Regression Toward the Mean as an Ideal
Dana Milbank has been on a roll lately. His page A-2 narratives about the goings-on inside Washington are readable and informative and a lot of fun. But I have to say, this morning's column about Al Gore and how smart he is gave me the creeps.
It's as if we live in a big Bud-Light commercial, where guys are doofuses and women are cute, and the smart kid is just there to play pranks on.
It starts out OK:
But -- was that the point? I wasn't there, but I don't think Gore was actually talking about how smart he is, was he? He has a movie out, and a new book, and I would imagine he was talking about the topics that those are about.
I'll skip down a little bit.
Is this so hard? Tell me, do readers of this blog find those statements intimidating?
Has life actually become a Bud Light commercial?
Look, I'm glad there's a guy out there who's keeping track of science and technology, and finding a way to make the new neuroscience fit in with traditional philosophy. And listen, I know lots of people in Iowa, hard-working, honest, and intelligent people, but how in the world can it be better to have leaders who write books for Iowa hog farmers?
This anti-intellectual trend has been building in the US for decades, and the result is the presidency of George W. Bush, a guy who does speak directly to the Iowa hog farmer. At the same time, we look at the surveys and wonder, how did America end up last in the civilized world in mathematics and science?
Maybe somebody ought to do an fMRI of a couple of people's heads to see what parts have gone dim: the smart parts.
Milbank:
Just wow.
I'll state a personal preference here. I am not intimidated by leaders who are smarter than me, and would never interpret it to mean that I'm "inferior" to them. I want foreign-policy guys who know more about foreign policy than I do; I want the Attorney General to know more about the law than I do; I want a Secretary of Homeland Security who knows something about security, a FEMA director who knows about emergencies; I want the FDA to know about food and drugs, and I want the President to know more about domestic and foreign policy than I do -- he should also be more articulate, better looking, and funnier than me. Why would anybody feel "inferior" about having great leaders?
It's as if we live in a big Bud-Light commercial, where guys are doofuses and women are cute, and the smart kid is just there to play pranks on.
It starts out OK:
A capacity crowd of 1,500 people jammed into Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University last night for Al Gore's speech and book-signing. But the numbers don't matter: Even if Gore were speaking before a sellout crowd at Verizon Center, he would still be the smartest guy in the room. Is It Wise to Be So Smart?
But -- was that the point? I wasn't there, but I don't think Gore was actually talking about how smart he is, was he? He has a movie out, and a new book, and I would imagine he was talking about the topics that those are about.
I'll skip down a little bit.
"It's the biggest problem he's got," said [audience member] Schwartz, from Germantown. "People don't want somebody who makes them feel stupid."
Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open "Assault on Reason," and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan -- all before finishing the introduction.
"The new technology called 'Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,' or FMRI, has revolutionized the ability of neuroscientists to look inside the operations of a living human brain and observe which regions of the brain are being used at which times and in response to which stimuli," Gore writes.
Still with him? Try this: "The architectural breakthrough associated with massive parallelism was to break up the power of the CPU and distribute it throughout the memory field to lots of smaller separate 'microprocessors' -- each one co-located with the portion of the memory field it was responsible for processing."
Is this so hard? Tell me, do readers of this blog find those statements intimidating?
Has life actually become a Bud Light commercial?
Look, I'm glad there's a guy out there who's keeping track of science and technology, and finding a way to make the new neuroscience fit in with traditional philosophy. And listen, I know lots of people in Iowa, hard-working, honest, and intelligent people, but how in the world can it be better to have leaders who write books for Iowa hog farmers?
This anti-intellectual trend has been building in the US for decades, and the result is the presidency of George W. Bush, a guy who does speak directly to the Iowa hog farmer. At the same time, we look at the surveys and wonder, how did America end up last in the civilized world in mathematics and science?
Maybe somebody ought to do an fMRI of a couple of people's heads to see what parts have gone dim: the smart parts.
Milbank:
The crowd loved it. But would the "average American," the one who, Gore said in disbelief, "now watches 4 1/2 hours of television per day?" (He felt compelled to add that "some of us are not watching it nearly that much.")
"I want the smartest guy around to be president," said Schwartz, in the "Worst President Ever" T-shirt. But, he added, "how do you convince people it's okay to feel inferior to their leaders?"
Just wow.
I'll state a personal preference here. I am not intimidated by leaders who are smarter than me, and would never interpret it to mean that I'm "inferior" to them. I want foreign-policy guys who know more about foreign policy than I do; I want the Attorney General to know more about the law than I do; I want a Secretary of Homeland Security who knows something about security, a FEMA director who knows about emergencies; I want the FDA to know about food and drugs, and I want the President to know more about domestic and foreign policy than I do -- he should also be more articulate, better looking, and funnier than me. Why would anybody feel "inferior" about having great leaders?
posted by JimK at 11:21 AM
35 Comments:
"I wasn't there, but I don't think Gore was actually talking about how smart he is, was he?"
He usually is. Read the Washington Post Book World review of his new book on Sunday which made this same point.
I don't know about you, Jim. Usually if anyone makes any point about science, your first thought is not to argue with it substantively but challenge the person's credential to speak about the topic at all unless they have a PhD in the specialty. You can't have it both ways. Either we all try to understand science or we just defer to the scientist.
Make up your mind.
I'm a little concerned by the references to Iowa hog farmers. Farmers these days have college or university degrees, often in both agriculture and business. Furthermore, people who do not have secondary degrees are not necessarily less smart than people who do.
What has gotten dumber is the language of newspapers. Go to the library of congress and get copies of any major newspaper from any major US city of 75 to 100 years ago and start reading. Notice the vocabulary? Working class people who couldn't afford to stay in school used to be able to educate themselves by reading newspapers.
Tish, I think I'm using the hog farmers in the same way Milbank is. It's not to say hog farmers are dumb or uneducated -- in today's corporate farming world they can't be -- (hey, cool, I had a typo, so that said "corporate framing," which is just as good)but they are not necessarily the target audience for a book called The Assault On Reason, which is going to compare contemporary cognitive styles to those used in the recent and distant past.
As for your second point, I once had a vocabulary-building book that took all its examples from the Sports section of the New York Times.
JimK
"Trying to understand" science is a worthy goal for everyone, but focusing on for example only 2/3 of the data of global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution as one Anon recently did, does not qualify as trying to understand science. Citing papers by right wing hacks is not an example of trying to understand science either.
The religious right and its allies in the Bush administration have been working to obstruct all scientific findings that don't support their beliefs about everything from global warming to sex education. Obstuction of science is not trying to understand it.
Again I urge everyone to check out the "The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science" and learn the many ways science has been under attack rather than under investigation to "try to understand" it.
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/a-to-z-guide-to-political.html
For President, I suspect we most want someone with whom we can identify, and with whom we agree, who thinks as we do. William Buckley is significantly smarter than I am, but I don't want him to be President. George Bush went to a more prestigious college than I and has more advanced degrees, but I didn't vote for him.
As for Science, anonymous, if we don't understand the science, we have to defer to experts. But the best course of action is to educate ourselves. If you want to understand why the second law of thermodynamics supports or disallows evolution, learn some thermodynamics. Buy an Encyclopedia Brittanica, it's a terrific resource. But just quoting non-experts who appeal to our pre-conceived notions is not way to be a responsible citizen.
School isn't supposed to teach everything. It's supposed to enable citizens to be able to learn whatever they need to know, and to teach themselves to understand whatever they need to understand.
Intelligent Design only works if you decline to learn the science behind and around it. So does the "research" put out by people like Cameron and Dobson. Once you learn a little about research methods and statistics, as well as a some genetics and neurology, you come to realize it's just bunk.
In my opinion, Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, Romney, all that crowd are smart enough for me. Bush wasn't.
As a former (but never a farmer) Iowan, I found the references to hog farmers comical. Iowans -- from a district whose only mid-sized cities leaned Democratic and whose other communities were heavily rural -- sent Jim Leach to Congress for 3 decades. He was a moderate and a thinker, an Ivy League guy who always sounded more like a college professor than a politician.
The Republican Party in Iowa has also labored long under the weight of the Pat Robertson conservatives, and a lot of folks are struggling with Steve King's bizarreness in Congress. Prior to that, though, it was the party which saw Mary Louise Smith rise to prominence, becoming the first (and thus far only) woman to serve as chairman of the RNC.
I never bought the argument that Iowa was best suited for first-in-the-nation caucuses, but part of the reason I think it sustained that status for so long is that there are a lot of thinking folks there in any community.
I want a President who is smarter, better-informed, and wiser than I am. Wisdom is perhaps the most important of those qualities, but I want all of them.
Given the difficulty of the issues facing our country and our world, I would think that most people, upon reflection, would feel the same way.
It is fine, and not foolish, to want a President you would feel comfortable hanging out with. But to make that the alpha and omega of the decision as to who to entrust the well-being of our nation to seems to me a bit short-sighted.
We all want a doctor with good bedside manner; but, even more, when we have a serious medical condition, we want a doctor who really knows medicine, can diagnose properly, and treat properly.
Whatever the current realities of our political culture, we would all be better served by examining the candidates as we would examine our health care providers. As much fun as it is to read Dana Milbank, perhaps he is selling the electorate short.
I don't think Al Gore's electoral problem has to do with how smart or well-informed he is. His manner in the past has been kind of off-putting to alot of people -- and his conduct in the 2000 debates was fatal to his candidacy. He seems to have learned from those errors, but his voice and tone are just him. Fair or not, many people find it patronizing. Again, it is not his message that many find off-putting -- it is his style of delivery. Bill Clinton can say the exact same things, but his style is such that he does not sound condescending.
""Trying to understand" science is a worthy goal for everyone, but focusing on for example only 2/3 of the data of global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution as one Anon recently did, does not qualify as trying to understand science."
As I remember, after scientific expert Randi said the times when global temperatures weren't rising were blips in time, an anon pointed out that this was 2/3 of the time during the last 150 years. Not an "attempt" at understanding but a fact.
The larger point was that the level of greenhouses in the atmosphere rose steadily but the temperature did not. Greenhouse gases may not have any effect or may be only one of a number of catalysts. The data is not conclusive.
Anonymous, anonymous was grossly exagerating when he said 2/3 of the time displayed on the map temperatures had dropped it was a very slight drop for about 1/3 of the 143 years displayed and overall the temperatures were up sharply from the time greenhouse gases started being heavily dumped in the atmosphere.
Once again, I refer you to the large graph in the middle of this page:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm
and to the long term graphs posted by Aunt Bea:
http://forumpolitics.com/pics/ipcc-global-warming-chart.bmp
Taken as a whole on average temperatures are sharply up from the period 1860 to 2003 compared to the long term trend up until 1860. You can put your blinders on if you want and ignore the totality of the evidence to focus on the 50 years when temperatures plateaued during the industrial revolution but the upwards trend is readily apparent to any reasonable person and most scientists are in agreement that human intervention is almost certainly causing global warming.
Not trying to start up the argument again, Randi. Simply responding to Beatrice's claim that someone was focusing on only 2/3 of data.
BTW, anyone heard of the ozone layer lately? Used to be the topic of alarm in the media as far back as the seventies. They never write about it anymore. By now, it should be gone and melanoma should be pandemic.
Maybe we evolved into resistance.
Thank you, Uncle Darwin.
Simply responding to Beatrice's claim that someone was focusing on only 2/3 of data.
Randi corrected your mistake; it was more like only 1/3 of the data. In science, you cannot simply ignore the data you don't like.
anyone heard of the ozone layer lately? Used to be the topic of alarm in the media as far back as the seventies. They never write about it anymore.
I gotta give it to you Anon. When you're wrong, you're really wrong. The ozone hole was the largest ever recorded just last year and somehow you missed the news. Even FOX carried the story:
Antarctic Ozone Hole Is Biggest Ever
Thursday , October 19, 2006
WASHINGTON —
This year's Antarctic ozone hole is the biggest ever, government scientists said Thursday.
The so-called hole is a region where there is severe depletion of the layer of ozone — a form of oxygen — in the upper atmosphere that protects life on Earth by blocking the sun's ultraviolet rays.
Scientists say human-produced gases such as bromine and chlorine damage the layer, causing the hole. That's why many compounds such as spray-can propellants have been banned in recent years.
"From Sept. 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles," said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. That's larger than the area of North America.
In addition, satellite measurements observed a low reading of 85 Dobson units of ozone on Oct. 8. That's down from a thickness of 300 Dobson units in July.
The ozone hole is considered to be the area with total column ozone below 220 Dobson Units. A reading of 100 Dobson Units means that if all the ozone in the air above a point were brought down to sea-level pressure and cooled to freezing it would form a layer 1 centimeter thick. A reading of 250 Dobson Units translates to a layer about an inch thick.
In a critical layer of air between eight and 13 miles above the surface, the measurement was only 1.2 Dobson unit, down from 125 in July.
"These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," said David Hofmann, director of the Global Monitoring Division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory. "The depleted layer has an unusual vertical extent this year, so it appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter..."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,222525,00.html
"Randi corrected your mistake; it was more like only 1/3 of the data. In science, you cannot simply ignore the data you don't like."
No one ignored any data, jackass.
"I gotta give it to you Anon. When you're wrong, you're really wrong."
Wrong about what? I said I don't hear much about in the media and I don't.
You have trouble relating to real people, don't you?
"Anonymous, anonymous was grossly exagerating when he said 2/3 of the time displayed on the map temperatures had dropped it was a very slight drop for about 1/3 of the 143 years displayed and overall the temperatures were up sharply from the time greenhouse gases started being heavily dumped in the atmosphere."
Never said it dropped 2/3 of the time. I said that for two periods, that represent 2/3 of time discussed, the level at the end was the same at the beginning and never exceeded that amount during the period. It's kind of a mouthful and things need to be summarized in this blog format. Still, you and Beatrice should have been easily able to follow the discussion. Here are thsoe periods again: 1850-1910 and 1940-1980.
From the beginning of the discussion I agreed that the global average temperature is up. The point is what caused it. Human activity, at least in the form of the carbon emissions, seems doubtful considering the uneven correlation.
Beatrice is right: you can't ignore the data you don't like. That's why you two don't get it.
No one ignored any data, jackass.
Oh thanks Anon. That's another personal attack because you have no sound rebuttal to a sound argument. Who's the "male donkey?"
You are the one focusing on only a few decades here and there while ignoring the rest of the data. Temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have varied over history but it was not until after the Industrial Revolution that these measures were able to reach the record highs we are seeing today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
I agreed that the global average temperature is up. The point is what caused it. Human activity, at least in the form of the carbon emissions, seems doubtful considering the uneven correlation.
Scroll all the way to the bottom and look again at the graph of 160,000 years of temperatures as well as atmospheric methane and CO2. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/stories/ Note that all three of these measures are correlated; they all rise and fall together.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have pumped more and more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere and temperatures have risen. This rise has been especially dramatically in the past 20 years when the numbers of carbon dioxide spewing cars on the road and polluting factories in developing countries like China have gone off the charts. It is true there have been fluctuations in the levels so that some decades appear to level off, but there's no denying the overall trend is upward.
The lower temps/carbon dioxide levels in 1980 are very likely the result of the United States Congress passing the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Air Quality Act in 1967, the Clean Air Act Extension of 1970, and Clean Air Act Amendments in 1977. Since then, however, the number of automobiles on the roads and factories that foul the air have simply become too much. A drive along any main thoroughfare during rush hour is telling. Photos, like this one from NASA, show industrial air pollution spewed by Chinese factories, which is so pronounced it is visible to the naked eye through the windows of the International Space Station. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17275
You have trouble relating to real people, don't you?
Actually no, not at all. I relate to kids and grown ups with ease. People have always told me that I am very sociable and they say that about my kids too (the acorn does not fall far from the tree and all that). It seems to me that people who hide in the shadows hurling insults at others are the ones who have trouble relating to real people.
"jackass"
We've spoken about this before, anonymous.
Anonymous said "Never said it dropped 2/3 of the time. I said that for two periods, that represent 2/3 of time discussed, the level at the end was the same at the beginning and never exceeded that amount during the period. It's kind of a mouthful and things need to be summarized in this blog format. Still, you and Beatrice should have been easily able to follow the discussion. Here are thsoe periods again: 1850-1910 and 1940-1980.
Those two periods do not represent 2/3 of the time discussed, its more like one third. For starters the data starts at 1860, not 1850 and temperatures are on average rising from 1860 to about 1905. There's a drop from about 1905 to 1915 but its still not back down to 1860 levels. the other period of a slight average drop in temperatures is from 1940 to 1980, but even at the lowest point in that time the temperatures exceed those at 1930 which greatly exceed those at 1860 levels. The time frame covered by a slight drop in temperatures is about 50 years and the whole graph covers 143 years - that's about 1/3 and in any event one must look at the totality of the data which on average is greatly up. You cannot ignore that data which doesn't support your wishful thinking.
Randi
The point is to make the carbon-warming hypothesis hold up, you have to explain why these periods occurred when greenhouse gases went up but the temperature didn't. They weren't just blips, they were signifcant periods of time since the Industrial Revolution. Until you have a reasonable explanation for these facts, the theory doesn't make sense.
Well obviously the evolution gap busting god of ID is responsible for the temperature variations, right Anon? I mean what other possible explanation is there?
Anonymous said "The point is to make the carbon-warming hypothesis hold up, you have to explain why these periods occurred when greenhouse gases went up but the temperature didn't. They weren't just blips, they were signifcant periods of time since the Industrial Revolution. Until you have a reasonable explanation for these facts, the theory doesn't make sense.".
Anonymous the explanation is obvious to anyone with an open mind. Look at the 1000 year climatic record that Aunt Bea linked to. The normal pattern is fairly sharp ups and downs around a mean temperature. The factors that cause these fluctuations continue during the time of vast carbon release during the industrial revolution. The release of greenhouse gases does not completely erase the exsiting patterns, it merely changes them. Thus if the period from 1860 to 2003 had followed the historical patterns over the previous thousand years one would have expected a sharper temperature drop than was seen in the time period of 1905 to 1915. If pre-industrial age patterns had repeated that would have dropped the temperature to quite a bit below 1860 levels. Instead the drop was much less, not quite down to 1860 levels. Same thing for the slight drop from 1940 to 1980. If past patterns had held true the drop would have been much sharper than it was with temperatures going down much below 1860 levels. Instead because of greenhouse gases the drop wasn't anywhere near as sharp as it would have been and only went back down to 1930 levels at the lowest.
Greenhouse gases aren't going to entirely erase the underlying up/down fluctuations, they make the down fluctuations less severe and the up fluctuations more severe. And that's what's seen in the graph from 1860 to 2003.
Well, that is a pretty good explanation, Randi. I still don't think it's a slam dunk but it does seem highly possible that human activity is causing the warming.
Assuming it is, though, what can be done? Al Gore himself can't be persuaded to give up his over-consumption of energy. How can we expect the Chinese and Indian people to halt their progress toward an affluent society? Most of what has been proposed won't even make a dent in the problem and we can't even get the major players to agree to that.
Al Gore himself can't be persuaded to give up his over-consumption of energy.
The Gore's house is not only their home; it's also an office for both Al and Tipper. Additionally, according to USA Today:
A spokeswoman for Gore said he purchases enough "green power" — renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and methane gas — to balance 100% of his electricity costs.
"Sometimes when people don't like the message, in this case that global warming is real, it's convenient to attack the messenger," Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said.
Gore participates in a utility program that sells blocks of "green power" for an extra $4 a month. Gore purchases 108 such blocks every month, covering 16,200 kilowatt-hours and helping subsidize renewable energy sources.
Johnson said it's unclear whether global warming is caused by humans, and he said the threat outlined in Gore's documentary is exaggerated.
The think tank [Tennessee Center for Policy Research] said that Gore used nearly 221,000 kilowatt hours last year and that his average monthly electric bill was $1,359. Johnson said his group got its figures from Nashville Electric Service.
But electric company spokeswoman Laurie Parker said the utility never got a request from the policy center and never provided them with any information.
Parker said Gore has been purchasing the "green power" for $432 a month since November. The Gore home is also under renovation to add solar panels, Kreider said.
Gore also owns homes in Carthage, Tenn., and in the Washington area.
Gore has said he leads a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To balance out other carbon emissions, the Gores invest money in projects to reduce energy consumption around the globe, Kreider said.
"For every ton of carbon they emit, he offsets that by doing investments in renewable energy sources," Kreider said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-02-27-gore-house_x.htm
Good catch, Aunt Bea. Anon should've checked the paper before he made his comments.
Who would have thought that somebody would argue against taking care of the earth? Evil has risen to prominence in America.
Thanks, Merle!
Did you see this article in today's Washington Post? I wonder if we'll get a new NASA chief now that lame duck Bush is finally willing to try to do something about global warming other than casting doubt about it. Of course his suggested voluntary measures are too little too late compared to the Kyoto Agreement, but at least this latest move represents a little bit of progress.
NASA Administrator Questions Need to Fight Global Warming
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 1, 2007; A13
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says that although global warming is changing Earth's climate, he's not convinced that is "a problem we must wrestle with."
The NASA chief -- whose agency has come under fire in Congress for cutting several programs designed to monitor climate change -- also says it's "rather arrogant" for people to take the position that today's climate is the optimal one.
"I guess I would ask which human beings, where and when, are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings," he said during a National Public Radio interview aired yesterday morning.
Griffin's comments come just months after the preeminent international organization on climate change issued a series of reports concluding that global warming will have serious consequences for life on Earth, and he quickly came under sharp attack from leading climate researchers and legislators.
In addition, President Bush yesterday called for the 15 nations that emit the most greenhouse gases to agree on a way to address global warming, days before he attends a summit of industrial powers where climate change will be a focus.
James Hansen, NASA's top official on climate change, said of Griffin's stance: "It was a shocking statement because of the level of ignorance it indicated with regard to the current situation. He seemed unaware that 170 nations agreed that climate change is a serious problem with enormous repercussions, and that many people will suffer if it is not addressed."
Hansen said Griffin's comments help explain why NASA's earth science budget has been severely cut.
In Congress, House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) said, "Setting aside NASA Administrator Griffin's personal views on the significance of global warming, I remain concerned that NASA is not doing as much as needs to be done on climate-change data collection and research."
"Based on NASA's own five-year budget plan, the agency will be unable to start any of the new Earth observations initiatives recommended by the National Academies for the foreseeable future," he said. "That's not going to get us where we need to be in our understanding of climate change."
White House science adviser John H. Marburger distanced the administration from Griffin, saying that "nobody should think that he was speaking for anyone but himself."
After criticism had begun to mount, Griffin put out this statement: "It is NASA's responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101173.html
"Gore has said he leads a "carbon-neutral lifestyle." To balance out other carbon emissions, the Gores invest money in projects to reduce energy consumption around the globe, Kreider said.
"For every ton of carbon they emit, he offsets that by doing investments in renewable energy sources," Kreider said."
Oh, good. We don't have to reduce our consumption to appease special interests, we just have to give them money. I get it.
"Good catch, Aunt Bea. Anon should've checked the paper before he made his comments."
We've all heard this before. Trouble is Gore is not asking the common man to "do investments", he saying they should make lifestyle sacrifices which he isn't prepared to make. It's called hypocrisy.
"Who would have thought that somebody would argue against taking care of the earth? Evil has risen to prominence in America."
No one's arguing against it. No one's proposed anything that would take care of the Earth.
What will you propose to do when China refuses to stunt their economic growth and reduce carbon emmissions? They were exempt from Kyoto and their country is an ecological mess. But they feel it is more important to raise their standard of living. Maybe we should let Gore be ambassador to China and give them daily speeches.
he saying they should make lifestyle sacrifices which he isn't prepared to make. It's called hypocrisy.
Yes, we know all about hypocrisy regarding the sacrifices our troops are supposed to make while Bush and the twins make no sacrifices at all. Cindy Sheehan's son is still dead.
Do you consider non-renewable-energy sources to be "special interests" too?
Anonymous said "I still don't think it's a slam dunk but it does seem highly possible that human activity is causing the warming.
Assuming it is, though, what can be done? Al Gore himself can't be persuaded to give up his over-consumption of energy. How can we expect the Chinese and Indian people to halt their progress toward an affluent society?".
Anonymous, frankly I'm pretty pessimistic about the situation. I think most of the wealthy industrialized countries might agree to significant cuts in greenhouse gases, but I don't see China, India, and other less wealthy countries going along with that until we see severe problems as a result of global warming. If there were a global government regulating such things then it could be done, but a global government seems less likely than all these countries restraining their greenhouse gas emissions. I fear no significant efforts will be made until severe problems appear and by then even draconian measures will fail to halt the changes in the short to medium term. Let's hope for a major technological breakthrough because otherwise I'm not sure we can save humanity from itself.
Getting back to the original posting, check out this column by Eugene Robinson in today's Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053101851.html
Thanks for the link, it was a great column. Mr. Robinson said:
"I don't want the candidates to pretend to be average people, because why would we choose an ordinary person for such an extraordinary job? I want to see what they've got -- how much they know, how readily they absorb new information, how effectively they analyze problems and evaluate solutions. If the next president is almost always the smartest person in the room, I won't mind a bit."
I won't mind a bit either. After what our proud C-student President has done to our standing and reputation in the world, I hope we can elect someone who at least attained B's, or better yet A's, in school.
Ohh, sore spot. Grades=ability to kiss ass. How about somebody who's just plain smart.
Now you're getting my drift. Remember, John Kerry's GPA at Yale was about one RCH higher than GWB's.
Glad to see you've finally found the appropriate handle.
Main Entry: flun·ky
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural flunkies or flunkeys
Variants: or flun·key/'fl&[ng]-ke/
Etymology: Scots, of unknown origin
1 a : a liveried servant b : one performing menial or miscellaneous duties
2 : YES -man
Just stating a fact, ma'am, an inconvenient truth. Grades aint everything.
By the way there, MCPS Ahead, you'd better remember who you are...
LOL Thanks for the laugh, Warning.
I'm not sure Flunky's so much a YES man as he is a Bushman.
Either way, he doesn't make the grade in my book.
Oh, and Flunky, did you catch this news item today?
Texas leads in carbon emissions
States differ widely — and not always due to size — on greenhouse gas
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:05 p.m. ET June 2, 2007
WASHINGTON - America may spew more greenhouse gases than any other country, but some states are astonishingly more prolific polluters than others — and it’s not always the ones you might expect.
The Associated Press analyzed state-by-state emissions of carbon dioxide from 2003, the latest U.S. Energy Department numbers available. The review shows startling differences in states’ contribution to climate change.
The biggest reason? The burning of high-carbon coal to produce cheap electricity.
-Wyoming’s coal-fired power plants produce more carbon dioxide in just eight hours than the power generators of more populous Vermont do in a year.
-Texas, the leader in emitting this greenhouse gas, cranks out more than the next two biggest producers combined, California and Pennsylvania, which together have twice Texas’ population.
-In sparsely populated Alaska, the carbon dioxide produced per person by all the flying and driving is six times the per capita amount generated by travelers in New York state.
“There’s no question that some states have made choices to be greener than others,” said former top Energy Department official Joseph Romm, author of the new book “Hell and High Water” and executive director of a nonprofit energy conservation group.
The disparity in carbon dioxide emissions is one of the reasons there is no strong national effort to reduce global warming gases, some experts say. National emissions dipped ever so slightly last year, but that was mostly because of mild weather, according to the Energy Department.
“Some states are benefiting from both cheap electricity while polluting the planet and make all the rest of us suffer the consequences of global warming,” said Frank O’Donnell, director of the Washington environmental group Clean Air Watch. “I don’t think that’s fair at all.”
He noted that the states putting out the most carbon dioxide are doing the least to control it, except for California...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19000614/
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