RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Russian Scientists Debunk Kyoto

Beliefnet poll of evangelicals: More value environment over abortion?

Generally speaking, however, evangelicals ranked traditionally progressive or Democratic causes as more important than traditionally conservative or Republican ones. Twenty three percent said their views had become less positive about Republicans, twice the number who said they’d soured on Democrats, though half of respondents said they had become less positive about both parties…

Combining those who labeled an issue “most important” or “very important,” the results were:

The economy (85%)
Cleaning up government (85%)
Reducing poverty (80%)
Improving public education/access to health care (78%)
Protecting the environment (70%)
Ending torture (68%)
Ending Iraq war (67%)
Ending abortion (61%)
Combating sex and violence in the media and entertainment (59%)
Illegal immigration (59%)
Stopping gay marriage (49%)
Helping Africa (48%)
Winning Iraq war (46%)
Fighting Islamic radicalism (58%)

Well, you said they "evangelicals."

Praise Father Algore!

Even among traditionally Republican voters, Environmentalism ranks pretty high. You may want to tell them they're practicing idolatry, G-Man...

John Coleman wants to sue Al Gore for fraud. Coleman, who founded the Weather Channel in 1982, thinks taking legal action against Al Gore would be a great "vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming." Coleman rejects the notion that people must take drastic actions to reduce their energy use.

Speaking at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on Monday, Coleman sharply chastised those who further global warming alarmism. Coleman believes that the station he founded has been captured by alarmists, such as the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen, who has advocated revoking the license of meteorologists that believe global warming can be explained by cyclical weather patterns and not human activity.

The majority of the scientific community seems to agree that humans are contributing to climate change. Do you think there's any merit to raising concerns about global alarmism? Would a lawsuit against Al Gore help the public determine fact from fiction?

Didn't the majority of the scientific community once believe that blacks were mentally and otherwise inferior to whites?

Good thing people didn't just accept that majority scientific opinion.

well if the majority of the scientific community believes it, it must be true!

the key phrase is "federal scientists"... blah blah blah... sycophants...

What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J.

He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming.

All Praise the Lord Highfather Algore and burn the heretics!

Wrong. The evidence is overwhelming among people who know what they're talking about (i.e., climatologists rather than hired engineers, Weather Channel CEOs, and right-wing pundits who see politics in every new scientific finding).

This fairy-tale town is stuck in the middle of a utopian struggle over renewable energy. The town council’s decision to require solar-heating panels has thrown Marburg into a vehement debate over the boundaries of ecological good citizenship and led opponents to charge that their genteel town has turned into a “green dictatorship.”

The town council took the significant step in June of moving from merely encouraging citizens to install solar panels to making them an obligation. The ordinance, the first of its kind in Germany, will require solar panels not only on new buildings, which fewer people oppose, but also on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs.

To give the regulation teeth, a fine of 1,000 euros, about $1,500, awaits those who do not comply.

Critics howled that the rule, which is to go into effect on Oct. 1, constituted an attack on the rights of property owners. The regional government in Giessen stepped in and warned that it would overturn the rule.

City officials in Marburg said, in turn, that they would take their case either to administrative court or all the way to the Hessian state capital, where they would try to get the state building code changed to protect their ordinance from officials in Giessen.

In the middle of this political chess match sit homeowners like Götz Schönherr.

From his deck, Mr. Schönherr can see the town’s famous hilltop Gothic castle as well as two of its three power-generating windmills. On his roof, a solar panel glints in the sunlight. He already uses the solar energy to heat his water, which has allowed him to turn off his boiler for roughly six months a year, a boon for his pocketbook but a decision he said he made for the sake of the environment.

And yet Mr. Schönherr opposes the new ordinance.

Mr. Schönherr had hoped to reinsulate his home, but to do so, and to satisfy the solar regulation, he would have to install a larger solar panel. It would cost him close to $8,000.

“That leads, in my case, and I would think in other cases as well, that people say, ‘Well, let’s just not reinsulate the roof,’ ” Mr. Schönherr said. “So it’s absolutely counterproductive.”

Officials in Giessen agree. “We have no problem with the use of solar energy,” said Manfred Kersten, press spokesman for the regional government in Giessen, “but this was a poorly constructed ordinance.”

Germany is one of the world’s top champions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting renewable energy. Thanks to hefty federal subsidies, the country is by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity.

Marburg, a historic university town where the Brothers Grimm once studied, is a model of enlightened energy production and consumption. In addition to the windmills and solar installations, the town’s utility company buys hydroelectric power from Austria, is transitioning its fleet of buses and other vehicles to natural gas and even lights footpaths with solar-powered lamps.

As a result, the Marburg dispute sometimes feels like an argument between the enlightened environmentalists and the really enlightened environmentalists.

“Marburg is already a leader when it comes to the use of solar energy, but up until now they’ve always tried to convince people rather than forcing them,” said Hermann Uchtmann, the opposition politician behind the “green dictatorship” charge who leads a local citizens political group, the Marburger Bürgerliste.

Like Mr. Schönherr, who is a member of the group, Mr. Uchtmann hardly fits the predictable mold of the Luddite opponent of renewable energy. He is a chemist at the local university who once built a solar-powered desalinization station for the town’s sister city, Sfax, Tunisia.

“It’s unfortunate that they decided to compel people, because I think you breed opponents that way rather than friends of solar energy,” Mr. Uchtmann said. He said he found the demands too invasive for existing homes, especially in the case of older citizens who might not live long enough to justify the upfront costs of installing the solar systems.

“I’m right up against the border myself,” said Mr. Uchtmann, who is 64. But he said he could support a solar-heating requirement for new buildings.

Because the town of 80,000 has a level population and relatively few new homes are built here, restricting the measure to new construction would not go far enough for the politicians behind it.

“We have a serious energy problem with the older homes,” Marburg’s deputy mayor, Franz Kahle, said in an interview at the historic town hall on the city’s colorful market square. To make a real leap forward, he said, a dramatic step was necessary.

“Before, solar installations were the exception and their absence was the rule,” Mr. Kahle said. “We want to get to the point where the opposite is the case.”

He pointed out that building codes constantly dictated what property owners could and could not do with their homes and said that the solar regulation already offered exceptions for cases of hardship or alternatives for those living in the shadiest spots.

Marburg’s law has attracted attention nationwide as a model for environmentally active politicians.

“What they are doing in Marburg is good and progressive, and we, and other cities, need to move forward with similar initiatives as well,” said Birgit Simon, deputy mayor of Offenbach am Main and a member of the Green Party. She said she hoped a coalition of left-of-center parties in the state Parliament could change the building codes to make the Marburg ordinance sustainable and imitable.

Among Marburgers interviewed one sunny afternoon this week, there was near universal support for the ordinance’s goals but an almost equal level of confusion about its exact nature.

“In principle, it’s a really good idea,” said Cornelia Janus, 35, who works at the university. But she questioned whether the costs might be too high and whether historic buildings and monuments would be protected.

“For a city like Marburg,” she said, gazing toward the churches and the castle arrayed along the hillside, which draw tourists from around the world, “that’s pretty important too.”

That's called an "ad hominem"--since you can't debate the science, you impugn the motives. Doesn't work.