The left has known for a long time that they have an agenda that does not find favor with the American people which is why they choose to legislate from the courts. Totally unconstitutional but do they care ? NO because they have this illusion that regardless of the law or the intent of the Founders only liberals know what is best for the country and if they have to bend the law and the Constitution in order to force the people into taking what libs know is best for them then they will do it.

As far as global warming, it amazes me how libs won't accept or realize that the source of our warmth, namely THE SUN, has intesity changes and we are in the midst of one of those cycles now. The sun alone controls our heat. If the earth can recover from a volcanic eruption like the 1815 eruption in Indonisia which caused snow to fall in the Northeast US during the summer of 1816 and an overall drop in temerature of 5 degrees over the next two years because of the ash, then nothing man does can either warm the earth or cool it.

Ken --

What aggravates me to no end is that while the smug, "we are the intellectual elite and we know what's best for everyone" facade fronts such utter cluelessness re the real world and inevitably leads more to misery than anything else, enough people subscribe to their deception that they actually have influence on our daily lives and on our government.

Re the Global warming issue, I also agree completely. But as usual, liberals following the Kyoto agenda could care less about the consequences it would have on our economy, and if they win on the issue, we'll be hit with a double whammy: Their already promised tax increases and the blow to industry courtesy of "Kyoto".

It almost makes me want to hibernate for the next two years and wake up in time to vote in 2008. :-)

The Church was wrong in 1633 to set up a court to rule on scientific truth (i.e. Gallileo), and the Supreme Court has no business today in passing judgment on a scientific controversy. We're still paying the price for the Court's last major foray into scientific (medical) judgment in 1973 (i.e. Roe vs. Wade).

Civil Truth --

SCOTUS really does need to stick to their brief, The Constitution, and stay off everybody else's turf. If they were meant to be involved in governance of any kind, the voters would make such determination, not the President and the Senate.

...and if, G-D forbid, we wanted them to render decisions on science issues, there would, hopefully, be scientists in the Court, not a bunch of lawyers.

Great post, Seth, and thanks for the link!

Gayle --

Thank you!

Seth,
I agree with you and C-Truth (although with my background in science, the global warming data
is quite intriguing, particularly the direct correlation between CO2 levels and temp rise) that we should let the scientists argue it out.
Certainly, there are a number of unanswered questions and much more research is required before I would run around like AGore. Nor would I scoff and laugh at concrete scientific data, which lately seems to be a tenet of a genuine conservative...landing on the moon and curing polio were sure stupid science jokes, right?
With that off my chest, where you guys have nailed it is the unusual slurry of lawyers and
scientists. EPA is full of lawyers, and having dealt with this organization a number of times,
if you can find a scientist, they will generally agree about scientific data and conclusions. The lawyers, understandably, haven't a clue when it comes to scientific logic..not that they aren't valued and needed in terms of complex
environmental law. SCOTUS should stay away from this tarbaby (literally, a study in its infancy)
and let the scientists argue for awhile. One of the NASA climatologists recently issued a paper that quite naturally the general public isn't alarmed...that he felt that by the time the predicted climate changes become apparent to us, there will be still be opportunity to take appropriate actions. Common sense-common science.

I say lets vote them off the island. Give them $5.00 and a new suitcase. A one way ticket anywhere but back here.

Why don't they leave this country? Because they're crack whores -- they're addicted. No, not to capitalism and freedom, but to cold, hard cash. They won't leave here because the US and the average working slob is an endless supply of CASH to them -- and they need cash to force their version of utopia upon those who don't want it.

BB --

So the proper course would be to let the scientisis wrangle and when the smoke clears, report to Congress. Leave the Court out of it.

However, as time progresses, it seems more and more scientists are beginning to agree that there is no evidence of man's involvement in climate change.

Meanwhile, the folks receiving the big grant money are sticking to their guns, even though they are no closer to producing a link between man and global warming than they ever were, simply because its a way to get a free ride off the backs of hard working taxpayers.

My solution to that would be to cut off the government funding and make these researchers "work" off contributions from those liberals, firms and organizations that are so vocal about embracing the Kyoto agenda. Perhaps Greenpeace would like to contribute....

Patty --

Welcome.

I say just give them a plastic garbage bag and a few francs, the currency they'd probably need if they end up going where they belong. :-)

Ogre --

I wouldn't argue with that -- the left definitely seems to need as much of everybody else's money as they can wrench away from us, any way they can.

Seth,
Of course I searched for the grant monies, but almost all references are to conservative blogsites! But, you must check out the silly
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
article which agrees essentially with your view, BUT which places responsibility for 'global warming' squarely in the lap of our second favorite conservative...Maggie Thatcher. :)
Apparently, her PR fellow didn't like it that after stopping free milk for poor schoolkids she gained the moniker 'milk snatcher Thatcher', so
he decided to take advantage of her BS Chemistry degree. She became the first spokesperson for the CO2 inundation problem....Yes, Attila the Hen is the do-gooder liberal we need to bring to account. Where's the swiftboat climatologists?
Seriously, though, check out the guy's article..I'm pretty sceptical. :)

BB --

AHA!!!!

Much peer pressure deters scientists from damaging potential sources of research funds. There is especial pressure - loss of future career - to avoid being the first to proclaim the scientific truth of global warming and thus damage the research funding of colleagues. But failure to proclaim the scientific truth does not mean that many scientists believe in the global warming hypothesis. In 1992 - at the height of the global warming scare - Greenpeace International conducted a survey of the world’s 400 leading climatologists. Greenpeace had hoped to publicise the results of that survey in the run-up to the Rio summit, but when they completed the survey, they gave very little publicity to its results. In response to the survey, only 15 climatologists were willing to say they believed in global warming, although all climatologists rely on it for their employment. Also, the Leipzig Declaration disputes the IPCC assertions about man-made global warming. It was drafted following the Leipzig Climate Conference in November 1995 and has been signed by over 1,500 scientists from around the world.

It's interesting that this hasn't seemed to find its way into any liberal venues I've read, but a lot of what he writes makes sense (of course, I'm not a scientist). However, I will research the contents of this article further, as I still believe that the global warming kerfuffle is politically, rather than scientifically based.

The grant monies won't be broached much at liberal sites, because they might be construed, correctly, as being a primary reason why many scientists support the global warming myth, rather than any picayunes like dedication and honesty. Liberal sites are very careful about such things.

From my own POV, I have used part of Ken's argument before, several times, that when you look at the powerful spewage of millenia of volcanoes, our own emissions seem kind of weak in comparison.

And we're still here. :-)

I'm not even sure I want Congress (or the UN!) involved in global warming. It's far from proven and more and more are getting a wee bit skeptical.

Shoprat --

As far as I'm concerned, the U.N. is our enemy, and an enemy of the liberty we enjoy as Americans, and I'd rather they have no say in anything that affects this country.

Where Congress is concerned, I'd just as soon wait until we have a Republican majority again -- the Dems are in the leftist camp, and global warming is political meat and drink to them.

Seth,
Volcanic activity definitely mucks up the atmosphere more than human activity: the latter is chronic, however..and both are cumulative. It would be straightforward, if as Ken notes, "

.....wha happn'd? hand/eye coordination problem, where were we? As Ken notes "The sun alone controls our heat." Absolutely true, and it controls the heat on the moon also..-179 in the shade and +237 in the sun. Pretty steady, every day for millenia since the moon has no atmosphere. As Maggie Thatcher noted a few years back, the atmosphere (which is astoundingly resilient, yet delicately balanced)acts to trap and distribute the sun's heat, which is why solar flares dork your I-pod but
not your bod. Speaking of government funding of scientists, we must be fair and note the thermonuclear tests which burdened our nice little air layer a few decades back..parts of Kwajalein drifted over after Krakatoa and prior to St. Helens. I'm no alarmist and I think we will run ourselves out of fossil fuel before we
drive CO2 over the top..we humans can't ruin our atmosphere, but we can make it act pretty weird, change the ratios of gases, carve ozone holes etc. Heck, we even caused the Cayahoga River to catch fire back in the sixties, talk about a fish fry. As I understand it, the politics of this admitedly incipient science, is that the left overballyhoos it, irritating the right, while the vast center is too busy with more important things to notice one way or the other.

BB --

I don't know much about the K River fire, but as I recall it had to do with residual materials dumped by profit motivated idiots (petrochems/ combustibles) who should've been more concerned with foresight than hindsight.

But it was a limited area event. The entire thing happened and ended, and the earth's atmosphere lived on.

I would think that the "half full" bottle crowd would have been out in force with nets, Cajun seasoning and lemon.

I tend to look at this great planet and think, "Well, this is a great balance. G-D thought of everything."

Every capability we have to do anything, even to create the awesome from the obscure, such as combining natural materials, refining where we need to and building a nuclear weapon or transforming anthracite into the frame of a bicycle fits into this balance.

Thusly, our atmosphere is mankind-ready. The fossil fuels we burn are part of the same system as the plutonium we create or the volcanoes that erupt.

The left needs to understand this.