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GENERAL DISCUSSIONS
Get ready for "Earth that was"...
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 3:36 AM
HANS
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 3:47 AM
PHYSICSCHICK
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:01 AM
WINTERFELL
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:09 AM
BROWNCOAT1
May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:26 AM
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: Fascinating link PhysicsChick. I must question the validity of the first link though, the one where unnamed sources in the Pentagon have developed all these Doomsday scenarios from the issue of climate change. I first question who these supposed "analysts" are, and what qualifies them to make these "predicitions". I also have to question how this info leaked out of the Pentagon if the Bush administration was trying to supress it. I do not doubt that our planet suffers from climate change due to pollution and the damage to the ozone, but to what extent is the damage? It is odd that a European paper would publish this article. Seems that if this was legit, Kerry would not hesitate to use it in his arsenal to destroy confidence in Bush and pave his way to the White House. "May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:28 AM
KALATHENA
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:34 AM
DECKROID
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:46 AM
DRAKON
Quote:Originally posted by Hans: Surprisingly, this report was produced by senior Pentagon insiders, rather than Greenpeace or some other NGO. Not surprisingly, it's being surpressed by the US government. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 4:49 AM
KNIBBLET
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: I also have to question how this info leaked out of the Pentagon if the Bush administration was trying to supress it.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:01 AM
Quote:Originally posted by kalathena: (stuff cut) I really would love to find out more about the effects of an industrial society on climate and how the climate is going to change in the future because of it. It's a tough one to predict, for sure because we don't have any precedent to look at.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:09 AM
HERO
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:11 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Drakon: And obviously not very well. If they posted it on the web, and you found it to tell everyone, then they did a really lousy job of suppression.
Quote:Originally posted by Drakon: It should be noted that military thinking is always going to be the most pessimistic. That is how you prevent exactly those worse case scenarios from coming about, by being ready for them and taking action to prevent them. You want a military that expects and plans for the worse. If you are wrong, great. The worst did not happen. And if it is something less than the worse, in most cases you can deal with that as well. "Wash, where is my damn spaceship?"
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:33 AM
AJ
Quote:Originally posted by Hans: Quote:Originally posted by Drakon: It should be noted that military thinking is always going to be the most pessimistic. That is how you prevent exactly those worse case scenarios from coming about, by being ready for them and taking action to prevent them. You want a military that expects and plans for the worse. If you are wrong, great. The worst did not happen. And if it is something less than the worse, in most cases you can deal with that as well. You're absolutely right that the report is based on worst case scenerios. But when that scenerio pretty much means the end of civilization, isn't it worth taking seriously? The US government is willing to spend billions on a questionable missile defence program to defend against questionable threats. Rightly or wrongly, Bush is taking action based on a worst case scenerio. Why not do the same for environmental threats? Could it be because it would mean taking action against the big oil companies he is so firmly in bed with? Hans
Quote:Originally posted by Drakon: It should be noted that military thinking is always going to be the most pessimistic. That is how you prevent exactly those worse case scenarios from coming about, by being ready for them and taking action to prevent them. You want a military that expects and plans for the worse. If you are wrong, great. The worst did not happen. And if it is something less than the worse, in most cases you can deal with that as well.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 6:15 AM
Quote:The Observer is a very real, major newspaper. This was not some Matt Drudge article. You seem to be doubting the very existence of the Pentagon paper itself. This story has been reported at many other news sources. Fortune magazine (hardly a left wing magazine) has picked it up and commented on it: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,582584,00.html If you read the first article, you'll see that the Pentagon report was written by Andrew Marshall, a very well known bigwig in US goverment planning (he is a key person behind the missile defence plan). If this paper was 100% B.S., I think we'd have heard a denial by now. The reason it isn't headline news on CNN and the rest of the media just proves how good the White House is at surpressing bad news. You might find that european papers (and others) may sometimes have stories that don't get published in the US for various political reasons...not a very reassuring thought in the land of the free.
Quote:I also cannot imagine that the Bush Administration would put even a buck-fifty into this kind of research. He doesn't want it done; he doesn't want to know what the effects are. He's much more concerned about taking over the Middle East and making sure we're all safe from those horrifying commitment mongers in San Francisco.
Quote:Then again, if you recall, the Pentagon was also very worried about asteroids after a close encounter, (missed by some 6,000,000 miles) back in 1995. Released a paper, and after that, we got two movies about asteroids hitting the earth. (Still think Lucifer's Hammer would have been the best movie of them all.)
Quote:It should be noted that military thinking is always going to be the most pessimistic. That is how you prevent exactly those worse case scenarios from coming about, by being ready for them and taking action to prevent them. You want a military that expects and plans for the worse. If you are wrong, great. The worst did not happen. And if it is something less than the worse, in most cases you can deal with that as well.
Quote:You haven't been paying attention to what the Bushies have been doing to science have you? The EPA has scrapped several air and water reports after the White House "edited" them. The employees of the EPA have made several leaks after the administration "suppressed" studies. I wish I hadn't deleted the short list of interferences - frelling yesterday. Bush's idea of science can be summed up in a short sentence. "If it's good for Halliburton, it's good for the planet." He's so convinced that Jesus is coming soon, it doesn't matter what we do to the planet because everyone that matters will be elevated into the heavens for perpetual helpings at the salad bar.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:00 AM
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: I did not say that I doubted the existence of the paper, rather the qualifications of the person who was the "analyst". I still do, knowing it is Andrew Marshall.
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: The military, the Pentagon primarily, have teams that come up with possible scenarios and how to prepare for them all the time. Speaking as a former SpecOp soldier who has been in the Pentagon, there are specialists who work around the clock to prepare for nearly any scenario you can dream up and plans to deal w/ each. It is nice to know that they are ready for such things, even if the probability of such an event is nearly nonexistent.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:11 AM
Quote:I don't think Bush is trying to take over the Middle East either. Such a statement sounds alarmist. Defeating a potential threat and liberating one country is not annexing the Middle East.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 7:51 AM
Quote:Excuse me, but I don't consider surpressing a report as "being ready for such things". It takes more than an ignored report to make us ready to fight global warming. It takes scientific research. It means taking a tough stand on fuel emissions. Just because someone writes a report on something doesn't make us safer - you have to act on it. If the threat from global warming is legitimate and current, a report gathering dust on a pentagon shelf isn't going to help. Bush's attitude towards global warming is like his attitude towards WMDs in Iraq - pick and chose the evidence that supports your pre-determined stance, then ignore everything else.
Quote:Hmmmmmm....my Sarcasm Circuits still seem to be maladjusted. Must be that chronic lack of body language inherent in online communication.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:12 AM
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: Again, you seem to have misread what I wrote. I did not, nor would I ever say that supressing information is a way to prepare for anything. What I actually wrote was that a military and government that makes plans for scenarios to insure preparation is a wise course of action.
Quote:Originally posted by BrownCoat1: It is nice to know that they are ready for such things, even if the probability of such an event is nearly nonexistent.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:54 AM
Quote:...states that the military or government is "ready for such things", and my point was that a report that is not acted upon, and is instead surpressed, is hardly being "ready" for anything (assuming by the "things" you were including the possibility of catastrophic global warming). Global warming is not the kind of thing where, by the time a catastrophe is obvious, you can pull out a decade old report and say "look, we predicted this and can fix it!". Rather, it's the kind of thing where if you believe there is a reasonable threat that it might occur you have to take action right now. By the time the catastrophe is obvious it's too late to go back in time and enact clean air legislation, force SUV makers to follow emmission standards, etc. Of course, if you believe that global warming falls in the category of events whose probability is nearly nonexistant, then there's not much point in preparing for that probability. However, I'm not going to turn this into a debate on the science behind the issue (we'll be here all day!).
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