Están ocurriendo cambios significativos en sistemas físicos y biológicos de todos los continentes y en la mayoría de océanos [...] La mayoría de estos cambios suceden en la dirección esperada con una mayor temperatura.

[habría] mucho interés entre los políticos en invertir los millones de dólares necesarios, si los científicos pudieran dar respuestas a preguntas fundamentales ... tales como el suministro futuro de alimentos.

It is quite possible that the biosphere (vegetation, sea life, etc.) has been starved for atmospheric CO2. Before humans started burning fossil fuels, vegetation and ocean plankton had been gobbling up as much CO2 out of the atmosphere as they could, but it was like a vacuum cleaner trying to suck through a stopped-up hose. Now, no matter how much CO2 we pump into the atmosphere each year, the biosphere takes out an average of 50 percent of that extra amount. Even after we triple the amount of CO2 we produce, nature still takes out 50 percent of the extra amount.

As a climate researcher, I am increasingly convinced that most of our recent global warming has been natural, not manmade. If true, this would mean that global temperatures can be expected to peak in the coming years (if they haven’t already), and global cooling will eventually ensue.

You would think that science is the last place you would find such religious opinions, yet they dominate the worldview of scientists. Natural scientists tend to worship nature, and they then teach others to worship nature, too . . . all under the guise of “science.” And to the extent that this view is religious, then making environmental laws based upon that view could be considered a violation of the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

La sociedad española ha demostrado que pocas otras -quizás ninguna en el mundo desarrollado- la superan en tolerancia de la mentira. Nunca un Gobierno en democracia les había mentido tanto, de forma tan abierta, obscena, confirmada y hasta reconocida por los mentirosos. Pero el ambiente general de indolencia y resignación han llevado a la práctica abolición del reproche social de la mentira.

[...] here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an alternative theory of the origin of species: Yet no such alternative theory has ever been presented, nor is one presented in the movie, nor even hinted at.

[...] creationists have been morally corrupted by the constant effort of pretending not to be what they are. What they are, as is amply documented, is a pressure group for religious teaching in public schools.

The “intelligent design” hoax is not merely non-science, nor even merely anti-science; it is anti-civilization.

For shame, Ben Stein, for shame. Stand up for your civilization, man! and all its glories. The barbarians are at the gate, as they always have been. Come man the defenses with us, leaving the liars and fools to their lies and folly.

[O] el discurso neocon ha cobrado cuerpo con Aguirre y empiezan a deslizarse los reproches que fueron tan del gusto de los Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol y compañía hacia quienes no les secundaban entre las filas republicanas, o las ideas del neoliberalismo de los 80 han vuelto inoportunamente a la carga cuando una profunda crisis económica está al acecho.

En cualquier caso, sus continuas apelaciones al liberalismo a través de autores como Friedman o Hayek producen cierta inquietud, ya que dejan en el ambiente los ecos neoliberales de la melodía de la revolución conservadora que protagonizaron Reagan y Thatcher.

Libertad

Hay que ponerse en contra de los que hablan por una altavoz; que injurian, apostrofan; contra aquellos cuyos discursos son discursos de potencias superiores a un hombre; que hacen hablar a las cosas ficticias, el Pueblo, la Historia, los dioses y los ídolos; contra los que se ocupan de los demás, y los consideran y piensan en ellos como una materia de sus juicios y de sus fines; que los hacen actuar, pagar, luchar; que estipulan sobre ellos; que pretenden conocer sus intereses y sus necesidades mejor que ellos mismos.

Ya tenemos ahí el poder, para esta misma tarde. Siempre he temido que volviésemos al Gobierno en malas condiciones. No pueden ser peores. Una vez más hay que segar el trigo en verde. Durante estas semanas últimas, lo mismo que en la propaganda del año pasado, he procurado aumentar las dificultades, las condiciones, las reservas, a fin de que el Gobierno no viniese fatalmente a mis manos. Es inútil. La gente quiere que gobierne yo. Y los que tal vez podían gobernar, se quitan de delante. Conocen lo mismo que yo las dificultades de la situación, y otra vez, como en 1931, me tocará afrontar lo que a todos les asusta.

La Puerta del Sol [...] ha ido llenándose de gente. [...] Algunos novatos estaban muy impresionados, pero yo recordaba la noche de abril del 31 y de mayo que precedió a la quema de conventos, y todo esto de hoy me parece una verbena. [...]. En efecto, a la una, como arreciaban los clamores, salí al balcón. Gran estruendo. Conseguí con el ademán, que se callaran [...] les invité a disolverse pacíficamente. Aplaudieron. Media hora después, no quedaba en la Puerta del Sol más que la circulación normal de tales horas.

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.

As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.

The main current of opposition to McCain faults him for departures from strict free-market ideology. [] if conservatives succeed in marginalizing anyone who does not toe the doctrinaire line of their free market ideology, they will lose an important--indeed the most central and precious--aspect of their creed: the faith in the virtue of individuals to make a good society for themselves, rather than the faith in an ideology to make a good society for us.

Conservatives who forget that the free market is properly a piece of policy rather than an ideological end-in-itself not only obscure the importance of individual virtue, they undermine it

The ideology of the economists leads far too many to sneer at the honest, if imperfect, attempts of a man to be virtuous and to put that virtue in the service of his country.

The problem with absolute faith in any ideology, including that of the free market, becomes evident with a glance at the flagship publication of the libertarians, Reason magazine. It is no coincidence that Reason publishes hagiographies of Milton Freedman [sic] as well as pleas for drug legalization and appreciations of cartoon pornography: economic libertarianism, elevated to the status of inviolable first principle, leads to moral libertarianism.

The moral vacuity of dogmatic libertarianism is poisonous to public life. By teaching that 'greed is good,' strict free-market ideology holds out the promise that private vices can be public virtues [sigue].

Tan sólo en el caso de los liberales cabría hablar de una ideología de centro o mixta (comparte con la derecha la aceptación de los resultados del mercado y con la izquierda la libertad individual)

en las posiciones 5 y 6 de la escala ideológica (en la que 1 representa la extrema izquierda y 10 la extrema derecha) había casi un 30% de liberales, un 16% de conservadores, un 11% de demócrata-cristianos, un 12% de socialdemócratas y un 14% de socialistas ..