Funny how the majority of the members are democrats?
..."The six large car manufacturers subject to the zero-emission program - Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and Toyota - opposed even the scaled-back rules....
...The debate drew in luminaries such as former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz (who wrote a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger arguing for a stronger electric car mandate, "... (like they listen to old republicans a "Reaganite" to boot in this state?)
As I'm sitting here watching it snow again, as it has been off and on for the last 5 months.
This last winter was maybe a fluke. Heard that it was caused by Pacific Ocean currents and that next big current event there will cause a hotter than "normal" summer. Some kind of Nino. There is one for cold and one for warm.
There are many days when the cold is life-threatening, and the growing-season is short. A warmer climate here would certainly make it more liveable. A 65F-90F climate would be nice.
And you have the whole expanse of Canada which is larger than the U.S. which is colder. And because it is so cold, very few people live there and those that do huddle along the southern border.
People prefer warmer climates as can be inferred from the migration in this country, and looking at global population densities. And we don't see any rush for people in the states to go to Alaska, where land is plentiful. So again I hope there is GW, though if there is it is very little, and mankind certainly is a small factor compared to solar activity and our orbit.
Arizona's temperatures rising more than the planet's average
John Faherty The Arizona Republic Mar. 28, 2008 12:00 AM While the rest of the world has experienced a relatively moderate increase in temperature over the past five years, the American Southwest has begun to broil.
The National Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, both environmental-action groups, analyzed federal weather data from 2003 to 2007.
Their research, released Thursday, showed that although the globe warmed by an average of 1-degree Fahrenheit during that period, the West warmed by 1.7 degrees and Arizona by 2.2 degrees.
The temperatures were compared with the historical average of the 20th century.
The report, "Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate," did not definitively pin the warming on the actions of people but said it is "very likely that most of the warming since the middle of the 20th century is the result of human pollutants."
The National Resources Defense Council warned that the increase has already begun to affect the region's agricultural, recreation and tourism industries.
Tony Haffer of the National Weather Service in Phoenix said there is no doubt the region has gotten warmer in the past five years.
Is it Global Warming, or just a "cyclical weather cycle?"
Only time and trends will tell............STAY TUNED !!!!
Heat is the least of Phoenix' problems. At one time it was one of the healthiest climates in the USA. Then someone had the bright idea to divert the Colorado river water over for irrigation. They planted crops and now it has one of the worst pollen seasons in the USA. Man has made Phoenix unhealthy. Not by overheating it.
Aren't there a lot of Indian ruins north of Sedona, and scattered around the area from Indians 1000-2000 years ago. If I remember what the tourist brochures said, I think the Indians abandoned many of the areas because the climate changed to hotter and drier, such that they had to abandon the area.
There are many other historical examples of peoples' migrations due to climate change. In fact Greenland had settlements during the Viking era, and then the climate turned colder and is what many now might consider normal or average; when in fact the ice melting now would just get us back to the climate in 1100, when there really were no pollutants.
So yes people would need to decide whether AZ is inhabitable if it gets much hotter, just as most people have to consider whether vast parts of Alaska are inhabitable.
So yes people would need to decide whether AZ is inhabitable if it gets much hotter,
I found Lake Havasu Arizona uninhabitable in the 1980s. 110 degrees at midnight was not my idea of a place one should live. That and $380 electric bills in the summer to keep the house down near 80 degrees. Your right, if the heat in the kitchen is too hot, GET OUT. Living in a flood plain or the path of erosion from the ocean is not too bright either. Unless you got lots of money and several homes to escape to. Working in the Arctic for 25 years, I wondered why the Eskimo people did not migrate further South. Maybe they acquired the taste for seal and caribou. That is a harsh climate that they have lived in for centuries. Which tells me that man adapts or dies. Pretty simple.
Indeed! The other news: if all those History, Discovery Channel programs, etc etc. are correct, a lot of so called real disasters are caused by so called high speed heavenly body collisions.
Indeed! The other news: if all those History, Discovery Channel programs, etc etc. are correct, a lot of so called real disasters are caused by so called high speed heavenly body collisions.
On Coast-to-Coast Radio Show last Friday night, Dr. Michio Kaku of NYU, talked about the potential effects of WR 104, a binary star located 8,000 light years away. Experts fear that when the star explodes it could send a beam of destructive gamma-ray radiation towards Earth. Kaku said the star may have already exploded.
News whether or not it exploded arrives anywhere from the next minute to 8,000 years from now.
Another scientist has theorized that earth receives destructive radiation from a giant black hole in Milky Way as Solar System oscillates up and down with respect to the planes of the hole and galaxy.
.."News whether or not it exploded arrives anywhere from the next minute to 8,000 years from now."...
That gives new meaning to, right NOW: to infinity?! :shades:
Dr. Kaku was finishing up his doctoral studies ( theo physics as I recall), when we met at the old alma mater. At the time, the discussions were about string theory. (rather than larger space bodies). While he is is an absolutely awesome theoretical physicist (pre eminent in his field) , probably his greatest skill set or "gift" as it were is his uncanny ability to explain those scientific subjects for greater consumption and wider audiences.
we bought our '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GTS at Avondale, west of Phoenix, and at a recent service appointment there a couple weeks ago it was in the upper 60's. I had a hard time being in Phoenix with a normal temperature going on outside. :confuse:
Even us Willcox, AZ, folks know that Phoenix and it's heat is a big problem. I would like to find out where Tucson, AZ, stands on the worst allergy area in the U.S. list. We have been really busy in the hospital lately with people getting respiratory illnesses. Lots of desert plants are blooming, I have been told.
While a lot of these catastrophic phenomenon are 1 in a 100,000 years or so, we certainly are aware now that we have several "lottery tickets" in hand. Far and away the major concern of the people of this planet, would be to develop a fast-deployable system to deflect or destroy comets and asteroids. We are in a shooting-range.
I was watching a show the other night and the theory based on a crater in the Indian Ocean is that the Great Flood which was recorded thousands of years ago was due to a comet impact. Giant tsunamis washe hundreds of miles in-land, and the amount of water vaporized in the collision, caused many weeks of rain/snow around the world. So these events (of that scale) may happen every 5,000 - 10,000 years.
Tucson was fifth LAST year. Don't know what the 2008 figure is
5. Tucson, Ariz. Total Score: 91.13 Pollen Score: Worse than Average Medicine Utilization per Patient: Average Board-Certified Allergists per Patient: Worse than Average
To go along with the high allergen count in mid and southern Arizona, Tucson is becoming a difficult place to get in to the ER. Tucson doctors have to navigate around so many insurances that only pay so much money(imagine that?)so to make enough money they over-schedule at their offices. So, people get frustrated waiting to get in to see the doctor and give up that regular office visit deal. What do they do if they still want to be seen by a doctor? They go to a nearby hospital's ER! ER visits are up something like 30-40% in southern Arizona in the last couple years.
Trouble is, now Tucson hospital ER's are over-crowded, to the point of the situation being dangerous. I read in the Arizona Daily Star(Tucson based)that one guy in his late 30's came in to a Tucson ER. He was sick, really not doing good. His wife kept telling the nurses that her husband needed help right away. By the time he got seen he was dead. Doctors speculate he had a lung infection and his lungs were full of fluid. Very sad case. Triage(moving from patient to patient to get the most help to the patients needing help first)was not done properly in this man's case.
Some people are moving out of Tucson, a city of one million people. They are afraid they won't get the emergency care in the ER they need. Tucson's ER's are being inundated. More doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists are needed, too.
The pollens and dust in Arizona is not helping the situation out as people continue coming in with respiratory troubles. All of this almost makes me want to shelve my gas-powered lawn mower this mowing season. Lawn mowers really pollute the environment bad. Mine is a self-propelled mower with bag on the back. Works like a champ, I would find going from that mower to an electric mower troublesome.
I often think that four duly elected, who like to say they have a "mandate" from the peoples', to do carte blanche, that the candidate: NONE OF THE ABOVE should be included.
Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals. We'll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.
If you understand his scientific lingo, you are better than I am. It does remind me of a great line in Fried Green Tomatoes "Good BaBeeQue"
I don't think Ted knows much about farming. Some of our MOST productive crop land is in the hottest spots in CA. With a little water the desert will grow most anything you need. Of course if they pollute all the water with fertilizer growing corn for ethanol we may have a problem. I think draining the Ogallala aquifer may be a much bigger problem than a warming trend. That is man caused by heavy irrigation.
The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters (420 billion ft) per year, amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. Some estimates say it will dry up in as little as 25 years. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely particularly on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture as they become aware of the hazards of overpumping.
It is interesting in that Turner is one of the LARGEST private landowners in the US almost bar none. If this sounds like a superlative, lets just say he is a rarified member of a handful of owners of massive US private land holdings.
Indeed the desert is a wonderous place. It CAN be used (and is) as the proverbial "bread basket ". It is also interesting with the DIRE warnings of the potentially catastrophic rise of coastal sea levels that a strategic slew of desalination plants are not being planned, let alone a thought glimmer in the minds of policy planners' thinking. Again not rocket science, just the principle of when life gives you lots of "lemon juice", make lemonade. One such action could be the replenishment of such aquifers and/or stop pumping from those aquifers and draw the waters from desalination plants and/or both!!!
Yes, Turner is the largest private land owner in the USA. Most are his personal hunting ranches for wealthy friends to use. Most of it is into conservation land banks that probably have little tax consequence for the wealthy landowner. He is also the largest buffalo rancher in the US. He should be smarter than the interview would lead you to believe.
Last I read the CA HOT areas produce about 60% of our Nations food. Unless they have planted all of it in corn for ethanol.
Diminishing sales from 16.2 M yearly to 15.1 M to 14 M....
Automakers' sales plunge ECONOMY WOES, HIGH GAS PRICES HURT PROSPECTS By Dee-Ann Durbin Associated Press
..."If the March sales rate held steady for the full year, U.S. sales would be 15.1 million units in 2008, according to Autodata. That's down from a rate of 16.2 million units last March, and the lowest monthly sales rate since October 2005, when a summer of heavy discounts hurt fall sales."...
It is good to hear the Sun has NO affect on the climate. Two different views. I think a better approach would be trying to prove what may cause climate change, rather than trying to shoot holes in someone else's findings. No one has explained the fact that the World's oceans have not warmed at all in the 10 years they have taken measurements. Or the FACT that the earth has cooled over the last year in spite of increased CO2 emissions.
Dr Svensmark himself was unimpressed by the findings.
"Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News.
"He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."
The "Sun Not the Cause" article is more than a bit thin in factoids.
For my part, I remain exceedingly skeptical that human factors are having much more than a negligible (as in not measurable) affect on our global climate (places like the Denver and Los Angeles basins notwithstanding). This is not to say that I think we should abandon all efforts at "Greening" our industries and our lifestyles, and stop our efforts at remediating past pollution pockets, because I most certainly think we should stay the course in those areas. I just find all of the "Sky is falling" hysteria from the media and the faithful more than a bit tainted with personal bias.
I agree that saving energy and cleaning our air and water are good things. I believe that the whole GW hysteria was contrived to gain control. We would already be paying Carbon Credits if the lies about the climate were not coming unraveled. Thank goodness the whole scientific community was not on the GW dole. Maybe we can get back to constructive environmental causes. Such as stopping the massive pollution caused by cargo ships and fertilizer pollution in the Mississippi river.
The question can be extraordinarily simple or overwhelmingly complex. The simple answer is: it is the ability to throw a monkey wrench into the process at important critical points (anywhere else in the process also, but ....)
Gary of course can answer, but I'll state what I think on that:
I believe that environmental groups had been stumped for years (since the major sources of industrial pollution were eliminated in the 70's and 80's), with finding a Cause to rally the majority of people behind to stop development. "Save the Whales" and seals, and some frogs just weren't getting people excited. Environmentalists needed a Cause that was so big, that they could scare the population sufficiently.
So now environmentalists have GW, which if you watch The Day After is Armageddon-like. Supposedly nothing good will come of a warmer Earth; and we all die or suffer.
So now that GW is a "publicized fact" supported by the eminent scientist Gore, and maybe Oprah? the people will rally and pass laws to stop any development that emits CO2. So now environmentalists can push for the roll-back of industry and autos and all the stuff we have been working to create. back to an agrarian society!
..."So now environmentalists have GW, which if you watch The Day After is Armageddon-like. Supposedly nothing good will come of a warmer Earth; and we all die or suffer. "...
Strange bedfellows when they also line up with the TV/Cable/Satellite soon to be HD, evangelists speaking of the end times, in our times. Repent of your C02 generating ways and satanic sulfur dioxide burning!!
First Whom: By the ultra radical environmental left with their Nobel Prize winning leader Al Gore.
Kernick has given a very good picture of what they would like to control. It is OUR LIVES. This same radical bunch have blocked numerous projects to gather natural resources, Oil being the biggest. Nearly 90% of our offshore oil is off limits. Finding new ways to power our appliances and vehicles is fine. Just do it in an organized competitive way. You cannot just pay someone to be inventive.
They have also put roadblocks to nuclear energy, hydro energy, solar energy, wind energy, geo-thermal energy and of course coal, oil and natural gas generation.
They have blocked many industries that end up in third world countries. Batteries for hybrids being one glaring example.
My contention is if it cannot be built here it cannot be sold here.
Gary says, "My contention is if it cannot be built here it cannot be sold here."
And what is the point of that requirement? Here are the only possible things I can come up with:
1. It's too dirty to manufacture cleanly, so please come to the USA and manufacture it HERE in MY BACKYARD if you are going to sell it here. 2. It's too dangerous for American workers because OSHA and the EPA protects us too much, so we can't make it here, and so we will be obstinate and not buy it here either. 3. We want to protect the foreign workers from harm, so we will refuse to buy something that is so dirty to manufacture.
My guess would be 3 with the provision that if it is too dirty to manufacture here it is too dirty to manufacture anywhere on the planet (I.e. it should not be okay to pollute someone else's backyard, which may still cause problems in your own backyard). We don't just need to cut these problems out of our continent but in the whole world. Scott
What possible benefit can anyone get by preaching conservation of the Earf? Other than the "feel good" vibe that comes with it?
It's a GOOD IDEA to block further oil exploration, if the alternative is to spend that money and effort finding non-fossil-fuel ways to power things.
And to protect the ocean life and ocean environment is far more important than getting a little oil from the Gulf (or wherever.) The ocean is the one of the most important natural resources and food sources on Earf.
You can't just go willy-nilly producing alternative energy sources at the detriment of other ecosystems.
So, you don't want hybrid batteries being built in third-world countries out of SPITE toward the environmentalists who wanted it done somewhere else?
How about the fact that they were trying to PROTECT AMERICANS? Do we just ignore that?
Sorry I thought the idea was to protect the planet, not Americans, my bad. As for the money being spent on alternative sources of energy, what is the good of that if the environmentalists are blocking almost every attempt to implement them? I can see Gary's point of view on some issues. I don't agree that the answer is to drill for more oil anywhere (including the ocean), but if you are going to not allow that you have to allow the construction of some sort of power supply to replace the fossil fueled power plants, you can't say get rid of them and then say that none of the substitutes can be built either, something has to give somewhere at least until that elusive "perfect" energy source can be found. Scott
Both 1 & 2. If it is too dirty to manufacture here it will be polluting the upper atmosphere. It will be emitting your horrible CO2. I am not concerned as much about foreign workers as ours. However I find that rather disingenuous wanting some one in a sweat shop to build you something that is too hazardous for an American worker to build. What happens when the workers in China file a lawsuit because of some dread disease they got building some part for your hybrid. They name all the hybrid owners along with Toyota in the lawsuit. I find your logic very elitist.
You can't just go willy-nilly producing alternative energy sources at the detriment of other ecosystems.
So, you don't want hybrid batteries being built in third-world countries out of SPITE toward the environmentalists who wanted it done somewhere else?
Your responses pretty much fit the people I am talking about. Don't pollute my back yard do it in China or India. Just send the shiny product in a highly polluting cargo ship. Let those in the LA basin worry about the smog from the ships bringing my shiny toys built by child labor in less than safe or environmentally clean factories.
Again I state. If it cannot be built safely or clean enough to pass OUR regulations. It should not be allowed in this country. That goes from a ball point pen to a giant earth mover. If we cannot practice what we preach why would anyone listen to US.
That goes for CFL bulbs that are not made in the USA.
Um, have you forgotten that the LIFETIME POLLUTION of a hybrid is less than a gas car?
(I don't have an elitist logic set. I'm not an elitist. I live paycheck to paycheck and no one in my family has any large amounts of money. If I missed a paycheck or two my finances would be in severe danger of collapsing.)
My point is this: Since the overall pollution footprint is less than a Corolla, anyone who complains about hybrid battery manufacturing pollution is just wasting their effort.
Spend your time complaining about stuff that has a real impact. Hybrid batteries do not, when the big picture is taken into account.
The statement "what goes around comes around" fits the pollution we are causing in other countries. There is nothing that I really need that cannot be made cleanly in the USA.
Comments
CARMAKERS' NEW TARGET: 7,500 TO 12,500
By Mike Zapler
Mercury News Sacramento Bureau"
link title
Funny how the majority of the members are democrats?
..."The six large car manufacturers subject to the zero-emission program - Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan and Toyota - opposed even the scaled-back rules....
...The debate drew in luminaries such as former U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz (who wrote a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger arguing for a stronger electric car mandate, "... (like they listen to old republicans a "Reaganite" to boot in this state?)
This last winter was maybe a fluke. Heard that it was caused by Pacific Ocean currents and that next big current event there will cause a hotter than "normal" summer. Some kind of Nino. There is one for cold and one for warm.
I'm not just talking about 1 year, or a fluke, I'm talking about averages. Here is what we put up with (on average) http://www.nhliving.com/weather/temperatures.shtml
There are many days when the cold is life-threatening, and the growing-season is short. A warmer climate here would certainly make it more liveable. A 65F-90F climate would be nice.
People prefer warmer climates as can be inferred from the migration in this country, and looking at global population densities. And we don't see any rush for people in the states to go to Alaska, where land is plentiful. So again I hope there is GW, though if there is it is very little, and mankind certainly is a small factor compared to solar activity and our orbit.
AZ Is SMOKIN' HOT !!!
Arizona's temperatures rising more than the planet's average
John Faherty
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 28, 2008 12:00 AM
While the rest of the world has experienced a relatively moderate increase in temperature over the past five years, the American Southwest has begun to broil.
The National Resources Defense Council and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, both environmental-action groups, analyzed federal weather data from 2003 to 2007.
Their research, released Thursday, showed that although the globe warmed by an average of 1-degree Fahrenheit during that period, the West warmed by 1.7 degrees and Arizona by 2.2 degrees.
The temperatures were compared with the historical average of the 20th century.
The report, "Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate," did not definitively pin the warming on the actions of people but said it is "very likely that most of the warming since the middle of the 20th century is the result of human pollutants."
The National Resources Defense Council warned that the increase has already begun to affect the region's agricultural, recreation and tourism industries.
Tony Haffer of the National Weather Service in Phoenix said there is no doubt the region has gotten warmer in the past five years.
Is it Global Warming, or just a "cyclical weather cycle?"
Only time and trends will tell............STAY TUNED !!!!
There are many other historical examples of peoples' migrations due to climate change. In fact Greenland had settlements during the Viking era, and then the climate turned colder and is what many now might consider normal or average; when in fact the ice melting now would just get us back to the climate in 1100, when there really were no pollutants.
So yes people would need to decide whether AZ is inhabitable if it gets much hotter, just as most people have to consider whether vast parts of Alaska are inhabitable.
I found Lake Havasu Arizona uninhabitable in the 1980s. 110 degrees at midnight was not my idea of a place one should live. That and $380 electric bills in the summer to keep the house down near 80 degrees. Your right, if the heat in the kitchen is too hot, GET OUT. Living in a flood plain or the path of erosion from the ocean is not too bright either. Unless you got lots of money and several homes to escape to. Working in the Arctic for 25 years, I wondered why the Eskimo people did not migrate further South. Maybe they acquired the taste for seal and caribou. That is a harsh climate that they have lived in for centuries. Which tells me that man adapts or dies. Pretty simple.
Spoken only as a true non-resident can speak. Come tell the residents that heat is not a problem and get laughed off the street.
Phoenix is actually the 21st worst allergy metro area, as ranked in 2007 by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
We were 18th the year before. So it's not as bad as it was.
On Coast-to-Coast Radio Show last Friday night, Dr. Michio Kaku of NYU, talked about the potential effects of WR 104, a binary star located 8,000 light years away. Experts fear that when the star explodes it could send a beam of destructive gamma-ray radiation towards Earth. Kaku said the star may have already exploded.
News whether or not it exploded arrives anywhere from the next minute to 8,000 years from now.
Another scientist has theorized that earth receives destructive radiation from a giant black hole in Milky Way as Solar System oscillates up and down with respect to the planes of the hole and galaxy.
That gives new meaning to, right NOW: to infinity?! :shades:
Dr. Kaku was finishing up his doctoral studies ( theo physics as I recall), when we met at the old alma mater.
Even us Willcox, AZ, folks know that Phoenix and it's heat is a big problem. I would like to find out where Tucson, AZ, stands on the worst allergy area in the U.S. list. We have been really busy in the hospital lately with people getting respiratory illnesses. Lots of desert plants are blooming, I have been told.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
http://www.bautforum.com/astronomy/71177-gamma-ray-probably-pointed-us-3.html
While a lot of these catastrophic phenomenon are 1 in a 100,000 years or so, we certainly are aware now that we have several "lottery tickets" in hand. Far and away the major concern of the people of this planet, would be to develop a fast-deployable system to deflect or destroy comets and asteroids. We are in a shooting-range.
I was watching a show the other night and the theory based on a crater in the Indian Ocean is that the Great Flood which was recorded thousands of years ago was due to a comet impact. Giant tsunamis washe hundreds of miles in-land, and the amount of water vaporized in the collision, caused many weeks of rain/snow around the world. So these events (of that scale) may happen every 5,000 - 10,000 years.
-Ding- Noah,
Somebody call? zwuupa-zwuupa-zwuupa...
-Ding- Noah!
Yeah. Who want's to know?
-Ding- It's the Lord, Noah!
...
Right! Am I on Candid Camera?
5. Tucson, Ariz. Total Score: 91.13
Pollen Score: Worse than Average
Medicine Utilization per Patient: Average
Board-Certified Allergists per Patient: Worse than Average
This page has Tucson 89th in 2008:
Top allergy metro areas
Trouble is, now Tucson hospital ER's are over-crowded, to the point of the situation being dangerous. I read in the Arizona Daily Star(Tucson based)that one guy in his late 30's came in to a Tucson ER. He was sick, really not doing good. His wife kept telling the nurses that her husband needed help right away. By the time he got seen he was dead. Doctors speculate he had a lung infection and his lungs were full of fluid. Very sad case. Triage(moving from patient to patient to get the most help to the patients needing help first)was not done properly in this man's case.
Some people are moving out of Tucson, a city of one million people. They are afraid they won't get the emergency care in the ER they need. Tucson's ER's are being inundated. More doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists are needed, too.
The pollens and dust in Arizona is not helping the situation out as people continue coming in with respiratory troubles. All of this almost makes me want to shelve my gas-powered lawn mower this mowing season. Lawn mowers really pollute the environment bad. Mine is a self-propelled mower with bag on the back. Works like a champ, I would find going from that mower to an electric mower troublesome.
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
We Voted Them In
Probably just a coincidence - LoL!
Interviewed Tuesday for Charlie Rose's PBS show, CNN founder Ted Turner argued that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals. We'll be eight degrees hottest in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.
If you understand his scientific lingo, you are better than I am. It does remind me of a great line in Fried Green Tomatoes "Good BaBeeQue"
The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted at a rate of 12 billion cubic meters (420 billion ft) per year, amounting to a total depletion to date of a volume equal to the annual flow of 18 Colorado Rivers. Some estimates say it will dry up in as little as 25 years. Many farmers in the Texas High Plains, which rely particularly on the underground source, are now turning away from irrigated agriculture as they become aware of the hazards of overpumping.
Indeed the desert is a wonderous place. It CAN be used (and is) as the proverbial "bread basket ". It is also interesting with the DIRE warnings of the potentially catastrophic rise of coastal sea levels that a strategic slew of desalination plants are not being planned, let alone a thought glimmer in the minds of policy planners' thinking. Again not rocket science, just the principle of when life gives you lots of "lemon juice", make lemonade. One such action could be the replenishment of such aquifers and/or stop pumping from those aquifers and draw the waters from desalination plants and/or both!!!
Last I read the CA HOT areas produce about 60% of our Nations food. Unless they have planted all of it in corn for ethanol.
Automakers' sales plunge
ECONOMY WOES, HIGH GAS PRICES HURT PROSPECTS
By Dee-Ann Durbin
Associated Press
..."If the March sales rate held steady for the full year, U.S. sales would be 15.1 million units in 2008, according to Autodata. That's down from a rate of 16.2 million units last March, and the lowest monthly sales rate since October 2005, when a summer of heavy discounts hurt fall sales."...
link title
Sun Not the Cause
Dr Svensmark himself was unimpressed by the findings.
"Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News.
"He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."
For my part, I remain exceedingly skeptical that human factors are having much more than a negligible (as in not measurable) affect on our global climate (places like the Denver and Los Angeles basins notwithstanding). This is not to say that I think we should abandon all efforts at "Greening" our industries and our lifestyles, and stop our efforts at remediating past pollution pockets, because I most certainly think we should stay the course in those areas. I just find all of the "Sky is falling" hysteria from the media and the faithful more than a bit tainted with personal bias.
Best Regards,
Shipo
What do you think if ALL of these had diesel motors?
contrived by Whom, to gain control over What?
I believe that environmental groups had been stumped for years (since the major sources of industrial pollution were eliminated in the 70's and 80's), with finding a Cause to rally the majority of people behind to stop development. "Save the Whales" and seals, and some frogs just weren't getting people excited. Environmentalists needed a Cause that was so big, that they could scare the population sufficiently.
So now environmentalists have GW, which if you watch The Day After is Armageddon-like. Supposedly nothing good will come of a warmer Earth; and we all die or suffer.
So now that GW is a "publicized fact" supported by the eminent scientist Gore, and maybe Oprah? the people will rally and pass laws to stop any development that emits CO2. So now environmentalists can push for the roll-back of industry and autos and all the stuff we have been working to create. back to an agrarian society!
Strange bedfellows when they also line up with the TV/Cable/Satellite soon to be HD, evangelists speaking of the end times, in our times. Repent of your C02 generating ways and satanic sulfur dioxide burning!!
First Whom:
By the ultra radical environmental left with their Nobel Prize winning leader Al Gore.
Kernick has given a very good picture of what they would like to control. It is OUR LIVES. This same radical bunch have blocked numerous projects to gather natural resources, Oil being the biggest. Nearly 90% of our offshore oil is off limits. Finding new ways to power our appliances and vehicles is fine. Just do it in an organized competitive way. You cannot just pay someone to be inventive.
They have also put roadblocks to nuclear energy, hydro energy, solar energy, wind energy, geo-thermal energy and of course coal, oil and natural gas generation.
They have blocked many industries that end up in third world countries. Batteries for hybrids being one glaring example.
My contention is if it cannot be built here it cannot be sold here.
And what is the point of that requirement? Here are the only possible things I can come up with:
1. It's too dirty to manufacture cleanly, so please come to the USA and manufacture it HERE in MY BACKYARD if you are going to sell it here.
2. It's too dangerous for American workers because OSHA and the EPA protects us too much, so we can't make it here, and so we will be obstinate and not buy it here either.
3. We want to protect the foreign workers from harm, so we will refuse to buy something that is so dirty to manufacture.
So which one is your reasoning?
Scott
It's a GOOD IDEA to block further oil exploration, if the alternative is to spend that money and effort finding non-fossil-fuel ways to power things.
And to protect the ocean life and ocean environment is far more important than getting a little oil from the Gulf (or wherever.) The ocean is the one of the most important natural resources and food sources on Earf.
You can't just go willy-nilly producing alternative energy sources at the detriment of other ecosystems.
So, you don't want hybrid batteries being built in third-world countries out of SPITE toward the environmentalists who wanted it done somewhere else?
How about the fact that they were trying to PROTECT AMERICANS? Do we just ignore that?
As for the money being spent on alternative sources of energy, what is the good of that if the environmentalists are blocking almost every attempt to implement them? I can see Gary's point of view on some issues. I don't agree that the answer is to drill for more oil anywhere (including the ocean), but if you are going to not allow that you have to allow the construction of some sort of power supply to replace the fossil fueled power plants, you can't say get rid of them and then say that none of the substitutes can be built either, something has to give somewhere at least until that elusive "perfect" energy source can be found.
Scott
Both 1 & 2. If it is too dirty to manufacture here it will be polluting the upper atmosphere. It will be emitting your horrible CO2. I am not concerned as much about foreign workers as ours. However I find that rather disingenuous wanting some one in a sweat shop to build you something that is too hazardous for an American worker to build. What happens when the workers in China file a lawsuit because of some dread disease they got building some part for your hybrid. They name all the hybrid owners along with Toyota in the lawsuit. I find your logic very elitist.
So, you don't want hybrid batteries being built in third-world countries out of SPITE toward the environmentalists who wanted it done somewhere else?
Your responses pretty much fit the people I am talking about. Don't pollute my back yard do it in China or India. Just send the shiny product in a highly polluting cargo ship. Let those in the LA basin worry about the smog from the ships bringing my shiny toys built by child labor in less than safe or environmentally clean factories.
Again I state. If it cannot be built safely or clean enough to pass OUR regulations. It should not be allowed in this country. That goes from a ball point pen to a giant earth mover. If we cannot practice what we preach why would anyone listen to US.
That goes for CFL bulbs that are not made in the USA.
(I don't have an elitist logic set. I'm not an elitist. I live paycheck to paycheck and no one in my family has any large amounts of money. If I missed a paycheck or two my finances would be in severe danger of collapsing.)
My point is this: Since the overall pollution footprint is less than a Corolla, anyone who complains about hybrid battery manufacturing pollution is just wasting their effort.
Spend your time complaining about stuff that has a real impact. Hybrid batteries do not, when the big picture is taken into account.
But if you REALLY believe that things not made here should not be bought here, good luck living in that cabin in Wyoming off the land....