So your message is to use more energy and create more pollution?

Are asthma, respiratory disease, acid rain, nitrous oxide pollution, mercury and all those other by-products of coal and fossil fuel use also made up?

How about the cutting off of mountaintops in places you don't live - so you can keep your lights on? Is that your idea of responsibility?

You can see that clearly from Google satellites if you can stand to look at it - giant scars upon the earth of square miles each that pollute the entire watersheds.

And yet, you want us not to be concerned?

Whatever happened to protecting Mother Earth - have you thrown that under the bus along with your empathy and compassion? You know, you are allowed to be a rightie without buying 100% of their radical talking points....after all, you are not in Congress yet (they can't do anything their leader, Boner, doesn't tell them to).

So glad I've still got Christmas lights hanging outside. Perhaps I'll turn them on.

Stuart,true to the leftist mantra has again decided to crap on his homeland and ignore the true rape of the planet that has occured and still is occuring in Russia,China,and many Third World countries.
During the brief period of openess after the fall of the Soviet Union there were some photo essays in book form on what the communists left as a legacy to the Earth.I have them at home.Beyond belief.Stuart like most of his kind conveniently ignores the communist degradation of the environment.
Aside from communists,massive destruction of the environment has taken place in Brazil,Indonesia,Madagascar,and India.
What say Stuart?I don't expect an answer from the provocateur who has entered this site like a bedbug.

I am reminded of a time when we were divvying up new ofice space. Most wanted a water view and I wanted a city view. As someone there put it "Some people prefer nature's miracles, others prefer man's accomplishments"

Joe, since when does our abuse of this land and much of the world have anything to do with someone else doing it worse?

That seems beneath your debating skills!

C'mon, come up with something better!

Let me try one on you. Where do you think much of the coal that is burned at the top of the Bay comes from?

Answer: Many places, but much from Columbia in S, America where it is mined in a horrible fashion and with terrible human rights abuses...

Other coal comes from Venezuela, that socialist place you so abhor. Please thank Mr. Chavez for his coal.

Fact is, Mr. Joe, we are 5% of the world population using over 25% of the worlds resources - that means destroying many other places IN ADDITION to our own home.

I was taught not to poop where I eat. I was also taught not to poop where others eat.

Now, come back with something better than the fact that Russia is an environmental nightmare - that is not relevant, especially since we are also sucking up their oil and gas.

How about telling us why we should put up with dirty air (about 1/3 of the people in the US breath very dirty air), water, disease and other problems caused by excess fossil fuel use?

Start with that, and then we can go on.

"and ignore the true rape of the planet that has occured and still is occuring in Russia,China,and many Third World countries."

So true, Joe. That's one of the reasons why the virtual moratorium on new oil drilling here in the US is so misguided. By banning it here, we're leaving it for other countries who have far less respect for the environment.

On the day that magic energy source is found to replace fossil fuels, I'll lift a (non-alcohol) glass of champagne with the greenest of the greenies.

Until then, drill, baby, drill!

Monique, how about addressing the actual issue?

Are you with Dick Cheney who says Conservation is a personal virtue, but NOT part of a reasonable energy policy?

Or, are you with many of us who say that conservation and energy efficiency is the largest single thing we can do (both personally and as a nation) to stretch our supplies of all forms of energy and cut down our pollution?

Whether you care about GW or not is a moot point. But whether you care about clean air, water and land is not!

Stuart-In case you haven't noticed we have huge coal reserves.Same with natural gas.We get most of our imported oil from Canada.You make allegations,but I doubt their accuracy.
Interesting how you blow off the destruction of the environment in other countries so easily.The US started developing environmental protection laws in the 60's.
Why are you so hateful towards your own country?
What precisely are you PERSONALLY willing to give up to help the people around the world you care so much about?
We consume more energy because we developed this country without a colonial empire of any importance,except for the carryovers from the Spanish-American War.
I guess you oppose nuclear power also,right?

Joe, I lived in the areas of TN, WV and other states where the coal is mined.

I am all for Nat Gas - it produces VASTLY less pollution, does not cut mountaintops off and is very easy to use.

But when it comes to coal, this is a very crass fuel and involves vast environmental destruction - as well as pollution of our water and air. We should not outlaw it, but we should base our future plans and plants on cleaner fuels including nat gas.

Consumption of energy, Joe, is measured per capita and has nothing to do with where you get it from. Folks in Texas (Bush/Cheney country) use about 8 times as much as the average European. Here in RI and New England we are doing pretty well and approaching those low European rates - we use only about 50% to 100% more than most Europeans.

BUT, that is because we are paying attention to it - such as this message from Brady. If we took the attitude of the right, we will simply fight more wars for oil, cut off more mountaintops and pollute more.

I'm not making this up! Here is the quote from President Bush Press Sec.
-----------------------------------
Q Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life.
-----------------------------------

Protect the American way of life including Hummers, McMansions, pollution, degrading environments, etc????

No way.....he was wrong. Luckily, the current admin would not respond in the same selfish way.

I'm tiring of always having serious arguments here-when I was growing up in a distinctly non-elite part of Brooklyn back in the 50's,we heated with coal.I always loved the smell of coalsmoke on a cold winter's day while planning the destruction of the guys from the next block.That involved snowballs packed with clinker ash and wet down and re-packed-it was like throwing a ball of concrete.
Amazingly we all survived.
Stuart-you didn't address nuclear.Inconvenient?

I am also intimate with coal, as my family were italian coal miners from Hazelton and Reading, PA.

They also become grocers there, and many are buried in the local church cemetery up there....stones discolored by coal dust and pollution.

Coal was a miracle and largely fueled our ascent into the modern world. I don't doubt that. But I am more of a futurist - looking forward rather than backward.

I also was in the coal business for some of my life, as well as many other energy ventures, so I am not speaking out my butt.

As to Nuclear, I have followed it closely for many decades. My interest is in the total cost and life cycle of any energy source. When they built all the current plants, they promised that the waste issue would be solved before they had excess waste. That was a lie, and now - 40 years later - they are almost no closer to a real (cost effective) solution than they were then. That, to me, is a lie of the worst kind. I don't want to hear that the cost of nuke generated electric is 6 cents a KWH, when future costs of dealing with the waste could triple that. Let me know, then, that the cost is 18 cents a KWH - which is more than we pay for Portsmouth generated wind power.

So, I'm for nukes...at least in the form of fusion and in the form of entire product life cycles that can be proven and cost out to me. But there is none now, which is why the government had to pass special bills insuring nuclear industry with our tax money. I know you can't be for that type of government funded approach.

Well,Stuart-you just about did it all,didn't you?And if you're italian,where did you get off calling me an anti-semite when I'm a jew by background.Anyone can call out their own,or didn't you know that?
Are you a real person?
It seems you have an answer for everything.
Methinks you're an amalgam developed by a neighboring left wing site.
I could be wrong,though.
BTW some of my family married up with italians around Allentown many years back.

Monique- to the central point- would it matter to you that global warming exists-whether manmade or from natural causes. Do you just want to score poltical points or are you interested in a more profound discussion about what humankind can do to adapt to climate change? So what that research has been compromised. Aren't you more concerned with what we need to do? Let Justin leave his lights on. But if we are facing a new climate reality( manmade or whatever) what are the smart and forward thinking responses we need to make?

David S:

This is all about one thing: a scientific theory that hypothesizes that man is causing the planet to warm because of the greenhouse gases that we generate. That theory had called for the planet to warm by 3.8 degrees since 1750 (or pick a year) by now. It has only warmed by 1.4 degrees. The theory, then, has already proven itself wrong. And this is not even taking into consideration the impact of the shady data dealings and myriad of temperature stations located on hot roofs, by jet engines, etc., etc. If those were properly factored, it's entirely possible that the global temp has risen by even less than 1.4 degrees.

The answer to one of your questions, then - do I believe that the planet is warming - was in the post itself: yes, the planet has warmed 1.4 degrees fahrenheit over the course of the last 200 years (stipulating no shady data).

Next, is man or Mother Nature responsible? The exact answer to that question, while not well publicized, is acknowledged by all: man generates 6% of greenhouse gases on Earth, Mother Nature generates the other 94%.

Finally, the answer to your second question: this is not at all about making political points. This is about not implementing exhorbitantly expensive, lifestyle-and-economy ending solutions (because that is what has been called for - an 83%-100% abatement of manmade greenhouse gases) to address a phenomenon described by a theory that has already been proven wrong by its own criteria and which, in view of the puniness of our role, may not even solve the problem.

Stuart (what a name for an 'Itlo') the enviroweenie movement was kuel for a while but we are moving on. Besides the enviroweenie girls are skanks who don't shave or shower, and they NEED both.

The scientific backround of those in this trendy movement, frauds, cheats, "data tweakers" and all, can be summed up in the recent post I read from a "let'm freeze in the dark" enviroweenie, to wit: "Gee, why can't we have 'generators' turned by electricty" in response to a (how DARE THEY) comment about where the power will come from to charge those cute electric cars. Also, a comment from a sign carrying dingbat the words "I don't like nuclear power, electricity is better". Just think, THEY may be in charge 'till November anyway.

I ALWAYS take my scientific advice from moron football players who proudly display their "certificates of attendance" at the college and/or university of their choice.

"where the power will come from to charge those cute electric cars"

Tchaah!! We'll just have to put an electric socket in the garage ...

Well,they could always chain Sheldon Whitehouse and Henry Waxman to treadmills to produce electricity.
Or capture the windpower of Congress.