It’s still 130 plus years of Democrat rule in the Arkansas legislature. That beats the Partido Revolucionario Institucional of Mexico. They only had 70 years of unbridled rule. And we all know that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

but then I decided that it doesnt really matter.

But if Democrats are the “good ol’ boys” what are the Repubs? White wine spritzer sipping ninnies?

I’m just a schmuck trying to hold on to few hard-earned dollars. It’s our own politicians who see “climate change” (I prefer to use the nom de jour as it is no longer global warming) as a way to further their financial agendas of reaching into our pockets. It’s also other countries, with heavily socialized corporate investment, who want and need to punish our success to give themselves the upper hand in the global marketplace.

You mention Nobel Prize-winning physicists as if the Nobel Foundation were as pure as the wind-driven snow and not political in nature. While there is a cadre of politically controversial Nobel Prize winners, let’s focus on just one – Al Gore. He won the 2007 Nobel “Peace” Prize for his work on raising public awareness on global warming (I guess they’ll have to scratch through that and inscribe it “climate change” now). I’m not sure what that has to do with peace, but okay, we’ll let that slide for the moment. No wait, I’m sorry, I can’t let it slide. What on God’s green Earth does that have to do with peace? Nothing at all. Then it’s discovered that that this prince of peace consumes more electricity in his Tennessee home in one month than the average American household does in an entire year. And that doesn’t even include all of the other carbon footprint with which Mr. Gore stains our beloved planet as he flies in private jets, rides in limos, and stays in luxury hotels (while the a/c is still running back home). And he dares to lecture me about not keeping my thermostat above 68º in the winter? It’s indefensible.

Our host and provider of digital ink, David, suggested that “you consider which party has held sway over just about all state decision-making for the last several generations.” Just so you know, it has been the Democrat Party since the days of Reconstruction. That’s about 130 years straight of “good ol’ boy” politics and dominance by the big D. During that time since 1874 we have had a total of two, count ‘em two, Republican governors. So when it comes to third world equivalence, please point your finger at the Democrats of Arkansas, while I point to the Heavens and thank God for Mississippi!

We don’t need to litter our streets. We don’t need to build big ash ponds on the side of a slope with elevated levies to collapse and dump acre-feet of contaminated energy production by-products onto and into our landscapes. We don’t need rocket ships blasting off into outer space either I suppose, but then we wouldn’t have Tang or Velcro billfolds, so that one is still up for debate.

We don’t need goobers out riding around in used-up-vegetable-oil-powered Mercedes cars either. If this is such a good idea, why not just go out to Kroger and buy up a bunch of bottles of un-used-up-vegetable-oil and pour it in the tank? Well, for one thing, it is a lot more expensive, both to the pocketbook and to the environment, to use vegetable oil versus gasoline or diesel. We don’t need to be converting the world’s food supply into fuel products. Food needs to be utilized in the feeding of people and livestock. It is no more “long-term viable” to use by-products of materials produced in limited amounts, such as used vegetable oil, than it is to tell me that dumping my Hummer for a hybrid will have an impact.

Oh well, debate tires one out after a while. Mr. ARPro guy, I don’t think you are paying close attention, or at least you aren’t good at picking up hints. All this writing would disappear if you would just post a few more bikini-clad reasons why global warming isn’t such a bad idea.

Nevertheless. I think that yes, indeed there is a huge debate to be had here. I also believe 100% that the way that the human race conducts itself has an impact on the planet we love so.

The good news for me (and hopefully planet earth) is that while the granola eating, wacko, lefty enviros want everyone to drive a 1979 converted Mercedes diesel that (oddly smells of catfish and hush puppies when it fires up) and the paid hacks and instruments of big business are wanting everyone to march our children and their forebears blindly off the cliff into the ravaged ravine of reaped fruit formerly known as Mother Earth, thusly suffering the consequences of the indifferent actions of out generation until……..

its the end of the world as we know it.

.. and I feel fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGqroT1FZ5Y

Take for instance, the last decade’s global crisis du jour, Freon, or more specifically hydrochlorofluorocarbons. Our scientific cadre of the day found this big old hole in the Ozone layer somewhere down near Tierra del Fuego that was allowing in so much unfiltered sunlight that shorn sheep were being microwaved and you had to go outside wearing SPF 99 or something like that to prevent immediate sunburn immolation. After much study and theorizing, the scientific cadre of the day determined that freon was the culprit and only by changing from freon could mankind be saved from global disaster. So chabge we did. At enormous cost to the industrialized world, primarily the good old USofA, we switched to another product and the world was saved. The hole mysteriously fell out of the news. Not because it really got any smaller, mind you, but it turned out to be not such a huge “man-made” problem after all. Seems that in 91 or so, Mt. Pinatubo down in the Phillippines decided to erupt and pour ash and many other types of devastation across the neighboring areas. What it also threw out was more sulfur dioxide IN NINE HOURS than mankind had managed to generate and throw off in the entire history of man. The problem is, sulfur dioxide mixes with the atmospherics and produced sulfuric acid and this too attacked the ozone layer. This attack was to such an extent that the Ozone hole grew to unprecedented levels. The maximum reduction in global temperature occurred in August 1992 with a reduction of 0.73°C. The eruption is believed to have influenced such events as 1993 floods along the Mississippi river and the drought in the Sahel region of Africa. The United States experienced its third coldest and third wettest summer in 77 years during 1992. Now that my friends is how you impact Mother Earth. Unfortunately, it was Mother Earth impacting herself. Mankind simply doesn’t have the tools unless we decide to launch every nuclear weapon for a immediate quick strike on ourselves and the whole world. Short of that, we don’t have the stuff to make the change. Mother Earth is too capable of correcting what bad is happening. A decade is nothing in time to Mother Earth. She can correct our mistakes and ills.

Yes, I can have serious impact on Mother Earth if I decide to go out to the old well in my back yard and dispose of several gallons of old pesticide. I will mess up the ground water around here.

Yes, if I have a gasoline station up in the Karst formation around Fayetteville and one of my leaking tanks allows gasoline vapors to fill Granny James basement and it blows, I will make a larger mess.

Yes, if we aren’t careful with the extraction of natural gas from the Fayetteville Shale, we will have even larger pollution problems, many undiscovered today, on our hands.

The thing is, mankind isn’t strong enough or smart enough or capable enough to do the massive climate change that is being bandied about today. Even the scientists themselves don’t agree. I read a report today that the global ice pack for 2008 was the same as it was in 1979. There is also a report out there with today’s dateline discussing the massive loss of the ice pack last year. As a matter of fact, back in the mid-70s, the big scientific debate was over the coming ice age. Funny thing is, the guys leading much of this debate are the same guys who started off discussing the Global Warming Crisis at the end of the last century.

Simply put, there is a reason when volcanos pop off, the comparison we use is something like “the combined force of 100,000 of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima,” or talk of possible astroid strikes would generate a force similar.

Mother Earth has her own cycles. The plates, they are a moving my friend. Someday (and soon hopefully) California will be an island out in the Pacific. They can tax cow farts all they want to at that time.

We need to protect our Earth and certainly not engage in wanton pollution and litering and wholesale pillaging of our natural resources. However, there are ways to do it safely and at low cost. We have proven this time and again over the period of the Industrial Revolution and onward.

I will keep my yard clean and recycle a few cans and make sure my car and truck are tuned up and getting the best gas mileage. I can assure you that these acts will do more for the environment than strolling by a kiosk in an airport out in California and stopping to buy carbon credits to offset my upcoming jet aeroplane trip.

Finally, I would like to throw out one caveat to the Global Warmers. I am establishing the Cameron Bluff Carbon Credit Offset Contribution Fund. Brummett can purchase carbon offsets for his tennis games. Brantley can purchase carbon offsets for his bloviations. Mr. ARPro guy can purchase them for those hot steamy evenings watching NetFlix movies with Miss APG. Fourche River Rex can purchase them to offset the harmful byproducts from that little still he has down in the holler behind his house. The ARGOCOGLOWARM can purchase them to offset all the dang trees they killed meeting and then in publishing their manifesto.

We can all be happy and I will definitely put the money to some very good use. I wonder what the carbon footprint is for a fifth of Johnnie Walker Blue anyway?

For my part, I wouldn’t go so far as to state it in such categorical terms as “no chance whatsoever,” simply because I would not be so presumptuous. I entertain a certain agnosticism, even humility, on that question, as that seems a rational response to me. Others on this list may disagree and are welcome to present their arguments. But that seems to be a matter quite distinct from “what should be done” (if anything).

I think it’s interesting that Sanders has come in for so much vociferous criticism simply for asking questions about the commission’s practices and recommendations. What’s up with that? One of the stand-in bloggers at The Arkansas Times a few days ago tried to call Sanders a “global warming denier,” but I’ve never heard him make any statements “denying” global warming. That wasn’t the question he was dealing with — he was exploring matters of governance and policy as they relate to this debate. Why are they so sloppy in their argumentation?

And the fact that you use the word “debate” in your question suggests that you recognize, or at least entertain the possibility, that there just may be more than one view, so kudos to you. I’m always stricken by how global warming activists are rabid about shutting down any whiff of an alternative viewpoint, which makes me distrustful of their intellectual honesty, their goodwill and their aims.

Plus, I always get a kick out of being contrarian and stirring up shit. Wheeee!
D.

And I’ll note that your second graf is thoroughly nonsensical, given that Republicans wield zero levers of power in the state of Arkansas and, with the exception of a few brief interregna in the governor’s office, never have. If you truly are distraught over the state’s “third world” status, and you insist upon rendering it as a partisan matter, I suggest you consider which party has held sway over just about all state decision-making for the last several generations.
D.