Blog Action Day ‘09: Climate Change

Today, for Blog Action Day 2009, I’d like to appeal to those who may be “on the fence” to get committed and take action.

The Problem, in a nutshell:

The atmosphere is currently about 390 parts per million CO2, and the world’s best climate experts believe we need to get back to 350 ppm. It was around 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. Our global emissions amount to about 1% of the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, every year. Regardless of all other natural factors, that has to have an effect. CO2 has been known to been a greenhouse gas for 150 years.

The Solution:

The experts recommend a reduction in CO2 emissions of 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. To accomplish this, we need government, business and the public all committed to taking action. We all need to demand that our governments step up to the challenge and become part of the solution not part of the problem.

I have such a bad headache that I’m going to leave it at that for now.

Understand for yourself why CO2 is a problem

Lost in all the talk about global warming, is some simple math that can help you understand the carbon dioxide (CO2) problem more intuitively. The executive summary of this post is as follows:
- Every gallon of gasoline used produces about 20 pounds of CO2.
- A car could produce 20 tonnes or more of CO2 per year.
- The world’s 500,000,000 vehicles could produce about 10,000,000,000 tonnes (10 gigatonnes) of CO2 per year.
- When you factor in all the other uses of fossil fuels, the estimate of global CO2 emissions of 27 gigatonnes per year seems reasonable.
- The entire atmosphere weighs approx 5,000,000 gigatonnes and it is currently about 390 parts per million (ppm) CO2, which would be around 2,000 to 3,000 gigatonnes CO2.
- 27 gigatonnes of human-created CO2 will actually affect the composition of the atmosphere, possibly causing the level to rise by about 1%/year.
- The pre-industrial CO2 concentration is estimated at around 270ppm, we are currently at about 390ppm, almost a 50% increase in 200 years.
- It has been known for 150 years that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas, in the concentration currently found in the atmosphere. Anyone who says it’s a trace gas or a naturally-occurring by-product of life is misleading you, either deliberately lying or because of their own ignorance.

So far, you don’t need to be a scientist to comprehend the numbers, but the shock comes when you look at the number that scientists are starting to agree on that CO2 needs to stabilize at: 350ppm.

The worst part is that it’s mostly only in the US and Canada that acceptance of these numbers is split largely on political boundaries. Conservative leaders in both countries are absolutely willing to lie to the public to maintain the status quo, and regular people don’t have the ability to do the calculations for themselves. Now ask yourself why they’ve been lying to you – the answer is the same as it was for tobacco: money, politics and “free markets”.

Before the lying, astroturfing trolls get here and accuse me of incorrect science, let me say that I’m just a home dad who put this together in an afternoon of Google research. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes and it’s much more complicated than I’ve shown, but I think you’ll agree that we’re dumping CO2 at a scale that is actually capable of changing the atmosphere. Given that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, even at the current “minute” level, you can see that increasing it without boundaries could have potentially catastrophic consequences.

If you haven’t seen the numbers presented this way, verify them for yourself, learn about the subject and you’ll begin to see how blatantly the misinformation has been propagated. To me, there is no other conclusion but that the people who’ve made this a political issue have miscalculated and our children and grand-children will be paying the price for decades of obstruction. This is not something I’m willing to forgive and I hold you partly responsible (assuming you are what I call a “denier” and I am what you might call an “alarmist”).

I’ll even go so far as to issue a challenge to the despicable, lying, Astroturfing frauds, similar to the one at Greenfyre’s, show me evidence that I’m substantially wrong about any of these basic numbers:
- 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gas
- up to 20 tonnes or more of CO2 yearly for a single vehicle, or perhaps 10 gigatonnes for 500,000,000 vehicles.
- total global CO2 emissions of about 27 gigatonnes a year
- total CO2 in the atmosphere about 3,000 gigatonnes
- explain a natural mechanism that accounts for measured increases in atmospheric CO2 since 1959 while somehow excluding the substantial amount of man-made CO2
- provide evidence that CO2 does not act as a greenhouse gas at current levels, and that doubling it (or more) will make no difference to melting ice caps and glaciers, sea level rise, climate patterns, etc.

I don’t want politics (“the lefties just want socialism”), anything about Al Gore (because I hate to tell you this, but regardless of how you feel about his politics, he has the facts on his side and all you have are lies), economics (“it’s too expensive”) or propaganda (“just a bunch of alarmists”), I want evidence, backed by scientific research, not just something that you read on someone’s blog.

However, if you don’t have any evidence, but you still just don’t see the possibility that it’s a problem we’re creating and that we have to get under control, take a stand for your position. Comment below for the rest of us to laugh at your stupidity. Who knows, maybe in 20 years I’ll be eating my words.

“Back of the envelope” calculations:

Generally, the gasoline your car uses is about 90% “octane” (that’s what the octane rating indicates, it’s more complicated than this, but for these calculations, it’s close enough) and 10% “heptane”.

The molecular formula for octane is C8H18, meaning it’s composed of 8 carbon atoms and 18 hydrogen atoms, while heptane is C7H16.

Octane combustion is given by this equation:

2C8H18 + 25O2= 16CO2 + 18H2O

which means that 2 octane molecules and 25 oxygen molecules from the atmosphere combine to produce 16 CO2 molecules and 18 water (H2O) molecules. The result of the reaction is energy released that is used to move the car.

Now, if you look at the “Periodic Table of the Elements“, you can find the atomic weights of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, which I will round off to 1, 12 and 16, respectively. You can use these numbers to compare the relative mass of the inputs and the outputs:

Octane: 8 C atoms x atomic mass of 12 + 18 H atoms x atomic mass of 1 = 8 x 12 + 18 x 1 = 114
O2 (an oxygen molecule in the atmosphere): 2 O atoms x 16 = 32
CO2: 1 C atom x 12 + 2 O atoms x 16 = 44
H2O: 2 H x 1 + 1 O x 16 = 18

You can verify that the equation balances:

2 x 114 + 25 x 32 = 16 x 44 + 18 x 18
1028 = 1028

This is conservation of mass, and this is the key part that doesn’t seem intuitively obvious to us. We tend to think we put gas in, it’s burned up and “disappears” because we don’t realize the mass of the exhaust. In fact, the equation tells us if you burn 228g (2 x 114) of gasoline, you consume 800g (25 x 32) of oxygen and the result is 704g (16 x 44) of CO2 plus 324g (18 x 18) of water. Expressed another way, for every gram of gas, you consume 800 / 228 (about 3.5g) of oxygen from the atmosphere and produce 704 / 228 (about 3.1g) of CO2 and 324 / 228 (about 1.4g) water. A litre of gas weighs approximately 770g and the resultant CO2 would weigh 770 x 3.1 (about 2.4kg).

For comparison, the combustion equation for heptane is:

C7H16+11O2 = 7CO2+8H2O

You can do the calculations yourself if you want to, but the end result for the purpose of this post is that it’s close enough to the octane equation and it’s a relatively small fraction of the gasoline, so it can be ignored.

There’s the bottom line, 1 litre of gasoline in produces about 2.4kg of CO2 out.

In gallons, 1 US gallon of gas produces almost 20 pounds of CO2!!! Here’s a separate citation for this number.

Depending on your vehicle and the number of miles you drive, you can easily produce 20 tonnes of CO2 each year (for example, assuming 15 mpg x 25,000 miles/year). Using fueleconomy.gov, you can estimate your own annual “carbon footprint”.

That’s one vehicle, multiply that by the number of cars on the road in the world, say 500,000,000 (estimates vary, but we’re looking for rough numbers here), you get 10,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2, just from vehicles, i.e. not including heating and generating electricity from fossil fuels or even burning wood. Current estimates of total CO2 emissions from human activity are about 27,000,000,000, or 27 gigatonnes, per year, so you can see that my numbers are close enough.

Now, the weight of Earth’s atmosphere is 5,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes or 5,000,000 gigatonnes, and it is approximately 390ppm CO2, which would translate to 5,000,000 x 390/1,000,000, or about 2,000 gigatonnes CO2. Here, Wikipedia says 3,000 gigatonnes, so I’ll use that number, but again you can see how close my calculations are.

So there’s currently 3,000 gigatonnes CO2 in the atmosphere, and we’re creating about 27 gigatonnes more each and every year. You might notice that’s 0.9% (27/3000), so if CO2 is increasing by that much each year, then it would seem from these calculations that it’s caused by us. In fact, it’s not even that much. In two years, from July 2007 to July 2009, CO2 went from 384.4ppm to 387.8ppm, >1.5ppm per year, but only an increase of 0.8%.

I’m not a climate scientist, but I think my methodology is close enough, and I believe it shows that the amount of CO2 we’re currently dumping into the atmosphere is actually significant enough to change its composition, which is another point that just doesn’t seem intuitive because we tend to think of the atmosphere as basically infinite. Remember that before the Industrial Revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was relatively stable, the natural “sources” and “sinks” more or less balanced each other, the one thing that has changed is us producing almost 30,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

We’re currently at about 390ppm, and increasing by more than 1ppm each year, imagine where we’ll be in 10, 50 or 100 years.

At around 600ppm, people perceive the air as “stuffy” and CO2 poisoning starts around 1000ppm. We are in fact on a path to extinction. But the problem is not dying of CO2 poisoning, it’s the greenhouse effect, which John Tyndall discovered in 1859, exactly 150 years ago this year. It doesn’t matter whether CO2 is a naturally-occurring by-product of life or how minute the concentration of CO2 is, the point is, it does act as a greenhouse gas at the level currently in the atmosphere.

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius calculated that if CO2 were to double, it would increase the temperature by up to 6C (almost 11 degrees F).

Any talk about “natural cycles” is also invalidated by this one point: The one difference between past climate changes and the current one is the amount of CO2 we’re creating.

The pre-industrial level of CO2 has been estimated at about 270ppm, so it has already increased by almost 50%. Anyone who tells you the CO2 level hasn’t changed since pre-industrial times is assuming you’re not smart enough to follow the basic math above. They would also have to account for how CO2 went from 390ppm down to 315ppm when measurements at Mauna Kea began in 1959, then has gradually increased back to 390.

Following up on a comment

I’ve had a couple trolls comment on my post about the individuals and institutions involved in global warming denial, one in particular accuses me of “slandering” Ross McKitrick and Bjorn Lomborg.

Here’s what desmogblog’s “denier database” has to say about McKitrick and Lomborg. Therefore, they are both high enough profile deniers to warrant my including them in the original post.

The commenter makes the perfectly valid point that economists should be involved in analyzing the economic impacts, but that actually reinforces my point. McKitrick is an economist, not a climate scientist, and is in no position to make claims regarding the reality of climate change, only the costs involved in taking action compared with the cost of doing nothing. The fact that McKitrick is associated with both the George C. Marshall Institute and Fraser Institute implies to me that he’s deliberately confusing the science because of his right wing ideology. This is part of what I find so completely fraudulent (I use that word deliberately) about this point of view – conservatives are so obsessed with free markets, deregulation and lowering taxes that they think it’s okay to counter the real climate science with their distortions and pseudo-science. The comment itself reveals this mindset,

a suspicion that some of the leftists taking the alarmists position want to use the global warming issue to bring in socialistic government by the “Back door”

so it’s ok to lie, because it’s just politics. The problem is, just as with tobacco and health care, they deny reality purely because of their ideology.

And they’ve been successful – instead of the debate being what level of CO2 do we need to stabilize at (350 ppm) and how do we get there, we debate the costs of doing anything at all.

On Obama’s satisfaction numbers

I have to remind myself, as progressives express their dissatisfaction with Obama, he’s a universe better than what we would’ve had. Also, he promised “change” and I think a big part of that change is bi-partisanship. Now, the Republicans have shown they won’t work with him anyway, but at least he tried, and it’s time to take off the gloves and fight back.

Bill Donohue, apologist for Irish clergy abuse

This was predictable, Bill Donohue coming to the defense of the Catholic Church over the Irish report on systemic abuse in Catholic institutions. Here’s the full text of his release [emphasis added]:

HYSTERIA OVER IRISH CLERGY ABUSE

May 20, 2009

After nine years of investigation, Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse has published its findings. More than 30,000 children, most of them delinquents, passed through one or more of Ireland’s Catholic-run institutions from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the report today:

Reuters is reporting that “Irish Priests Beat, Raped Children,” yet the report does not justify this wild and irresponsible claim. Four types of abuse are noted: physical, sexual, neglect and emotional. Physical abuse includes “being kicked”; neglect includes “inadequate heating”; and emotional abuse includes “lack of attachment and affection.” Not nice, to be sure, but hardly draconian, especially given the time line: fully 82 percent of the incidents took place before 1970. As the New York Times noted, “many of them [are] now more than 70 years old.” And quite frankly, corporal punishment was not exactly unknown in many homes during these times, and this is doubly true when dealing with miscreants.

Regarding sexual abuse, “kissing,” and “non-contact including voyeurism” (e.g., what it labels as “inappropriate sexual talk”) make the grade as constituting sexual abuse. Moreover, one-third of the cases involved “inappropriate fondling and contact.” None of this is defensible, but none of it qualifies as rape. Rape, on the other hand, constituted 12 percent of the cases. As for the charge that “Irish Priests” were responsible, some of the abuse was carried out by lay persons, much of it was done by Brothers, and about 12 percent of the abusers were priests (most of whom were not rapists).

The Irish report suffers from conflating minor instances of abuse with serious ones, thus demeaning the latter. When most people hear of the term abuse, they do not think about being slapped, being chilly, being ignored or, for that matter, having someone stare at you in the shower. They think about rape.

By cheapening rape, the report demeans the big victims. But, of course, there is a huge market for such distortions, especially when the accused is the Catholic Church.

Is there no crime so heinous that these people will not stand up for each other over?

[Edit: Here are just a couple articles that go into further detail, from vjack and PZ.]

Bill C-311 – Hopefully it will make the Conservatives permanently un-electable

The funny thing is, up until a few years ago, I was always a small-c conservative, and I’m still generally a fiscal conservative. But the current crop of conservatives in North America have me so enraged with both the Republican Fascist Party (that’s my new name for them) and Canada’s Neo-Con Party (led by George Bush’s lap dog, Stephen Harper) that I hope for the permanent demise of both parties.

It seems inevitable that, at least in some way, my dream is going to come true south of the border. The Republican Party is (probably) smart enough to realize that they’ll never win another election until they distance themselves from the extremist American Taliban and KKKhristian factions. I really do hope the racist, ignorant, homophobic anti-science, apocalyptic theocrats spend the next 40 years “wandering in the desert” without a political voice (or secede and become the Mexican State of “Tay-has”). The “moderate” Republicans will just pin the whole global warming denial thing on the Jesus Freaks, and move on.

Canada’s a completely different story. We have a Conservative government, who seem to have learned all their tricks from Dubya, Darth Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Phil Gramm and friends. They don’t believe in evolution, and they don’t believe in global warming. Their only reading material seems to come from Republican think tanks and they’ve already started their “elitist” attack ads and we aren’t even in an election campaign. Unfortunately, there’s no internal rift to hope will explode.

It’s the climate change issue that I think has the best potential to destroy the party and end neo-conservatism in North America forever. Recently, Bill C-311, the Climate Change Accountability Act, passed first reading, since we have a minority government and the majority of our MPs actually have principles. Every single Conservative MP voted against the bill.

But things have changed quickly, I think. The public support for action on global warming has recently become overwhelming. The Conservatives will have to do the biggest flip-flop in history or risk losing support everywhere but our oil-producing areas. It is a given to me that most people in the oil business will continue to deny global warming as long as it is in their narrow short-term self-interest, regardless of future consequences. But the rest of Canada has caught on, and I hope they punish the Conservatives severely for putting short-term financial gain against the future of humanity.

BTW, a word on “flip-flopping”, before I finish. Everyone, including the media, seems to treat changing your mind as one of the worst things a politician can do, even worse than lying. Personally, I respect when someone looks at the situation in depth and says, “I was wrong.” Breaking campaign “promises” is not much different, we all know that party platforms are based on what the party thinks has the best chance of getting them elected. Once they get in power, a good politician will do what he has to do, regardless of his ideology. That’s the problem with the Conservatives, they will never let evidence get in the way of their ideology, and that’s what makes them bad for the country.

Conservatism: Where the rich get a free ride; where programs that I don’t need are wasteful; where regulations that get in the way of me making more money are evil; where liberty means I get to do the torturing to justify illegal wars and where freedom of speech means I get to push my religion in your face but everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi, a socialist, a fascist, a communist or just plain unpatriotic. In other words, it’s all about me.

Today’s Republicans

Apologists for torture; apologists for bigots, homophobes and hate criminals; apologists for global climate disaster; apologists for any and all forms of wrongdoing by religious officials; actively working to destroy public education and reduce America’s competitiveness.

Yet even more ignorance, misinformation, distortion, and lies from global warming deniers

A classic tactic the deniers use is “I haven’t seen any research that shows…”

Take Michele Bachmann’s mind-numbingly stupid “There’s not a single piece of evidence that CO2 is harmful, it’s natural, it’s only 3% of the atmosphere” rant (I know those are not her exact words, but YOU know that was the message) . It’s so appallingly stupid, I’ll let others address it.

I’ve been accused by a commenter of hating people who disagree with me, but to be more accurate, I agree (to some degree) with Alonzo that global warming denialism is evil because of the devastating impact it will have on future generations, including my descendants and those of so many people whose lives will be ruined because anti-regulation free-market capitalists want to make more money today.

Here’s a story about a climate change denier organization’s own scientists accepting the global warming science, in 1995!!!

Ok, to those who claim to never have seen the research, I’ll do your homework for you. Google “global warming research”. For me, the #1 hit was the Stanford Solar Centre. Page down to the FAQ’s, and follow some of the links.

Beware, the real research gets very technical, very fast. For the non-scientist, like me, I let the experts figure it out. This gets back to my original post – on one side, we have almost every credible climate scientist on the planet, and on the other, we have James Inhofe’s debunked list of economists, TV weathermen, dead people and people who even objected to being on his list. Before you give both sides a chance to express themselves, you have to decide if both sides are credible, and the deniers flatly are not credible, for reasons that I addressed in my original post.

Anyway, believe what you want, because I think the tide has turned and you are now on the wrong side, just like you (or at least many of your fellow global warming deniers) are wrong about evolution, gay rights, vaccinations and crimes against humanity (torture and starting illegal wars). Don’t feel bad if you’ve fallen for it all, the Republican lie machine is a very powerful force of malevolent hatred, all designed to manipulate ignorant, bigoted people into keeping them in power.

I don’t need to re-hash everything, if you want my general opinion on issues, read my shared items from the blogs that I read.

And remember, I’m not here for readers and I don’t want to get into arguments in the comments. My comment section is for respectful, intelligent discussion. I’ll discuss any issues, but “I haven’t seen any research” is no longer good enough.

Read this before your start your global warming “research”…

I’ve met enough people who’ve said, in effect, “I’ve done the research and I’ve concluded that global warming is not real/not caused by humans/not such a bad thing.”

Before you start your own research, I suggest you look into some of the people and organizations involved in global warming denial.

I’ll tell you some of the individuals you’ll find:
Sen. James Inhofe, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Fred Seitz, S. Fred Singer, Ross McKitrick and Bjørn Lomborg, among many, many others.

Or, don’t believe Wikipedia? Check SourceWatch.

Among the organizations involved in global warming denial, four of the most prominent are: George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute and Cato Institute.

Let’s be clear, these are primarily conservative think tanks, aimed at reducing regulation. We all know how that worked out for the banking industry…

For example, CEI (though their website is off-line as I write this) believes “that people improve their lives not through government regulation, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace.”. So they’re not about science or climate, they’re a conservative think tank and they’re all about deregulation. They strive to deny the science behind global warming, in the interest of corporate profit.

Now, check out ExxonSecrets.org, once you’re past the intro, check out the pre-saved maps, sucn as “Biggest Exxon $$ Winners”, “Fred Singer, Skeptic-in-Chief”, “CEI web”, “Sen. Inhofe and friends” or my favourite, “Climate Science Skeptic Roundup”.

If you’re not convinced, try googling “seitz singer tobacco“, 2 of the top hits today are “The Indisputable Corruption of Frederick Seitz“, “The Corrupt S. Fred Singer, corrupt Fred Seitz…” and “No apology is owed Dr. S. Fred Singer, and none will…” The last one is interesting, as it shows the connection between S. Fred Singer and tobacco lobbyists, whose “product” was doubt.

Or google “inhofe 400 debunked“.

If you still want more reading, here are the environment posts from my other blog, or one from What I Learned Today or, if you prefer, a video.

I can save you a lot of time and confusion in doing your research, because there’s only one factual conclusion: The parties involved in climate change denial are well-connected, well-funded, highly-motivated and not at all concerned about lying or distorting facts. Their ideology is based entirely on free markets and reducing regulation, not about science or protecting future generations. Their method is the same as was used by the tobacco industry, create doubt.

Another quiz result…

Obviously, I’m proud to have scored 309/400 on this quiz.

So, which really is the biggest threat to America?

Republicans: “The biggest threat to America is the gays… and the atheists… The two biggest threats to civilization are the gays and the atheists… and public health care… The three biggest threats to civilization are the gays, the atheists and public health care… and the Employee Free Choice Act. The four biggest threats… Amongst the biggest threats to civilization are the gays, the atheists, public health care and the Employee Free Choice Act.”

(with sincerest apologies to Monty Python)

Not to mention evolution,  climate change (you gotta love this blog’s name, “Axis of Right”, not only identifying themselves as right-wing but also implying “correct” and more patriotic than the left because of the awesomeness of their stars and stripes banner, not to mention putting the word “scientists” in air quotes and accusing the media and the UN of being in on the conspiracy.), NOT torturing, the Fairness Doctrine, pornography, gun control, a black man in the White House and of course not just Islamic terrorism, but Islam itself.

BTW, according to WorldNetDaily, Obama’s economic stimulus package “makes a deliberate – and unconstitutional – attempt to censor religious speech and worship on school campuses across the nation”, purely by prohibiting stimulus money being used to repair religious facilities.

My Thoughts on PoliticalCompass.org

To start off, I’m going to unapologetically tell you that I scored around -5 on the economic scale, which seems to indicate a pretty strong leaning toward the dreaded “communism”, and also -5 on the social scale, leaning towards what they call “libertarianism”.

Wow, I’m a libertarian communist. Never woulda known it. I just thought I was a liberal. Anyway, it turns out I’m actually in pretty good company, because my score was very close to Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

In fact, I think everyone in North America is in for a surprise when they take this test. Whoever’s blog I learned about PoliticalCompass.org from was horrifed to find he ranked as a libertarian, like me. Most “conservatives” will probably be shocked to find themselves categorized as “neo-liberal authoritarians”.

I’m not criticizing or disagreeing with PoliticalCompass.org at all here, I see what they’re proposing and I think they’re exactly right. The point is, it allows all of us to re-evaluate ourselves more realistically.

Most world leaders that they’ve charted seem to fall close to a diagonal line from bottom left to top right, so if you look at the International Chart with your head tilted to the left, you get the traditional, simplistic left-right continuum, with Mandela, the Dalai Lama and me on the left, and George Bush, Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolas Sarkozy on the right. The only exceptions, where the economic value is significantly different from the social value, are: Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Robert Mugabe, Mahmoud Abbas, Pope Benedict XVI and Milton Friedman. This would suggest that most people expect a fairly constant amount of goverment influence, the difference is to what extent we expect our government to control societal “values” or the economy.

Which brings me back to me. I can explain my results simply: I believe in the capitalist system, except where it needs to be regulated because I just don’t trust business to do the honest or ethical thing, or where it’s a service that shouldn’t be provided on a for-profit basis. I also wish government would operate more like a business, where costs are more tightly controlled. As for social freedom, I think people should have freedom to do and say as they wish, within the law, as long as they do not harm others.

Looking at that statement, you probably see that most people would agree in principle, it’s just a matter of where you draw the lines, so here’s how I differentiate myself from some other groups. The Christian Right would like to make their “family values” the law, and those who call themselves “libertarians” are really just pure capitalists. They’re the ones who own the corporations and therefore have the means to take care of themselves, so they’re dedicated only to the free market and small government because they don’t want their money going to the more vulnerable in society (which I think for most of them means black people).

I believe that abortion and homosexual marriage should be legal and that government has a responsibility to provide not only defense, education and infrastructure, but also health care, a social safety net and regulation over free enterprise to control greed and corruption.

Both sides on the family values debate accuse the other of fascism, by trying to force their views on others. I think the difference is the “family values” people have a narrow definition that they’re trying to enforce, the other side just wants freedom of religion and sexuality. The only thing they’re trying to enforce is tolerance.

Now, before you go calling me a baby killer, I have a few questions for the anti-abortion crowd:

1) If abortion were illegal what punishment would you suggest for a woman who has an abortion anyway? The same as a murderer, up to and including life imprisonment or the death sentence? Because the fact is that women were having abortions before it was legal, it’s just that many more of them were dying because of less-than-perfect conditions. If a woman really doesn’t want the baby, she’ll terminate the pregnancy, even at risk to herself.

2) I’ve read that the US Supreme Court has been dominated by Republicans continuously since Roe v. Wade. If they were going to repeal it, haven’t they had enough chance to do so? Are you really so blind that you can’t see that it’s a carrot that’s been dangled in front of you for over 35 years?

3) Can’t you see that nobody is “pro-abortion”, we would all like to see it never happen again, but the best way to stop it is to avoid the pregnancy in the first place? The best way to help Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin not to get pregnant again is sex education so they know how to keep it from happening. “Abstinence-only” does not work. At all.

I hope more and more people see the views of the “Religious Right” as I do: hypocritical, ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic and hateful.

And O’Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh are just like the vile propaganda guy from the movie “V For Vendetta”. Don’t believe me? Compare how Bill O’Reilly reacted to Jamie Lynn Spears’ and Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.

Hint: When someone tells you that something is going to “destroy the fabric of America” or that someone is the “most dangerous person ever”, realize that you’re being manipulated by propaganda.

(A bit off topic from PoliticalCompass.org, but it’s my blog.)

Not Another Word on Gay Marriage Until They Execute an Adulterer

This comes from The Young Turks (I’ve moved the disclaimer to the top, because nobody actually wants anyone to execute adulterers, it’s just to make a point!):

PS — In case anyone is a maniacal literalist, please do not actually attempt to execute any adulterers or anyone else. Check yourself into a mental hospital instead because the seven headed dragon in Revelations could be out to get you.

The religious right picks and chooses which parts of the Bible they want to apply. And they choose based on which outsider group they would like to hate next. First, they emphasized slavery in the Bible when they wanted to hate black people. Now, they emphasize the parts condemning homosexuality so they can hate gay people.

They are completely and utterly disingenuous. They don’t mean a word of it. They don’t give a damn what the Bible says. They just want to use it as an instrument of hate.

The Bible says eating shellfish is an abomination. Yet there are no Red Lobster Amendments. The Bible says you shall not wear two different types of cloth at the same time. Yet there are no Propositions against cotton and wool combos.

…

The religious right pretends that the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman. But that is a bald faced lie. Have any of these people ever read the Bible? The Bible is full of men taking on second wives, servants, prostitutes and concubines. And all the while, God heartily approves. How many wives did King David have? Eight? Twelve? Let alone his possibly gay lover, Jonathan.

Now the Bible says that a man shall not lie with another man. That is true. But it also says, in the same exact book, that adultery is an abomination. And the just punishment for this sin is execution. So, who will execute the first adulterer? Please step on up. May the one without any Biblical sin cast the first stone.

Here is a question no one can answer — and lucky for the right wing, the media never bothers to ask — why do you only focus on the part of the Bible against homosexuality but not on the part against adultery? … How come no religious figure in this country has mounted a campaign to take away the rights of adulterers? Let alone execute them.

I’ll tell you why. Because there are too many of them. Their followers are adulterers. They don’t make for good scapegoats. They are not an easy target to ostracize and focus your hatred on. Gays are perfect. They are a small enough percentage of the population and different enough from the rest of us to be able to get people to focus their negative, barbaric instincts on them. The Bible is only a tool for this tribal, ugly tactic.

But I am tired of hearing people saying that homosexuality is a sin in the Bible when they never quote the rest of the Bible (probably because a great majority of church goers have never independently read the Bible or they have built up a reservoir of excuses for the parts they find inconvenient). So, from now, I would like to tell the Rick Warrens of the world, you are perfectly allowed to say how much you would like to take gay people’s rights away from them based on the Bible so long as you agree to do one thing first — execute an adulterer.

If you can do that for me, then I’ll believe that you actually believe in the Bible literally and will accept your literal argument against homosexuality. Fair is fair. Step on up.

BTW, typealyzer.com calls me…

INTP – the logical and analytical type, probably pretty true, though I think they give me too much credit when they say “great at finding subtle connections between things and imagining far-reaching implications.” However, I think (hope???) they’re wrong about “might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive.”

My submission to thereprobablyisnt.com

I don’t believe in gods because religion is just tradition, community and ancient mysterious rituals, using people’s natural sense of fear, wonder and curiosity, combined with someone’s view of “morality” and comforting answers to the “big questions” in a way that ensures the perpetual power and influence of the leaders and the obedience of the followers.

As an outsider, this is obvious with the “gods” of the Norse, Egyptians, Greeks or any of the native American civilizations. The challenge comes in accepting this for the religion you were indoctrinated with, which for me was Christianity.

To me, the Old Testament is nothing more than a bunch of campfire stories of a primitive, brutal tribe of Bronze Age desert nomads. The only reason it became the basis for so much of today’s religion is because they famously won all their battles. If any tribe had vanquished the Israelites in any of the battles, our view of religion would probably be completely different. But of course, no one did because the “God” of the Israelites encouraged them to be particularly ruthless and bloodthirsty. “Campfire stories” can be loosely based on truth, but after several generations, will be pretty much unrecognizable, and the whole God part is pure mythology anyway. People love stories of the supernatural, even today, but it doesn’t make any of it real.

Meanwhile, the New Testament is just the marketing materials of the followers of a charismatic leader (assuming he existed at all). They had to use all the standard symbolism of the day (being a god, born of a virgin, etc) to give his words the necessary credibility.

We now know that Earth is an insignificant speck in the universe and the only way human beings evolved to the point we did is essentially luck. This is the only life and the only planet we have, our highest aspiration should be to take care of of others and the planet, because there is no one else out there to do it for us.

( my story at thereprobablyisnt.com )

America sometimes “spectacularly” more dysfunctional than more secular European countries

or in the words of TimesOnline, societies are worse off when they have God on their side

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortal

I find this an encouraging thought…

From LA Progressive,

Now, the Republicans are relegated to the South — an extremist backwater party of white heterosexual Christian fundamentalism, cultural intolerance, and political irrelevance. They embrace xenophobia, islamophobia, and homophobia as America becomes a browner, more diverse nation. They uphold the plutocratic interests of free market capitalism at a time when the public demands greater government intervention in the economy, as a check against corporate excess and upward wealth redistribution.

I’m embarrassed for the “religious right”…

… or “values voters” or the “moral majority” or whatever they call themselves nowadays.

First, all the most outspoken gay-bashing Republicans and pastors turn out to be gay themselves. For an ongoing chronicle of pastors’ betrayals, see Mojoey’s blog. On family values, Republicans are no better than Democrats, but the hypocrisy makes them worse.

A while ago I learned that the whole global warming denial thing is a Republican strategy by people like Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer and organizations such as the George C. Marshall Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose “About CEI” page says

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government.

Doesn’t sound very scientific, does it? Sounds more like the Republican mantra that John McCain has been parroting since his involvement in the Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s, until this year’s subprime meltdown, “deregulate, deregulate, deregulate”. The whole goal of global warming denial was to sow doubt about the science and delay regulation. They were such fierce believers in “free enterprise” that they created false, misleading “evidence” and succeeded in delaying meaningful action by 30 years, causing our current environmental situation to be much worse than it would have been if Reagan had acted.

I read that people in 34 countries were polled about their belief in evolution and only Turkey had a higher percentage of people who reject evolution. Maybe you’re even one of them, and you think you have all this brilliant “evidence”, but trust me, you’re wrong. 100% wrong. You’ve been deliberately kept ignorant by your church and the Republican Party. It’s part of their war on science and “elitism”. Or call it the assault on reason.

Why do you think Bill O’Reilly hates Daily Kos so much? He doesn’t want you to read it, because you might begin to comprehend the magnitude of the lie that’s been perpetrated on you.

Then, I find out that the Republicons were just using racist white voters, and that the Republican Party

promotes not the general welfare but the commercial interests of corporate enterprise.

How many times did you hear John McCain talk about the middle class? He just talks about tax cuts for business, it’s Reaganomics, you take care of big business and hopefully wealth will “trickle down”. We all know how well that’s worked – the gap between rich and poor has never been as big as it is now.

Then I learned that the whole idea of repealing Roe v. Wade is just red meat (a much more powerful analogy than a carrot) dangled in front of evangelicals to keep them on issue. For over 35 years since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has been dominated by Republicans – they could have overturned it at any time, but they never have and never will because then they’d lose their precious carrot.

Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and their type turned negative campaigning into an art form, hitting new lows this year. They knowingly use your racism, intolerance and ignorance to instill fear in you. They’ve succeeded so well this time that I’m afraid it will be hard to get the hatred back under control. Seriously, so what if his middle name is “Hussein”? It’s a name, he was named well before Saddam became a household name. And do you not remember the stuff about his pastor, how can he be a Muslim at the same time? They hit a new low with their smear against Rashid Khalidi. But you don’t care – he has a Muslim name, he must be a terrorist. People, your ignorance is appalling. Here’s even an article by Bill Ayers, who’s not an enemy of America as he was portrayed.

After McCain picked Palin, most reasonable Republicans were severely disappointed. But not “the base”, you guys love her, and already want her to run in 2012. In fact, many of you were secretly hoping that McCain would die so she would become President. McCain chose her in a cynical move calculated to appease “the base”, hoping it might attract some Hillary supporters, but Palin’s whacked-out ideas just drove them away.

I learned about American eliminationism, which helped me decode the veiled racism in statements such as

“You know, people are poor in America, Steve, not because they lack money; they’re poor because they lack values, morals, and ethics.” (Same guy also said they’re “fat and flatulent.”)

or

Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value. Let me tell you that right now. I know this sounds offensive to half of my fellow Americans, because they have been Europeanized in their values. The French Revolution is not the American Revolution. The French Revolution said Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. The American Revolution said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. We have lost touch with what our distinctive American values are. We have distinctive American values. … We have a better value system, and this is being protected by one of the two parties: the Republican party.

Except that the Declaration of Independence starts with the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” And Abraham Lincoln made it clear in the Gettysburg Address that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness doesn’t apply just to whites.

And of course there’s the obsession with being “tough on crime”, which is code for “put the blacks in jail where they belong” because you’d rather just lock ‘em all up than create programs to help them help themselves. “If you work hard in America, you can succeed” just means that you think blacks are lazy and don’t deserve any help.

When McCain said that famous day, “The fundamentals of the economy are strong”, the deregulation theme he’d been repeating for so long was shown to only benefit the rich.

And of course he couldn’t separate himself from his good friend, George W. Bush, the most-disliked president in history. But many of you still support him because your pastors have been telling you to for eight years.

So between Bush, Palin, the economy and negative campaigning without any viable ideas of his own, he lost the election, and the Republican Party became a “white, rural, regional party”, who mostly voted for Palin not for McCain.

Now, the party has been taken over by the base, and Palin is your first choice for 2012. Problem is, the guys in charge know Palin will never attract the independents and democrats needed to win an election so now they’re throwing her under the bus.

Too bad, so sad.

A (Short) History of Human Rights Reform

(Yes, from an Anglo-North American point of view…)

Centuries ago, it was perfectly acceptable to “own” slaves, women had no right to vote and marriage was permanent (“What God has put together, let no man put asunder”). There was no divorce in the Catholic church; widows and widowers could remarry, but otherwise, marriage was permanent. To this day, the Catholic church does not recognize divorce, but they accommodate by granting an annulment, i.e. pretending the marriage never existed.

During the 1500s, King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, but the Pope wouldn’t give him one, so he established, and became the head of, the Church of England. Being king has its benefits, you get to write the rules.

It was still frowned upon even for a Catholic to marry a Protestant – a Christian marrying a Jew would have been almost unthinkable. Gradually, it became more acceptable for Catholics and Protestants to marry, and today, even marrying completely outside your religion doesn’t have the stigma it once did.

In 1776, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence began,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

And of course, there was the struggle to end slavery. The American Civil War was literally fought over slavery. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address stressed that the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness did not apply exclusively to the white race. But black people still did not have the right to vote, and “Jim Crow” laws would enforce segregation until 1965.

Similarly, women did not win the right to vote easily – it took until 1918 for women in Canada to achieve the right to vote in federal elections. In the US, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, while women in Switzerland had to wait until 1973. Even today, some countries do not allow women to vote, including Saudi Arabia and Vatican City. Saudi Arabia also doesn’t allow women to drive.

In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The civil rights movement in America gave finally black people full rights, but didn’t end the racism. It took over 40 years for Martin Luther King’s dream to be fulfilled by Barack Obama being elected President of the United States of America.

“Miscegenation laws” banning interracial marriage existed in America from colonial times until 1967. Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, by the way, here’s an interesting quote I just found,

A 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, legalized abortion by a 7-2 vote. Six of the seven justices in the majority were Republican appointees. The only Democratic appointee, Byron White, voted against Roe v. Wade.

In fact, in every year since 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court has been controlled by a majority of Republican-appointed judges. There has not been a Democrat-appointed chief justice since 1953.

Currently, there are seven Republican appointees and two nominated by Democrats.

Obviously, if the Republican majority had wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade at any time since 1973, they had the votes to do so. Why haven’t they?

Or another, wondering if Roe v. Wade is the Republican Party’s carrot on a stick.

In 1978, Californians rejected Proposition 6, better known as the “Briggs Initiative”, which would have banned homosexuals form working as teachers.

Canada adopted its Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.

“Civil union”, essentially gay marriage, was recognized in Denmark in 1989.

Apartheid ended in 1990.

In 2003, Ontario became the first jurisdiction in North America to recognize same-sex marriage. Today same-sex marriage is recognized in many countries.

In May 2008, the Supreme Court of California ruled that same-sex marriage was legal.

On November 5 2008, Proposition 8 passed in California (along with similar initiatives in other states), modifying the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. Let me repeat, an existing right, that people want to remove. It is hateful, bigoted fearmongering to claim that gay marriage will destroy civilization and to use “that’s how it’s always been” as justification.

The struggle for human rights has been going on for centuries. This is just the next step we have to get over. Soon, places that don’t allow same sex marriage will be considered just as backwards as Saudi Arabia is today. And always remember who was the most vocal in supporting Proposition 8 – the “religious right”, the same people who resisted every advancement in human rights in history.

As a straight male, I think people even wonder why I’m so passionate about this. I’ve had all the same objections myself: “That’s how it’s always been”, to “Ok, but let’s not call it marriage”, to “Ok, fine, I guess”, to “Anything less is discrimination and is unacceptable”. I actually found it liberating to be free of that last vestige of bigotry, I now look at everyone as equal and I want all the same rights and privileges for everyone.

I know exactly one guy who’s in a gay relationship, and he’s such a great person that I can’t imagine denying him the same rights at everyone else. If he’s crazy enough to actually want to get married he should be allowed to (I live in Ontario, so technically, he is).

Obama 2008 – Yes We Can!!!

Good news (in my opinion):

- Obama won in a landslide (349 electoral votes to 163)

- Senate: 56 Democrats, 40 Republicans

- Congress: 254 Democrats, 173 Republicans

- Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole

- one new Democratic governor (MIssouri)

Bad news:

- Proposition 8 passed in California

- Al Franken lost

- Michele Bachmann won

- James Inhofe won