Just one more Person Pissing me off.

[The_Darkness]

Okay, so I'm going through Fark.com and getting the funnier side of the news when I come to a link. I don't even know what their tagline was, but it got my attention. What I got was some person that went out and found environmental stickers plastered on people's cars and then called them hipocrites for driving gas guzzling cars and even thinking about putting environmental stickers on them.

Okay. No harm done.

And then I saw the pollution statistics at the top of each entry. Miles per Gallon listed....seems to check out from what I know. "Annual Greenhouse Gas Emmisions" is the stat that really got me. These things are listed in Tons per year. It took about .01 seconds for my brain to go "what the fuck?" So I grabbed a calculator.

The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on a car each year. Okay, so we take a nice low number for mileage, like 23, and divide 12,000 by 23 and come up with 521 and change for the number of gallons of fuel bought each year. Let's round up. Let's say that person X buys 600 gallons of fuel each year. Gasoline weighs 6 pounds per gallon, so simple math says that's 3600 pounds of fuel each year.

7th grade science told most of us that something cannot burn unless it is in the presence of oxygen....and 99% of the time, that's true enough. Let's say for simplicity that fuel and air are mixed in a 50/50 ratio by volume as the engine does it's thing. Air weighs 1 pound per cubic yard, which is 27 cubic feet. Assuming a nice round 7.5 gallons per cubic foot (Really, it's 7.481) and multiplying it all through, we get 202.5 gallons per cubic yard, so there's 202.5 gallons of air in a pound. Simple enough. With the by volume combination, we see that in order to burn in the area of 600 gallons of fuel, we need to also burn 3 pounds of air so it can adequately mix. And, I'm not going to lie to you, a 50/50 mix is pretty rich....you'd get pretty damn lousy fuel milage at that.

But, I digress.

So, we've consumed 3603 pounds of materials to drive over 12,000 miles in a single year. Last time I checked, a ton was 2000 pounds, so we actually consume 1.8 tons of material, and approximately 30 percent of that is watervapor, which I hope and fucking pray they haven't made into a greenhouse gas yet. So now we're down to 1.26 tons of exhaust each year, and about half of that is classified as a "greenhouse gas", so we arrive at the total of .63 tons each year produced for a car getting 23 miles per gallon.

Some of you may still be going "holy shit!" However, a conservative effort of estimation for volcanic ash being put into the air from the erruptions of Mt. Krakatoa at the begining of the 20th century up to the erruption of Mt. St. Helens in the 1980's is 1 million, billion tons. For those of you who are not so awesome at math, that number looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000. If I'm not mistaken, that's more than the networth of most of the world. You think the world gives a shit about 63 cents? Or 300,000,000 people spending 63 cents? or 2,500,000,000 spending 63 cents? Do you think that a millionare flinches at spending $1.58 for a donut and a gas station coffee? No? Well, that's the equalent of 2.5 billion people driving relatively fuel inefficient cars for a full year. 100,000,000:1.58 If that was gasoline in drinking water, you wouldn't even know it's there at 1.5 parts per million.

Get a goddamn clue.

I'll kindly get off my soapbox now, but I've included the link for your approval.

http://www.zombietime.com/concourse_of_hypocrisy/01.html

I did note that the photographer and mathemagician seem to be in the Berkeley area. Last I knew, there was a university there. Maybe they have a remedial math class that's taking on students this semester.

 

[hermitage]

California steamin'
Forecasters predict hellacious summer, world's hottest year on record
BY DANA BARTHOLOMEW, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 01/04/2007 10:11:18 PM PST


The hottest prediction for '07: the hottest world temperature on record. The hellish forecast for Los Angeles: a summer hotter than last year's record smoker.

Stubborn greenhouse gases and the return of El Niño will likely turn 2007 into the world's hottest year on record, climate researchers predicted Thursday.

That's bad news for California, singed last year during its hottest-ever summer.

"We are going to suffer," predicted Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "Last summer was a preview of coming attractions.

"There's definitely a disturbance in the force on global temperatures. Between hot days and heat waves on the rise, we're looking at hotter temperatures this summer in Los Angeles."

The nation's leading climatologists endorsed a prediction made Thursday by British scientists that a resurgent El Niño, coupled with persistently high levels of greenhouse gases, will likely make this year the hottest on record.

Britain's Meteorological Office forecast a 60 percent chance that 2007 would surpass the global record set in 1998 of 1.20 degrees over the long-term average.

"In general, temperatures will continue to rise as
greenhouse gases increase, and El Niños add an extra boost," said Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, who concurred with the British prediction.
"With each succeeding El Niño event, we are more likely than not to set new record global temperatures,"

Experts say California, the world's 12th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, could suffer dire consequences as temperatures rise locally and around the globe.

Higher temperatures strain power plants and increase the risk of statewide blackouts and catastrophic wildfires.

They also can also decrease mountain snowpack and jeopardize water supplies.

Heat wave killed

Last year, 160 Californians died during a soaring heat wave that taxed farms and livestock and strained air conditioners.

In July, mercury at the Woodland Hills station soared past 100 degrees for a record three consecutive weeks. In all, temperatures shot above the 100-mark for 24 days, another record.

On July 22, temperatures at Pierce College topped out at a Sahara-like 119 degrees - a Los Angeles County record.

Climatologists say that, when it comes to global warming, nine out of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade.

"We're in a global-warming world," said David Neelin, professor of climate dynamics and a specialist in the effects of El Niño at the University of California, Los Angeles. "If you have a threshold - say 100 degrees - that many find uncomfortable, you're going to exceed that threshold more and more often."

But California is leading the nation in the battle against global warming.

In addition to renewable energy policies, the Golden State has enacted landmark legislation to reduce greenhouse emissions generated by vehicles and industry.

Reducing emissions

An initiative aimed at reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by power plants and other industries took effect Jan. 1.

"The governor has said that the science of climate change is real and he will continue to shine the spotlight on the important issue of reducing greenhouse emissions in his second term," said Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The governor stands in stark contrast to President George W. Bush, who has refused to sign the international Kyoto protocol to limit greenhouse emissions.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the new chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, has vowed to make greenhouse gases a priority, with hearings expected to begin this month.

"Nowhere is there a greater threat to future generations than the disastrous effects of global warming," Boxer said in a recent statement.

While Boxer has yet to unveil greenhouse legislation, she has called on Congress to follow the "California approach" in regulating emissions.

While the moderate equatorial current known as El Niño could warm the ocean and atmospheric temperatures, climatologists warned that a major event such as a volcano could severely cool its impact.

Climate out of kilter

The current El Niño has warmed Washington, D.C., enough to cause the cherry trees to bloom this winter, while inflicting severe drought on Africa and Australia.

While forecasters say it's difficult to predict how El Niño might affect specific regions such as Southern California, all agreed temperatures are on the rise.

In the past century, average temperatures in Los Angeles have shot up 5 degrees, with a 3-degree increase in offshore ocean temperatures.

In the past half-century, late-summer heat waves have also increased, said Patzert, who is studying heat-wave trends in Woodland Hills, the hottest spot in Los Angeles.

"I tell my students, `Forget about science - major in air conditioning,"' the rocket lab researcher said.

Richard Somerville, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, praised California's greenhouse programs, but said the world must follow suit.

"This is a political problem," Somerville said. "The best thing that people can do is not recycle cans, put in low-impact fluorescent light bulbs, bike to work and drive a high-mileage car.

"You've got to tell the politicians that this is important. You've got to wean the world away from fossil fuel."

Staff Writer Lisa Friedman contributed to this report.

dana.bartholomew@dailynews.com

(818) 713-3730

 

[The_Darkness]

Yes, but keep in mind, that "Hottest Year on Record" thing is since like 1915 or so. 100 years of records on a geologic time scale is nothing at all. There's oral history from Indian tribes that tell of 30 droughts, massive super storms....pretty much all of the worst parts of our imaginations. There is an ancient (2500+ years old, no one is sure just how old) map of Antarctica with no ice on it.

Most historians, particularly ancient historians, have very little doubt that the Earth is getting warmer, but we know it's been warm before. The earth is a dynamic system, always changing, always reacting, and the little tiny impact that we humans actually have on the Millions upon millions upon millions of cubic miles of atmosphere is ridiculously small. Granted, that's not an open statement saying everyone should go out and start a tire fire, leave their lights on, and go back to driving super cars from the 1960's, but still; our impact as a species has been negligible compared to what mother nature can do to herself over the course of a weekend, or even a few minutes with an earthquake.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

"An Inconvenient Truth" pretty much nailed the science down on the matter for me. Core samples, ocean currents, fossil records, statistical temperature guaging through oxygen content, etc. We, human beings that is, have dramatic effects on the world--our contribution is not minute. There is a crazily /vast/ number of non-refuted studies on the matter, I was won over by the sheer volume of data to that effect.

The "hottest year on record" includes recording of mean Earth temperature through several converging measures for, literally, thousands of years. It is /hardly/ limited to a hundred years of data, as we've been pulling data based on different correlaries of temperature.

As for vague oral histories of primitive people and the pseudo-sciences surrounding things like the Reis Map... these are /not/ staples of the scientific community, not at all. Nor of the historical community.

 

[hermitage]

There is no dispute that this planet’s climate has gone through dramatic changes as a result of external influence, such as impacting large asteroids capable of sending enough debris to the atmosphere to reduce the intensity of the sunlight supporting then present climate conditions.

Then there has been an intense volcanic activity capable of reducing average temps. Even a drop of 3C could bring about domino effect-like conditions, as in some regions the snow pack would not melt.

I don’t believe that the volume of greenhouse effect-causing gases that have been released to the atmosphere have already triggered some “butterfly effect” with a very unpleasant result that would start mess up with the ecology some 10 years from now. But I’m positive that the supplies of crude would be squeezed to the last drop and part of it will go “up the chimney.” Since no one can safely estimate how much oil is left and what we will burn after, it’s not easy to run a dynamic models to peek to the distant future having no reliable parameters to do so. But if there is substantial evidence that our craving for energy raises global temperature, things will surely not get better and some concern is due, especially when we seem to be lazy to adjust to the new conditions.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/images/global_warming/ghouse_effect.jpg

 

[The_Darkness]

"An Inconvenient Truth" pretty much nailed the science down on the matter for me. Core samples, ocean currents, fossil records, statistical temperature guaging through oxygen content, etc. We, human beings that is, have dramatic effects on the world--our contribution is not minute. There is a crazily /vast/ number of non-refuted studies on the matter, I was won over by the sheer volume of data to that effect.

As for vague oral histories of primitive people and the pseudo-sciences surrounding things like the Reis Map... these are /not/ staples of the scientific community, not at all. Nor of the historical community.

Then someone better wake up. Ice core samples have proven to be wrong time and time and time again. Ocean core samples are a much better way to address the issue, and they back up the historical data. The simple fact is that Earth has spent most of its existance in a Tropical climate. There are some serious questions that have been raised but never fully answered about the Earth's climate 100,000, 250,000, and 1,000,000 years ago. The Saraha Desert was a vast forest and swamp that existed for a number of millenia before the Nile shifted course and instead of dumping into the Atlantic instead moved to the Mediterranian.

And yes, Joe, while the oral histories (though apparently vague, it's what they had, and by and large, were not subject to interpretation until the white folks showed up from across the pond) were pretty accurate. The Reis map, though called psuedo science, still exists and has existed for a long, long time. Out of Place Artifacts like the Reis map should be sending a wake-up call to the world that the world isn't cut and dried and abbridged as it is in a 1000 page world history text book. The common is accepted and the odd is cast aside because it's too hard to explain or too damaging to religion or shatters our ideas about cultural superiority and technological advancement.

However, just because it's been discovered and verified that temperatures now are nearing a level that they were at during much of the time of the Roman Republic is also lost on the public, because they want an issue. They want to be victimized so badly that they'll point the fingers at themselves and say "We Did This"

If you're still unmoved, get a hold of a palenotologist. Ask them what the prevailing climate has been on the earth, and whether the .02% of the time Human beings have been on it is the norm or the exception, or hell, even if wild swings in climate have happened before, and will continue to happen in the future.

 

[The_Darkness]

Hermitage,

I agree completely. I'm not saying don't recycle, don't drive fuel-efficient cars, and go ahead and trash everything. I'm just saying that there's some very inflated numbers out there and those who oppose them with data other than glacial core samples and 35 years of atmospheric data are beaten down and silenced by the crushing masses.

That's kind of a neat graphic, in a 7th grade science book way, but it gets right to the point.

*sigh* I just wish the damn oil companies didn't own the world. There's been several types of engines and carbueration systems invented that run on convential 89 octane that get 40+ miles per gallon at their worst, but it's been made....financially disadvantageous to let the public have them as of yet. Conspiracy? Nope....just wise investment that's screwed us all.

 

[Weird Harold]

And then I saw the pollution statistics at the top of each entry. Miles per Gallon listed....seems to check out from what I know. "Annual Greenhouse Gas Emmisions" is the stat that really got me. These things are listed in Tons per year. It took about .01 seconds for my brain to go "what the fuck?" So I grabbed a calculator.

The average driver puts about 12,000 miles on a car each year. Okay, so we take a nice low number for mileage, like 23, and divide 12,000 by 23 and come up with 521 and change for the number of gallons of fuel bought each year. Let's round up. Let's say that person X buys 600 gallons of fuel each year. Gasoline weighs 6 pounds per gallon, so simple math says that's 3600 pounds of fuel each year.

From the government fuel efficiency page linked from your link:

Annual Fuel Costs and Greenhouse Gas Estimates are based on 45% highway driving, 55% city driving, and 15000 annual miles.

It's been known for a long time that the official government fuel efficiency ratings are inflated and virtually impossible to match in real life driving, so I'm not surprised that their "annual greenhouse emissions ratings" are also inflated to a "worst case" level even though they don't seem to match the official numbers using your simplistic formula -- even correcting for the milage estimate you used vs the milage estimate they use.

When it comes to the official government ratings, they're based on actual test results in idealized laboratory conditions so the only thing they are good for is comparing one model against another; they have no real relationship to actual real world results and/or environmental impact.

They are however, based on actual measurements of fuel consumption and exhaust gas components so I would rate them as just a bit more credible than your "quick and dirty" estimation even though there are flaws in the methodology that produce results that don't apply to anything but laboratory conditions and optimal engine performance.

Whichever numbers you choose to believe are closer to real-world performance, the only thing they are really useful for is determining which car pollutes more or less than another because real-world cars are seldom tuned to perfection and have to deal with things like changing road grade, traffic congestion, head-winds, variable fuel quality, and human drivers, that all have (generally bad) effects on fuel efficiency and environmental impact.

 

[The_Darkness]

It's been known for a long time that the official government fuel efficiency ratings are inflated and virtually impossible to match in real life driving, so I'm not surprised that their "annual greenhouse emissions ratings" are also inflated to a "worst case" level even though they don't seem to match the official numbers using your simplistic formula -- even correcting for the milage estimate you used vs the milage estimate they use.

When it comes to the official government ratings, they're based on actual test results in idealized laboratory conditions so the only thing they are good for is comparing one model against another; they have no real relationship to actual real world results and/or environmental impact.

They are however, based on actual measurements of fuel consumption and exhaust gas components so I would rate them as just a bit more credible than your "quick and dirty" estimation even though there are flaws in the methodology that produce results that don't apply to anything but laboratory conditions and optimal engine performance.

Whichever numbers you choose to believe are closer to real-world performance, the only thing they are really useful for is determining which car pollutes more or less than another because real-world cars are seldom tuned to perfection and have to deal with things like changing road grade, traffic congestion, head-winds, variable fuel quality, and human drivers, that all have (generally bad) effects on fuel efficiency and environmental impact.

True enough, Harold, but even still....off by a factor of 7? Or in the truest form, a factor of 14? They'd have to be burning straight crude oil and then every time the vehicle is ready for an oil change, dump the oil on the ground and burn it, along with the old tires when those are replaced.

I used to drive what was mostly a 1980 Caprice. Picked it up for 800 bucks and drove it 125,000 miles before the tranny shelled out and I didn't want to put another $400 in the car to have my brother switch it out with a rebuild. That pile of crap got 22 miles a gallon average in the winter and 18 in the summer. temperature, conditions, wind, winter/summer grade of gas all make a HUGE difference in fuel use. But not by a factor of 7.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Then someone better wake up. Ice core samples have proven to be wrong time and time and time again.

But, spicy prose and assertive propositions aside, where is the evidence that the ice core samples used by the scientific community with regards to global warming are "wrong". I can say "statistics have been proven wrong time and time again!", but that doesn't mean that the percentile rankings for a standardized test are incorrect.

Ocean core samples are a much better way to address the issue, and they back up the historical data.

Incorrect, both ice core data and ocean sediment data going back 400,000 years show a direct correlation between temperature and CO2 levels. Ocean sendiment core sampling has /contributed/ to glocal warming evidence, not detracted from it.

The simple fact is that Earth has spent most of its existance in a Tropical climate. There are some serious questions that have been raised but never fully answered about the Earth's climate 100,000, 250,000, and 1,000,000 years ago. The Saraha Desert was a vast forest and swamp that existed for a number of millenia before the Nile shifted course and instead of dumping into the Atlantic instead moved to the Mediterranian.

Unless you're saying that the ice and ocean (and other) sampling that has been used to measure CO2 levels going back several hundred thousand years is, somehow, bad science or inaccurate (which would be a monumental undertaking, considering none out of the 9000+ studies on this relationship produced in peer-reviewed journals have had that component of the research refuted), we /have/ sufficiently answered the question of Earth's climate going back as long as you say.

Now, you use the word "fully" with regards to an answer... that's a highly prejorative word. Has the relationship between CO2 and climate been shown to be sufficiently true? Yes. Is it sound science? Yes. Does it fully answer the question? No, because the bounds of "what is a full answer" is not a particularly scientific limitation. "If you can't measure it, you can't define it", is a good rule of thumb. Does the science out currently explain what we observe? Yes. Is that the "full story", probably not, but it is a vastly (by virtue of the science done) more evidenced theory than its null.

And yes, Joe, while the oral histories (though apparently vague, it's what they had, and by and large, were not subject to interpretation until the white folks showed up from across the pond) were pretty accurate.

"Pretty accurate" is another inspecific term. How accurate? How inaccurate? Presently, no primitive culture's predictions of the future or mapping of their present was perfectly accurate--that's easy to understand. So how accurate is "pretty accurate"? And, even then, were they accurate about the information we're talking about? Again, framing the argument in words like "pretty much" is really inspecific. I can think of dozens of examples of primitive cultures "getting things wrong". From self-annihilation due to decomposing bodies in water-supplies to geographical inaccuracies in the shape of the world they thought they lived in to apparent contradictions between the expected natural effects of certain events and the ones that ended up happening (the onset of natural disasters being a good example).

We can say "they're pretty accurate about stuff, thus they're probably right about X"... but that's poor reasoning, bad science, and aggressive assumptive habits which are intellectually lazy.

The Reis map, though called psuedo science, still exists and has existed for a long, long time. Out of Place Artifacts like the Reis map should be sending a wake-up call to the world that the world isn't cut and dried and abbridged as it is in a 1000 page world history text book.

The Reis map isn't out of place, as a number of studies have been done that evidence very specific placement of it. It is, considered by the scholarly community, a map generated out of presumptions about the world moreso than experience of it. It corresponds to several such map habits of the time. It's less a "mystery of the ages" than a "well documented guess". If you're saying that the Reis map is somehow evidentiary, I'd love to know your sources for that.

Again, saying "it doesn't fit, thus it must have truth!" is poor reasoning, bad science, and intellectual laziness. A thing must be shown to /have/ truth, either historically, rationally, or evidentiarily... presuming it has truth because it exists is like saying that The Bermuda Triangle might be cursed, because there are four-hundred year old captain's logs that say that--when the history and statistics show no such unique frequency of disasters.

The common is accepted and the odd is cast aside because it's too hard to explain or too damaging to religion or shatters our ideas about cultural superiority and technological advancement.

That is hardly true. The existence of germs had to be /proven/ because it was hard to accept--all the ancient texts and folk-stories and mythologies of disease coming from the Gods, Fate, or lower-class people were assumed to be evidence to germs being fake. At this point, you're making generalized blanket statements that don't actually evidence or help support your point--this is a bit of a straw-man fallacy as we're not arguing over "the realism of the common or the odd", we're talking about evidence for and against global warming.

Using cliche's or emotive propositions beside the point like "the different is rejected because its controversial" (1) aren't necessarily true by any means and (2) aren't really germaine to the discussion.

However, just because it's been discovered and verified that temperatures now are nearing a level that they were at during much of the time of the Roman Republic is also lost on the public, because they want an issue. They want to be victimized so badly that they'll point the fingers at themselves and say "We Did This"

I have nothing intelligent to say about what "They" want. I am not much for assuming the emotive needs of the vaguely defined. However, the climatological record shows us far exceed temperatures two thousand years ago, one thousand years ago, and a hundred years ago. I'm not sure the science you're referencing, here.

If you're still unmoved, get a hold of a palenotologist. Ask them what the prevailing climate has been on the earth, and whether the .02% of the time Human beings have been on it is the norm or the exception, or hell, even if wild swings in climate have happened before, and will continue to happen in the future.

I assume you mean "paleontologist".

First, do you realize that you're assuming the opinion of every paleontologist (including those that support global warming)?

Second, you're proposing a bit of a red-herring fallacy in that you're saying that the scientists in question will say that "yes, wild swings happen"... but, that wild swings happen don't refute global warming in any way. The existence of aggressive swings in temperature are a part of the climatological record and doesn't disagree with the idea that humans civilization, through greenhouse gases, are contributing to the build up of CO2 levels more heavily than have /ever/ been recorded in the atmosphere--thus, raising the world's temperature higher, as a direct result.

That a paleontologist would agree that human civilization is the exception to the climate and that wild swings happen doesn't /actually/ disagree with global warming at all. Rather, they /do/ lend support to it, evidentiarily by showing that we are rapidly surpassing the standard deviations from global temperature ranges and doing so during this recent slice of Earth history--it's uniquely sharp rise in comparison to more gradual fluctuations is a part of the global warming theory.

. . .. ... .....

This won't be a popular thing to say, but it's relavent: You make a /lot/ of informal logical fallacies, just in your last post alone you've covered about seven or eight. This is not evidence of good reasoning being employed. You seem to have a preconcieved notion of your own point, but your statements don't support the conclusion you're trying to make (at least not logically).

 

[Weird Harold]

True enough, Harold, but even still....off by a factor of 7? Or in the truest form, a factor of 14? They'd have to be burning straight crude oil and then every time the vehicle is ready for an oil change, dump the oil on the ground and burn it, along with the old tires when those are replaced.

If you based your computations on the example you linked, your numbers were only 1/3 of the government figure for annual greenhouse gasses. I'm not sure where you're coming up with factors of seven and fourteen. If you didn't use the car in your link as the basis for your computations, there is no basis for comparing your figures to the official government figures.

The problem is that while you showed your logic/computations I have no idea what logic/formula/data points are used to come up with the official AGG rating. I can only assume that there are some erroneous assumptions involved with the government's rating computation because the laboratory conditions that result in "best case" MPG ratings should NOT also result in Worst Case AGG ratings.

I could probably find out what the computation involves but it's not worth the effort because the numbers don't tell me anything quantitative about actual environmental impact, they just tell me that test-car A performed better than test-car B under conditions as similar as possible. It doesn't even really tell me anything about the production-cars. I do know that several car manufacturers have challenged the official ratings of specific models on the grounds that the test-cars used were improperly tuned and not representative of the production run.

For me, it doesn't matter how far off the official numbers are as long as the same methodology is used for all cars tested because the only value of the official rating is qualitative and/or comparitive -- as long as all ratings are inflated by the SAME factor of seven, fourteen, or a million, the qualitative comparison is still valid and the actual quantitative number is worthless.

 

[The_Darkness]

Joe, you're right, I haven't given any form of notation or hard data, and I have a nasty tendacy to use words which reflect generalizations as opposed to hard data. Personal fault or observational hazard, either way, I am who I am, and aside from volumes upon volumes of collected data that I can't remember sources of, I have nothing you would consider hard proof, and I'm not going to spend the little free-time I have with researching it further at this time. You have your educated opinion, and I have mine, and until we start getting down and dirty with the details, I doubt we'll ever reach an agreed upon conclusion.

By the way, thanks for not getting personal and turning into amicus. I've always admired that about you when you shoot people down with all the precision and cool collectiveness of an executioner.

Harold, you're also right, but in your statement you directly imply that the numbers are essentially meaningless, which is also right.

---

This conversation spiraled out kinda quickly, but we're back to the begining with Harold's post. Where the hell did that number come from? I'm sure there must be some formula and function that it's derived from, but I just can't figure out how their inventing more waste than the materials they're putting in.

 

[Joe Wordsworth]

Joe, you're right, I haven't given any form of notation or hard data, and I have a nasty tendacy to use words which reflect generalizations as opposed to hard data. Personal fault or observational hazard, either way, I am who I am, and aside from volumes upon volumes of collected data that I can't remember sources of, I have nothing you would consider hard proof, and I'm not going to spend the little free-time I have with researching it further at this time. You have your educated opinion, and I have mine, and until we start getting down and dirty with the details, I doubt we'll ever reach an agreed upon conclusion.

By the way, thanks for not getting personal and turning into amicus. I've always admired that about you when you shoot people down with all the precision and cool collectiveness of an executioner.

Given that its the sort of topic that demands the painstaking details, you're probably right about agreeing to "let it be" for now.

 

[hermitage]

Other mammals lived on this planet long before man did; they were happily farting free of worry where the gases would go and what consequence it bears. Homo sapiens proved to be different, and I believe that the theoretical model of the greenhouse effect is conceptually healthy – but does it really cause variation in temperatures observed?

A Texaco-sponsored study may show different conclusion then the one commissioned by Green Peace activists. Corporate Science vs. Pure Academic Thought?

There is a great deal of entropy involved. There is not enough computing power perhaps, descriptive analyses scream for additional, hard to obtain data, which may turn out not reliable; inference is plagued by such and perhaps by not enough analytical skills on the part of those involved...

When the mercury hits 110F in July, don’t expect me to take a ten-minute walk to the store to get a sixpack. I’m driving – AC on.

 

[TheEarl]

When the mercury hits 110F in July, don’t expect me to take a ten-minute walk to the store to get a sixpack. I’m driving – AC on.

A little bit OT, but anyone who wants to know a major difference between the US and the UK, it's right there.

Vella thought I was a lunatic for volunteering to walk five minutes down the road to buy something from a shop. I was amazed at her amazement. Sure, it was hot, but that didn't mean you couldn't walk it! In England you'd be wondering whether it would be worth looking for a parking place!

The Earl

 

[The_Darkness]

I used to make me feel dirty to drive somewhere less than 3 miles away, but then again, I grew up in a rural town of 600 people and most all of us had bikes. The swimming hole/county park was 3 miles off, my friends lived within 3 miles, and "downtown" was just 6 blocks off. Hell, we lived 2 blocks from school, so that wasn't even an issue.

Simpler times, less worry, less responcibility, I guess.

 

[cumallday]

I'm no climatologist, but what about food?

Studies have shown that the world's cimate has been unusually stable for the past 10, 000 years - exactly the lifetime of agiculture and civilization. These same studies (J. Hansen, R. Alley) show that the earth's climate has sometimes fluctuated wildly, breaking from an ice age - or plunging into one - not over centuries, but in decades.

The natural triggers of such events are still not all that well understood - perhaps the changing of oceanic currents or thawing permafrost releasing methane gases....etc. Nevertheless, change is not in our interest. Our only rational policy is not to risk provoking it. Yet we face abundant evidence that civilization itself, through fossil fuel emissions and other disturbances, is upsetting the long calm in which it grew. Droughts and unusually hot weather have already caused world grain output to fall or stagnate for nine years in a row while the number of mouths to feed have gone up by 600 million.

Should the earth's climatic balance go back to its old regime of chills and sweats crops will fail everywhere and the great experiment of civilization will come to a catastrophic end. In the matter of our food we have become as specialized, and therefore as vulnerable, as the saber-toothed cat.

Anyways, I tend to take on a "Pascal's Wager" approach when it comes to ecological debate. In other words, better safe than sorry. As I've written in a thread by our dear friend amicus; time is running out, but hope springs eternal. I remain cautiously optmistic.

 

[hermitage]

A little bit OT, but anyone who wants to know a major difference between the US and the UK, it's right there.

Vella thought I was a lunatic for volunteering to walk five minutes down the road to buy something from a shop. I was amazed at her amazement. Sure, it was hot, but that didn't mean you couldn't walk it! In England you'd be wondering whether it would be worth looking for a parking place!

The Earl

Did you mean OT or HOT?

See, my interest in the matter is not a pure intellectual pasttime. I happen to live in place that the news article I posted talks about and where 110 degrees Fahrenheit equals to 43 degrees Celsius. I really have a second thought about dragging my ass to the store when the heat wave hits and perhaps have the liberty of being a bit inquisitive about what's fucking up.

Hey, was it hot or was SHE hot? I wouldn't mind a "heat wave" like that.

 

[TheEarl]

Did you mean OT or HOT?

See, my interest in the matter is not a pure intellectual pasttime. I happen to live in place that the news article I posted talks about and where 110 degrees Fahrenheit equals to 43 degrees Celsius. I really have a second thought about dragging my ass to the store when the heat wave hits and perhaps have the liberty of being a bit inquisitive about what's fucking up.

Hey, was it hot or was SHE hot? I wouldn't mind a "heat wave" like that.

OT - Off Topic. And by hot, I mean it was hot as considered by Texans, as that was where I was at the time.

The Earl

 

[hermitage]

Hermitage,

I agree completely. I'm not saying don't recycle, don't drive fuel-efficient cars, and go ahead and trash everything. I'm just saying that there's some very inflated numbers out there and those who oppose them with data other than glacial core samples and 35 years of atmospheric data are beaten down and silenced by the crushing masses.

That's kind of a neat graphic, in a 7th grade science book way, but it gets right to the point.

*sigh* I just wish the damn oil companies didn't own the world. There's been several types of engines and carbueration systems invented that run on convential 89 octane that get 40+ miles per gallon at their worst, but it's been made....financially disadvantageous to let the public have them as of yet. Conspiracy? Nope....just wise investment that's screwed us all.

That's right. Global warming was not surely the idea that helped to design Ford Explorers and other SUV's. Corporate interest is being taken seriously by the politicians, especially in the USA, and it is the government that comes up with regulations regarding environmental issues. No one likes to "re-tool" and there is no incentive to do so unless an issue is responsible for a steep drop in sale.