Give me a call. I'll take you out to coffee.

I agree with you on this point: whatever the science, there's certainly nothing wrong with working toward more responsible uses of natural resources. It always good to leave things nicer than you found them.

I am a global warming skeptic. The earth is either cooling are warming; there is no "official temp". The Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, etc. all tell us that the temp fluctuates for reasons still not yet fully understood by modern science.

That said, it can't be good to release all of the carbon the earth has stored over millions of years into the atmosphere. To think otherwise is foolish. So global warming? Meh. Supporting leadership to reduce our collective carbon emissions? Sign me up. Why wouldn't you want to live in cleaner and greener America?

If you ask me the problem is that certain skeptics are coming off too heavily handed and defensive. If you want to throw down, brother, you best have a thick skin.

And just a tip…no one is going to take your relevant arguments seriously if you spout off nonsense about the eventual abolishment of private property.

People on the forums mostly get excited about great new shops opening up and ways to improve the community. It's always been a friendly, civil place.

Scott seems like a nice, stand-up guy, as far as I can tell. The Citizens site is a great service he's set up for the neighborhood.

Go troll somewhere else.

Climate change is not a global conspiracy… sorry. Everyone in the reality-based community agrees.
Scientific opinion on climate change.(Wikipedia list)

You're going to cite James Inhofe's blog? Really? The guy is nuts. He's one of the most backwards, anti-science right-wing senators out there.

It's obvious that no one's going to convince you otherwise on this issue, and you're not winning anyone over (why resurrect a 3 month old thread?), so maybe save all the copy-pasting of bogus info for a different forum.

However, none of these people who are so hell-bent on making the information I have been posting seem worthless can provide any shred of fact or support to suggest what I have posted is incorrect.

The entire crux of their argument is, in fact, based on your belief that these folks are infalllible and perfect, and that anyone who challenges what they deem to be the "status quo" is a nut job.

How convenient for them to be able to argue their points this way. Don't deal with the information at hand — far better to simply call it the work of complete nutjobs and lunatics.

So fellas… that doesn't work on people who have brains. This is Seattle, remember? Land of the intellectual. How did you morons becomes so entrenched here?

Don't you wish life was so easy… you fight like a sissy, from an intellectual standpoint. Why don't you be a man and use your brain, and present some fact-based research for crying out loud?

I refuse to be manipulated with your emotionally-based (fact-less) garbage.

This Scott Ringgold character who runs this forum works for the city government. Part of his job is to implement this UN Agenda 21 crap in this neighborhood. He'll deny this up and down, while at the same time he links his own "sustainable development" web site directly to this forum. How obtuse.

So of course he's going to do everything in his power to downplay the information I have presented here. Scott is completely biased. But Scott seems to be a complete idiot, since he can't support what he believes with any level of research of fact.

It's far easier for him to tell his buddies to post on this forum, and attack the information I presented by calling it "conspiracy theory."

Way to go, geniuses.

Prove to me that harmless CO2 emissions from human beings are going to cause a climate catastrophe. Show me the science that convinced you so completely. What the hell did you base this religious-fervor upon?

Before you run off with your mouth about conspiracy theories, maybe you can prove that none of this information below is real…

** March 16, 2009 — 650 international scientists, many of them current and former United Nations IPCC scientists who have now turned against the UN, wrote the latest 231-page report to the US Senate Minority Committee debunking man-made climate change. This is 12 times more than the 52 scientists who signed the UN report supporting man-made climate change in 2007.

(Source: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072E-802A-23AD-45F0-274616DB87E6 )
** Petition Project: 31,478 American scientists have signed this petition (see http://www.petitionproject.org/ which requires a hand-written signature and paper form submission), including 9,029 with PhDs.
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.
** Professor Mojib Latif, the leading scientist of the IPCC (the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) has admitted that the Earth's temperature has not increased in nine years, and that we're entering a period of steady or cooling temperatures that will possibly last until 2020 or 2030.

Despite no global warming in 10 years and record-setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century. IPCC computer models have predicted global warming of 1° F per decade and 5-6° C (10-11° F) by 2100, which would cause global catastrophe with ramifications for human life, natural habitat, energy and water resources, and food production. All of this is predicated on the assumption that global warming is caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 and that CO2 will continue to rise rapidly. However, records of past climate changes suggest an altogether different scenario for the 21st century. Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5 ° C (1° F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090 (Easterbrook, D.J., 2005, 2006a, b, 2007, 2008a, b); Easterbrook and Kovanen, 2000, 2001). Climatic fluctuations over the past several hundred years suggest ~30 year climatic cycles of global warming and cooling, on a general rising trend from the Little Ice Age.

Global climate changes have been far more intense (12 to 20 times as intense in some cases) than the global warming of the past century, and they took place in as little as 20–100 years. Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998.

When the Royal Society of New Zealand recently claimed that the earth was warming, Society member and climatologist Dr. Vincent Gray responded:

“This statement is a lie. The globe is currently cooling. ……..there are currently nine authorities currently involved in providing a dataset of monthly global temperature anomalies. They are:

NOAA’s National Climate Data Center (NCDC, GHCN-COADS)

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)

Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (HadCRUT2v)

NOAA radiosonde network , (RATPAC)

Hadley Centre Radiosonde Network (HadAT2)

University of Alabama Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (UAH )

Remote Sensing Systems Lower Troposphere TLT MSU (RSS)

National Center for Environmental Protection Reanalysis (NCEP50)

European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis (ERA40)

Eight of these authorities agree that the globe is currently cooling. Only GISS disagrees.” (Source: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm )

** Who stands to gain from man-made global warming?

March 25, 2009 — While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president.

The “privately-owned” Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by Obama cohorts Al Gore and Maurice Strong (Strong has played a critical role in working with the UN to globalize the environmental movement).

For years now Strong and Gore have been cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.

Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”

Gore, self-proclaimed Patron Saint of the Environment, buys his carbon off-sets from himself–the Generation Investment Management LLP, “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C., of which he is both chairman and founding partner. The Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist, including the Chicago Climate Exchange.

(Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/25/obama-helped-fund-carbon-scheme/ )

** What is the United Nation’s Agenda 21, what is sustainable development, and how do these fit into the information above?

As described in this article on Sustainable Development, Agenda 21 was the main outcome of the United Nation's Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Agenda 21 outlines, in detail, the UN's vision for a centrally managed global society. This contract binds governments around the world to the United Nation's plan for controlling the way we live, eat, learn, move and communicate - all under the noble banner of saving the earth. If fully implemented, Agenda 21 would have the government involved in every aspect of life of every human on Earth.

Agenda 21 spreads it tentacles from Governments, to federal and local authorities, and right down to community groups (see the Agenda 21 local planning guide at http://www.crossroad.to/text/articles/la21_198.html ). Chapter 28 of Agenda 21 specifically calls for each community to formulate its own Local Agenda 21: ”Each local authority should enter into a dialogue with its citizens, local organizations, and private enterprises to formulate 'a Local Agenda 21.' Through consultation and consensus-building, local authorities would learn from citizens and from local, civic, community, business and industrial organizations and acquire the information needed for formulating the best strategies.” - Agenda 21, Chapter 28, sec 1.3

Source: http://www.green-agenda.com/agenda21.html

RELATED SOURCES:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1646
Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org

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To give good neighbor BR his due, I did skim the Agenda 21 materials at green-agenda.com, freedomadvocates.org and so on.

My, Alex, and A Dissappointed Neighbor's concerns for the integrity of this Wiki are overblown. I now encourage all neighborhood residents and wiki readers to dip a toe into these ideas, at least.

They present a rich skein of nutjob conspiracy twaddle that should provide at least 10 minutes entertainment (at most, 10 minutes of your life you will never get back). Skim over these resources and you will be inoculated from them for life.

Good Neighbor should consider organizing a meet-up or setting up a twice-monthly study group. The library would be a good, low-cost venue for this. Alternatively, Caffe Vita where there's coffee and snacks.

You make outrageous claims about whole groups of frankly far more credible people and refer us to conspiracy sites as "proof." That has nothing to do with credible investigative journalism, or with reasoned debate.

You wrote: "Speaking for myself, the issues BR raises here are interesting only in how neighbors respond to them." As the moderator, you lead by example and set the tone. Why would responses be more important than ideas presented, unless the goal is to build consensus, rather than determine the best course of action through pooling a conglomeration of ideas based in each individual's own findings?

I can see how I would regularly test the mettle of a consensus-building forum, when I am personally interested in presenting facts and having open discussion.

If it's not already obvious, I do care about people. I work to educate many people, not just those in this small community. For many people, I am a recognized source of reliable, highly-predictive information.

I am also a long-time environmentalist and activist. I am concerned that the environmental movement is in the process of being co-opted by special interests. I assume from the get-go most people will react negatively to new information that challenges their existing beliefs — it is only natural to do so.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

I am not here to judge. I do know there is a plan for our community, and countless other communities. This is a local issue, in my opinion. I am the messenger, and such is the nature of my work. To attack the messenger is unnecessary, as it's more important to deal with the ideas brought before you.

If I don't or can’t bring these things to your attention, who will? This is what I am professionally trained to do. Your reactions come with the territory. I hear you, I understand you, and at one point in time I agreed with you… and I know better than to take it personally. All I have asked you to do is, simply, to read (or watch the vids posted).

What better place to bring this discussion than to the people who are working at the heart of the issue of local sustainable development? I merely ask you to digest and read the information I have posted, and only then respond afterward. You will see I am not alone, that the information is factually based, and that I am acting in good faith.

We are not the only community working with this issue at this time. And I am not the only person out there communicating this information to their community. If need be, I will invite others to this discussion who are much more well-versed than I am, in these topics.

I realize my concerns may not be valid. But how are we to know, if no intelligent conversation ever takes place about these issues? How are we to know much of anything if all potentially controversial topics are to be swept under the carpet, before any conversation based in facts or shared knowledge, actually happens?

In any case, I do have a plan: Step one is awareness. No one can do anything if no one knows what is going on. Step two will happen when we get there, and I don’t expect to be leading it, as my specialty is in research, not figuring out solutions to complex issues.

It is my sincere hope that these concerns are not valid, and that there is nothing, ultimately, to be concerned about.

Thank you.

Remember this?

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Voltaire gets credit for that …and he apparently feels more strongly about it than I really do. But I imagine many neighbors are OK to tolerate some unpopular or unwelcome comments here in the spirit of keeping an open forum.

The irony is, I agree with you — strongly. To me, neighborhood power is much more about how we collaborate here, and much less about how we wrest power from some perceived overlord over there (City Hall, the Council on Foreign Relations, or whatever). It's that distinction that helped get this this site going.

We're disagreeing about the best way to provide for, as you say, a "civilized conversation about local issues and possibilities".

I've sat in too many neighborhood meetings where a few Citizens frame most of the discussion. We squander precious time and opportunities for working together — that's unfortunate. Many neighbors leave feeling frustrated or unwelcome — that's a tragedy. Maybe here, Columbia Citizens can slip that noose altogether — maintain a productive space for neighbors to share their interests and work, without cutting others out. If one neighbor's comments don't sit well, we get to simply move on to something more engaging.

Community can be messy. But it's also what we make of it. Which brings me back to Voltaire: Excellently observed, but let us cultivate our garden.

There is no reality to what this guy's saying, and his claims are offensive and, were they addressed at a single individual, libelous. In other, plainer words, this is hateful bullshit. It's the kind of vicious conspiracy theory that doesn't belong in civilized conversation about local issues and possibilities.

Just because someone's your neighbor doesn't mean they're not full of it, or worse.

In our experiment of more than two years, I'd say BR is the Citizen who has tested the mettle of this discussion medium and this online community the most. This is a bona fide Citizen, who believes these ideas and shares them in good faith. You're right — the local tie-ins are tenuous at best, even when some post takes a tangential poke at our local activists. Now if there were a weekly Freedom 21 meetup for Ron Paul supporters at the Ale House, that would be local. …but I digress.

Speaking for myself, the issues BR raises here are interesting only in how neighbors respond to them. Sure, it's easy to vent our aggravation. It's a lot harder to engage respectfully and substantively with this neighbor, not least because we know we'll get a full and earnest response. Or maybe some Citizens say to hell with it, and leave the space.

So if BR were your next door neighbor and raised these issues, what would you do? You've got all those options — vent, engage, move away — or you could simply let it pass and recognize you've got an entirely different world view than the people's next door.

Depending on whether this kind of discussion disrupts the overall tenor of the site, I might start hitting the delete button eventually. For now, rather than dwell on it, how about just bringing your own priorities to the fore instead?

> Spam doesn't have to involve commercial benefit.

The ideas espoused here are offensive. Substitute Jews or Catholics or any other group for "greens" in the statements above — secret conspiracies! evil unamerican elites coming to take away your property! — and we'd be labeling this note just spam, but hate speech.

If this kind of nonsense is seen as a "reasonable" part of the neighborhood discussion, this site is in real trouble.

Quoted for truth. Columbia Citizens is catholic in its viewpoints, but I think that hosting discussions about how the United Nation's Agenda 21 plan for building sustainable neighborhoods is really a high-level conspiracy of elites to abolish private property and to liquidate 6 billion human beings by century's end does not by any stretch fall inside the web site's mission, which I thought was to connect neighbors and inform them about life as we know it in Columbia City, Seattle.

Moderator, have you decided that it's Columbia Citizens' mission now to play host to conspiracy theorists?