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Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
Jonathan Cook wrote:
We went to see this movie over the weekend. Although not much in it was new to me, overall it was a pretty good presentation of the data and issues surrounding global warming. If anyone out there actually believes the "global warming isn't happening" or "it is but we don't have a part in causing it" lines, you should really see this movie, without any blinders on or partisan preconceptions. Yes, Al Gore throws in a couple of snide partisan remarks, and I wish they hadn't included those because it detracts from the message of the movie, but overlook them and listen to the data. Whether you like or despise Al Gore, he's obviously taken a lot of time and effort to polish his understanding and presentation of this issue. The movie is worth seeing. I'll go out on a limb with an opinion and an OBROFF (though not needed as this is a valid environmental sbject). There has been extreme debate over this at the office involving massive research on the part of many people to try and convince one side or the other. This is good but I remain unconvinced that the movie is nothing more than alarmist though I, admitedly, base this largely on a basic, and very fundamental, premise of not ever, ever getting my facts from career politicians. In my opinion the scientific community at large has to share established data and so you hear the same basic 'facts' touted over and over with, what I see, as very little in the way of original, exhaustive studies. The politics of science is huge and really misunderstood, in my opinion and there is corruption after corruption, changed paradigms after changed paradigms. Research Frederic Sietz. This coupled with the fact that accuracy of recent data gathering would show potentially more variance as well as other serious anomolies and contradictions in terms of times of coincedent global warming with decreased CO2 'inflation' just, well, bugs me. I also do not trust complex simultation as I do not believe they can get all of the variables right and that some singular events (Krakatoa, Mt. Saint Helens) can change the outcome dramatically. Something that bugs me too is the fact (I'm open to hearing someone who knows this) that our ability to accurately measure CO2 dimishes in times in times of high solar impact. The other thing is the most recent comment that, if the statistics are right, coupled with 'population growth models' the current recommendations proposed will not do enough and the movie could make us complacent about real, additional, research and problem solving. My opinion only. OBROFF: I was suprised that a map of the San Juan National Forest I bought recently did not have terrain elevation contours. I saw a road following a river for 12 miles before crossing it so I went, assuming good access. I'm a dilligent hiker who believes one must generally walk a minimum of 1-2 miles to avoid people on public water but I was not prepared for the fact that this road was 1000-1500' above the river which was 1/4 mile away with no way to reasonably descend. Get a map with terrain elevation data!!!! Your pal, Halfordian Golfer It is impossible to catch and release a wild trout. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
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Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
Computer simulations are notoriously unreliable.
They are written by computer programmers (a semi-anti-social bunch the includes the likes of Tim Walker and me, for example). A steep and observable rise in atmospheric CO2 is not in dispute however, nor are thinning ice caps and receding glaciers. CO2 levels are, by some reports, approaching unprecedented levels. Is all or any of this a natural phenomenon with no correlation to fossil fuels? Some correlation? Total correlation? Only a fool would say there is no correlation. Global warming has become a political issue because the ideological right sees it as a threat to (their) ideal of unregulated and unrestrained business growth (free market capitalism). Regardless the causes, I wouldn't make any long term real estate investments in the Bahamas. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
wrote in message ... ...I don't doubt that there's something going on, but I don't believe the scientific studies.... Ah, the beauty of gyromancy! Wolfgang |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
Jonathan Cook wrote:
wrote: Global warming has become a political issue because the ideological right sees it as a threat to (their) ideal of unregulated and unrestrained business growth (free market capitalism). I agree. But we consumers play along, too, not wanting any impacts on our energy-intensive, affluenza-driven lifestyles... Most excellent. "Affluenza" I will definitely steal that one. -- Ken Fortenberry |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
"Ken Fortenberry" wrote in message . net... Jonathan Cook wrote: wrote: Global warming has become a political issue because the ideological right sees it as a threat to (their) ideal of unregulated and unrestrained business growth (free market capitalism). I agree. But we consumers play along, too, not wanting any impacts on our energy-intensive, affluenza-driven lifestyles... Most excellent. "Affluenza" I will definitely steal that one. You won't be the first: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search Wolfgang |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
wrote in message ups.com... A steep and observable rise in atmospheric CO2 is not in dispute however, nor are thinning ice caps and receding glaciers. CO2 levels are, by some reports, approaching unprecedented levels. Is all or any of this a natural phenomenon with no correlation to fossil fuels? Some correlation? Total correlation? Only a fool would say there is no correlation. All true and correct. Unfortunately, there are many millions of fools. Note, for example, that global warming has been a very real phenomenon for well over a century, a matter of great concern to some few thoughtful individuals for nearly as long, documented fact for decades, and the scientific literature is voluminous and incontestable.......which is to say that it's simply been a myth......till now. NOW, we have a movie! It is just a matter of time till the DVD comes out, at which time it gets on T.V.......at which time it becomes (at long last) REALLY real! Global warming has become a political issue because the ideological right sees it as a threat to (their) ideal of unregulated and unrestrained business growth (free market capitalism). That's only a small part of a large complex of reasons. The short version: global warming is a political issue because it IS real and it is merely the biggest and most far reaching thing that has confronted our species since the last recession of the continental ice-sheets. Wolfgang Regardless the causes, I wouldn't make any long term real estate investments in the Bahamas. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
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Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
-- Some of my angling snaps: http://gallery.fishbc.com/gallery/vi...bumName=RalphH I don't doubt that there's something going on, but I don't believe the scientific studies. It has been a while now, but I knew some of the scientists who were doing the computer simulation models. Even those doing the modelling admitted that their models were drastically inaccurate. Tweaking knobs slightly caused wildly different results. Their models didn't correlate with the observed measurements. from memory. I was taking geography course when the initial buzz about global warming started about 25 years ago. Subsequently I read that comparisons of actual climatic results to the computer simulations of the time indicated the results were far more moderate than the predictions. There is little doubt global warming is taking place. Reliable information on mean air temperature, rainfall, ocean temperature, glacial movements, polar ice cap depth and extent have been taken for many decades and these all indicate "warming". The bigger question is do we know the cause and can we do anything about it? Is this a relatively short term trend like the "little ice age" of hundreds of years ago? The earth and been both signficantly cooler and warmer in prehistory (based on pollen samples). Temperatures in moderate latitudes were much higher in the millenium after the official end of the last ice age. So is this just a natural trend or a man made trend. I'd bet the later is a factor and we'd be fool not to try to reduce our CO2 output. Conversely I wish I had a buck for every expert who told me the world was going to end in the next 2 or 3 decades. Still none the less the sunset of our petro based economy is expected, switching from fossil fuels to alternate sources makes sense long term in this regard alone. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
We found this on Reuters New Service today, regarding Ken Lay's
funeral: The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared. Now, we at Americans for Equal Justice don't claim to be experts on MLK or Jesus, but COME ON. I mean, seriously. Jesus Christ? The Prince of Peace who said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? That Jesus Christ? Or is there another Jesus Christ who I don't know about who enriched himself and his family at the expense of hard-working folks while leading the collapse of a huge corporation? Because I am confused here, Reverend. And Martin Luther King, a man of God who was killed trying to reverse a 400-year-old racial injustice being perputrated on 20 million Americans? Please Reverend, just quietly bury the man and ask the family to give back the money. Please Visit http://www.kenlayisalive.org Link to Reuters article http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...1-ArticlePage1 wrote: On 12 Jul 2006 13:12:23 GMT, (Jonathan Cook) wrote: RDean wrote: Well, yeah, he [me] did write, but he neatly ignored certain points presented...such as his own "sickenly bloated" salary and giving a large chunk of it up... Well I'm cutting and pasting from google groups because our local newsserver gets only about a third of ROFF posts, and right now yours aren't showing up. I missed your first paragraph and then forgot about it after writing. But yeah, if someone wants to offer me $10M, I'll gladly talk them down to 5. In the meantime, you're free to research NMSU faculty salaries Um, talk them _down_? You're not in the business school, are you? as compared to peer state institutions. What do such comparisons have to do with it? Why not compare yourself to a child in Pakistan or China? To them, you make a huge sum, and so, based on the (supposed) premise that "sickenly bloated" is not highly subjective and relative, you should be willing to cut your salary dramatically. Here's some more grist for the mill: Warren Buffett, the world's 2nd richest man, is giving (well, not exactly, but let's ignore that point for a moment) 31 billion USD to a charity started and run by the world's richest man. The interest paid on CDs at current rates is about 5%, so that'd be about $1.55 billion a year, or $30 million a week, on his "gift." Which is about $6 million a day, based on a five-day work week. What's interesting about $6 million, you might ask? One thing might be that it is the amount of money Key Lay recovered from his (alleged) insider trading in selling off (or out, if you must) what shares of Enron he did in mid-late 2001. Another interesting thing about the number is that it is less than what he borrowed against his remaining large amount of Enron holdings during the same timeframe to, guess what? Buy more Enron stock. So what's the point, you ask? Well, several, but here's a question based on one of them: why would you guess that Lay is now seen by many as a reviled criminal, yet Buffett, who has amassed so much money that he could have bought and sold Ken Lay, Fastow, and Skilling at their richest using just the interest on some of his pocket money, and do it without ever leaving the country club, is seen by many of those same folks as some sort of hero? It's all public domain information. You probably could find my exact salary and post it on ROFF if you wanted to... I don't. .but anyway, you admit that you're more than a small part of the problem, and that problem is that you and people with whom you include in your meaning of "us" consume unnecessarily and to excess, I drive 7mi to work, I work in a climate-controlled office, I live in a climate controlled house. That alone puts me as more than a small part of the problem. Driving anywhere, be it 40 miles or 400 (to the san juan, for me) just to _recreate_ also makes me part of the problem. So if the "government" made you walk to work, took away the climate control, and banned you from driving to where you recreate, that'd be not only OK with you, but a necessary and proper thing, right? Regardless of your answer on that, if you feel that your behavior is causing a problem, why don't you control it? but you want someone else to oversee it or make it work better. Maybe "the government" can help you out Government can and has done many good things over the years. It could have much more of an impact than I could by myself (maybe I'm making excuses; I'll admit it). It could raise fuel efficiency standards, it could invest in more regional and national rails, it could mandate building standards, it could offer incentives to increase renewable energy use rather than incentives to extract more oil and gas, and on and on. It could, but you could just stop what you're doing, and it would be easier and cheaper for you to do it directly rather than have you do it to yourself via "the government" (...of the people and all that other Gettysburg stuff...). I'd offer that when "the government" tries to do such as you suggest, those who would be controlled are entirely behind all sorts of regulations, laws, and other controls...well, at least as long as it is someone else having to do without (or, having to put up with whatever). I'm not skeptical of government's ability to do good things, nor am I skeptical of the free market's ability to do good things, nor am I skeptical of a union's ability to do good things, or any other "pick-your-social-institution". It sounds as though you are, however, skeptical, and not unreasonably so, of your ability to control your own actions, suggesting that "the government" is better suited to controlling you than, well, you. To that end... But any one of them, unchecked, will be corrupted. ...any time a person or people attempt to place upon others that for which they themselves ought to take responsibility, corruption and other problems won't be far behind. Take care, You too, R Jon. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
We found this on Reuters New Service today, regarding Ken Lay's
funeral: The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared. Now, we at Americans for Equal Justice don't claim to be experts on MLK or Jesus, but COME ON. I mean, seriously. Jesus Christ? The Prince of Peace who said it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? That Jesus Christ? Or is there another Jesus Christ who I don't know about who enriched himself and his family at the expense of hard-working folks while leading the collapse of a huge corporation? Because I am confused here, Reverend. And Martin Luther King, a man of God who was killed trying to reverse a 400-year-old racial injustice being perputrated on 20 million Americans? Please Reverend, just quietly bury the man and ask the family to give back the money. Please Visit http://www.kenlayisalive.org Link to Reuters article http://today.reuters.com/business/ne...1-ArticlePage1 wrote: On 12 Jul 2006 13:12:23 GMT, (Jonathan Cook) wrote: RDean wrote: Well, yeah, he [me] did write, but he neatly ignored certain points presented...such as his own "sickenly bloated" salary and giving a large chunk of it up... Well I'm cutting and pasting from google groups because our local newsserver gets only about a third of ROFF posts, and right now yours aren't showing up. I missed your first paragraph and then forgot about it after writing. But yeah, if someone wants to offer me $10M, I'll gladly talk them down to 5. In the meantime, you're free to research NMSU faculty salaries Um, talk them _down_? You're not in the business school, are you? as compared to peer state institutions. What do such comparisons have to do with it? Why not compare yourself to a child in Pakistan or China? To them, you make a huge sum, and so, based on the (supposed) premise that "sickenly bloated" is not highly subjective and relative, you should be willing to cut your salary dramatically. Here's some more grist for the mill: Warren Buffett, the world's 2nd richest man, is giving (well, not exactly, but let's ignore that point for a moment) 31 billion USD to a charity started and run by the world's richest man. The interest paid on CDs at current rates is about 5%, so that'd be about $1.55 billion a year, or $30 million a week, on his "gift." Which is about $6 million a day, based on a five-day work week. What's interesting about $6 million, you might ask? One thing might be that it is the amount of money Key Lay recovered from his (alleged) insider trading in selling off (or out, if you must) what shares of Enron he did in mid-late 2001. Another interesting thing about the number is that it is less than what he borrowed against his remaining large amount of Enron holdings during the same timeframe to, guess what? Buy more Enron stock. So what's the point, you ask? Well, several, but here's a question based on one of them: why would you guess that Lay is now seen by many as a reviled criminal, yet Buffett, who has amassed so much money that he could have bought and sold Ken Lay, Fastow, and Skilling at their richest using just the interest on some of his pocket money, and do it without ever leaving the country club, is seen by many of those same folks as some sort of hero? It's all public domain information. You probably could find my exact salary and post it on ROFF if you wanted to... I don't. .but anyway, you admit that you're more than a small part of the problem, and that problem is that you and people with whom you include in your meaning of "us" consume unnecessarily and to excess, I drive 7mi to work, I work in a climate-controlled office, I live in a climate controlled house. That alone puts me as more than a small part of the problem. Driving anywhere, be it 40 miles or 400 (to the san juan, for me) just to _recreate_ also makes me part of the problem. So if the "government" made you walk to work, took away the climate control, and banned you from driving to where you recreate, that'd be not only OK with you, but a necessary and proper thing, right? Regardless of your answer on that, if you feel that your behavior is causing a problem, why don't you control it? but you want someone else to oversee it or make it work better. Maybe "the government" can help you out Government can and has done many good things over the years. It could have much more of an impact than I could by myself (maybe I'm making excuses; I'll admit it). It could raise fuel efficiency standards, it could invest in more regional and national rails, it could mandate building standards, it could offer incentives to increase renewable energy use rather than incentives to extract more oil and gas, and on and on. It could, but you could just stop what you're doing, and it would be easier and cheaper for you to do it directly rather than have you do it to yourself via "the government" (...of the people and all that other Gettysburg stuff...). I'd offer that when "the government" tries to do such as you suggest, those who would be controlled are entirely behind all sorts of regulations, laws, and other controls...well, at least as long as it is someone else having to do without (or, having to put up with whatever). I'm not skeptical of government's ability to do good things, nor am I skeptical of the free market's ability to do good things, nor am I skeptical of a union's ability to do good things, or any other "pick-your-social-institution". It sounds as though you are, however, skeptical, and not unreasonably so, of your ability to control your own actions, suggesting that "the government" is better suited to controlling you than, well, you. To that end... But any one of them, unchecked, will be corrupted. ...any time a person or people attempt to place upon others that for which they themselves ought to take responsibility, corruption and other problems won't be far behind. Take care, You too, R Jon. |
Movie: An Inconvenient Truth
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