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Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 9:41am

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American Taliban Calls Kettle Black

If any group of people in American society deserves to be compared to the Taliban, it would have to be the fundies. After all, both groups are religious extremists who advocate the overthrow of secular law and an imposition of strict Biblical law.

One of the groups vying for the honor of top Taliban is Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association. While Donald Wildmon is slowly dying in the hospital, his son Tim has taken over the family hate duties. He sent me anemail yesterday. He is trying to whip his supporters into a frothing fundie frenzy over a Michigan town finally realizing that maybe they were unconstitutionally promoting a specific religion. Let’s have a look:

First Battle of the 2009 Christmas Culture War is here

A non-existent war existing only in the minds of the American Fundie Association for the sole purpose of getting their followers riled enough to whip out their checkbooks.

Ask the Macomb County Road Commission to rescind their order removing a privately maintained Nativity scene set at the crossroads of the city. The Christmas culture wars for 2009 have begun and ground zero is the Detroit suburb of Warren, which for 63 years has hosted a privately maintained Nativity scene set at the crossroads of the city.

It doesn’t matter whether the display is privately maintained or city funded. It’s on city land, which makes it a city endorsement of one specific religion. The only way the city of Warren could keep the nativity scene is to also open up that land for displays by other religious groups. The last time a city tried that, the fundies threw a fit and vandalized the other displays.

The Road Commission informed Satawa of its decision upon receiving a letter in December 2008 from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which purported to act on behalf of a complainant in the city of 134,000 residents, saying the display violated the Constitution.

“Purported” to act. That’s because in culturally diverse modern America, there couldn’t possibly be a non-Christian living in a city of 134,000.

Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the [Thomas Moore] Law Center, said that militant atheists attempt to do through the courts what the Taliban by force had done to Afghanistan: remove all the symbols of the country’s national heritage.

You read that right. The American Taliban is accusing someone else of being the Taliban.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 1:07 am and is filed underChurch and State. 

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Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 9:42am

American Taliban IV

Permalink Reply by Michel on April 21, 2012 at 5:17pm

Yep, tight-assed conservatives secretly envy the Taliban. They wet their pants thinking about a Sharia analog.

Permalink Reply by Marianne on April 18, 2012 at 2:20am

I do question the government, yes, but I keep it separate from religious institutions and religious beliefs...

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Permalink Reply by Victor Rubicon on April 18, 2012 at 8:11pm

If libertarian ideology ever posed a real threat to the elite class of the U.S. it would be outlawed. But, it's actually very useful, sort of like voting in general. You can use it as a clown, a straw man, or a "serious" alternative political point of view.

It's still annoying to the rest of us, though.

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Permalink Reply by Daryl on April 18, 2012 at 8:28pm

If you read Libertarian values, it's conservatism without religion. Birth control is left out and they are against the war on drugs. It's the the guys who will take the place of the Republicans if and when people finally decide that both Democrat and Republican politicians are idiots. You want one religious party and a nonreligious party fighting for votes, or do you want two nonreligious parties fighting for votes? It's beneficial for both of us. :) Of course in a perfect world, special groups wouldn't promote candidates for election, just like George Washington said. Parties will divide the country.

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Permalink Reply by Michel on April 20, 2012 at 8:34pm

In many cases conservatism is described as keeping to the old. While some old things must go, there are some things that never change.

That's an article of faith.

Your very very short list of examples of immoral things is simplistic at best. For example it is absolutely not immoral to steal if it's the only way you can feed your children. It is not immoral to kill if your life or your children's is a stake. And the immorality of rape is a rather recent development.

Conservatism is holding on to things that have already changed.

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Permalink Reply by doone on April 21, 2012 at 9:46am

pics on Sodahead

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Permalink Reply by Davy on April 22, 2012 at 3:04pm

-Venus has very high atmospheric pressure and 96% CO2 and it’s a raging inferno.

But the thing is 

It is hypothesised  that the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like that of the Earth with liquid water on the surface. The runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water and subsequent rise of the levels of other greenhouse gases.

Nitrogen trifluoride.

Nitrogen trifluoride is used in the plasma etching of silicon wafers. Today nitrogen trifluoride is predominantly employed in the cleaning of the PECVD chambers in the high volume production of liquid crystal displays and silicon-based thin film solar cells. In these applications NF3 is initially broken down in situ, by a plasma. The resulting fluorine atoms are the active cleaning agents that attack the polysilicon, silicon nitride and silicon oxide. Nitrogen trifluoride can be used as well with tungsten silicide, and tungsten produced by CVD. NF3 has been considered as an environmentally preferable substitute for sulfur hexafluoride or perfluorocarbons such as hexafluoroethane.[2] The process utilization of the chemicals applied in plasma processes is typically below 20 %. Therefore some of the PFCs and also of the NF3 always escape into the atmosphere. Modern gas abatement systems can decrease such emissions.
Elemental fluorine has been introduced as an environmentally friendly replacement for nitrogen trifluoride in the manufacture of flat panel displays and thin film solar cells.[3]
Nitrogen trifluoride is also used in hydrogen fluoride and deuterium fluoride lasers, which are types of chemical lasers. It is preferred to fluorine gas due to its convenient handling properties, reflecting its considerable stability.
It is compatible with steel and Monel, as well as several plastics.

Hexafluoroethane

Hexafluoroethane is used as a versatile etchant in semiconductor manufacturing. It can be used for selective etching of metal silicides and oxides versus their metal substrates and also for etching of silicon dioxide over silicon.
Together with trifluoromethane it is used in refrigerants R508A (61%) and R508B (54%).

Sulfur hexafluoride 

Of the 8,000 tons of SF6 produced per year, most (6,000 tons) is used as a gaseous dielectric medium in the electrical industry, an inert gas for the casting of magnesium, and as an inert filling for insulated glazing windows.

Tetrafluoromethane

Tetrafluoromethane is sometimes used as a low temperature refrigerant. It is used in electronics microfabrication alone or in combination with oxygen as a plasma etchant for silicon, silicon dioxide, and silicon nitride.[6]
Environmental effects

Tetrafluoromethane is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to the greenhouse effect. It is very stable, has an atmospheric lifespan of 50,000 years, and a high greenhouse warming potential of 6500 (CO2 has a factor of 1); however, the low amount in the atmosphere restricts the overall radiative forcing effect.
Although structurally similar to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), tetrafluoromethane does not deplete the ozone layer. This is because the depletion is caused by the chlorine atoms in CFCs, which dissociate when struck by UV radiation. Carbon-fluorine bonds are stronger and less likely to dissociate. According to Guinness World Records Tetrafluoromethane is the most persistent greenhouse gas.

That is what is used to allow you to live the way you want to do!

Go tell the Polynesians whose Islands are being slowly inundated by the sea that Climate change ain't occurring.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venusian_atmosphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases

BTW 

Conservative = maintaining the STATUS QUO

Liberal =ANARCHY.

Socialist = Trying to look after all the PEOPLE. 

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Permalink Reply by Daryl on April 22, 2012 at 6:17pm

While I miss the good old days before mankind when there were no tornadoes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, typhoons, blizzards, or hurricanes; the sea level didn't fluctuate, the continents didn't drift, we didn't have periods of warming and cooling, nor did the temperature change daily; for 4 billion years until mankind came along; you are only fighting half of my argument so I'll restate what you missed.

Mars is 95% CO2 and it's freezing. It's atmospheric pressure is thin.

Venus is 96% C02 and it's boiling hot. It's atmospheric pressure is extremely high.

Earth is less than 1% C02. Not only that, it's less than 1% of any so-called greenhouse gases. If greenhouse gases had anything to do with it, Mars should be a raging inferno. But it was more to do with how much air is actually there to heat up to begin with.

Plus another guy posted a link to a website attempting to debunk my argument and that website actually said all the planets were warming up to a certain degree. Are we somehow polluting all the other planets?

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Permalink Reply by doone on April 22, 2012 at 6:42pm

You are embarrassing to read - the percentage compostion does not matter as much as the total concentration.   It is really a simple idea if you bother to learn about how green house gases actually work.  The green effect is increased with more CO2 molecules - not the percentage of the molecules in the total atmosphere.

 

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Permalink Reply by Neal on April 23, 2012 at 8:29am

"Plus another guy posted a link to a website attempting to debunk my argument"

It did debunk your argument if you were to read it. The article starts off with these words, "Mars is not warming globally." I thought that would be pretty easy to understand. It goes on to explain:

There are a few basic points about the climate on Mars that are worth reviewing:

1. Planets do not orbit the sun in perfect circles, sometimes they are slightly closer to the sun, sometimes further away. This is called orbital eccentricity and it contributes far greater changes to Martian climate than to that of the Earth because variations in Mars' orbit are five times greater than the Earth.

Mars has no oceans and only a very thin atmosphere, which means there is very little thermal inertia – the climate is much more susceptible to change caused by external influences.

The whole planet is subject to massive dust storms, and these have many causal effects on the planet’s climate, very little of which we understand yet.

We have virtually no historical data about the climate of Mars prior to the 1970s, except for drawings (and latterly, photographs) that reveal changes in gross surface features (i.e. features that can be seen from Earth through telescopes). It is not possible to tell if current observations reveal frequent or infrequent events, trends or outliers.

When you state other planets are warming, it is a falsehood. No one knows. I thought the article was responsibly worded, it did admit that we can't even agree what's happening on this planet, but we have a hell of a lot more data to use.

The apparent long-term warming between the 1970's and 1990's is largely a consequence of the timing of the two snapshots used. The "brighter" 1977 snapshot was immediately after a global dust storm when the planet was temporarily lighter. The "darker" 1999 snapshot was of the planet in it's usual state. There is little evidence that Mars is undergoing decadal-scale, long term global warming. In fact, following the 2001 global dust storm, the southern hemisphere was brighter than in 1977 (Szwast 2006).

Conclusion

The empirical evidence isn't conclusive on whether global warming is happening on Mars. However, to answer the question on whether the sun is causing Earth's global warming, there is plentiful data on solar activity and Earth's climate. Many papers have examined this data, concluding the correlation between sun and climate ended in the 70's when the modern global warming trend began.

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