Sen. Harry Reid, NV: Wildfires caused by global warming

[John Larkin]

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/a8ae099c-6a23-45fd-a6fe-7b923d3e728b

...Jim Thompson

Some good links here:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8

John

 

[JosephKK]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Your brain-washing is showing.


Socialism does involve taxation, just like free market capitalism.
In general, socialist administrations collect a larger proportion of
the gross national income in taxes than administrations that claim
to believe in free market capitalism, but the difference isn't
dramatic.

Taxation isn't theft - it is an agreed payment for centrally
organised services negotiated between the electorate and the
administration - so socialism isn't theft, and socialists aren't
necessarily criminals.


The political system that destroyed the Soviet Union, and came close
to destroying China isn't socialism but bolshevism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik

It differs from socialism in restricting political control to a
disciplined group of professional revolutionaries, which makes it an
oligarchy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

As I've argued here before, the current U.S. political system is
getting perilously close to being another kind of oligarchy - a
plutocracy - which isn't doing it any good at all. If you want an
example of criminal behaviour, you may want to think about the way
that your own administration extracts a great deal of tax money from
the general population to spend on defence, to the extent that your
expenditure on "defence" is roughly equal to the total amount spent
on defence by the ten countries directly below you in the pecking
order.

Historically, the top dog has spent as much on defence as the second
and third dog combined.

The usual explanation of the current U.S. extravagance on defence
doesn't involve perceived threats, but rather a conspiracy between
defence contractors and politicians to rip off the tax-payers, with
the "defence" contractors paying off the politicians by funding
their election campaigns.


She does believe in a better health safety net than your current
administration, but she's unlikely to press for a system that will
be anything like as effective (or as cheap) as the current British,
German, French or Swedish systems. For one thing, the last time I
knew much about your medical system, half the money that got pajd to
your doctors covered their malpractice insurance premiums, and most
of that ended up with the insurers, while at least half of the
residue ended up with the lawyers who specialise in sueing for
malpractice. No-fault compensation would be a great deal cheaper,
but it would put a great many parasites out of work.

This is one explanation of how you spend some 14% of you GDP on
medical care to get poorer public health statistics than France and
Germany get by spending about half that proportion of ther GDPs. The
British system is slightly cheaper, but doesn't do quite as well as
the French and German systems, though it still delivers much better
public health statistics than the US system does.

Gosh Bill, could you post some pointers to backup the numbers you are
using. People that are not religiously wed to their positions like
to be able to defend them.

 

[Jim Thompson]

I guess the way the Apache tribe managed forest handled the
Rodeo-Chediski fire a few years back, they must have
global cooling on their side

The Arizona indigenous tribes have an advantage... they regularly tell
the state and the greenies to go pound sand ;-)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Jim Thompson]

Some good links here:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8

John

Yep. But there are regulars here that will still deny the conclusion.
They are nutcases through and through.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Jim Thompson]

I think the native people should get into the nuclear generating plant
business. ;-)


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

I guess that's a possibility. One of the tribes, I can't remember
which now... maybe Navajo, owns a coal-slurry powered unit at Four
Corners.

...Jim Thompson

 

[JosephKK]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Think again. Socialised health care works a lot better than the
dog's breakfast that you have got, but the parasites who do so well
out of your over-priced and less-than-comprehensive system have
succeeded in associating it with socialism - which is a valid
association - and associating "socialism" with "communism" which is
not.

Unfortunately, Americans see socialism as a non-American belief, so
they don't know anything about it and - being somewhat more
xenophobic than most - they don't want to know anything about it.


I suspect that you are at least as one-eyed as the authors you
complain about.

It is curious that Americans all know how Stalin damaged Russian
agriculture by supporting Lysenko, whose ideas about biology were in
perfect agreement with Marxist-Leninism, though somewhat divorced
from reality.

They seem less concious of the way their own economists are
encouraged to believe in the perfection of the free market, which
leads the economists to give advice that suits people with a lot of
money rather better than it suits the rest of the population.

Ooohhh. Nice attack on a straw man.

 

[Richard Henry]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:19:17 -0700, the renowned Jim Thompson

//hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/a8ae099c-6a23-45fd-a6fe-7b923d3[/url]...
...Jim Thompson
I guess the way the Apache tribe managed forest handled the
Rodeo-Chediski fire a few years back, they must have
global cooling on their side
The Arizona indigenous tribes have an advantage... they regularly tell
the state and the greenies to go pound sand ;-)
...Jim Thompson

I think the native people should get into the nuclear generating plant
business. ;-)

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

I guess that's a possibility. One of the tribes, I can't remember
which now... maybe Navajo, owns a coal-slurry powered unit at Four
Corners.

Not exactly. The plant is located on Navajo land, but not owned by
any tribe (unles they hold stock).

http://www.pnm.com/systems/4c.htm

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

The Arizona indigenous tribes have an advantage... they regularly tell
the state and the greenies to go pound sand ;-)

...Jim Thompson

I think the native people should get into the nuclear generating plant
business. ;-)


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[Richard The Dreaded Libertarian]

Selling education doesn't work quite the same way as selling socks and
bread.

It doesn't nowadays, with the rampant socialism that's choking the
life out of people all over the world, but it _should_ be.

That way, you'd have an option besides the government's propaganda
mills.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[JosephKK]

Jim Thompson [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

Yep. But there are regulars here that will still deny the
conclusion. They are nutcases through and through.

...Jim Thompson

Unfortunately true.
My high school education included learning serious doubt for mere
authority. It also taught me about the very basic concept of
science, called testability. For a body of knowledge to have claim
to the descriptive term science, the contents of it must be
permanently be opened to continued testing, questioning, extension
and refinement. Neither religion nor politics tolerate these
requirements.

 

[[email protected]]

It doesn't nowadays, with the rampant socialism that's choking the
life out of people all over the world, but it _should_ be.

Rubbish. The point about education is that it changes you, if it
works. Socks you can put on and take off, and give to someone else to
put on and take off, but you have to work hard to acquire an
education, and once you've got it you can't take it off and give it to
somebody else. You can teach what you know to other people - if you've
got the talent, and someone pays you to keep you alive while you are
doing it, but you can't stack it up and sell it in bulk,

That way, you'd have an option besides the government's propaganda
mills.

You've always got that option. I did get my Ph.D. in chemistry by
going through formal education system, but pretty much everything I've
learned about electronics I got from reading about it and doing it. Of
course, it wouldn't have worked without the maths I learned while I
was getting my degrees in chemistry ...

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:













Gosh Bill, could you post some pointers to backup the numbers you are
using. People that are not religiously wed to their positions like
to be able to defend them.- Hide quoted text -

Google is your friend. For quite a lot of stuff you can go to

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

which is a source the Americans do seem to accept - for myself I'd be
cautious about any CIA figures on weapons of mass destruction.

For health care I found these

http://www.pnrec.org/2001papers/DaigneaultLajoie.pdf

which is simple

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/23/3/10

which has some interesting things to say about why the U.S. health
care system is so expensive.

and this, which just covers the countries of the European Union, but
is dated 2007.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/healthaccounts/international_comparison_total_health_expenditure.asp

 

[[email protected]]

On Oct 25, 2:52 pm, [email protected] wrote:
On Oct 25, 6:36 pm, James Arthur wrote:

[...]

We've been protecting the world since WWII. That's expensive.
But that's not where most of the money is going.
True, now. Most of our money is presently spent on ineffectual social
programs.

Not true.

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

Bill, that link is just plain embarrassing--no wonder you have such
wacky, misbegotten theories.

I rather liked the way they lumped the interest on the national debt
into military expenditure, on the not-unreasonable basis that this was
just paying for previous wars.

Here's the actual data:

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/additionaltable3.pdf

summarized here:
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp603.htm

The U.S. 2007 budget was
$2,731 billion ($2.7e12), of which only

$500 billion was for defense,
$69 billion for Homeland wasted-money nonsense, and some other
pittance for the war.

That total is less than the $614 billion spent by HHS (Medicare,
Medicaid, and a few of the manifold assistance programs) alone, not to
mention

But the expenditure on Medicare isn't ineffectual, nor is it a social
program.

$586 billion on Social Security,

of which $486 billion is on old age and survivor insurance, which
isn't ineffectual

$52 billion on food stamps,

which isn't ineffectual

$21 billion on farm subsidies,

That isn't a social program - it's just buying votes in rural areas.

$42 billion on housing subsidies,
$43 billion on unemployment...

So, your information is wrong on its face--those idiots don't know how
to count, much less account.

They do know how to account - its just that you don't like the way
they look at the expenditures. And your accounting strikes me as no
less partisan, albeit in the opposite direction.

Oh baloney--another one of your bankrupt theories. Graham's plenty
smart. Runs in the family. Not that it matters, but I clear genius
with several sigma to spare; iterate the requirement, and I make the
second cut.

You do well on IQ tests. Fine. So do I and so does every member of
Mensa. There may be a few false positives in there somewhere. In fact
scoring over 140 on an IQ test - which is what most people are
claiming when they claim to be above the "genius" level, just means
that you, along with some 0.25% of the population, are above the level
where regular IQ tests give meaningful results. Scoring 150 doesn't
place you another standard deviation above the herd - it just means
that you found the test easy. There are around a million people in the
U.S. who would score above 140 on the regular tests, but nobody has
put together a test that will spread them out along the tail of the
bell curve and calibrated it so that an extra ten points on the score
would correspond to another standard deviation.

And having a high processing capacity doesn't mean that you use it
well - if Graham is smart, he's still managed to decide that the
entire IPCC is in conspiracy to lie to him about global warming, and
all those nice people who get money from Exxon-Mobil are
altruistically blowing the whistle on the IPCC.

Jim Thompson claims to have scored well enough on his IQ test to have
qualified to join Mensa. He had enough sense not to join, but he
doesn't seem to be interested enough in the real world to have woken
up to the deficiencies of the current U.S. administration,

 

[John Fields]

Rubbish. The point about education is that it changes you, if it
works. Socks you can put on and take off, and give to someone else to
put on and take off, but you have to work hard to acquire an
education, and once you've got it you can't take it off and give it to
somebody else. You can teach what you know to other people - if you've
got the talent,

---
And, if they _can_ learn, yes?

I must say, I have new-found respect for you regarding your
proposition that education changes a capable student irrevocably.
---

and someone pays you to keep you alive while you are
doing it,

 

[Don Lancaster]

The stunning beauty of that is that the math is universal.

Two plus two equals four.
Except for very large values of two.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics 3860 West First Street Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml email: [email protected]

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

 

[[email protected]]

Yep. But there are regulars here that will still deny the conclusion.

True. The name Richard Lindzen comes up fairly early in the report,
and the American Enterprise Institute.

Richard Lindzen is a well known shill for Exxon-Mobil, and the
American Enterpise Institute is heavily funded by Exxon-Mobile

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange

Exxon-Mobile seesm to be spending quite a lot of effort getting
nonsense written into the minority pages of the senate committee on
the environment and public works. The majority pages paint a rather
different picture.

They are nutcases through and through.

If you believe that you have to be a nut case to believe something
that Exxon-Mobile doesn't want you to believe.

As usual, Jim isn't paying enough attention to the world outside
electronics, which makes him distinctly gullible.

 

[[email protected]]

Jim Thompson [email protected] posted to
sci.electronics.design:

On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 20:53:42 -0700, John Larkin

//hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/a8ae099c-6a23-45fd-a6fe-7b923d3[/url]...
...Jim Thompson
Some good links here:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&Cont...
John

Yep. But there are regulars here that will still deny the
conclusion. They are nutcases through and through.

...Jim Thompson

Unfortunately true.
My high school education included learning serious doubt for mere
authority. It also taught me about the very basic concept of
science, called testability. For a body of knowledge to have claim
to the descriptive term science, the contents of it must be
permanently be opened to continued testing, questioning, extension
and refinement. Neither religion nor politics tolerate these
requirements.

Happily, the case for global warming is being made by scientists, who
are permanently open to continued testing, extension and refinement.

The case against global warming is essentially made by exaggerating
the importance of the issues being raised by those scientists engaged
in that process of testing, extension and refinement, in much the same
way that creationists and "intelligent designers" mine the biological
literature for differences of opinion,

You should note that John's URL points to the minority pages of the
senate committee on the enviroment and public works. The majority
pages present a rather different opinion.

 

[Richard Henry]

Happily, the case for global warming is being made by scientists, who
are permanently open to continued testing, extension and refinement.

The case against global warming is essentially made by exaggerating
the importance of the issues being raised by those scientists engaged
in that process of testing, extension and refinement, in much the same
way that creationists and "intelligent designers" mine the biological
literature for differences of opinion,

You should note that John's URL points to the minority pages of the
senate committee on the enviroment and public works. The majority
pages present a rather different opinion.

Sen Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma is the ranking minority member and pretty
much controls what is posted on the minority web page. Research on
him will explain a lot. Apparently, he doesn't believe in global
warming because it's not in the Bible.

 

[James Arthur]

On Oct 26, 2:29 am, [email protected] wrote:

On Oct 26, 6:06 am, James Arthur wrote:
On Oct 25, 2:52 pm, [email protected] wrote:
On Oct 25, 6:36 pm, James Arthur wrote:

[...]

We've been protecting the world since WWII. That's expensive.
But that's not where most of the money is going.
True, now. Most of our money is presently spent on ineffectual social
programs.
Not true.
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

Bill, that link is just plain embarrassing--no wonder you have such
wacky, misbegotten theories.

I rather liked the way they lumped the interest on the national debt
into military expenditure, on the not-unreasonable basis that this was
just paying for previous wars.

That's one of their most glaring errors--wrongly attributing all debt
to warfare.

We've spent a great deal more on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid and
Johnson's war on poverty. Social programs have been roughly 2/3rds the
budget for quite some time; by any fair measure, they deserve an equal
proportion of the debt.

That's not opinion, that's accounting...amortization.

(If you had three resistors dissipating heat, would you blame one for
the entire loss?)

But the expenditure on Medicare isn't ineffectual, nor is it a social
program.

I regard it as effectual mostly at raising the cost of medical care,
and secondarily, a means of re-distributing wealth. And it's
socialized medicine--not a road, not part of the defense of the
nation, not maintaining the means of governance, nor part of some
other Constitutional purpose.

of which $486 billion is on old age and survivor insurance, which
isn't ineffectual

Of course it is--as a retirement or investment plan the system has an
appalling efficiency: a large fraction of money is lost the moment
it's sent in. IOW, a huge NEGATIVE return. If saved in their own
accounts, people would still have that money which their government
squanders, plus interest.

which isn't ineffectual


That isn't a social program - it's just buying votes in rural areas.



They do know how to account - its just that you don't like the way
they look at the expenditures. And your accounting strikes me as no
less partisan, albeit in the opposite direction.

I've explained why their accounting is improper. Either they're
nitwits, or blackguards.

You do well on IQ tests. Fine. So do I and so does every member of
Mensa. There may be a few false positives in there somewhere. In fact
scoring over 140 on an IQ test - which is what most people are
claiming when they claim to be above the "genius" level, just means
that you, along with some 0.25% of the population, are above the level
where regular IQ tests give meaningful results. Scoring 150 doesn't
place you another standard deviation above the herd - it just means
that you found the test easy. There are around a million people in the
U.S. who would score above 140 on the regular tests, but nobody has
put together a test that will spread them out along the tail of the
bell curve and calibrated it so that an extra ten points on the score
would correspond to another standard deviation.

My remark was immodest and I regret it, but my god you're dense Bill--
you've still way underestimated me, you are again far off the mark,
have not understood what I said, have again misapplied a bunch of
wrong assumptions, and then woven another complicated story to
explain.

Which was my point--you leap to conclusions not supported by the data.

And, when your conclusion is shown conclusively to be wrong, you
equivocate.


If you persist even when wrong, people will think you wrong when you
persist.

With best regards,
James Arthur

 

[James Arthur]

On Oct 27, 4:46 pm, [email protected] wrote:

Which was my point--you leap to conclusions not supported by the data.

And, when your conclusion is shown conclusively to be wrong, you
equivocate.

Clarification: By 'equivocate' here I don't mean 'dissemble,' but
'back-step, spin, re-cast, kludge, revise; tergiversate.'

I'm not accusing you of lying, and hope you didn't take it that way.
Sorry for any confusion.

Cheers,
James