Global Warming

[Sammie]

For once we agree, Diesel. Yes, this raging dogfight (otherwise known as the G.W.debate) has really become a spectacle.

The data, reasearch and the scientific evidence that each side clings to is mind boggling. Is there impending environmental doom or are people really manipulating scientific models for political motives?

Climate changes and we need to deal with that, rather than spend fortunes sending thousands of diplomats, advisers, and advocacy groups hither and yon for their scream fests. What a shame that $ couldn't be spent instead on the people who actually suffer when Mother Nature becomes a buddy*.

Hurricane Mitch killed more than 10,000 people in Central America in 1998. Hurricane Fifi killed 3000 more in the 70's. Katrina, after 2 years is still a wreck.

Instead of being so bent on who the "winner or the loser" is on this subject, we should be focusing on better preparation for disasters, how to best use available land and protect the habitat. Tornados, heat waves, floods, smog alerts, fires and blizzards should be at the top of the list, not who's right or who's wrong.

 

[scratch]

And I never even discussed the idiot Chavez to our south and how much he's making on this deal!

Wkmac,
Your entire post was great, but the above quote reminded me of something. My Mother-in-Law is notorious for forwarding those "Chain letter" e-mails, I usually just delete them without looking at them. I read one today though, and it was about our good buddy down in Venezuela, Chavez. Chavez owns Citgo, thats where his money is coming from. Seven/Eleven has dropped his contract. Supposedly, due to Americans starting to buy gas from elsewhere to boycott him, he is changing Citgo's name to Petro Express. And he is getting help from the Russians to build an AK-47 plant, Iranians are running his refineries, and supplying long range missiles. I don't know how much of this is true, but I don't stop at Citgo anymore.

We do need to rid ourselves of our oil addiction. I am all for nuclear, wind, hydro, geothermal, or any other kind of power. It will be a great day when a car will be able to be run off the electricity that it generates itself while going down the road. A perpetual motion machine, producing more energy than it uses. With our technology, I don't understand why we aren't there now.

 

[Sammie]

I'm curious as to where you heard this, because there is no land mass at the north pole. No glaciers either. It's just ice. Take away the ice and all you have is the Arctic ocean.

Jones,

I was referring to the 1,118-mile undersea mountain range stretching from Siberia, across the North Pole to the shores of Greenland -

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,501034,00.html

and the plants and grasses found in the stomachs of wooly mammoths in Siberia -

https://web.archive.org/web/20100323162340/http://www.crawford2000.co.uk/3600vel.htm

 

[satellitedriver]

Hmmm....the seafloor at the northpole is over 13,000 feet down. Are you saying that there is evidence that grass once grew there?

I'm pretty sure that undersea deposits of oil were formed mostly from plankton(scroll down a bit), not plant matter (which tends to form coal instead), and the Arctic ocean is extremely rich in plankton, which is why it is such a rich fishing area.

Yes, the seafloor is 13,000 feet down, now.

I will concede that was underwater 51 million yrs ago, but it was fresh water not sea water.
Tropical with fern and plankton and land locked from the oceans.

Here are a few excepts from Purdue University reporting on a news story that appeared in Nature magazine;

Researchers aboard a fleet of icebreakers collected samples by drilling into the floor of the Arctic Ocean during a 2004 expedition, and scientific findings will be published for the first time in several papers to appear Thursday (June 1) in Nature magazine.
The expedition was part of an international research effort called the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which explores the Earth's history and structure as recorded in seafloor sediments and rocks.
Huber used new data from the research to compare against results from complex climate-model simulations he performed to study and predict the effects of greenhouse gases. He co-authored two research papers to appear in Nature detailing conditions in the Arctic Ocean 55 to 50 million years ago during a time of unprecedented global warmth.

The cylindrical core samples contained the remains of ancient plant and animal life, which yielded critical new information about the Arctic Ocean during that time. Researchers used a recently developed technique called TEX-86, which enables scientists to measure the temperatures that existed when ancient organisms lived by analyzing the composition of fatty substances called lipids in their cell membranes. Using this technique, the researchers found that sea surface temperatures at the North Pole had soared to 23 degrees Celsius, or around 73 degrees Fahrenheit, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or the PETM, about 55 million years ago. Today's mean annual temperature at the North Pole is around minus 20 degrees Celsius, Huber said.




around 50 million years ago, the Arctic Ocean was frequently covered with dense mats of a freshwater fern called Azolla, which flourishes in ponds, said Henk Brinkhuis, a marine palynologist and biogeologist from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and lead author on one of the Nature papers.
"Imagine that the Arctic Ocean was a giant lake, with this vegetation growing in it," Brinkhuis said. "What these findings say is that the Arctic Ocean must have been isolated, or nearly cut off, from the Atlantic Ocean by land masses that later shifted into the present continents. Today, if you hop in a boat and head north in the Atlantic Ocean, you could go all the way to the Arctic Ocean. But back then it was more isolated, which prevented salt water from ocean surface currents from reaching there."

The concentration of carbon dioxide in today's atmosphere is about 380 parts per million, whereas the concentration 55 million years ago was about 2,000 parts per million.

While the climate models had predicted that researchers would discover the Arctic Ocean's freshwater past, the models have consistently underestimated by at least 10 degrees how hot the Earth would have been during that time, Huber said.

The models fail to explain another puzzling fact. The temperature difference between the North Pole and the equator today is about 45 degrees C. But the difference appears to have been much smaller during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum time frame. Otherwise, it would have been too hot for vegetation to survive in equatorial latitudes.

"We still haven't explained why the tropics stayed cool," Huber said. "Somehow, we have to explain how you can warm the poles up to 23 degrees Celsius without having the tropics rise to at least 50 degrees, which is 10 degrees too hot for plants to carry out photosynthesis."

"Today's models underpredict how warm the poles were back then, which tells you something disturbing — that the models, if anything, aren't sensitive enough to greenhouse gases," Huber said. "At the same time, it is possible that other forces in addition to higher-than-normal greenhouse gas concentrations were involved, otherwise we can't explain how the tropics maintained livable conditions.

"People have conjectured that polar stratospheric clouds or hurricane-induced ocean heat transport might have played crucial roles in amplifying polar heating, but much work needs to be done to prove this. Mechanisms that feed back onto global warming are poorly understood and not well represented into our current generation of models. This should be of great concern and will continue to be debated and explored in future research.

Scientists may explore several issues in future work, including research aimed at explaining specifically why the temperatures were so high 55.5 million years ago.

"There is a fundamental discrepancy between what kind of climate we expect to result from high atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and what kind of climate really prevailed during these ancient epochs," Sluijs said. "We, hence, need to improve our climate models. An important question is, what was seasonality like in the Arctic? Was there an as-large temperature difference between summer and winter as there is nowadays?"

You are right. No grass, but it was tropical.
PAX

 

[DS]

The continent of Atlantis was an island
which lay before the great flood
in the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
those beautiful sailors journeyed
to the South and the North Americas with ease,
in their ships with painted sails.

To the East Africa was a neighbour, across a short strait of sea miles.
The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture.
The antediluvian kings colonised the world
All the Gods who play in the mythological dramas
In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis.
Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth.
On board were the Twelve:
The poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,
The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.
Though Gods they were -
And as the elders of our time choose to remain blind
Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new
Hail Atlantis!
Donavan Leech

 

[Sammie]

The continent of Atlantis was an island
which lay before the great flood
in the area we now call the Atlantic Ocean.
So great an area of land, that from her western shores
those beautiful sailors journeyed
to the South and the North Americas with ease,
in their ships with painted sails.
Donavan Leech

Very good, DS.

Plato also sang Atlantis's praises, and Francis Bacon after him. Edgar Cayce had psychic knowledge of their writings and thought Atlantis was located in the Canary Islands. Lewis Spence, the Scottish occult scholar and mythologist, thought the Cro-Magnon cave paintings in Europe were done by displaced Atlanteans, who also supposedly taught the Egyptians and Mesoamericans how to build pyramids. It was also a hot topic during the Classical Antiquity (8-5th century BC).

I wish somebody would crack this case once and for all!!

 

[satellitedriver]

Very good, DS.

Plato also sang Atlantis's praises, and Francis Bacon after him. Edgar Cayce had psychic knowledge of their writings and thought Atlantis was located in the Canary Islands. Lewis Spence, the Scottish occult scholar and mythologist, thought the Cro-Magnon cave paintings in Europe were done by displaced Atlanteans, who also supposedly taught the Egyptians and Mesoamericans how to build pyramids. It was also a hot topic during the Classical Antiquity (8-5th century BC).

I wish somebody would crack this case once and for all!!

Don't forget the Land of Mu. The Pacific version of Atlantis. Theories pre-date it to Atlantis.
The base of the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico is the exact same dimensions as Cheops(sp) pyramid in Egypt.
Monolith builders around the world seemed to occur around the same time.
These theories seem to support a dispersal of knowledge world wide in a short time frame.
Most seem to be crack pot theories, space aliens, ancient knowledge of levitation, ect....,
but, there may be a grain of truth in the theory of an ancient human culture that is now lost in antiquity.
PAX

 

[diesel96]

Am I ready for the gov't to mandate any of these? OH HEIL NO! Why? Because the moment you grant gov't this power, the underbelly of graft and corruption will step up to create a bureacracy that will manipulate the economics and market system so that in the future as technologies change and the need to adapt to new conditions we will be took locked into a system to change and longterm hardship will arise as a result.


Despite a classical libertarian ethical and political beliefs, their support of the market economy is first and foremost, and is based on the unchangable laws of economic science, and not on ethical/political considerations.
For this purposes of this post, I guess your not going to take a position on whether or not humans are causing global warming. But a position if global warming is real, government action is not the answer.
But the idea that government is the logical answer to the largest-scale problems in society is so un-appealing that it is often treated as though it needs no debate. Is this your idea? And not the idea that we’re causing global warming, that is our enemy.

The presence and cause of global warming is a scientific question that will continue to be argued. However in science, procastination and complacency, is always our enemy.
I admit I don't know the solution to global warming.
But without the sense of urgency and capitalism, will the free market agressively act to produce solutions while this debate continues for years to come before a castistrophic event occurs.

IMO,I feel the free market can act responsible enough to produce solutions even if profits are minimal in the infancy stages if our Gov't (a leadership the works For The People) set standards and incentives and creates and equal playing field for capital innovation without getting to involved (maybe at the state levels if need be).

I believe the free market can agressivily capitalize on green earth-energy innovations like they do say with I-pods, I-phones, computer tech, etc and ween us off oil dependancy, but keep in mind the big business money, corruption, and lobbiest hired by the free market boggs down the Gov't from being effective on confronting such issues.

Just a short story on Libertarian Joe ,living in the Hurricane belt most of us adhere to Gov't and public warnings, ads, literature on how to prepare and survive thru a storm except for our libertarian neighbor "Joe". Joe kept procastinating on Gov't and public warnings year after year, "is the storm coming?"--"is the storm not coming?" Sitting on his lawn chair drinking a beer laughing at us year after year of spending money and time with supplies and boarding up from near misses. But one recent year, when he realized this storm was enevitable he then finally decided to act and drive to Home Depot and the Supermarket.....Unfortunatly he came home empty handed, everything sold out or closed, no plywood, no generator, no batteries, no gas/propane, no ice, no water....His family was not happy that Joe relied on the markets to be there for him with impending doom set to rain on his parade.....Luckily he had neighbors who capitalized on Gov't and public warnings who took care of him and his family with extra supplies because we took action before the storm season (even if we didn't think a storm was coming).

 

[wkmac]

Diesel,
As to your libertarian Joe, if it makes you feel better I'm very happy for you.

As to my position on man caused global warming? If you've even read any of my posts of this issue I think my comments speak very clearly but in case you haven't, let me be a little clearer with what I've done. In the last 5 years, we've spent in access of $25k on our home making drastic changes that effect the bottomline of our total energy usage. Every money model we used told us our investments would never pay for themselves in pure energy saving alone but we plowed ahead. We worked with not only private energy concerns but also officials from our local electrical cooperative and also the gas company in doing past and future short and longterm energy use studies of our home. We also did evaluations of our home as it relates to insulation and air leakage of the structure itself.

We did things such as taking the attic insulation level up to R-45 total. Unfinished basement walls were finished with R-19 at subterrianian level and R-25 along air exposed walls. Also concrete basement floor was subframed with 2 by material, insulated with R-6 styro-form insulation between 2x and then capped with 3/4" deck. Also all windows and doors where changed to double pane/low E/argon and this alone took an prevoous unfinished/unheated basement from a constant average temp. in winter of low 50 degrees and even upper 40's on cold days to a now constant average with no HVAC of around 64 degrees. This unfinished basement now finished has it's own seperate HVAC system from the upstairs but with area so tight, even in the most recent 100 degree plus days, the unit only comes on about 2 times in a 24 hour period and it's mostly to dehumidify the air. Same is true in winter months. We do run a much lower humidity because we own a number of guitars and other music electronics that require such conditions. This unit is total electric and small in size because the insulation investment allowed that size savings. It's also a 18 SEER unit which it a very high efficency.

The upstairs also an 18 SEER is dual fuel Electric Heat Pump/Gas and is also a Puron system which is enviro friendly. New double pane/low E/argon windows all the way around and all new doors were installed for their sealing factors. All new kitchen alliances with energy use a prime factor. Tankless hot water heater (gas) with my own special built manifold system that centralizes and then direct feeds to outlets. Remove old loop system and went direct feed in order to save again on energy and with a special solar pre-heat feature we hope to add in the future for even more energy savings. We also use dual fuel for cooking as our stove top is gas and the ovens are convection which are more energy efficent. Our total gas/electric for the most recent month with record breaking 100 degree days was $145 total and there are 2 adults and 4 kids in this house.

Another reason we did all of this was in conjunction with our local electric co-op in the hopes of adding solar photovoltaic panels in the future and they may use our home as test model to see if homes can become at least net positive energy producers during the daytime weekday hours when demands from commerical customers are high as people are at work. The national grid infrastructure is about at peak capacity and any power plant additions right now would be either gas or coal fired and not nuclear. What do gas and coal produce for emmisions? Yep, you got it.

Bottomline is, we've done what we've done not for net economic gain because over time it will not pay for itself but rather to reduce our energy use and thus reduce our production of pollutants whether greenhouse or particulant matter which itself causes something called Global Dimming. Nova on PBS just had a good program on this little known issue called Dimming the Sun. Also our hope is to go solar and even windpower at some point in the future and a lot of our work is pre-prep towards those ends. In all of this that I've done, I've not asked or demanded of gov't to do anything on my behalf or pass laws that would make it easy for me to do this or drive some economic gain. We did it as our way to make a difference where we can. Is it enough? We don't take the attitude it is but we make no judgements either way.

But since you've been so judgemental, what have you done? Whether fair or not, about all I can say is you took your money and bought a Harley and then pontifficate on here about how Bush has or hasn't done this or that and those charges may in fact be fair. And don't hand me that nonsense about Harley's fuel mileage becuase if you calculate the volumetric efficency of those big jugs compared to weight ratio of the vehicle, you're riding around on the 2 wheel equal of a 70's muscle car with a 750 Holley double pumper on a big block engine. I'm not anti-harley either as in the 1970's I rode one myself for several years. Great bike IMO.

We own a 3/4" ton SUV to haul amps/PA/drums to music gigs as it's cyclinder volumetric and towing efficency even with the large bigblock engine exceed the vans and even smaller SUV's when you use the vehicle and compare task to task. Why do you think UPS gives you those big tractors in feeder to pull trailers instead of the much less fuel burning pickup trucks? If the pick up truck was able, it would have to run at constant peak power ban and thus no efficent savings at all. Cram 5 people into a compact car and drive 100 miles at highway speed and then do the same in a full size and compare all the variables from fuel used to exhaus output and you'll find for the job the full size was the right choice. If however, 1 or 2 people then the compact wins going away.

My main car to and from work has a small 3.1 liter V-6 and I'm hoping one day to buy a hybrid. All this for money? Nope never pay for itself even with the high gas prices so what woud drive my thinking?

You wave Al Gore around like the 2nd coming of Jesus and he does deserve credit for talking about this issue as we should cut greenhouse emmissions if for no other reason than a preventitive measure like when you dress warm to keep from catching a cold. But Al also has his faults to bare and even today it seems we have new cause to shake our heads at Al again.



No Diesel, I don't have to come here and pontificate of global warming and then try and justify my concerns with demands that the gov't do something. I just decided long ago to do something myself after seeing the examples set by folks like the late Dennis Weaver, Ed Begley Jr. and Darryl Hannah. We cut our home total energy consumption by 60% over the last 5 years and we plan to cut more as we incorporate LED lighting and solar outside lighting. How much reduction is that in greenhouse gases my friend? I'm not buying carbon credit offsets because I don't have too. What are you doing? Riding your Harley instead of driving your pickup truck? Why not trade in the truck or harley and get a small car like me! But I guess like Al you can buy carbon credits, make yourself feel better and then continue to yell at paint....uh pontificate the party line.

Oh, and one other thingy. In my earlier post that set you off hollering at paint on the wall again, I spoke of impevious surfaces having an effect of temp. rise (it's called thermal mass and study any big city to see the effect of temp and weather patterns) and last I looked, those type of impervious surfaces are manmade so I would think that would toss me into the bunch that thinks than man's actions are affecting global temp. rise. But unlike you who seem to suggest that it's all and only greenhouse gases, I'm not willing to throw anything and everything but greenhouse gases off the table. There are many man and natural factors involved and it's foolish to think otherwise IMHO.

BTW Diesel: I see you missed a spot of paint on the wall!

 

[Sammie]

Diesel,
As to my position on man caused global warming? If you've even read any of my posts of this issue I think my comments speak very clearly but in case you haven't, let me be a little clearer with what I've done. In the last 5 years, we've spent in access of $25k on our home making drastic changes that effect the bottomline of our total energy usage.

Bottomline is, we've done what we've done not for net economic gain because over time it will not pay for itself but rather to reduce our energy use and thus reduce our production of pollutants whether greenhouse or particulant matter which itself causes something called Global Dimming.

But since you've been so judgemental, what have you done? Whether fair or not, about all I can say is you took your money and bought a Harley.

No Diesel, I don't have to come here and pontificate of global warming and then try and justify my concerns with demands that the gov't do something.

BTW Diesel: I see you missed a spot of paint on the wall!

Thanks a lot, Wkmac, for stealing my post.

Actually, I was going to go this route but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

And we don't know what all Diesel has done as far as home improvements. All we've heard about is the HDTV and the motorsickle...

Our house was built in 1972 so every appliance has been replaced, including the windows. We look around at newer homes every now and then but sadly enough our patio furniture wouldn't fit in their teeny, postage stamp sized lots nor would our furniture fit into their tiny, chopped up rooms. But that's neither here nor there.

I agree with you that the key here is to clean up our own little corners of the world, if it is affordable for one to do so. We do a lot of research on all of our purchases in order to be cost/energy efficient and it has really paid off. The only thing left for us is siding, which will probably happen soon.

How about we pass the hat around and send Diesel a paint ball gun and a bucket of pellets. That way he can take it out on the wall, not the paint. (But I'm not telling him where I live...)

 

[diesel96]

Kmac...Seems like you missed the whole point of my post.
I'm sorry you wrote a whole sermation on how you spent a significant amount of money on contirbuting to lessening your home energy usuage.
I simply posed questions referring to Gov't action and free market willingness. I never once accused you or Sammie of being hypercitical and to provide evidence of energy upgrades.

These simple questions were posed to you, and you go off asserting I'm questioing what have you done for global warning.1 Or was it Libertarian Joe that set you off?

"For this purposes of this post, I guess your not going to take a position on whether or not humans are causing global warming. But a position if global warming is real, government action is not the answer."

"But without the sense of urgency and capitalism, will the free market agressively act to produce solutions while this debate continues for years to come before a castistrophic event occurs."

You wave Al Gore around like the 2nd coming of Jesus

Previuos Post #26
And before your Rt wing friends start freaking out and yelling at me that I got my head up Al Gore's butt, I never even seen his movie. Someone who loves his country,nature and the Earth should all take notice with an open mind, not a political mind."

I just decided long ago to do something myself after seeing the examples set by folks like the late Dennis Weaver, Ed Begley Jr. and Darryl Hannah. We cut our home total energy consumption by 60% over the last 5 years

Most of us appreciated what you have done along with the likes of the rich and famous....I wonder if ever the typical American Family working hard just getting by can monetarily address significant home energy usuages besides conscientious efforts such as the folks you've mentioned.

And we don't know what all Diesel has done as far as home improvements. All we've heard about is the HDTV and the motorsickle...

But since you've been so judgemental, what have you done?

I don't think it's important and off topic, but since your curious;

-Logistically, moved to closer proximity to work.
-Installed new bi-level a/c units ....automatically controls room temps on each level when present and not present.
-Ceiling fans in everyroom
-Updated Window treaments and window tinting
-New roof with lighter color tiles and lighter paint on the outside.
-Planted and maintain large shade trees at specific points to filter direct sun rays on the house
-Blew in insulation in attic upon moving in with incentive discounts from FPL
-Have spent the extra dollar for upgraded efficient appliances as needed(hot water heater is next)considering tankless also.
-Low wattage bulbs and eventually phase out incandescent
-As far as the Harley..40+MPG is 40+MPG volumetric or not it gets me around cheaper.
I'd say my FPL bill is $200 or less in the dead of summer, even with the a/c on more, now that I sleep during the day. About $140 in the cooler months.
BTW..Watch out for that Chinese paint, it has lead in it.(including the paint balls)

 

[wkmac]

Most of us appreciated what you have done along with the likes of the rich and famous....I wonder if ever the typical American Family working hard just getting by can monetarily address significant home energy usuages besides conscientious efforts such as the folks you've mentioned.

Not as long as people continue to only politize this issue rather than focus on real and actual solutions and that is what set me off. I completely accept your distaste for libertarian thought and your views are a majority view in this country. It's the reason libertarians only at best gather 2 to 3% in national elections and I also believe that our society will continue to move to towards ever increasing power of a central federal gov't. I voice an opinion only in the hopes that as we move in those directions we don't allow the gov't to overstep and with that comes the abuse and misuse that always follows.

If all we do is debate which scientist is right or wrong on global warming then at the end of the day we'll be no further along from where we are right now and one group of us or the other will be right and the other wrong. In the meantime will we for example have moved away from petro as our economic lifeblood? Probably not. Will that in effect guarantee in some form the emmissions of environmentally polluting products in our air and water? Yeah, we'll still have that. For those interested in fighting the "islamo-fascists" out there and the likes of oppressors like Chavez, will our continued use of oil guarantee those folks to still be power players in geo-politics and drive our own gov't foreign policy and in a real sense our domestic tax policy as revenues are spent to meet any threats the gov't feels they pose?

It ironic that in this one area, we have so much common ground that instead of seeing it, we're to dam# busy trying to win a political arguement in order to defend our own little personal cult of personalities. That's what sets me off Diesel. WE, YOU, ME, THEM, US, THEY, ALL, EVERYONE are so busy falling into this trap of politics when instead there is something everyone can do. I know you live in Florida where it's flat but something I do is when I start down a hill in my car and it's not an issue with traffic, I throw the car in neutral and coast. I'm luck that I have a couple of different routes to and from work and in going to I get more coasting in one direction and visa versa on the other. In coming home there's one stretch I'm able to coast over 2 miles distance but it also requires me coasting up a hill and by the time I crest it, I'm going about 5 mph. Now if you're in a hurry, forget it but at 1 am it's not a problem for me so I so it. Net gain for me? I get almost an extra 100 miles from a tankfull of fuel that over a year I guesstimated I'll save about 300 gallons of fuel with at $2.60 a gallon is around $800 in savings. Now what I did really cost nothing except maybe leaving for work about 5 or 10 minutes earlier and getting home about the same but I just denied money to the islamo types and Chavez, took money out of Halliburton's pocket if that makes you feel better, put more gas backlog into the supply chain placing downward pressure on gas prices, put real money at almost no cost into my own pocket, save a little bit of wear and tear maybe on my car (that one's real iffy with me but did nothing worse either) and to the issue at hand, very much reduced the amount of exhaust coming our my tailpipe as less fuel was being consumed.

I know you live where it's flat and this idea may have no bearing but instead of you promoting the idea of backing a specific political agenda which in turn others will do the same, why not promote ideas and what one person or a group of people can do? Do you ever once consider that maybe, just maybe for once we could get off our arse and start doing something and drive the gov't towards it instead of waiting for them to lead us?

I'm not opposed to good gov't, contary to what you think of me, I'm not opposed to a system of what we call social security, I'm not even opposed to what some call nationalized healthcare. I don't have a problem with either one if you want ot know the truth of the matter. What I do opposed is mandatory participation by the gov't and the denial of the individual to either provide for themselves or the right of that person to contract with another for those said services. A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly etc. etc. You would scream bloody murder if a group of private individuals did this but when those same groups of folks step in and manipulate both sides of the political process under the guise democracy (majority rule) you seem to think that grants it total legitimacy and I just don't see it that way. My overall guiding principle is this. By the power of God and nature's God I've been granted certain inalienable rights meaning that no man under any pretense can abbrogate those rights and liberties. And as such I can also not violate in any way those same rights of another person and this includes the use of force or fraud. Now as an individual I can't violate these rights of other human being, I also strongly believe that I can't gather into groups known as political parties or political causes and then vote via the democratic process for others to do what I can't do on an individual level. If I can't go to my neighbor and extract money by force to give to another person or corporate entity, then please expalin to me how I now achieve that right by gathering into groups and voting a gov't to do the very same thing on my behalf under the guise of what we call tax policy? And yes, don't pay the tax and out will come the gun! Tell me how to justify that violation of basic human rights because I've yet to be able to. That thought process forced me to walk away back in the 80's from what we now call Christian, Neo-Conservative politics as I realized the so-called rightwing of the time was violating this principle as much as the so-called left wing was. That's what drives my thought process with gov't. Good gov't should always be voluntary not compulsary and if so you'll likely get good gov't.

You want win the debate over global warming because the science is way to muddled because of the politics of force and compulsion. The only way to really win is to get off our individual and do something ourselves even if it's nothing more than changing out the lightbulb from incandescant to flourescent but I'd give long thought to LED myself as flourescent does have a mercury component that ends up in landfills and enters the water table at some point.

To end this on a promising note, I read this on CNN just recently and I have to say as much as I love big block V-8's of the late 60's and early 70's muscle car era (my teenage years) I jumped for joy when I read this.

It will be some breakthrough like this that changes the world and oddly enough it wasn't some gov't entity or special priviledged corp. Goliath but rather some small "out of the box" thinking person who changes the world and history tells us the greatest advances of man have come via this route and the worse nightmares have come via the collective consolidation of power by the masses through manipulation into the hands of the few.

No Diesel, Libertarian Joe is really quite humorous when I consider it came from someone who rails against a current gov't but then only has ideas that would feed even more power to the very thing you are railing against in the hopes that one day his own guy will be back in charge. Seems to me it's like going out and getting HIV on purpose so you can go visit your favorite doctor more often. Makes perfect sense!

 

[wkmac]

Thanks a lot, Wkmac, for stealing my post.

Actually, I was going to go this route but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

And we don't know what all Diesel has done as far as home improvements. All we've heard about is the HDTV and the motorsickle...

Our house was built in 1972 so every appliance has been replaced, including the windows. We look around at newer homes every now and then but sadly enough our patio furniture wouldn't fit in their teeny, postage stamp sized lots nor would our furniture fit into their tiny, chopped up rooms. But that's neither here nor there.

I agree with you that the key here is to clean up our own little corners of the world, if it is affordable for one to do so. We do a lot of research on all of our purchases in order to be cost/energy efficient and it has really paid off. The only thing left for us is siding, which will probably happen soon.

How about we pass the hat around and send Diesel a paint ball gun and a bucket of pellets. That way he can take it out on the wall, not the paint. (But I'm not telling him where I live...)

Sorry Sammie, didn't mean too and you are right about not knowing what Diesel has or hasn't done. Earlier in this thread I posted a post on some ideas of things I had done in the hopes of changing the discussion with no end in sight to something where we could share what we ourselves had done on an individual basis to make a difference. And big thanks to you for the things you've done for your home to try and make a difference. To steal a "very overused" tagline from Sean Hannity, "You're a Great American" Sammie in the truest sense of the word.

As for siding, I was lucky in that our house is brick on all 4 sides so the siding issue was limited to the overhangs, gables but we also expanded the front of the house and it would not be brick. We did go with insulated vinyl ourselves but also being over 50 years old, I didn't want to climb ladders to paint anymore so now except for the new front porch I'm in the process of finishing up myself that I built, my exterior is completely maintenance FFFRRRRREEEEEEEEEEE!
I hope my celebratory attitude was subdued.

I've got about 10 more years at UPS and then I'm retired. My wife and I want to leave the area we live in because it is a ratrace. We've even discussed going to a couple of different countries as well but we'll see. Nothing to do with the politics but rather climate advantages. We have started planning our retirement home and we are seriously planning for a home completely off the grid with all the modern thingies of life, a rain collection system that provides all our water needs and then a recycle waste system for gray and blackwater that once the blackwater is processed through a primary septic tank for solids breakdown using solar collection and then passing the liquified remains through leechfields planted in terraces with a variety of plantlife that feeds on the waste product so that by the time the water comes out the end you can just about put your glass down and drink it. My wife and I love plants so we just think this is great.

The rainwater collection is an old idea but several years ago a man in Arizona built a 37k gallon concrete cistern on his property and then installed a metal roof on his home with gutter collection system. It took about a year of rainfall to fill the cistern but now if he gets no rain at all and using water at a normal use rate, he can go about 10 months. Another added benefit of this especially in urban evironments with lots of impervious surfaces causing excessive rain runoff into streams and creeks or overwhelming the wastewater system, this would save on the runoff and the more homes that could do this, would save on loal infrastructure costs and in our case locally where we are fighting surrounding states over water rights in our watershed, any large scale use of this process would lessen the pressures and maybe eliminate the problem altogether. My wife and I have worked with some local county officials (democrats but please don't tell Diesel because I have a stereotype to uphold) on a number of these type ideas from relaxing building codes that in some cases prohibited solar arrays, not because they were unsafe, etc. but the rules were so exact that there was no flexibility in the regs for the inspectors and zoning dept's to even consider them in the first place. Alot of alternative housing and construction processes are very safe and even more so than current home construction but because the laws don't even speak of them at all, this places pressure on local inspectors who can only rule to the letter of the regs written. This is really changing across the country I'm glad to say.

Keep up the effort Sammie where you can and there are tons of resources our there on doing real things around your house to make a diference. Next time you are at a large chain bookstore, go to the magazine rack and look for a copy of Home Power magazine. Not suggesting you buy one but look it over to see what people are doing. The mag. is loaded with techno-jargon that can be almost engineer level stuff but the resources are out there to figure it out for those who want to. I'm watching the submersible micro generators where you immerse the business end into a flowing stream of water and you've got electrical power. I live on a fast flowing stream so you can understand my interest. Another article I read is the idea of same technolgy on even smaller scale that could be used by backpackers. I can just see it now, someone on the trail with a bigscreen TV.


Have a great weekend Sammie!

 

[Sammie]

Thanks, Wkmac, hope you're enjoying your weekend, too. Today is our "UPS Day at Six Flags" so the Feeder guy here took our 16 year old and and 3 other teens along for the "ride"... And they'll ride the rides
until they all turn green. (Not for me)...

I've got about 10 more years at UPS and then I'm retired. My wife and I want to leave the area we live in because it is a ratrace. We've even discussed going to a couple of different countries as well but we'll see. Nothing to do with the politics but rather climate advantages.

I was outsourced from Planet Brown two years ago and Dude has about 5 more years to go. I've tried living in different parts of the country but Colorado and my asthma do very well together and it would break Dude's heart to live anywhere else , so this will remain the place.
But we won't remain in the city, that's for sure. The bank no longer has
possession of our home, so as of tomorrow we're gonna start looking
around at some out of the way places.

Alot of alternative housing and construction processes are very safe and even more so than current home construction but because the laws don't even speak of them at all, this places pressure on local inspectors who can only rule to the letter of the regs written. This is really changing across the country I'm glad to say.

I was really impressed with a strawbale house I watched being built near the US/Canadian border 2 summers ago. This was an experimental home on a college campus and I talked to the people who were sponsoring it and building it. Saving 75% of the current heating/cooling bills we now experience sounds good to me, and these houses are also soundproof. And if sod and straw homes worked a century ago when people settled in places like Kansas and Nebraska, why the heck not now as well?

When I lived in New Mexico I loved the adobe homes. And what a great way to go green. Dirt, water, and a little chopped up straw! I don't know if one would make much sense in Colorado with the snow we get but the one I had in Albuquerque was a dream. So cool in the summer without any appliances and great in the winter. And the adobe walls that surround some of the homes give them a great atmosphere.

Another article I read is the idea of same technolgy on even smaller scale that could be used by backpackers. I can just see it now, someone on the trail with a bigscreen TV.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you on this one, but are you referring to those crazy, new $500 TV Glasses that you put on and you're suddenly
watching a 50" TV screen? Somebody told me about this just today and then I see your post on it. Small world.....

 

[wkmac]

from sammie:Maybe I'm misunderstanding you on this one, but are you referring to those crazy, new $500 TV Glasses that you put on and you're suddenly
watching a 50" TV screen? Somebody told me about this just today and then I see your post on it.

No, I hadn't even heard of those but what I meant was some ding dong having a big screen strapped to his backpack walking up the trail.


I always love it when I hear some say, "well we're gonna rough it this weekend and go camping!" only to see them drive off in a top of the line Prevost motorhome. I'd like to take them in the middle of January into the heart of the Smokey Mountains with everything you've got in a backpack on your back and show them what roughing really is. It's pure bliss if you ask me and I've done it oh so many times.

You got some beautiful country in your neck of the woods in Rocky Mountain National park but the most beautiful place I saw out there was the north rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison because the High Desert floor is loaded with wildflowers backdropped by beautiful mountains and then the canyon itself is unreal. My best picture was an over the rim shot that I got by wedging my feet under a large rock outcrop and then laying out horizonal over the edge from the waste up and looking straigth down a 2000 plus foot vertical drop. Even though I violated the rule of no safety rope, my experience climbing and especially spelunking had me very confident because of how I had my feet wedged in under a rock weighing several tons. However 20 years later don't ask me to do that again because I've lost that testosterone belief in immortal life!


That whole place was just magical to me and I envy you living near it.

 

[wkmac]

Well there seems to be something new afoot or rather something old coming back into vogue!

https://web.archive.org/web/2008021...orial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175

I say "something old coming back into vogue" as not that long ago, the general consensus was cooling rather than warming. Are these folks really overblown weathermen/women? We all know how accurate they are!

 

[cheryl]

Mayor Compares Threat of Global Warming to Terrorism

"Terrorists kill people. Weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill an enormous amount of people," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters after addressing the U.N. General Assembly, but "global warming in the long term has the potential to kill everybody."

 

[wkmac]

This is OT but bare with me.

Cheryl,

Good to see you over here and posting. I know things got a bit rough in other areas of the BC but always enjoy seeing you over here. And I wanna say this about the crew over here. We all see things different and with lots of passion and at times it gets a bit testy but at least from my POV you guys (me included) never go over the edge and I'd like to give all of you a


Even though at times we seem miles apart and it's hard in this space to cover a lot of ground although I try like hell to get as much as I can
I think in the end if it came down to it, we all share a whole lot more in common than we do apart. I for one appreciate the challenge you guys bring to the table. And Cheryl, don't be a stranger as I enjoy your comments.

And for those that hate and detest me, which I hope are many blame Cheryl as she was the one who started all of this!



Cheryl, did I just throw you under the bus or what!
Excellent, I made you smile and laugh and good to see that again.

Thanks Lady!

 

[moreluck]

Perhaps "deceptive advertising," but I think it is still safe to estimate that a large percentage of our "green activists" lack basic scientific knowledge.

Listen to this.





http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/013117.html

 

[diesel96]

Nice spin and hoax on a scientific term never used unless your are a chemical major answering a pop quiz. What I do question, should Penn and Teller be profiting from someone else's hoax and portray people as being stupid and uninformed. Maybe they should come up with more original material.
Admittingly this does expose people's willingness to support an issue their not entirerly sure of plus having an attractive trust worthy looking doublecrossing blonde does hurt.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax