Eden Prairie News - Story - Comments

Upcoming Spanish movies at

Miss Mollee — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:35:59 -0500

Upcoming Spanish movies at the Rex are:

Oct. 3 – 9
“Hancock”
Dubbed in Spanish

Oct. 10-16
“Under the Same Moon”
In Spanish

Oct. 17-23
“Ladron Que Roba A Ladron”
In Spanish

Oct. 24-30
“Pan’s Labyrinth”
In Spanish

Oct. 31- Nov. 6
“The Orphanage”
In Spanish

What if it turns out that

William Wood — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:47:32 -0500

What if it turns out that the whole thing is a crock?

In the buildup to the war in Iraq, the argument was that our intelligence supported the belief that Saddam had developed weapons of mass destruction, especially biological weapons, and that he thereby posed a direct threat to us as he might share them with al Qaeda or similar terrorist organizations. Personally, I was very torn. The "evidence" that Colin Powell presented to the UN clearly was not sufficient to establish the presence of WMDs "beyond a reasonable doubt," but combined with Saddam's history of defiance toward the UN plus the unspeakable destructive power that WMDs represent, I reluctantly concluded that there was a "preponderance of evidence" that justified the invasion.

You see, I hope, where this is going...

We humans are fallible. Even when we try our best, using our best tools and processes, we make mistakes. Could the science of climate change be wrong? Sure. But our best is just that, our best. It is what we HAVE to go on. The whole premise of the war in Iraq was based on a mistake. That does not mean that we should not have done what we did. We did what we did based on our best knowledge at the time. We must do the same now for climate change. Let's just hope -- as I firmly believe -- that our scientific community will have done us better than our intelligence community.

6. What do you do with those

William Wood — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 06:09:20 -0500

6. What do you do with those of us who won't play along? Will you use the violent and coercive force of government to force me to comply?

Let me tell a little story.

The friend I mentioned above who got himself a national monument is a guy named Dave Willis. I met him through a program at Westmont College called Inoculum (http://www.westmont.edu/inoculum/general.html). The year I went on the Inoculum, we spent a week rock climbing in the high backcountry of Yosemite, entering the park from the northwest corner via the Hoover Wilderness.

Dave, himself, is quite a story. His outfit takes legislators (usually on horseback) into threatened wilderness areas mainly in California and Oregon to show them firsthand what is at stake. I know Dave best through his letters, and in them I can feel his wild swings from hope to despair as opportunities to save wild areas arise and, all too often, are lost. I have seldom seen honest passion like this in anyone.

When he was a young man, Dave was on a two-man expedition to climb Mt. McKinley. The pair were caught in a violent snowstorm and his partner began to succumb to hypothermia. One of the effects of hypothermia is childlike behavior, and as a result, Dave's pal lost his pack over a cliff. That was bad enough, but the real problem was that their tent was of a type that split in two: each carried half. So there Dave was, on a mountain with a hypothermiating partner and no tent. What did he do? He tied his parter up in his own sleeping bag and waited out the storm. Using a mirror, he was able to signal to another expedition some miles away, but the storm rolled back in and the rescue helicopter was not able to arrive until a day later.

By that time, Dave's hands and feet were frozen solid.

Well, the two were rescued the next day. Dave lost his hands and feet; his buddy suffered minor frostbite. Since then, Dave gets into the backcountry on horseback. He's been doing this for I don't know how many years, but it's more than twenty. My point is that it takes a LOT of love for the wild to keep doing what he does. Dave is a religious guy and for him, the wilderness is an expression of God's love.

So here's the thing. On the day we set out on the Inoculum trip, I piled into Dave's beat-up old pickup, specially fitted so he could drive it, and we started driving toward the trailhead. We were driving on a country road somewhere between Bridgeport and the Hoover Wilderness and Dave was sipping a Coke. Finishing it, he looked over at us...then, without saying a word of explanation, tossed it right out the window.

I don't pretend to know all that Dave meant by that. But part of it, I think, was to shine a light on it: our disregard for the planet is UGLY. Yes, we have the freedom and ability to do as we will. But with that comes great responsibility.

So, Peter, you can "play along" or not. My hope is that the solution will not involve the "violent and coercive force of government" to a degree much worse than the "coercion" the government applies when it tells you to stop at a red light. I really believe that that will be possible.

But in the end, I'd worry more about the coercion of my conscience.

"So, who would we rather

William Wood — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:56:14 -0500

"So, who would we rather have with their hand on the Earth Controls..."

Answer: neither. For now:

http://williamgwood.home.comcast.net/~williamgwood/P9230001.JPG
http://williamgwood.home.comcast.net/~williamgwood/P9230003.JPG

I'm going to write more about this soon in an open letter to Senator McCain, a man for whom I have tremendous respect. But this party is not fit for highest office at this time, and this issue is one of the reasons why.

(BTW, my wife's car has a sticker, too, but I don't show the photo of it. Thanks go out to the jerk who swerved around her and my 2 and 4 year old daughters to give her the finger last week.)

William, I'm a small

twoputttommy — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:46:35 -0500

William, I'm a small business man. Real small. But, each and every one of my customers want - and some of 'em "demand" - proof of liability insurance before I work on their property. Everybody has to have liability insurance. Everybody, that is, except nuclear. Well, that's not quite accurate; but the fact is nuclear doesn't have to insure themselves to the full extent of the damage they could cause.

Why? Because no one will insure a nuclear plant. So, they don't have to have a line-item on their budget that accurately reflects what that cost should be; an expense everyone else has to have. This is because the Feds - in their infinite wisdom - passed a law that says they don't; it's called the Price Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act.

And then there's the issue of storage - who is going to pay for the costs of storage, 100,000 years from now? Is there a trust fund set up for this, and who are the brainiacs that set the actuarial tables to determine proper funding? Obviously, I'm bein' a little facetious, but you get the point.

Here's the deal - Because of the 1973 Oil crisis, and the ensuing Arab Oil Embargo, President Carter developed a plan to end dependence on foreign oil.

Carter also turned down the thermostat, put on a cardigan sweater, and installed solar panels on the roof.

Reagan got elected, and he took off his jacket, turned up the thermostat, and ripped that solar panel off the roof.

And that's the philosophical difference between the parties.

Reaganism says that if you can afford to pay the bill, it's not a problem - it's only a problem for those in the middle and lower classes that can't afford the bill. And even though it sucks to be them, it's their own fault - they should simply pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make more money.

But, I'm going off on a tangent; the reality is that nuclear is not cost effective without massive public subsidy; personally, I'd rather see solar panels on every roof and wind turbines on the horizon, than the court system clogged with lawsuits from folk that live downwind from proposed nuclear plants.

"Clouds of sulfur ash" it

edenpprairiefactchecker — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 08:50:21 -0500

"Clouds of sulfur ash" it is....

According to Peter's World..

Peter's questions must have come from Anti-Global warming fanactics' top one hundred list.

And you mentioned the "Gore" word to boot.

It is obvious that while Peter may be able to write down the questions, he has no understanding of the complexity of Earth Science related to Global Warming.

Here we're (Gore is) actually taking the "passive approach" and Peter doesn't even know it!

The problem with right wing Republicans is they can't see the "forest
for the trees."

So, who would we rather have with their hand on the Earth Controls, William or Peter?

Ok, Peter, on to your 4th

William Wood — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 02:03:07 -0500

Ok, Peter, on to your 4th and 5th questions.

They are actually related, so I will respond to them together. Your question #4 asks for a cost-to-degree formula, and your question #5 asks whether trying to target a cooler global climate is really such a good idea.

Since, as I've indicated above, I can't give you a cost but only a strategy for keeping costs low and in the private sector as much as possible, I will not be able to give you a cost-to-degree formula, either. But it gets worse. It's not just the cost side of the equation that I don't have a concrete answer for. Peter, what we are talking about here is no less than terra-forming Earth -- and we do it without the absolute certainty you crave as to what effects we will bring about.

I freely admit it: this is terrifying stuff. If you don't already feel the terror in your gut at the thought of what I'm talking about doing, then look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:As08-16-2593.jpg. That's it, folks. We got no where else to go. If we screw her up, the show is over. And, yup, we're talking about tinkering around with the ATMOSPHERE without positively knowing what will happen.

But ladies and gentlemen, the news is that that experiment has been underway for over a century and a half. We're already terra-forming Earth, and we did so with an ignorance that makes our present uncertainty pale by comparison. What we are talking about doing is the UN-doing of the unwitting experiment we've been conducting for so long now.

You know, there are two approaches to this. What I've proposed above is a passive approach: NOT putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. There are also active approaches: taking active measures to cool the Earth directly. Active measures would include things like deliberately increasing the Earth's albedo by, say, dispersing huge clouds of sulfur ash to reflect the incoming light from the sun. Think I'm joking? Think again: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/12343892/can_dr_evil_save_the_wor.... Scared now?

At our present stage in the crisis, I believe the measured and reasonable thing to do is to stop putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, immediately. The active approaches simply cannot be risk-justified (thankfully). But that is for now...do nothing for too long, and they may be our only shot. So how can I "be sure" that taking measures to cool the global climate will be a good thing? Again, there is no way to "be sure." But staying our present course is far more likely to lead to catastrophe, and by taking the measures I've recommended above, we can at least throttle our impact should the planetary system throw us a curveball. (We haven't even talked about curveballs, but they may be in our future. Example: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2008/2008052826907...)

BTW, Peter, if we are ever farming Greenland, we will be doing it only after a catastrophe of unimaginable horror will have occured. The ice on Greenland is just that: ON Greenland. When Arctic ice melts, it does not raise sea-level since it was already IN the ocean. But if the Greenland ice fully melts, then you really will see sea-levels rise in the way Gore depicts, with all the accompanying human death and suffering.

And that may not be all.

Ice, of course, is fresh water. If you were to have a rapid melting of Greenland ice into the Atlantic, you would thus wind up with a region that would be locally less salty. But fresh water and salt water have different densities, so having a local region that is less salty would very likely affect the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream acts as a barrier keeping arctic waters from northern Europe. Shut down the Gulf Stream, let those waters in, and despite the fact that the global climate would be warmer, northern Europe would be plunged into a true ice age. This is precisely the scenario Kim Stanley Robinson describes in his Forty Days trilogy (http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/07/stanley_robinson_q...). Is this sure to happen? No. Is this a possible scenario. You bet.

So please: watch what you wish for.

Tommy, I'll need more time

William Wood — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:38:40 -0500

Tommy, I'll need more time to understand the econonmics of nuclear. My impression is that it does turn a healthy profit for companies like Southern Cal Edison...but I need to research that further. Also, I would envision the creation of a consortium of power companies coming together, under federal mandate, to create a standard powerplant design that could be suited to each site. Having a production-line nuclear design would reduce costs all around, making the business case all the stronger.

That said, I would emphasize that I am indeed in favor of pursuing ALL forms of renewable energy that do not contribute greenhouse emissions.

I have driven many times through that California wind farm that you see in all the commercials and that is a thrilling sight, more of which I would love to see. HSBC uses geothermal energy to heat and cool its newer buildings. An Edison project (http://www.edison.com/pressroom/pr.asp?id=5885) that looks extremely promising is the development of a Stirling Engine capable of powering over a quarter-million homes. (Apparently the project looks good to some folks other than just me, too: http://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2008/04/100-million-into-stirling-en...). (Never heard of a Stirling Engine? See my remarks above about the dearth of imagination from our storytellers.)

These and others like them must absolutely be encouraged and, where it makes sense, subsidized. These REALLY are keys to our national security, because not only do they move us towards the energy independence we so desperately need from a security standpoint, but they are also the technologies we can safely EXPORT to developing nations. Nuclear may be an option for our own use, but I can't conceive helping other nations to develop it. We need these alternatives to offer to other countries as a safe way to help them provide clean power for their peoples. By sharing these technologies, we not only protect the planet and help avert disaster, but think of the diplomacy they represent!

In the end, though, the thing I would want to stress is this: under no circumstances may we morally entertain half measures. I believe that non-nuclear solutions are just that. They simply will not provide the power that you know we as a country will consume. Half measures not only fail to address the climate crisis, but they risk lulling us into complacency, thinking that we have addressed it.

The climate crisis must be solved overwhelmingly. We do it, and we do it BIG. In my present opinion, nuclear is the only way to ensure this victory.

William, I appreciate your

twoputttommy — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:08:57 -0500

William, I appreciate your thoughts. And I'd like to share my thoughts concerning nuclear, and it's from a business perspective.

Do we really want to encourage an industry that cannot compete economically?

And the simple fact is, nuclear cannot compete economically, without a massive public subsidy.

And if we're going to subsidize an industry, we should be subsidizing industries that can compete economically.

There's lots of talk about nuclear now; just wait until the NIMBY's find out it's going in their city; just wait until the people down-wind find out a nuclear reactor is planned up-wind. You know the court battles that are bound to happen, before a shovel of dirt is turned, let alone a kilowatt produced.

While all of this is going on, real renewable-energy progess could be proressing. Subsidies need to go to businesses that can compete; not nuclear that cannot.

All right, let's continue.

William Wood — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 23:58:00 -0500

All right, let's continue. But first a shout out to Mayor Young -- you don't know it, but you sat just to my right at the first half of tonight's EPHS football game. I considered saying hi but figured you just wanted to enjoy watching the Eagles rack up yet another kick-a win. Woo hoo! (I was the one with the squirmy 4 year-old girl belting out Little Mermaid and Garth Brooks songs.)

So let's look at your third question: costs.

First, before I say *anything* else, I want to address the fear that obviously underlies your question. Clearly, asking the question at all implies that you are very (rightly) concerned about being fiscally responsible and not impinging on individual liberties. In the back of your mind I imagine are images of tree-hugger environmentalist-types, demanding that the federal government be used to ram costly solutions down our throats, like it or not, personal freedom be damned.

Well, as much as I love the outdoors, I am no tree-hugger. I have friends and relatives who ARE (one who even got Pres. Clinton to create a national monument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade-Siskiyou_National_Monument) and I love 'em to death, but I've come to grips with the fact that I am not really of that pattern. Climate change to me is not an environmental issue. It is national and global security issue first, a moral issue second, and a business issue third. Also, I have a libertarian streak a mile-wide. So rest assured, I, too, am tremendously concerned with costs and would want any infringement on personal liberties to be measured with extreme care.

So...cost. The honest answer is that I don't know and that is because I don't have a full solution mapped out. No individual could, really. But here are some important thoughts:

- First, I reject ethanol or similar bio-fuel type solutions. I really don't think they play into the solution at all. There is no need to worry about using crops that could otherwise feed people or livestock from my corner.

- Second, the solutions need to go after the biggest carbon emitters. Forcing people to use more economical light bulbs may conserve electricity, but that is only an issue if the production of the electricity causes carbon emissions. I have only praise for those who voluntarily choose to reduce, reuse, and recycle...but that is not going to get us to where we need to be. We need to be positioned so we have cheap, and extraordinarily abundant electricity for all -- with no carbon emissions.

- Third, I believe that nuclear is the only current technology that offers a solution for that need. That is not to say we should not pursue wind, geotherm, solar, etc. But nuclear can get us to where we need to be NOW.

- Fourth, the cost of building, securing, overseeing and maintaining nuclear facilities will be great, no doubt. But as I noted above, these should not be government projects. These should be primarily private enterprises with government participating to secure and oversee. The latter should not be underestimated. If we as a nation are truly going to become strategically dependent on nuclear, then we need to secure our nuclear facilities with the military, and we need to have STRICT and TRANSPARENT oversight to force the private power companies to adhere to design and maintenance rules and remediations. Other than that cost, however, let private investors build and profit from the facilities. The most important thing government can do here is get out of the way.

- Fifth, by choosing to go nuclear, we as a people will owe a debt to the people of Nevada who will be asked to bear the burden of underground storage of the waste. We must spend whatever it takes to make Yucca Mountain a safe storage solution and we may be morally on the hook to relocate people living nearby if they feel uncomfortable living in proximity to the site. We can afford to treat these people right and we must never adopt the attitude that Nevada is just a wasteland, anyway. Having lived there for three years myself I can assure you, it is not.

- Sixth, I think it is probably just a reality that regular fuel-based cars and trucks will be the norm for at least another 10-15 years. The government cannot reasonably ask individuals to ditch the investment they have made in their current cars. So, as electric and hydrogen based cars and trucks slowly become the norm (mine will be the Tesla, thank you: http://www.teslamotors.com/) and the free market cost of gasoline will help you to voluntarily "choose" to go electric or hydrogen, the government needs to sponsor a project to deal with the carbon that current cars and trucks emit.

What I have in mind here are activities to sequester this carbon dioxide. One of the most interesting proposals I have seen comes from Gregory Benford, professor of physics at UC Irvine and author of some of the best sf you will ever get your hands on (http://www.gregorybenford.com/). He writes about his idea in an Amazon Short here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000CBT7PQ/qid=1132469075/...). The idea, in a nutshell, is to bury farm waste (corn stalks, etc.) in the deep ocean where the sequestered carbon will be retained for about a thousand years. He estimates that burying just the US farm waste could capture 33% of all carbon emitted today, not even factoring in a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions if we go nuclear. The two together might solve the problem through the remainder of the century.

Of course, the government would have to pay to transport and bury the farm waste (who else would?). But I can easily envision opening a carbon sequestration market: let the government set the demand side of the equation (how much carbon to sequester), and let private companies compete to devise ways to meet the demand (and burying farm waste is only one of many ways to do this). The government would certainly have to pay the suppliers (with taxpayer money), but fostering competition and innovation would ensure that the government does not itself get into the carbon sequestration business and would get the best, most cost-effective solutions. The money to pay (and, again, to OVERSEE) these vendors, I believe, could come directly from spending cuts to the military budget. This IS a security expense and it is really more suited to the security environment of the 21st century.

(Personally, if I were to make a go at this, I would envision creating great dirigibles to haul the farm waste. This would reduce the carbon emissions due to transportation and would make pick up and delivery much simpler. You could even color the upper surface of the dirigibles to reflect sunlight, incrementally reducing the Earth's albedo and helping that much more. But now I am drifting of into sci-fi again, aren't I?)

So...cost wise, I can't give you exact costs. This isn't a formalized plan that is ready for that yet. But in general, I think a solution can be tailored so that much of the expense is born by private investors who will ultimately reap a profit, and the rest, while definitely a tax-payer bill, would not be as costly as we might think, and could come from cutting existing costs elsewhere in the budget.

And as far as costs to personal freedom -- let's agree to keep that as low as possible.

(P.S. I want to add one thing here: one reason that the tree-hugger socialist environmentalist image haunts our collective imagination is because there is a terrible lack of imagination in our science fiction, especially the SciFi portrayed in films (because I know no one will read real sf). The best scifi we have on TV today is probably BattleStar Galactica, and while it is admittedly a brilliant show that illuminates much about human character, it speaks nothing to the pressing science problems of our day: climate change, energy, science education, proliferation of WMDs and religious-based terrorism, pandemics, genetics research, (real) space exploration, and the interplay of science and politics, for a few. An idea I have long wanted to pursue is to produce a show similar in format to PBS Mystery! that would allow today's best sf writers to unleash scripts that DO delve into these issues. The power of real sf is the power to expand how we see our real, present world. If anybody wants to go in with me, let me know!)

Below is a link to a story

Leah Shaffer — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:17:58 -0500

Below is a link to a story about Scream Town, another haunted house in the region:
http://www.chaskaherald.com/news/business-news/get-your-fright-screamtow...

The following is more

Leah Shaffer — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:12:09 -0500

The following is more information about how to register to vote from Hennepin County:

If you live in Hennepin County, there are three ways to register to vote in the general election Nov. 4. You can pre-register until 5 p.m. on Oct. 14:
Go to the Hennepin County website – http://www.co.hennepin.mn.us/elections
– and click on “Voter registration application” under “Downloadable forms” in the right-hand column.
Register to vote at your local city offices.
You also can register at your polling place on Election Day. To register to vote, you must be:
A United States citizen.
A resident of Minnesota at least 20 days before Election Day.
At least 18 years old by Election Day.
If you are currently registered to vote, you don’t need to register again unless you have:
Moved to a different address.
Changed your name.
Not voted during the last four years.
Recently returned from active military duty and last registered to vote where you were deployed – you may have to re-register to vote here in Minnesota.
To register to vote at your polling place, you must provide election judges with proper identification, such as:
A Minnesota driver’s license, a learner’s permit, a state identification card (ID) or a tribal ID card that has your current address (or the receipt for renewal or change of license or ID).
A “notice of late registration” from your city clerk, if you pre-registered to vote
but didn’t make the deadline for this year’s general election.
If your ID doesn’t have your current address, bring one of the following documents, even if it has your previous address:
Minnesota driver’s license, state ID or tribal ID.
U.S. passport.
U.S. military ID.
Student ID from a Minnesota college.
AND one of the following:
A bill for electric, water, gas, telephone (including cell phone or satellite phone service), cable TV, Internet service provider, sewer or trash pickup that has your name and current address, with a due date within 30 days of Election Day. Beginning this year, copies of electronically provided utility bills also will be acceptable proofs of residence. Rent statements with utilities included as an itemized portion of the rent are now accepted as well.
If you have none of these, another registered voter living in your precinct can come with you and vouch for your residency.
For more voting information, visit or call your local city clerk; go to the Hennepin County website – hennepin.us/elections, search “Voter registration information;” or call or visit the Hennepin County Elections Division: 612-348-5151.

Since I actually do have a

William Wood — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:26:24 -0500

Since I actually do have a regular day job (and you've already got me parsing an example of 40 year-old Supreme Court judicial activism), please forgive me but I will reply to these in parts.

Let's look at 1 and 2 first.

In your first question, you asked "Why did NASA recently say that we are currently experiencing 'a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet.'"

As far as I can determine, NASA did not say that. Google the phrase and you will find that it is said by John Casey of the "Space and Science Research Center" (http://www.spaceandscience.net/id1.html) in Orlando, Florida (conveniently less than 1 mile from HolyLand Theme Park in case you want to visit with Jesus afterwards http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=28.489845&lon=-81.438655&zoom=16&q1=470...). I don't know enough to question Mr. Casey's credentials or motives, but he certainly is NOT NASA, even if he did do work for NASA in the past.

For NASA's rather more official opinion on the matter, it would be better to stick with official NASA sites, such as the NASA Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/)(please note the domain in that URL). Here is the NASA Earth Observatory take on Global Warming: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/global_warm...

From paragraph #1: Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

Then, about mid-way down the second page of the update, the report addresses the question: "But how do scientists know global warming is caused by humans and that the observed warming isn’t a natural variation in Earth’s climate?" The conclusion, arrived at on the climate model page, is that "This means that, according to the models, humans are responsible for most of the warming observed during the second half of the twentieth century."

This is NASA's opinion, not just mine. If we were talking about just my own opinion, I'd say "ignore at will." But NASA's opinion is rather more informed than mine. Ignore at peril.

(Incidentally, I am not sure which global metrics you have in mind, but the Evidence for Global Warming section of the Earth Observatory site presents some pretty compelling data. If you are interested, you can even get Earth Observatory news feeds set on your iGoogle home page. I did that when iGoogle started. I have not seen one article come from NASA since then that seriously questions either that climate warming is occuring or that carbon emissions are a signicant factor.)

I don't know enough about ocean temp models to comment yet. I suspect that oceanic models are even more complex (and therefore more susceptible to error) than atmospheric models. After all, you're essentially dealing with TWO vast, complex systems -- the atmosphere AND the ocean -- in oceanic models.

Finally, you ask if I can tell you for certain that human activities rather than natural activities such as the sun are the cause. Of course not. Peter, I have a degree in philosophy. I concentrated on questions in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion and epistemology. If there's one thing I can tell you with a high degree of certainty, it's that you are seldom going to hear me express anything with certainty.

The world, contrary to what some may think (and indeed may have said recently) is not black and white, and even less so is our knowledge and understanding of the world. It is impertive that we be able to see in shades of probability. Right now, there is a strong probability (the IPCC, I believe, characterizes it as 95%+ odds) that human activity is a significant causal factor influencing climate change. But even if it were only 51%, that, to me, is when we are morally on the hook. That's exactly the point of the Stanford lecture at the link in my earlier post.

I'll end this post tonight with one last point. I work for a rather large financial institution. Given the insanity going on lately, I believe we in fact became the world's largest finacial institution by market capitalization a couple of weeks ago. HSBC. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hsbc)

Contrary to what the subprime mortgage mess might make one think, banks are normally rather averse to risk. And so HSBC as an organization considers climate change not only to be real but a BUSINESS THREAT and a SOCIAL IMPERATIVE. So much so that I am extremely proud to report we have invested US$100mil in partnerships to address climate change (http://www.hsbccommittochange.com/environment/climate-partnership/) and internally are scrambling to find ways to clean up our own environmental footprint.

That's what a risk averse BUSINESS says about climate change.

Thanks WW for acknowledging

sd42webmaster — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:19:52 -0500

Thanks WW for acknowledging that the science is not anywhere near settled on Global Warming and forgive me for not noticing your comment until now.

You’re a smart guy – here are seven questions for you:

1. Is global warming really happening? Can you explain why three of the four global metrics are showing that global temps are going down right now? Why, according to NPR, haven't temps risen in 10 years and why haven't ocean temps haven't risen in 5 years? Can you explain why the IPCC’s predicted temperature rise in the Indian Ocean isn’t panning out? Why did NASA recently say that we are currently experiencing "a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet." (the word "new" can also be interpreted as UNEXPECTED – kind of important when considering climate change models).

2. Can you tell me for certain that man – and not the sun – is the primary cause?

3. How much will the proposed solutions cost? I want exact monetary costs in addition to costs to personal freedom. I also want to know about costs to human life when we use food for fuel instead of food.

4. How many degrees will those solutions bring down the temperatures? Can you tell me for sure – if we do this and this and this, the temperature will drop X degrees? What is the cost per degree -- for example, it will personally cost us all $10,000 each to bring down the temps 0.5 degrees but if we want it to go down a whole degree, we will all have to move into mud huts)?

5. How can you be certain that plunging global temperatures will be a good thing? Won’t it mean longer colder winters (I'm moving!), shorter growing seasons, more disease, more use of fossil fuels for heat? Some say that warmer temps will mean that we will once again be able to farm Greenland –- that life on earth will actually thrive.

6. What do you do with those of us who won't play along? What if I don't want people dictating what kind of car I can drive or what food I'm allowed to eat or how warm I can heat my house? Do I really have bring light bulbs with mercury into my home? What if I won't limit my carbon output? Will you use the violent and coercive force of government to force me to comply?

7. What if it turns out that the whole thing is a crock? What if the entire global warming industry is just a made-up religion to make Al Gore wealthy and to give socialists an excuse to grow government and control our lives? Where can we go to get our money and our freedoms back? How do we rebuild a devastated economy? How do we apologize to the millions of people around the world adversely affected by our ethanol policies?

THE PRO-BARACK VOTE-FRAUD

Gino G — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:25:35 -0500

THE PRO-BARACK VOTE-FRAUD DRIVE
Posted: 4:34 am
October 8, 2008

SYSTEMIC corruption of our election process continues. Barack Obama and his old friends at ACORN and Project Vote are leading the way. This radical revolution is taking place in your backyard. And as I've reported before, this voter-fraud racket is on your dime.

On Monday, the two groups announced the wrap-up of a 21-state voter-registration drive targeting low-income people and minorities in such battleground states as Ohio, Pennyslvania, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

What's wrong with that? For starters, these two groups are militantly partisan outfits purporting to engage in nonpartisan activity. And their campaign comes amid an avalanche of fresh voter-fraud allegations involving ACORN in many of those same states.

ACORN has helped register over 1.27 million people nationwide. It gets 40 percent of its revenues from the taxpayers, with the rest coming from left-wing heavyweights like billionaire George Soros and the Democracy Alliance.

Lefty lawyer Sandy Newman founded Project Vote, a 501(c)(3) organization, to register voters in welfare offices and unemployment lines with the explicit goal of turning back the Reagan revolution.

The two groups are inextricably linked - and at their nexus is Barack Obama. Despite his denials of any association with the group, Obama's political DNA is encoded with the ACORN agenda.

As I've noted previously ("ACORN: O's Ugly Ally," June 26), Obama trained ACORN members in Chicago. In turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his Illinois campaigns and ACORN's PAC endorsed him in this year's Democratic primaries back in February.

And Newman hired Obama in 1992 to lead Project Vote efforts in Illinois. The effort's motto: "It's a Power Thing." Today, the Obama campaign's "Vote for Change" registration drive is running in parallel with ACORN/Project Vote, targetting the same sorts of people.

It's an all-out scramble to scrape up every last unregistered voter sympathetic to Obama's big-government vision. "Our volume," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe bragged of the voter-registration program, "is going to be enormous."

Quantity over quality. That's the ACORN way - and the fraud allegations keep piling up:

* Yesterday, Nevada officials raided ACORN's Las Vegas office after election authorities accused the group of submitting multiple voter registrations with fake and duplicate names. Among the bogus monikers: names of former Dallas Cowboys players.

* Lake County, Ind., election officials this month rejected thousands of registration forms ACORN had turned in from its drives this summer. On a conference call yesterday, GOP officials noted that up to 11,000 of the applications were no good - tying up election officials and jeopardizing the voting rights of untold victims whose identities may have been stolen.

In what seems to be ACORN's standard operating procedure, vote canvassers had pulled names and addresses from phone books and forged signatures. According to a local paper (the Northwest Indiana and Illionois Times), "Large numbers of voter registration forms bore signatures all in the same apparent handwriting style" and "apparently the organization's canvassers broke rules to meet ACORN-set voter registration quotas to get paid." The fake registrants include dead people and underage kids.

* Milwaukee, Wisc., officials last month discovered at least seven felons employed as voter-registration workers for ACORN and another affiliated group. (State law bans felons from such work.) They also uncovered a raft of problematic voter-registration cards. The state GOP accuses the group of trying to get dead, imprisoned or imaginary people on the voter rolls. Fraud has plagued ACORN's Milwaukee chapter since the last election cycle.

* In Florida, in Orange County alone, ACORN workers turned in multiple, copycat forms for six separate voters over the summer. The Miami Herald reports: "One individual had 21 duplicate applications."

Election officials had flagged ACORN's negligent practices months ago. But it may be too late: In Orange, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, ACORN has signed up 135,000 new voters, nearly 60 percent of them registered as Democrats - a fifth of all new voters in that region.

* In Ohio, large numbers of homeless people got free van and bus rides to register. Shelby Holliday, a reporter for Palestra.net, filmed ACORN shuttling in some prospects. She told me she spoke with one homeless woman who said ACORN "told her who to vote for if she wanted a 'better life,' and told her not to worry about jury duty (one of the reasons this homeless woman didn't want to register) because the government probably wouldn't be able to track her down. She was registering with a temporary address."

Holliday interviewed another homeless man targeted by the registration drive who exulted that he was voting for Obama because "I want him to do his thang. You know, do his thug thizzle."

"Thug thizzle" is street slang for performing your trademark move. Obama and ACORN have practiced their thug thizzle together for years: Organizing an ever-expanding community of ineligible and marginal voters to expand the Democrat power base. Rules be damned.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10082008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_pro_...