Environmentalism is in all of the schools, and children are being frightened by end-of-the-world scenarios by the prophets of doom while having the Green ethos inculcated in them through letter-writing campaigns and "Earth friendly" checklists. The Environmentalists, heavily financed by left-wing think tanks and environmental-activist organizations, are hurrying to push through Draconian emission standards and to stifle any debate-and that debate is plentiful, indeed.

This is not settled science, nor are scientists in agreement about this matter. Increasingly it is becoming obvious that the 1degree F warming we have witnessed in the last century is related to solar cycles. Many scientists have disagreed with this notion of Anthropogenic Global Warming from the beginning; we had the Statement by Atmospheric Scientists, The Oregon Petition, the Leipzig Petiton, and the Heidelberg Appeal. The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has a long list of scientists who have changed from believers into skeptics.

I do not know enough about the trial of Galileo to be able to say how close he came to being executed by the Inquisition.  It seems quite possible that had he comported himself more aggressively and disrespectfully, and less cooperatively, he might very well have ended up in a prison, or even put to death.  As it is, it seems the Inquisitors were not so much interested in what he believed, as in what he had already published and might go on to publish.  So he agreed to renounce his Dialogo, and to accept an imposed silence under house arrest.

On the "science" of the persecutors: Given the limitations of empirical evidence prior to Galileo and his telescope, there was nothing unreasonable about accepting the geocentric system described by Claudius Ptolemaeus.  To be sure, that system got a bit tangled when it came to explaining the apparently retrograde movements of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, but not so tangled as to make the whole thing unbelievable.  Copernicus, by hypothesizing a heliocentric system, showed how much easier the math became, for calculating the movements of the planets.  But he did not go so far as to assert that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the planetary system.  Anyway, he had no evidence for that.

Where those old Aristoteliolatrous Catholic doctors, and the hierarchs who believed them, most disgracefully violated scientific reasoning, was in their insisting that the authority of the Bible supports the geocentric system, and only that system, and therefore any promotion of the heliocentric system would be an act of rebellion against the authority of both the Bible and the Church.

They also got bent out of shape by Galileo's observations of "imperfections" in the planetary bodies: the cratered face of the Moon; the phases of Venus; satellites of Jupiter; the "ears" of Saturn.  (I forget if his observations of Mars included anything of that sort, and if he observed the phases of Mercury.)  That reaction of theirs did not have anything to do directly with the Bible, I think.  Rather, I suspect those observations offended against certain hardened cosmological ideas, influenced by Plato and Aristotle, to the effect that the Moon and the planets were created by God as perfect luminary bodies.  Galileo's observations showed that they were not star-like at all, but were unique worlds similar in some regards to the Earth.

I would be interested to know what contemporary Protestants might have thought of all this.  Did they applaud Galileo as a hero for standing up to the Pope and to flawed Catholic doctrine?  Or were they as horrified by his conclusions as the Catholics were?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

politics is decided by the C student.  

Why can we land a man on the moon, but can't . . . (add whatever problem you want to solve here)  

The reason is because when developing the landing on the moon project, they could hire and fire due to competence.  

Not so with politics.  The same failed voters vote the next time.

http://www.john-daly.com/fraction/fraction.htm

Taking into account the impact of solar variability for global warming, best fit studies have revealed that solar forcing is amplified by at least a factor 4 whereas CO2 doubling should be reduced to less than 1°C.</blockquotes>


Texeme.Construct(function(x)=Participation(x))

Sheesh. It never stops from some of these dunderheads.

. . . for a connection between cosmic rays and climate to be interesting, it does not have to account for the already well-explained climate history of the past 100 years. Even a small effect, to which Earth is only sensitive under some conditions, would be an exciting find. The CLOUD experiment does not have to overturn the consensus of the world's climatologists to be a success; it just has to throw a little light on some physics. "In a nutshell," says Kirkby, "we want to go after the microphysics between a cosmic ray and a cloud droplet or ice particle. How significant are they in the atmosphere, or in certain parts of the atmosphere?"

 . . how significant are they in the atmosphere, or in certain parts of the atmosphere?

These sound like important questions for which there are yet no answers.

You can see more about this here:

Will the Debate on Global Warming Ever be Over?