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 Debunkers
 Philosophy
 Is global warming a ruse?
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| Author | Topic: Is global warming a ruse? |
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barisax Member |
posted 06-29-2007 01:57 AM
  
Towards the end of the Coincidence thread in the Global warming forum, Jeffexpressed confusion about some points in an editorial. The editorial mentioned some anomolies in the science surrounding this topic, yet ended up saying quote:. Could much of the Global Warming hysteria be the result of a deep seated concern over our finite supplies of oil or other energy sources? IOW, are environmentalists/malthusians using Global Warming to scare us into conserving as opposed to appealing to our sense of reason? If so, what are some of the implications of this? One obvious thing I can see is the potential misallocation of resources. But what concerns me more would be the insulting of the average person's intelligence. Suppose that the intellectual elite would lie to the general population to get them to change for the better. That would be good, right? What happens when the general population realizes that they were lied to (even though for their own good)? They would lose trust and respect for the intellectuals, and/or see that this is an acceptable practice. Is this the direction we're heading in? Or am I smoking crack? IP: Logged |
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KGB Moderator |
posted 06-29-2007 09:27 AM
You may recall a thread some time back where a Green type as much as admitted that global warming was a great way to scare people into not polluting, and thus was valuable whether there was anything to it or not. I can't find the original thread, but someone else may be able to. IP: Logged |
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Victor Member |
posted 06-29-2007 06:10 PM
quote: I tend to be a little bit more cynical. If you look carefully, you find that the only solutions being proposed increase the power of governments. The golden age of liberal politics was the New Deal. Back then the public demanded that government do something about the Great Depression. The result was a parade of government programs and an increase in Federal power. Ever since, politicians have been looking for catastrophes or disasters that they can solve with a government program. Global warming is just the latest example. Try proposing a solution to global warming that involves decreasing government power sometime. Watch what the elites do then. IP: Logged |
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Steve_V Member |
posted 06-30-2007 04:51 PM
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with a series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken Robert Higgs, has suggested something rather similart. He argues that during the times of crisis government power expands to deal with the crisis, but that when the crisis is over the government does not relenquish its hold on power. As Victor noted the Great Depression is a classic case. Much of the government we see today was due to the Supreme Court's "creative" interpretation of the Commerce Clause, which came after Roosevelt threatened to expand the number of justices on the court and pack it with judges sympathetic to his causes. I believe there was a popular name for this event called, "the switch in time to save nine." Basically the court switched its position on the Commerce Clause allowing FDR's New Deal programs/policies to go unopposed. Nowadays if you see a ruling and think, "Geez, how is that Constitutional?" chances are the SCOTUS would (or did) fall back on the Commerce Clause. If they could find some way to link the activity in question to commerce (either inter or intra-state there really is no distinction anymore) then they'd give the Federal government the green light to do what it wanted. IANAL, but I'd be willing to bet that the Civil Rights laws all hinge at least in some way on the Commerce Clause, for example. ------------------ IP: Logged |
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setnahkt Member |
posted 06-30-2007 09:37 PM
There's a famous example of creative use of the Commerce Clause in the environmental field: the "Glancing Goose" interpretation of the Clean Water Act. The original CWA applied to "Waters of the United States", which included any river, stream, etc. that crossed a State line, entered the ocean, or flowed into the above. A consortium of Chicago suburbs wanted to use a an old gravel pit ("Mallard Lake") for a landfill*. Said pit was man-made and had no connection to any other water. Local activists attempted to stop development under the CWA (I have to admit that I'm not unsympathetic - as a child I used to enjoy feeding the ducks at Mallard Lake.) The Army Corps of Engineers agreed with the activists, holding that because wildfowl covered under international treaties used the lake they were engaged in interstate commerce and the lake was therefore waters of the United States. The principle was later extended to water bodies that waterfowl might think about using, hence "Glancing Goose". The Supremes eventually sunk the idea, but it was on a 5-4 vote. * Most high-qualiity gravel from the Chicago area comes from Silurian dolomite that was originally "coral" atolls, "coral" is in quotes there because there's a taxonomic argument about what phylum the beasties actually belonged to. The most famous of these is Thornton Quarry, which is a huge hole on both sides of I-80 just west of the Indiana line. The depleted quarries tend to get used for landfills; thus you can map Silurian island arcs around by the distributions of garbage dumps in the Chicaco metropolitan area. IP: Logged |
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barisax Member |
posted 07-01-2007 12:09 AM
I understand that federal drug laws hinge upon the Commerce Clause also. Speaking of man-made water features, there are a number of swimming holes near highway overpasses in Indiana. Often, RV's and campers are lined up nearby. In flat areas, they simply dug a hole nearby to get the fill dirt for the overpass ramps. Swimming in a giant puddle...mmmm. Back to the topic, could we expect people to start waking up anytime soon? Or will they just become numb to all of the conflicting news reports, and stop caring alltogether? I hope it's the former, and that people start challenging the elite to focus on real problems, rather than the later where they stop caring what the elite do. IP: Logged |
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KGB Moderator |
posted 07-01-2007 12:37 AM
quote: Set, it's a pleasure to have you here on the boards. You have a keen eye for the fascinating tidbit of information. IP: Logged |
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