An Inconvenient Truth

[mrhnau]

2 hours I'll never get back. I'd rather read scientific journals and draw my own conclusion. Gore is a politician. Enough said.

Hey man, if you want the same effect as the Gore movie, just turn on the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel, or NPR. Watch long enough, and you get enough guilt about destroying the world. I was joking with my wife about this. Watch long enough, you see three types of shows:

1) The world is going to end soon, and its our fault
2) Cute fuzzy animals are dying and its our fault
3) The world is going to end soon, and there is nothing we can do about it

You might see the occassional "I've got a 200 lb tumor" or "Look at this weird tribe in New Zealand", but somehow thats our fault too, or those tribes in NZ are wearing Coke t-shirts or something...

From my understanding of the movie, most of what he has said has been said elsewhere. Listen to the news, watch the above channels and radio, you will get it.

 

[michaeledward]

2 hours I'll never get back. I'd rather read scientific journals and draw my own conclusion. Gore is a politician. Enough said.

Hey, and while you're at it ... maybe you could read your scientific journal under one of these :

http://www.energyfederation.org/consumer/default.php/cPath/25_44_168_197

 

[mrhnau]

Some ideas: Discuss at will

1) Get states to agree to a consistent gas mixture. No more of this craziness at different cities, requiring unique mixtures every couple of weeks. Have perhaps two or three seasonal ones, and stop at that. Might need to a conservative one (that is, environmentally good and good gas milage) that costs a bit more, but thats ok.

2) Encourage recycling. I see alot of bottles and plastics with this annoying little stamp "10 cents refund in CA". Heck, I'd LOVE to get 10 cents back for some of the bottles I use on a daily basis. However, I don't want to drive 2000 miles to get it. Also, I don't want to pay $25 a month (non-optional) for a little recycling bin. Thats is not encouraging me to recylce, thats punishing me for it. Find some way to consistently encourage recycling across the states.

3) Encourage businesses to conserve, since alot of waste comes through them. Give tax incentives (and not meaningless ones) for companies that reach thresholds. This includes companies that research alternative energies, develop cars, have meaningful cuts in waste, etc. Those that are horrible, fine them like we already are, but make them proportial to where they have teeth. Fining some huge oil company 10k a day is nothing, but to a small business, thats crippling. Help those out of compliance get into compliance through tax breaks or programs that can inform them approporiately. Encourage those showing improvement.

4) Don't sign stupid treaties that single out the US for conservation (Kyoto). If we want to save the world, its got to be everyone participating, not just us. Other countries coming online have got to do it in a clean fashion too. Yes, I know the Us pollutes alot, but so do other countries (NO, Micheal, I don't want links about how horrible we pollute, how we are the biggest consumers, we already know that, thank you very much)

5) Realize that no matter what we do, its not going to insure paradise. Before man we had animals going extinct. I'm going to have a hard time believing you if we think dinosaurs were our fault too. Realize that the world goes through cycles, and we are in the middle of a solar maximum and possible pole flip over the next decade or two. These things are not meaningless. Do the best we can, then realize we as humans are not the ultimate deciders of the fate of the earth, or of some rare slug hiding out in Ghana. There will always be cycles, an asteroid, a volcanoe. We had ice ages in the past, we will probably have them again, with or without us here.

6) Be sensitive to business. People need to eat. Its great to have trees, but if that means my family has to starve, then by gosh, I'm going to cut it down. I love animals, but if I'm going to die by not hunting them, then I'm pulling out my gun. If you want loggers to stop cutting down rain forrests, then you better have some alternative other than "you are going to die of starvation now, but at least you have some pretty trees to look at". If your regulations are going to make business absolutely unreasonable for a large percentage of companies, then we are going to lose a significant portion of our economy. Hey, you have trees, but you don't have a job, you don't have a car, you don't have a house, you don't have anything. You have a huge portion of society that will need retraining. This does not come cheap. Who pays for it? Government aka taxpayers. Total modification of businesses in the US takes ALOT of time. We can't afford putting 100 million people through school to get a new job. It simply won't work. We take small steps and proceed from there. New fuels? OK, lets phase them in. It won't work next year. We can't get off of gas driven cars that easily. Lets be realistic about the problems we have, and see as a society we are too huge of an economy to move too quickly. Small steps, but lets start making some.

 

[michaeledward]

mrhnau

Go see the movie ... I'll buy.

There are two items in the movie that you might find compelling.

Item 1 - The scale balancing business and the planet earth

Item 2 - The human population chart, referencing Al Gore's lifetime

Maybe you won't find these items compelling, but I am pretty certain reading about what is discussed (specifically in these two instances) in a scientific journal just doesn't have the same impact.

 

[Rich Parsons]

Some ideas: Discuss at will

1) Get states to agree to a consistent gas mixture. No more of this craziness at different cities, requiring unique mixtures every couple of weeks. Have perhaps two or three seasonal ones, and stop at that. Might need to a conservative one (that is, environmentally good and good gas milage) that costs a bit more, but thats ok.

This is very true, The current high end complaint area for fuel issues is the Madison, Milwaukee, and North Chicago area.

Also realize that Ethanol does not have the energy per any unit of measurement, so by gallon or by percentage it decreases the efficeincy of the engine. Even the places that have it and are a few cents cheaper, run a mileage check on two different gas types, one with ethanol and one without. First tank that switches should be your cleaning tank and should be run as close to empty as possible. Then run three complete tanks and tank the average of them, and then repeat for other gas type. This avoids the special conditions that might skew a fuel economy average. Of course the larger the sample size the better also should be down with different ambients and humudity, but done at about the same time shoudl get you a good guess. Also avoid Spring and Fall during the switch from Summer Fuel to Winter Fuel and vice versa.

Ethanol is a good idea, but do it as a complete ethanol system, so vehicles can operate optimized for this new fuel. Yes a sensor or some new algorithm maybe involved to get it to switch to the right operating points. The worse you can do is run E85 and then at a half take run E0 or E15, and keep mixing it at wierd percentages. Run a complete tank for better optimization.

Also not that distribution of E85 is not out there yet, and also the cost for the 30% reduction in energy per volume is not at the price break point yet.

Is it green thinking? yes. Does it help reduce the amount of gasoline and oil used? Yes. Is it cheaper? Not yet.

2) Encourage recycling. I see alot of bottles and plastics with this annoying little stamp "10 cents refund in CA". Heck, I'd LOVE to get 10 cents back for some of the bottles I use on a daily basis. However, I don't want to drive 2000 miles to get it. Also, I don't want to pay $25 a month (non-optional) for a little recycling bin. Thats is not encouraging me to recylce, thats punishing me for it. Find some way to consistently encourage recycling across the states.

Yes this is a negative re-inforcement. Since the company that collects it also gets to turn in their product for income and also can get recycle credits in certain areas.

3) Encourage businesses to conserve, since alot of waste comes through them. Give tax incentives (and not meaningless ones) for companies that reach thresholds. This includes companies that research alternative energies, develop cars, have meaningful cuts in waste, etc. Those that are horrible, fine them like we already are, but make them proportial to where they have teeth. Fining some huge oil company 10k a day is nothing, but to a small business, thats crippling. Help those out of compliance get into compliance through tax breaks or programs that can inform them approporiately. Encourage those showing improvement.

ISO 14000 and it subsections were created to have an international standard for how to meet a minimum level of certification for recycling and for being clean. So if you see a company with a white field and I think two greenhands with ISO 14000 on it then this company or this plant or location has taken the first steps in trying to be "green".

4) Don't sign stupid treaties that single out the US for conservation (Kyoto). If we want to save the world, its got to be everyone participating, not just us. Other countries coming online have got to do it in a clean fashion too. Yes, I know the Us pollutes alot, but so do other countries (NO, Micheal, I don't want links about how horrible we pollute, how we are the biggest consumers, we already know that, thank you very much)

No Comment for I am not up to speed on the other treaties for toher countries.

5) Realize that no matter what we do, its not going to insure paradise. Before man we had animals going extinct. I'm going to have a hard time believing you if we think dinosaurs were our fault too. Realize that the world goes through cycles, and we are in the middle of a solar maximum and possible pole flip over the next decade or two. These things are not meaningless. Do the best we can, then realize we as humans are not the ultimate deciders of the fate of the earth, or of some rare slug hiding out in Ghana. There will always be cycles, an asteroid, a volcanoe. We had ice ages in the past, we will probably have them again, with or without us here.

Could both of these issue be skewing the local conditions? As the poles move could the Ozone holes become more unstable abd become larger?

I do not know, it would be an intersting discussion though.

6) Be sensitive to business. People need to eat. Its great to have trees, but if that means my family has to starve, then by gosh, I'm going to cut it down. I love animals, but if I'm going to die by not hunting them, then I'm pulling out my gun. If you want loggers to stop cutting down rain forrests, then you better have some alternative other than "you are going to die of starvation now, but at least you have some pretty trees to look at". If your regulations are going to make business absolutely unreasonable for a large percentage of companies, then we are going to lose a significant portion of our economy. Hey, you have trees, but you don't have a job, you don't have a car, you don't have a house, you don't have anything. You have a huge portion of society that will need retraining. This does not come cheap. Who pays for it? Government aka taxpayers. Total modification of businesses in the US takes ALOT of time. We can't afford putting 100 million people through school to get a new job. It simply won't work. We take small steps and proceed from there. New fuels? OK, lets phase them in. It won't work next year. We can't get off of gas driven cars that easily. Lets be realistic about the problems we have, and see as a society we are too huge of an economy to move too quickly. Small steps, but lets start making some.

Problem is that small steps are being made, Just in all directions as everyone thinks they ahve the "RIGHT" idea or course to follow. Not sure how to get all or most moving in the same direction so I cannot comment on how to help. Sorry.

 

[shesulsa]

It's in the phone book ...

It ain't a secret ...

http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=r3qy0s91c0nt&style=o&lvl=1&scene=1677001

Upper Right Corner .... third house down ... swimming pool .... black jeep in the drive.

Is that your place, michaeledward?

 

[tradrockrat]

You'll keep us informed on your progress through those scientific journals, right?

nah, I'll just make a movie about it. You can pay for everyone to see it.

but if you want to read the ones I am currently reading, go HERE http://www.esi-topics.com/gwarm/index.html

 

[tradrockrat]

Listen to the news, watch the above channels and radio, you will get it.

yeah - I'll get what they're selling. The problem is, I'm not shopping. Here's an idea (with lightbulb and everything Mike)

One of you guys explain to me how come we came out of the "mini" iceage we wre experiencing a few hundred years ago with out industry or the global warming activities that are oh so clearly responsible for todays climate shift. Cause if you can accept that the world is way more complex than Al Gore, maybe there's hope for you.

 

[Lisa]

Moderator Note.

Please keep the discussion at a mature, respectful level. Feel free to use the Ignore feature to ignore members whose posts you do not wish to read (it is at the bottom of each member's profile).

Thank you.

Lisa Deneka
MartialTalk Senior Moderator

 

[michaeledward]

Is that your place, michaeledward?

Yep. There is no such thing as privacy.

 

[michaeledward]

nah, I'll just make a movie about it. You can pay for everyone to see it.

but if you want to read the ones I am currently reading, go HERE http://www.esi-topics.com/gwarm/index.html

Am I missing something?

I follow this link, and I get a list of references, but no articles themselves. There are some rather minor interviews with the authors of some of the articles. But there is not much on that link to actually read.

And, I'm sure you know, that this list of rankings was compiled for publication in January 2002.

 

[Don Roley]

So, while I truly understand the issues at hand I was looking for an open ended discussion.

The Current Magnetic Pole has shifted from parts of Canada to be on its way to parts of Russia. This is a large shift in recent year as in ten years.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...rth+core&start=1&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&cd=1

http://www.thetech.org/exhibits_events/online/quakes/inside/core.html

Since the core is moving and the Magnetic Pole is moving, maybe this is part of the cause of the Oceans heating up?

Nope, Rich you are stupid for suggesting such as we all know it is your car that you drive is doing more damage. Get it right it is Global Warming.

Then some state that the world will flood when the caps melt. I linked in a recent picture here as well that showed a lot of melt. Where are the floods? Oh yeah Rich your stupid comments about how Water as a solid displaces more then its' mass and thereby has a larger volume than as a liquid. So when the Ice melts that is in the water now it actually lowers the water table of the earth seas. Now the water on land still has to be counted for. But by then no one wants to talk about it as it is now a science problem and not a political issue.

So if the core is moving which takes energy, could the earth be heating up?

Could some of the energy be escaping into the oceans naturally?

Could some of the energy be the cause of the latest Typhoons and Hurricanes?

Could it also be the cause of a Tsunami?

Ah but Rich is nothing but a stupid stick jock who thinks he knows a little physics and just needs to be quiet. The questions he asks have no political agenda. He does not say no, he says possible but look at this as well and let us think about this.

Yet to make people think for themselves has been stated to be one of the hardest tasks. Even though I am not asking for that of everyone just asking for a discussion.


But I guess the INCONVENIENT TRUTH, does not matter when one is asked to look at the whole picture and the whole system.

And what about SNUs? Solar Nuetrino Units.

http://www.baen.com/library/067172052X/067172052X___7.htm

Very interesting book above written by a couple of guys with a ton of degrees by the name of Niven and Pournelle. Baen no longer prints the book, and so they seem to have put the entire thing on line. The above link leads to the discussion that might be of interest here. It is an interesting read.

"We live in an ice age-—" began Gregory Lutenist. When he got to the words "ice age" three people had joined him, speaking in unison with him. Then came a voice from the crowd: "No ****!"

"-—and we always have," he continued, imperturbably adjusting his glasses. "During the last seven hundred thousand years there have been eight cycles of cooling and warming. The glaciers retreat, but always they come back; and the warm, interglacial interludes last for only about ten thousand years. Since Ice Age Thirty-Five ended fourteen thousand years ago, the next one must have started four thousand years ago. Most of human history has been lived in an ice age. So why did no one notice?"

"It was too warm!" someone suggested.

Lutenist beamed at him. "Just so. It's hard to convince a man in Bermuda shorts that he's living in an ice age. But consider the halcyon, interglacial world of 4500 BC!" He waved a forefinger in the air.

"In Scandinavia the tree line was above 8000 feet." Three voices again joined him, speaking in unison, as Lutenist continued. "And deciduous trees grew all the way to the Arctic circle. The Sahara was a rain-watered, grassy savannah crossed by mighty rivers and even mightier hunters. We remember that age dimly as a Garden in Eden." Lutenist paused and removed his glasses. He polished the lenses and set them back upon his nose. He paused, sighed, and said, slowly, so that everyone in the room could join in, "But then the sun went out."

Gordon looked to Alex. "Shto govorit"? The man is mad, the sun has not gone out."

Lutenist beamed at Gordon. "Ah-—"

"Fresh meat!" someone yelled.

"Tell me, my young friend," Lutenist said. "What lights up the sun?"

"Is trick? Fusion. Hydrogen to helium."

"And when the fusion ends, what then?" Lutenist asked.

"Uh-—but how can fusion end? There is plenty of hydrogen."

"But it did end," Lutenist said. "And no one noticed." Bob Needleton stuck his head in between Alex and Gordon. "Where have all the neutrinos gone? Long time passing . . ." He gave Sherrine a quick kiss on the neck.

"Hi, Pins," Alex said. "Welcome back."

"I didn't want to miss Greg's spiel." Bob cupped his hands around his mouth. "There'll be a neutrino scavenger hunt tonight after the program," he announced. "Bring your snipe bags and your Chlorine-37 tanks." The audience responded with boos and catcalls. Lutenist waved to him and Bob waved back. "Hi, Greg. Still thumping the same old drum, I see."

"Excuse me," Gordon said, "but what means spiel about neutrinos?"

Bob pulled a chair up and set it beside Sherrine between the two wheelchairs. He straddled it backwards. "It's simple really."

Alex braced himself. When a physicist says, "it's simple," it usually meant it was time to duck.

"You see, when two protons fuse into a deuterium nucleus they yield a neutrino. There are two ways that can happen, but. . . Well, the details don't matter. Sometimes the deuterium hip-hops through beryllium into lithium and spits out another neutrino, and there are a couple of other reactions that also produce neutrinos; but that's about the gist of it. Fusion spits neutrinos. Get it?"

Gordon looked puzzled. "I get. So?"

Bob held his hands out palms up. "The problem is we never found the neutrinos. A Chlorine-37 detector should register a neutrino flux of eight snew, but all they ever get is two snew."

Gordon's frown deepened. "What's 'snew'?"

Sherrine hid her face in her hands. Bob said, "I dunno, not much. What's snew with you?"

"Thank you for sharing that with us-—"

"Sorry, I've never been able to resist that one. Snew is SNU, Solar Neutrino Units. One snew is one neutrino event per 1036 atoms per second."

There was a commotion at the other end of the room. A dozen fans, maybe more, came in. "Is this the pro party?"

Lutenist said. "I'm not through."

A 1arge man in a bush jacket waved a salute with a bottle beer. "Go right ahead, Greg. Don't mind us."

"What's up?" Lutenist demanded.

The man shruged "Con Committee said to come here, this will be the 'Meet the Pros' party."

"Aw crap," Lutenist said. "This is my lecture!"

"What's to lecture?" Needleton demanded. "It was all simple, and known before 1980. The sun is not producing enough neutrinos. Ergo, it is not fusing. Yet, according to the technetium levels in deep molybdenum mines there were plenty of neutrinos passing through the Earth during interglacial and preglacial periods."

"Excuse me, Bob," said Gregory Lutenist, "are you leading this discussion or am I?"

Bob waved a hand. "Sorry, Greg. Go ahead." In a near-whisper, "Gordon, it's a cycle. Fusion stops, the sun cools a bit, shrinks a bit, the core gets denser and hotter, fusion starts again, the new warmth inflates the sun. See? Is that a relief, or what?"

"Maunder Minimum!" someone shouted.

Lutenist beamed. "The sun goes through sunspot cycles. Lots of sunspots, it gets warm here. Few sunspots, colder weather. An astronomer named Maunder recorded sunspots and found that the last time there weren't any the planet went through what was known as the Little Ice Age, the Maunder Minimum." He paused dramatically. "And in the 1980s it became certain that the planet was going into a new Maunder Minimum period."

"Yes, yes, we know this," Gordon said. "Sunspots are important to us. But if so important to Earth, why do they not know cold is coming?"

"Bastards did," the man in the bush jacket growled. "But they said Global Warming."

"Grants," Bob said. "There's money in climate studies. All the Ph.D. theses. All that would go if things were so simple-—"

A short blond woman, slender by local standards, came in with a large tray. She carried it up to the piano as if thinking to set it down there, looked at the clutter, turned helplessly-— "Ah. You're Gabe?"

He smiled and nodded. She said, "Laurie. Hold this while we get a table." She set the tray across the arms of his wheelchair and was gone.

It was covered with small dishes, each with a couple of slices of vegetables. Cucumber, carrot, a bit of lettuce, some cabbage. A stalk of broccoli. Alex felt his mouth begin to water. Fresh vegetables! Of course the people here would be used to them-—

Bob Needleton stopped talking about neutrinos and stared at the tray. He gave a long, low whistle. "Dibs on a carrot stick!"

Gregory Lutenist said, "Broccoli for me. Now. It is important to realize that the sun has always burned hotter or cooler during different eras of our planet's history. Greenhouse or Icehouse."

A fan spoke up. "Carrot for me, too. The dinosaurs lived during a greenhouse era, didn't they?"

A voice spoke from the doorway. "Pros get first choice. This is the Meet the Readers Party, right?"

Lutenist nodded as if there had been no interruption. "Dinosaurs, and the Great Mammals, too. In fact, prior to the Pleistocene the world was quite warm. Hippopotami wallowed in the Thames."

He paused a moment. When he continued, half a dozen voices spoke in unison with him. "Then, in the blink of a geological eye, they were replaced by polar bears."

Lutenist beamed.

Alex looked to Sherrine. "What-—"

She laughed. "Some of us have heard Gregory before."

Cucumbers, celery, carrots, luxuries beyond his wildest dreams were cradled in Alex's arms. He couldn't eat; he had to share this with the whole room; and he couldn't get his hands on any of it without dropping the tray. Little dark red spheres, little bright red spheres with white inside, were displayed on big green leaves. Where were they with that damn table?

Badges were showing on various chests. Here were tiny oil paintings of alien creatures and landscapes and starscapes, or wheel-shaped and band-shaped artificial habitats infinitely more sophisticated than Mir and Freedom. A few badges bore angular cartoon faces and elegant calligraphy: CLOSET MUNDANE. KNOWS HARLAN ELLISON (evil smirk. HAS READ MUCH OF DHALGREN (bewilderment).

Lutenist continued. "Human history is so short that, living between the hippopotamus and the polar bear, we thought those conditions were 'normal.'

"After the sun went out, the interglacial ended and the world grew colder and drier. The Saraha rivers dried up, one by one, until only the Nile was left. By 1500 BC, the Scandinavian tree line had dropped to six thousand feet, and broad-leaf trees had disappeared from the Arctic.

"The weather changed. The North African coast was the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. It began to dry up. Great migrations began, Huns, Arabs, Navajos, Mongols. There were Viking colonies on Greenland, but the Greenland Glacier began to move south, until it covered them all."

"Tell you another one," the man in the bush jacket said.

"Go ahead, Wade," Lutenist said.

Sherrine looked around. "Wade Curtis. A pro."

"Writer?" Gordon asked. She nodded.

Curtis's voice boomed even in the large room. "In the American Revolutionary War, Colonel Alexander Hamilton brought cannon captured by Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga down to assist General Washington in Haarlem Heights. He brought them across the ice on the frozen Hudson River. By the twentieth century, the Hudson didn't freeze at all, let alone hard enough to carry cannon on!"

Lutenist smiled agreement. "Right! The Little Ice Age was coming to an end! In fact, a warming trend had started around 1200, and lasted for eight centuries. Anyone know why?"

"Hey, let's eat!" someone called.

"Let him finish," Curtis growled. He drained his beer. A bearded man behind him silently handed him another.

Lutenist stabbed a hand into the air. "Why?"

Someone in the audience responded. "Because a farmer doesn't give up his land."

"That's right, Beth. Farmers! Hunters run, which is what our ancestors did during the Thirty-Fifth Ice Age. But the five hundred million settled and civilized humans of the thirteenth century were not going to pull up stakes and move elsewhere. London, Copenhagen, even Moscow were too valuable to abandon. So what did they do?" He used and stared around the audience.

Several responded in unison. "They threw another log on the fire!"

Lutenist beamed. "Exactly! They fought the cold with heat, soot and CO2. Air pollution!"

"Smudge pots," Curtis growled.

Right, Lutenist shouted. "Smudge pots! Greenhouse effect!"

"Pollution, poll-ooo-tion," someone sang.

So, do you think that the SNU output might have something to do with the warming going on? Or is it polution that happened before we invented the car? Or could it be something else?

 

[Carol]

So, do you think that the SNU output might have something to do with the warming going on? Or is it polution that happened before we invented the car? Or could it be something else?

SNU shortfalls are explained in the study below. The appearance of SNU shortfalls are based on the belief that solar fusion happens in the sun's core ("Fusion stops, the sun cools a bit, shrinks a bit, the core gets denser and hotter, fusion starts again, the new warmth inflates the sun.")

The evidence in the link below provides a seemingly convincing theory that there are no SNU shortfalls...this and other solar anomolies is explained with evidence that, coronal mass ejections aside, solar fusion appears near the surface.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9604074.

Could other solar events be causing an increase in the earth's temperature? Maybe so. Sunspots are on a fairly consistent 13 year cycle. Solar Flares can and do put out a lot of extra X-rays. Coronal Mass Ejections are Mother Nature's e-bomb. The Ejections put forth a tremendous amount of heat and radiation, causing geomagnetic storms that wreak havoc with telecommunications systems by crippling satellites and even affecting the service of some terrestrial switching equipment or even power plants.

Enough to raise the temperature of the planet? Difficult to say. But it is enough to mess up the telephone system and thats when my customers get really cranky.

 

[tradrockrat]

Am I missing something?

I follow this link, and I get a list of references, but no articles themselves. There are some rather minor interviews with the authors of some of the articles. But there is not much on that link to actually read.

And, I'm sure you know, that this list of rankings was compiled for publication in January 2002.

think of it as a guide for what to look for if you'd like to educate yourself about it. And yes, they are from a few years ago, but thay do lay a good foundation and provide a jumping off point to reference the more recent journals and findings. When I see a synopsis that I find intersting, I look for that article elswhere and read it in it's entirety.

such as this one:

Article Title: Much Ado about Warming: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Do Little to Stop Global Climate Change or Solve the World's More-Pressing Environmental Problems. Contributors: Indur M. Goklany - author. Journal Title: Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy. Volume: 16. Issue: 4. Publication Year: 2002. Page Number: 40+. COPYRIGHT 2002 University of Tennessee, EERC; COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group

go out and track this one down. You'll like it.

 

[Don Roley]

The evidence in the link below provides a seemingly convincing theory

That is the thing- theory!

I bet you know that the last winter was one of the hottest for north America. Did you know that it was the coldest on record for Japan since the end of WWII? Did you know that some areas of antartica have seen an increase in the thickness of ice?

Sunspots, magnetic pole shift and everything else. Isn't it a lot to try to pull together in a neat theory that can be fitted into a gew simple sentances?

Hell, I will admit that until Rich mentioned it, I did not even think of the fact that ice takes up more space than water, so that the melting of the ice caps would not be as great as I thought. How many people realized that the earth was warmer before man ever started planting crops and that the increased water in the world wide system increased the amount of plants in the world and the number of deserts went up as more water was trapped at the poles?

Moreover, there are a lot of people running around saying that the goverment is trying to over state the danger posed by terrorism to centralize more power under their control in the name of protecting us from some non-existant threat. Many of these same people are also saying that we all must give them power to control us in the name of protecting us from a great big nasty threat.

Yes I am cynical. I do not trust anyone- much less someone like Gore.

But at the same time, I agree with Pournelle that petroleum is too usefull a substance to burn. I would like to see more nuclear plants and alternative power sources. But those that decry global warming don't seem to like that as much as setting us back to a time when we let people with illnesses like diabities die due to our lack of resouces.

 

[heretic888]

Here is the website for the Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy:

http://forum.ra.utk.edu/index.htm​

 

[michaeledward]

But those that decry global warming don't seem to like that as much as setting us back to a time when we let people with illnesses like diabities die due to our lack of resouces.

Care to back up this statement?

Or should we just mark it up to .... well ... whatever.

 

[Don Roley]

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef

Albert Einstein once said, "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore's new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction.

 

[michaeledward]

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef

Go see the movie ... I'll Buy.

 

[elder999]

The nation's top climate scientists are giving "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy.

The former vice president's movie — replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets — mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press.

The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.

But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

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