1. Comment #67494 by AgentofEvolution on September 3, 2007 at 3:34 pm

I can't wait to watch this! Thank Science for the internets.

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2. Comment #67510 by Johnny O on September 3, 2007 at 4:06 pm

That is the first time I've heard him speak in that way about his brother. He seemed almost sad about it.

I can't wait to hear the whole thre hours.

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3. Comment #67521 by NAIANF87 on September 3, 2007 at 5:18 pm

Haha, "Thank Sciance." Nice, AgentofEvolution. I love Southpark too.

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4. Comment #67522 by Beachbum on September 3, 2007 at 5:20 pm

I watched it and recorded the whole 3 hours, twice, to DVD and thought it quite nice, as interviews go. The emails and call-ins ran the full spectrum from amiable to absurd. I have also learned a bit more about Mr. Hitchens and his particular point of view, I was very pleased with the broadcast.

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5. Comment #67525 by Zzyx1170 on September 3, 2007 at 5:42 pm

For those who want to listen to this on a digital audio player (like iPod), I placed an mp3 of parts 1 through 7 of this interview on RapidShare at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/53257393/Christopher-Hitchens_2007-09-02-CSPAN_01-07.mp3

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6. Comment #67528 by apexmi on September 3, 2007 at 5:55 pm

Beachbum,
Would you be willing to make me a copy of your DVD if I sent you the time,disc,postage Cost? Never know how long until a replay hits to record myself.

Thanks

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7. Comment #67530 by jimmm33 on September 3, 2007 at 6:02 pm

I watched 1-7. Looking forward to the rest. It was neat to see clips of him from CSPAN in the past.

He's coughing a bit. I hope he takes care of himself. I found myself worrying about his health.

Other Comments by jimmm33

8. Comment #67531 by HappyPrimate on September 3, 2007 at 6:02 pm

Watched the whole thing twice yesterday on C-Span. It was a very good interview and was truly in-depth on Hitchens. They talked about all his books, current events and his personal life.

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9. Comment #67532 by AJ Rae on September 3, 2007 at 6:03 pm

Not so much on religion, lots on Hitchens, some on Iraq.

He confirms his views on abortion quite early on in the interview. He seems to be basing his anti-abortion views on the argument from potential. He says an embryo is a "unborn child" as the reason for his view. It's a very weak argument, with the obvious mistake of giving a potential-X the value of X.

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10. Comment #67544 by okmichigan on September 3, 2007 at 6:55 pm

AJ I think his views on abortion may be a little more nuanced than that. All he really admits is that it may be fair to at some point call the fetus an unborn child, and that abortion should be avoided whenever possible. He frequently speaks out against the religious who think that life actually begins at conception. I would imagine that like most of us, Mr. Hitchens falls somewhere in the middle.

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11. Comment #67565 by papavb on September 3, 2007 at 8:01 pm

One funny thing about the pro-lifers, is to notice that their opponents, aren't the pro-death people. I would assume no one here would choose abortion as the first solution to any such question, and quite literally throw out the baby with the bathwater. A certain amount of discretion and deftness in these matters is required, and I would feel somewhat uneasy comparing unborn children to X's and potential X's. The choice doth lay with the mother when it comes to it though.

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12. Comment #67587 by doodinthemood on September 4, 2007 at 12:27 am

3 hours in ten minute chunks? Crucifiction sure works hard.

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13. Comment #67589 by Robert Maynard on September 4, 2007 at 12:34 am

Thanks, Zzyx1170

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14. Comment #67596 by neverdead on September 4, 2007 at 1:19 am

I watched it on Cspan & thoroughly enjoyed it.
15 parts here.
http://www.buildupthatwall.com/videos.html

Other Comments by neverdead

15. Comment #67614 by Zzyx1170 on September 4, 2007 at 2:54 am

I also placed an mp3 of parts 8 through 15 of this interview on RapidShare at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/53319742/Christopher-Hitchens_2007-09-02-CSPAN_08-15.mp3

Other Comments by Zzyx1170

16. Comment #67627 by quicksilver on September 4, 2007 at 4:06 am

Thanks, Zzyx1170! I thank you, my friends thank you, and everyone at my job today will thank you!

Other Comments by quicksilver

17. Comment #67632 by scooternyc on September 4, 2007 at 4:31 am

While I know that my view of anthropogenic global warming is not shared by most on this site, it was disturbing to me to hear Hitchens say that we should be acting as though it is happening.

Unfortunately this sounds so very much like the wager of believing in god just in case.

For me, the entire interview, save for this moment, was terrific. My observation was as such of truly getting to know the author in ways that we don't always get to have insight of when debates are at hand.

Other Comments by scooternyc

18. Comment #67638 by CJ22 on September 4, 2007 at 5:01 am

Oh this is gonna be good! Thanks all those making the efforts to make this stuff available to us all. Of all the musketeers and their colleagues, I think Hitchens is probably the one whom I agree with the least but enjoy hearing speak the most.

Other Comments by CJ22

19. Comment #67667 by Robert Maynard on September 4, 2007 at 8:56 am

scooternyc: Unfortunately this sounds so very much like the wager of believing in god just in case.

What it sounds like is insuring against a worst case scenario, in a physical world which is completely available to measurement.
Unlike Pascal's wager, in which one is encouraged to subscribe to a religious "philosophy" based on a threat assessment pertaining to a scenario which cannot be investigated, and supported by "lobbyists" with no evidence - the particulars of climate change are completely observable (though its predictive power has understandably large error bars at the moment), and the threat assessments are entirely derived from that data.
Also unlike Pascal, the outcomes of this wager will verifiably take place in an actual world, one way or the other.

The infamous wager isn't unsound because it's a bad idea to "play it safe", it's unsound because it doesn't account for the true range of outcomes, which if included would ultimately produce no wiser option than not gambling in the first place.

On the other hand, making a transition to low-carbon, renewable energies would be a good idea even if the Earth didn't seem to be dangerously heating up as a result of us burning the billions of litres of plankton and plant remains we found in the ground.

Other Comments by Robert Maynard

20. Comment #67672 by hungarianelephant on September 4, 2007 at 9:59 am

But there's also a much larger downside than Pascal's wager. Kyoto has already cost getting on for $400bn. And even if it were implemented in full, it is estimated to delay the effect of global warming by around 6 years. You don't have to disbelieve in AGW to see that this is spectacularly poor value, any more than you have to be a rabid environmentalist to appreciate that burning vast amounts of oil in a matter of decades is a bad idea – as Robert Maynard points out.

Unfortunately, the debate has become polarised between deep greens and the oil lobby, with pretty much everyone else realising that there's a problem but failing to do anything meaningful about it.

If we were really serious about it, we (by which I mean the US, where I don't live) would spend $200bn on a Manhattan Project II to develop a cheap, renewable energy source. This kills off AGW and peak oil in one go, but the reason I characterise it thus is that it would also deprive the mad mullahs of resources and influence. On the whole, it seems a better use of money than starting another war front in the Middle East.

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21. Comment #67673 by scooternyc on September 4, 2007 at 10:03 am

Robert,

I respect your post even though I disagree with some of it.

While the science consensus is one of a political nature, the science data is not. There are too many discrepancies still to be proved to just give ourselves over to such ideology.

It cannot, for instance, be discounted the research of Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick and the difficulties they had in even getting the data from Mann to reconstruct his assessment. Is this not the basis of all science? We take your data, recreate the experiment/information, and find out if it's falsifiable. The very same insistence that we in opposition of religion claim to want to see done with regard to the existence of god.

Although there has been claims to such data as showing that anthropogenic global warming exists, it cannot say how much man is contributing, if at all.

While I believe in the conservation or resources, the exploration of alternatives, I will not endorse the idea of hysteria that others wish to religiously indulge.

Consensus is not science, it's politics.

"Playing it safe" is no different than "act as though god does exist just in case". Anyone is free to rationalize it differently, but neither premise is responsible in the choice to do so.

The models that seem to predict are never revealed publicly nor the data that is input to these models. If I'm mistaken hopefully someone will support information by which I can further research. Information that has been gleaned tells of model numbers greatly inflated to show the extreme; this is not responsible research.

When the models were utilized to predict past weather patterns, they were unreliable. Again, if I'm mistaken, please advise.

Regardless, I am not willing to assert the endorsement of trillions of dollars toward something when there are greater issues in the world that need priority and no one can prove the science as certain.

Other Comments by scooternyc

22. Comment #67674 by toomanytribbles on September 4, 2007 at 10:03 am

i just watched the whole thing. the 15th part ends rather abruptly -- miss much?

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23. Comment #67684 by CruciFiction on September 4, 2007 at 10:52 am

doodinthemood,

Thanks for the thought, but I cannot take credit for this one. Some other YT user is doing the uploading work. I just found it.

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24. Comment #67691 by robotaholic on September 4, 2007 at 11:29 am

I realized that regardless of the topic, when CH speaks, I learn something new either about history, literature, or have a new joke.

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25. Comment #67695 by Thor on September 4, 2007 at 11:59 am

The whole program will probably be up rather soon on the "In Depth" homepage at the CSPAN website:

http://www.booktv.org/programs_archive.aspx?SectionName=In%20Depth
(videos there are RealPlayer streams)

BTW: I just noticed they also did an interview with E.O.Wilson - could be interesting.

Other Comments by Thor

26. Comment #67704 by bluebird on September 4, 2007 at 12:48 pm

Thor, thanks for the CSPAN/booktv link, and for mentioning the EO Wilson interview (8/5/07).

Other Comments by bluebird

27. Comment #67714 by John Frum on September 4, 2007 at 1:43 pm

Thanks for the link



scooternyc,
I wouldn't draw a comparison between 'the existence of a God wager' and concern for the planet. The former is totally selfish and dishonest - while the latter is based on genuine well-being and security of all.

Other Comments by John Frum

28. Comment #67715 by Deoradh on September 4, 2007 at 1:47 pm

All 19 parts are now available - It's been a good evenings viewing

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29. Comment #67718 by MilesSmiles on September 4, 2007 at 1:51 pm

Brilliant...all videos are on http://www.buildupthatwall.com/videos.html

Other Comments by MilesSmiles

30. Comment #67742 by Zaphod on September 4, 2007 at 3:09 pm

I watched this last night and the last 30+ minutes not long ago. Really enjoyed it.

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31. Comment #67746 by AlmostCertain on September 4, 2007 at 3:36 pm

It will be rebroadcast on CSPAN this Saturday morning at 9am (I believe that's eastern time).

See this website:

http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8532&SectionName=In%20Depth&PlayMedia=No

Other Comments by AlmostCertain

32. Comment #67771 by Dreamer's Dilemma on September 4, 2007 at 5:35 pm

Scooternyc,

Stand tall in the face of the opposition. Correlation is not cause. You are correct that there are many more significant problems on which the global economy should invest scarce resources to the greater good of humanity than the threat of global warming.

World hunger comes to mind. A handfull of medical challenges (AIDS of course, but maybe if a few dollars could be spared for non-politically correct diseases then some others as well). Islamic terrorists. Michael Moore movies. Well, you get the idea.

Regards,
DD

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33. Comment #67776 by roach on September 4, 2007 at 6:22 pm

Thanks for posting this.

Other Comments by roach

34. Comment #67792 by eric.malitz on September 4, 2007 at 8:29 pm

world hunger and saving millions more humans via medical advances are more important than the obvious destruction humans have waged on the environment? How about having no place to live and no environment at all? How about seeing every large mammal go extinct; its fine as long we save a million humans, right?
The environment should be top priority, it is the most general thing holding all life together on this planet. And how can anyone argue with the massive amount of species extinction that is happening under our feet? This is fine as long as we save some more humans?
Whether global warming is happening or not, we absolutely should be "playing it safe"..there are many, many things that need to implemented very soon to keep the environment from rolling, very fast as it is, downhill. This is not a personal bias or some looney green talk, this is the world we live in; humans are not the only animals on this planet.

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35. Comment #67795 by Jacob on September 4, 2007 at 8:37 pm

Did anybody happen to write down the list of books Hitchen's has enjoyed?

I was able to get the author list as:

• George Eliot
• George Orwell
• Martin Amis
• Kingsley Amis
• Ian McEwan
• Salman Rushdie
• Colm Tóibín
• Karl Marx
• Richard Dawkins
• P.G. Wodehouse
• Evelyn Waugh
• Paul Scott
• James Fenton
• James Joyce
• Conor Cruise O'Brien
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Saul Bellow


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36. Comment #67798 by Thor on September 4, 2007 at 8:46 pm

Beware of part 16 of the Youtube clips: there is a crazy religious woman calling in and holding a longish monologue about... well, I don't really know what it was about, I probably purged my my memory in order to remain sane.

Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad - I skipped over most of it, but I found myself grinding my teeth while listening to her inane drivel.

Other Comments by Thor

37. Comment #67820 by Robert Maynard on September 5, 2007 at 12:16 am

scotternyc: "Playing it safe" is no different than "act as though god does exist just in case".

So you have decided to equate all notions of self-preservation in the face of a speculative threat with intellectual cowardice. Fantastic.

To re-iterate, I already addressed this attempt at equivocation in my initial response, because Pascal's wager does not "account for the true range of outcomes", and is therefore not comparable to, shall we say, Gore's Wager, just to be cheeky. :P
I say again, the contemptible nature of Pascal's wager does not lie in its endorsement of playing it safe. Playing it safe is, in general, a really smart idea, which is what makes Pascal's wager so seductive to anyone who becomes impressed by it. The problem lies in the false analysis of the 'game' (there is more than one god to be wrong about, so belief in Pascal's Christian God is as far from safety as atheism, rendering the wager meaningless), and a bad understanding of how one can play it (people don't generally change their minds on important issues without some serious convincing).

What is more important about Gore's Wager, and its incompatibility with the threats of religious ideology, is that beliefs regarding global warming are not a matter of differential outcomes for individual policies. It is not the case that people who believe different things about global warming will come to experience different worlds as time passes. So policy regarding the issue must be considered with everyones best interests in mind, and we must devote resources to pursuing the safest options.
It is a wager, and it's the sort of wager you really wouldn't want to be wrong about.

Let me use an example we're all familiar with.
Imagine Bertrand Russel's celestial teapot. We can't see it, but we can't disprove its existence, so we have to be agnostic about it. But in a sense, there are celestial teapots out there - millions of them, the mineralised remnants of a solar ejection billions of years ago - they're quite difficult to detect if you don't know where to look, because they're non-luminous and don't reflect the suns light very well, or very much of it.
Despite this, NASA devotes a portion of its budget to developing solutions should a rather large teapot, say the size of India, someday found itself on a collision course with our planet. Why is that? Why should we spend money on a threat that may never materialise, which we aren't responsible for, and which we may not even be able to solve, when there are already so many solvable problems on Earth? Why don't we leave aside our plans for averting extinction-event teapot strikes until such a nightmare is unambiguous and imminent?
Because while we must be agnostic, it is ultimately a matter of probability. We know they're out there, even when we can't see the majority of them. And no matter how much room there is in space, in the fullness of time there is bound to be one which will otherwise randomly careen into Earth.
There are currently no meteors known to be on a collision course with Earth, but there have been several spotted which in the next few decades (if calculated correctly) will pass very close by our atmosphere. To echo your calls for skepticism over climate modeling, what if those calculations are wrong? What if, indeed? What if these exaggerated models of climate change were still not extreme enough?

Where there is uncertainty in matters like this, we should be modestly aware of our circumstances, and plan for the worst. It's smarter to play it safe when the environment is at stake, because the cost of being wrong is seven billion amazed people slapping their forehead hard enough to die. :P
The species does not move as one, and we can easily afford to pay different people to work on different problems at the same time. It is not as though pursuing policies to curb greenhouse emissions is going to stall research on AIDS, just as putting billions behind plans to counter global warming is not going to divert funds away from planning for a meteor strike or a terrorist attack.

Anyway, I've never seen your previous discussions about global warming, so I don't really know much about your positions. It's unclear whether you accept global warming but deny anthropogenic global warming, or if you just flat out deny global warming in general. I'm curious because Dreamer's quip about correlation and causation has me wondering if he doesn't even accept the greenhouse effect.

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38. Comment #67864 by hungarianelephant on September 5, 2007 at 3:27 am

Robert Maynard - I don't disagree with any of your post. The problem is that this eminently sensible position is frequently taken as a mandate for action which it does not support, because of a misunderstanding of what the "safe" option is.

As I understand it, you are saying that it is a good idea to put resources into researching alternative energy sources, in case the climate change models are right (or an underestimate). We can probably all agree on that.

But the deep greens do not say this. Instead they want to reduce carbon emissions by next week, regardless of the economic and human cost. Now, what if the model is wrong? What if AGW is negligible? Or what if AGW is real but the actions we take don't have the desired effect? What if the earth is naturally warming? Then we will have created a significant amount of human misery for no reason. It's hard to see how this is in any meaningful sense a "safe" option. Unfortunately, this is where most of the debate is stuck. I don't include yourself or scooternyc in this, but nonetheless it seems to me that we need to move on from discussions about whether or not AGW is real.

eric.malitz - Your point is well made. Nonetheless, the damage already done is done and there's no point crying over it now. The question is whether we can do better in the future. Taking your point that the planet does not solely belong to humans, the fact remains that we are the dominant species and control the fate of many others. Short of mass suicide, a 12 Monkeys-type epidemic or worldwide totalitarian regimes, the only way we can reasonably expect to conserve other species is if it can be shown to be not in the interests of individuals to do things that harm them.

The elephant, for example, is regarded as a pest by many African villagers, and remains a fruitful source of income for the poachers. We can try descending from the West and telling people that the elephant is one of the last large mammals and it's vital to save it. But that won't work, unless we can give the villagers an interest in doing so (and meanwhile try to eliminate the positive advantages in killing it, such as by enforcing the ivory ban rigidly). Richard Leakey - possibly the most enthusiastic proponent of elephant conservation - argues this in more detail in The Sixth Extinction, which IMO should be compulsory reading in schools. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend it.

Other Comments by hungarianelephant

39. Comment #67896 by Robert Maynard on September 5, 2007 at 4:53 am

True, hungarianelephant, but I thought everyone understood that deep greens (at least the ones as "deep" as you're referring to) are unrealistic hippies. When someone can't understand that change is going to take place over years, decades, rather than months, they're not arguing for progress, they're arguing for standstill, for freezing in the headlights.

Everyone's got a different take, but besides improving and researching alternative energies I'm a big fan of pushing for nuclear power as a transitional alternative energy, while solar cells improve and we use biofuels to try and wean ourselves off petrochemicals.
Now, it'd be seriously great if everyone dropped everything and started building nuclear power plants now, but those things take over a decade to build, and deep greens seem to be even less fond of stardust-based uranium than corpse-based oil.

Ultimately I think we'll just move forward gradually and deal with the consequences of our policies as they come. We are after all the smartest things around, so if any non-bacterial organism has a chance of surviving a poisonous, irreversible (on geological scales) climate shift, its us. :P

Besides, if the earth is naturally warming you still couldn't argue that emitting less greenhouse gas would make things worse, and you still couldn't argue that shaking off our reliance on finite resources is a bad idea. With issues like peak oil riding alongside, easing into new forms of energy around now would be a good idea even if the Earth wasn't also heating up.

Other Comments by Robert Maynard

40. Comment #67939 by scooternyc on September 5, 2007 at 8:57 am

Mr. Maynard,

I cannot fathom from your post to hungarian how you are able to understand with reason and logic the position of the "extreme greens" and yet not understand the post previously where I point to verifiable and empirical evidence that the "hockey stick" graph, alone, is being disputed. Gore and company are the extreme greens with nothing more than political ambitions.

One must question why Gore wouldn't even accept the easy debate with Bjorn Lomborg on this issue? Why not any other scientist?

We know why.

As such, once again, I am not willing to drink the kool-aid of people who want to turn this into a religious hysteria by which we are delegating trillions of dollars while too many scientists and data are not conclusive.

I ask the same questions of you regarding the data you have seen and the other data available in dispute, as I would a person of religion:

Whom are we discrediting?

What data are we ignoring?

How is this criteria being decided?

Who is deciding the criteria for the discrediting of both data and scientists?

And one more time, I accept and encourage that we conserve our resources, recycle when possible, find alternatives, but I'm not willing to "act as if global warming is man-made". That's an extremists view which flies in the face of rational, objective observation of evidence with which it is not being politicized.

Again, consensus is politics, not science.

Other Comments by scooternyc

41. Comment #67949 by tieInterceptor on September 5, 2007 at 10:31 am

very interesting talk by 'the one and only' mr Hitchens.

his thoughts on abortion did make me think he is against it 100%, but as okmichigan mentions, most likely he did not mean that a 3 day old embryo is a baby, but that there is a moment that a unborn child is developed enough to be considered alive. therefore there is a time deadline in the development of the foetus that should not be crossed.

I made a playlist with the entire youtube videos 1 to 19

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=820E0F76DC8D628B


so they are easy to find to anyone interested.

Other Comments by tieInterceptor

42. Comment #67956 by Robert Maynard on September 5, 2007 at 11:18 am

Scooter,
I think ultimately our differences are not dramatic. I would hasten to join you in encouraging due skepticism of Al Gore's politicised declarations and rock concerts (regardless of how sincere I do believe he is), but I would not be so quick to stand up to, say, the IPCC, whose conclusions are very similar, simply because I know that I'm nowhere near qualified enough to begin commenting on their conclusions, let alone considering myself familiar and comfortable with the work of its critics, whichever payroll they happen to occupy.

Besides my status as an amateur enthusiast, I've avoided talking about the actual science because your initial beef was a mostly philosophical one. When you did bring in the science though, it seemed as though you would move from acknowledging evidence for AGW (however subtle), to reflecting on the implications that only a subtle, uncertain effect has for the reliability of the 'hockey graph', and then proceed to denial of AGW altogether, and comparisons to cults.

This three step progression was perfectly encapsulated in a single sentence you wrote,

Although there has been claims to such data as showing that anthropogenic global warming exists, it cannot say how much man is contributing, if at all.

It's like "It does seem as though there is evidence for it, but we don't know how much evidence there is for it, or even if there is any evidence for it. Wait.. what did I say at the beginning?"
From that kind of wandering, I think you may be behaving just a tad contrarian about the issue.

Al Gore is not nearly as deep green as some: he does stress the importance of global warming activism as an economically competitive movement, rather than a "You can't like, own money, man" quasi-socialist dismantling and revolution of "the way things are now".

The whole "trillions of dollars" thing is another thing I don't get. I mean, the investigation and implementation of alternative energies are the exact policies Gore et al recommend as a solution to their arguments about AGW. But you've said you support these policies. It's not like he's also advocating a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Where is the disconnect, if the outcomes of your differing opinions ultimately end up in the same place? Exactly which of those trillions would be spent in ways you haven't already agreed are good? Are there plans for a giant gold Gore statue I don't know about?

Other Comments by Robert Maynard

43. Comment #67980 by scooternyc on September 5, 2007 at 1:59 pm

Mr.Maynard,

Perhaps we are closer in thought that previously considered.

I do not support the Kyoto or Gore's fantastical hysteria. Gore's fanaticism rings in the ear most irritatingly when statements as such, "it's settled, the consensus is there; the debate is over" or any similar rhetoric. This just has politics written all over it. His own ambitions, and I can only venture to guess, those that support him undaunted by all the counter-arguments and evidence are suspect in all manner of speaking.

At this point we just don't know, as repeated by Gore to Stephanopoulos on his Sunday show this past year when questioned about some of the validity of the models used and the information gleaned from them.

I don't want to proceed as if we are responsible until that evidence is more reliable and falsifiable. At this point, it is not.

I do like the continuation of private companies seeking alternatives to support an ever growing society that should, as always, conserve its resources and find alternatives when possible.

To mandate such behavior is to not allow free markets to function, now we're moving away from the benefits of capitalism and into other arenas of which have never been successful, nor should we participate at such irresponsible government behavior.

Yes, we're humbled by nature and our contributions to its good and bad, but we cannot engage, nor support the hysteria that Gore and his entourage are spewing.

Other Comments by scooternyc

44. Comment #68002 by Robert Maynard on September 5, 2007 at 2:40 pm

I don't think Gore has any political aspirations left, beyond pop statesman, the president-that-would've-been-a-whole-lot-better. His pronouncements are not for politics anymore than, say, Geldof's apparent belief that money and awareness is all we need to fix Africa.
Gore does sincerely believe in anthropogenic global warming, and the consensus as to its nature (which is obviously not to say that faith is any better than cynical politics).

As a citizen of "the other country that didn't ratify Kyoto" I can more or less sympathise with some doubts about that protocol, but its goals were pretty modest. Suppose the case for AGW becomes more solid in the future, and the so-called "deadline" doesn't change by very much - the longer it takes to start acting, the steeper and more ruinous the requirements will become with each successive protocol, once Kyoto terminates in 2012. Again, I think it's better to start moving decisively up now, because it may seem steep now, but it can only get steeper with time if AGW is correct (which I am fairly certain it is). :P

I wouldn't be surprised if most countries failed to meet their Kyoto goals by 2012, but then there'll be a new protocol, and things had better start happening then.

Other Comments by Robert Maynard

45. Comment #68059 by Styrer- on September 6, 2007 at 12:03 am

I love hearing the Hitch. But I suggest a certain 'compartmentalisation' of mind is evident here, with an extraordinary insight into the nature of religion but a blinkered one on Iraq.

His support for the invasion seems to stem from his commendable support for the suffering natives of that country; while his lack of condemnation of the most disingenuously planned and presented, self-interested and irrelevant attack on a foreign, sovereign state seems to be incidental to him. That the former supersedes the latter for Hitchens is disappointing to me, wantonly ideological as it seems to be.

I thought he had left all that behind.

Other Comments by Styrer-

46. Comment #68064 by eric.malitz on September 6, 2007 at 12:59 am

Scooter:
Alternative energy sources or any behavior that leads to a positive effect in what is right now a very dreary future, absolutely SHOULD be mandated.
I am not an expert on global warming but I was under the impression that there really is no dispute among the majority of environmental scientists that it is happening and that human actions are causing it; could this POSSIBLY be suprising, that humans could cause this?? What suprises me is the amount of species that are STILL in existence.

Other Comments by eric.malitz

47. Comment #68065 by eric.malitz on September 6, 2007 at 1:01 am

Should we make this into an official post on the forum? I haven't checked the politics section (or other appropiate sections?) in awhile. But someone feel free to or I will myself (if its not already being discussed).

Other Comments by eric.malitz

48. Comment #68082 by _riverrun_ on September 6, 2007 at 4:40 am

Realplayer file available here. BTW, there are many other interesting 3 hr in depths there as well. Check the archive. :)

http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8532&SectionName=In+Depth&PlayMedia=No

Other Comments by _riverrun_

49. Comment #68118 by thompjs on September 6, 2007 at 7:24 am

On the Global Warming issue:

Read current (or maybe last month now)
Scientific American article. It has good summary
of how the computer models work and what they
are indicating.

If you can slam that article, then let me know.

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50. Comment #68218 by walk on September 6, 2007 at 11:53 am

Can anyone shed light on Citizen Hitch's comments concerning Billy Graham? He paints Graham as a conscious fraud, recounting a (real?) conversation between the Rev. and James Templeton, Graham's Canadian counterpart. Is this conversation described in print antwhere? It would certainly change my perception of Graham as a misguided, but for the most part, sincere individual.

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