You declare that governments are all bad, and thus that genocide really is nothing new. As though there are no degrees of bad that a government can fall under. Gaddafi was going to commit a widespread genocide against his opposition. Your defense for not stopping it amounts to observing that America's congress doesn't care about the American people either, so they are just as bad and no sense trading one bad government for another.

You downplay genocide because you want to take pot shots at NATO and the west to point out that yes, they are bad and have done evil things too.

Put on our big boy pants and face the real world. Every nation the world over has done horrible, terrible things to masses of people. America is not special in that regard. In order to try and make live better for people, sometimes that means working against a common enemy, like the rebels are working with NATO to remove Gaddafi. Removing Gaddafi doesn't guarantee a golden age for Libyan people. It just aborts the guaranteed retaliatory genocide Gaddafi would have enacted without his defeat, and a slim hope for a better future that was impossible without Gaddafi's removal. That is a good thing, however bleak the circumstances may be.

An honest question. During Gaddafi's revolution, were all his supporters rallying in the streets demanding the basic freedom of democratic process? That would seem a very important distinction or commonality.

Nice try, but your not back pedaling fast enough. Here is the context you responded to, and I called you out on:

The problem with Libya was that it had a stable, successful socialist economy

Doesn't look stable to me. Recall that the rebellion predated the foreign powers.

MaxWell Demon:Well, it was stable in the sense that without the help of NATO, Gaddafi would probably have been able to stop the rebellion. Yes, it would not have been good for the people, but since when do any governments care about the people

You down play genocide by colloquially referring to it as "it would not have been good for the people, but since when do any governments care about the people". What's more, you do it in the context of a discussion were stability is advocated as the one benefit for Libyan people of remaining under Gaddafi versus an unknown future with the NATO backed opposition.

That is evil, even if you are too ignorant to have intended it.

I see what you did there, very clever and funny.

Well, except that part where the Syrian people are bleeding and dying for the same lack of intervention.

Oh, and except for the fact that 25% of Syria's revenues come from oil exports...

When do stupid, ignorant, and flat out false remarks about evil dictators murdering their people become funny?

Well, it was stable in the sense that without the help of NATO, Gaddafi would probably have been able to stop the rebellion.

You realize that Gaddafi's own representatives at the UN agreed with you? They were well agreed that Gaddafi was hours away from initiating his genocide of the opposition. It was then, at the urging of the Arab League that the UN requested the assistance of member nations, and NATO volunteered to protect the Libyan civilians.

You are quite correct to observe that without NATO's stepping in, Gaddafi would have quickly stabilized his control of Libya.

You are quite evil to insist that would have been a good thing for the Libyan people.

An argument from authority is not a fallacy as long as the authority is a legitimate expert on the subject and there is a consensus among the majority.

And how many authorities are there who are legitimate authorities in ALL of the required fields to declare that human CO2 emissions have caused the last century of warming? It spans virtually every scientific discipline that there is. There is meaningful individual consensus on specific, isolated facts. It has indeed been warming over the last 100 years. Human's have indeed been releasing measurable levels of CO2. CO2 is indeed a GHG that contributes to warming. I'm afraid however, that there is no legitimate expert and majority consensus that those individual pieces prove unprecedented and potentially catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is underway.

The legitimate experts that tell us the last 100 years have been warming equally have records showing similarly high temperatures within the last 2k years, with temperatures previously dropping as quickly as they are warming today(see even Mann's own corrections to his previous work). That seems to argue against the last 100 years of warming indicating catastrophic AGW is underway.

The legitimate experts that tell us that humans are emitting measurable levels of CO2 each year also tell us that those are a mere 3% of the natural emissions our planet produces every year. That seems to argue against our CO2 emissions being proof that catastrophic AGW is eminent.

The legitimate experts that tell us that CO2 is a powerful GHG also tell us that it is responsible for 10-25% of the greenhouse effect, while water vapor accounts for better than 70. Combine that with the small contribution humans make to natural CO2 emissions, and it is hardly compelling that catastrophic AGW is upon us.

The tricky part about science is cross-disciplinary studies and a failure to recognize uncertainties in results that get picked up as input from another discipline. The IPCC has tried to get around that with committees of experts, but it seems to have only managed to add the additional problem of politics into the mix.

Agreed on them both needing to be accounted for. Why is it then that a google scholar search for scientific studies on increases in atmospheric CO2 do NOT include volcanoes, or ANY other natural sources, and instead try and correlate only human emissions to to measured atmospheric CO2 increases?

How about the IPCC's projections for atmospheric CO2 levels? They too include the built in presumption that the only variation in the carbon cycle is human emissions. That may be useful as a comparison number to say the difference humans might make, all other things ignored. It doesn't tell us anything about the overall human contribution though. A 1% shift in natural sinks and sources, which we understand poorly, throws a wrench in everything.

The science that is settled is that things have been warming the last 1-200 years, that CO2 is a GHG, and that human activity is about 3% of annual global CO2 emissions. The science that isn't settled is EVERYTHING tying those together in any quantitative manner. Our future actions rely entirely on just how much of the past and future warming is contributed to by human vs. natural activity, and one other piece of the science that is well agreed upon is that we do NOT understand the role of the natural carbon cycle and climate change very well at all.

Ah, but the scientific "consensus" is that we DON'T really understand the carbon cycle, is it not? Go do a google scholar search on the subject, half the papers are studies on why there is such discrepancy in past results. The other half that try and make claims like yours use absurd methodologies, like trying to find the correlation between human CO2 emissions and changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. That might sound like a decent study, save for the consideration that human CO2 emissions are 3-4% of natural emissions, so if natural emissions(or sinks for that matter) vary at all, the human contribution is all but lost in the noise. I've a very simple theory why their results are inconsistent and vary so much, the 3% human contribution being looked at is getting lost in the noise of the other 98% that is being ignored.

As for clouds, I have problems with arguing that it is separate from water vapor AND with any study using them as a net positive feedback. Maybe I'm relying too much on my own experience(anecdote), but I understood clouds to be inextricably linked to water vapor, almost as though being virtually the same thing in many cases. Additionally, I've never found a day to generally be warmer for the presence of clouds, making them as a positive feedback a hard thing to swallow.

I agree with your logic, but I think you misunderstand the science of it.

Human CO2 emissions are about 3-4% that of naturally occurring emissions. CO2 accounts for about 10-25% of the greenhouse effect. If we want to look at cost effective solutions to global warming, even catastrophic global warming, we need to know how much impact cutting our emissions is going to have. The evidence is very strong that the trillions of dollars it would cost, every year, to cut out our emissions in half is probably better spent on mitigation measures to live with the rising temperatures that are coming. Furthermore, that is assuming that cutting trillions of dollars out of the global economy can done with out triggering WW3, which seems at least equally as likely as our continued emissions triggering irreversible catastrophic climate change. As a matter of fact, WW3 would seem liable to cause it's own irreversible environmental damages.

Right, volcano emissions must be insignificant compared to human emissions, since they are a mere 1% of what humans emit. Before reading any further, think hard about whether or not you accept that logic, it seems pretty solid.

Here's the trick, human's emit 3-4% as much CO2 as natural sources. If the above logic still holds, we might almost dismiss human CO2 emissions out of hand as insignificant, right?

The reality is that human CO2 emissions, despite being tiny, are special in that they fall outside the earth's natural cycles. The real question is, how much impact does that small 3-4% contribution we add make on a grand scale. To answer that we need to understand what kind of flux there is in natural CO2 emission and absorption, which is openly admitted to be poorly understood, it is the consensus, if one likes that kind of phrase. AFTER that is understood, we can begin to estimate the impact of the whatever net increase in CO2 we are causing has on temperature. That means understanding the role of water vapor, as it accounts for ~70% of the greenhouse effect while CO2 is a comparatively meager 10-25%. And, once again, the 'consensus' for those that like that phrase, is that the role of water vapor is poorly understood, so much so that different climate models aren't even agreed when to use water vapor as a positive or negative feedback...

Sorry, I'm just some ignorant, unscientific heathen trying to understand things out loud.

Did you miss the part where Clinton threatened to bomb them if they didn't give in? That's not an option anymore.

It never was. North Korea's nukes haven't changed much, yet. The North's conventional, 50's era, long range artillery was already sufficiently stocked and positioned to turn Seoul into a million little craters on a moments notice.

On the one hand you have a messy deal full of threats and bribes, on the other, NK gets the bomb. If you prefer the latter, you got it.

You've misrepresented the problem. North Korea gets the bomb on BOTH hands. That's trouble guys arguing like you seem to miss. When a dictator says, I only committed this terrible thing because of X, they are generally LYING. The truth is they commit their crimes because it benefits them, whether condition X is met or not doesn't matter one bit.

In addition, the level of isolationism in the US is frankly frightening. It's nothing like North Korea, of course, but there are a LOT of Americans who are incredibly insular. It isn't as bad as some of the numbers suggest--the very few Americans having a passport is more a testimony to the fact that you have to go farther to cross a border than you do in Europe--but it's bad. Most people in the US know effectively nothing about modern international affairs, and only a small percentage know anything about international history. During the presidential election, for example, then-candidate Obama expressing his willingness to go into Pakistan if necessary was a relatively small bit of trivia here, and most people had no freaking clue how upset his statements to that effect made pretty much everyone in Pakistan. Fast-forward a few years, and you see the consequences of that ignorance--the public's response to Pakistan's being upset with the actual raid isn't "We know how big a deal this was for you, we felt we had to do it, and we'll make it up to you," it was "if you're upset it must be because you were hiding Osama!"

Your showing your own ignorance. You need to follow Pakistan's papers more closely. The JUI-F political party had it's members standing up in Pakistan's National Assemblies demanding to know why the military failed to protect a muslim hero like Osama Bin Laden, because clearly he could not have been where he was without the ISI or military's knowledge. So, it's not just American's ignorant of Pakistani politics that believe there were officials in Pakistan that were hiding him, elected Pakistani politicians believed so as well, and they deemed him a hero!!!(Google the JUI-F if you won't believe me)

It provides an international mechanism for justice and oversight of elections and regime change when countries are ready for those things. (The International Criminal Tribunals and later the International Criminal Court, for example.) It also determines whether wars are legal or illegal under International law

Right, like the ICC convictions of Omar Al-Bashir and Gadhafi. How is that working out so far?
Justifying wars like they authorized action in Libya?

The UN is petty political maneuvering, just on a grand scale and with callous disregard for the lives of people.

It sounds a lot hippie.

How is it helping to never have any consequences when a nation deliberately, repeatedly and blatantly violates everything the UN stands for? It is a slave state, where the population is callously used up as so many food powered robot slaves. Those born with disabilities are still put to work in the fields most suited them, guinea pigs in testing the lethality of their chemical weapons research program. That's right, an escaped military officer explained how watching a fellow officer struggle with giving up one of his children to the 'cause' was a major reason he eventually fled the country.

Aside from how North Korea treats it's own people(which is unforgivable enough of itself), there is also it's pursuit of nuclear weapons, and it's continued assaults and attacks against South Korea's assets and people as well.

You ask what good can come from shunning North Korea? I demand what justification you think there is for dignifying a nation acting so horrifically by welcoming them as diplomatic equals. Our differences are not just cultural or regional disagreements, it is about the most widespread human rights violations and war crimes our world has seen since Stalin.

Clinton's goodies included offering them 2 nuclear reactors and enormous supplies of oil bought and paid for with American money. Basically, offering billions of dollars of aid and 2 nuke plants for their previous bad behavior. Isn't the lesson that threatening and bullying America is a good way to get paid handsomely?

Are you serious or just trolling? Once again, Mann's own comments on his reconstruction:
The EIV reconstructions suggest that temperatures were relatively warm (comparable with the mean over the 1961–1990 reference period but below the levels of the past decade) from A.D. 1000 through the early 15th century, then fell abruptly.

So, in 1500 absolute temperatures were comparable to those from 1961-1990. That means over the intervening 400 years temperatures cooled and warmed back to where they started around 1500. The cooling after 1500 was no more or less abrupt than the warming leading up to the 1960-1990 comparable temperature range.

Get your head on straight and accept that Mann's research clearly shows that cooling after 1500 was just as abrupt and anomalous as the warming that brought temperatures back to what they used to be in 1500.

I know, it makes it harder to persuade people to believe AGW is real and important, but denying what the basic evidence says does that too.