Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

1) Our society shifted from a mostly common sense one to a litigious one where you have predatory lawyers just looking for anything or anybody to sue and successful class action suits can net a law firm millions.

2) We encouraged and allowed unions unprecedented power that almost closed down the railroads and several other previously thriving industries and that have made it more and more difficult for our auto manufacturers to be competitive.

3) The government began meddling more and more with regulation and mandates that made it even more difficult to compete with burgeoning foreign markets.

Our auto makers cut so many corners trying to be competitive that they earned a reputation of making inferior cars coupled with making cars nobody wanted.

The foreign auto makers seized a large chunk of the pie. The American automakers corrected that are now making superb automobiles again but have had a tough time regaining their reputation.

Amerians had become conditioned to think foreign cars are better.

I will remind you that the USA is not Japan or China or Korea or any European country and we deal with somewhat different dynamics here.

I think that's a lame excuse. Companies like Tesla Motors are continuously sold out and have long waiting lists even in the current economic climate - and they are an American car company.

Hey, I'm not a spokesman for small innovative American car companies. If you guys are so enamoured with huge corporations that have failed to come up with any kind of innovation in the last two decades and that now have to be propped up with taxpayer money so they don't collapse, I probably won't change your opinions.

Of course. American Exceptionalism has always been a sufficient explanation for why there's absolutely no point in comparing the United States with any other country in the world.

American uniqueness is real.

The country, the principles upon which it was founded, and the intent of our Constitution was to be unique in the world; a grand experiment that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

The undergirding that supported it was a desire to be rid of authoritarian dictatorship and oppressive government--to prevent us from doing violence to one another, but otherwise to be free to follow whatever dreams we could envision. The more we adhered to that fundamental principle, the better off we were. And the more that we have gotten away from that, our freedoms and all they gain us have been relentlessly chipped away at.

I'm sorry that you think it presumptious of us to see something other than conformity as a virtue.

Of course you take the concept to extreme with your "absolutely no point'" comment which intellectual honesty would inform most people is a straw man, but oh well. I wonder what you'll conjure up to sneer at when we finally become mostly like Germany?

Or will you then consider us perfection or at least worthy of a smidgeon of commendation?

I think this boils down to envy, Foxfyre. To Europeans, Europe is the center of the Universe, and who is America think she is anyway.

Just because she bailed out Europe from dictators and madmen in the last century,

and just because she is almost the only one left in the world to pronounce evil for what it is

to the extent to actually put her money and blood where her mouth is,

she is supposed to apologize.

And Obama apparently agrees.

The government began meddling more and more with regulation and mandates that made it even more difficult to compete with burgeoning foreign markets.

Our auto makers cut so many corners trying to be competitive that they earned a reputation of making inferior cars coupled with making cars nobody wanted.

The foreign auto makers seized a large chunk of the pie.

The American automakers corrected that are now making superb automobiles again but have had a tough time regaining their reputation.

Amerians had become conditioned to think foreign cars are better.

AP Newsbreak: Obama looks at climate engineering
Apr 8 10:55 AM US/Eastern
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer Comments (466) Share on Facebook

WASHINGTON (AP) - The president's new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth's air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

Holdren outlined several "tipping points" involving global warming that could be fast approaching. Once such milestones are reached, such as complete loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, it increases chances of "really intolerable consequences," he said.

Twice in a half-hour interview, Holdren compared global warming to being "in a car with bad brakes driving toward a cliff in the fog."

At first, Holdren characterized the potential need to technologically tinker with the climate as just his personal view. However, he went on to say he has raised it in administration discussions.

Holdren, a 65-year-old physicist, is far from alone in taking geoengineering more seriously. The National Academy of Science is making climate tinkering the subject of its first workshop in its new multidiscipline climate challenges program. The British parliament has also discussed the idea.

The American Meteorological Society is crafting a policy statement on geoengineering that says "it is prudent to consider geoengineering's potential, to understand its limits and to avoid rash deployment."

Last week, Princeton scientist Robert Socolow told the National Academy that geoengineering should be an available option in case climate worsens dramatically.

But Holdren noted that shooting particles into the air"making an artificial volcano as one Nobel laureate has suggested"could have grave side effects and would not completely solve all the problems from soaring greenhouse gas emissions. So such actions could not be taken lightly, he said.

Still, "we might get desperate enough to want to use it," he added.

Another geoengineering option he mentioned was the use of so-called artificial trees to suck carbon dioxide"the chief human-caused greenhouse gas"out of the air and store it. At first that seemed prohibitively expensive, but a re-examination of the approach shows it might be less costly, he said.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97ECHLG1&show_article=1

What if the government would pass laws that prevented frivolous lawsuits or sensibly tightened the justification for what a manufacturer can be held responsible?

For every 320 Americans there is a lawyer " indeed, with 799,960 lawyers among a population of 255,600,000, America may have the highest proportion of lawyers per capita in the world. In England, there are 694 Englishmen per lawyer, in France 2,461 Frenchmen per lawyer and in Japan 8,195 Japanese per lawyer. Lest you think the Japanese are exceptionally poorly served, you may wish to reflect that there are 15,748 Koreans per lawyer, with a mere 2,813 lawyers for Korea's population of 44,300,000.*

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report
251
Economist David Henderson, a Professor at the Westminster Business School and former Chief economist for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, derided the UN IPCC process in a presentation in Brussels on April 18, 2007. "I believe that there is a problem of unwarranted trust in the IPCC process and in the role of the Panel itself, a problem which the Stern Review shows no awareness of. In peer-reviewed work that the IPCC has drawn on, the authors concerned have failed to make due disclosure of data, sources and procedures, and the IPCC has not required them to do so," Henderson said. Noting that he believed the IPCC "has acquired what is effectively a monopoly position," Henderson said the IPCC was "far from being a model of rigor, inclusiveness and impartiality." "To begin with, the very idea of creating a single would-be authoritative fount of wisdom is itself open to doubt. Even if the IPCC process were indisputably and consistently rigorous, objective and professionally watertight, it is imprudent for governments to place virtually exclusive reliance, in matters of extraordinary complexity where huge uncertainties prevail, on a single source of analysis and advice and a single process of inquiry. Viewed in this light, the very notion of setting consensus as an aim appears as questionable if not ill-judged," he said. Henderson also dismissed the Stern Review as "a heavily biased, exercise in speculative alarmism" and urged governments to "think again" about the focus on CO2 reductions. "Rather than pursuing as a matter of urgency ambitious and costly targets for curbing CO2 emissions, [governments] should take prompt steps to ensure that they and their citizens are more fully and more objectively informed and advised," he said