I agree, celebrities should STFU about issues on which they are not experts (although I'm not going to change the channel if Angelina Jolie strolls in front of a camera holding a Cambodian orphan).

We should listen to scientists about scientific questions. By the way, Paul--what is the majority opinion in the scientific community on the issue of global warming?

Wonder if Gore III was practicing to be a 'rock star'?

Sing it, boys.
=======

Amen to that. Now if we could just get some people in Hollywood to admit they aren't experts on anything but self-love and lookin' pretty, we might be on to something.

There was a time in this country when a scientist like Albert Einstein could become a huge celebrity simply because of the power of his ideas. Now we have the "ideas" of people who have become celebrities based on their looks fed to us by the media as if they were informed or valuable. A sad state of affairs indeed.

Slowly but surly reality is creeping into the music industry.

I don't know if that's a typo or not, but I like it better either way.

Reality is pretty surly, that's why so many people avoid it.

We don't buy tickets to concerts or CDs to hear musicians lecture us on politics.

Just sing and play your instruments. That's what we pay you for.

Hollywood and musician celebrities are probably, as a whole, the most screwed up people in the world. And for them to lecture anyone on anything is an absolute JOKE!!

And the fact that they don't realize this, is also part of the joke.

Take what these people say and do and vote the opposite. Then you know you're on the right track.

>By the way, Paul--what is the majority opinion in the scientific community on the issue of global warming?

Good question. 1500 lackeys for the UN said Global warming was real and man made.

Over 17,000 scientists, two-thirds of which have advanced degrees signed a petition saving they where full of crap.

The majority CLEARLY says global warming is bogus.

Thanks for asking.

thanks for the typo check guys

I think Alice Cooper said it best:

"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."

You here that liberals? You are bigger morons than Cold Play, Green Day, Bono and the rest of the high school dropouts who actually think they know what they are talking about.

In a free market, it is ok for musicians to play music that projects their beliefs on issues, however the market is a fickle place. To respond to a previous poster. Since scientists are educated in a system poluted with leftist ideas, it is sometimes difficult to decern true science from that which has a political taint to it. When the head of the climatology department at MIT and some of the leading scientists who are knowledgable in this area state there is no connection between CO2 and global warming. When, while glaciers are retreating, ice mass at the south pole and Greenland is growing. I doubt if the verasity of a politician selling carbon credits, crying the sky is falling, the sky is falling is to be believed. Follow the Pied Piper if you must, but don't expect thinking people to follow him to their doom.

Celebrities and performers spout the liberal talking points because of their nature.

They want to be liked. They want to be praised and admired and feted because that's how they make the bucks and have a nice lifestyle.

Liberalism is the easy way out. No conflicts, just making everyone feel good and no judging of people's attitudes, lifestyles, or behaviors (except conservatives, but nobody likes conservatuves, so its OK) being a liberal means that nobody will dislike you since you don't 'force' your opinions on people.

Being conservative is too hard for celebrities and entertainers to take.

Has anyone else noticed how slowly but "surly" (hehe) we're seeing the Global Warming crowd change the description of their crusade to "Global Climate Change"? Kinda makes it hard to refute that the climate changes, even though the name is just new window dressing for the same argument. Now that we're seeing the beginnings of a Global Cooling scare, the new name can cover all the bases whenever they decide it's warming or cooling.

Changing your letterhead can get quite costly you know.

Oyster, they should just call themselves the Chicken Little Society.

"It's a bit patronising for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world," said Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, explaining why the group is not on the bill at any of Al Gore's charity concerts.

Better wait until you are 40+, so you can start sending 21 year olds overseas to die in some senseless war. Vietnam = Iraq.

"Changing your letterhead can get quite costly you know."

But they do it on recycled paper, so it's OK

Publicus,

By having kids you're supporting the war.

Publicus,

You're not a kid anymore. You can't do the drugs and free sex as casually as you once did. I know it's hard to grow up, but you must, before you humiliate yourself further.

It ain't the 60s. Vietnam and it's comparisons are over.

It's 2007. You're old. Your health is wearing down. You can't close your eyes and wish the 60s were back so you could feel important.

Get back to reality.

Mac Lorry -

"By having kids, you're supporting the war."?

Please clarify, explain.

"It's a bit patronising for us 21 year olds to try to start to change the world,"

I'm not exactly sure what he was saying there, or what he might have meant to say, but never fear! Publicus is here! And he'll clarify it for us, by golly. Even if he has to seque into a separate topic.

Over 17,000 scientists, two-thirds of which have advanced degrees signed a petition saving they where full of crap.

Please.

Alice Cooper for President.
============

Vietnam = Iraq.

Only if the left gets its way.

If we win, Iraq = WWII, removing a merciless dictator.

It's a good time to be a skeptick.
=====================

C-S-G -

Yep. The only problem with Vietnam was we didn't stick it out. We'd still be wasting young lives there today if it was up to people like you.

Thanks, mantis. I knew the most intelligent regular commentator on this silly blog would say what I wanted to say before I got around to it. (I'm a dozen time zones away from most of you guys and gals.)

Global warming is a phenomenon about which we are uncertain, but that doesn't make the entire hypothesis false. Al Gore's hypocrisy doesn't matter one way or another to me. I'm going to go ahead and not be a douche bag about energy consumption, and if you're right and I'm wrong, you can rub my face in your unnecessary carbon emissions when the jury is in. Otherwise, thanks for contributing to environmental armageddon, assholes!

Please

Posted by: mantis at July 5, 2007 02:13 PM

Ok mantis... for the sake of this discussion, I'll give you that every word he said was a true, accurate and representative of the whole population of the people who signed the petition. Your source is vulnerable on several fronts, but heck, I'll give it to you.

6 out of 30 now would not sign it today... ok that's 20%.

17,000 * .8 = 13,600

Now I've never been to good at this greater than/ less than stuff but if I if understand this right...

13,600 > 1,500

But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Publicus,

You said: "Better wait until you are 40+, so you can start sending 21 year olds overseas to die in some senseless war. Vietnam = Iraq."

To which I said: "By having kids you're supporting the war."

Then you said: "Please clarify, explain."

It's easy, if there were no kids for the 40+ somethings to send to war there would be no war.

It's meant in the same tone as your first comment above.

In the link provided by mantis, Tim Lambert makes the assumption that the only information the scientists who signed the petition had was what came with the petition. Given the credentials of the signers that's a rather naive assumption.

Lambert also seems unaware that there's competing theory of climate change that has passed the peer review stage and is currently undergoing testing at CERN.

If the CERN experiments demonstrate that the Sun is the major driving force of climate change it would be counterproductive to deplete our economic resources trying to reduce green house gases.

Also, as the head of NASA pointed out, there's no evidence that the current climate is optimal. The alarmists would have us react out of fear rather than knowledge.

Ok, Paul, let's have a discussion then. First, the number you quoted comes from this piece by Scientific American, which Lambert links to. The SciAm survey looked only at the "1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science," not the entire 17,100 signatories at the time (and rightly so, who cares what a biologist thinks about climate?). So your real number would be 1120 > 280, but let's look a bit closer at what they found.

Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases,

4 out of 30 were not even identifiable as published scientists. So there go 187 of the 1400.

11 said they still agreed with the petition

Which makes only 37%, or 513 out of 1400, who still agreed with the petition. Of those,

one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation.

Ah, so only three of those who still agreed with the petition had relevant expertise, and only one was an active climate researcher. If we took this data to be representative that would mean that of the 1400 who claimed to hold climate Ph.D.s, only 140 would have relevant expertise, and only 47 of those would be active climate researchers. If we are generous and count non-climate researchers with relevant expertise, we get 140 people who would still agree with signing the petition. And 280 of those who signed the petition have stated they would not do so again (of course this doesn't factor in all of the scientists who dismissed the petition as garbage in the first place).

280 > 140

But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Now thirty people is too small a sample to be representative, but it's enough to make one reconsider the validity of this petition. Of course there are many other reasons: the disingenuous way they put their "research" out (pretending to be an NAS paper), the fact that their "research review" did not actually review the vast majority of climate research, the fact that many of the names that have been added to the petition are fakes, which the organizer, Robinson, admits, "there's no way of filtering out."

Anyway, there a lot of good reasons to doubt the validity of the Oregon Petition, but my main point was that even if it were entirely valid, it in no way supports your contention that, "The majority CLEARLY says global warming is bogus." The petition states,

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."

So anyone who does not believe that humans will cause catastrophic heating in the foreseeable future, could honestly agree with that statement. That does not mean they think "global warming is bogus."

Paul will get back to you, mantis, right after his head finishes exploding (always wanted to write that...).

I plan on burning a few tires in my back yard on Saturday to help with the live earth agenda.

The only problem with Vietnam was we didn't stick it out.

Partially correct. The other problem was that politicians were getting in the way of winning the war, by imposing too many restrictions (many of them quite absurd) on the troops in Vietnam. Kinda like the Dhimmicrats in Congress wanna do to our troops now.

You might want to look at history, Publicus. How many times since the end of Vietnam has a Democrat sat in the Oval Office? Twice. Once because Nixon was an idiot and once because we thought the Cold War was over and the Democrats weakness on national security didn't seem to matter.

National security matters again, and if the Dhimmicrats don't wake up, they'll face another long stretch without a President of their party.

Which suits me just fine.

Oh, good Lord, Leeward is back.

Turn off the fans, we won't need them, Leeward's spinning will create a nice breeze to keep us cool.

There are Spinal Tap moments with this overwrought Live Earth concert and I think Nigel Tufnel sums it up best:

It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever....

The IPCC's consensus claim has also been challenged and the IPCC has not released the names of the scientist who agree with their published position. The IPCC says it will release the names this fall.

In a number of articles I have linked to before several scientist who were once onboard the IPCC have since distance themselves from it's conclusions. It will be interesting to take 30 names from the IPCC list and see how many really support the IPCC's published position and how many are actually "climate" scientists. We know that many of the computer molders are mathematicians and physicists, so I guess we can throw out their names.

The real question is who's right, not how many are right or wrong.