Now there are gonna be some True Believers in the Church of Global Warming who will be commenting. Try to be nice. No insults unless they insult us first. We may get some trolls on this one. BTW, Prosper is not a troll.

YAY, Prosper!!!!

Denny- We've had more snow this fall than in almost 30 years, and certainly since I moved here in '89, and the ski resorts opened about a month earlier than they usually do!

But that doesn't matter.

Record hot weather? Global warming! Record cold weather? Global warming! Last year's record hurricane season? Global warming! This year's non-existent hurricane season? Global warming! Ice caps melting on Mars? Global warming! Pluto being declared NOT a planet? Global warming (It's mainly ice, ya know)!

Here's an experiment everyone can do at home. Fill a large, tall glass to the top with ice. Then fill it with water to the rim. Let it sit on a counter for a few hours, until all the ice melts. Then look how much water is on the counter...NONE.

I know that's kinda simplistic, but it proves that melting ice does not raise the water level.

Water is the only compound that is less dense in its solid form that its liquid form. That is why ice floats. I stayed awake long enough in Chemistry 101 to learn that.

And DanS is not a troll either.

Bulb thermometers rely on the simple principle that a liquid changes its volume relative to its temperature. That's thermo-dynamic FACT.

Liquids take up less space when they are cold and more space when they are warm (this same principal works for gases and is the basis of the hot air balloon --). That, too, is thermo-dynamic FACT.

As water gets warmer, it will expand and rise.

Maybe my glass is not tall enough or large enough.

All I know is, following your directions, in the interest of understanding something new, we had to break out the Brawny towels.

Fill a drinking glass with ice and then the (heat) of the alcohol of your choice; betcha a quarter that if you can hold off from drinking it, it will 'boil over' and slosh-over the top of the glass and become both wasted-whiskey and an affirmation of the Laws of Thermo-dynamics...

Tom Waits calls it his unique-form of the Blues.....; I call it an affirmation of the Laws of Physics, Thermo-class.

At risk, being Down South and not having to worry all that much about anti-freeze as when we lived up in frozen Chicago, perhaps you might explain how Ethelene Glycol does it's magic?

Ethelyne Glycol.

Ethylene Glycol !!!!

Fuck! I gotta quit drinking this shit! Cain't hardly Spell no mo! Ethylene Glycol! It makes me swell up.

Want me to check your radiator, Ma'am?

I can't believe we allow such crap to go on from people in this country. EXPECIALLY when it is US paying their wages! (Overinflated Wages at that!)

************

Global Warming Gag Order

Senators to Exxon: Shut up, and pay up.

Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Washington has no shortage of bullies, but even we can't quite believe an October 27 letter that Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Its message: Start toeing the Senators' line on climate change, or else.

We reprint the full text of the letter here, so readers can see for themselves. But its essential point is that the two Senators believe global warming is a fact, and therefore all debate about the issue must stop and ExxonMobil should "end its dangerous support of the [global warming] 'deniers.' " Not only that, the company "should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history." And in extra penance for being "one of the world's largest carbon emitters," Exxon should spend that money on "global remediation efforts."

The Senators aren't dumb enough to risk an ethics inquiry by threatening specific consequences if Mr. Tillerson declines this offer he can't refuse. But in case the CEO doesn't understand his company's jeopardy, they add that "ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years." (Our emphasis.) The Senators also graciously copied the Exxon board on their missive.

This is amazing stuff. On the one hand, the Senators say that everyone agrees on the facts and consequences of climate change. But at the same time they are so afraid of debate that they want Exxon to stop financing a doughty band of dissenters who can barely get their name in the paper. We respect the folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, but we didn't know until reading the Rockefeller-Snowe letter that they ran U.S. climate policy and led the mainstream media around by the nose, too. Congratulations.

Let's compare the balance of forces: on one side, CEI; on the other, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, the U.N. and EU, Hollywood, Al Gore, and every politically correct journalist in the country. We'll grant that's a fair intellectual fight. But if the Senators are so afraid that a handful of policy wonks at a single small think-tank are in danger of winning this debate, they must not have much confidence in the merits of their own case.
The letter is so over-the-top that we also wonder if Mr. Rockefeller in particular has even read it. (He and Ms. Snowe didn't return our call.) The Senator hails from coal-producing West Virginia, where people know something about carbon emissions. Come to think of it, Mr. Rockefeller owes his own vast wealth to something other than non-carbon energy. But perhaps it's easier to be carbon free when your fortune comes from a trust fund.

The letter is of a piece with what has become a campaign of intimidation against any global warming dissent. Not only is everyone supposed to concede that the planet has been warming--as it has--but we are all supposed to salute and agree that human beings are the definitive cause, that the magnitude of the warming will be disastrous and its effects catastrophic, that such problems as AIDS and poverty are less urgent, and that economic planners must therefore impose vast new regulatory burdens on everyone around the world. Exxon is being targeted in this letter and other ways because it is one of the few companies that still thinks some debate on these questions is valuable.

Every dogma has its day, and we've lived long enough to see more than one "consensus" blown apart within a few years of "everyone knowing" it was true. In recent decades environmentalists have been wrong about almost every other apocalyptic claim they've made: global famine, overpopulation, natural resource exhaustion, the evils of pesticides, global cooling, and so on. Perhaps it's useful to have a few folks outside the "consensus" asking questions before we commit several trillion dollars to any problem.
Imagine if this letter had been sent by someone in the Bush Administration trying to enforce the opposite conclusion? The left would be howling about "censorship." That's exactly what did happen earlier this year after James Hansen, the NASA scientist and global warming evangelist, complained that a lowly 24-year-old press aide had tried to limit his media access. The entire episode was preposterous because Mr. Hansen is one of the most publicized scientists in the world, but the press aide was nonetheless sacked.

The Senators' letter is far more serious because they have enormous power to punish Exxon if it doesn't kowtow to them. A windfall profits tax is in the air, and we've seen what happens to other companies that dare to resist Congressional intimidation. It's to Exxon's credit that, in its response to the Senators, the company said that it will continue to fund free market research groups because "there is value in the debate" that helps promote "optimal public policy decisions." Too bad that's not what the Senators care about.

=================================================

FOR THE RECORD

The 'Obfuscation Agenda'
The letter to ExxonMobil.

BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV AND OLYMPIA SNOWE
Monday, December 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST

Editor's note: This is the text of a letter Sens. Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent to ExxonMobil's CEO. A related editorial appears here.

October 27, 2006
Mr. Rex W. Tillerson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
ExxonMobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Boulevard
Irving, TX 75039

Dear Mr. Tillerson:

Allow us to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your first year as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the ExxonMobil Corporation. You will become the public face of an undisputed leader in the world energy industry, and a company that plays a vital role in our national economy. As that public face, you will have the ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil toward its rightful place as a good corporate and global citizen.

We are writing to appeal to your sense of stewardship of that corporate citizenship as U.S. Senators concerned about the credibility of the United States in the international community, and as Americans concerned that one of our most prestigious corporations has done much in the past to adversely affect that credibility. We are convinced that ExxonMobil's longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change skeptics, and those skeptics access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy.

Obviously, other factors complicate our foreign policy. However, we are persuaded that the climate change denial strategy carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped foster the perception that the United States is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature of our nation internationally. It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the "deniers." Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil to capitalize on its significant resources and prominent industry position to assist this country in taking its appropriate leadership role in promoting the technological innovation necessary to address climate change and in fashioning a truly global solution to what is undeniably a global problem.

While ExxonMobil's activity in this area is well-documented, we are somewhat encouraged by developments that have come to light during your brief tenure. We fervently hope that reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its funding of the climate change denial campaign of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) are true. Similarly, we have seen press reports that your British subsidiary has told the Royal Society, Great Britain's foremost scientific academy, that ExxonMobil will stop funding other organizations with similar purposes. However, a casual review of available literature, as performed by personnel for the Royal Society reveals that ExxonMobil is or has been the primary funding source for the "skepticism" of not only CEI, but for dozens of other overlapping and interlocking front groups sharing the same obfuscation agenda. For this reason, we share the goal of the Royal Society that ExxonMobil "come clean" about its past denial activities, and that the corporation take positive steps by a date certain toward a new and more responsible corporate citizenship.

ExxonMobil is not alone in jeopardizing the credibility and stature of the United States. Large corporations in related industries have joined ExxonMobil to provide significant and consistent financial support of this pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in the scientific debate, but to obscure it. This climate change denial confederacy has exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size or relative scientific credibility. Through relentless pressure on the media to present the issue "objectively," and by challenging the consensus on climate change science by misstating both the nature of what "consensus" means and what this particular consensus is, ExxonMobil and its allies have confused the public and given cover to a few senior elected and appointed government officials whose positions and opinions enable them to damage U.S. credibility abroad.

Climate change denial has been so effective because the "denial community" has mischaracterized the necessarily guarded language of serious scientific dialogue as vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their scientific integrity, by giving them relatively equal standing with legitimate scientists. ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this bogus scientific "debate" and the demand for what the deniers cynically refer to as "sound science."

A study to be released in November by an American scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change denial front groups in 2004 alone. Besides a shared goal, these groups often featured common staffs and board members. The study will estimate that ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million since the late 1990s on a strategy of "information laundering," or enabling a small number of professional skeptics working through scientific-sounding organizations to funnel their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed websites such as Tech Central Station. The Internet has provided ExxonMobil the means to wreak its havoc on U.S. credibility, while avoiding the rigors of refereed journals. While deniers can easily post something calling into question the scientific consensus on climate change, not a single refereed article in more than a decade has sought to refute it.

Indeed, while the group of outliers funded by ExxonMobil has had some success in the court of public opinion, it has failed miserably in confusing, much less convincing, the legitimate scientific community. Rather, what has emerged and continues to withstand the carefully crafted denial strategy is an insurmountable scientific consensus on both the problem and causation of climate change. Instead of the narrow and inward-looking universe of the deniers, the legitimate scientific community has developed its views on climate change through rigorous peer-reviewed research and writing across all climate-related disciplines and in virtually every country on the globe.

Where most scientists dispassionate review of the facts has moved past acknowledgement to mitigation strategies, ExxonMobil's contribution the overall politicization of science has merely bolstered the views of U.S. government officials satisfied to do nothing. Rather than investing in the development of technologies that might see us through this crisis--and which may rival the computer as a wellspring of near-term economic growth around the world--ExxonMobil and its partners in denial have manufactured controversy, sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco industry for so many years. The net result of this unfortunate campaign has been a diminution of this nation's ability to act internationally, and not only in environmental matters.

In light of the adverse impacts still resulting from your corporations activities, we must request that ExxonMobil end any further financial assistance or other support to groups or individuals whose public advocacy has contributed to the small, but unfortunately effective, climate change denial myth. Further, we believe ExxonMobil should take additional steps to improve the public debate, and consequently the reputation of the United States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil publicly acknowledge both the reality of climate change and the role of humans in causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil should repudiate its climate change denial campaign and make public its funding history. Finally, we believe that there would be a benefit to the United States if one of the world's largest carbon emitters headquartered here devoted at least some of the money it has invested in climate change denial pseudo-science to global remediation efforts. We believe this would be especially important in the developing world, where the disastrous effects of global climate change are likely to have their most immediate and calamitous impacts.

Each of us is committed to seeing the United States officially reengage and demonstrate leadership on the issue of global climate change. We are ready to work with you and any other past corporate sponsor of the denial campaign on proactive strategies to promote energy efficiency, to expand the use of clean, alternative, and renewable fuels, to accelerate innovation to responsibly extend the useful life of our fossil fuel reserves, and to foster greater understanding of the necessity of action on a truly global scale before it is too late.

Sincerely,
John D. Rockefeller IV Olympia Snowe

Cc:
J. Stephen Simon
Walter V. Shipley
Samuel J. Palmisano
Marilyn Carlson Nelson
Henry A. McKinnell, Jr.
Philip E. Lippincott
Reatha Clark King
William R. Howell
James R. Houghton
William W. George
Michael J. Boskin

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009338

Oh please lets not forget that we are to have a GREATER number with a GREATER severity of Hurricanes!

They will make Katrina appear to be a simple wind storm by comparison.

OK...

2006 saw a total of 13 named storms, NONE of which caused any damage that could even come close to being compared with Katrina!

Predictions by ALL were for the worst season in recorded time! Oh yeah, the insurance companies made a whole lot more than the oil companies this year as well... You know, anticipating sumptin bad might, could possibly happen to some, rate increase?

As long as I'm slammin one of my favorite targets I'll add this. In 2001 the industry lost, 6-7 billion. In 2005, Katrina losses remember, they made 7 billion profit!

So much for the good hands people!

TC:

I read this a day or two earlier than your post.

Did you think that a fraction of us stay-awake all night to see what you think worthy of your cut-copy-paste?

Request that you DIGEST what you've read and summarize it in your OWN words?

While I can't & won't speak for my fellow-posters here, I SUSPECT that they can & do read for themselves and would rather hear what YOU have to say as a result of what you've read.

In the absence of that, why not just post a 'link' (you know; a URL?) to that which you so subscribe?

Just a thought.

I might like to disagree/agree with you if I understood that it was 'you' that was posting something ... rather than being merely an agent of radio-relay.

Again, just a thought.

You want a sip of his ethylene glycol or not????

Denny, I agree that global warming is a fact. And I agree with you on its probable causes. History tends to support that. I'm in favor of alternative energy for reasons other than what Al Whore spews. I like the idea of cutting our dependence on Muzzie oil.
Nantuckett would be an IDEAL place for a wind farm, but the implications are too blatent and swimmer and traitor get it. The only time the wind farm would function at capacity was when they are home in massiveclueless. Thge wind has to have a source, and there is none better save Al Whore.
I'll know that the libtards are taking global warming as seriously as they claim when I see them all riding bikes rather than their precious SUV's.

TC:

See?

Look at how Jeremy says/does it!

I'm not sure if he agrees with the MAJOR-premise of this 'thread', but he DAMN SURE speaks in his own voice!

TC: Want another swig on the ethylene glycol jug?

My contribution to fight Global Warming : to step aside for a while. It seems the topic is a little too hot to let a frog debate on it.
Thanks to Denny's solicitude !

see you soon

DanS- I've done this in my house and NEVER had any water spill over the side. Maybe it's the altitude, since I'm 9,200 feet above sea level.

But I doubt it.

Just to make sure, I'm sitting here looking at a glass I filled with ice that's well over the rim of the glass, and then filled with water. I'll let you know what happens.

I'm just a lowly science teacher here, and well, guys, umm, global warming is real- in the sense that carbon dioxide and water vapor trap heat around our planet. If we didn't have global warming, life would never be able to exist, we would be a big ball of ice. Oh yeah- water vapor is a much bigger "culprit" in global warming, but we don't hear about that, do we?

Denny--when I lived outside Boston, I loved mass transit. If I needed to go into the city, I'd rather take the T and not deal with traffic and parking costs.

Where I lie now, in South Carolina? Well, yeah, it makes a lot less sense.

Roger Ebert is a sissy horse's ass of the first stripe. First he tells us he's a LIBERAL. Already MEGO(My eyes glaze over). Anything at all he follows up with can automatically be discounted as the bleatings of a typical lefty Kool-Aid drinker. Who, besides himself, should give a rat's patoot about ANYTHING he has to say?
If you do, then YOU are a spaghetti-spined ignorant fool, too. Have I made myself clear?

Dan, I agree that global warming is a fact. I do not agree that man is the primary cause, and I do not agree at all with Prosper that the USA is a worse poluter than China or India.
Why should we have signed Kyoto? We are already further along on cleaning up our industry than much of the world. Last year in China they had a chemical spill into a major river. (sorry, not going to spend time looking it up and pasting a link, this is common knowledge) That spill killed scores of people and left an entire region without drinkable water for several weeks. When was the last time that happened in the USA? We have strict controls. Cities get fined for having treated affluent above certain levels of bacteria, and the water they dump is ALWAYS cleaner than the rivers are to begin with.
Many US cities draw their drinking water from rivers, just like in China. The water purification equipment is similar, its not protected technology. How often do dangerous spills happen here? When they do, we get clean up efforts underway and contain the spill before it endangers our water.
Had world industry been required to make its out put as clean as the US or european output, that would have been a diffrent story. Kyoto was all about giving a few developing countries an edge by giving them a pass. Since Kyoto, we have seen spikes in the price of concrete copper and aluminum, as well as increases in steel and other raw materials costs. Do you understand why? The material is flowing to China and India like never before. They are building factories to do the production that Europe is being forced to cut due to the Kyoto BS.
I can agree with cutting polution to improve air quality. WE DID THAT IN THE 70's. Why do it again when the rest of the world is still catching up to us and Europe? The corporations that backed Kyoto did so because they knew it would give them an excuse to funnel jobs away from high paid workers into poor regions.
Lower paid workers, less restrictions on polution fewer benefits for the workers means more profits. If Republicans are all about big oil big business big profits why aren't they backing kyoto?
Simple, what the lame stream media is feeding us is BULL SHIT!
TC, just post a link if you feel its that important. saves space and makes everyones read a lot easier. Only post the contents of a link if its a few sentences you want to highlight.
Consider this, all the carbon now trapped in the fossil fuels was once free carbon. It was part of the carbon cycle. If you are a Christian, you believe that the oil became trapped when the flood of Noah occured. BTW did you know that stories of a world wide flood exist in many of the cultures of the world? In China, the oldest culture with a written language, they have mention of a worldwide flood with only a few who survived in a large boat. At one time though that carbon was part of the world environment, whether in plants, animals, or the air.
I'm going to leave off for now, I've got tenants with problems and have to run.

Rob - Here in Florida that experiment would result in a pool of water around the glass, every time. However, the water would come from condensation of water on the outside of the glass(from the humid air in the room), and not from overflow. Perhaps that is what DanS encountered? Bet DanS is pulling your leg a bit.

Yeah, used to live at 8600 ft. in Colorado and 'Global Warming' was a real bitch, especially when it snowed 40" overnight, and after a few days of that, we were finally able to dig our vehicle out the following spring. A couple of years ago I remember running across scientific reports that temperature measurements of the earth's crust showed it had actually cooled by a few tenths of a degree. And let's not forget that the earth goes through cycles, which is conveniently forgotten whenever something is pulled out of context. Crichton has it right: Global Warming = Political Fiction. And you know if the politicos are involved, especially the Hollywood-seeking liberals, they'll champion any cause they can profit from.
Thanks, Shane, for the link to Crichton's speeches - if you haven't followed him, this is a guy who rolls up his sleeves and does his homework.

Prosper the soon to be realist......

One of the first steps to becoming a thinker who accepts the world as is really exists is to recognize the limit of your intellect for the given topic. Congratulations that the door to awareness is beginning to open for you. You may stumble from time to time but the door to enlightenment & truth is now open to your former closed mind.

As to your acknowlegement to sit on the sidelines of the Global warming issue,what prompted this ? Was it the obvious inaccuracies of the pronouncements of the leftwing environmentalists to what actually has happened or is occurring? Or was it just your mind beginning to open on it`s own?

Just wondering, have a good day!

DanS - Go back to Chemistry 101. Water is the only compound that is less dense in its solid form than in its liquid form. Sorry. That is a fact. If it were more dense it would be heavier when it was ice and it would sink. It doesn't do that. It floats. Thermometers use mercury, not water. Fill up a glass with ice and let it melt. Does it overflow? No. Fill up a glass with snow and let it melt. Does it overflow? No. Try it yourself and report back to me. I know it sounds counterintuitive but that's the way the chemistry works. As I said, water is the only compound that does this.

TC - In the future, please provide a link to the article and summarize.

Den (and others):

Tried it & am reporting back-;

Yep, you are correct!

I've had three different size glasses of ice & water sitting here for about 4 hours; the ice is slowly melting and the water level is *not* increasing. There is, however, quite a bit of condensate on the outside of each and I can see it starting to puddle a bit at the base of each.

Also, of note, the 'experiment' is on a counter by the door; it's about 40 degrees outside and perhaps 70 inside. Having numerous pets, I've opened & closed the door perhaps 12 times over the 4-hour period.

Care for a nice glass of Ethylene Glycol? :) Thanks for the Chem-class brush-up!

DanS - That's one of the reasons roads are worse in the north than in the south. Water gets in the cracks in the road and as it freezes, it expands.

That's one of the reasons roads are worse in the north than in the south. Water gets in the cracks in the road and as it freezes, it expands
And all these years I thunk it was cause Minesota had so many darn liberals vs Kansas and the tax dollars were going to line political pockets rather than to repair roads.

Sorry, had to say it.

During the Clinton era, cue the soft focus filter & soft music, wasn't there a Time magazine cover story about the next ICE AGE?

It's all Bush's fault...It's all Bush's fault...It's all Bush's fault...It's all Bush's fault...

They are too much...

Denny et all; Please accept my apologies for posting lengthly articles instead of just the links. Not real sure why I did that. But it's digital history now.

Global Cooling... April 28, 1975, Newsweek

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/coolingworld.pdf

Dan I'm sure you can do an internet search to find out the chemical properties of Ethylene Glycol so you will know how it works.

Global warming update in NW PA....

Got about a foot of snow in the last 24 hours & icy roads, two cars in the ditch in front of my shop.Deliveries of material to me postponed till next week .This mornings outhouse flooring "Daily Paper" says Global warming might actually cause ice age. Thermometer must be broke......temperature went down not up.

Man, I'm moving to Colorado nexth month (yeah, coldest time of the year, and from the Tropics, I'm a dumbass), better bring my SCUBA gear.

A mixture of ethylene glycol and water form a eutectic point. A 50/50 mixture freezes at -40 degrees. Water alone freezes at 0 degrees and ethylene glycol alone freezes at -13 degrees. As you vary the mixture ratio you get freezing points along two curves that meet at that point.

I knew I went to college for a reason.

Ethylene Glycol is also good for ridding the neighbor hood of domesticated coyotes.
Why do idiots love to get Pit Bulls, Rotweillers etc and let them run loose? One fellow told me last week that the only reason he keeps pits is so everyone will see what nice dogs they are. Then he went on to tell me that he had several taken away because they became dangerous, and also had a couple put down when they became unmanagable. I'm seriously considering leaving a hubcap full of Ethyl Glycol where his mutts like to roam when he turns them out with out a lead. The darn animals have chased two people I know already.

I've red lot of the posts on the global warming. I think it's useless to argue and give facts. If some of you believe it's a religion, there is nothing to do. Religion is a matter of faith, not of rational thoughts. Maybe lots of the scientists all over the world are wrong, maybe the only two or three countries in the world who refused the Kyoto Treaty are right. I propose to wait and see. Now every one in the world agree Iraq war was not the idea of the century. Maybe this time, you will be right. I hope that for our future. PHIL

Phil...

I read your posting........Global Warming is occurring but the conclusion of man being the culprit is not a fact , it is a knee jerk hysteria by the environmental lunatics who believe man to be evil & not the supreme species on this planet. To this point it is a pseudo-religion to those devoted to the belief of the culpability of mankind.This is not an argument , it is a fact.

As to the Kyoto Protocol....I suspect that you as well as the vast majority of those who say we should sign it have never read what the proposal is or the impact to the western civilization were we to accept it. I think were you to do so, your belief for the need of this turkey would change as you recognize what the thrust of this proposal is.

As to your opinion of the Iraqi war , well, every one has an opinion but it should be based on an understanding of the events that lead to it`s occurance . But as most liberals do not let truth or reason interfere with their thought process, I do not expect you are likely to consider the truth of what Saddam was up to influence your opinion.