Partisan Divide on Threat Assessment?
Steven L. Taylor
·
Sunday, December 18, 2011
·
3 comments
Dan Drezner has some interesting thoughts on the subject: The partisan politics of threat assessment
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
There is an EMP threat but it doesn’t come from China or Iran but from the sun or a distant supernova. This is just more fear mongering by those who want to protect the military industrial complex.
Without defending Newt’s position on EMP, I am inclined to think that there is a difference between a technological threat that we would have some limited control over (EMP) and an ecological threat for which all of the data so far seems to indicate little resolve (no, I don’t count handwringing) for the lifestyle changes required to hold in place, let alone reverse (global warming).
I dislike the “I’m an agnostic” approach, but get real folks, no one is lining up to say “i’ll live in a smaller, colder house and drive almost not at all because this threat is really important to address.” And even if anyone was willing to say that, we would still have the problem that 85% of all energy is used by the industiral sector in developed nations.
Give up your lifestyle and job to fight global warming. Any takers?
@Just nutha ig’rant cracker: “…no one is lining up to say “i’ll live in a smaller, colder house and drive almost not at all because this threat is really important to address.”
Maybe yes, maybe not so much.
It sure is a good thing that the Scientific Method of Finding Things Out always allows for new information to be considered instead of the nonsensical idea of “settled science.”
See “Thirty-three Year Temperature Update-Well Below Computer Model Predictions”
http://reason.com/blog/2011/12/16/thirty-three-temperature-update-well-bel