I wasnt beeing seriose. I dont want you to die. Really I'd be bored at work if you did, so please dont.
I have no clue how much CO2 my car emits vs me breathing it... But i honestly also do not believe industrialization has done any more damage to the atmosphere than the countless volcanic eruptions over the course of earths history have or will. There are volcanoes in south america that never stop spewing gases, and we arent dead yet.
Its not even like co2 just collects and sits around until our atmosphere becomes nothing but... Every vegetable on earth sucks it up. Now maybe chopping down rainforests might affect that, but dont you think, that on a global scale thats been ofset by all the wheat, strawberry, banana farms throught the world. Heck san diego was once scrubland, now its full of those damn eucalyptus trees.
Nature takes care of her self. So lets not worry too much about it. Hell with the way we have advanced technology wise in the last 100 years, it probably wont be more than another 100 before we all live on spaceships anyways...
All I can think about when I read this tread is the song "Capital G" by Nine Inch Nails.
I pushed a button and elected him to office and a
He pushed a button and it dropped a bomb
You pushed a button and could watch it on the television
Those motherfuckers didn't last too long ha ha
I'm sick of hearing 'bout the haves and the have nots
Have some personal accountability
The biggest problem with the way that we've been doing things is
The more we let you have the less that I'll be keeping for me
Well I used to stand for something
Now I'm on my hands and knees
Traded in my God for this one
He signs his name with a Capital G
Don't give a shit about the temperature in Guatemala
Don't really see what all the fuss is about
Ain't gonna worry bout no future generations and a
I'm sure somebody's gonna figure it out
Don't try to tell how some power can corrupt a person
You haven't had enough to know what it's like
You're only angry 'cause you wish you were in my position
Now nod your head because you know that I'm right—all right!
Well I used to stand for something
But forgot what that could be
There's a lot of me inside you
Maybe you're afraid to see
Well I used to stand for something
Now I'm on my hands and knees
Traded in my God for this one
He signs his name with a Capital G
Sueven wrote:
This is revealing. I think Mid is operating under this implicit assumption that everything which everybody says is of equal value, so that (in this context) some right-wing lunatic with a blog balances out the opinion of some scientist who has done serious research into the issue.
Speaking in scientific terms is not simply an attempt to say something in as many words as possible, it's an attempt to use the language appropriate for discussion of a particular subject. The same is generally true of legal language. Obviously it's good to maintain a connection to plain english, but it's more important to speak as precisely and accurately as possible.
It's interesting that Mid seems to think that scientific and legal language is simply "mumbo jumbo." It's also interesting that he apparently is incapable of distinguishing between "legal mumbo jumbo" and scientific mumbo jumbo. As a law student, opening up a scientific study is like staring at sanskrit for me, and I would guess that Animale would probably find it pretty difficult to figure out what the hell is going on in a tax exam. I would suggest that it's not true, as Midnyte claims, that "us awesome folks" use a lot of words while saying nothing. Rather, I think it's true that us awesome folks are using those words to say nothing that Midnyte is capable of comprehending.
Yes Sueven, I am but in illiterate man who cannot comprehend the use of the massie amount of words you choose to use to make a point. Or possibly, just possibly, you bore me with your long innane ramblings. You think of yourself fondly because of your use of legal language. I find you boring, long winded, illogical and boring. (Did I mention boring?)
You are what you are though and I respect you for it. We need people of all types, I suppose.
I hold the opinion that many legal writings and scientific writings are unnecessarily long and usually say nothing. For example, your race essay you sent me. It was awful and presumptious. They go on forever saying so much more than necessary. You find all of those words important and look down upon someone who holds a different opinion. If that means I am dumber than you, then I gladly accept that title. I'm not in an intellectual competition with you nor anyone else on this board. I just enjoy discussing societal issues. I'd enjoy them more if it wasn't on a flame vault, but I have yet to find an interenet forum that isn't filled with such superiority complexes and hatred. Either that or they are all idiots who are like-minded and just regurgitate what the previous poster said.
I am not sure why I continue to try and get my point across, because when I do take the time to explain myself, like I will now - it is completely overlooked - but I will explain myself. Again.
Let me start by reiterating that I have absolutely no objection to development of alternative resources of energy across the board. Let me also say that I think a lot of people underestimate or completely ignore the fact that we have been doing exactly that for decades, and will continue to do so. Thing is, most of the people that speak on this issue are "damn the man" types that are just interested in pointing out how powerful and rich the oil companies are. Doing this is not helping the matter, if you think that some kind of solution will be reached by doing this your are sadly mistaken (you may have also listened to 1 too many Rage Against The Machine songs.)I
The real solution to researching and developing new sources of energy is going to be the people showing THEIR interest in this happening in constructive ways, such as people going to school, getting an education and contributing to the research/development. This is just like anything else of this scale, there is no overnight solution, no matter how urgent the issue may or may not be - it takes time, and if people continue to do their part and make it known that this is the direction they want things to go in, things will change.
There are plenty of very large and wealthy organizations that are very willing to put large sums of money into the research of these issues and the development of new technology, but people need to be educated (preferably early on) on why this is important.
What is not ok with me is to use scare tactics or falsified information to make people think that they do not have a choice but to get on the bandwagon with an agenda. None of you were ok with these tactics being used by the Bush administration to get people on board to go to Iraq, this situation shouldn't be any different, and to be honest I think it is just as serious.
I am completely aware of the theories behind what is happening, what might happen, and what the contributing factors are. Some of the other contributing factors (besides emissions) are deforestation and the rate the worlds population is increasing, and also things like volcanic eruptions, etc. These are equally as imporatant if we are going to talk about working towards a solution to our impact on the environment, and they are also all very very hard issues to deal with, specifically getting control of our population.
I mean we can sit here and talk about ways that we can make things at least a little better by waning away our dependency on oil, but if those other issues aren't adressed, they will become just as big or bigger a problem down the road. What precisely could any of you suggest we do about the population issue? I can't even begin to wrap my mind around any feasable solution that wouldn't heavily infringe on peoples freedom and possibly create other large issues.
To expand on what I said above about misrepresentation of data, I still maintain that is occuring here ,which would I would just ignore if it wasn't for the way it is being used and presented to people. I do not believe we can make fair judgements on climate patterns or changes in sea level, etc based off of a century of data given the age of the planet. We all understand (at least I think we do) that these changes occur in a cycle, but we do not know how long those cycles have taken in the past, how fast temperatures rose, how fast the glaciers melted, how fast water was released into the gulf stream, how long it took for the ice age/s to come about after this process was set into motion.
Given that, I don't think it is too extreme or by any means ignorant of someone to be hesitatnt to get on board with major, expensive, controversial world wide changes to deal with the issue based off of data when we could very well be way off, this could be the normal pace at which these cycles have occurred. I am obviously not arguing the accuracy of these trends they have observed over the past 100 years or so, but I am just stating that 100 years is a blink of an eye in this planets life and I don't feel we can draw these "the world is ending" conclusions from said data. Am I suggesting that we sit on our asses and do nothing? I think I have made it clear that the answer to that is no. But I don't have the sense of extreme urgency that some seem to have, knowing that efforts are being made, and have been being made for many years is enough for me to feel like we are not going to end up in a bad place.
I also am concerned that this data is already being used by politicians to propose very bad plans for action that could have extremely bad consequences, possibly even harsher consequences for humanity than the consequences that the supposed issue at hand pose to us.
I was raised to not be a slob, to clean up after myself, not throw shit on the ground, not use resources I don't need (you could ask my girlfriend how I nag about having lights on in rooms we aren't in), I don't drive anymore than I absolutely need to, etc. I have always been that way and always will be, I feel in a small way I am, and have been doing my part. For this exact reason I refuse to be guilted by any of you into thinking that I am somehow contributing to the problem because I am not on the bandwagon with you. I am completely aware of what is going on around me.
Funk, thanks for the thoughtful post, which makes a pretty decent amount of sense.
Mid, I officially gave up on engaging with you after your contributions to the 'who's your favorite candidate' thread. You're part moron part troll, and I'm not sure how much of each goes into making you up, but I'm pretty certain that there's not much beyond those two. So, for the time being, I'm more or less happy to talk about you, but I don't really have any interest in talking to you.
I'd just like to point out that I held out in giving you the benefit of the doubt and taking you seriously for far longer than most.
Sueven wrote:
Mid, I officially gave up on engaging with you after your contributions to the 'who's your favorite candidate' thread. You're part moron part troll, and I'm not sure how much of each goes into making you up, but I'm pretty certain that there's not much beyond those two. So, for the time being, I'm more or less happy to talk about you, but I don't really have any interest in talking to you.
.
No, no. Not yet. Please explain to me why my interest in not voting for Obama based on his possible religious affiliation and background is so wrong. I have no desire to vote for Huckabee based on his religious beliefs either. Doesn't ones religious affiliation tell a little about who a person is? Their belief structure? Their moralities?
Didn't many on this board express disgust for President Bush based on his christian ideology? Yes, they did. Did you write them off too?
No, no. Not yet. Please explain to me why my interest in not voting for Obama based on his possible religious affiliation and background is so wrong. I have no desire to vote for Huckabee based on his religious beliefs either. Doesn't ones religious affiliation tell a little about who a person is? Their belief structure? Their moralities?
Read the links that you posted in that thread. If you can't figure it out, then I'm going to go with 100% moron, 0% troll.
No, no. Not yet. Please explain to me why my interest in not voting for Obama based on his possible religious affiliation and background is so wrong. I have no desire to vote for Huckabee based on his religious beliefs either. Doesn't ones religious affiliation tell a little about who a person is? Their belief structure? Their moralities?
Read the links that you posted in that thread. If you can't figure it out, then I'm going to go with 100% moron, 0% troll.
I have read them, stupid. Why the fuck do you think I posted them. Do all you legal beagels really have no sense of fucking humor? Jesus dude. Turn that percentage polling on yourself.
Back to the topic... yep Funk population growth is the 800 lb. gorilla in the room on this whole thing. However, at this point in time - as you correctly pointed out - that side of things really cannot be addressed at a reasonable level. Now, one could argue that raising the standard of living for the entire planet (i.e. everybody is first world) would accomplish population control in and of itself (birth rates in the first world are much lower than in the third), so the question becomes how do we raise the economic level for the rest of the world in such a manner that we don't completely destroy the earth in the process - which is what would happen if we do it in the manner that the current first world countries became first world (through major deforestation, strip mining the third world for resources, etc. etc.).
The starter to accomplish this is through a cheap, reliable, "green" source of energy. This would have the added side effect of solving the CO2 emission problem as well in the long term. The world cannot burn coal to become first world, too many issues there (both acid rain, sulfur emissions, and CO2). So, we are left with either solar or fusion in the mid to long term (oil and gas are short term (100ish years) solutions, coal is 1000ish years). I believe that we are not spending enough on research now to accomplish this goal in a reasonable time frame.
Now to your larger point of "we're doing enough now." That is what's called the "business as usual" model in the IPCC report. Let's just say that the projection associated with that is... bad. So, changes need to be made. Maybe not as drastic as some are saying, but, changes need to be made beyond the normal day to day things we all can do. So I disagree with you here, although I do think that the policy decisions being made are not necessarily good ones - but that is a separate debate.
Here's the chapter on the results of models. (Note: this section alone has over 100 contributing authors) http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-repor ... pter10.pdf
If you look at page 763 you see that the consensus is made up of 23 different modeling systems. Some of the individual models (see figure A1B precipitation figure for instance) don't predict large changes at all, whereas others (see figure A1B temperature figures), have outliers that lie far above all the others.
Midnyte_Ragebringer wrote:
I mean, it's not like you could compare this to how the Bush adminstration used 9/11 to go to war and fill their pockets. It's completely not the same issue here at all. These companies aren't profiting willingly by this whole global warming scare....err I mean, Global Climate Concern. It's not as if General Electric has a larger lobbying budget than all of the oil companies combined. Not at all.
And it was larger than the top three oil companies combined, not all. My apologies. Lots of interesting things here to see who is spending money, influencing law and politics.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Douglas Adams
Personally, I think the poles are shifting. We used to have snow in October when I was a kid. Now we are lucky to have a white Christmas. A few years ago we had a snow storm in May and a summer so cold that sweaters were still in use. I don't care what it is called or who is doing the calling, something isn't right. Or, maybe it is right and we are just going through a change that should be happening.
Boogahz wrote:I remember hearing about the pole-shift theories back in the late 80's to early 90's. I haven't heard anything about it since.
> 4 years
The Pole Shift theories are some of the most interesting along with my favorite expanding earth theory.
The expanding earth theory goes something like this:
-all the continents fit together if you reduce the mass of the earth by ~30-33%. Think about it, the current Pangea theory where there was one super continent all clumped together with a massive single ocean covering the rest of the planet doesn't make sense to me. Why would this single continent be grouped together in that manner? You don't see that land pattern on other planets.
On the other hand, shrink the earth and the continents fit together well:
The theory goes on to explain that the smaller sized earth would have less gravity, which would in turn allow for the much larger dinosaurs to roam the land without their own weight crushing them. The author points out huge dragon flies, long neck of the brachiosaurus, etc and blades of grass that could not support themselves in today's gravity.
It's an interesting theory if nothing else. All that's needed is a reason for the Earth to be expanding. The solution as to where the water came from to fill the gaps is comets (outside sources) as it still does occasionally to this day.
It was in the early 80's that the Small Comet theory came into being. During this time, Louis A. Frank working with John Sigwarth noticed black spots on Dynamics Explorer I's data. Reluctant to just ignore this noise, Frank and Sigwarth worked for 4 years to finally come up with the fact that Small Comets are entering the Earth's atmosphere. In 1997, a series of photographs taken by the VIS (Visible Imaging System) camera aboard NASA's Polar spacecraft were released. These photographs were further proof that these Small Comets really do exist.
Finally, new evidence has been found that supports the Small Comet theory. This evidence is in the form of ground-based observations of these snowy visitors taken between October 1998 and May 1999 by the Iowa Robotic Observatory (IRO) located in Arizona. Dr. Frank and Dr. Sigwarth were able to capture 9 more images of Small Comets during this time period.
With all of this evidence in support, it does appear that there are about 20 snow comets weighing 20 to 40 tons each that crash into the Earth's atmosphere every minute. The comets are no danger to life on Earth because they disintegrate in the atmosphere. In fact, these Small Comets might have been very beneficial to life on Earth. In a paper published in the March 1, 2001 issue of the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research, Dr. Frank and Dr. Sigwarth are now theorizing that the water in the Earth's oceans might have arrived by way of these small snow comets.
Dr. Louis Frank has been a University of Iowa faculty member since 1964. He has been the experimenter, co-investigator or principal investigator for instruments on 42 spacecraft! Dr. John Sigwarth has been Research Scientist at the University of Iowa since 1989. He currently is project scientist for the Visible Imaging System on the Polar spacecraft of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
It's been fuckling HOT up here the past few days.
Temperatures in the mid teens in January is ridiculous.
It's 14 right now... supposed to hit 16 this afternoon.
(That's over 60 in american degrees)
I've got 99 problems and I'm not dealing with any of them - Lay-Z
Fairweather Pure wrote:Jan 7th, 2008. We were under a tornado warning in Calhoun county, MI. I should be ass deep in snow righ tnow.
Weren't you ass-deep in snow over the weekend? We had close to a foot that only just melted the last couple days. Coupled with the heavy-ass rain last night, there's now a river in my backyard.
We've been dumped on pretty hard a couple times in the last month, I feel like we've already seen more snow fall than in all of last year and there's still a few months of winter left.
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
Fairweather Pure wrote:Jan 7th, 2008. We were under a tornado warning in Calhoun county, MI. I should be ass deep in snow righ tnow.
Weren't you ass-deep in snow over the weekend? We had close to a foot that only just melted the last couple days. Coupled with the heavy-ass rain last night, there's now a river in my backyard.
We've been dumped on pretty hard a couple times in the last month, I feel like we've already seen more snow fall than in all of last year and there's still a few months of winter left.
It's the extreme climate shifts that cause me concern. Yes, plenty of snow last week. Tordanoes last night. That's fucked up, even for Michigan weather.
Fairweather Pure wrote:Jan 7th, 2008. We were under a tornado warning in Calhoun county, MI. I should be ass deep in snow righ tnow.
Weren't you ass-deep in snow over the weekend? We had close to a foot that only just melted the last couple days. Coupled with the heavy-ass rain last night, there's now a river in my backyard.
We've been dumped on pretty hard a couple times in the last month, I feel like we've already seen more snow fall than in all of last year and there's still a few months of winter left.
It's the extreme climate shifts that cause me concern. Yes, plenty of snow last week. Tordanoes last night. That's fucked up, even for Michigan weather.
Sorry, for some reason I was reading you wrong. I agree, totally fucked up!
"It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."- Barack Obama
Fairweather Pure wrote:Jan 7th, 2008. We were under a tornado warning in Calhoun county, MI. I should be ass deep in snow righ tnow.
Weren't you ass-deep in snow over the weekend? We had close to a foot that only just melted the last couple days. Coupled with the heavy-ass rain last night, there's now a river in my backyard.
We've been dumped on pretty hard a couple times in the last month, I feel like we've already seen more snow fall than in all of last year and there's still a few months of winter left.
It's the extreme climate shifts that cause me concern. Yes, plenty of snow last week. Tordanoes last night. That's fucked up, even for Michigan weather.
Sorry, for some reason I was reading you wrong. I agree, totally fucked up!
It was the gods smacking you for laughing so hard at OSU!!!
Wulfran Moondancer
Stupid Sidekick of the Lambent Dorf
Petitioner to Club Bok Bok
Founding Member of the Barbarian Nation Movement
