Welcome to
Science a GoGo's
Discussion Forums
Please keep your postings on-topic or they will be moved to a galaxy far, far away.
Your use of this forum indicates your agreement to our terms of use.
So that we remain spam-free, please note that all posts by new users are moderated.


The Forums
General Science Talk        Not-Quite-Science        Climate Change Discussion        Physics Forum        Science Fiction

Who's Online Now
0 members (), 181 guests, and 2 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Latest Posts
Top Posters(30 Days)
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 2 of 4 1 2 3 4
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 414
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 414
Quote:
Originally posted by DA Morgan:
Are they that hard of reading or is it that they just have an agenda and don't want to let the facts get in their way?
The increased polarization of politics in the US, along with science-illiterate pundits and talk radio hosts are the cause, IMO. Everyone seems to think their opinions should be aired and respected, regardless of their knowledge of a subject.

I'm been involved in a number of open forums on scientific topics, and it's not just SAGG. I started out trying to help kids with homework, and my eyes were opened to this nonsense.

People just don't know how science works -- from the *scientific method* to peer review.


When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
--S. Lewis
.
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
D
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
D
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
My thoughts exactly. And to mildly criticize our hostesses and host here at SAGG they don't help the matter by running a "science" web site and not enforcing rules of scientific discourse.

The US education system, especially with respect to science and math, is in need of a trip to the ICU. And the politicizing of science by the Bush administration, and others before it, have only made the matter worse. Global warming is not a political issue. How to respond to it may be but there are no politics, or shouldn't be, in a temperature measurement. This is all very sad.

If I were 30 years younger I'd be studying Chinese. I see no hope of the American public waking up before the country is reduced to being another Portugal (no offense intended to the Portugese).


DA Morgan
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 414
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 414
My first father-in-law was a big fan of Louis L'Amour, and had just about every one of his popcorn novels. I read most of them during my visits to the in-laws to avoid death by boredom. One of his observations stuck in my mind. I paraphrase:

The center of civilization gradually moves westward over the centuries.

I'm afraid he's right. It should be crossing the International Date Line soon. Are we living America's Autumn?


When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
--S. Lewis
A
Anonymous
Unregistered
Anonymous
Unregistered
A
"Are we living in America's Autumn?

with my luck it's winter and it will stay that way forever.

I think American should look to its borders and impose strict regulations on foreign immigrants, especially from the Middle East. We don't need to have terrorists coming here and being welcomed. I'd be in favor of some kind of supervision of "visiting aliens" similar to that of parolees; make them report weekly and account for themselves regularly. If we monitored them more closely, we should be able to detect the money laundering and funds transfers from Al Quaida and send them packing.

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
E
Member
Offline
Member
E
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
Quote:
Originally posted by soilguy:
I paraphrase:

The center of civilization gradually moves westward over the centuries.

I'm afraid he's right. It should be crossing the International Date Line soon. Are we living America's Autumn?
Very prescient quotation. And yes you have a front seat view of the death throes of a once great culture. Every civilization or empire has eventually choked to death on its own sickly sweet hedonism. Greatness leads to affluence which affords people the opportunity to endlessly play with themselves. $14 Billion a year spent on porn in USA tells me I'm not wrong. The great US of A as the benevolent dictator of Western culture isn't any different from the Romans, it just has the opportunity to reach out by satellite and take more people with it. Sit tight in front of your TV and watch the whole sordid spectacle unfold in 42" high definition widescreen like everyone else. You'll be able to get any good bits you miss in a DVD boxed set with special features and commentary. Quit complaining, the wise lost as was inevitable, and the Immams will inherit the Earth.

Easy.

A
Anonymous
Unregistered
Anonymous
Unregistered
A
SO do either of you two know what would happen if you hosed down the polar ice caps and ice sheets with fresh water in winter?
Would It all just freeze very quickly or would it just melt the pre-existing ice?
If it did freeze, couldn't someone just bring a collosal supertanker equiped with an enormous desalinazation rig (that sucked in salt water and spat out fresh water)and hose down the icecaps and sheets to keep them from receding?

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
E
Member
Offline
Member
E
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
Quote:
Originally posted by Amaranth Rose:
"I think American should look to its borders and impose strict regulations on foreign immigrants, especially from the Middle East. We don't need to have terrorists coming here and being welcomed.
Quite, but too late. They're in and unlike white middle classes who want to defer for their career, until they're sterile, the Muslims have no such compunction. One thing they do know is how to multiply. "It's the demographics, stupid". But anyway, the feminist hatchet job on Motherhood has left you bereft of children, so whose gonna step in to do clean your empty factories and look after an aging population...Whitehall will keep America's doors open and both terrorism and the Muslim population will thrive and when they make the feminists don the Jilbab they'll wish they had mothered a whole army. They were fighting the wrong battle.

Easy.

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
E
Member
Offline
Member
E
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
OMG. I take it all back. We have the Kevin 611s of this world to save us.

Easy.

Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
D
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
D
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
The center of civilization, except for recent history, has always been in China. It is just going home after a short vacation.

The British, the Germans, the Italians, the Japanese, the Spanish and Portugese have taken the change in their status quite well and adjusted. The French, it seems, still think everyone should be speaking their language but otherwise have recovered from their loss of empire. I fear Americans will awaken to their new reality with anger and a desire for vengence.


DA Morgan
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
C
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
C
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
The Europeans finally realized that if they stick together they are a greater power then individual little states.

As far as the "hatchet job on motherhood". Anytime a society becomes more technologically advanced the women tend to become more independent. The historical and societal reasons to have large families disappears as countries move from agricultural economies to industrial ones.

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
A
Member
Offline
Member
A
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
Morgan you amaze me.. what do pictures of Ice there, and Ice gone.. I SAID there is a 30 year polar cycles.. Ice cores (remember those pesky lil problems that get in the way of your logic), SHOW this and far worse has happened.. I want proof of mans empending doom from global warming.. the massive flooding.. the earth on its knees gasping for breath.. do yourself a favor, quit reading the national inquirer.. and just go read the info avail. from ICE CORES.. yes I know they will get in the way of your death and destruction Global Warming.. you just blow off the PROOF.. FACTS seldom win against preconceived opinions.. but I am trying.

If you think we are seeing Global Warming now.. anyone who says this is unprecedented global warming.. are just parrots repeating party lines.. the simple fact is.. this is NOTHING when compared to what has happened.. core samples prove it..


NEVER Underestimate the power of stupidity!
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
C
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
C
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
"We're not global warming skeptics, though we are generally "skeptical," in the healthy scientific sense that we don't hide our heads in the sand of easy explanations. Recent ice core data collected from Antarctica indicate carbon dioxide and methane, both greenhouse gases, are currently 30 percent higher than any time in the last 650,000 years. This rise is attributed to increasing fossil fuel combustion and intensive agricultural practices (e.g., livestock and rice fields).

The International Panel on Climate Change predicts an average global temperature increase of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit for this century. Even if we only reach the lower limit, we can reasonably expect that climatic change will outpace the ability of many systems, both economic and ecological, to adjust. It is ethically unacceptable to continue business as usual in the face of substantial and avoidable harm to each other and Earth's ecosystems. We must respond with courage, reflected in the policies of industrialized and industrializing nations, and in the energy choices of all states, counties, towns, and citizens."

Ok, how about looking at it this way. The temperature warming, the climate shifting as it is leads to unpredicatable weather patterns which will affect things like water supplies even in the US. California has had long droughts and the only thing that kept that state running was water from other states. If we hadn't gotten the rain we had in Arizona the fire season would have been horrible and there would have had to be serious water rationing.

I am not saying that one day we will wake up and all be under water. I do not think anyone but the most extreme people are saying humans will become extinct. The point that scientists and concerned citizens are making is that there is evidence that we are changing the planet faster then it has normally been changed, that "urban heat islands", less trees and damaged watersheds will effect our way of life. We need to try to be more aware of how our actions affect the environment. There are people, like the Inuits whose entire way of life may be destroyed if the temperature keeps going the way it is. I guarantee you they have not been able to stand around in shorts and have their fishing equipment slip into the water as an ice floe has given way beneath them in eons.

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
C
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
C
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
Look at it this way, if the "hoax" of global warming causes us to develop cleaner, more efficient and healthier means of living it will prove to be a positive thing for humans and the ecosystem. Wouldn't it be nice not to have smog?

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
A
Member
Offline
Member
A
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
Past studies of gases trapped in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores have suggested that Earth's temperature can sometimes change amazingly fast, warming as much as 15 degrees in some regions within a couple of decades. At the same time, there are concerns about the change of major ocean currents, such as those in the North Atlantic Ocean, that are responsible for the comparatively mild climate of much of Europe. If that "thermohaline circulation pattern" were to abruptly shut down, as has happened at times in the past, it could plunge much of the European continent into a climate more closely resembling that of central Canada.

At the time this data was gathered the ice cores under study were from present back apx. 650,000 years, the current thinking is they are going to get ice cores as far back as 1.2 million years from the Dome C, EPICA. During the last 400,000 years, warm periods have had a temperature similar to that of today. Before that time they were less warm, but lasted longer (<-- global cooling then or now?). In the last 400,000 years our grenhouse gas levels are at the highest.. what caused them to be higherprior to 400,000 years ago? comparing the pattern of this past climate with global environmental conditions today we could expect the present warm period to last at least another 15,000 years.

This information was gathered by Dr Eric Wolff EPICA,and Ed Brook, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, is part of the 10 nation team who does deep core studies.


NEVER Underestimate the power of stupidity!
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 427
E
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
E
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 427
Quote:
Originally posted by Chaoslillith:
Look at it this way, if the "hoax" of global warming causes us to develop cleaner, more efficient and healthier means of living it will prove to be a positive thing for humans and the ecosystem. Wouldn't it be nice not to have smog?
The result of a hoax success would be make us
to do things that we can not afford. It will bankrupt humanity, not help improve its conditions.

ES

Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
C
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
C
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
No, what is bankrupting us as a country is a war we never should have fought. Most cities and countries that implement renewable energy initiatives such as solar farms have a high cost outlay, but save quite a bit of money and make the cost outlay back in a few years.

How exactly does replanting trees, building windfarms, installing solar panels, finding ways to not pullute our own drinking water bankrupt us again?? Solar and windfarms are low upkeep products, planting trees only helps air quality as well as helps us provide for future homebuilding etc.

I fail to understand how even after all the proof of what horrible, shortsighted policies cost us, medical bills, water pulluted beyond repair and on and on are people still pulling the "it will bankrupt us card". California and Europe have some of the most stringent environmental laws yet their are still plenty of businesses there. Europe has done a wonderful job of incorporating renewable energy into their daily lives.

Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
D
Megastar
OP Offline
Megastar
D
Joined: Oct 2004
Posts: 4,136
I find it fascinating that people who, one would think, should be worrying about the future are so focused upon their next paycheck.

And do you think any of these greedy souls is happier than a native of Belize living quite nicely on $3600/year? Not a chance.

Once you have a roof over your head and food in your belly everything else is a matter of style. Our society has lost its way and people who have barely the ability to balance their checkbook are pontificating on the impact of energy strategies on the global economy. It is very sad! They can't think but they can parrot.


DA Morgan
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
A
Member
Offline
Member
A
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 53
Chaoslillith, maybe you need to define what you would call "plenty of businesses", Its basic economics that are causing both people AND BUSINESSES to leave California in RECORD NUMBERS, California tax revenues, and tax records being proof of that (the interesting thing is most of the businesses and people leaving California are heading to Texas, it currently holds 5 of the top 10 fastest growing cities in America, due to lower taxes, cheaper power, and non-destructive business laws, and affordable housing) also, if you are thinking Western Europes economies are healthy.. I think you will find they are not if you check into them.. France is currently having riots than have numbered in some est. 1 MILLION rioters nation wide over labor, Germany has had more than a few riots and problems in regards to employment, Germany's last elections adding even more proof to the existence of those problems.. and our English brothers have employment problems as well, and a heavy regressive taxes, Green Energy is NOT cost effective as of yet.. For power, Nuke power is currently the most cost effective means of producing power.

Windmill Farms kill more birds of prey to the point of whole species in the areas of windmill farms in great decline and endangered. The maintenance costs of the windmill farms are very high. Planting trees does little to improve air quality, the primary producer of oxygen is the oceans, in fact there are numerous trees that produce green house gasses in levels that are rather surprising (why would plants produce green house gases if they are "destructive to plants"?)

There are several reliable recent comparative studies place nuclear electricity generation solidly as th e lowest-cost producer, often by serious margins. Studies by eg. IEA AND OECD-NEA (2005), MIT (2003), DGEMP France (2003), TARJANNE & LUOSTARINEN Finland (2003), ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING UK (2004), UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (2004), CERI Canada (2004) are surveyed at http://www.world-nuclear.org/economics.pdf Most accept an "overnite" capital cost of about $1300 to $1500 / kw, butvary on rates of interest etc.

BOTH solar thermal concentration (very soon, eg. alread y in California (but not cost effective yet), see the 0.5 to .8 Gw Stirling dish generated power purchase agreement by San Francisco utility http://www.stirlingenergy.com/breaking_news.htm) and PV (somewhat later, depending on how quickly commercialization of Optical Rectenna is done) (http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03osti/33263.pdf is a bit old, (yes I know Morgan its old, and no longer reliable, btw, how old are you, are you by chance pre-personal PC??) dont expect NREL to move quickly on something like this which could upset a LOT of vested interests with conversion efficiencies above 50% and no crystal silicon processing required), it's about economics folks, so I guess we need to hurry up and wait.


NEVER Underestimate the power of stupidity!
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
C
Senior Member
Offline
Senior Member
C
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 137
Ahh yes, windmills kill birds, that one is being trotted out again.

California's economics has more to do with California doing things like investing money in Enron and rising healthcare costs then environmental burdens, France's riots has to do with racism, Germany's labor issues have to do with trying to bring East Germany up to the level of West Germany and what is happening is that the businesse are going to East Germany because labor is cheaper, once again nothing to do with solar energy. I am 31, hardly pre-PC. My mom has family in Germany who keep her up to date on information there, plus she gets a German newspaper.

Your last two paragraphs lost me as I think you are referring to DA with them. The point is that investing in renewable energy is intellingent as the technologies are getting increasingly more efficient and less costly. My uncles in Germany both have solar on their roofs and every month they get checks from the power company as they are producing more then enough energy for their house. THAT IS IN GERMANY!!! Imagine what solar roofs in Arizona could do.

Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
E
Member
Offline
Member
E
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 45
Quote:
Originally posted by Chaoslillith:
France's riots has to do with racism,
Current riots are about employment law.

Easy.

Page 2 of 4 1 2 3 4

Link Copied to Clipboard
Newest Members
debbieevans, bkhj, jackk, Johnmattison, RacerGT
865 Registered Users
Sponsor

Science a GoGo's Home Page | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact UsokÂþ»­¾W
Features | News | Books | Physics | Space | Climate Change | Health | Technology | Natural World

Copyright © 1998 - 2016 Science a GoGo and its licensors. All rights reserved.

Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5