NOAA: Coolest Weather Since 2001 for US,Globe

[the iron horse]

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080313_coolest.html

 

[melon]

Correction: Coolest winter, not weather.

There's a big difference, since some climate change models argue that colder, more intense winters are a product of climate change. This isn't necessarily desirable, as it can wreak havoc on citrus crops in the South in certain years.

Of course, I should state that I'm in favor of continued scientific research, but I also do not think it should be an excuse for inaction. Most solutions offered by climate change scientists also have a very favorable result that would please national security experts too. It should make liberals and conservatives alike happy, but for different reasons.

 

[financeguy]

Most solutions offered by climate change scientists also have a very favorable result that would please national security experts too. It should make liberals and conservatives alike happy, but for different reasons.

I do wonder though, not for the first time, why it is that 'liberals' are associated with 'believing' in climate change and 'conservatives' with 'climate change denial'.

After all, why shouldn't conservatives be in favour of CONSERVING the environment, or is this another example of the hijacking of conservative philosophy by extremist pro-free market elements which really, at their core, aren't very conservative at all?

Another point I'd make in passing, is that the leftwing governments in the former Eastern Block weren't very conservative or caring regarding the environment. Actually, to this day, many of the globe's most notorious environment disaster zones can be found in the former Soviet Union.

It's one of the reasons why, even though I voted Green in the most recent Irish general election, I'd tend to be intensely sceptical of the left wing of the Green Party.

 

[the iron horse]

"I do wonder though, not for the first time, why it is that 'liberals' are associated with 'believing' in climate change and 'conservatives' with 'climate change denial'.


My first thought is why you did not repond directly to the info on the link posted.

My second thought...and I guess I might get flamed for this...but some conservatives (and Libertarians) seem to be more willing to search out info on a topic and not just be persuaded by the current propaganda.

 

[BVS]

Of course, I should state that I'm in favor of continued scientific research, but I also do not think it should be an excuse for inaction. Most solutions offered by climate change scientists also have a very favorable result that would please national security experts too. It should make liberals and conservatives alike happy, but for different reasons.

Exactly.

I do wonder though, not for the first time, why it is that 'liberals' are associated with 'believing' in climate change and 'conservatives' with 'climate change denial'.

After all, why shouldn't conservatives be in favour of CONSERVING the environment, or is this another example of the hijacking of conservative philosophy by extremist pro-free market elements which really, at their core, aren't very conservative at all?

Absolutely. In fact, some could argue that a lot of the modern environmental movement had it's beginnings in conservationalists who are very pro-hunting pro-gun. I find the right's avoidance of almost anything green very disturbing. In fact downright scary at times, I actually hear neo-cons use the Bible as a reason to be anti-green.

 

[Irvine511]

My second thought...and I guess I might get flamed for this...but some conservatives (and Libertarians) seem to be more willing to search out info on a topic and not just be persuaded by the current propaganda.

conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.

(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)

 

[financeguy]

Agreed, BVS, and I find Roger Scruton has interesting things to say on this particular issue of conservatives not embracing the environmental movement (and I will state, yet again, that I don't agree with Scruton on EVERYTHING, lest someone digs out some horrendously right-wing quote from Scruton to use against me. )

This is why we should not be surprised if the Conservative Party under David Cameron is finally becoming conscious of the message contained in its name. Conservatism and conservation are two aspects of a single long-term policy, which is that of husbanding resources. These resources include the social capital embodied in laws, customs and institutions; they also include the material capital contained in the environment, and the economic capital contained in a free but law- governed economy. The purpose of politics, on this view, is not to rearrange society in the interests of some overarching vision or ideal, such as equality, liberty or fraternity. It is to maintain a vigilant resistance to the entropic forces that erode our collective inheritance.

The conservative understanding of political action, as it was first articulated by Burke, is one that ought to appeal to environmentalists. Burke’s response to Rousseau’s theory of the Social Contract was to acknowledge that political order is like a contract, but to add that it is not a contract between the living only, but between the living, the unborn and the dead: in other words a relation of trusteeship, in which inherited benefits are conserved and passed on.

The living may have an interest in consuming the earth’s resources, but it was not for this that the dead laboured. And the unborn depend upon our restraint. Long-term social equilibrium, therefore, must include ecological equilibrium.

This thesis, which environmentalists are apt to express in terms of “sustainability”, is better expressed in Burke’s way. For Burke reminds us of a motive that arises naturally in human beings, and which can be exploited for the wider purpose of environmental and institutional conservation: namely, love. Human love extends to the dead and the unborn: we mourn the one and plan for the other out of a natural superfluity of good will. True social equilibrium arises when the institutions are in place that encourage that superfluity and channel it towards the maintenance of the social organism. The principal danger is that those institutions may be destroyed in the name of present emergencies, present appetites and the egregious needs of the merely living.

This emphasis on small-scale, observable and believable human motives is one of the strong points of conservative political thinking.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article640442.ece

 

[the iron horse]

conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.

(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)

And Liberals do not do this?

 

[BVS]

See financeguy, we can agree at times.

 

[financeguy]

conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.

(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)

Once again I'd probably have a slight issue with 'conservatives', per se, being associated with that kind of thinking.

 

[A_Wanderer]

conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.

(i mean, if we're just going to continue this line of thinking)

Yes, and lefties are objective reason based observers or at least much less prone to groupthink

 

[melon]

Once again I'd probably have a slight issue with 'conservatives', per se, being associated with that kind of thinking.

I think it might be unavoidable for Americans here to relate to "liberalism vs. conservatism" from anything more than an American mindset. I am aware of the various nuances of European politics, for instance, and I think it might just become mindbogglingly difficult to somehow include all the nuances in every discussion of "liberal vs. conservative" that we get here a lot. But I will say that I'll understand if non-Americans here get frustrated by that lack of nuance, as well. I'll try harder, in the future, to get that point across, although I'm sure to stumble some more in the future.

I have to say, at a very superficial glance, that I wish that the GOP resembled the U.K. Conservative Party more. They definitely don't seem like the bigoted party of Thatcher past.

 

[melon]

And Liberals do not do this?

I hate to say it, but I see the "groupthink" sometimes too, albeit it seems to be more hate-filled from the right-wing spectrum and more statist on the left.

 

[financeguy]

I think it might be unavoidable for Americans here to relate to "liberalism vs. conservatism" from anything more than an American mindset. I am aware of the various nuances of European politics, for instance, and I think it might just become mindbogglingly difficult to somehow include all the nuances in every discussion of "liberal vs. conservative" that we get here a lot. But I will say that I'll understand if non-Americans here get frustrated by that lack of nuance, as well. I'll try harder, in the future, to get that point across, although I'm sure to stumble some more in the future.

Well, yes, but actually - generally speaking - in the English speaking part of Europe, i.e., Britain and Ireland, 'conservative' is generally associated with the right wing, and 'liberal' generally equals left wing - much like in the US, but unlike in continental Europe.

So for an English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish person, the US nomenclature is pretty familar. I wasn't taking an issue with anything in your post specifically - I was just commenting on the general tendency for conservatives NOT to be associated with conservation of the environment - and probably, conservatives have themselves to blame for this.

 

[MadelynIris]

conservatives tend to seek out specious information that will justify their current lifestyles/prejudices/belief systems. information exists only to buttress a previously held belief, no matter how destructive, personally or socially.

I can't believe you just typed that, and certainly can't believe that you actually believe that.

 

[Irvine511]

And Liberals do not do this?

*everybody* does this.

(i was just following your initial line of thinking -- there are liberals and conservatives, and both are subject to good thinking and bad thinking)

 

[Irvine511]

I can't believe you just typed that, and certainly can't believe that you actually believe that.

i believe it insofar as the original poster wrote this:

[q]My second thought...and I guess I might get flamed for this...but some conservatives (and Libertarians) seem to be more willing to search out info on a topic and not just be persuaded by the current propaganda.
[/q]

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

(CBS) Self-avowed "P.R. agent for the planet" Al Gore says those who still doubt that global warming is caused by man - among them, Vice President Dick Cheney - are acting like the fringe groups who think the 1969 moon landing never really happened, or who once believed the world is flat.

The former vice president and former presidential candidate talks to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Confronted by Stahl with the fact some prominent people, including the nation’s vice president, are not convinced that global warming is man-made, Gore responds: "You're talking about Dick Cheney. I think that those people are in such a tiny, tiny minority now with their point of view, they’re almost like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the world is flat,” says Gore. "That demeans them a little bit, but it's not that far off," he tells Stahl.

 

[U2democrat]

I saw something on NBC (I'll look for a source) about how the Antarctic ice shelf is rising 1 degree each decade.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I think a huge chunk of it just broke off, sank-whatever. I heard something about that this week but I've been sick so it's all a fog, could be a NyQuil induced delusion