CFC, O3, and the Climate Change Debate

Reflections on another environmental debate
Donald Prothero
Skepticblog.org

The recent passing of Sherwood Rowland, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery (along with Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen) that CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) break down ozone in the stratosphere, causes me to think back on that furious debate over environmental issues—and the remarkable way it was resolved by international agreement and no longer threatens us. Those of us who are old enough to remember the political events of the 1970s and 1980s might recall the big public concern over the ozone layer. Like the debate over acid rain, this environmental crisis arose from earlier research that suggested a problem, then ran into huge opposition from conservative business and anti-environmental interests during the 1980s when Reagan’s cronies were in power. Like the debate over acid rain, the evidence for the hole in the ozone layer only increased until the pressure from scientists and governments around the world overcame the resistance of the affected industries, and resulted in an eventual global agreement to curb the causes of this pollution.

The story began in the late 1960s when the U.S. and Europe were both engaged in a race to develop a supersonic transport (SST) for civilian passengers, which would whisk people around huge distances in much shorter times (primarily between Europe and America). I vividly remember this series of events, because my father worked for Lockheed Aircraft at the time, and spent years of his life working very long hours to develop a huge multivolume “proposal” for how the Lockheed SST would be built. Huge numbers of man-hours and millions of dollars building two working prototype aircraft were wasted by Lockheed in the competition when the contract went to Boeing Aircraft instead. Ironically, the Boeing SST was eventually canceled, too. The only SST that was built was the Anglo-French Concorde, which traveled between New York and Paris from 1976 until it was retired in 2003 due to low demand after the 2000 Concorde crash, low air traffic after 9/11, and high costs since most of the electronics in the aircraft were over 30 years old and obsolete.

One of the concerns that caused the cancellation of the Boeing SST project (besides the technical problems, delays, huge cost overruns, and the concern that it would ever be profitable enough to justify its existence) was the possibility that as the SST flew through the ozone layer in the stratosphere, it might cause environmental damage. Ozone (O3) is a chemical made of three oxygen molecules bonded together; it has a distinctive smell most commonly noticed when a lightning strike or electrical discharge occurs. It is formed when O2 in our stratosphere is bombarded by radiation and splits up, and some of those free oxygen radicals join other O2 molecules to form O3. At ground level, it is not good for us, but up in the stratosphere, it performs an important role in screening out excessive ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation from the sun, which can cause skin cancers and blindness.

The issue of the possible damage of SST travel in the ozone layer was raised in the late 1960s as the Boeing and Concorde SST projects were well along (previously, there had been worries that SSTs might contribute to greenhouse gas warming). A crucial 1970 paper by atmospheric chemist Harold Johnston raised the possibility that nitrous oxides from jet engines might break down the ozone layer, and the story soon reached national attention. However, by the time the paper was fully published, the House of Representatives had already canceled funding for the Boeing SST program, so it was only applicable to the European Concorde. Nevertheless, Congress funded another program, Climate Impact Assessment Program (CIAP), which involved nearly 1000 scientists across many different agencies and universities over 3 years, to assess the possible impact of the SST. When the 7200-page report came out in 1975, it suggested that 500 Boeing-type SSTs could deplete the ozone layer by 20% especially over the heavily traveled North Atlantic corridor. Yet the executive summary, written by Department of Transportation bureaucrats who wanted the SST to go forward, claimed just the opposite, and suggested that a newly modified SST would not damage the ozone layer. The scientists who had worked so long and hard on the research were outraged, but their corrections only appeared in the scientific literature, while the mass media only reported the summary that falsely claimed that the SST was safe for the ozone layer.

Meanwhile, the focus on SSTs and nitrous oxide shifted to another culprit when scientists testing the engines for the upcoming space shuttle missions discovered that it emitted chlorine, which was much more reactive and capable of destroying ozone. Paul Crutzen, an important contributor to the “nuclear winter” debate, presented a paper on the chlorine problem at a 1974 NASA conference on the topic in Kyoto. Soon thereafter Rowland and Molina published a historic paper in Nature showing that the most abundant source of stratospheric chlorine was chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were commonly used in refrigerators and air-conditioners as a coolant, and spray cans as a propellant. CFCs were particularly nasty and rapid destroyers of ozone. In the stratosphere, they break up due to solar radiation to release a free radical chlorine atom, which then bonds to ozone and breaks it apart. Once this reaction occurs, however, the chlorine atom is freed up to break up more and more ozone.

With the news that everyday products like hair spray were dangerous to the environment, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, and Congress soon convened panels and commissioned research to look into the problem. As Oreskes and Conway (2010, Chapter 4) describe in detail, the battle of scientists vs. the CFC industry soon became bitter and nasty. The main industry trade associations and their lobbyists, the Chemical Specialities Manufacturers Association and the Manufacturing Chemists’ Association, soon set up a PR campaign to try to discredit the research, while pouring over $5 million in research grants to scientists (in hopes they might find results which would dispute Molina and Rowland’s conclusions). They hired a British professor of theoretical mechanics, Richard Scorer, to plug their viewpoint. He argued that humans could not cause a problem that might affect the entire atmosphere (even as he gave speeches in Los Angeles, which was experiencing dangerous smog alerts). Once a Los Angeles Times reporter exposed his links to the CFC industry and called him a “hired gun,” his propaganda was discredited, but others soon took his place.

Then the industry made a big fuss about the idea that volcanic eruptions might be a bigger source of CFCs than humans, and therefore hair sprays were not to blame. They spent money on a “research” program monitoring an Alaskan volcano, which erupted as expected in January 1976. But when the research didn’t show what they wanted to show, they quickly toned down the PR machine and claimed the results were “inconclusive”. Yet the lie that volcanoes were a bigger source of ozone damage continued in their PR campaign. As Harold Schiff put it, the CFC industry “challenged the theory every step of the way. They said there was no proof that fluorocarbons even got into the stratosphere, no proof that they split apart to produce chlorine, no proof that, even if they did, the chlorine was destroying ozone”. Then scientists went out in 1975 and 1976 and disproved every one of the industry’s claims, and showed that CFCs were indeed a severe threat to the ozone layer and needed to be taken seriously.

When the National Academy of Sciences finally released its long-delayed report on Sept. 15, 1976, it was devastating in its clear-cut conclusions: CFCs were indeed a serious threat to the ozone layer. Despite the efforts of the aerosol industry, the federal regulatory machinery jumped into action, and the FDA and EPA both began to work on regulation of CFCs. Ironically, by the time the FDA announced regulations in 1977, the bad publicity surrounding hair sprays had already had an effect on consumer buying patterns. People had discovered that there were lots of CFC-free products that sprayed their contents without dangerous chemicals, such as roll-on deodorant and pump sprays for most kitchen cleaners. The sales of CFC propellants had dropped by 75%, and when the ban took effect in 1979, it was merely the final step in the process already underway.

Meanwhile, NASA began to devote more and more of its satellite time to look into the problem. By the 1980s, their satellites had documented an alarming “hole” in the ozone layer that arose over the Antarctic at the beginning of each austral spring in September-October, as the warming stirred up the stratospheric clouds and sped up the chemical reactions. The hole was huge and persisted for months, and the ozone levels were alarmingly low. There were even hints of an Arctic ozone hole as well, although it was not as predictable and well established. Both of these discoveries were alarming, since it meant that people living at high latitudes (southern South America, New Zealand, Australia) as well as the wildlife of these areas and the Antarctic, were being exposed to dangerous levels of UV-B during the Austral Spring. Not only does high UV-B cause skin cancer, but at high enough levels it can cause eye damage as well. This was a threat to be taken seriously.

As this research emerged through the 1980s, international conferences were held to reach agreements for a worldwide ban on CFCs. The final result of years of negotiation was the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which was ratified by all the signatory nations by 1988. Not only was the research supporting the agreement scientifically impeccable, but even the manufacturers had a member on the panel. They could see the market trends away from CFC use, and the risks they took by fighting regulation and scientific consensus. Finally, on March 18, 1988, DuPont (the largest maker of CFCs) announced that they would cease production of CFCs within a few years.

The battle should have been over. The scientific research had reached a consensus, governments around the world had agreed on a solution to the problem, and since CFCs were easily replaced, the industry had complied and actually done better financially without CFCs. Case closed. But the right-wing organizations that challenge any science restricting business (even a business no longer fighting the science) were not ready to give up. The major conservative “think tanks” (the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Marshall Institute again) wanted to keep fighting regulation which violated their “free market” philosophy, even if the industry being regulated didn’t make the polluting product any more, and had agreed to the regulation (and improved their bottom line). Some of these people were prominent in the Reagan Administration, like Interior Secretary Donald Hodel. His “protection plan” for people under the ozone hole was to wear hats and long-sleeved shirts! The ridicule that he received soon led to his resignation, but there were many other conservatives both in and out of the Reagan White House who were working both publicly and quietly to deny the already settled problem of ozone depletion.

Among the most prominent of these critics was none other than Fred Singer of the Heritage Foundation, a “hired-gun” scientist famous for his previous battles defending the tobacco industry and the polluters who caused acid rain. In 1987, he wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal claiming that the “ozone scare” was not credible. He claimed that CFCs were not responsible, and that the ozone simply moved somewhere else. Of course, if he were not a long-retired physicist with no experience in satellites since the 1960s, he would have known that this claim was ridiculous. The newer generation of satellites have global coverage, so if the ozone had moved somewhere else, it would have been detected.

Singer’s writings are full of the same dodge, deny, and divert tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry. For example, he pulled the old distraction of “other causes”: there are other reasons for skin cancer, therefore we shouldn’t worry about the ozone hole! As we saw before, this is irrelevant: if the ozone hole causes skin cancers, we don’t want to add it to the list of other known carcinogens, but try to eliminate it.

His main stratagem was a familiar one: scientists have changed their minds in the past, therefore we shouldn’t take them seriously. He brought up the ancient 1960s debate over where the SST might deplete ozone, and laughed at scientists when this proved to be wrong. But he never mentioned that scientists themselves had corrected this error decades ago, and the current evidence of CFCs causing ozone was based on a huge amount research in the ensuing 20 years.

In 1988, Singer misinterpreted valid scientific research by V. Ramanathan about greenhouse gases to claim that the fluctuations of chlorine and stratospheric cooling were just “natural variations” and humans didn’t cause them. But in original paper, Ramanathan argued nothing of the kind, but just the opposite: that humans were warming the warming the troposphere that was causing cooling of the stratosphere. Singer did the same to James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, and an early prophet of the global warming problem. Singer pulled a graph out of context from one of Hansen’s publications to argue that the warming trend was part of a natural cycle. Of course, any objective look at those papers would show that this is a deliberate distortion to pervert their meaning to the opposite of what was said. Ramanathan and Hansen’s research was arguing in the clearest possible terms that the changes in the troposphere and stratosphere were not cyclic and were due to human-induced greenhouse gases.

Soon Singer’s view of the world—that CFC-ozone science was incomplete and uncertain, that scientists had made mistakes in the past, that it would be expensive to fix the problem, and that scientists were corrupt and money-grubbing)—was picked up by the right-wing media, including the ultra-conservative Washington Times (founded and owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church), and business publications like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune. William F. Buckley published an article by Singer in his conservative journal National Review. There, Singer blamed rejection of his writings by major scientific journals not on his own incompetence and bad science, but on a global conspiracy by scientists to shut out dissenting points of view. According to Singer, “It’s not difficult to understand some of the motivations behind the drive to regulate CFCs out of existence. For scientists: prestige, more grants for research, press conferences, and newspaper stories. Also the feeling that maybe they are saving a world for future generations”.

To working scientists, this entire statement sounds bizarre and absurd. Yes, scientists are motivated to publish research which will be noticed and have some importance. They’re all human, after all. And why is it a bad thing to save the planet? Unlike biased “think tanks” publishing their own opinions over and over, and pushing a political-economic agenda, scientists can’t get away with claiming just anything. The peer review process is very strict, and if their data or conclusions don’t pass muster, they will be quickly refuted by other scientists eager to shoot them down. Outsiders like Singer (long retired from doing any real science) or the creationists love to propagate this myth of “scientific conspiracy”, but as any working scientist knows, that’s a lie. The scientific community is sharpening their knives to critique each other through peer review and checking published results with later follow-up research to prove someone wrong, and they are about as far from a unified conspiracy as one could imagine.

And the charge that scientists do their research just to get rich is equally absurd. Most of them are in relatively low-paying teaching positions, where they rarely reach a six-figure salary even after 20 or more years of hard work. I’ve been teaching for 33 years now, and I still haven’t made it to a salary of six figures, despite publishing numerous books and over 250 scientific papers. To reach our goals of working in science, we had to make many hard sacrifices of long hours and living in near poverty in 5-7 years of grad school (for a total of 10-12 years in college) to earn a Ph.D. Then we go through the brutal process of teaching for 4-6 years or more on starvation wages as a lowly assistant professor, all the while under the threat of not getting tenure and losing our job forever. All the scientists I know have made these sacrifices willingly, because they love what they do, and want to discover new and important things about the natural world. As scientists, we were typically bright students near the top of our class, capable of going in lots of directions. If we wanted to make real money, we would have gone into business or law, where the grad program is only a few years, and then huge salaries are available at the other end.

For Singer or any of the other conservative anti-environmentalists to claim scientists are corrupt and trying to earn big money and better reputation is a clear case of projecting their own motivations on someone else, or the “pot calling the kettle black.” Singer and his cohort are certainly not hurting for monetary support. For example, Singer’s foundation Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) was originally affiliated with a Moonie organization, and now receives funding from Arco, Unocal, Shell, and ExxonMobil. SEPP netted $226,443 in 2007, and had accumulated assets of $1.69 million. We don’t know how much Singer gets paid for shilling for all these different conservative foundations, but it’s safe to say he earns a lot more (as do most of the rich businessmen who fund these foundations) than the paltry salaries of academics. And Singer, a former scientist with an agenda, gets a lot more publicity and coverage when his causes are trumpeted by right-wing media than do any scientist involved in the debate.

What motivates this bizarre perspective of Singer and his conservative cohorts? As Oreskes and Conway (2010, p 134) show, Singer sees the environmental science community as “technology-hating Luddites” with a goal to regulate and change our economic system. According to Singer, scientists have a “hidden political agenda” against “business, the free market, and the capitalistic system.” The “real agenda” of scientists is to overthrow capitalism and replace it with communism.

I’m not sure what scientists Singer hangs out with, but this sounds like the Red Scare paranoia of the 1950s, and it is about as far from reality as possible. I know hundreds of natural scientists (geologists, biologists, chemists, and physicists in many subspecialties), and if there’s one thing they almost all share, it’s a lack of interest in politics and economics, let alone a unified socialist-communist agenda. Many got into science specifically because they weren’t interested in economics and politics, and had a gift or love for doing science instead. What they are committed to is a sincere love of the truth, and a willingness to make sacrifices of their time, money, and even comfort and personal safety to find out what is really true about nature, no matter whose agenda it might support. Only rarely do most of us think about possible political or economic implications of our research. Typically scientists try to downplay those aspects because they don’t want to attract attention or controversy! If you doubt this, just look at all the negative comments that scientists heaped on Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould because they were willing to be public figures.

Nor are we all “commies”. I know of large numbers of both conservative and liberal scientists (but no outright communists or socialists), despite the claim that we’re all left-wingers. There are some scientists who do have strong political opinions, but as scientists we try our best to prevent our political biases from influencing our scientific results. We’re human, of course, so occasionally research with a political agenda does get published—but then the rest of the scientific community will jump in and criticize it, so we don’t get away with our biases for long.

But let’s get back to the ozone depletion issue and what this example tells us. Scientists originally looking for something else accidentally discovered the problem. Then it was found to be serious and generated a huge volume of conclusive scientific evidence. From this, governmental agencies finally took action, but long after consumers had almost stopped using CFCs. Soon the industry stopped making them because demand had dropped, and they weren’t necessary, and other materials and methods for refrigeration and propellants worked cheaper and better. Since the Montreal Protocol, the ozone layer has been gradually recovering and CFCs have been gradually vanishing from the stratosphere, although they may not be gone until 2050 or later. Yet the anti-environmentalist movement kept beating a dead horse, filling the right-wing media with false or misleading stories, and claiming that even something like curbing CFCs (which was a good economic decision for both DuPont and the planet) was somehow leading us to communism.

All through this debate, one can see the strong parallels to the current global warming debate, from the tactics of industries who want to confuse and cloud the issue (the tobacco company “smokescreen” defense), to the attempts to smear scientists and paint a completely bizarre picture of them, to the efforts to fund phony “research” and then downplay the results when they don’t support your company’s interests. And the players in all these debates were the same, especially the conservative foundations with their funding from major energy corporations. But there are positive messages, too: once scientists produced overwhelming evidence for the dangers of CFCs, and governments and affected industries cooperated with each other, it was possible to find a solution for a global environmental problem, and now it is no longer on our radar. The same happened with the acid rain debate of the 1970s and 1980s, and now cap-and-trade has solved that pollution problem. We hear all the screaming over cap-and-trade on the AGW issue, but it works just fine in reducing acid rain and everyone in those industries has learned to work with that system.

Of course, weaning civilization off of fossil fuels is a bigger problem than these, but the history of the debates over the ozone hole and acid rain show that once science, industry, and governments get together, something CAN be done. The question is: will we be able to reach that consensus? Or will science deniers in the pay of the fossil fuel industries prevent us from acting when it has been long overdue?

Bryant wrote:The question is: will we be able to reach that consensus? Or will science deniers in the pay of the fossil fuel industries prevent us from acting when it has been long overdue?

The deniers don't have to prevent people from acting forever, just until the Republicans get back into the White House.

I must have missed something because, as a conservative, I just thought it was a given that CFCs were harmful. ITs my understanding that aerosols were changed so as to be less harmful to the ozone. And way back in the 70s I seem to remember an effort to make factories install something that would reduce pollution and poison stuff in the air.

I agree that industries do resist changes though. ITs always that way. The tobacco indistry fought tooth and nail to resist change and lined politicians pockets in the process. Same with the liquor and beer industry. Same with big business. Same with foeign indistries. And now, we see it with the healthcare indisrty and insurance companies. They all try to "influence" politicians with gifts and money in order to convince them to vote a certain way.

The problem imo, is these lobbyists. I would love to see these practices changed. Make it illegal to accept or ofer gifts for influencing a vote.

Why do we falsely blame conservatives for all of this shit??? All across this report the author mentions conservatives this and conservatives that. So I guess that to be a businessman, one would have to be a conservative. I guess only conservatives worry about money and the loss of their product lines.

It's pure shit and reinforces the falsities spouted off elsewhere. It isn't as if there are no conservative minded scientists. Wrong or right, dissenting voices in science are not to be ridiculed and just because they are dissenting, it doesn't mean they are automatically conservative. A very famous man once said "if it is consensus, then it ain't science".

Seems to me that there are plenty of businesses that are run by and contribute to those who are not "conservatives" *cough* BP, Shell, GE, most of the pharma industry*cough*

It isn't that I don't agree with the author on the core problem, but can somebody please write something without injecting that kind of finger pointing crap or am I asking too much???

Marconius wrote:Why do we falsely blame conservatives for all of this shit??? All across this report the author mentions conservatives this and conservatives that. So I guess that to be a businessman, one would have to be a conservative. I guess only conservatives worry about money and the loss of their product lines.

Well, how many of the think tanks that are mentioned in that article as fighting the CFC legislation are liberal ones then? The Heritage Foundation maybe? :-P And this is talking about history, this isn't saying that "all conservatives are blocking science" this is saying that "these people/groups tried to derail CFC legislation, and they were for the most part right-wing/conservative". So, facts. This report is concentrating on what happened with CFCs not what's happening now with global warming. The talk of global warming there is that what was happening then seems to be happening again, and saying it's the same people on the "pro-business" side.

It's pure shit and reinforces the falsities spouted off elsewhere. It isn't as if there are no conservative minded scientists. Wrong or right, dissenting voices in science are not to be ridiculed and just because they are dissenting, it doesn't mean they are automatically conservative. A very famous man once said "if it is consensus, then it ain't science".

Aye, I agree, 100% consensus is bad, it makes people lazy and complacent if they have no-one to challenge them. Still though, if 99% (or even 95%) are saying one thing, it doesn't mean that the 1%/5% are right because they're bucking the trend. Not every dissenting scientist is a Gallileo or a Darwin. And there's a difference between "dissenting voices in science" and "crap and misleading science" like that guy Fred Singer in the article. Come up with a theory, gather evidence & experiments to back it up that are demonstrable and repeatable, present it to people for review/criticism, then you can be taken seriously. If you start with the idea that "Theory X is wrong", don't do any original research and cherry-pick your facts to suit your preconceptions (and if they don't fit, make them fit), well, sorry....

Seems to me that there are plenty of businesses that are run by and contribute to those who are not "conservatives" *cough* BP, Shell, GE, most of the pharma industry*cough*

Businesses/companies are in general apolitical, in that they have no ideology besides that of "make money". They will "support" whatever party is in a position to get the business what it wants (less regulation, less taxes, preferable treatment when awarding contracts etc). When the dems are in power, the companies will try to keep them happy so they won't get in their way, and maybe throw a little extra their way in the hope/expectation that he who pays the piper calls the tune. When the reps are in power, the money will head their way.

Marconius wrote:Why do we falsely blame conservatives for all of this shit??? All across this report the author mentions conservatives this and conservatives that. So I guess that to be a businessman, one would have to be a conservative. I guess only conservatives worry about money and the loss of their product lines.

It's pure shit and reinforces the falsities spouted off elsewhere. It isn't as if there are no conservative minded scientists. Wrong or right, dissenting voices in science are not to be ridiculed and just because they are dissenting, it doesn't mean they are automatically conservative. A very famous man once said "if it is consensus, then it ain't science".

Seems to me that there are plenty of businesses that are run by and contribute to those who are not "conservatives" *cough* BP, Shell, GE, most of the pharma industry*cough*

It isn't that I don't agree with the author on the core problem, but can somebody please write something without injecting that kind of finger pointing crap or am I asking too much???

Well, was it not the GOP (which to most Americans is synonymous with [edit]conservative[/edit]) that fought the hardest against CFC regulation? Is it not the GOP that rights the hardest against green house gas regulation? Wasn't it the GOP that used such lines as 'overturn the CAA/CWA', 'abolish the US EPA', and 'eradicate the anti-business regulations' to get elected in 2010? While these stances may not represent the views of all Republicans in the United States, they do seem to have found root with the influential think tanks and GOP leadership. There are indeed some scientists (the real ones, not the wannabes or the corrupt practitioners who say whatever they're paid to regardless of what their data says) who who harbor conservative political views, however you're unlikely to hear them argue against AGW. That said, I don't understand what would make a scientist strongly support the GOP, seeing how they have become so anti science (look at all the anti-evolution and anti-climate change legislations that GOP lawmakers have introduced this year alone).

As for your consensus quote, its a fallacy to assume something is correct because its a popularly held notion. It is not a fallacy to accept a popularly held notion because thats what the data supports. Hundreds of thousands (alright, I made that number up, but I think its not unreasonable estimation) of studies have been done exploring several lines of inquires that have all led to the same results.

Right on! And those wicked republicans actually freed the slaves too.

Dennis324 wrote:Right on! And those wicked republicans actually freed the slaves too.

What does the Republican's once liberal view of human rights have to do with pollutants?

Miles1 wrote:

Well, how many of the think tanks that are mentioned in that article as fighting the CFC legislation are liberal ones then? The Heritage Foundation maybe? :-P And this is talking about history, this isn't saying that "all conservatives are blocking science" this is saying that "these people/groups tried to derail CFC legislation, and they were for the most part right-wing/conservative". So, facts. This report is concentrating on what happened with CFCs not what's happening now with global warming. The talk of global warming there is that what was happening then seems to be happening again, and saying it's the same people on the "pro-business" side.

*sigh*
Ok Miles. You already admit that businesses and corporations are apolitical yet somehow you still hold onto the false belief that the "think tanks" they pay for are not??? They are whatever the business tells them to be. Do you really think Alliance For Responsible CFC Policy was all about conservatism or was it about protecting Dupont's corporate profits. Not all resistance to change is conservatism. Have you ever even taken the time to track Congressional voter records??? Until Reagan got into office, Republicans and not Democrats were at the forefront of environmental protection. Of course Reagan was the first recognized Neo-conservative President (we have had two more since then). As you should know (if you have done your research) a neo-con is much closer to a Democrat than a traditional Republican. That is why there is no tangible difference between the two parties today. What exactly is the difference anyway??? Social issues is the about only thing. Social issues that real conservatives shouldn't give a damn about....well actually we should.

Without going off course much here is what a conservative stance should be on a few of today's issues......

Gay marriage; a conservative should care because we supposedly hold true to tUS constitution. Now marriage is a service provided so it is not a right, but since my government has taken it upon themselves to perform that service, then they cannot/should not have the power (note I say power 'cause governments do not have rights, they have powers) to deny marriage to anyone. Churches on the other hand do have the standard "right of refusal" since they are nothing more than a private business.

Women's contraception; contraception is a good to be purchased and free access to it is not a right. All women do have the right to purchase it if they can afford it. The government may or may not have the power to force insurance companies what services they cover in their plans (that is an issue to be solved by the courts). Even so, the woman does have the right to "shop around" until she finds a company that does offer the coverage she wants.

Health care; once again this is a service provided and cannot be a right. The government does have to power to regulate the industry, but it does not have the power to force people to buy insurance.

In a sense we conservatives should; first ensure that the government is not overstepping its power. If the government stays within its power framework then we conservative have the secondary duty to ensure that these bills and regulations are written in such a way as it minimizes the affect on all tax payers.

Environmental and civil issues should be at the forefront of conservatives agenda because we should really want to conserve both individual freedom and our environment. Of course there is a false hysteria right now because many of the programs that conservatives sponsored (i.e. EPA) are no longer looking out for the environment and are now all about revenue generation. It is not a bad thing to restructure an existing plan or agency in order to make it better and more efficient. Streamlining is done with great success in business all the time and since government is nothing more than a business, then it is necessary to streamline it as well. All things, even the good, become bulbous and inefficient with time so why the hysteria??? I'll tell you why. The government is only interested it its own power base and to streamline government agencies is to take its power away so it will knowingly spread falsities.

Bryant wrote:

Well, was it not the GOP (which to most Americans is synonymous with [edit]conservative[/edit]) that fought the hardest against CFC regulation? Is it not the GOP that rights the hardest against green house gas regulation? Wasn't it the GOP that used such lines as 'overturn the CAA/CWA', 'abolish the US EPA', and 'eradicate the anti-business regulations' to get elected in 2010? While these stances may not represent the views of all Republicans in the United States, they do seem to have found root with the influential think tanks and GOP leadership. There are indeed some scientists (the real ones, not the wannabes or the corrupt practitioners who say whatever they're paid to regardless of what their data says) who who harbor conservative political views, however you're unlikely to hear them argue against AGW. That said, I don't understand what would make a scientist strongly support the GOP, seeing how they have become so anti science (look at all the anti-evolution and anti-climate change legislations that GOP lawmakers have introduced this year alone).

You know enough to know that the GOP was on the forefront of environmental issues all the way up to 1980. What changed in 1980??? You know the answer to that.

For the rest.....you know the EPA issue.....please refer to my answer to Miles.

Bottom line: To say that the modern GOP, as a whole, is conservative is propagating a lie and I do take offense to that greatly. Very few Republicans these days are truly conservative. They let their religious views dictate their political views and wish to impose those upon the rest of us. To say that the modern Democratic party is liberal is also propagating a lie. They are progressive and not necessarily liberal. Much of their agenda is actually not liberal but quite authoritarian in nature. By this I mean they wish to regulate every aspect of our lives (the dreaded nanny state).

Remember; the opposite of the term conservative is not liberal, it is actually the term radical. The opposite of liberal is authoritarian. Now you see the resemblance between Democrats and Republicans. Both are fairly authoritarian now-a-days (in their own right).

Bryant wrote:

Dennis324 wrote:Right on! And those wicked republicans actually freed the slaves too.

What does the Republican's once liberal view of human rights have to do with pollutants?

How can human rights be any more liberal than they always were??? Rights do not grow. They do not multiply. They can never be more liberal than what we are trying to conserve at the moment. Do not confuse goods and services with rights.

I still think the main problem is lobbyists and their influence over politicians. They pamper our congresspeople with lavish gifts and make promises (and threats) regarding their industries monetary support for their upcoming elections and imo, the senators fear their power. (You dont want to lose the support of the Teamsters or NEA or NRA).

Term Limits would solve a lot of this.

Bryant wrote:
That said, I don't understand what would make a scientist strongly support the GOP, seeing how they have become so anti science (look at all the anti-evolution and anti-climate change legislations that GOP lawmakers have introduced this year alone).

Is not just the GOP but conservatives in general who have been turned off science in the last few years: Conservatives Losing Trust in Science, Study Finds

Marconius wrote:
Ok Miles. You already admit that businesses and corporations are apolitical yet somehow you still hold onto the false belief that the "think tanks" they pay for are not??? They are whatever the business tells them to be. Do you really think Alliance For Responsible CFC Policy was all about conservatism or was it about protecting Dupont's corporate profits.

Some of the think tanks like the Heritage Society are political, but the "astroturf" think tanks like the one you mention above are shells for companies. Chances are, if it's a single-issue organization, it's a "friendly face" for whatever propaganda the company that is secretly/not-so-secretly funding it wants to put out.

Not all resistance to change is conservatism. Have you ever even taken the time to track Congressional voter records??? Until Reagan got into office, Republicans and not Democrats were at the forefront of environmental protection. Of course Reagan was the first recognized Neo-conservative President (we have had two more since then). As you should know (if you have done your research)

I haven't done my research and gone into tracking Congressional voter records, because I'm Irish and I don't care that much about how your political parties have voted in the past to put that much effort in

a neo-con is much closer to a Democrat than a traditional Republican. That is why there is no tangible difference between the two parties today. What exactly is the difference anyway??? Social issues is the about only thing. Social issues that real conservatives shouldn't give a damn about....well actually we should.

Without going off course much here is what a conservative stance should be on a few of today's issues......

So there are no more real conservative politicians so? At least, none who have a chance of actually being in a position of power?

It is not a bad thing to restructure an existing plan or agency in order to make it better and more efficient. Streamlining is done with great success in business all the time and since government is nothing more than a business, then it is necessary to streamline it as well. All things, even the good, become bulbous and inefficient with time so why the hysteria??? I'll tell you why. The government is only interested it its own power base and to streamline government agencies is to take its power away so it will knowingly spread falsities.

Well, there's a difference between "restructuring/streamlining" and "getting rid of", which is what a lot of the conversation out of the republican candidates seems to be. And as for "Streamlining is done with great success in business all the time", by "success" you generally I suppose mean "cutting size and costs" right? Well, I've been though several rounds of "streamlining" in companies, and while the first round is generally OK-ish at getting rid of the dead wood, anything after that means the people who are left end up doing the work of the others which means increased stress, pressure and often decreased productivity. In one place I worked, I ended up doing the work of 4 ppl, and I didn't realize until I left and went to work for a "normal" company again how stressed I'd been.

And as for streamlining government services/agencies, well, we've been doing that over here for years. Generally what happens is that the people on the front-line who actually do stuff are laid off first while the layers of middle- and upper-management always get though layoffs unscathed. Then, when people start complaining that things aren't working any more, they generally add in another layer of bureaucracy to "manage things more efficiently" and the problem continues.

Miles1 wrote:
Is not just the GOP but conservatives in general who have been turned off science in the last few years: Conservatives Losing Trust in Science, Study Finds

Found this while I was searching around for soemthing totally unrelated (don't you love the youtube "suggestions" sidebar?)



I don't watch FOX so I don't know if this is the standard of science reporting on it, but if it is, I can see why conservatives are turned off by science....

Miles1 wrote:

I haven't done my research and gone into tracking Congressional voter records, because I'm Irish and I don't care that much about how your political parties have voted in the past to put that much effort in

So you basically have nothing of worth to add. Just believing the same old stuff said about conservatives. Typical really.

Miles1 wrote:
So there are no more real conservative politicians so? At least, none who have a chance of actually being in a position of power?

Yep, a few. Most are at the state level. Jindal has a growing base of support, but he will prolly not run. Thing is, most career politicians are sociopaths by nature. A conservative politician should not wish to be a career politician. Look at New Hampshire. Biggest block of conservative politicians left in tUSA.

Miles1 wrote:
Well, there's a difference between "restructuring/streamlining" and "getting rid of", which is what a lot of the conversation out of the republican candidates seems to be. And as for "Streamlining is done with great success in business all the time", by "success" you generally I suppose mean "cutting size and costs" right? Well, I've been though several rounds of "streamlining" in companies, and while the first round is generally OK-ish at getting rid of the dead wood, anything after that means the people who are left end up doing the work of the others which means increased stress, pressure and often decreased productivity. In one place I worked, I ended up doing the work of 4 ppl, and I didn't realize until I left and went to work for a "normal" company again how stressed I'd been.

And as for streamlining government services/agencies, well, we've been doing that over here for years. Generally what happens is that the people on the front-line who actually do stuff are laid off first while the layers of middle- and upper-management always get though layoffs unscathed. Then, when people start complaining that things aren't working any more, they generally add in another layer of bureaucracy to "manage things more efficiently" and the problem continues.

Sorry guy, I drifted off on this. I know you tried to say something important, but all I got out of it was: "All streamlining will do is actually make me work 40 hours instead of surfing the net and checking out Facebook for half the day every day."
Yep, seen it a million times....................

Marconius wrote:
So you basically have nothing of worth to add. Just believing the same old stuff said about conservatives. Typical really.

Well, care to enlighten me so, as you have obviously already studied these records? You said "Until Reagan got into office, Republicans and not Democrats were at the forefront of environmental protection." - I'll take that as a fact to save time so, so the next question is what happened under Reagan, who seems to be the patron saint of the Republican Party and who can never have done any wrong apparently, to change the Republican's stance on the environment?

Yep, a few. Most are at the state level. Jindal has a growing base of support, but he will prolly not run. Thing is, most career politicians are sociopaths by nature. A conservative politician should not wish to be a career politician. Look at New Hampshire. Biggest block of conservative politicians left in tUSA.

So if a "true" conservative politician shouldn't be a career politician, then how are they to get into a position where they can actually influence things on a national scale without getting co-opted/corrupted by the Republican party machine? Unless there are term limits brought in for congress, then you'll always end up with career politicians.

Sorry guy, I drifted off on this.

Sorry if I bored you, I'll summarize so: through personal experience both in my company and my country, I know that "streamlining" by job cuts only works effectively as a one-time event: the first round of layoffs gets rid of the non-managerial dead-wood, but after that, in most orgs the people who need to be gotten rid of to remove bloat are at the middle-management layer who end up making the decisions on who to lay off, so productive ppl are removed to save the manager's own jobs and the root cause of the inefficiencies/bloat continues.

Miles1 wrote:
Well, care to enlighten me so, as you have obviously already studied these records? You said "Until Reagan got into office, Republicans and not Democrats were at the forefront of environmental protection." - I'll take that as a fact to save time so, so the next question is what happened under Reagan, who seems to be the patron saint of the Republican Party and who can never have done any wrong apparently, to change the Republican's stance on the environment?

Reagan is loved by pretty much everyone in this country (except for the extreme ideologues) because we credit him (most likely a little to graciously) with the end of the Cold War. He was also very pro-business and saw many regulations as nuisances to business. We were in an economic quagmire after Carter (the most ineffectual president until Obama....if you think Obama has even been the slightest bit effective then you have ideology problems). So Reagan got rid of many environmental regulations in order to help economic growth. It really didn't help that much.

I do not favor trimming regulations for business purposes. I favor clipping the power of many governmental regulating agencies (like the EPA) because it is no longer about the environment any more. It is about generating revenue and nothing else at this point. Most of these agencies have way to much power at this point.

Miles1 wrote:
So if a "true" conservative politician shouldn't be a career politician, then how are they to get into a position where they can actually influence things on a national scale without getting co-opted/corrupted by the Republican party machine? Unless there are term limits brought in for congress, then you'll always end up with career politicians.

They can't. Not any more. Our system was supposed to be set up with politicians who were servants while in Washington, but would come home to whatever means of supporting themselves they had. Government service was not supposed to be their means of support. That way they would have a clear stake in the economic success of the country. They were supposed to be subject to each and every law they passed. Of course they are no longer subject to many of them.

That is why a true conservative would not wish to be a career politician (at least a conservative in tUSA). Conservatives would want to CONSERVE the spirit of our governmental system and not run roughshod through it.

Miles1 wrote:
Sorry if I bored you, I'll summarize so: through personal experience both in my company and my country, I know that "streamlining" by job cuts only works effectively as a one-time event: the first round of layoffs gets rid of the non-managerial dead-wood, but after that, in most orgs the people who need to be gotten rid of to remove bloat are at the middle-management layer who end up making the decisions on who to lay off, so productive ppl are removed to save the manager's own jobs and the root cause of the inefficiencies/bloat continues.

Sorry Miles. I keep reading the same "I won't be able to surf the net any more" kinda stuff I read the first time.

You ain't the only one who has been through the "fat cutter". In fact trimming the fat is many times part of my job. I know exactly what your post above means and yeah, it does mean that you would actually have to work your 40 and not slack off......you know, what you were supposed to be doing all along.

Marconius wrote: So Reagan got rid of many environmental regulations in order to help economic growth. It really didn't help that much.

So if it didn't help, then why are today's republicans all gung-ho to try to repeat the experiment?

[/quote]
I do not favor trimming regulations for business purposes. I favor clipping the power of many governmental regulating agencies (like the EPA) because it is no longer about the environment any more. It is about generating revenue and nothing else at this point. Most of these agencies have way to much power at this point. [/quote]

Shocking to believe, but I agree with you here. Government pretty much everywhere in the world has gotten too bloated and inefficient and self-perpetuating.

That is why a true conservative would not wish to be a career politician (at least a conservative in tUSA). Conservatives would want to CONSERVE the spirit of our governmental system and not run roughshod through it.

So that's how things are supposed to be, now how do you actually change it - or is change even possible these days?

Sorry Miles. I keep reading the same "I won't be able to surf the net any more" kinda stuff I read the first time.

You ain't the only one who has been through the "fat cutter". In fact trimming the fat is many times part of my job. I know exactly what your post above means and yeah, it does mean that you would actually have to work your 40 and not slack off......you know, what you were supposed to be doing all along.

So you're basically calling me a slacker then, nice, cheers for that. My point, once again and for the last time, wasn't "boo hoo, if they fire the rest of the slackers I may actually have to do some work", it's that most of the time in streamlining, the "fat" doesn't get cut, the "muscle" does. Take a hospital say, if they talk about "streamlining", they never fire the bureaucrats who produce nothing but paper (the "fat") and who never see a patient, they close a ward and fire a bunch of nurses who actually help sick ppl (the "muscle"), because the ones doing the firing decisions are the bureaucrats who see themselves as indispensable. Sure, maybe there are some slackers who can be gotten rid of, but what happens if you need to streamline again and you've run out of slackers? Do you get rid of your fellow manager on $100k a year who you lunch with every day or do you fire 3 more workers on $30k a year and make the rest take up the work? Maybe you do your fat trimming differently and fire the manager, and if so I salute you, you're one of the few.

I thought Reagan did a pretty good job of getting our economy going again. I favor his styule of stimulating business by reducing restrictive regulations and taxes. I think his presidency led us to more prosperous times than Carter and is the main reason many conservatives loved and revere him.

AS for 'true conservatives would not wish to be career politicians', thats probably true. Unfortunately power corrupts and thats why I wish we had term limits for all politicians, not just presidents. But it would take an act of Congress to enact this and I doubt seriously that would ever happen.

I wish we could somehow slash politician's salaries too and raise the salaries of our military, police and fire fighters, who put their lives on the line daily so we an be free to surf the net.

Miles1 wrote:

Marconius wrote: So Reagan got rid of many environmental regulations in order to help economic growth. It really didn't help that much.

So if it didn't help, then why are today's republicans all gung-ho to try to repeat the experiment?

I do not favor trimming regulations for business purposes. I favor clipping the power of many governmental regulating agencies (like the EPA) because it is no longer about the environment any more. It is about generating revenue and nothing else at this point. Most of these agencies have way to much power at this point. [/quote]

Shocking to believe, but I agree with you here. Government pretty much everywhere in the world has gotten too bloated and inefficient and self-perpetuating.

That is why a true conservative would not wish to be a career politician (at least a conservative in tUSA). Conservatives would want to CONSERVE the spirit of our governmental system and not run roughshod through it.

So that's how things are supposed to be, now how do you actually change it - or is change even possible these days?

Sorry Miles. I keep reading the same "I won't be able to surf the net any more" kinda stuff I read the first time.

You ain't the only one who has been through the "fat cutter". In fact trimming the fat is many times part of my job. I know exactly what your post above means and yeah, it does mean that you would actually have to work your 40 and not slack off......you know, what you were supposed to be doing all along.

So you're basically calling me a slacker then, nice, cheers for that. My point, once again and for the last time, wasn't "boo hoo, if they fire the rest of the slackers I may actually have to do some work", it's that most of the time in streamlining, the "fat" doesn't get cut, the "muscle" does. Take a hospital say, if they talk about "streamlining", they never fire the bureaucrats who produce nothing but paper (the "fat") and who never see a patient, they close a ward and fire a bunch of nurses who actually help sick ppl (the "muscle"), because the ones doing the firing decisions are the bureaucrats who see themselves as indispensable. Sure, maybe there are some slackers who can be gotten rid of, but what happens if you need to streamline again and you've run out of slackers? Do you get rid of your fellow manager on $100k a year who you lunch with every day or do you fire 3 more workers on $30k a year and make the rest take up the work? Maybe you do your fat trimming differently and fire the manager, and if so I salute you, you're one of the few. [/quote]

Sorry about replying to the whole post all at once, but I am actually "slacking off" right now and typing this on the Blackberry!!!

Modern Republicans try to emulate Reagan because he is admired by most people both Dems and Reps here in tUSA. That has more to do with how he handled tUSSR than anything else. It isn't as if the economy in the 1980's was stellar....how many recessions did we go through.....2 or 3 at least. Reagan's popularity is why the Neocons got such a strong foothold.

The only way to fix things is by revolution. Now in saying this, I am not advocating violent revolution, but a revolution of the voters. In watching some of the political commercials I've been seeing lately, I think it is getting cunthair close. There are a few nonpartisan political commercials airing over here (CNN is showing a bunch) that are preaching non-party line voting and voting on the issues alone and it seems that the biggest issue is the debt.

Yes Miles, you are a slacker. Don't worry though, I have yet to meet a person who wasn't when they could get away with it (look at me right now). I guess I am lucky. My industry is not unionized so therefore we have very little fat (you know, those middle management positons created for no reason other than increasing union power). We only trim the unneeded personnel when we are going over our established AFE (an account created for the billing purposes of each and every project. Now say we are repairing an outgoing oil riser (a riser is the section of pipe going from the production deck to the waterline. The riser might only be 80' long, but since it is at the water/air interface, it is subject to heavy corrossion and needs to be repaired/replaced quite often. Now say we are going over our AFE and I gotta trim the crews. I will get with the foremen of the construction crew, the scaffold crew, the dive crew, and the paint crew (as well as inspection and heat treat). We will discuss who they can live without and send those guys home. Usually it is the newer guys, but sometimes we can use that oppotunity to send guys home if they have been out there a while and need a break(we actually try to do this as much as we can). Of course we don't usually feel bad about laying these guys off the job 'cause they really didn't lose their job. They are still employed by whatever company hired them, they just have to wait for another job to pop up.

Of course I realize my position and industry are worlds apart from yours. I worked that office crap and can't stand it. Even though I am still in an office today, it is in an industrial setting and is quite different from a corporate setting.

BTW-sorry if I pissed you off with my comments. We all know that everyone here slacks whenever we can. It ain't nothin personal...just being an asshole was all.

Marconius wrote:
Sorry about replying to the whole post all at once, but I am actually "slacking off" right now and typing this on the Blackberry!!!

Ugh, crackberrys - have one for work and I hate it, have been trying to sell the boss on getting us iphones as the on-duty phones got ages. Coincidentally, my last company got bought out by RIM 2 days after I handed in my notice :-)

Modern Republicans try to emulate Reagan because he is admired by most people both Dems and Reps here in tUSA. That has more to do with how he handled tUSSR than anything else. It isn't as if the economy in the 1980's was stellar....how many recessions did we go through.....2 or 3 at least. Reagan's popularity is why the Neocons got such a strong foothold.

So people are more in love with the myth of Reagan than anything he actually did?

The only way to fix things is by revolution. Now in saying this, I am not advocating violent revolution, but a revolution of the voters. In watching some of the political commercials I've been seeing lately, I think it is getting cunthair close. There are a few nonpartisan political commercials airing over here (CNN is showing a bunch) that are preaching non-party line voting and voting on the issues alone and it seems that the biggest issue is the debt.

The problem with a voter revolution though is that there's no real third-party option at the moment - if you vote for any independent who is rich enough to get on the ballot (Perot, Nader), they still don't have a hope of winning, all they can do at best is split the vote and hand the election to one side or another.

One option I thought of ages ago for elections is the "NOTA wins" rule - one of the problems at eh moment is that if ppl don't like the candidates they have, they have no real other choices besides not voting, or voting for he lesser of two evils. I know in the US you have "None Of The Above" as an option on most/all(?) ballot papers, well how about bringing in a rule that if NOTA "wins" by getting more votes than any of the actual candidates, then the election is declared void and has to be re-held with new candidates? Of course the chances of this actually happening is slim to non-existent, it would be like turkeys voting for xmas for politicians to vote for this.

Yes Miles, you are a slacker. Don't worry though, I have yet to meet a person who wasn't when they could get away with it (look at me right now).

I'm not a big fan of the term "slacker", I prefer "energy efficient" - most of my job involves waiting around for something to break, so I get time to do other stuff

Of course I realize my position and industry are worlds apart from yours. I worked that office crap and can't stand it. Even though I am still in an office today, it is in an industrial setting and is quite different from a corporate setting.

Yeah, is a big diff between your layoffs there and ours - in our place, a layoff is for life, not just for the weekend, once you're gone, you're gone. First time I was "streamlined" my team went from 24ppl to 18 in an afternoon, with the same workload. One of the guys that got laid off was 2 days back from his honeymoon, didn't get another job for nearly a year, another had his work visa tied to the company so him and his wife & kid had to go back to S Africa, so the way the layoffs were done left a pretty bad taste in our mouths. Also, in that 24 we had 4 managers, guess how many managers were in the 6 ppl that went?

BTW-sorry if I pissed you off with my comments. We all know that everyone here slacks whenever we can. It ain't nothin personal...just being an asshole was all.

Meh, if I took everything to heart that I read on the internet, I would've killed myself years ago :-P