Oh, god. I do not want to get into a pissing contest about which scientists I believe and which ones I don't believe.
In my book, the National Academy of Sciences is the gold standard. After that, it's just one big political food fight.
Not only that: In a heavyweight championship bout between scientists, I'd sooner trust Al Gore's side more than I'd trust George W. Bush's side. No mas.
One last thing: the press has an idiotic habit of giving equal weight to every dissenting opinion. They call this "fairness," but I call bullshit.
You know: "Democrats say earth is round; some Republicans disagree." Feh.
So I'm going to beg off on this discussion. Yeah, that's right -- I've already made up my mind: the earth is round.
Many of Gore's conclusions are based on the "Hockey Stick" that shows near constant global temperatures for 1,000 years with a sharp increase in temperature from 1900 onward. The record Gore chooses in the film completely wipes out the Medieval Warm Period of 1,000 years ago and Little Ice Age that started 500 years ago and ended just over 100 years ago.
I don't know if that's true of not, but this chart includes it. But does that really look any better?
Gore claims that sea level rise could drown the Pacific islands, Florida, major cities the world over, and the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. No mention is made of the fact that sea level has been rising at a rate of 1.8 mm per year for the past 8,000 years; the IPCC notes that "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected."
And I'm not sure of the relevance of this. Sea level rises will only occur with significant melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which may occur later should global warming continue.
But hey, why worry about it; what’s the worst that could happen? I mean, we obviously understand this phenomenon completely and have proven ourselves fantastically adept at anticipating and avoiding the negative consequences of environmental changes – naturally occurring or otherwise.
Actually, sea level rise also occurs from expansion as ocean waters warm.
Thermal expansion of water is quite low, actually, especially in the amounts predicted. If the oceans were heated to boiling, it might make a significant rise, but otherwise, not much. For example, if the world heats up enough to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, the oceans would rise 77 meters (that's getting near 200 feet for the non-international-standard measuring folks). If all that additional water were heated to boiling, an extra three meters on top of that.
That's a crime. One of the last great nature preserves in America endangered so the SUV drivers can pay 10 cents less a gallon a few years from now. Whoopee.
The drilling in ANWAR will be on the mudflats. It will take up a tiny amount of land. The caribou will flourish.
Bullshit. I don't think you've researched this much. I recommend the lastest issue of National Geographic for a background on the North slope. And it isn't just the 'bou that will suffer.
The male caribou is a sarve. So I think you meant sarvesh*t.
:-)
But we just called them bou when I lived up there, none of your hoity toity "sarves", thank you. Besides, we don't speak Sami here, they're called bulls and cows in North America.
I've never understood the resistance to drilling in ANWAR. It takes about 0.05% of the land and NO ONE LIVES THERE. I just don't understand the emotional resistance to drilling in ANWAR.
It takes about 0.05% of the land and NO ONE LIVES THERE.
And someone else demonstrates a firmly held opinion that indicates that they DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. Goddamn it, do a smidgin of reading on the subject, willya? I'm starting to lose all respect for you people.
Look up the Gwitch'in, Inuvialuit, Inupiat, Han, and Tutchone, and then read up on the Porcupine Caribou herd. Or did you mean "no white people live there?"
Mark Adams, the high and mighty, hypocritical, bloviator. (mail) (www):
Except for the fact that the media and the wingnuts get all squishy inside if they can make fun of Gore, not unlike a wild pack of fifth graders teasing the new kid, and it's just plain bitchin' to nitpick him and catch him in another fib, why on earth would anyone so gleefully pile on when the stakes are so catastrophically high?
And while you're at it, explain Gore's hidden agenda that motivates him to champion this cause. Who is he working for? Who's getting rich on his crusade to get our environment under control? Why would he lie?
Why would so many experts lie?
I'm no expert in climatology (one of my best friends is -- even taught it at Stonybrook, but he's just another liberal nutjob like me), however, I know that money talks and when science becomes political, I'm trusting the side that doesn't have a huge financial interest in who the politicians believe.
It's really simple:
Multinational corporations don't care about you unless you are a stockholder.
If you are a stockholder, multinational corporations only care about making you money.
The more money a multinational corporation makes for its stockholders, the less likely they will care about how the company made the money.
Multinational corporations make more money by ruining your planet than if they expended the time, effort and technology to protect your environment.
Multinational corporations have no natural incentive, financial or otherwise, to protect your environment.
Multinational corporations will only protect your environment if forced through regulations.
Multinational corporations will ignore evironmental regulations if it is cost effective to do so, absorbing fines, paying bribes, lobbying Congress is merely the cost of doing business.
You cannot afford to lobby Congress, pay bribes or be fined. If you are a stockholder, you already are paying for such expenses, but won't care as long as the corporation makes enough money engaging in such activities to continue paying you dividends.
What's good for a multinational corporation is not necessarily good for America. It is always good for the stockholders as long as profits are maximized.
The flip-side is the wacko environmentalists, the crazed "save-the-whale" crowd out there protecting owls and sitting in trees while singing protest songs. (Keep singing Joan!)
They have no financial incentives to fight for their cause, quite the opposite. They cannot count on a good business model to make money, they have few if any paid staffs, nobody gets rich dealing with them, and their contributors, unlike stockholders who gain from their contributions, are strickly volunteers and donations.
Their only incentive is that they believe in their cause enough to sacrifice their time, effort and money.
Who you going to believe? The multinational corporation who is trying to maximize profits over all other considerations, or the people out there trying to save the planet? They can't all be commies. And if they're right we could wreck this world, if wrong, some stockholders will earn less profits.
I tend to put the burden of proof on the well funded folks with the bad track record and who have every reason to lie to me. Fair? Balanced? Not only are the energy industry's scientists unable to offer a preponderance of persuadable evidence on the issue, common sense tells us that pollution is to be avoided.
Duh!
If you are not a stockholder in one of these companies, or benefit from their contibutions to your favorite politicians, it is unfathomable that you would defend, rather than challenge anything they say. As fun as debate tournaments are, this is not an issue that you should just pick your side due to party affiliation.
It doesn't pay dividends you can put in a bank to protect the planet.
Let me paraphrase Pat Roberts when he talked about Civil Liberties. This is something conservatives seem to buy so it should work for this issue too, right?.
You'll have no civil liberties stock options if you are dead.
We have carefully studied and taken a position on petroleum development. We have reached a consensus that we have held now for over two decades. That consensus is not what most people think, it is much more complex. The essence of the Kaktovik position is that we would support oil exploration and development of the coastal plain provided we are given the authority and the resources to ensure that it is done properly and safely. Without the necessary provisions to ensure this protection, we would not.
When much of our land was designated a wildlife range, and then a refuge, many more people felt entitled to this area. Many groups, most of whom have never even been to our place, were making efforts to seize our land by putting more names to it and creating more rules and regulations. Regulations that once enacted could not be undone. The area that we called home for thousands of years was now being seen exclusive of the people who lived here. For the first time we found ourselves fighting an enemy we could not see. Some of these people we offered to meet with so that we might discuss our concerns. Most never had the decency to respond. Perhaps they felt guilty. Perhaps looking into the eyes of the true people of this land was just too real for them.
Regardless, most of these people continue to talk their talk, and they do it very far from this place. We see the news of other places, we see people talk as though they are from this place, we see them dance and sing and praise our land and call it their own. It is against the culture of the Kaktovikmiut to speak for other people and to assume what may be right for them, or to presume their intentions. Over time we have learned that this not necessarily how other people think.
Hmmmm. So we had to steal the village in order to save it, right?
The hypocrisy of this ecological double standard is palpable. So union bosses, greens and liberal politicians bring up the Gwich’in Indians, who claim drilling would “threaten their traditional lifestyle.”
Inuit Eskimos who live in ANWR support drilling by an 8:1 margin. They’re tired of living in poverty and using 5-gallon pails for toilets -- after having given up their land claims for oil rights that Congress has repeatedly denied them.
The Gwich’ins live 150-250 miles away -- and their reservations about drilling aren’t exactly carved in stone. Back in the 1980s, the Alaska Gwich’ins leased 1.8 million acres of their tribal lands for oil development. That’s more land than has been proposed for exploration in ANWR. (No oil was found.)
A couple years ago, Canada’s Gwich’ins announced plans to drill in their 1.4-million-acre land claims area. The proposed drill sites (and a potential pipeline route) are just east of a major migratory path, where caribou often birth their calves, before they arrive in ANWR.
Many therefore suspect that the Gwich’ins' role as anti-oil poster children has a lot to do with the fact that they have received at least $630,000 from the Wilderness Society and a herd of liberal foundations. In exchange, they’ve placed full-page ads in major newspapers, appeared in television spots and testified on Capitol Hill in opposition to ANWR exploration -- while pursuing their own drilling programs.
I don't believe that the people who live there oppose drilling. I believe they oppose drilling where they are driven off their land or stripped of control. They are in favor of drilling where they keep the land and they get oil money and control. That sounds like human nature. Blanket or traditionalist opposition does not.
Of course it does, Wince, it supports a preconceived notion that you have.
So, could you only discover a statement about the Gwitch'in in this delicious "intellectual conservative" article?
First of all, I knew and worked among the Gwitch'in, as well as the Inuvialuit and Northern Tutchone, and the smears in this article is a joke. These people are mostly subsistence hunters, and the caribou are literally life and death to them and their culture, which is why the US and Canada have a treaty about protecting their primary source of food.
Secondly, there's a load of nonsense in this article. Spit freezing before it hits the ground. 5 gallon pails as toilets. And what is this crap about wind turbines? What on Earth, other than the usual scummy tactic of trying to change the subject, does that have to do with oil drilling in ANWR? Nothing.
Lastly, nice to see a conservative "intellectual" article mis-stating the benefits of the ANWR fields. They focus on the top end of the estimates (16 billion barrels) even though there's only a small chance that it contains that much, and it's more likely that it contains less than half that. Then it goes on to say that that inflated figure represents "30 years of imports from Saudi Arabia". So what? The bulk of US imports don't come from Saudi Arabia. That's just a cheap ploy to tap into a popular mindset, and I think it speaks volumes about the tactics of the writer of this "intellectual" piece.
They only would be supportive of oil exploration and drilling if they were in control of it. I'd be more comfortable with that as well. But for all intents and purposes, that means they are opposed to it, as they will not be given control of the development. One of the concerns is that those really pushing for explotration and drilling are primarily interested in setting up the infrastructure for development of offshore drilling in the Beausfort Sea, something that the Inupiat are deeply opposed to.
Secondly, there's a load of nonsense in this article. Spit freezing before it hits the ground. 5 gallon pails as toilets. And what is this crap about wind turbines? What on Earth, other than the usual scummy tactic of trying to change the subject, does that have to do with oil drilling in ANWR? Nothing.
You haven't really disputed the content of what was said. It isn't changing the subject, but putting some perspective on things. I happen to agree with wind turbines, but I am not foolish enough to believe it is having a negative effect on some species. One of the arguements against drilling in the area is:
They claim energy development would “irreparably destroy” the refuge. Caribou doo-doo.
I don't like the snarky comment about the caribou, but at the end of the day I would rather they are displaced in that vast wilderness than at home here, where their home becomes a shopping mall with a highway leading to it, with residential communities in between.
Pam, the Arctic isn't like down south here. It's a fairly savage environment, and the balance is much more easily upset. The ANWR is a particulirly diverse and rich area of the Arctic, which is was made into a wildlife preserve, and it's extremely easy to damage in a way that takes a long, long time to fix, if ever. For example, US federal agencies are still cleaning up some sites that were drilled some sixty years ago.
The point is that (a) the oil isn't going anywhere, and will probably be even more valuable later when there's better and less invasive extrusion and transportation technology, (b) anything done in the region will have to be done very, very carefully, with agreement from all parties and stakeholders, (c) that environmental concerns aside, there is a valuable resource at risk (the Porcupine Caribou herd), and (d) people who think it's just barren tundra don't know what they're talking about.
For the record, should drilling in ANWR be approved today, production will not begin until 2010, and peak production of one million barrels a day will not likely occur until 2030 or so. If consumption rates are the same as today, that would save you the equivalent of 14 cents less a gallon.
Of course there's a load of nonsense in the article. There's a load of nonsense in Gore's film. There's a load of nonsense in everything I write. There's a load of nonsense in everything you write.
Smaller loads in the last two, of course.
In all three articles the claims made about political behavior all ring true, because that's how people behave. The Kaktovikmiut and the Gwitch'in would both like oil money as long as it doesn't ruin their life and they have some control. The people in Washington love to make rules which mess with the small numbers of people actually living on the land, as long as it is popular with the large number of voters who don't. The small number of people living on the land tend to complain rather bitterly about this. The environmentalists tell lots of stretchers, sometimes because they believe the stretchers, sometimes because it's for a good cause. The press excepts the environmentalist stretchers as fact. The business promoters tell fewer stretchers, because the press watches them like hawks, but their supporters tell plenty anyway, sometimes because they believe the stretchers, sometimes because it's for a good cause. The environmentalists are clueless about the economics of the issue and the human costs of their policies because hey, deep inside they wish there were only about 50 to 100 million people on the planet anyway, preferably using only stone age technology. The business interests are clueless about the caribou and the various Inuit, because they are focused like a laser on the economic issues, their isn't a large market for caribou meat and the Inuit have only slightly more buying power than the caribou. And everyone makes "documentary" films which are really position pieces to spread their respective facts and stretchers around.
At the end of the day you will trust the envrionmentalists and not the oil companies. And I will trust the oil companies and not the environmentalists.
At the end of the day you will trust the envrionmentalists and not the oil companies. And I will trust the oil companies and not the environmentalists.
Who said I trusted the environmentalists? I trust the scientists who have done environmental studies in the area, and I trust the people who live in the region and who need to pass it on to their children in decent shape. And as I have lived in the region for a period and lived and worked with people whose ancestors have populated the region for millenia, I get to trust myself somewhat.
I trust the oil companies much less because their only responsibility is to their stockholders. They have no repsonsibility for environmental stewardship of the region or to the people of the area and their unborn generations. And I certainly have zero trust for those uninformed souls who would gladly sacrifice a protected wildlife reserve, its environment, and its people for 14 cents less per gallon that they put into their SUVs so they can drive to the mall.
But to get back to what started this, Ted said no one lived there. Can we agree that he was dead wrong about that?
++- Thank's for responding. I would like to point out that I have got to believe that the oil drilling of 2006 or 2010 is much safer and cleaner than 60 years ago.
Good enough. I already knew there were Inuit who lived there, 'cause I'd read an advocacy piece (oil company sponsored, I think) by one of the Inuit in question.
Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I don't have time to read all the above comments,
This is from an interview at Grist magazine, take a look at Gore's answer;
"...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."
Robert Balling is among several scientists in the pay of the energy companies.
Sellout Scientists
The case of Dr. Robert Balling is equally intriguing. A geographer by training, much of Balling's research focused on hydrology, precipitation, water runoff and other Southwestern water and soil-related issues until he was solicited by Western Fuels. Balling has since emerged as one of the most visible and prolific of the climate-change skeptics.
Since 1991, Balling has received, either alone or with colleagues, nearly $300,000 from coal and oil interests in research funding, which he also disclosed for the first time at the Minnesota hearing. In his collaborations with Sherwood Idso, Balling has received about $50,000 from Cyprus, $80,000 from German Coal and $75,000 from British Coal Corp. Two Kuwaiti government foundations have given him a $48,000 grant and unspecified consulting fees and have published his 1992 book, "The Heated Debate," in Arabic. The book was originally published by a conservative think tank, the Pacific Research Institute, one of whose goals is the repeal of environmental regulations.
There is no real controversy about global warming except that which has been promulgated by those who are paid to do so. 1000's of scientists the world over are in agreement. Only those subsidized by energy companies offer any skepticism. Their "science" has been refuted over and over. They are, in the scientific community, held in disrepute.
The views on global warming of Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling have been rejected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC), which represents perhaps the most intensive, peer-reviewed scientific process ever undertaken in human history. Michaels' and Balling's climate views are generally not found in peer-reviewed journals, except as unreviewed letters to the editor. Instead, they appear in speeches, private newsletters, websites and on editorial pages -- all great venues for free speech but not science.
It's really hard to debunk science because most everything is theory. Theory even when accepted is still just theory.
Which ones are false?
Oh, god. I do not want to get into a pissing contest about which scientists I believe and which ones I don't believe.
In my book, the National Academy of Sciences is the gold standard. After that, it's just one big political food fight.
Not only that: In a heavyweight championship bout between scientists, I'd sooner trust Al Gore's side more than I'd trust George W. Bush's side. No mas.
One last thing: the press has an idiotic habit of giving equal weight to every dissenting opinion. They call this "fairness," but I call bullshit.
You know: "Democrats say earth is round; some Republicans disagree." Feh.
So I'm going to beg off on this discussion. Yeah, that's right -- I've already made up my mind: the earth is round.
Except it's not, its an oblate spheroid.
I don't know if that's true of not, but this chart includes it. But does that really look any better?
Not to my eyes.
And I'm not sure of the relevance of this. Sea level rises will only occur with significant melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which may occur later should global warming continue.
Actually, sea level rise also occurs from expansion as ocean waters warm.
http://www.marine.csiro.au/LeafletsFolder/45slevel/45.html
But hey, why worry about it; what’s the worst that could happen? I mean, we obviously understand this phenomenon completely and have proven ourselves fantastically adept at anticipating and avoiding the negative consequences of environmental changes – naturally occurring or otherwise.
http://ndrd.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Thermal expansion of water is quite low, actually, especially in the amounts predicted. If the oceans were heated to boiling, it might make a significant rise, but otherwise, not much. For example, if the world heats up enough to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, the oceans would rise 77 meters (that's getting near 200 feet for the non-international-standard measuring folks). If all that additional water were heated to boiling, an extra three meters on top of that.
True, but it will happen first.
And what was that again about measuring devices and ocean level rise ;-)
That's a crime. One of the last great nature preserves in America endangered so the SUV drivers can pay 10 cents less a gallon a few years from now. Whoopee.
It's no big deal.
Yours,
Wince
Bullshit. I don't think you've researched this much. I recommend the lastest issue of National Geographic for a background on the North slope. And it isn't just the 'bou that will suffer.
The male caribou is a sarve. So I think you meant sarvesh*t.
Try to be careful about these things.
Yours,
Wince
:-)
But we just called them bou when I lived up there, none of your hoity toity "sarves", thank you. Besides, we don't speak Sami here, they're called bulls and cows in North America.
And someone else demonstrates a firmly held opinion that indicates that they DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT. Goddamn it, do a smidgin of reading on the subject, willya? I'm starting to lose all respect for you people.
Look up the Gwitch'in, Inuvialuit, Inupiat, Han, and Tutchone, and then read up on the Porcupine Caribou herd. Or did you mean "no white people live there?"
And while you're at it, explain Gore's hidden agenda that motivates him to champion this cause. Who is he working for? Who's getting rich on his crusade to get our environment under control? Why would he lie?
Why would so many experts lie?
I'm no expert in climatology (one of my best friends is -- even taught it at Stonybrook, but he's just another liberal nutjob like me), however, I know that money talks and when science becomes political, I'm trusting the side that doesn't have a huge financial interest in who the politicians believe.
It's really simple:
Multinational corporations don't care about you unless you are a stockholder.
If you are a stockholder, multinational corporations only care about making you money.
The more money a multinational corporation makes for its stockholders, the less likely they will care about how the company made the money.
Multinational corporations make more money by ruining your planet than if they expended the time, effort and technology to protect your environment.
Multinational corporations have no natural incentive, financial or otherwise, to protect your environment.
Multinational corporations will only protect your environment if forced through regulations.
Multinational corporations will ignore evironmental regulations if it is cost effective to do so, absorbing fines, paying bribes, lobbying Congress is merely the cost of doing business.
You cannot afford to lobby Congress, pay bribes or be fined. If you are a stockholder, you already are paying for such expenses, but won't care as long as the corporation makes enough money engaging in such activities to continue paying you dividends.
What's good for a multinational corporation is not necessarily good for America. It is always good for the stockholders as long as profits are maximized.
The flip-side is the wacko environmentalists, the crazed "save-the-whale" crowd out there protecting owls and sitting in trees while singing protest songs. (Keep singing Joan!)
They have no financial incentives to fight for their cause, quite the opposite. They cannot count on a good business model to make money, they have few if any paid staffs, nobody gets rich dealing with them, and their contributors, unlike stockholders who gain from their contributions, are strickly volunteers and donations.
Their only incentive is that they believe in their cause enough to sacrifice their time, effort and money.
Who you going to believe? The multinational corporation who is trying to maximize profits over all other considerations, or the people out there trying to save the planet? They can't all be commies. And if they're right we could wreck this world, if wrong, some stockholders will earn less profits.
I tend to put the burden of proof on the well funded folks with the bad track record and who have every reason to lie to me. Fair? Balanced? Not only are the energy industry's scientists unable to offer a preponderance of persuadable evidence on the issue, common sense tells us that pollution is to be avoided.
Duh!
If you are not a stockholder in one of these companies, or benefit from their contibutions to your favorite politicians, it is unfathomable that you would defend, rather than challenge anything they say. As fun as debate tournaments are, this is not an issue that you should just pick your side due to party affiliation.
It doesn't pay dividends you can put in a bank to protect the planet.
Let me paraphrase Pat Roberts when he talked about Civil Liberties. This is something conservatives seem to buy so it should work for this issue too, right?.
You'll have no
civil libertiesstock options if you are dead.I'm not sure they like Washington style protection, either: Hmmmm. So we had to steal the village in order to save it, right?
These Gwich’in? I don't believe that the people who live there oppose drilling. I believe they oppose drilling where they are driven off their land or stripped of control. They are in favor of drilling where they keep the land and they get oil money and control. That sounds like human nature. Blanket or traditionalist opposition does not.
Yours,
Wince
No, Gore doesn't do it for the money. Neither did Clinton, although he does have more money now. Neither does Bush.
Yours,
Wince
Neither does Bush.
I thought we agreed, you have to use emoticons or a [/sarc] tag when you're trying to be funny.
Of course it does, Wince, it supports a preconceived notion that you have.
So, could you only discover a statement about the Gwitch'in in this delicious "intellectual conservative" article?
First of all, I knew and worked among the Gwitch'in, as well as the Inuvialuit and Northern Tutchone, and the smears in this article is a joke. These people are mostly subsistence hunters, and the caribou are literally life and death to them and their culture, which is why the US and Canada have a treaty about protecting their primary source of food.
Secondly, there's a load of nonsense in this article. Spit freezing before it hits the ground. 5 gallon pails as toilets. And what is this crap about wind turbines? What on Earth, other than the usual scummy tactic of trying to change the subject, does that have to do with oil drilling in ANWR? Nothing.
Lastly, nice to see a conservative "intellectual" article mis-stating the benefits of the ANWR fields. They focus on the top end of the estimates (16 billion barrels) even though there's only a small chance that it contains that much, and it's more likely that it contains less than half that. Then it goes on to say that that inflated figure represents "30 years of imports from Saudi Arabia". So what? The bulk of US imports don't come from Saudi Arabia. That's just a cheap ploy to tap into a popular mindset, and I think it speaks volumes about the tactics of the writer of this "intellectual" piece.
It's a load of crap, Wince. Try again.
They only would be supportive of oil exploration and drilling if they were in control of it. I'd be more comfortable with that as well. But for all intents and purposes, that means they are opposed to it, as they will not be given control of the development. One of the concerns is that those really pushing for explotration and drilling are primarily interested in setting up the infrastructure for development of offshore drilling in the Beausfort Sea, something that the Inupiat are deeply opposed to.
You haven't really disputed the content of what was said. It isn't changing the subject, but putting some perspective on things. I happen to agree with wind turbines, but I am not foolish enough to believe it is having a negative effect on some species. One of the arguements against drilling in the area is:
I don't like the snarky comment about the caribou, but at the end of the day I would rather they are displaced in that vast wilderness than at home here, where their home becomes a shopping mall with a highway leading to it, with residential communities in between.
The point is that (a) the oil isn't going anywhere, and will probably be even more valuable later when there's better and less invasive extrusion and transportation technology, (b) anything done in the region will have to be done very, very carefully, with agreement from all parties and stakeholders, (c) that environmental concerns aside, there is a valuable resource at risk (the Porcupine Caribou herd), and (d) people who think it's just barren tundra don't know what they're talking about.
Of course there's a load of nonsense in the article. There's a load of nonsense in Gore's film. There's a load of nonsense in everything I write. There's a load of nonsense in everything you write.
Smaller loads in the last two, of course.
In all three articles the claims made about political behavior all ring true, because that's how people behave. The Kaktovikmiut and the Gwitch'in would both like oil money as long as it doesn't ruin their life and they have some control. The people in Washington love to make rules which mess with the small numbers of people actually living on the land, as long as it is popular with the large number of voters who don't. The small number of people living on the land tend to complain rather bitterly about this. The environmentalists tell lots of stretchers, sometimes because they believe the stretchers, sometimes because it's for a good cause. The press excepts the environmentalist stretchers as fact. The business promoters tell fewer stretchers, because the press watches them like hawks, but their supporters tell plenty anyway, sometimes because they believe the stretchers, sometimes because it's for a good cause. The environmentalists are clueless about the economics of the issue and the human costs of their policies because hey, deep inside they wish there were only about 50 to 100 million people on the planet anyway, preferably using only stone age technology. The business interests are clueless about the caribou and the various Inuit, because they are focused like a laser on the economic issues, their isn't a large market for caribou meat and the Inuit have only slightly more buying power than the caribou. And everyone makes "documentary" films which are really position pieces to spread their respective facts and stretchers around.
At the end of the day you will trust the envrionmentalists and not the oil companies. And I will trust the oil companies and not the environmentalists.
Yours,
Wince
Who said I trusted the environmentalists? I trust the scientists who have done environmental studies in the area, and I trust the people who live in the region and who need to pass it on to their children in decent shape. And as I have lived in the region for a period and lived and worked with people whose ancestors have populated the region for millenia, I get to trust myself somewhat.
I trust the oil companies much less because their only responsibility is to their stockholders. They have no repsonsibility for environmental stewardship of the region or to the people of the area and their unborn generations. And I certainly have zero trust for those uninformed souls who would gladly sacrifice a protected wildlife reserve, its environment, and its people for 14 cents less per gallon that they put into their SUVs so they can drive to the mall.
But to get back to what started this, Ted said no one lived there. Can we agree that he was dead wrong about that?
That may be, but consider that there have been two largish oil spills in Alaska in the last month or two, I'd say it needs a bit of improvement.
Good enough. I already knew there were Inuit who lived there, 'cause I'd read an advocacy piece (oil company sponsored, I think) by one of the Inuit in question.
Yours,
Wince
This is from an interview at Grist magazine, take a look at Gore's answer;
"...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."
Sellout Scientists
There is no real controversy about global warming except that which has been promulgated by those who are paid to do so. 1000's of scientists the world over are in agreement. Only those subsidized by energy companies offer any skepticism. Their "science" has been refuted over and over. They are, in the scientific community, held in disrepute.
Alternate Views