Lazs,
Sometimes you make sense and sometimes you're way off your rocker. In this case you are way off your rocker.
My roommate bought a 2004 Prius (the new kind) and it is a fine car. Its acceleration is quite comparable with other mid size cars, it gets 55mpg and it emits far less polution. What exactly is the problem with that? How is that, oooh bogeyman word, "socialist"?
Rip,
Conservatives love to make that kind of claim all the time but never back it up. Furthermore they latch onto the heavy mionority of researchers who say global climate change isn't happening, may not happen or will not be as severe as thought and try to portary the issue as massively up in the air.
The fact of the matter is that peer review is far, far more effective at culling the crap out than you give it credit. Futhermore, funding fights don't carry anything like the weight into research conclusions that you are insinuating.
Let me put it this way:
If we don't go into Iraq and he has WMD that he uses on us we get hurt bad.
If we don't go into Iraq and he doesn't have WMD we don't get hurt.
If we go into Iraq and he has WMD we stop him from hurting us and spend some money.
If we go into Iraq and he doesn't have WMD then we've only spent money we didn't have to.
Is the same formula (minus the war and dying bits) as this:
If global climate change is happening and we don't act to mitigate it we get hurt bad.
If global climate change is not happening and we don't act we don't get hurt.
If we act to mitigate global climate change and it is happening, then we spend money and get hurt less.
If we act to mitigate global climate change and it is not happening, then we spend money that we didn't have to.
Of course the ironic part is that if we do act to mitigate it and are successful, the Conservatives will crow about how it was never happening and use as evidence the fact that it didn't happen. See Y2K for reference.
