I see that the Sydney Morning Herald is now publishing funky conspiracy theories. Alan Anderson informs us that Kyoto is nothing but a Euro-commie plot:
Of course, everyone who is familiar with the Kyoto Protocol knows what it really is: a brazen attempt by the EU to compensate for its competitive disadvantage (the result of socialist economic policies) by hobbling the United States economy.
I like the way Anderson uses the "everyone who is familiar with X knows" locution to avoid offering any actual arguments or evidence in support of his position. I checked the Wikipedia page on Kyoto and strangely enough found no support for Anderson's theory. In fact, pretty well all the industrialized countries except Australia and the US are signing. This seems to be inconsistent with Anderson's position. Why have all these countries fallen for the EU's dastardly plot if everyone knows about it? It's a mystery.
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The opinions at Razor have a value in direct proportion to the welcome that dissenting, or even consenting, comments receive from the over-opinionated and under-educated Anderson - none.
The Herald could get a clue about the value of blogging from better examples elsewhere, couldn't it?
Now you can insult me all you want John, but I have to point out that I almost always respond to dissenting comments on my personal blog and I respond without fail to dissenting emails.
Unfortunately, the SMH decided not to allow comments on my site. Personally I would have loved to have them.
Ps - I have posted a rebuttal on my site, leading readers to this article on the topic.
How exactly can you be over-opinionated?
And an under-educated lawyer? Last time i checked they had to spend a few years at Uni to get that qualification, and i think the odd year here or there at Uni qualify's as educated.
Say Alan, fair comment that it's the Herald's not your policy on comments and feedback, but have another lash at the guilty party would you please? As to James' question: anyone is over-opinionated James when, as one example, they publicly opine on an area that is beyond their education and outside their expertise. Now if you're not entirely sure why anyone should be suggesting that climate science is likely to be beyond the scientific grasp of a lawyer then I would recommend to you not a political or think tank or lobbying website but instead the (much derided by the ignorant) IPCC, most accessible at here - go ahead, don't be shy, have a look! - which really does represent a comprehensive and honest attempt to collect in one place the gist of our current best scientific understanding of climate. Also, to demonstrate that opinions are easy to come by, in opposition to Alan's approving citation of Pat Michaels in his response to Tim at The Razor, here is another climate scientist's opinion of Pat Michaels: "He has published little if anything of distinction in the professional literature, being noted rather for his shrill op-ed pieces and indiscriminate denunciations of virtually every finding of mainstream climate science." from Disinfopedia , a site which you will find to have many opinions different to the Cato Institute's. So everybody's got opinions - but to all those who would casually claim that scientists must be fools and their opinions on climate change "political" or "vested interest", or any other such rude nonsense, I'd recommend the IPCC site above as a starting point (before putting mouth and opinions into loud gear).
Tim and all, I feel bad about those naked URLs and lack of paragraphing above - but the offered tags don't work for me and nor is my name and email address being remembered (as the tick-box promises). Is it only me, and Opera 7.51, that things don't work for?
The remembering stuff works for me with Firefox and should work with any browser unless you have cookies turned off.
Tags are just standard html tags like <p>. You can use the preview to see what things look like. I'll fix up your comment when I get home tomorrow.
Since when was the wikipedia entry a coprehensive treatise on the politics of kyoto? Surely you can see that there might be political reasons why europeans are pushing kyoto.
A wikipedia entry is good evidence for an arguement that starts with "Of course, everyone who is familiar...".
Surely you can see that there might be political reasons why europeans are pushing kyoto.
Of course, but extrapolating that to "a brazen attempt by the EU to compensate for its competitive disadvantage (the result of socialist economic policies) by hobbling the United States economy" is like going from "some people didn't like JFK" to the full blown grassy knoll conspiracy theories.