Hypothetically guilt-free pseudo-liberal still-pollution global warming fighting

Bumper stickers, ever since the invasion of Iraq, proliferated into hood/deck stickers, door stickers and more.

Oh, sure, you might see an occasional pick ribbon sticker for a breast cancer survivor or something, but the invasion of Iraq and its yellow “Support the Troops” ribbons really ginned things up.
Meanwhile, some drivers, mainly but not only SUV owners, think they can buy themselves out of the consequences of global warming.

But many people believe a few dollars on a sticker can indeed buy social redemption, as this New York Times story about carbon offset bumper stickers illustrates.

Take Biff Cuthbert. Running an organic clam farm for a few years taught him all about being green. But when he recently needed a new vehicle to haul musical equipment for his folk band, as well as his two Akita dogs, Mr. Cuthbert ignored his environmental conscience and bought a cream-colored 2004 Land Rover, which gets 12 miles to the gallon.

Feeling a pang of conscience about driving such a gas-guzzler, Mr. Cuthbert paid $79.95 to Terrapass.com, a group that helps finance non-polluting solar, wind and methane-driven energy projects. In exchange, he got a sticker for his windshield verifying that he is offsetting some of the 16,766 pounds of carbon dioxide his Land Rover will emit this year.

"It rounds the edges off of the guilt a little bit, I guess," said Mr. Cuthbert, 62, of Guilford, Conn. "It's a little like having your cake and eating it too," Mr. Cuthbert said.

Web sites like terrapass.com, carbonfund.org, nativeenergy.com and self.org focus on automobile emissions because drivers can become aware of their carbon footprint every time they fill up. An average car produces about 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

What this is NOT, contrary to the mass media, is a way of buying oneself out, or of assuaging, one’s guilt over failure to actually do something concrete in either instance. Rather, in my opinion, it’s a form of intellectual and moral laziness.

It’s intellectual laziness for refusing to brainstorm what one might actually do to “support the troops” or produce less global greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond that, it’s moral laziness, above all for having some suspicion of what an appropriate action might be, prior to any brainstorming, but refusing to take that action.

Let’s take the carbon offsets first.

Basically, this is a rationalization for allowing oneself to continue to drive an SUV. Really, if you need that much room, there’s the option of a minivan which gets 50-100 percent better gas mileage. And, with sliding second-row doors and large rear lift-hatch doors, minivans are actually easier to load and unload than SUVs.

As for towing, sure, front-drive minivans don’t have the same torque as rear-drive SUVs. But, rear-drive fullsize vans do, and they still get better gas mileage than fullsize SUVs.

But, minivans, let alone fullsize vans, aren’t “cool.” So, the intellectually and morally lazy spend more on an SUV than on a van, and then spend $79 a year on a cheap bumper sticker to pretend to really be doing something about the environment.

Ditto, in spades, for the “Support the Troops” ribbons.

Have you even written a letter to an individual soldier, let alone indicated your willingness to actually sacrifice?

Would you support a tax hike or a budget cut sufficient to pay for this war, rather than making its costs part of a $500 million a year federal budget deficit? Would you support gasoline rationing, especially as prices continue to soar? To connect with the other theme here, would you get serious about driving your SUV less, if you own one?

Would you support a young relative of yours joining the military, knowing more troops are needed in Iraq? If someone in your family actually talks about signing up, would you try to keep others from talking him or her out of it?

A fair chunk of people who could be defined, if they were more politically active, as “liberal hawks,” have these ribbon magnets. So, too, do many “moderate squishes” and “undifferentiated blobs.” This is not just a phenomenon of “run Bush up the flagpole and salute” conservatives.

Jonah Goldberg -- more dishonesty about global warming

I guess Jonah figures that on the pages of National Review or the cyberpages of The Corner, he's dones enough lying on behalf of BushCo and the War in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich, etc.

Because he's now, in his latest syndicated column, switched his smoke and mirrors to global warning. Specifically, he's calling Al Gore a "scaremonger" for his new movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Jonah does admit global warming is happening. But, he downplays its severity through several tactics. One is through trying to play the old "balance" game by trotting out global warming-skeptic climatologists. That's when he talks about 60 climatologists writing Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Another, an oldie but a goodie, is talking about the temperature change of 1-2 degrees with the insinuation that's degrees Fahrenheit instead of degrees Celsuis, twice as much. So, here's what I e-mailed the schmuck:

First, Harper is the leader of Canada's Conservatives. By inserting strongly right-wing conservative evangelicals into positions in Ottawa where their anti-scientific "faith-based" stances have oversight over Canadian science policy, he's already shown his true colors. He doesn't need to learn much from Shruub.

And BFD about the 60 climatologists anyway, Jonah. I suppose Bjorn Lonmborg has 59 climatologist friends he was able to round up to pretend that global warming is no big deal.

And, in case you missed it, the case for global warming is actually worse — WORSE — than we once thought, as we now know smog particulates have partially offset warming in the past 50 years. But, cleaner fuels, factories and power plants are removing more particulates and reducing that offset.

As for the change, even MORE CONSERVATIVE climatologists say 1-2 degrees CELSIUS change over the current century.

Way to NOT TRANSLATE THAT into 2-4 degrees Fahrenheit. Example No. 972 of your intellectual dishonesty on this issue.

Update, April 26:
As evidence of the Bushism of Harper’s Conservative government, I now present the proof-bearing pudding. The Conservatives want to join BushCo’s “Kyoto-lite” climate group.

Canada's new Conservative government, which is openly skeptical about the Kyoto climate change protocol, said on Tuesday it backs a breakaway group of six nations that favor a voluntary approach to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Environmentalists said the comments about the partnership — which is being heavily promoted by Washington — show the Canadian government is not serious about tackling climate change.

Iranian oil blustering is getting downright Orwelian

I couldn’t but laugh when I read that George Orwel (sic) admitted that Iran has us, and the Strait of Hormuz to boot, perhaps, by the oily short hairs if President Shrub keeps his twitchy finger near the hair trigger of an attack on the Islamic Republic. (How’s that for a boatload of clichés, to boot?)

While discounting (Iranian President) Ahmadinejad’s seriousness in his Wednesday comments about the value of oil, Orwel conceded the oil industry could not do without the 2.5 million barrels that Iran exports daily.

“Ahmadinejad is trying to show his muscle so that the Bush administration can realize the consequences on the oil market of further confrontation with Iran,” Orwel said, adding that he fully expected Iran to threaten to cut off oil if the confrontation with the West continued.

While Ahmadinejad did not say he would use oil as a weapon in his dispute with the West, Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said last month the oil card was in play.

"If (they) politicize our nuclear case, we will use any means. We are rich in energy resources. We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world," he said, referring to the Straits of Hormuz.

What next? Some Aldus Huxley to warn about Venezuela?

IDer lying about National Geographic and Gospel of Judas

Noted on-the-sly Intelligent Designer Stephen Bainbridge claims National Geographic is “peddling heresy” for for its stories on the Gospel of Judas.

Well, he’s engaging in the same type of tactics and thought that led to people like him getting their legal heads on a plate in the Dover, Pa. ID-in-public-schools suit.

Here’s what I told him both on his blog comment space and via e-mail:

NG is NOT a religious magazine. Of course, since IDers obviously, as Dover demonstrated, don't know the difference between science and religion, or deliberately obscure the difference, or both, you either are too clueless to grasp that NG is not a religious magazine or else you are engaging in more Dover-type tactics.

In short, Professor Bainbridge, in either case you are again engaging in intellectual dishonesty.

Steve Snyder
Master of Divinity, 1992

Now, as the the theological background of the Gospel of Judas.

Dualism of some sort (evil vs. good gods, matter vs. flesh [cf. Judas being thanked by Jesus for “releasing” him from the fleshly prison) is a commonplace of Gnosticism. “Twinning” even becomes part of this dualism.

In fact, some Gnostic writings claim Thomas/Didymas (Aramaic and Greek for "twin") was Jesus' twin.

And many postulate his first name as Judas (Jude), as in the brother of Jesus associated elsewhere with the biblical book (unless you're an orthodox Catholic rejecting Jesus' brothers).

And, this Jude/-as is in some writings considered to be "that" Judas. Remember, Paul's authentic letters were written before any of the "orthodox" gospels.

What did European governments know about CIA renditions, when did they know it, and how much did they participate?

The question is raised in my mind by a story about the Khaled El-Masri rendition, reported in the Spring 2006 issue of Civil Liberties, the official magazine of the ACLU.

El-Masri claims that he is "90 percent" certain a man who interrogated him three times in Afghanistan was a German. That and other details of the story have me wondering whether some German intelligence agency was participating more in renditions than the government knew, or maybe even if Gerhard Schroeder DID know and Berlin's official hands are a lot dirtier than it wants to say.

Update: We may soon have the answer, as Germany’s three opposition parties have forced the opening of a Reichstag investigation. The leading party in the current ruling coalition, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, not pushing for the investigation doesn’t surprise me. But, that the Social Democrats, the party of former Chancellor (during the time of el Masri and other renditions) Gerhard Schroeder also not pushing for the investigation is a silence that speaks loudly.

Holy shit, the Hammer quits!!

This is a day to be happy, to quote Monty Python. And yet, for Democrats, it can't quite be. There's seven months left until the general election and DeLay won't be around (with his Abramoff albatross) to pin on individual GOP candidates.

Question: How much did Rove lean on him?