.” Secondly, the levels historic atmospheric CO2 are hard to pin down in absolute numbers when drawn from ice cores, etc. The best one can do is observe trends. Furthermore, the global temperatures cited as correlating to atmospheric CO2 levels come from measurement methods which are now being challenged in the scientific community. It turns out that temperatures measured by satellites in earth orbit are more accurate than terrestrial-bound sensors, and the data recorded over several decades show lower average temperatures than the numbers used by the “pro-global-warming” community. Also, the movement upwards in global temperatures is still within the time-base of “statistical noise” compared to the long-wave trends extracted from ice cores and similar sources. 4. Regarding the terrestrial sensors mentioned in #3, the US temperature data used for climate modeling by the NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies – which is often cited by alarmists, including Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth – have been showed to be highly suspect. There are multiple instances of these sensors being placed in thermally non-neutral locations such as adjacent to air conditioning units, 5. The data mentioned in #4 was used to calculate annual temperatures since the early 20th century. A sudden upward trend at the end of the century (called the “hockey stick” by Al Gore) was said to correlate with the increase in CO2 levels. Well a diligent, unaffiliated scientist discovered that the NASA’s temperature calculations were faulty due to a Y2K bug in their software. NASA has since fessed up to this mistake and corrected their data. Three of the five warmest years are now 1921, 1931 and 1934 6. I resent the frequent assertion that all who challenge man-made global warming are a collective of ignorant, uneducated dolts. I have two technical degrees, have authored technical papers and have been employed in the technical and scientific community for 25 years. How do I fit into that vision? 7. I often hear that we [the US] should have committed ourselves to the Kyoto Treaty to reduce man-made global warming. What drives me nuts about that argument is that almost no democratic senator at the time of ratification committed his or herself to its ratification in a test vote. Further, the treaty put the bulk of the responsibility to reduce “greenhouse” emissions on the United States, while China [the largest source of greenhouse gases] shouldered little of the burden. I point out that the US is by far the most productive economy in the world when measured against its consumption of energy, and therefore the most efficient. That should be taken into account when someone engages in this debate 8. In case no one noticed it, back at the beginning of October a British court determined that Al Gore's “Inconvenient Truth" contains at least eleven material falsehoods. I won’t list them here. References are easily found on the internet. 9. Now the intellectual honesty. I actually do believe that mankind is contributing to global warming – but a fraction of the level the alarmists believe. What pushes me away from buying into the global warming scare – more than anything else – is that liberals advocate government as the solution. Government is by default political, so anything the government does, regulates or enacts as law becomes political and therefore cannot be intellectually objective or honest. The success of United States is due to the recognition of inviolate basic rights and private property – which to me implies minimal government interference. The measures advocated by the global warming community in essence violate these rights – whether it be draconian taxes, or consigning our rights to an international body of lawmakers. I would rather relegate my children to a future of melting ice caps and increasing temperatures, than to give over their rights to a body of politicians who are at best inept but more likely would be corrupt beyond our wildest imaginations. God Bless The USA [Is it OK to cite God in a liberal Blog?]

Nason wrote:

"The success of United States is due to the recognition of inviolate basic rights and private property – which to me implies minimal government interference. The measures advocated by the global warming community in essence violate these rights – whether it be draconian taxes, or consigning our rights to an international body of lawmakers. I would rather relegate my children to a future of melting ice caps and increasing temperatures, than to give over their rights to a body of politicians who are at best inept but more likely would be corrupt beyond our wildest imaginations."

Nason is living in an imaginery past which condemns our future.

Scientific groups concurring with the IPCC position on human caused global warming:

1.1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 1.2 Joint science academies’ statement 2007 1.3 Joint science academies’ statement 2005 1.4 Joint science academies’ statement 2001 1.5 U.S. National Research Council, 2001 1.6 American Meteorological Society 1.7 American Geophysical Union 1.8 American Institute of Physics 1.9 American Astronomical Society 1.10 Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 1.11 American Association for the Advancement of Science 1.12 Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London 1.13 Geological Society of America 1.14 American Chemical Society 1.15 Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)

Those noncommital [not the same as dissenting] 2.1 American Association of State Climatologists 2.2 American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG)

Nazi. Are we also going to the "showers"?

Hey, I definitely don't agree with the notion of reeducation camps. But can we keep this civil?

Yeah, I'm disgusted by the idea. The IDEA.

Concentrate on the idea and not on each other. Perhaps both sides can learn something here.

Ideas. I had family in Poland that "disappeared" from someones "Ideas".

You, dear sir, are a left-wing wacko nutjob. Makes me glad to be a Libertarian and to believe in FREEDOM.

Robert: The moment that you REQUIRE people to be 'educated' in what one little side thinks in hotly contested issues, you are close enough to shake hands with totalitarianism.

Uh, Earth to Robert. The urgency of climate change is not something that "one little side" "thinks." The reality of climate change is not even "hotly contested," outside of fake science and politically and/or economically motivated snow jobbers. (Nice pun, though. "Hotly" contested.) The deniers can shout as loud as they want, but THEY are the fringe, the wackos, the people who will fight to the death for their right to believe against reason that the world is flat, and that we can burn fossil fuels forever. The people of the world should not have to damn themselves to a future of incalculable suffering because of what THIS "little side" insists on believing, in opposition to virtually universal scientific and political consensus. And a majority of people wanting to prevent the destruction of themselves AND the (tiny) minority that disagrees with them isn't totalitarianism--it's Democracy.

Oh, and BTW, see how far you get, I don't know, running a restaurant if you happen to believe (as many people once did) that un-refrigerated or undercooked food won't make your customers sick. Is the fact that the Health Department would shut you down "totalitarian?"

Should we not treat people with AIDS, because a small, fringe minority disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus (that HIV is caused by a virus) and instead believes that AIDS is a punishment from God?

Just a visitor: Newsflash: The desire or action toward forcing people to enter into re-education camps for an agenda is WRONG no matter the agenda.

Personally, I'll take my freedom and all of the "negatives" that go along with it than be forced into a social engineering program mandated by anybody to advance ANY agenda.

Ah, yes. "Social engineering." Like, say laws that prevent someone from selling you tainted food? Or selling you a car that crumples like a paper bag in a crash? Or that say someone should go to jail if they try and kill you? These are all laws that keep people safe. That protect us. That "provide for the general welfare." Do they restrict your freedom? Of course. (At least if you were interested in killing someone or didn't care if you did.) But would you really prefer to live in a world where everyone was "free" to do those things? If so, you and your Lord of the Flies buddies are welcome to find some uninhabited island to go play Survivor on.

So, really, come on. We aren't talking about "an agenda." Well, actually, we are. The agenda to exploit and destroy the environment for economic gain. That agenda has created some pretty nasty consequences for life on Earth, and we can either be responsible, as a society, and try to correct our mistakes and minimize the damage, or we can literally sentence ourselves and life on Earth to a future with unimaginably more suffering, cruelty and death.

You all sound like an irresponsible kid who didn't study for their math test. The test is tomorrow. But when his parents say, "The test is tomorrow, you'd better study," he flies into a rage about how they are trying to control him, deny him his freedom, and hey, how do you KNOW the test is tomorrow? Do you really want to take away my TV privileges because you think it is tomorrow? The tyranny! Besides, even if it is, I've heard you don't need math, so I don't think it will be that bad if I do have a test tomorrow.

Oh, and if you try and make me study, I'll kill you.

Real mature. Real rational. Real "grown-up" of all of you.

Funny, if my government (or any body else) has an "agenda" to save my life, and the lives of my children, or to help minimize the needless suffering in their lives, I'd think that was a good thing.

Should FDR have said, "No need to sacrifice, folks. No need to be uncomfortable, or make hard choices. I'm sure whatever Hitler and Hirohito want is better than having to do without rubber and butter." Is that what we want government to do? Never tell us what we don't want to hear?

Actually, that is often what government does. I don't think it serves us very well when it does that. You?

"Oh, and if you try and make me study, I'll kill you.

Real mature. Real rational. Real "grown-up" of all of you."

Yes, it's that simple. And that serious. I will kill you if you come to force me into a camp. I've learned the lesson taught to the Jews in 1939. Complying with you leads to destruction. No, I'm not joking. That's real. And it's a mature decision. Similar to the one made by the Founders of this country when they broke with England.

I choose freedom over your values. And I'm prepared to defnd that freedom with force.

The fruits of re-education camps. http://www.edwebproject.org/asiapics/tuolsleng.skulls.jpg

Maybe you'll use the same rules. http://www.edwebproject.org/asiapics/tuolsleng.rules.jpg

YF: I've learned the lesson taught to the Jews in 1939. Complying with you leads to destruction. No, I'm not joking. That's real. And it's a mature decision.

Whoa there, cowboy. The fascists (in case you've been sleeping since, oh, 1939) are those in the military-corporate-neoconservative side of the house who want you to support perpetual wars for oil and corporate power. THEY are the ones who threaten all of our freedoms.

They, BTW, are also those who want you to think you can consume, and drive, and burn oil, and spend all you want and it won't be a problem. If they continue to hold on to power (by stealing elections, suppressing votes, intimidating the opposition, controlling the media and using the justice system for political ends, all old tricks in the Fascist playbook), THEY will be the ones who use Blackwater and the like to round up everyone who doesn't disagree with them and put them in camps run by Homeland Security. Read Naomi Klein's book. It documents how the right-wing/corporate side of the house is following all the steps that Fascist regimes take.

Complying with THEM is what "leads to destruction." Letting THEM set the rules is what got us into this mess in the first place. Letting THEM convince us that cheap oil is a birthright and that we should launch wars of conquest and occupation to maintain it. Letting THEM take away our freedoms in the name of "fighting terror."

Prescott Bush financed the Nazis, and supported a coup plot against FDR by those who thought the US should emulate Germany in response to the Great Depression. The lesson taught to the Jews in 1939 (as you put it) was paid for by our President's grandfather. The grandson is cut from the same cloth.

Forget "camps." Forget "re-education." Forget all the images of totalitarianism that you'll use force to oppose. That's NOT what we're talking about. We're talking about all of us, working together, to try to solve the biggest threat to the survival of humankind that we've ever faced.

What do YOU know how to do? Make bio-diesel? Grow food? Fix cars? Use computers? Build things? Something else nobody's thought of?

GREAT! Teach THAT! Anyone who has anything to contribute should do so. We need everybody! And, if you think that, say, wind- and solar-powered electric cars are a better solution than bio-diesel and ethanol, let's talk. Let's debate. Let's use ALL of us to come up with the best ways to survive this thing.

But don't let Bush and his mouthpieces somehow convince you that it is a greater threat to recognize and address the problem than to pretend is isn't there, or isn't that bad. THAT will require you to defend your freedom with a gun long before any one from our side can teach their first class.

Yikes!!!! Have you considered moving to Russia or China? It sounds like they could really use your talents. Maybe not,too radical for them!

Amazing. President Bush is a "fascist," even though it's the liberal kook Kaufman who is the one who is demanding mandatory roundups and brainwashing camps, presumably at gunpoint.

Put down the bong. You've had enough. And if you still believe this wild-eyed conspiracy theory tomorrow, get professional help.

Seriously, do you think the world revolves around you? Do you think you're so important that there has to be a "neocon fascist" plot to keep you down? Such arrogance astonishes me. All the cranks believe they're so important that the government has to be conspiring against them--"global warming" cranks, flying saucer cranks, "intelligent design" cranks, JFK-was-shot-by-Hitler's-cloned-brain-in-Bigfoot's-body-from-a-UFO cranks, and you're all absolutely convinced that it's everyone else that's brainwashed and crazy and only you, typing angrily on a sputtering old 486 from your mom's basement, you and only you know THE TRVTH that we must all accept, at gunpoint if necessary, in the fantasy world you want to bring to all the rest of us. And, as Stephen Schneider's admission reveals, you are perfectly willing to lie and falsify data to "prove" the "truth" about your own personal obsessions as long as it's "fake but accurate." "We're saving the WORLD from GLOBAL WARMING and CAPITALISM, man!" "We're telling the people about the ALIENS at AREA 51, man!"

No thanks. We don't want any. Oh, and one more thing: e pur si muove.

"Whoa there, cowboy. The fascists (in case you've been sleeping since, oh, 1939) are those in the military-corporate-neoconservative side of the house who want you to support perpetual wars for oil and corporate power. THEY are the ones who threaten all of our freedoms."

That was intended as an insult, Mr Progressive. You and the original Poster are the ones suggesting mandatory camps. If the shoe of oppression fits, wear it. BTW: Hitler may have taught us the original lesson, but progressive like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot perfected the "camps" trying to stamp out capitalists. Much like your ideas.

You are on warning, Sir. If you decide to come, come armed. One of us isn't leaving.

The more I read, the I think reeducation camps may be the only way. Ha, ha, ha. Honestly, I'm happy to see that conservatives? are so vehemently opposed to authoritarian government and hope their taste for freedom goes beyond rejection of global warming orthodoxy.

I don't know Albert Kaufman, but I doubt he would actually support rounding people up for mandatory instruction. Sometimes writers use hyperbole to attract attention and make a point. Chastising him is fair game, but really, repeated firearm cocking sounds more like adolescent masturbatory activity than political discourse. I don't spend much time on rightwing blogs. Is that what goes on during discussions of illegal aliens and tax-and-spend liberals?

Tom Civiletti The more I read, the I think reeducation camps may be the only way. Ha, ha, ha. Honestly, I'm happy to see that conservatives? are so vehemently opposed to authoritarian government and hope their taste for freedom goes beyond rejection of global warming orthodoxy. JK: Am I the only one who has noticed that the primary difference between the Ds and Rs is the choice of who they want to screw over by using the power of government? Neither believes in freedom for all, only for those in their favorites list.

There is another way and that is to remove government power so that it cannot be bought and misused by either side.

Thanks JK

A few comments:

I am still appalled by the number of people willing to force others to their beliefs. Especially when they are unable to defend those beliefs on facts, instead they let others think for them by blindly citing alleged authorities. They are willing to commit heinous crimes against their neighbors, without even understanding the real data. People, right here in Portland, willing to force others into re-education camps, just waiting to take to the streets and start rounding up the non-believers Those people are very dangerous potential brown shirts.

SCAREY very SCAREY.

Leonidas of Sparta mentioned Stephen Schneider’s willingness to lie. Did you know Gore said the same thing more recently:

Grist: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?

AlGore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is , as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.

Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there's going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions. (From Grist, 09 May 2006, grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/ bold added)

Some inconvenient facts: Viking farms are still under Greenland Ice. 1998 is no longer shown to be the warmest year, using the best historic data in the world.) The same data shows cooling since 1998 - we are 9 years into cooling. (Some say, based on solar cycles, that the cooling may get serious in just a few years.)

Thanks JK

Thank God I live in the US and cannot be forced to spend five days doing whatever you want me to do.

On the other hand, I'll give you five if you give me five first.

watermelons: green on the outside, red in on the inside. thank God for the Second Amendment, so we can fight this cultural marxism.

As a teacher and a democratic socialist, I object to the underlying notion that forced indoctrination is education in any real sense.

Considering Albert's proposal as a draft of a curriculum for a voluntary program that could actually be instituted (look at the historical examples of the Chautaqua movement or the travelling lecture/ organizing program carried out by the People's Party in the 1890s), I think it puts far too much emphasis on "individual solutions" and behavior change. It needs much more on how to think about structures that constrain some choices and enable others.

I also object to its underlying assumption that in effect some of us have got it knocked & have the answers to the questions, and others merely need to learn to agree with us. This is as undemocratic coming from the left as from the knee-jerk see-a-problem, throw-a-market-at-it right.

Its not just asking people what they need. We need continual education too. We all need to face internal contradictions in our received ideologies, center (the real "politically correct" idea base in this country, with a rightward skew) left and right, as the world throws us new questions or new versions of older ones.

For instance, growing our own food is fine as far as it goes, but it won't actually go very far for a lot of folks. Well over 90% of U.S. Americans are urban, suburban or live in rurally oriented towns. Even farmers get most of their food via market mechanisms because of agricultural specialization.

A body of public health literature is emerging which is identifying a phenomenon called "food deserts," in which large areas of very large cities (the studies so far have mostly involved Chicago, Philadelphia, L.A. & to a lesser extent NYC) lack full-service groceries while having an abundance of snack-food, soft drink & beer & wine oriented (depending on state) convenience stores, as well as fast-food restaurants. Fresh fruit and vegetables are either not available at all, or are of poor quality and high cost, relative to prices elsewhere and even more importantly to the less healthy foods & local incomes. A lot of folks in such areas can't afford cars so can't take advantage of economies of scale JK points out. It is not clear how much this is a phenomenon in smaller large cities (like Portland), small cities, towns, certain kinds of suburbs, certain kinds of impoverished rural areas. These areas loosely track with low income.

Now, markets have not served to provide these areas with full service groceries. A Jim Karlock knee-jerk if markets don't do it, it shouldn't be done approach isn't ethically acceptable, and wonon't solve the problem. (Though I have seen one interesting grocery trade publication article arguing that the assumptions of market research that go against putting stores in inner cities have been misleading because they rely on government income stats that focus on the formal market, and ignored another significant increment of gray and black market income circulating in these areas.)

On the other hand, if one wants to argue from a social and health equity viewpoint that everybody should have easy access to affordable healthful foods -- a structural precondition to changing individual health affecting dietary behavior -- and if it should prove true that the most likely way for that to happen is via Walmart or other big-box stores, how should progressives weigh those equity concerns against the other ones & other types of concerns that make us chary of that kind of store? Should we say, it's most important to improve that access, and if that means expanding the distribution network of the industrial food system, with all its ecological and labor equity problems, so be it, reforming that system is an ongoing task? Should we say the ill-health effects of bad nutrition are larger for the populations affected than whatever health problems there may be with "conventional" foods? Should we seek policy interventions that particularly encourage availability of fresh food from sustainable sources, also encourage conventionally owned markets? Should we look to other community criteria (local ownership, local employment) as part of the picture? Should we not try to answer these questions off the top of our heads, but get the people affected involved in the discussions about what they need, what they'd like, what they'd use, what the obstacles are that they face?

Even if your nutty idea somehow took hold in the forthcoming Hillary Rodham administration, I am not worried at all. The government can't even find illegal aliens hiding in plain sight (here's a tip, ICE: go to Wal-Mart on Saturday) so what makes you think they they can round up everyone and send them to a re-education camp? Oh, wait a minute... force of arms. To take your optimistic, utopian idealism to its logical end means that people who didn't want to attend the camp would be rounded up by government agents with guns and that some of them would be shot as an example to the others. Wow, thank the Founding Fathers for that Second Amendment. Your plan will never, ever happen in the USA under the Constitution. See you later and have a nice day.

First of all, I am appalled at the lack of negative feedback at the very idea of such a thing. Isn't it enough that the government mandates specific lessons, and pushes the political correct crap on our kids to the point of absurdity? Another thing; Are all you people that agree with this really so stupid that you think Al Gore is a nice guy just trying to help us? You can't see that this is all a big scam to milk you and governments around the world out of money? Carbon credits! Give me a freakin' break! Isn't Oregon the same state that thinks sex with animals is ok? HEY!!! STOP DRINKING THE SALT WATER!!!

By the way...Chris the Solialist moron...TAKE A BIG CUP CUP OF SHUT THE HELL UP!

Jim Karlock and Tom Civiletti are talking past one another.

Let's say a large proportion of global warming is natural (which I believe a lot of the science saying that a signficant portion is human caused would also say). Let's ask what it means if natural global warming left to its own devices would cause a whole hell of a lot of problems for our rather intricately specialized global division of labor, without any human-caused increment? Is it a good idea to add a largish human-caused increment? No.

The largishness needs to be measured with reference NOT to natural historical climate cycles, within which the late-Holocene warm period we've been in for maybe 20,000 years is a good thing, insofar as agriculture is a good thing. Rather, the scale in question is the vulnerability of the intricate global division of labor to the effects of that change.

JK is misdefining the problem. But if we are honest with ourselves, we'd have to admit that at the end of the day most progressives here aren't so far from him. Paul Gronke started his recent post about compact fluorescent light bulbs by enumerating various inconveniences he wasn't prepared to take up, quite yet. His position is in no way out of the mainstream or unreasonable under current terms of debate.

Consider this thought experiment (which will doubtless elicit more howls but is NOT a policy proposal or something I want to do -- it is something I want to think about). We have seatbelt laws, and cops can pull you over and provisionally fine you for violating them - "give you a ticket". This is done in the public interest in safety -- exercise of the freedom not to wear seatbelts imposes large health costs on the public, including public costs and private ones through the insurance system. Most people accept this. Even if one disagrees with it philosophically, it does not involve violent coercion.

Now, let's imagine someone proposes a law that makes it a finable offense to drive a car alone -- the inverse of the low-traffic incentive lanes on some highways. What would happen? It would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of liberals & leftists as well as conservatives and center-rightists. Part of it would involve arguments about various situations where driving alone might be necessary in one sense or another. But mostly it would be because U.S. Americans like individual personal transportation with the flexibility cars provide, based on the collectively, socialistically, governmentally provided roads infrastructure, btw.

But if we really think the global warming situation is truly dire, with costs far, far greater than those created by not wearing seatbelts or motorcycle helmets, shouldn't we be talking about minimally restrictive laws on individual driving? What does it say about how seriously we take it, that such issues don't even come up?

"Btw, to those who still haven't heard, I decided a while back not to run for the State Rep. position in HD 42." Thanks be to Zeus for that.
Please come yourself to pick me up for the camp. We have so much to talk about.

Jim Karlock and Tom Civiletti appear to be talking about apples and oranges re transport costs.

Jim, do your cost figures include costs of road construction and maintenance? Road policing?

Even those aspects don't get at costs that are extremely hard to quantify, in part because they aren't paid, but get externalized onto the common environment and the public health -- the pollution costs (not restricted to greenhouse contribution) not only of auto emissions but of producing and disposing of cars and their various components including fluids, of fuel extraction, refining, and transport (including spills) of both raw and refined fuels, the pollution costs of building and maintaining roads.

Just because an individual driver, and the business or in some cases public orgranizations carrying out these activities, are able to externalize these costs onto the environmental and health commons doesn't mean they don't exist.

Externalizing these costs on the commons in a sense involves a kind of "taking," comparable though not exactly the same as the takings of non-private property that were involved in the enclosures of land commons that created systems of exclusive private property in land.

Perhaps, the notion of mandatory 're-education' in the hopes of developing a great egalitarian state of social and economic equality is your idea of a utopia, but in reality it's just another police state. Every tyrant always thinks he knows what's best for the people.

I don't care to live in an Orwellian society so that your ridiculous schemes of doom and destruction can be used to enslave an entire culture. People like you are dangerous to the notion of individual freedom, using political correctness along with others of your genre to suppress free speech.

Your lunacy will be posted to http://patriot.eponym.com whether or not my post survives on your site.

Of course Jim wants to force me to do things. He wants to force me to accept the various destructive consequences of unregulated markets. He wants to force me to pay for the infrastructure to support his preferred methods of transport, and the externalized costs of private economic activity from which I don't benefit. He wants to force me to pay the costs of enforcing private property rights and contracts, since in fact private property is artificial in human history, and of enforcing contracts, since in fact capitalism left purely to voluntary agreements wouldn't work, but depends on collective action through the state to reduce the risks of making deals and investments, despite anarcho-libertarian wishful thinking. He wants to force me to accept the doctrine that corporate entities are "persons" legally for purposes of certain benefits, but not for some other important responsibilities, and he wants to force me to accept the system that limits the liability of investors for corporate actions, again involving collective action through the means of the state enforced for the larger common good.

One could go on, this doesn't exhaust the list by any means.

These might or might not be good or bad things. They might in some cases involve collective action for a common good that I'd agree is a common good, but one that I'd prefer to realize by different methods with more equitable distributional consequences, so that the forcing JK wants to do is to make me live under a system where the state acts for the higher benefit of certain interests and the lower for others than I would prefer. And as I say, for the most part he gets his way.

What he can't force me to do is enter into his fantasy world that what he values would exist if it weren't for collective action through government, that it is a choice between government action or its absence, rather than different forms of government action.

The conditions of capitalist wealth cannot exist apart from government. That's why the 18th century classical political economists & philosphers included government centrally in their definitions of civil society. Civil society for them was the public realm of government and market, as opposed to the private domestic realm.

Hey Cpl Henry, suppose I don't? Gonna force me? ;-> Free speech unless you disagree with me, let's see, only unclassical liberals do that, so you must be a liberal?

Actually, it's you who should go back to Freeper-land.

Also, if you look at what I wrote, you might notice that it's critical of Albert's original post.

But that would interfere with your nice fantasy world in which manifestly untrue things are magicked into spurious truth because you put labels on people and ideas, then make statements about the labels rather than the actual words and ideas.

Despite thinking Albert's proposal wrong-headed in terms of liberty issues (and remaining a democratic socialist while doing so, thanks) and in its approach to education and in confusing education with public debate, as well as problematic in content, to be fair to Albert, one should note that both the idea of "camps" and the idea of "utopia" were introduced by others.

Camps I think came from a leftside critic of the idea of re-education. Utopia was a motives speculation from a rightwing critic, subsequently attributed to Albert though he never used it.

What's interesting, as one of my fellow libertarians pointed out, is that Mr. Kaufman sees the link between his preferred method of "educating" and the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot and Chinese re-education camps and still thinks it a good idea.

Very, very revealing.

Bob Tiernan

Why do these people never go to China to see how reality really is for those who live under complete gub'ment indoctrination and control? Albert! You're a knucklehead!

Libertarians, conservatives, and Second amendment enthusiasts,

If you reread the many comments to this post, you will find very few that support the institution of forced reeducation camps, and much rejection of the idea. I can assure you, as one who has taken part in many progressive conspiracies, the topic of forced reeducation never comes up, not once. Personally, I detest socialist totalitarians as much as I detest capitalist ones.

~~~~~~~~~~~

As far as talking past Jim Karlock on the global warming issue, I plead guilty. Although I like Jim personally, as I tend to like most libertarians, I have given up trying to talk sense to him about climate change. I recognize that the meteorological data is complex and not totally consistent. I recognize that climate cycles due to natural causes. But I fail to see how a reasonable person can dismiss the overwhelming consensus of scientific organizations and peer reviewed publications that conclude that human caused global warming resulting from fossil fuel combustion is well established. I do not expect Jim to be reasonable on this issue, but I hope that others reading this conversation will be. I am speaking to them, not Jim.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On transportation costs, Jim presents data on historic costs of various modes, while I am concerned with the impact of ever-increasing energy costs on transportation modes. I believe we cannot plan for future without considering how conditions will be different than they were in the past.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim Karlock suggests that a smaller government would present less danger of despotism. That can be true, depending on which part of the government becomes smaller. I do not know many people who want government larger than what they see as necessary to deliver whatever services they see as beneficial. That is where we will differ. In any case, vigorous defense of rule of law, civil liberties, and democratic governance by the people and the press are paramount. This includes the right to bear arms, in my opinion, although some progressives take a different view. Remember, too, that even communists propose the ultimate withering away of the state. They just want to run things in the meantime. The meantime can become a long time, so we must be aware of any effort to suspend rights "temporarily" in a perceived national emergency.

Uh, Earth to Robert. The urgency of climate change is not something that "one little side" "thinks." The reality of climate change is not even "hotly contested," outside of fake science and politically and/or economically motivated snow jobbers. (Nice pun, though. "Hotly" contested.) The deniers can shout as loud as they want, but THEY are the fringe, the wackos, the people who will fight to the death for their right to believe against reason that the world is flat, and that we can burn fossil fuels forever. The people of the world should not have to damn themselves to a future of incalculable suffering because of what THIS "little side" insists on believing, in opposition to virtually universal scientific and political consensus. And a majority of people wanting to prevent the destruction of themselves AND the (tiny) minority that disagrees with them isn't totalitarianism--it's Democracy.

Thanks, I take pride in my puns. As to your argument, I'm fine with you and I taking steps to slow environmental decay. But I won't force anyone else do, nor will I force them to listen to me and my thoughts. Global warming is still a theory, and I accept that I could, in fact, be wrong. After all, there is also a small fringe which believes that the US never landed on the moon. I don't think they're right, indeed, I might as well say I know they're wrong. But I don't want to have the government mandate action against these adults because, as a basic human right, they're free to think what they want, no matter how offensive, moronic, or just plain wrong it is.

Oh, and BTW, see how far you get, I don't know, running a restaurant if you happen to believe (as many people once did) that un-refrigerated or undercooked food won't make your customers sick. Is the fact that the Health Department would shut you down "totalitarian?"

I wouldn't deem that totalitarian. After all, I don't have a right to harm people. I do have a right to speech and independent thought.

Should we not treat people with AIDS, because a small, fringe minority disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus (that HIV is caused by a virus) and instead believes that AIDS is a punishment from God?

The many should be at the mercy of the few no more than the few should be at the mercy of the many. If one thinks AIDs is a punishment from above, they can feel free not to get treated - because AIDs treatment, unlike re-education camps, isn't mandatory. Of course, these people can't stop other people from being treated. Interestingly, you recognize the AIDs fringe as being wrong to [hypothetically] force their beliefs on others, but fail to see this in the original post's suggestion of 'mandatory [<-- operative word] re-education.

The distinguishing factor is that the original post reflects opinions arguably held by the majority, while those who believe AIDs is punishment are in the minority. I don't believe that the majority should control the minority. As Benjamin Franklin said, democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner. Do you know what he said about liberty?

This has got to be the scariest thing since Al Gore's propaganda to sell his carbon credits (and yes we all know that's the only reason he is involved).

Not only do you want to try to indoctrinate an entire nation into believing an unproven theory, you want to teach others how to spread this to others.

Please answer me if you can, what periods of the Earth's history has had the greatest amount of species of plant and animals? Warmer or Colder periods? If you environmental whackos do actually make a difference and stop the warming trends, have you ever thought of what is to follow?

If we take all of these steps to eliminate a naturally occuring warming trend (other planets are warming as well as our own so this is most likely from solar activity), the consequences are even MORE dire than warming as we will not have the CO2 in the atomosphere to protect us from periods of diminished solar activity. We will then start a rapid decline into an ice age and you'll be praying for us to burn coal, drive our cars and fire up factories you had shut down so you can keep the ice off of your noses.

Tom Civiletti -- You're right. I was surprised to learn that Chavez's predecessors do seem to have been even worse. Unfortunately the U.S. interventionism in Venezuela is not in any way surprising. However none of this indicates that Chavez is not a dangerous wacko, just that world governments are and have always been full of dangerous wackos.

By the way, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Venezuela#, while in no way embodying a neutral point of view is very interesting and certainly doesn't read like a product of the CIA :-)

Joel H,

I don't know if wacko is an accurate descriptor, but people who are ruthless power grabbers are the ones who tend to reach high office, especially when the rule of law, transparency, and functioning democracy are weak. That, unfortunately, describes most of the world throughout history. This is something that Jim Karlock and I probably agree on.

Interesting link:

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/11338421.html

Thanks JK

BTW:

How are much are measures to stop "global warming" going to hurt the poor? (higher power prices? higher gas prices, general inflation, higher housing prices due to densification, etc)

Thanks JK

I wouldn't deem that totalitarian. After all, I don't have a right to harm people.

Right you are, Robert.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that it is harming people very much for us to be putting so much carbon in the atmosphere. Doubters and deniers can whine all they want, but as far as the rest of us is concerned, it is a fact. It is about as certain as the idea if you don't refrigerate your meat, and then serve it to someone, they'll get sick.

So, it harms people to waste energy. It harms people to drive gas-guzzlers. It harms people to have one country output 25% of the world's carbon when we have such a much smaller percentage of the world's population. It harms people to have an economic and political system that rewards waste and penalizes conservation. It harms people when others make lots of money destroying natural resources. I could go on, but you see my point.

All we're talking about, is trying to protect ourselves and our earth, from things that we know will hurt us.

Jim, I know that those who have calculated the human costs of climate change (pain, suffering, war, displacement, etc.) have concluded that by far the worst impacts will be on the poorest people. Those who can't move to higher ground, or out of areas suffering from desertification. We're talking about a humanitarian crisis the scale of which the world has never known. And, as always, those with the least resources will suffer most.

I also know that rich countries put out 100s of times more carbon per person that poor countries. So we own the problem. (Hence the logic of Kyoto--those who made the problem, and got rich doing it, should take the lead in fixing it.)

Chris,

For instance, growing our own food is fine as far as it goes, but it won't actually go very far for a lot of folks. Well over 90% of U.S. Americans are urban, suburban or live in rurally oriented towns. Even farmers get most of their food via market mechanisms because of agricultural specialization.

Very true. We cannot "pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps" to get out of this mess. The way resources are allocated will have to change.

For example, how many millions of acres in urban areas are taken up by surface parking lots? I don't know, but it would be enough for a lot of community gardens. Not only are people growing their own food (saving money, eating more healthfully, reducing food transportation and storage, and absorbing a little carbon along the way), they are also out, in the community, working together, to make things better. Might have some desirable social impacts as well.

In WWII we had "Victory Gardens"--everybody doing their part to help win the war (aka save our country). In the Great Depression we had WPA, CCC and countless other public works projects, which both built much-needed infrastructure and put the unemployed to work.

The wackos call it "socialism" and "social engineering"--I call it:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...

Funny, how we require people who want to become naturalized citizens of this country to learn those words, to learn how our system of government is supposed to work, before they are allowed to share in the privileges, rights and responsibilities that are a large part of what it means to be an "American."

But people lucky enough to be born here, don't have to know shit.

Who's a fascist? Who is the greatest threat to our civil liberties? Who can confiscate property of anyone who speaks out against the government, imprison people without trial or access to a lawyer, listen to your conversations, read your mail, and declare martial law whenever they SAY there is a "national emergency"?

(Hint: It's not "the commies.")

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/EV_Ares/566

Given the polarity of the conversation here, it's a good place to note the commonality of the democratic left and the democratic right. Both are marginalized. Both understand that power often operates arbitrarily, within and in spite of established framework which supposedly governs us. Both realize the necessity of protecting freedom of expression and individual prerogative in times when mindless acceptance of ruling-class views become the norm.

We often call each other "wackos", but we should also recognize that what we hold in common is not trivial. By very nature, it is difficult for nonconformists to come together, but we often fight for the same freedoms, even if we do so from very different perspectives.

JK: You want compulsive re-education suggestions? Try this:

Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North, Continuum UK, 2007, ISBN 0 8264 8614 2.

Their latest production is a typically detailed examination of the phenomenon that characterises our age more than any other, and one that returns us to the primitive state of our superstitious ancestors with their witch hunts, the global scare.

Authors such as your reviewer and James Le Fanu have contended that there was a sea change in western society that occurred in about 1982 and, sure enough, that is where this account begins. That was the year that the acronym AIDS was adopted and, by one of those ironic quirks of coincidence, on the very month that this book was issued the UN has finally admitted what the sceptics always knew, that it had grossly exaggerated the scale and nature of the epidemic. From that time on all hell broke loose, with an unending sequence of “disasters” – killer eggs, listeria hysteria, mad cows and human CJD, E. coli, The Millennium Bug, Satanic abuse, speed kills, lead, passive smoking, asbestos and finally the big one – Global Warming. This account spells out the progression, a lengthy tragicomedy of irony, incompetence and sheer perfidy. Each scare is analysed in terms of the pushers and the blockers through various stages.

Read the whole review at: scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/scaredtodeathreview.html

Thanks JK

Yes I just want to say that if you think Re-educating the Masses with this dog dropping is good for our future look at the other world countries that have "re-educated" there citizens. We have Germany in the early 1900's with Hitler I think we can all see where that led. To a poor destitute nation that decided that since there's was the only way to live they should take over the world and force others to live like them. We also have China where to even say something against the Great Government you are imprisoned or shot and then your family get the bill for the bullet (for those of you who think that is a myth look it up) Do I believe that we should do better at taking care of our Planet? Absolutely! Do I think we should start by getting China (the world's #1 polluter) to clean up their act? Yes. America per-person is one of the cleanest nations on the planet and doing more every day to clean the environment than any nation on the planet. So why is it that instead of asking Mexico to work on there pollution rates we try and make the USA the bad guys? If you truly want to clean the environment talk about these problem. Until you do I will see your rantings as that of

<continued> an individual who want personal freedoms to disappear. As an individual who is at war with a free market society. Again I say that is you want to be taken seriously by those on the right that is where you should start with the real problems facing our environment not the nation that does the most to keep the planet clean. Until you do those of us on the right will continue to view you as uncaring about the environment. You ignore the true problem facing our planet.
I say in closing if you wish for me or any of my "comrades" on the right to get behind you start including the true polluters on your hit list. We know America can do better and please continue to push for us to do better. I for one have converted my diesel truck to run on Vegetable Oil I have changed all of my light fixtures to energy saving bulbs. As I have done for most of my family. I just wish that you guys who are just out to hurt the free thinking free living free market lifestyle would actually study the global situation before blabbering on about the evils of the United States of America

Thank you.

America per-person is one of the cleanest nations on the planet and doing more every day to clean the environment than any nation on the planet. So why is it that instead of asking Mexico to work on there pollution rates we try and make the USA the bad guys? If you truly want to clean the environment talk about these problem...

I just wish that you guys who are just out to hurt the free thinking free living free market lifestyle would actually study the global situation before blabbering on about the evils of the United States of America

List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita

Some highlights:

United States #10 Canada #11 Australia #13

Russia #30

Japan #34

Mexico #82

China #91

India #133

Other links (and different rankings) here, here and here. (The last one is from our very own government.)

By all means, please, "actually study the global situation."

This just in from the "who really wants to turn the US into a police state" desk (10 extra points if you said "not the commies?"):

Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

Bush to task military spy satellites for domestic spying

And, on the "Should I believe the overwhelming evidence regarding climate change, or should I just buy more stuff and not worry?" topic:

Resorts Prepare for a Future Without Skis

jaybeat I just wish that you guys who are just out to hurt the free thinking free living free market lifestyle would actually study the global situation before blabbering on about the evils of the United States of America JK: Why did you leave out this little detail: Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2006 were 1.5 percent below the 2005 total—the first annual drop since 2001 and only the third since 1990. Source: Page 9 of ftp://ftp.eia.doe.gov/pub/oiaf/1605/cdrom/pdf/ggrpt/057306.pdf We are headed in the direction you want, but don’t even mention it. BTW, how does the growth rate in CO2 output compare between US and those poverty stricken countries you hold up as examples? (Looks to me like you really are “ out to hurt the free thinking free living free market lifestyle” and would put us all in poverty if given a chance.)

jaybeat List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita United States #10 Canada #11 Australia #13 .... Mexico #82

China #91

India #133 JK: Mexico #82, China #91. As usual your crowd is suggesting we become a third world toilet to solve some imaginary problem.

No thanks JK

jaybeat: Resorts Prepare for a Future Without Skis (travel.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/travel/02skiglobal.html)

JK: Canadians should brace for coldest winter in almost 15 years

TORONTO - After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday From: ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/cold_winter_forecast

Please quit trying to scare people into the progressive’s vision of poverty for everyone else.

Thanks JK

Gosh, I think I finally understand why there is such a high correlation between being a libertarian and being a global warming denier: to accept human caused global warming as a critical problem would negate the libertarian notion that collective action in not necessary to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So, a libertarian must either must reject reality or abandon his philosophical underpinning.

It's not unlike a fundamentalist Christian being unable to admit that fossilized remains can be more than a few thousand years old.

(Bold > off)
Tom Civiletti Gosh, I think I finally understand why there is such a high correlation between being a libertarian and being a global warming denier: to accept human caused global warming as a critical problem would negate the libertarian notion that collective action in not necessary to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. JK: Wrong again. Said correlation is due to Libertarians, in general, being fact based and progressives, in general, being emotional based, the last ruminants of the romantic age. See this for a nice description: .rmastudies.org.nz/documents/UrbanRomanticsUS.pdf Evidence: When one mentions the evidence against catastrophic warming, one tends to get emotional arguments, a personal attack and suggestions of punishment for your blasphemy. What you seldom get is facts. Libertarian = facts; Progressive = emotional romantic arguments

(repeating)Tom Civiletti negate the libertarian notion that collective action in not necessary to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. JK:Not in the least. Libertarians recognize that collective action is essential to man’s progress. Libertarians also believe that it is government forced collective action that screws things up far more often than free people acting collectively through their voluntary actions in a free marketplace. The reasons are fairly simple. 1) Government does things based on what will get politicians votes, not what actually works. 2) A small clique usually has effective control of government and uses that control to enrich themselves (Halliburton, Goldschmidt, Williams, Walsh. ) 3) Even, if honest, the government does not have all the information that all individuals collectively have. So, even if it wanted to make the correct decisions, it does not have the needed information. 4) One size DOES NOT fit all. Government decision tend to be broad and apply everywhere.

Tom Civiletti So, a libertarian must either must reject reality or abandon his philosophical underpinning. JK: Naw, it is progressives that mostly already have rejected reality. Perhaps the best example of this is the progressive planning profession which has such nutty beliefs as:

• High Density will reduce traffic congestion. It doesn’t, it increases congestion. See: debunkingportland.com/Smart/DensityCongestion.htm
• High Density will reduce cost. It actually increases costs. See: www.debunkingportland.com/Smart/DensityCost.htm
• High Density will give us affordable housing. High density increases housing costs. IBID
• High Density will let you walk to the store to get a quart of milk. So what? See: debunkingportland.com/Smart/QuartOfMilk.htm
• Mass transit saves energy. It doesn’t. See: debunkingportland.com/Transit/BusVsCarTEDB.htm
• Mass transit saves money. It doesn’t - it is much more expansive than driving. See: debunkingportland.com/Transit/Cost-Cars-Transit.htm
• If we become more like Europe, people will switch to transit. Europe’s transit share lost 20% in the last 20 years, while personal vehicles share increased. See:debunkingportland.com/Transit/EuroTranistShareLoss.htm
• Automobiles are massive subsidised. They aren't, transit is. See: debunkingportland.com/Roads/Docs/Delucchi_Chart.htm
• Light rail causes development. No the tax abatements and special treatments cause development. See: debunkingportland.com/Transit/LightRailDevelopment.htm
• Light rail is safer than cars. Light rail kills at over twice the rate of cars. See: debunkingportland.com/Transit/MAXSafetyChart.html
• A single light rail line can carry as many people as a ten lane freeway. Actually it carries as many people as about 1/4-1/3 lane or freeway. See: debunkingportland.com/Transit/10LaneFreeway-2.htm

The really sad part is that many people actually believe these things (along with catastrophic warming.)

Thanks JK

Wow! Albert's certainly taking a lot of flack.

If he, just one optimistic and hopeful human being, is able to withstand all of this, and yet still speak coherently and rationally, I will be much admiring of his fortitude and clarity.

The fact is that he wants, his real DESIRE, is for the good things to happen. His mechanism, politics, or logic may be messed up, greedy or fascist, or whatever great evil you fear, but HIS INTENTION is that people wake up and really think about what's going on around us. What would that take?

Politics is noisy, with clamorous distractions. Any debate is with a pit full of vipers and hogs, but through that and beyond there, what are we really talking about here?

Albert is asking us what we, as a People, WISH that we were taught about. What do we care about, so much that we would WANT to study and learn and have the government help us learn. Because it is really, really important to us, ourselves. What do YOU care about?

It's a pretty F'ing simple question. What do YOU care about? What do YOU need help to understand better, to learn and deal with, in your lifetime? What do you blue-sky wish, if anything at all were possible?

If there were a free Community College available to you, what courses do you really crave to know more about that would improve who YOU are?

Okay, okay, fine, Albert is Hitler, Stalin, and all that, but meanwhile, the question still stands.

Forget about the mechanism of how PR marketing, Coca-Cola, Nazi's, fascism, billboards and TV advertising and concentration camps work. What do you yourself wish you could know about, without too much propaganda, trouble or effort? What are THE TOPICS?

I'd like to know about plastic. Where the hell does it end up if it actually survives a thousand years? And I'd like to know about campaign contributions. Where do our "elected" leaders get their financial power, if their votes are so bought and paid for?

"We have the BEST government that money can buy." So who bought it?

"I love America because you can vote as many times as you want, but only the first vote is free." Where are all the other votes coming from? That's what I personally (though maybe not you!) want to know. What is your interest?

Certainly, as a patriotic American citizen, you care about how things operate in America. What questions do you have? What information would you like to have access to, if in some fantasy world it were possible to have a course that teaches you any possible thing?

What topics do you want to know more about?

Please, beyond the hissing and biting, address THIS question.

Tom Civiletti: "It's not unlike a fundamentalist Christian being unable to admit that fossilized remains can be more than a few thousand years old."

I'm so sick of pejoratives like that. Now your ranting is on the scale of Jaybeat's, stuffing words into people's figurative mouths which weren't said, while you claim that we attack your values with a broad brush.

You know nothing of my values. As Christians, we are commanded to be good stewards of the Earth, which starts with respecting the value and dignity of our fellow men and women. By advocating government trends towards despotism, totalatarianism, even "benevolent dictatorship," you totally skip over the human dignity part of the deal.

And as long as I'm at it, why is there so much caterwauling from the Left about saving the environment (the goal of which I agree with) but not a peep about aborting innocent children? And don't say a woman's personal choice does not affect the community. It does. Such an act done out of personal convenience is no different, nay way worse, than pouring used motor oil into a stream. It's a sharp denial of the basic moral underpinnings which cause us to respect each other's value and dignity. Alexander Hamilton - one of the most brilliant men of his time, a founding father of this country, and who by the way advocated centralized government, was an unplanned, unwanted child of poverty.

So stay on subject. Cut the personal attacks, or you invite much more rebuttals.

Now your ranting is on the scale of Jaybeat's...

Wow! So I'm the gold-standard ranter, now, am I? Cool!

(And, silly me, I thought all those people talking about bullets and guns were just, oh, rational debaters of the issue at hand?)

Tom wasn't making an attack; he was making a comparison, and, from where I sit anyway, a pretty fair one. I'll try and simplify (Tom, correct me, please, if I get it wrong.)

Some people believe, for extra-rational reasons (i.e., their religious beliefs) that the Earth is no more than a few thousand years old, have to deny the rational consensus of scientists that fossils of prehistoric life can be reliably dated (by geologic and chemical methods) as much older than that.

Some (other) people believe, also for extra-rational reasons, statements such as "smaller, more limited government is always better." They, in turn are forced to deny the rational consensus of scientists that human-caused climate change represents a catastrophic threat to life on earth, because that would mean either that a) the so-called "free" market does not always produce what is best for human-kind, and/or b) a larger and less-limited government might be needed to deal with a threat of this magnitude.

In JK's case, he would like readers to believe his own website, instead of thousands of pages of peer-reviewed, scientific scholarship. No doubt there are other web sites that purport to "prove" that multi-million year old fossils are in fact only a few thousand years old. There are also web sites and pseudo-scientists who have tried to convince the courts and governments that "intelligent design" is a legitimate scientific theory and should be given equal weight in school biology classes with the theory of evolution.

In the end, these are all attempts by people who believe in a specific conclusion, to muster evidence and arguments to support it. But science works the other way around, which is why none of these attempts to create a rational justification for extra-rational beliefs stand up to any kind of rigorous analysis.

Is that "on subject" enough for you, Nason, or do you want to talk about Stalin, Hitler and our personal freedoms some more?

Jaybeat: "Blah-blah-blah..."

Oh, and besides, Hamilton didn't trust "the people" to govern and wanted to make Washington "Emperor." (I'm not saying he shouldn't have been born, just that he's not the founding "father" I would look to for inspiration or guidance on how to empower people or help them resist tyranny.

Jaybeat: "Is that "on subject" enough for you, Nason...?"

No. Not at all. In fact you keep on making my original point for me. You have hardly addressed any substantive points, and keep making grandiose statements that supposedly defend your opinions. I haven't read one fact from you. Saying "the majority of Americans believe Global Warming is a threat" doesn't make it so. Citing the IPC website just quotes from a bunch of apparatchiks. Uttering phrases like "Peak Oil" and "neo-Fascist" only paints you for what you are. At this point I have to make a subjective observation. You seem to be a very book-learned individual who may not have a lot of street sense. A while back you said "Bring it on", and I gave you a lot of detailed rebuttal to so-called Global Warming facts. You said nothing in response. I looked at JK's site and it's full of facts and references studies to back up his assertions. You've just been blathering on and on. How old are you? You’ve got a great shtick, and ought to work for the Republican National Committee. Then we're sure to see another "neo-Fascist, John-Birch quoting, bible-thumping, free-market capitalist” person in the White House.

Jaybat: In JK's case, he would like readers to believe his own website, instead of thousands of pages of peer-reviewed, scientific scholarship. JK: I demand that you to come up with even one page, on my web site, that goes against “ thousands of pages of peer-reviewed, scientific scholarship.” Provide page name and quote PLUS same for at least ten “peer reviewed” references (after al there are thousands) with page number and quote. Or SHUT UP. (Sierra Club Weekly Reader references do not count.)

You are also showing your ignorance of the peer review process: Here is what a National Academy of Sciences statistical expert had to say: Wegman report, page 4: In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.

You are showing your lack of careful thinking (consistent with your other rants).

Jaybat: No doubt there are other web sites that purport to "prove" that multi-million year old fossils are in fact only a few thousand years old. There are also web sites and pseudo-scientists who have tried to convince the courts and governments that "intelligent design" is a legitimate scientific theory and should be given equal weight in school biology classes with the theory of evolution. JK: You forgot one, potentially more damaging, crackpot belief (and it is a belief rather than fact): catastrophic global warming.

Jaybat: In the end, these are all attempts by people who believe in a specific conclusion, to muster evidence and arguments to support it. But science works the other way around, which is why none of these attempts to create a rational justification for extra-rational beliefs stand up to any kind of rigorous analysis

JK: Lets see your “rigorous analysis” of these inconvenient facts: Viking farms are still under Greenland Ice. 1998 is no longer shown to be the warmest year, using the best historic data in the world. The same data shows cooling since 1998 - we are 9 years into cooling. (Some say, based on solar cycles, that the cooling may get serious in just a few years.) Water vapor is responsible for far more warming than CO2. * Man only emits a small portion of total CO2 emission.

Catastrophic warming has no more FACTs than “intelligent design”, Lysenkoism and other crackpot ideas.

Thanks JK

JK: Catastrophic warming has no more FACTs than “intelligent design”, Lysenkoism and other crackpot ideas.

Which is why virtually THE ENTIRE WORLD (including the scientific community) is in almost unanimous agreement that climate change is a serious problem. Everybody, that is, except those of us in the good 'ol US of A who don't want to change a light bulb or give up their Hummers. (Present WVO-burning and bike-riding climate change deniers excepted.)

Because everyone else is a krak-pot, eh, Jim?

Oh, and Nason, so glad to see that you've risen above the name-calling you supposedly abhor.

Nason, you quoted me as "Saying "the majority of Americans believe Global Warming is a threat" doesn't make it so." What I think I said (and which is the truth) is that the vast, overwhelming majority of the scientific community believes climate change is a threat. If you want to believe the 0.5% of qualified scientists who disagree, that's fine. But don't claim that YOU have the facts on your side.

You also said "Citing the IPC website just quotes from a bunch of apparatchiks." Ah, so here we have the picking and choosing of which scientists and scientific organizations to believe and which to disregard. Any chance that has something to do with not liking their findings, and then looking for something to discredit them with?

Here's what a quick Google search comes up with for credible (in my opinion, anyway) sources on the seriousness of climate change. If you really have the spare time, feel free to try and debunk each and every one of them (I bet Jim will help). But it still doesn't change that you are trying to invalidate an overwhelming consensus within the scientific community either with your own "I'm smarter than those guys 'cause I think for my self and know how to (mis)use statistics" analysis, or "But what about THIS guy who's just as smart as these thousand other guys and says THEY are all WRONG???!!!"

Quite frankly, you both remind me of playground bullies I knew in 1972 who beat me up for not thinking that Nixon was the best President ever.

Guess they showed me.

BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

Natural Environment Research Council - Climate Change

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society: News: Scientists Present Roadmap for Reducing Climate Change Risks

US Climate Change Science Program

Climate Change Science: Adapt, Mitigate, or Ignore?

Societial Re-education campaign? What A load of BS! I don't buy into all this global warming garbage ALBERT! Thirty years ago scientist predicted the earth was cooling off and we were headed into an ice age. Now they are saying the earth is heating up. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. Last year where I live they had record cold temperatures so this is nothing more than A crock of S**t ALBERT! BTW ALBERT if you want to re-educate yourself then you and all the other gullible people who fall for this nonsense go ahead ALBERT! I'll keep eating my junkfood, driving my SUV everywhere (even next door if I feel like it). I'll buy my fruit and vegetables in the store and I'll keep spewing all that carbon in the air when I drive. What do you think about that ALBERT!

jaybeat BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Natural Environment Research Council - Climate Change Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society: News: Scientists Present Roadmap for Reducing Climate Change Risks US Climate Change Science Program Climate Change Science: Adapt, Mitigate, or Ignore? JK: Thanks for the Naomi link, I hadn’t realized that it was openly available. You saved me a trip to the local library (and some irrelevant CO2 emissions.). Same for the other science mag link.

Expect rebuttal soon. (preview at: scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf )

Thanks JK

JK: BTW, I’m still waiting for your “rigorous analysis” of these inconvenient facts: Viking farms are still under Greenland Ice. 1998 is no longer shown to be the warmest year, using the best historic data in the world. The same data shows cooling since 1998 - we are 9 years into cooling. (Some say, based on solar cycles, that the cooling may get serious in just a few years.) Water vapor is responsible for far more warming than CO2. * Man only emits a small portion of total CO2 emission.

Catastrophic warming has no more FACTs than “intelligent design”, Lysenkoism and other crackpot ideas.

Thanks JK

Albert: Very nice; well put.

Jim: No need to bother--I've already debunked the debunkers!

Responding to Global Warming Skeptics —Prominent Skeptics Organizations

Funding a Global-Warming Skeptic

ExxonMobil tried to mislead, scientists say

Global warming skeptics

Global Warming Skeptic Can't Stand the Heat

It might be easier to just kill humans...fewer humans fewer problems...should make the regressives (ah, progressives) and boot-strap lickers (ah, conservatives) pleased.

Thank the founders for the 2nd amendment!

Is this what the lefts vision of the future is? This is really scary, Re-education classes and the imposition of your agenda against the free will of others?

Look for a fight if you try this.

Sean

If people haven't already believed the man made global warmingTM myth yet, a forced education in GW will just hurt your cause...wouldn't it?

Does it come with a Little Red Book and all of the Kool Aid you can drink?

Sorry, Cory, but I'm afraid that it is all of the people who DON'T think there's a problem that are the one's drinking the Kool-Aid.

Oh, and BTW, it's a little Green book. ;-)

Jim Karlock,

You are using selected data, some of which is irrelevant or misinterpreted. Take, for instance, the possibility of Viking farms lying under ice in Greenland. This makes me worry more about catastrophic climate change. Why?

Because the atmospheric CO2 level is higher now than it was in the time of Viking exploration, and that CO2 level has increased so quickly that it has only begun to cause the atmospheric heating that it eventually will cause. Since substantially lower CO2 levels were sufficient to see a significant portion of the Greenland icecap melt, I expect much greater melting in the near future. That corresponds to a catastrophic rise in sea level to go along with the desertification, tundra melting, and other climatic disruptions we can expect.

You also write, "Water vapor is responsible for far more warming than CO2."

Just how is this noteworthy beyond possibly confusing the uninformed? I have never heard a scientist downplay the power of atmospheric H2O to trap heat. This in no way reduces the importance of a huge, difficult to reverse human-caused increase in atmospheric CO2. It is a stinking red herring.

Posted by Albert: Posted by: David | Dec 4, 2007 3:05:31 AM "...I'll keep eating my junkfood, driving my SUV everywhere (even next door if I feel like it). I'll buy my fruit and vegetables in the store and I'll keep spewing all that carbon in the air when I drive. What do you think about that ALBERT!"

What do I think about that? A more important question might be what your kids, or grandkids think about the way you're living, and the world you will leave to them?

I teach my kids to think for themselves and to not believe everything like this global warming scam that comes along.

Ah, David. So your kids should be able then to decide whom to believe--the vast, overwhelming majority of qualified scientists, or folks like you who find their opinions inconvenient.

I suppose nutritionists who overwhelmingly agree that too much junk food is bad for you are also wrong. And your opinion would be based on, what--you like to eat Big Macs?

If you teach your kids not to believe in science, then on what information should they "think for themselves"?

Ah, David. So your kids should be able then to decide whom to believe--the vast, overwhelming majority of qualified scientists, or folks like you who find their opinions inconvenient.

I suppose nutritionists who overwhelmingly agree that too much junk food is bad for you are also wrong. And your opinion would be based on, what--you like to eat Big Macs?

If you teach your kids not to believe in science, then on what information should they "think for themselves"?

There was an article I read from Newsweek from 1975 called "The cooling world" where it talked about another ice age. Now some thirty years later these so called scientist say the earth is heating up. If they were wrong 30 years ago why should we believe them now? It's also A matter of common sense. Last year many parts of the U.S. had record cold tempeatures. During the year we had Katrina all these ecofreaks said it was because of global warming that we had so many hurricanes. The last two years have been rather quiet. Is global warming causing that also? With all these so called reports coming out on global warming it makes me think that the facts are more made up rather than the truth. I don't doubt that there is climate change happening and I don't dispute that there are green house gases but I doubt very much that humans are causing it. I'll post A link you should read. I'll let my kids make up their own minds but I'll be damned if some hack like ALBERT tells me how to eat, what to drive, what light bulbs to use, or grow my own vegetables based on some lie. I choose to do the opposite. I'm not hurting anyone and I know damn well I'm not damaging my enviorment by driving my SUV. Time to go burn some more carbon and get my Big Mac from McDonalds. What do you think about that ALBERT!

Global Warming Fact, Fiction

Global Warming Fact, Fiction: lots of attitude, not very convincing.

It is amazing that conservatives have no conception of the political power of concentrated wealth, believing that environmentalists exert more force on scientific, media, and governmental positions than do ExxonMobil, Chevron-Texaco, Peabody Energy, General Motors, and the panoply of business funded organizations like the Heritage Foundation. Of course, folks who believe the tale of the Liberal Media are capable of believing anything at odds with fact based reasoning.

David: There was an article I read from Newsweek from 1975 called "The cooling world" where it talked about another ice age. Now some thirty years later these so called scientist say the earth is heating up. If they were wrong 30 years ago why should we believe them now?

Because there is something called the scientific method. If a scientist doesn't know why something is happening, they form a theory and then they test it, using objectively measurable data. If a few scientists hit on something they think might be going on, and it sounds real sensational, then maybe it makes the cover of Newsweek. But, later, if other studies and experiments come out that disprove the previous theory, you won't see it on the cover of Newsweek, but the scientific community still knows that the old theory has been disproven, and you won't see a huge number of credible scientists advocating a disproven theory. That's no one credible has been talking about that theory since, I would guess, 1975.

Human-caused climate change, on the other hand, was first on the cover of Time (FWIW) in the mid 1980s. Since then, the theory has not been disproven, but instead has gone from "possible" to a virtual certainty over the last 20 years. That's because scientist after scientist and study after study have reinforced, confirmed and added new urgency to the original theory. The last 20 years of scientific research have confirmed that human-caused global warming is a big, and real problem. The same 20 years of science have shown the theory from 1975 to be, well, wrong.

So, because some scientists were wrong, at some point in time, you'll never believe anything that science comes up with, no matter how overwhelming the evidence?

How was your last visit to that faith healer of yours?

It's also A matter of common sense. Last year many parts of the U.S. had record cold tempeatures. During the year we had Katrina all these ecofreaks said it was because of global warming that we had so many hurricanes. The last two years have been rather quiet. Is global warming causing that also?

You can't prove or disprove a scientific theory on just a few data points. If we have a cold winter this year, it doesn't mean that, over the last 100 years, on average, global temperatures have not been going up. That would be like saying, when we have a winter when it doesn't snow in Portland, "It will never snow again." Silly.

Sure, people see disastrous storms and they want to say, "A ha! Proof!" But scientists don't do that. I believe that some do think that, over the last 10 years or so, that the frequency and intensity of tropical storms has, on average, gone up, and some have theorized that global climate change may be to blame. But, if we have a year or two of not many storms, that will not disprove their theory, and if we have a year or two of many storms, it won't prove it, either.

With all these so called reports coming out on global warming it makes me think that the facts are more made up rather than the truth.

Why are they "so-called" reports? What I have seen are actual studies, from actual scientists. And not just a few, here and there, but the vast majority of the scientific community thinks that there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is real, and primarily human-caused. And you don't believe them, why--because it doesn't "sound right"? Or because there are "too-many" reports, or because most of them point to the same answers?

I don't doubt that there is climate change happening and I don't dispute that there are green house gases but I doubt very much that humans are causing it.

Again, the world-wide scientific consensus is that all such "doubts" have been obliterated by the last 20 years of research and data. And you doubt this because you think you're smarter than all of them, or because you just don't like how you and everyone else are going to need to change?

As far as the Big Macs are concerned, I don't really care, since you're only killing yourself. (Unless society ends up paying for your health care. Then I care.) But your kids might care. And they'll definitely care about all the carbon your SUV put out when they're living with the reality that you simply refused to face.

It's obvious we aren't going to change each others minds here. If you're gullible to fall for this global warming scam then so be it and NO I don't think I'm smarter but I have done my own reading. If you had read the link you would have known that. Recycling is wonderful. You want to switch to alternative cleaner fuel sources? That's great! You want to increase the mileage on cars and trucks? Terrific! You like solar and wind power? More power to you! I see nothing wrong with any of these things but when I hear idiots say we have to because of this global warming scam IMO is pathetic. I have no doubt that global warming is A FRAUD! Plain and simple! My wife told me the other day one of the reports verifying that global warming was real came from the U.N. That right there makes me suspicious! If I was A scientist and they paid me enough I think I would say anything. This whole thing is A scam! The past 30 years have proven these so called scientist to be buffoons when they thought the earth was going into an ice age and thirty years from now will prove the same. And where do you get off saying I'm going to need to change? I don't have to do anything! I'll continue to drive my suv, to burn the lightbulbs I want or anything else I damn please. This isn't the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela or China and I'm not going along with this ignorant Stalinist agenda! Anyone who believes this crock has to be ignorant. Now I think I'll drive my SUV A block down the road for some dunkin doughnuts! What do YOU and that moron Albert think about that!

You are out of your ever loving mind! I'm glad you lost your election! We don't need any more communists in office!

David: ...when I hear idiots say we have to because of this global warming scam IMO is pathetic. I have no doubt that global warming is A FRAUD! Plain and simple! My wife told me the other day one of the reports verifying that global warming was real came from the U.N. That right there makes me suspicious!

So the fact that independent scientists from around the world were asked their opinions on climate change by a UN body makes what the scientists said instantly not credible? Republicans and Democrats both vote--does that mean you don't ever recognize and election if your side looses? WTF??

If I was A scientist and they paid me enough I think I would say anything.

You wouldn't last a day as a scientist, then. At least not one with any credibility upon your peers.

This whole thing is A scam! The past 30 years have proven these so called scientist to be buffoons when they thought the earth was going into an ice age and thirty years from now will prove the same.

So because some scientists were wrong about something you'll never believe something that almost all scientists believe, ever again?

Do you believe your doctor when he tells you your MRI shows you've got a tumor? What if the second opinion says the same thing? What if you get 25,000 doctors, and they all say if you don't stop smoking, eat right, and have surgery, you're going to die inside of six months? Are they all quacks? Are they all trying to "scam" you? Are you "ignorant" because you believe their "crock"?

And, tough guy, if all you're doing is killing yourself, your right, you can do whatever you "want or anything else I damn please."

But when your behavior is killing your neighbors, or shortening their life--just like second-hand smoke--then you DO have to do something different. If you insist on smoking in an indoor public place, and won't stop, the police-man will take you to jail. If you take out your car's pollution control equipment, they'll do the same thing.

When you've got your own planet, all to yourself, you can F' it up all you want. Till then, there's 5 billion or so other of us that might have a thing or two to say about it.

Spoken just like the true little Stalinist that you are. ALBERT acting like some modern day Hitler wants to mandate brainwashing everyone while YOU having your head so far up his ass are gullible enough to follow him over A clift. This is nothing more than junk science. I don't even believe that most scientist go along with this. Just another piece of propaganda put out by you looney leftist. I'm not hurting anybody driving my SUV and don't compare your phoney science to second hand smoke. You can choose to be gullible and ignorant but that doesn't mean everyone else has to be. I'll continue to live the way I want and YOU WILL learn to like it! The best way that can serve the common good of everyone is that little pukes like you move to venezuela or cuba where Hugo and Fidel will welcome your phoney indoctrination. Here in the United States we don't have dictators.

David,

That last comment was satire, right? You are pretending to be an ignorant, no-nothing knuckle dragger! Ha ha, it's really funny. You were kidding. Right?

torridjoe ah, more made up math from Jim Karlock, the village denier! Call us when the shuttle lands, Jim! JK: ah, torridjoe again showing his lack of basic thinking skills such as grade school arithmetic.

Thanks JK

Great! Just what we need, Socialism!

I am so tired of environmental wackos such as yourself shoving their global warming BS down our throats. Thanks dude, but I am perfectly happy living in my capitalist world with as little government interference as possible (much less your BS). I try to recycle as much as possible, but this is ridiculous.

Comrade Albert:

The Central Commissar of the People's Republic of Oregon heartily supports your most excellent proposal.

We have decided the terms "re-education" or "brainwashing" should be used infrequently in this regard (wikipedia or google will explain why).

In the future, please use the term "voluntary simplicity" or "living green seminars" or "21 Century Civics" in place of re-education.

Or it's off to the Thought Reform Gulag with you!

Nason:

Thank you for your thoughtful posts and for your philosophical rigor. I expect you will be blocked from posting on this site within days unless you learn to toe the party line.