That's simply not true.

How did you arrive at the conclusion? Did you look at one religion (probably your own) and extrapolate to every other religion out there?

In fact, I do not remember a religion outside Christianity that makes such a claim.

Does anybody really believe that a treaty that allows India and China to pollute as much as they want will do much to protect the environment and that opposition against such a treaty is proof of ignorance?

Whether or not a treaty lets developing countries pollute has NOTHING to do with whether or not global warming is real.  Skeptics need to be able to separate the two.  "It's not fair that India's carbon cap is less than mine, therefore, all of the research on global warming is fake" doesn't make much sense.  The two are unrelated.  Science doesn't say anything like "Global warming is caused by man but not by India and China."  The science says that carbon emissions, from everywhere, are causing it.  Politicians are the ones who decide how to enforce reducing carbon emissions in their countries.  Nothing in the science of global warming gives India a free ride; that's entirely a political choice.

It's very possible to believe that global warming is real, to believe that there's no massive conspiracy, and yet still vote against whatever treaty you don't like.  There are, thankfully, a few Repbulicans who do this.  I don't agree with their "let someone else deal with it" attitude, but I can at least appreciate that they're not trying to deny science or claim that there are massive conspiracies when they vote against environmental protection laws.

No, and whether or not global warming is real has nothing to do with whether humanity caused it or not or whether we have little or much influence on the climate either way.

The only safe part of this is that a treaty that allows the worst offenders (the cities at the Chinese coast) to pollute as much as they want to does NOT help AT ALL, regardless of whether global warming is real or not and whether global warming is caused by humanity or not.

I personally believe that global warming is real just like global cooling is real. Both happen occasionally, depending on what the sun does. I don't believe that humanity has much of an influence (less than a single volcano anyway). But I know that allowing Chinese cities to pollute as much as they want and signing a treaty to that effect is foolish and doesn't do anything good for the climate.

If global warming is real and caused by humanity, the Kyoto treaty will make it worse.

And if global warming activists don't see that, I cannot blame global warming critics for thinking that the whole issue is a scam.

Yeah, yeah, i keep forgetting that global warming denialists are switching over to saying it's real but it's not our fault.  I meant to say anthropogenic global warming.  My post would still be exactly the same.  The science makes it very plain that global warming is both real AND caused by man; this is what the scientists prove, and the policy on which countries need to cap when is a totally different issue.

I don't know if I should bother arguing with you about this, because my main point is that even if that were true, it has NOTHING TO DO with whether or not anthropogenic global warming is real.  SCIENTISTS prove that anthropogenic global warming is real; POLITICIANS decide what to do about it.  Don't mix the two groups up.  If you've got a grudge against China and want to vote whatever you want about it, you are allowed to do that.  You can argue that Kyoto's unfair without needing to also deny science and make grand claims of a massive world conspiracy.

That said, I'll point this out anyway:  China just recently edged out the U.S. as worst offender.  When Kyoto was written, it didn't.  Before 2008, the U.S. was much worse than China.  Per capita, the U.S. still surpasses everyone, including China, in the amount of pollution we create.  Developed countries, in general, have released much more CO2 and continue to still.  The adopters of Kyoto (nearly all the developed countries except the U.S.) are reducing their emissions, so now the numbers will look different.  Kyoto lasts for 2 more years, and the plan is (and was) that China would have that long to try to pull its economy together, and will then be re-examined in 2010.  When Kyoto was created, China's emissions were lower, and it was decided that developing countries would get a longer grace period to change their infrastructure because their economies are fragile and forcing them to dismantle their power and productions facilities when they can't afford replacements would likely destroy them.

Now, you are free to disagree with that stance; you can say that it's only fair that if developed countries need to start reducing pollution, that still-developing countries need to stop too even if it kills them.  Or you can argue that it's unfair that some countries get a grace period, so we shouldn't have to obey any laws at all.  However, these things are SEPARATE from the fact that anthropogenic global warming is real.  You might have a point if the science was saying something like "Global warming comes from carbon emissions in the U.S., but carbon emissions in China are actually good for the environment."  But it doesn't say anything like that.  ALL carbon emissions are bad, but the politicians decided to give China a few extra years.  I don't know if I can make this difference clearer.  I think most conspiracy theorists just want to ignore that so they can get on with their conspiracies.

That's just stupid.  China was allowed to pollute as much as it wanted before Kyoto.  Almost everyone could pollute as much as they wanted before Kyoto.  Kyoto is there to stop that.  Kyoto didn't let China pollute "more" than it already could.  There were no laws regulating carbon emissions in China, and Kyoto didn't change that.  Kyoto only placed new restrictions on the developed countries of the world (except the U.S.) and that is exactly its purpose.  It didn't get rid of old restrictions on China or India: there were no old restrictions.

I didn't say "China", I said "Chinese cities at the coast". It's easy for a country to keep pollution levels low if 90% of the population do not live in industrialised regions but in dirt-poor rural areas.

I have never been in China but I hear that the smog in Chinese coastal cities is absolutely *ridiculous*.

It is THAT type of pollution that the Kyoto treaty has confirmed as acceptable, and that's a stupid way to try to protect the environment whichever way you put it.

And was it useful to put that in writing?

Yeah, I don't believe it.

For the last two years the average temperatures have gone down, not up.

I am not entirely ignorant of the science, but since I disagree with you you will probably claim that I am. But I understand global warming also happens on other planets in our solar system at the moment, which suggests that the sun (probably) has a much bigger effect than humanity.

Whether humanity's part in this is of relevance is perhaps the important question; and I haven't seen any evidence that it is. (I have seen numbers that CLAIM such, but always without a means of comparison to numbers showing the influence of the sun.)

LULA POSTS #137

MAKESHIFTWINGS POSTS #139

Do you really believe that the universe and all its regulating laws came together ON ITS OWN? What did it come from?

The reason why there is no way the universe came into existence upon its own comes from the principle that the greater cannot come from the less; rather the less must always come from the greater..the Greater in this case is Almighty God. On this St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the proof is from motion. Everything that is moved is moved by something else. But no series of movers and things moved can explain anything unless there is a First Mover which moves everything else but is not "Himself" moved becasue He is the Source of all movement.

So, when we were told the universe began with the expansion of a primeval atom, we must then ask, what made it expand? If we ascribe this movement to an earlier movement, we must ask the same question about the earlier movement, until we come to a Prime Mover, not Himself moved---the one true God.

This brings us back to causality. One thing is caused by another, but for the same reason as above, there cannot be an infinite chain of causes unless there is a First Cause which does not need to be caused because He always was, is and ever will be.  

What follows the word "then" is not rational. I say the universe is obviously created and that what is created supposes a Creator who is uncreated, or the problem goes on forever, the whole endless chain of dependent things is not able to explain itself as each of it links. It is rational to argue, however, to an uncreated watchmaker. It is not rational to ask who created this uncreated watchmaker. 

God was not created. If He were He would be a creature and would have a creator. His creator would then be God and not He Himself. God never began and will never cease to be...God is Eternal.  There was never a time when He did not exist. If there had been, then neither He nor anything else would ever come into existence since there would have been nothing to create anything. Likewise, God will always exist. 

God is the One Being Who could not possibly not exist. He is Infinite and explanation of all else. And there is no need to be troubled by this as we humans are constantly learning and don't know all the answers to our existence at least on this side of Heaven.

double post

triple post! 

Look at your statement. Tell me where god came from, keeping in mind your thesis that the greater cannot come from the less.

Kyoto doesn't say their pollution is acceptable.  It says that it is unacceptable, but that China would be allowed an extra few years as a grace period to fix it because its economy was crap, it doesn't have easy access to new technology like first world countries, and shutting down their only power plants and factories would probably have caused the nation to fall apart.  The U.S., on the other hand, has (or at least had) plenty of money, easy access to technology, and one of the best infrastructures in place for upgrading their factories.  The U.S. didn't want to, because it would cut into short-term profits, but that's not the same thing as risking the collapse of your national infrastructure as is the case with third world and still-developing countries.

The Kyoto agreement was basically an agreement that global warming is a global problem, and that the nations with all the power, money, and technology, were going to have to be the ones driving the change, and poorer nations would be brought in later.

As I said, it's fine if you disagree with that, but it has nothing to do with the scientific fact of global warming.

Yes, of course.  Because if Kyoto had included demands that would have destroyed developing nations and left hundreds of thousands of people in poverty like you seem to want, it never would have been approved by most countries.

And that alone is enough for you to believe that every science institute in every nation in the entire world is involved in a massive conspiracy controlled by the Chinese?  Seriously?  You are willing to ignore all of the data, and the opinion of every accredited organization in the world, because things get slightly cooler some times?  The graph goes up and down; it doesn't have to go straight up to show a warming trend; it just has to be constantly trending upwards.  2008 was cooler than 2007, but that doesn't change the fact that the 10 hottest years that have been recorded since decent record-keeping came about in the 1880's have ALL happened in the last 12 years.  It's getting hotter.  All the data is showing that.  A slightly cooler summer one year doesn't mean it's suddenly reversed itself.  And besides... didn't you JUST SAY that you agreed that global warming was real, and now you're claiming that it's not?  I thought your only disagreement was that you think we're not responsible.  Now you ARE saying that you think it's not even really happening?

Well, you apparently didn't know that it's been getting hotter over the last fifty years, which is sort of step one.  I'd tend towards saying you're willfully ignorant because you don't seem to want to read any science from actual scientific pages.  How about:

Joint National Academies of Science: http://dels.nas.edu/climatechange/

NASA: http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/

American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://www.aaas.org/spp/cstc/top%20issues/climate%26energy_index.shtml

IPCC: http://www.ipcc.ch/

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html

Or, seriously, any actual accredited scientific body that is peer-reviewed and has published in actual scientific journals.

Instead, you're getting all your info by (apparently) googling "global warming hoax" and parroting the first thing you read.  It's important to remember that the internet is a crazy place, where anyone can make a web page on anything they want.  Half of what isn't porn is lies.  You can't blindly trust information on a random page just because it sounds nice.  This goes doubly for right-wing anti-science propaganda sites.

Why not read NASA's own reasoning for the warming on Mars, since they're the ones who discovered it, and the only ones who have actually researched it?

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/2007/marswarming.html

Here you go, straight from Stanford's solar research group: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600px-Temp-sunspot-co2.svg.png

Or you could read about NASA's study: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/19990408/

How about the World Radiation Center saying that solar radiation hasn't increased noticably at all since 1978, yet we've had the fastest increase in temperature ever in these last years: http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant

The Max Planck institute has tried to get records going even further back, to 1940, and even then, they show there has been no increase in solar radiation, yet a huge increase in temperature: http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/sun-climate/

What more do you want?

Yes.  It came from the Big Bang.

But that's not an actual "principle" or law of some kind.  It's just something Thomas Aquinas made up.  Despite the intentional vagueness of "great" and "less", I'd say greater comes from lesser all the time: a human being comes from a fertilized egg, the mona lisa came from some paper and paint, supercomputers come from sand and metal.

Plus, as Coelocanth pointed out for like the ninth time in this thread, you can't say "Everything has to come from something" and "God didn't come from something" without a contradiction.

The first mover is the Big Bang.  Why does the first mover have to be a giant invisible Republican wizard?

Yeah, I've read all of Aquinas's arguments way back in Philosophy 101, where we talked about how they're all logical fallacies for exactly what we keep pointing out: "Everything has to be X" and then "God doesn't have to be X".  You can't keep using those two things together, because they are contradictions.  If everything is X, then God must be X.  If God isn't X, then it isn't true that everything is X.

Let me summarize: Aquinas's arguments have two main failings:

1) His premises (everything must have been created by something greater, everything must have been moved by something bigger, etc) are not actual scientific laws of any kind (though there are some similarities).  They're just things he made up.  They might sound intuitively nice, but you can't just base an argument on them as if they were known truths.

2) The followup statement to each of those premises (god wasn't made by something greater, god wasn't moved by something else, etc) all contradict the premise.  In logic, this means the argument is a fallacy.  Either the premise or the conclusion must be FALSE.

It bothers me that people try to claim that they're using logic when they repeat these arguments, but then when you point out the flaw, they basically say "Well, god is magic!"  You can't use magic or holiness or mystical babble to avoid logic.  If you want to go off about magic and mysticism and how things can be true even if they're false, then that's fine, but don't pretend it's a logical argument.

I'm having a difficult time posting tonight...I can't get past page 8 and post #180 if I open by the Forums and My Replies.

I keep getting that the website wants to run an add on, and that I should click on it....

I'm also unable to edit or delete comments #188 and 189.

Really...."Cosmic", "chemical", "stellar" evolution? The Big Bang has come in and out of vogue...the politicians of science produced a masterpiece of guessing and the cosmologists fabricated theories from it....those who believe must believe by faith.

Stellar evolution is based upon the premise that nothing can explode and produce all the stars, planets, moons, .....all that's in the universe. Nothing + nothing = 2 elements plus time = all physical laws and a completely structured universe of galaxies, systems, stars, planets and moons orbiting in perfect balance and order.

Real scientists have given up on this far fetched unscientific and unworkable fantasy long ago, while evolutonists refuse to abandon it.

Although it's not scientific and was never meant to be, I prefer Genesis' explanation of the origin of the universe and all that's in it. "In the beginning" God spoke and there was a large amount of energy. But what is energy? We know it's forms but not what it is. What are the properties and laws governing energy confined in the interior of stars...that's something I venture we'll never know.

But what do we know...."In the beginning", there first appeared light..the first representative of matter just as Genesis 1:3 says, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light."   

At least it has a name.

Why does the first mover have to be a Democratic blob of nothingness?

I'm not exactly seeing solid arguments around here.