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Yeah. Theres a BIG fucking difference. Bernies been fighting for years. Warren is just a flavor du jour.
Edit: To be more specific, bernie has a long record of creating, voting and fighting for policies that lift all americans...not just a few.
Im aware warrens career consisted of fighting corruption in finance...but her record as a senator is a fraction of his. And ive never heard her describe herself as a socialist. Yep!
He's also a self-described socialist who loves him some central american communist dictators. Rape fiction is also cool. lol. |
This is disingenuous, in that there can be food which no one can afford to buy. I have high school friends in VZ and that is definitely not their experience. Downplaying the terrible situation in VZ helps no one. Shhhh you can’t say anything like that on this sub. No matter how much you actually support Bernie his supporters on this sub blindly support Maduro, even though he did violate the constitution with that whole judge shenanigan.
Oh and btw before you guys respond yes I’m a proud Bernie Boi and yes the crisis in VZ is caused by US policy. Doesn’t make Maduro less of an autocrat |
I believe that a lot of white Democrats feel obligated to identify as liberal to "prove" they aren't bigots. POC Democrats feel no such obligation. I keep seeing the use of People Of Color. Why is this a thing again? There are white people and everyone else (colored)? |
Not a Trump fan but he is correct and Lighthizer is wrong. MOUs are not binding, the are an agreement for an agreement. As much as I don't like Trump . That was my understanding as well. It is a framework that both parties agree. You can create contract based on it but it is arguably a non binding document. |
Holy shit your delusional. Why pay CIA operatives when clowns like you will go around spewing their propaganda for free. You’re*
Also we do it for free because propagandist fools like you get paid a lot. Maybe your gov should spend more money on bettering life for its people. |
You’re*
Also we do it for free because propagandist fools like you get paid a lot. Maybe your gov should spend more money on bettering life for its people. **your
It’s true. Right now Daddy Putin and the undead specter of Marx is paying me 1000000 sexy commie dollars an hour to listen to your insipid imperialist bullshit |
>New ideas and conversation have to start somewhere and when they do, those in power lash out against it. AOC getting a bunch of that but she's tough. Liking her more and more every day.
The gnd is green party Jill Stein idea. Its not realistic legislation but is merely fodder for the boobs on the far left. For folks who understand public policy they know that her bill is low quality garbage and any future legislation dealing with Climate Change will not be borrowing ideas from the GND. |
>Undocumented immigrant, a group that is convicted of crime at a rate of 0.75%
You realise an "undocumented immigrant" is by definition a criminal because they entered the United States illegally right? 100% Of illegal immigrants are criminals. There is nothing wrong with violating unfair laws though. |
r/sadbuttrue r/SadThatPeopleThinkItIsTrue |
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4fdf61bdbd3e8ae1e3b00d3c97d48b3435b84a77f922c36d9c6c2d751ade8ac0.jpg 40 fucking years we've heard the same thing and the weather(climate - whatever) continues to stay the same. My question is why? Why are these globalist assholes pushing this shit so hard? Don't they have enough of our money? |
It tell us that the chance of Civil War is becoming a significant reality.
Obama should have rallied the nation and allies against Russia with Cold War zeal. The threat was not taken seriously enough, imo. Why does everyone have a boner for Russia. It's just a scapegoat
Real problem is Americans and they're divided by other Americans
Russia ain't shit. Only thing they can do is flood you with funny dash cam footage |
Most of Western Europe disarmed themselves, and they're doing fantastic. Singapore disarmed themselves voluntarily and they're one of the top performing economies in the world. But when you have a country like usa where there are alot of people of coler who vote for communists, its much riskier here |
Can we get a megathread already?
Edit: I don’t think this is huge news. It was just all over my front page and i figured it should get a megathread. Yes, Trump kissed someone on the cheek, let's start a megathread. Seriously, with all the terrible things this guy is doing, let's not focus on this. |
It is impossible to provide positive rights without a government that forces the labor and steals the money to pay for it. Anarchists believe in no government, I don't see how fucking stupid you have to be to not understand that. You sound like leftist cucks. Food water and shelter are also not rights. If it has to be provided by someone else, you are not fucking entitled to it. Get it yourself or get something you can trade for it. I agree, this does not seem possible. |
How is that relevant? The claim in this thread is that the armed populace is against their own government. its not relevant, just a typical american taking any chance they can get to brag about their military, and how it protects everyone. /s
Republican-lites are here in masse today i see |
The scientific method: choose your outcome and then go hunting for some facts that support it. Oh you mean climate "science"?
Yeah I agree, it's bad |
" we can use the 3 billion we are giving to amazon in tax credits moving to NYC to buy affordable housing,which i personally object to living in, instead of giving it to Amazon" - AOC Kind of inquiring about the standards of education at Boston U. While you are entirely correct in AOC’s lack of knowledge when it comes to tax incentives, don’t expect to be taken seriously in r/politics if your view doesn’t fit a certain narrative. Hope that saves you some time/effort!
Edit: I see the bandwagon downvoters are out in force today! |
Democrats: ***"RUSSIA!"***
Republicans: ***"VENEZUELA!"***
Voters: "Healthcare?" TIL Bernie is the only candidate talking about healthcare. |
This didn't happen. Everyone who was there contradicted her and she has a history of making false claims. Plus this only comes out after she was denied a job in the administration. as much as i hate dear leader, the woman alleging this is not white and given what a racist piece of shit the pres is... |
That's actually really interesting, and makes sense as to why the guy in the video felt it so important to point out the terms of this MOU. However, the vast majority of the circle jerk of people commenting on this thread and shitting on the comment you replied to had never heard of an MOU before today. And have no idea about whether it is binding or not in any context. BongHits4Jesus also specifically said "in most business contexts". Lol, never change, Reddit. Pretty much nobody reads the articles in this sub, they just vomit the same anti-Trump statements in every single thread.
As if their snarky commentary will somehow matter or change anything and is not the same as pissing in an ocean of piss.
Also I'm sure Trump will be finished after this deal, as usual. He will be impeached next Wednesday 🤣 |
How is this not the top post right now. Jesus you guys think this is a normal thing? It's fairly normal to try to kiss someone without getting their consent first. It's embarrassing if you misread the situation and get rejected but probably not a newsworthy event. You probably shouldn't be trying to kiss other people if you're married, but i don't really care about the personal lives of politicians. I didn't really care when Bill was having affairs in the oval office either. I care a lot more about all the bad policy trump is pushing than about whether he tried to kiss someone and got shut down. Unless he like held her down and continued kissing her, this is pretty much tabloid garbage. |
Did you know she smoked weed once?
Edit: Keep the downvotes coming! Really? She's so relatable now! |
Epstein has connections with both parties and tons of famous people, the right wing was the one who called him out on it in the first place But no one remembers that... |
This didn't happen. Everyone who was there contradicted her and she has a history of making false claims. Plus this only comes out after she was denied a job in the administration. And yet you'll get downvoted like crazy. When did this country get to a point where accusations are proven guilty now? |
The top of r/politics always amuses McCabe was quoted as saying "We could imagine that Trump had committed all of these crimes, multiples, so there was nothing we could do other than plot a coup! It was our duty, as members of the FBI and DOJ." |
I guess if you pretend they don't pay other taxes and insist those somehow don't count But how will I get my spluttering 30 seconds of anger? |
Volunteering requires a time commitment that many of his voters don’t have. 1 out of 13 of his voters is very unlikely. >time commitment that his voters don’t have
I don’t think you realize who his supporters are. They’ve got roughly 8 more hours each day than most people have. |
If you remove the electoral college within 40 years the United States will collapse. That's their plan though... |
That's their plan though... I know. That is what is so sad. The populous is so ignorant of how freedoms are taken away. How it works historically. |
Yes Did some reading and yeah, seems this old fuck is trying to cater to whats PC in hopes of becoming the President in 2020.
Naah to late grandpa 👌🏻 |
Well I mean Clinton was President before Trump, so him getting first mention isn't that much of a stretch.
Suck it up. Amen, I don’t get the bootlicking. The PGate crowd was saying it was the ruling class of political, corporate and media elites were engaged in sex trafficking. It’s based on class, not party. |
Instead of shifting around a fixed budget that comes in literally regardless of anything she does (unlike a real business), why doesn't she actually work on her district.
If she dug into her district finances, eliminated waste, optimized pay and put the surplus into fixing infrastructure and edu, it would be a true game changing statement that others could follow.
This is low impact virtue signaling. That would require a district office which she neglected to set up. Seriously being downvoted for speaking the truth. You people are just like Trump supporters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/nyregion/aoc-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-district-office.html |
I mean, her accused crimes were while she was an appointed official already... SOS. Shush, you aren’t supposed to say this.
It ruins their bullshit. |
Yeah I saw that, but I was still only counting the people standing on the steps holding signs/the megaphone - not the ones facing them recording it.
But whatever, it's getting dowvoted anyway. Heaven forbid I strive for accuracy, right? Yeah people here care more about narratives than accuracy. It's ironic considering people here claim to be all about facts and truths. You're right, there are obviously about 14 people participating in the protest. And you're right that it's still a laughably small number. Yet people here will double down. |
Who in their right mind would attend a pro-Trump rally in San Francisco? Do you *want* to get beaten up? Yes! |
Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt wrote a tweet Monday ripping Sen. Bernard Sanders for a resurfaced video of the democratic socialist praising the Soviet Union in 1988.
[Mr. Bildt’s tweet](https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1100039769810235393) included the video of Mr. Sanders, then-mayor of Burlington, Vermont, giving a speech following a recent trip to the Soviet Union, where he said he was “extremely impressed” by the public transportation system.
“The stations themselves were absolutely beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful. It was a very, very effective system,” Mr. Sanders said in the video. “Also, I was impressed by the youth programs that they have. There are palaces of culture for the young people — a whole variety of programs for young people and cultural programs which go far beyond what we do in this country.”
Mr. Bildt, who served as Sweden’s prime minister from 1991 to 1994, tweeted in response: “Bernie Sanders was lucky to be able to get to the Soviet Union in 1988 and praise all its stunning socialist achievements before the entire system and empire collapsed under the weight of its own spectacular failures.” That's the problem with Sanders and his supporters. They don't understand that results of the Soviet Union were caused by socialism. The problem isn't that sharing everything equally is bad, it's what you have to do to enforce the sharing that's the problem. |
That's like not what he said at all. Shhhh, let them have this fake news, it's all they have left. |
Why did this post get a gold exactly? What do you think Sanders is spending all his bribes on? |
He was just on CNN and won't say when he plans to release them 😑
He did this same thing in 2015/2016 who gives a fuck
he already said he was gunna release 10 years worth
what exactly do you think is gunna be found in them? |
I like Bernie, certainly in comparison to Trump, but he always reminds me of the old guy in Creepshow, yelling for his cake. I'm talking about his look, not his rhetoric, just to be clear. Maduro Sanders 2020 |
He doesn't get off the hook until he actually, you know, releases his returns. It's been 3 years already and for some reason Bernie seems reluctant to. > It's been 3 years
Trump hasn't released his... |
PuTiN PuPpEt Russia has become the centrist democrat's equivalent of fake news.
There are real instances of both, but both are used to discredit dissenting voices. |
Did she claim an ethnicity or just ancestry? Just ancestry. And the native American tribes are mostly angry about Don's racist mocking of their tragedies
​ |
There's nothing to apologize for. I mean minus rigging the nomination for Hillary Clinton thus allowing trump to win the 2016 election and send our country into arguably the worst time in our history since the civil war/reconstruction. So i guess you're right as long as we completely ignore this stain on our history caused by a rigged election system. |
All the bill required was that if a child was born alive, that they would receive the same level of care as any other child would in the doctors judgement.
It never did anything with abortion. Exactly. It wouldn't put the woman's life in danger one bit. "Anti-abortion" my butt, nothing about it was anti-abortion. |
It makes you wonder what's in his tax returns from 2005 to 2009 He didn’t release them because he wasn’t the nominee. |
I mean minus rigging the nomination for Hillary Clinton thus allowing trump to win the 2016 election and send our country into arguably the worst time in our history since the civil war/reconstruction. So i guess you're right as long as we completely ignore this stain on our history caused by a rigged election system. This is your brain on Russia propaganda. |
There's nothing to apologize for. Yeah, it's not like [super delegates told voters to take their will and shove it](https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/03/29/23877594/washington-superdelegates-still-endorsing-clinton-spurning-pro-bernie-majority-of-state-voters).
The game was outright rigged. (Still is, but it also was rigged as well.) |
I think we know the answer to that given history. Well that fucking sucks. Much of what the Russians did was during the primary before Bernie conceded. It was a golden opportunity to divide Democrats during 3 empty months where he fell further and further behind and his supporters got angrier and angrier and more open to Russian influence. Why repeat that mistake? |
brown lady bad AOC derangement syndrome |
AOC derangement syndrome Living in their heads rent free |
I mean it is a fair criticism of the plan... and AOC has been very dismissive of the cost....
Thanks for all the downvotes, I appreciate the civility towards a comment that doesn’t agree with your echo chamber of a subreddit. ruh oh, you criticized someone on the left. say goodbye to your karma. of course it's a valid criticism, because the entire premise behind the GND is just spewing alarmist garbage. |
So everyone gets you are anti Bernie. Why don't you tell us about a candidate worth looking into? The mainstream dems are making a big mistake if they continue with this dismissive attitude. There is half the country to inspire to vote. I wonder which ones will be capable of bringing potential voters out to rallies? |
Tinker vs. Des Moines may get called into play; I did my 11th grade US History classes proud by teaching that.
OTOH that might still be considered stifling of a protest, which might qualify for 1st Amendment Rights.
I'd love, however, to see a lawyer or student argue on the grounds that it may have similar historical impact to Swastikas when aligned with the experiences of caged and kidnapped children at the southern border.
You know, because that's a significant crime against Humanity, actually, and if it's ever used as part of hate speech style bullying, well...
(Also I strongly suspect that there could be parents putting kids up to this shit on both sides, at least to some extent, of the political left and right) >historical impact to Swastikas when aligned with the experiences of caged and kidnapped children at the southern border.
MAGA hats arent swastikas. swastikas are what losers wore. MAGA is for winners
TRUMP FOR LIFE |
All the bill required was that if a child was born alive, that they would receive the same level of care as any other child would in the doctors judgement.
It never did anything with abortion. Ssssh, don't disturb the echo chamber! |
You and a handful of whiny Clinton supporters are the only ones who actually give a shit about this issue. This confirms I will not vote for Bernie if he wins the nomination. |
It is taking out of context though.
Edit: Context for y’all: https://twitter.com/johncornyn/status/1099808300642824193?s=21 Sorry you are getting downvoted, context is important. What is the context of the quote? |
What is negative about trying to save an infant's life? Because saving an infant's life is a scare tactic. It's scary to save infant lives. |
If you reverse those, it's even funnier Lol true |
I'm just looking for facts. And this is a serious inquiry from someone who is still undecided in the Dem primaries. What proof do you have that he has been "fighting for this issue for decades."? I'm not being an ass, I genuinely want to see the receipts. As a left leaning voter, who has checked out his record and sees post office renaming as his main accomplishment, please point me in the right direction. Again, I am NOT being snarky. Genuinely want to see the policy. He hasn't been fighting, he has been complaining for years. There is a major difference. |
I like the core of what he says but i've never been more sure of someone losing in my life. I hope you're right. |
Haha humor! Yikes never commenting here again, can’t express any opinion that doesn’t suck OPs dick. |
I’m certainly not the first to say this,and I am totally onboard with Bernie winning (though I prefer Warren), but I both of them should think through how they are gonna tackle the inevitable capital strike that’s gonna occur if they win. Yeah I agree, both Warren and Bernie will ruin this country. We should vote against both of them. Cory Booker is most likely the best choice, that or Biden |
I find your lack of moderation disturbing. Too far stretched into the fantasies of one party to realize that we will never unite this nation through bluntly regarding someone as inferior because of their beliefs. While you may find my thoughts annoying I extend my hand to you fellow American as a sign of piece and unity. As Obama once said, before democrats or republicans we are Americans and that’s what’s most important. Lmao I love how even quoting Obama and trying to be open minded but you’ll still get downvoted in this joke of subreddit.
This place is even more pathetic than the memes they upvote en masse. |
Well there is also long standing stories of women getting violent after being rejected too. Take a british woman who smashed a glass bottle on the man, she got a slap on the wrist for that. Also statistics show women resort to violence more often than men do.
And I have seen feminist stating that their movement would crumble if men were indifferent to women which is what I think MGTOW does instead of bashing women. Their ideal as I saw in a video was "the opposite of love is indifference". |
Bernie "make America Venezuela" Sanders
How many times does socialism have to not work for leftists to stop trying it? bUt ItS nEvEr ReAllY bEeN tRiEd BeFoRe |
Why are people pushing back on this? She is demonstrably dumb, yet people try to meme it so that it’s not so > demonstrably dumb
Have you seen who our president is? She looks like a MIT grad in comparison
Edit. I see you made an account just to complain about aoc and talk trash about Democrats. Nice... lol |
> demonstrably dumb
Have you seen who our president is? She looks like a MIT grad in comparison
Edit. I see you made an account just to complain about aoc and talk trash about Democrats. Nice... lol Get trumps fucking dick of your mouth jesus. If you mention ANY, it’s trump this, trump that. Fuck right off. She is a dumb cunt and it makes me sad this sub has turned to /r_politcs-life |
Why does the government have control over what sort of pallets are used? Well it doesn't and this story is fake news, we have more eu stamped pallets than we can get rid of already. They are inferior to standard pallets in every way except weight so UK transport and storage firms only use them if they absolutely have no other choice. |
ITT people who call themselves "the left" supporting censorship and the handing over of such powers to big corporations.
Just as long as it benefits them.
(Warning, corporate bootlicking reaching extremely hazardous levels below this point.) British people have a love of control by government or corporations, always have. It’s why the U.S. founding fathers shot at your soldiers. |
At last, this is the day! This is the day we get to kick that football, THIS IS THE DAY!! I lol'd. |
No one is forced to take out student loans.
There is a myriad of trade schools and other ways to build your career. I started my business when I was 24 and had less than 800 in the bank. I walked business to business looking for clients. A good friend of mine is an underwater welder he make 80K + benefits. I believe his school was less than 10k for all his certs a d training. The point I'm making is you don't have to go to college and take on all that debt.
Edit: Because I'm not whitelisted I will be placing my responses here.
Edit: u/pl76p Well lets look back in time: I'm from El Paso Texas as a white boy I was constantly harassed and looked down on for not being mexican enough. I grew up with a mom who was 16 when she had me. I was the personification of WHITE TRASH. I had a [big spool](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ooTtWH6uRZg/maxresdefault.jpg) as a dining room table. I barely graduated from High School with I believe a 2.4 GPA. I was busy chasing bullshit and didn't care about learning. I was too cool for school. Then the real world showed up and it demanded money I didn't have for all kinds of shit. I was only making 10 bucks an hour working at a movie theater. So I took a second job. I now had 2 shitty jobs both making 10 bucks an hour. I was cranking out just under 800 dollars a week before taxes. I did this in some form or another for the first 3-4 years of my life. Then I stumbled upon sales at some door 2 door marketing firm. Mind you I had facial piercing and a can't "fuck with me" haircut.
I saw guy make 1000 a week in less than 40 hours I was hooked! I wanted that money and it was the only way out. I had to learn and completely revamp my "edgy" appearance. It took a while about 6 months to really get it down.
###But finally I was a "door 2 door sales guy"
My dream came true right? right....right :( Not exactly. I worked with this firm for another two years. You know the guys that sale QUILL office supplies business 2 business that was me.
Eventually I outgrew my position there. I was fired!
It was the longest job I ever kept maybe 2.5 years.
Now I was unemployed again. I could go get a bunch of shitty 10 dollar an hour job, maybe another shitty sales job.
###OR...
I could do something different. I could take my door 2 door sales skills + my love for computers and find a way to financial freedom. Now at this time I was 23-24 year old. So I went to vista print and ordered 1000 business cards for 11.00 dollars. Every morning I got up at 6 I put on my sales clothes and I hit the ground running. My goal was to knock on the doors of 80 business a day.
###"Hi my name is DRQXX and I fix computers, do you have any computers that need fixing, ask me about today's special"
Something cheeky, cliche and cringy all rolled into one. I kept saying to every door, I brought a smile. after 6 hours of being told to fuck off or leave or NO; I found her she was a small painting company. They asked me if I could fix a printer. It took me 5 minutes to fix it. I charged a flat 60. But before I left I looked at everything else. Did what I could to make the technology perform better.
###MSCONFIG baby!
After that I built my business. It's been almost 15 years. I have no formal training. Just bought a lot of lunch for people who are smarter than me; I read a lot of books; and I never gave up.
So I had to build my stairs so I could join the top 5% of taxpayers. Very true. The trades are where it's at. My buddy grew up with his whole family selling drugs. He saw his friends and family get fucked by the law, so he took his money and got a couple classes and the trades school. He is about to finish his apprenticeship and be making $42hr. He is black. I'm only adding that part because of the other reply to you. |
Very true. The trades are where it's at. My buddy grew up with his whole family selling drugs. He saw his friends and family get fucked by the law, so he took his money and got a couple classes and the trades school. He is about to finish his apprenticeship and be making $42hr. He is black. I'm only adding that part because of the other reply to you. If you can make money selling drugs and get away with it do it! Look at 50cents co authored book (Robert Greene) [50th LAW](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1504653246/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AWtDCbZN3MPZK)
His story is all about over coming extreme adversity as a black guy living in the ghetto with no family. Great story and only proves you can get out if you want to. |
At last, this is the day! This is the day we get to kick that football, THIS IS THE DAY!! Sure go ahead and kick it. Too bad it will end up WIDE LEFT |
I don't think we're there yet; but with people a megaphone who keep telling us we are sure aren't helping. How about we do something more productive than make another joke on the illiterate president's poor grammar? Black Lives Matter, a hellish health care system, and woke female drone pilots didn't start under Cheeto Covfefe Drumpf Mussolini (or whatever the "in" way to refer to him is). All of those are pretty laughing-stock-ey if you're Poland or whatever listening to some US dipshit telling you how your life would be vastly improved if you just took more austerity measures.
Since you've clearly owned the premise of the piece (the illiterate President's poor grammar), I guess there's no reason to discuss the myriad ways we're actually in need of a come-to-Jesus moment as a country. The piece is like 2% about Trump (refers to him as a racist billionaire, which, finances permitting, seems pretty appropriate) and it's intellectually lazy as fuck to characterize it as more just so you can get off the hook with discussing the other 98%. |
This whole thing was entirely q made up story line by rat faced Clinton staffers.
I fucking hate we even have to keep bringing this up. Riiiight. He was a failed candidate since March, threw a huge temper tantrum, dragged it on to the convention, and then went to Clinton rallies to promote his Own brand. What a hero! |
Another day, another unnamed, unknown source.
How easy must it be to trick American media. Just ring up, say you known Cohen is going to say X and Y and they just... believe you. They don't question you, they just take what you say and publish it.
Truly peak journalism. JoUrNALiSM iS bUiLt oN aNonYmoUS souRCeS! |
At last, this is the day! This is the day we get to kick that football, THIS IS THE DAY!! Anyone else just realize if you sort by controversial this place is much better? |
Imagine being so mentally ill you get this on your car. imagine having the balls to stand up to the president. |
If you look at this subreddit, you'd never know that Trump is in Vietnam for more talks with North Korea. Weird. It's like there's an agenda here and they want to shut out anything remotely positive This subreddit is like you’re on a plane and you don’t like your pilot so you hope your pilot crashes. They can’t be happy about any of the good that’s happened because they don’t even discuss it. They cling & feed of any negativity, most of which isn’t even true. Must be a sad life. |
Funnily enough, I've been downvoted to oblivion despite no opposing argument. The sub is unfortunately brigaded by the pro-China crowd. If you scroll through my post history, you will see the same thing happens to me as well. Any argument or comment I make, is usually heavily downvoted regardless of the content because I've been labelled "anti China." It doesn't matter if it's a well structured argument or not. And it only ever happens in this sub - it's clearly targeted. It also gives you a taste of how squelching dissent works when you can't outright censor.
Unfortunately I don't see how the Mods could correct that without themselves directly censoring. It's quite a shame though, because you can't really have an intelligent or balanced discussion when it comes to China.
Might want to at least message the mods just so they remain in the loop. Although again, I don't think they can do much about it. |
Run Jill Run. Please.
Edit:Are there people still threatened by Jill running for President? Why? I thought she had less than 3% support ;-)?How can someone with so "little" support be so threatening? ;-) Everyone who blamed Bernie for Trump’s election should have blamed Jill Stein.
Edit: two words for y’all: **Supreme Court.** SO many people ITT want to throw their vote away in this garbage FPTP system we have, then turn a blind eye when Trump gets another four years as if your vote didn’t count. I don’t know about y’all but as a far leftist I’d much rather have a corporate Dem in office than a far-right idiot who will appoint enough judges to overturn Roe. |
Anyone else just realize if you sort by controversial this place is much better? Yes. Just recently, I started sorting r/politics by controversial and it's been a far better experience.
I get it. We hate Trump. But the comment section of r/politics has turned into a daily pep rally of trump hate embellishment. Some of us frequent this sub for real political discussions and news. It's out of control. |
No one credible has said he's committed crimes since taking office until now (if now). The convicted perjurer is your credible witness? |
Thank you. I think people in this sub mistake calling out this tabloid level “sources familiar say” clickbait reporting as somehow “defending Trump”.
I provided a very specific example above (the media speculating on Congressional testimony based solely on anonymous sources) solely for what you said, a wait-and-see approach. Personally, I’m sick of getting my hopes up by blindly trusting clickbait like this. >Personally, I’m sick of getting my hopes up by blindly trusting clickbait like this.
Are people willing to admit the President was right about fake news? |
Yes. Just recently, I started sorting r/politics by controversial and it's been a far better experience.
I get it. We hate Trump. But the comment section of r/politics has turned into a daily pep rally of trump hate embellishment. Some of us frequent this sub for real political discussions and news. It's out of control. Would love it if the mods moderated |
No one credible has said he's committed crimes since taking office until now (if now). I thought that Creepy Porn Lawyer was credible though? |
“The rest of the country is improving economically but the little part that I’m in charge of is going to shit. This isn’t my fault” Labour controlled areas tend to be worse already and the more downhill they go, the more they vote labour. A vicious spiral. |
>Personally, I’m sick of getting my hopes up by blindly trusting clickbait like this.
Are people willing to admit the President was right about fake news? Yes. |
Labour controlled areas tend to be worse already and the more downhill they go, the more they vote labour. A vicious spiral. That’s the thing. It’s in a labour governments political interest to keep people as poor as possible
At least it’s in the Tories interests to make people richer |
Yes. Just recently, I started sorting r/politics by controversial and it's been a far better experience.
I get it. We hate Trump. But the comment section of r/politics has turned into a daily pep rally of trump hate embellishment. Some of us frequent this sub for real political discussions and news. It's out of control. Trash the president and get fake internet points from jobless basement dwelling goons. |
https://www.technocracy.news/former-president-of-greenpeace-scientifically-rips-climate-change-to-shreds/
Thank you for the opportunity to set out my views on climate change. As I have stated publicly on many occasions, there is no definitive scientific proof, through real-world observation, that carbon dioxide is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the past 300 years, since the peak of the Little Ice Age. If there were such a proof through testing and replication it would have been written down for all to see.
The contention that human emissions are now the dominant influence on climate is simply a hypothesis, rather than a universally accepted scientific theory. It is therefore correct, indeed verging on compulsory in the scientific tradition, to be skeptical of those who express certainty that “the science is settled” and “the debate is over”.
But there is certainty beyond any doubt that CO2 is the building block for all life on Earth and that without its presence in the global atmosphere at a sufficient concentration this would be a dead planet. Yet today our children and our publics are taught that CO2 is a toxic pollutant that will destroy life and bring civilization to its knees. Tonight I hope to turn this dangerous human-caused propaganda on its head. Tonight I will demonstrate that human emissions of CO2 have already saved life on our planet from a very untimely end. That in the absence of our emitting some of the carbon back into the atmosphere from whence it came in the first place, most or perhaps all life on Earth would begin to die less than two million years from today.
But first a bit of background.
I was born and raised in the tiny floating village of Winter Harbour on the northwest tip of Vancouver Island, in the rainforest by the Pacific. There was no road to my village so for eight years myself and a few other children were taken by boat each day to a one-room schoolhouse in the nearby fishing village. I didn’t realize how lucky I was playing on the tide flats by the salmon-spawning streams in the rainforest, until I was sent off to boarding school in Vancouver where I excelled in science. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia, gravitating to the life sciences – biology, biochemistry, genetics, and forestry – the environment and the industry my family has been in for more than 100 years. Then, before the word was known to the general public, I discovered the science of ecology, the science of how all living things are inter-related, and how we are related to them. At the height of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the threat of all-out nuclear war and the newly emerging consciousness of the environment I was transformed into a radical environmental activist. While doing my PhD in ecology in 1971 I joined a group of activists who had begun to meet in the basement of the Unitarian Church, to plan a protest voyage against US hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska.
We proved that a somewhat rag-tag looking group of activists could sail an old fishing boat across the north Pacific ocean and help change the course of history. We created a focal point for the media to report on public opposition to the tests.
When that H-bomb exploded in November 1971, it was the last hydrogen bomb the United States ever detonated. Even though there were four more tests planned in the series, President Nixon canceled them due to the public opposition we had helped to create. That was the birth of Greenpeace.
Flushed with victory, on our way home from Alaska we were made brothers of the Namgis Nation in their Big House at Alert Bay near my northern Vancouver Island home. For Greenpeace this began the tradition of the Warriors of the Rainbow, after a Cree Indian legend that predicted the coming together of all races and creeds to save the Earth from destruction. We named our ship the Rainbow Warrior and I spent the next fifteen years in the top committee of Greenpeace, on the front lines of the environmental movement as we evolved from that church basement into the world’s largest environmental activist organization.
Next we took on French atmospheric nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They proved a bit more difficult than the US nuclear tests. It took years to eventually drive these tests underground at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. In 1985, under direct orders from President Mitterrand, French commandos bombed and sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing our photographer. Those protests continued until long after I left Greenpeace. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that nuclear testing finally ended in the South Pacific, and it most other parts of the world as well.
Going back to 1975, Greenpeace set out to save the whales from extinction at the hands of huge factory whaling fleets. We confronted the Soviet factory whaling fleet in the North Pacific, putting ourselves in front of their harpoons in our little rubber boats to protect the fleeing whales. This was broadcast on television news around the world, bringing the Save the Whales movement into everyone’s living rooms for the first time. After four years of voyages, in 1979 factory whaling was finally banned in the North Pacific, and by 1981 in all the world’s oceans.
In 1978 I sat on a baby seal off the East Coast of Canada to protect it from the hunter’s club. I was arrested and hauled off to jail, the seal was clubbed and skinned, but a photo of me being arrested while sitting on the baby seal appeared in more than 3000 newspapers around the world the next morning. We won the hearts and minds of millions of people who saw the baby seal slaughter as outdated, cruel, and unnecessary.
Why then did I leave Greenpeace after 15 years in the leadership? When Greenpeace began we had a strong humanitarian orientation, to save civilization from destruction by all-out nuclear war. Over the years the “peace” in Greenpeace was gradually lost and my organization, along with much of the environmental movement, drifted into a belief that humans are the enemies of the earth. I believe in a humanitarian environmentalism because we are part of nature, not separate from it. The first principle of ecology is that we are all part of the same ecosystem, as Barbara Ward put it, “One human family on spaceship Earth”, and to preach otherwise teaches that the world would be better off without us. As we shall see later in the presentation there is very good reason to see humans as essential to the survival of life on this planet.
In the mid 1980s I found myself the only director of Greenpeace International with a formal education in science. My fellow directors proposed a campaign to “ban chlorine worldwide”, naming it “The Devil’s Element”. I pointed out that chlorine is one of the elements in the Periodic Table, one of the building blocks of the Universe and the 11th most common element in the Earth’s crust. I argued the fact that chlorine is the most important element for public health and medicine. Adding chlorine to drinking water was the biggest advance in the history of public health and the majority of our synthetic medicines are based on chlorine chemistry. This fell on deaf ears, and for me this was the final straw. I had to leave.
When I left Greenpeace I vowed to develop an environmental policy that was based on science and logic rather than sensationalism, misinformation, anti-humanism and fear. In a classic example, a recent protest led by Greenpeace in the Philippines used the skull and crossbones to associate Golden Rice with death, when in fact Golden Rice has the potential to help save 2 million children from death due to vitamin A deficiency every year. The Keeling curve of CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere since 1959 is the supposed smoking gun of catastrophic climate change. We presume CO2 was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before human activity could have caused a significant impact. I accept that most of the rise from 280 to 400 ppm is caused by human CO2 emissions with the possibility that some of it is due to outgassing from warming of the oceans.
NASA tells us that “Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature” in child-like denial of the many other factors involved in climate change. This is reminiscent of NASA’s contention that there might be life on Mars. Decades after it was demonstrated that there was no life on Mars, NASA continues to use it as a hook to raise public funding for more expeditions to the Red Planet. The promulgation of fear of Climate Change now serves the same purpose. As Bob Dylan prophetically pointed out, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”, even in one of the most admired science organizations in the world.
On the political front the leaders of the G7 plan to “end extreme poverty and hunger” by phasing out 85% of the world’s energy supply including 98% of the energy used to transport people and goods, including food. The Emperors of the world appear clothed in the photo taken at the close of the meeting but it was obviously Photo-shopped. They should be required to stand naked for making such a foolish statement.
The world’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, is hopelessly conflicted by its makeup and it mandate. The Panel is composed solely of the World Meteorological Organization, weather forecasters, and the United Nations Environment Program, environmentalists. Both these organizations are focused primarily on short-term timescales, days to maybe a century or two. But the most significant conflict is with the Panel’s mandate from the United Nations. They are required only to focus on “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability.”So if the IPCC found that climate change was not being affected by human alteration of the atmosphere or that it is not “dangerous” there would be no need for them to exist. They are virtually mandated to find on the side of apocalypse.
Scientific certainty, political pandering, a hopelessly conflicted IPCC, and now the Pope, spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, in a bold move to reinforce the concept of original sin, says the Earth looks like “an immense pile of filth” and we must go back to pre-industrial bliss, or is that squalor?
And then there is the actual immense pile of filth fed to us more than three times daily by the green-media nexus, a seething cauldron of imminent doom, like we are already condemned to Damnation in Hell and there is little chance of Redemption. I fear for the end of the Enlightenment. I fear an intellectual Gulag with Greenpeace as my prison guards.
Let’s begin with our knowledge of the long-term history of the Earth’s temperature and of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. Our best inference from various proxies back indicate that CO2 was higher for the first 4 billion years of Earth’s history than it has been since the Cambrian Period until today. I will focus on the past 540 million years since modern life forms evolved. It is glaringly obvious that temperature and CO2 are in an inverse correlation at least as often as they are in any semblance of correlation. Two clear examples of reverse correlation occurred 150 million years and 50 million years ago. At the end of the Jurassic temperature fell dramatically while CO2 spiked. During the Eocene Thermal Maximum, temperature was likely higher than any time in the past 550 million years while CO2 had been on a downward track for 100 million years. This evidence alone sufficient to warrant deep speculation of any claimed lock-step causal relationship between CO2 and temperature.
The Devonian Period beginning 400 million years ago marked the culmination of the invasion of life onto the land. Plants evolved to produce lignin, which in combination with cellulose, created wood which in turn for the first time allowed plants to grow tall, in competition with each other for sunlight. As vast forests spread across the land living biomass increased by orders of magnitude, pulling down carbon as CO2 from the atmosphere to make wood. Lignin is very difficult to break down and no decomposer species possessed the enzymes to digest it. Trees died atop one another until they were 100 metres or more in depth. This was the making of the great coal beds around the world as this huge store of sequestered carbon continued to build for 90 million years. Then, fortunately for the future of life, white rot fungi evolved to produce the enzymes that can digest lignin and coincident with that the coal-making era came to an end.
There was no guarantee that fungi or any other decomposer species would develop the complex of enzymes required to digest lignin. If they had not, CO2, which had already been drawn down for the first time in Earth’s history to levels similar to todays, would have continued to decline as trees continued to grow and die. That is until CO2 approached the threshold of 150 ppm below which plants begin first to starve, then stop growing altogether, and then die. Not just woody plants but all plants. This would bring about the extinction of most, if not all, terrestrial species, as animals, insects, and other invertebrates starved for lack of food. And that would be that. The human species would never have existed. This was only the first time that there was a distinct possibility that life would come close to extinguishing itself, due to a shortage of CO2, which is essential for life on Earth.
A well-documented record of global temperature over the past 65 million years shows that we have been in a major cooling period since the Eocene Thermal Maximum 50 million years ago. The Earth was an average 16C warmer then, with most of the increased warmth at the higher latitudes. The entire planet, including the Arctic and Antarctica were ice-free and the land there was covered in forest. The ancestors of every species on Earth today survived through what may have been the warmest time in the history of life. It makes one wonder about dire predictions that even a 2C rise in temperature from pre-industrial times would cause mass extinctions and the destruction of civilization. Glaciers began to form in Antarctica 30 million years ago and in the northern hemisphere 3 million years ago. Today, even in this interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age, we are experiencing one of the coldest climates in the Earth’s history.
Coming closer to the present we have learned from Antarctic ice cores that for the past 800,000 years there have been regular periods of major glaciation followed by interglacial periods in 100,000 year-cycles. These cycles coincide with the Milankovitch cycles that are tied to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt. It is highly plausible that these cycles are related to solar intensity and the seasonal distribution of solar heat on the Earth’s surface. There is a strong correlation between temperature and the level of atmospheric CO2 during these successive glaciations, indicating a possible cause-effect relationship between the two. CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that temperature is the cause, as the cause never comes after the effect.
Looking at the past 50,000 years of temperature and CO2 we can see that changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature. This is as one could expect, as the Milankovitch cycles are far more likely to cause a change in temperature than a change in CO2. And a change in the temperature is far more likely to cause a change in CO2 due to outgassing of CO2 from the oceans during warmer times and an ingassing (absorption) of CO2 during colder periods. Yet climate alarmists persist in insisting that CO2 is causing the change in temperature, despite the illogical nature of that assertion.
It is sobering to consider the magnitude of climate change during the past 20,000 years, since the peak of the last major glaciation. At that time there were 3.3 kilometres of ice on top of what is today the city of Montreal, a city of more than 3 million people. 95% of Canada was covered in a sheet of ice. Even as far south as Chicago there was nearly a kilometre of ice. If the Milankovitch cycle continues to prevail, and there is little reason aside from our CO2 emissions to think otherwise, this will happen gradually again during the next 80,000 years. Will our CO2 emissions stave off another glaciation as James Lovelock has suggested? There doesn’t seem to be much hope of that so far, as despite 1/3 of all our CO2 emissions being released during the past 18 years the UK Met Office contends there has been no statistically significant warming during this century.
At the height of the last glaciation the sea level was about 120 metres lower than it is today. By 7,000 years ago all the low-altitude, mid-latitude glaciers had melted. There is no consensus about the variation in sea level since then although many scientists have concluded that the sea level was higher than today during the Holocene Thermal optimum from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago when the Sahara was green. The sea level may also have been higher than today during the Medieval Warm Period.
Hundred of islands near the Equator in Papua, Indonesia, have been undercut by the sea in a manner that gives credence to the hypothesis that there has been little net change in sea level in the past thousands of years. It takes a long time for so much erosion to occur from gentle wave action in a tropical sea. |
The Keeling curve of CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere since 1959 is the supposed smoking gun of catastrophic climate change. We presume CO2 was at 280 ppm at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, before human activity could have caused a significant impact. I accept that most of the rise from 280 to 400 ppm is caused by human CO2 emissions with the possibility that some of it is due to outgassing from warming of the oceans.
NASA tells us that “Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature” in child-like denial of the many other factors involved in climate change. This is reminiscent of NASA’s contention that there might be life on Mars. Decades after it was demonstrated that there was no life on Mars, NASA continues to use it as a hook to raise public funding for more expeditions to the Red Planet. The promulgation of fear of Climate Change now serves the same purpose. As Bob Dylan prophetically pointed out, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”, even in one of the most admired science organizations in the world.
On the political front the leaders of the G7 plan to “end extreme poverty and hunger” by phasing out 85% of the world’s energy supply including 98% of the energy used to transport people and goods, including food. The Emperors of the world appear clothed in the photo taken at the close of the meeting but it was obviously Photo-shopped. They should be required to stand naked for making such a foolish statement.
The world’s top climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, is hopelessly conflicted by its makeup and it mandate. The Panel is composed solely of the World Meteorological Organization, weather forecasters, and the United Nations Environment Program, environmentalists. Both these organizations are focused primarily on short-term timescales, days to maybe a century or two. But the most significant conflict is with the Panel’s mandate from the United Nations. They are required only to focus on “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere, and which is in addition to natural climate variability.”So if the IPCC found that climate change was not being affected by human alteration of the atmosphere or that it is not “dangerous” there would be no need for them to exist. They are virtually mandated to find on the side of apocalypse.
Scientific certainty, political pandering, a hopelessly conflicted IPCC, and now the Pope, spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, in a bold move to reinforce the concept of original sin, says the Earth looks like “an immense pile of filth” and we must go back to pre-industrial bliss, or is that squalor?
And then there is the actual immense pile of filth fed to us more than three times daily by the green-media nexus, a seething cauldron of imminent doom, like we are already condemned to Damnation in Hell and there is little chance of Redemption. I fear for the end of the Enlightenment. I fear an intellectual Gulag with Greenpeace as my prison guards.
Let’s begin with our knowledge of the long-term history of the Earth’s temperature and of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. Our best inference from various proxies back indicate that CO2 was higher for the first 4 billion years of Earth’s history than it has been since the Cambrian Period until today. I will focus on the past 540 million years since modern life forms evolved. It is glaringly obvious that temperature and CO2 are in an inverse correlation at least as often as they are in any semblance of correlation. Two clear examples of reverse correlation occurred 150 million years and 50 million years ago. At the end of the Jurassic temperature fell dramatically while CO2 spiked. During the Eocene Thermal Maximum, temperature was likely higher than any time in the past 550 million years while CO2 had been on a downward track for 100 million years. This evidence alone sufficient to warrant deep speculation of any claimed lock-step causal relationship between CO2 and temperature.
The Devonian Period beginning 400 million years ago marked the culmination of the invasion of life onto the land. Plants evolved to produce lignin, which in combination with cellulose, created wood which in turn for the first time allowed plants to grow tall, in competition with each other for sunlight. As vast forests spread across the land living biomass increased by orders of magnitude, pulling down carbon as CO2 from the atmosphere to make wood. Lignin is very difficult to break down and no decomposer species possessed the enzymes to digest it. Trees died atop one another until they were 100 metres or more in depth. This was the making of the great coal beds around the world as this huge store of sequestered carbon continued to build for 90 million years. Then, fortunately for the future of life, white rot fungi evolved to produce the enzymes that can digest lignin and coincident with that the coal-making era came to an end.
There was no guarantee that fungi or any other decomposer species would develop the complex of enzymes required to digest lignin. If they had not, CO2, which had already been drawn down for the first time in Earth’s history to levels similar to todays, would have continued to decline as trees continued to grow and die. That is until CO2 approached the threshold of 150 ppm below which plants begin first to starve, then stop growing altogether, and then die. Not just woody plants but all plants. This would bring about the extinction of most, if not all, terrestrial species, as animals, insects, and other invertebrates starved for lack of food. And that would be that. The human species would never have existed. This was only the first time that there was a distinct possibility that life would come close to extinguishing itself, due to a shortage of CO2, which is essential for life on Earth.
A well-documented record of global temperature over the past 65 million years shows that we have been in a major cooling period since the Eocene Thermal Maximum 50 million years ago. The Earth was an average 16C warmer then, with most of the increased warmth at the higher latitudes. The entire planet, including the Arctic and Antarctica were ice-free and the land there was covered in forest. The ancestors of every species on Earth today survived through what may have been the warmest time in the history of life. It makes one wonder about dire predictions that even a 2C rise in temperature from pre-industrial times would cause mass extinctions and the destruction of civilization. Glaciers began to form in Antarctica 30 million years ago and in the northern hemisphere 3 million years ago. Today, even in this interglacial period of the Pleistocene Ice Age, we are experiencing one of the coldest climates in the Earth’s history.
Coming closer to the present we have learned from Antarctic ice cores that for the past 800,000 years there have been regular periods of major glaciation followed by interglacial periods in 100,000 year-cycles. These cycles coincide with the Milankovitch cycles that are tied to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit and its axial tilt. It is highly plausible that these cycles are related to solar intensity and the seasonal distribution of solar heat on the Earth’s surface. There is a strong correlation between temperature and the level of atmospheric CO2 during these successive glaciations, indicating a possible cause-effect relationship between the two. CO2 lags temperature by an average of 800 years during the most recent 400,000-year period, indicating that temperature is the cause, as the cause never comes after the effect.
Looking at the past 50,000 years of temperature and CO2 we can see that changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature. This is as one could expect, as the Milankovitch cycles are far more likely to cause a change in temperature than a change in CO2. And a change in the temperature is far more likely to cause a change in CO2 due to outgassing of CO2 from the oceans during warmer times and an ingassing (absorption) of CO2 during colder periods. Yet climate alarmists persist in insisting that CO2 is causing the change in temperature, despite the illogical nature of that assertion.
It is sobering to consider the magnitude of climate change during the past 20,000 years, since the peak of the last major glaciation. At that time there were 3.3 kilometres of ice on top of what is today the city of Montreal, a city of more than 3 million people. 95% of Canada was covered in a sheet of ice. Even as far south as Chicago there was nearly a kilometre of ice. If the Milankovitch cycle continues to prevail, and there is little reason aside from our CO2 emissions to think otherwise, this will happen gradually again during the next 80,000 years. Will our CO2 emissions stave off another glaciation as James Lovelock has suggested? There doesn’t seem to be much hope of that so far, as despite 1/3 of all our CO2 emissions being released during the past 18 years the UK Met Office contends there has been no statistically significant warming during this century.
At the height of the last glaciation the sea level was about 120 metres lower than it is today. By 7,000 years ago all the low-altitude, mid-latitude glaciers had melted. There is no consensus about the variation in sea level since then although many scientists have concluded that the sea level was higher than today during the Holocene Thermal optimum from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago when the Sahara was green. The sea level may also have been higher than today during the Medieval Warm Period.
Hundred of islands near the Equator in Papua, Indonesia, have been undercut by the sea in a manner that gives credence to the hypothesis that there has been little net change in sea level in the past thousands of years. It takes a long time for so much erosion to occur from gentle wave action in a tropical sea. It does boggle the mind in the face of our knowledge that the level of CO2 has been steadily falling that human CO2 emissions are not universally acclaimed as a miracle of salvation. From direct observation we already know that the extreme predictions of CO2’s impact on global temperature are highly unlikely given that about one-third of all our CO2 emissions have been discharged during the past 18 years and there has been no statistically significant warming. And even if there were some additional warming that would surely be preferable to the extermination of all or most species on the planet.
You heard it here. “Human emissions of carbon dioxide have saved life on Earth from inevitable starvation and extinction due to lack of CO2”. To use the analogy of the Atomic Clock, if the Earth were 24 hours old we were at 38 seconds to midnight when we reversed the trend towards the End Times. If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is. You don’t get to stave off Armageddon every day.
I issue a challenge to anyone to provide a compelling argument that counters my analysis of the historical record and the prediction of CO2 starvation based on the 150 million year trend. Ad hominem arguments about “deniers” need not apply. I submit that much of society has been collectively misled into believing that global CO2 and temperature are too high when the opposite is true for both. Does anyone deny that below 150 ppm CO2 that plants will die? Does anyone deny that the Earth has been in a 50 million-year cooling period and that this Pleistocene Ice Age is one of the coldest periods in the history of the planet?
If we assume human emissions have to date added some 200 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, even if we ceased using fossil fuels today we have already bought another 5 million years for life on earth. But we will not stop using fossil fuels to power our civilization so it is likely that we can forestall plant starvation for lack of CO2 by at least 65 million years. Even when the fossil fuels have become scarce we have the quadrillion tons of carbon in carbonaceous rocks, which we can transform into lime and CO2 for the manufacture of cement. And we already know how to do that with solar energy or nuclear energy. This alone, regardless of fossil fuel consumption, will more than offset the loss of CO2 due to calcium carbonate burial in marine sediments. Without a doubt the human species has made it possible to prolong the survival of life on Earth for more than 100 million years. We are not the enemy of nature but its salvation.
As a postscript I would like to make a few comments about the other side of the alleged dangerous climate change coin, our energy policy, in particular the much maligned fossil fuels; coal, oil, and natural gas.
Depending how it’s tallied, fossil fuels account for between 85-88% of global energy consumption and more than 95% of energy for the transport of people and goods, including our food.
Earlier this year the leaders of the G7 countries agreed that fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100, a most bizarre development to say the least. Of course no intelligent person really believes this will happen but it is a testament to the power of the elites that have converged around the catastrophic human-caused climate change that so many alleged world leaders must participate in the charade. How might we convince them to celebrate CO2 rather than to denigrate it?
A lot of nasty things are said about fossil fuels even though they are largely responsible for our longevity, our prosperity, and our comfortable lifestyles.
Hydrocarbons, the energy components of fossil fuels, are 100% organic, as in organic chemistry. They were produced by solar energy in ancient seas and forests. When they are burned for energy the main products are water and CO2, the two most essential foods for life. And fossil fuels are by far the largest storage battery of direct solar energy on Earth. Nothing else comes close except nuclear fuel, which is also solar in the sense that it was produced in dying stars.
Today, Greenpeace protests Russian and American oil rigs with 3000 HP diesel-powered ships and uses 200 HP outboard motors to board the rigs and hang anti-oil plastic banners made with fossil fuels. Then they issue a media release telling us we must “end our addiction to oil”. I wouldn’t mind so much if Greenpeace rode bicycles to their sailing ships and rowed their little boats into the rigs to hang organic cotton banners. We didn’t have an H-bomb on board the boat that sailed on the first Greenpeace campaign against nuclear testing.
Some of the world’s oil comes from my native country in the Canadian oil sands of northern Alberta. I had never worked with fossil fuel interests until I became incensed with the lies being spread about my country’s oil production in the capitals of our allies around the world. I visited the oil sands operations to find out for myself what was happening there.
It is true it’s not a pretty sight when the land is stripped bare to get at the sand so the oil can be removed from it. Canada is actually cleaning up the biggest natural oil spill in history, and making a profit from it. The oil was brought to the surface when the Rocky Mountains were thrust up by the colliding Pacific Plate. When the sand is returned back to the land 99% of the so-called “toxic oil” has been removed from it.
Anti-oil activists say the oil-sands operations are destroying the boreal forest of Canada. Canada’s boreal forest accounts for 10% of all the world’s forests and the oil-sands area is like a pimple on an elephant by comparison. By law, every square inch of land disturbed by oil-sands extraction must be returned to native boreal forest. When will cities like London, Brussels, and New York that have laid waste to the natural environment be returned to their native ecosystems?
The art and science of ecological restoration, or reclamation as it is called in the mining industry, is a well-established practice. The land is re-contoured, the original soil is put back, and native species of plants and trees are established. It is possible, by creating depressions where the land was flat, to increase biodiversity by making ponds and lakes where wetland plants, insects, and waterfowl can become established in the reclaimed landscape.
The tailings ponds where the cleaned sand is returned look ugly for a few years but are eventually reclaimed into grasslands. The Fort McKay First Nation is under contract to manage a herd of bison on a reclaimed tailings pond. Every tailings pond will be reclaimed in a similar manner when operations have been completed.
As an ecologist and environmentalist for more than 45 years this is good enough for me. The land is disturbed for a blink of an eye in geological time and is then returned to a sustainable boreal forest ecosystem with cleaner sand. And as a bonus we get the fuel to power our weed-eaters, scooters, motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, trains, and aircraft.
To conclude, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is the stuff of life, the staff of life, the currency of life, indeed the backbone of life on Earth.
I am honoured to have been chosen to deliver your annual lecture.
Thank you for listening to me this evening.
I hope you have seen CO2 from a new perspective and will join with me to Celebrate CO2! |
Final edit: Double check my numbers. Im not making this up, i have no reason to. This article is literally from December 1st, 2016
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308353-trump-won-by-smaller-margin-than-stein-votes-in-all-three
Wisconsin(10 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 22,748 votes. Jill Stein got 31,072 votes
Pennsylvania(20 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 44,293, Jill Stein got 49,941
Michigan(16 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 10,704 votes, Jill Stein got 51,463
New Electoral vote count:
10+20+16=46:
(+46) clinton (273)
(-46) Trump (258)
People who voted for Jill Stein-- in a swing state-- is **one of the things** that helped get Trump elected. Splitting the left-leaning vote doesnt help left-leaning candidates in the long run
As the only other candidate besides Clinton with a chance of winning the presidency, nationally, was Trump.
>Clinton: 65.853 million votes
>Trump:62.984 million votes
>Gary Johnson: 4.489 million votes
>Stein: 1.457 million votes
A non-vote for Clinton, a vote for Jill Stein -- these both helped get Trump elected in swing states the way the electoral college is set up.
That's most likely why Bernie said he'd rather reform the Democratic Party then start a new one.
This is well-known effect called the "spoiler effect." I doubt Stein didn't know what she was doing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect
Heres jill stein photographed with Michael flynn, Putin, and other Russians at a dinner:
[Guess Who Came to Dinner With Flynn and Putin](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696)
Further reading:
[The Russian effort to divert votes to Jill Stein was more extensive than previously thought](https://thinkprogress.org/russia-jill-stein-2016-election-interference-48dff3966227/) You’re getting downvoted because unfortunately, many longtime Bernie supporters don’t like hearing these FACTS.
Jill Stein is not your friend, you gullible, stubborn bastards.
And yes, I like turtles. |
Would love it if the mods moderated Oh they moderate, they moderate right leaning thought out of here. Can't go against the grain! Also there's the passive moderation that they use to silence discussion. Downvoted too much and you can only respond every 9 minutes. Guess who always get's downvoted? Definitely not the people repeating "Fuck Trump and Fuck Republicans" ad nauseum, as if that contributes anything to the discussion. How can anyone possibly have a discourse if you are getting bombarded with responses and you can only comment once every 9 minutes. It's bullshit. I've gone on to just saying my piece and leaving it at that.
Edit: As I've said, I'm not going to respond, so don't bother replying. We can't have a conversation anyway since this comment is in the negative and I'm now time gated to responding every nine minutes. Isn't that a great rule? What better way to cultivate discourse between people then time gating unpopular or different opinions! Great job dudes. |
This one might be over generalizing here. Most of the Pro-Lifers I know were also mortified by the jails for kids ICE ran at the border. In fact, I don't know anybody that has decent morals that weren't appalled at what ICE did. (Although some waved the blame away with it being a "typical government bureaucratic mess.")
On a side note, could we not break the [reddiquette](https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddiquette#wiki_please__don.27t) by making posts with titles in all caps. Thanks. “Might” be? It’s absolutely over-generalizing, and that’s all that so many pro-choicers do with their arguments. It’s intentional generalizing to try and make the other side look stupid. It’s lazy, yet people buy into it and will mindlessly upvote it. |
This is coming from someone who is pro choice, but has empathy:
1) most people who are pro life are so because they care about babies both in and out of the womb. I haven't met one who claims that the baby can rot in filth and famine after they are born. Maybe they don't agree with the policies you believe will help the poor, but they probably do feel bad that those conditions exist. Very few people want suffering, they just believe in different solutions. But you interpret their solutions as harsh and uncaring, while they interpret our solutions as an unrealistic fantasy.
2) everyone gets annoyed when discussing one political issue and you bring up another as a retort. It's like if you said "Marijuana should be legal" and someone replied "but Crystal meth does horrible things to people." It doesn't address the problem you were actually talking about. Yeah, this sub is great for humor but in real life, retorts are exactly the opposite of what you want to do if you are genuinely interested in others understanding and adopting your views. |
Would love it if the mods moderated They do, that's the problem. Does anyone else get limited to one comment? |
Yes. Thank you for not being closed minded. |
Yikes the ignorance shows.
If y’all don’t agree then go listen to his debates with the people you hold up as valued in your community. He literally destroys them with logic. Y’all are fighting something you don’t know a thing about. Get educated people. This sub is anti-white and anti-male (unless you’re gay), it’s no surprise ;) |