Henry Payne for October 06, 2015

I just shake my head at Payne.

Well, the toon is half right; VW did knowingly build cars that pollute. The other half, not so much. Well, not at all. Deniers simply don’t want to have to take the slightest personal responsibility for what they’re doing.

Michael wme is being sarcastic. Re-read his post and the link he posted. He does this a lot.

Michael wme is good at what he does. Are you a fan of Douglas Adams?

I still don’t get why there is such a resistance to the fact of global warming? Why is this political and why is this even an argument? Is it due to the consumption of fossil fuels?

Don’t sweat it too much. I believe I’ve gone off on Michael as well before someone pointed it out to me.

I don’t deny climate change. Something is happening and it’s happening for the worse. Here’s where I think the problem is though: the two parties have turned the issue into one of their go to polarization issues. The worse thing that could have happened to the environment has happened: it’s become politicized. Leave aside climate change for a moment. There are numerous reasons for working to develop cleaner energy sources, environmentally friendly tech, and safeguarding natural resources. Those issues never get discussed though by either side.

Take Jack75287’s comment. I could say to him, ‘okay. But how does that preclude developing better, cleaner energy sources? We could get ourselves off the oil standard making us less dependent on the Middle East, China, and Russia. We could help jump start several industries here in America.’ Probably some other arguments as well. Do you think anyone is going to challenge him that way though? I doubt it. Instead there will probably be name calling, links to graphs which come from sources that are suspect, or recitations from some manifesto. Someone might even say his momma so ugly. My point here is that 98% of the climate change debate isn’t about the environment. It’s about who’s right. I don’t mean to imply this is what you are doing. But I would offer that if you want to have an impact on this issue, don’t redirect your question. Find an argument that they can’t dismiss because of party rhetoric. Better to have both sides buy in to the solution regardless of their reasons for doing so then these endless debates which have never and probably will never accomplish a thing.

@ OldCoal

I must have missed those posts. Sorry. I used to get all sarcastic and snarky here as well. Still do sometimes though I shouldn’t. But frankly all the snark isn’t solving anything either. And snark’s been going on in these debates a lot longer than either of us have been posting.

The EPA is a government agency. For any government agency to exist, it needs a problem. Since clean air and clean water are important, they exist. But they have gone too far in this country (US). They will not admit “mission accomplished” and voluntarily shut themselves down. So when “global warming” came along they knew the funding would never stop. Now they are a monster.

The difference here is that what VW did was illegal and immoral. While “Climategate” was an overblown false controversy that took some emails out of context to try to discredit climate change.http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/