Uechi-Ryu.com

On the bright side some of us folk who live up here in the mountains could have ocean fron property

Clearly I'm not suggesting norplant for gay guys. All my posts come with instructions to think about their contents

"When we are all dummied down enough we just might buy into this, "the sky is falling" garbage that we are being spoon fed."

You mean the scientific consensus that industry and our government is fighting tooth and nail? Hardly spoon feeding. We scarcely pause a moment a day to consider that most facets of our high energy consumption, nonrenewable energy and resource dependence, trash and toxin producing lifestyle CANNOT continue.

We CANNOT continue to pour greenhouse gases into the sky without consequences. The situation is fact; the rate of change is disputed.

We CANNOT continue to ravenously consume oil--its running out. Other sources of fuel will be developed like ethanol and hydrogen cells and oil shale, but the same rules apply to them.

We CANNOT continue to produce megatons of trash everyday and expect it all to disappear.

We CANNOT continue to reproduce at an exponential rate. Do you want to stop by choice, by famine, by explosive infection, or climate change?

There are, indisputably, time limits on all these activites. The limits themselves are disputable. But it is not foolish to recognize they exist and try to figure out how to live sustainably before some calmity forces us to or before what we love about the planet is seriously damaged. Why should we race through scarce resources and let our kids handle the consequences? What exactly is stupid about acknowledging this reality?

And I'll say it again: the most important measure to help the environment (energy use, disease, poverty, habitat loss, deforestation, pressure on fish stocks, pollution, you name it) is birth control.

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--Ian

I have been a skeptic about global warming as a human-caused event for quite some time, at least in the sense that I am not easily convinced by mathematical models. I'll probably never forget the first gulf war predictions by Carl Sagan and his co-researchers that if Saddam Hussein torched the Kuwaiti oil fields that it would lead to a global catastrophe. Others diagreed, but Sagan argued that they had failed to account for convection of the soot due to solar warming. So we all know that Sagan's model failed ot predict the results. There are other stories about mathematical models. I'm not against mathematical modeling. It's part of what I do, and I've even taught a university course on it, but one should never forget what a model is and how unreliable a simplified model can be for making predictions.

Having said that, what has moved me more or less to accept the consensus opinion has not been the plethora of dire model predictions, rather the physical reports of melting permafrost and, to a lesser extent, glaciers. Something's happening, and as the mathematical models are updated to be more and more accurate (using the data we are collecting), I expect we'll get better predictions out of the models and clearer pictures of what various actions will do to the situation. I suppose this is happening, but I'm not really paying that close of attention to the research to be able to say it.

On the other hand, we have to remember that scientists are people, too, and as a group they are subject to certain influences. It tends to be in their best interest to make extreme predictions, since that will earn them the most attention, so there is room for some "pushback" against dire predictions. It seems to me that the way around this is to demand relatively short-term predictions. If the model starts getting things right, then the long-term predictions are made more credible. If it gets things wrong but there are always excuses about how this variable or that changed, then, well, it's that much more "incredible".

Good luck with the birth control solution. I think population moderation via disease and conflict is a foregone conclusion. We really aren't as civilized as we let on.

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Mike

Actually the number one way to lower the birth rates within a country is to educate the women.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200607120038.html



...talk about a strange solution to overpopulation and possibly over-pollution...

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Did you show compassion today?

Just how sussesful is this? HOw widespread? Im pretty suspicious about the UN, or even any african governments motives.

Lets get back on track.

The add is fear mongering based on false hoods.

Ian proclaim CAN NOT as loudly as you choose, we have and will it appears and we still here mate.

You suport science you say. You have a general degree in a medical field. I understand your an urban chap.

I grew up in the bush on a trapline. Living off what we had available and sustaining the harvest for generations. Our meat veggies and starch were from the land. Our tiny income from fur. You and I might have a different base from which to view the earth and filter our decisions.

But I think we both are environmentalists, I'm a bit of an extremist. I've experienced the political fallout generated by the well meaning urban folks and have my life destroyed as a result.

I no longer live the traditional life style. Eco freaks like green piece destroyed my families way of life. Hard to hunt venison and trap beaver when you can't afford the tools of the trade. Families have to eat.

Oh well I still have the pleasure of dealing with their fund raisers...funny few knock on my door any longer.

I have a degree in environmental design that goes back to the late seventies. I own a solid waste company that hauls government waste in a national park.

My services have been requested and utilised by the federal government on the ecological steering committee that drove wildlife decisions in our most crowded national park in Canada. I have worked on restoring ecological integretary to the region I live in for many years. And I have won awards for my work in this field! I'm not talking out my ass. I'm actualy qualified in the field. My government has recognised my work in wildlife management. ( I hate the term, I see it as fixing ##### ups) And my government employs my company in solid waste management.

So rattle the sabers and claim your a man of science but lets not loose site of the fact your a medical type and not an enviromental scientist, an ecologist, or a man of the land.

Leo's coments are correct ,it cost more to do the right thing than the wrong thing. NS has done the best job in Canada doing the right thing. But those land fields are still full of the wrong things. We are a disposable society giving the problem lip service.. Change must begin with the consumer.

I haul for the federal government, far from recycling centers. What ends up in Calgary land fills is a crime!

Ian the sky is not Falling ! Find the largest bold face you can it does not change the facts.

Here are a few please view these clips. You claimed global warming is indisputable. the possition of the political urban lobby. The science is flawed, their are chaps at Harvard saying the same thing.


http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3

Please watch these clips! you might learn something.

Then again you can bury your head in the sand.

Be well.

Laird

Since you asked...

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

So these are US numbers.


And now back to the rest of the discussion...

_________________
Did you show compassion today?

All living things change and can't be preserved. The Earth is still "alive" which means it's always changing.

Interesting info Dana.

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I was dreaming of the past...

I like that. I see martial arts as a living thing as well.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING


MYTH 1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

FACT: Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures. Average ground station readings do show a mild warming of 0.6 to 0.8Cover the last 100 years, which is well within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium. The ground station network suffers from an uneven distribution across the globe; the stations are preferentially located in growing urban and industrial areas ("heat islands"), which show substantially higher readings than adjacent rural areas ("land use effects").

There has been no catastrophic warming recorded.



MYTH 2: The "hockey stick" graph proves that the earth has experienced a steady, very gradual temperature increase for 1000 years, then recently began a sudden increase.

FACT: Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time. For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland) was followed by a period known as the Little Ice Age. Since the end of the 17th Century the "average global temperature" has been rising at the low steady rate mentioned above; although from 1940 – 1970 temperatures actually dropped, leading to a Global Cooling scare.

The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that.



MYTH 3: Human produced carbon dioxide has increased over the last 100 years, adding to the Greenhouse effect, thus warming the earth.

FACT: Carbon dioxide levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout geologic time. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased from a rate of about 0.2% per year to the present 0.4% per year. But there is no proof that CO2 is the main driver of global warming. As measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2 levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming. Geological field work in recent sediments confirms this causal relationship. There is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth's oceans expel more CO2 as a result.



MYTH 4: CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas.

FACT: Greenhouse gases form about 3 % of the atmosphere by volume. They consist of varying amounts, (about 97%) of water vapour and clouds, with the remainder being gases like CO2, CH4, Ozone and N2O, of which carbon dioxide is the largest amount. Hence, CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere. While the minor gases are more effective as "greenhouse agents" than water vapour and clouds, the latter are overwhelming the effect by their sheer volume and – in the end – are thought to be responsible for 60% of the "Greenhouse effect".
Those attributing climate change to CO2 rarely mention this important fact.


MYTH 5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.

FACT: Computer models can be made to "verify" anything by changing some of the 5 million input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used.. They do not "prove" anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover.


MYTH 6: The UN proved that man–made CO2 causes global warming.
FACT: In a 1996 report by the UN on global warming, two statements were deleted from the final draft. Here they are:
1) “None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases.”
2) “No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man–made causes”

To the present day there is still no scientific proof that man-made CO2 causes significant global warming.



MYTH 7: CO2 is a pollutant.

FACT: This is absolutely not true. Nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere. We could not live in 100% nitrogen either. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is. CO2 is essential to life on earth. It is necessary for plant growth since increased CO2 intake as a result of increased atmospheric concentration causes many trees and other plants to grow more vigorously. Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has included CO2 with a number of truly toxic and noxious substances listed by the Environmental Protection Act, only as their means to politically control it.


MYTH 8: Global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes.

FACT: There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that supports such claims on a global scale. Regional variations may occur. Growing insurance and infrastructure repair costs, particularly in coastal areas, are sometimes claimed to be the result of increasing frequency and severity of storms, whereas in reality they are a function of increasing population density, escalating development value, and ever more media reporting.



MYTH 9: Receding glaciers and the calving of ice shelves are proof of global warming.

FACT: Glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for hundreds of years. Recent glacier melting is a consequence of coming out of the very cool period of the Little Ice Age. Ice shelves have been breaking off for centuries. Scientists know of at least 33 periods of glaciers growing and then retreating. It’s normal. Besides, glacier's health is dependent as much on precipitation as on temperature.


MYTH 10: The earth’s poles are warming; polar ice caps are breaking up and melting and the sea level rising.

FACT: The earth is variable. The western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer, due to unrelated cyclic events in the Pacific Ocean, but the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder. The small Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica is getting warmer, while the main Antarctic continent is actually cooling. Ice thicknesses are increasing both on Greenland and in Antarctica.

Sea level monitoring in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (Maldives) has shown no sign of any sea level rise.

I have a big issue with climate change models. Not one has factored evaporation and cloud cover.

Rising sea level = increased water coverage= increased evaporation. And at an increasing rate if it is getting warmer!

We also know that increased cloud cover blocks the suns rays = cooling Yet not one climate change model has factored in the cooling effecty of the increased cloud cover created by the melting of polar ice.

You'd almost think the science is flawed. Surely these so called men of science are not distorting the facts to drive their agenda. Could it be bunk, hooey, total BS. Ian claims it's science. But how can it be when the disreguard the cause and effect of extra moisture in the system.

I propose it's advocacy at it's worst and it's what I hate most about eco wantabee's! Misdirected dogma.

Exactly. I have to laugh at the hubris of some of the eco-geeks that think that they can preserve the world as they see fit. I always wonder if they'd try the same thing with their children.

Now it is in our best self interests to be good stewards of our resources.

_________________
I was dreaming of the past...

And if you want to support this activity (not just to influence birth rates), how about

http://www.care.org/

_________________
Mike

Willy, much ado about nothing.

1) I didn't say an MD had anything to do with my expertise on global warming, in fact, I've never claimed any.
2) Nothing you wrote about you abuse at the hands of eco freaks or your experiences living off the land have anything to do with me, or global warming, either.
3) I'm curious as to the source of your myth buster text. I'll get to your video and the details later, but there's a clear slant in that, too...
4) So now that you're done obsessing about my caps, would you care to comment on whether you think that we can.... continue to grow exponentially without the population stabilizing? continue to use fossil fuels indefinitely? continue to spread across dwindling habitats without regrettable consequences our kids are going to hold us accountable for? continue to dump our trash instead of learning to leave the earth as we left it? I picked all those statements because its pretty clear that all these factors--population growth, fossil fuel use, trash production--are going to have to slow down in the future, and once that's agreed, its just a question of timing and style. I was careful not to say things were changing tomorrow. So what exactly are you disagreeing with, or are you just focusing on the caps instead of my comments to give the appearance of a reply?

As for birth control: yes, education is a fabulous tool for birth control. and we've also convinced remote african tribes to let us vaccinate them against smallpox, rather quickly eradicating it... the guinea worm is on its way out too... and thousands of men have agreed to mass vasectomy. And there could be a technology that allows reliable contrception for years with a single shot--why is controlling our fertility such an outlandish idea? We don't have any good alternatives.

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--Ian

Great question Ian! The success of a species does have impacts. Why it’s the same with deer. Too many has negative impacts. Just like too many predators may have negative impacts on the eco system. Bottom line is the system adjusts. It’s not up to a specific species to adjust and regulate the system. Man is part of the damn system weather you understand it or not, your not in charge of the system your just part of the system.

Nature will regulate our over abundance in time. War, weather, disease..Things will find their proper balance if the system is left alone to function. Ask the dino dudes….ohhh they got regulated.

I suspect you mean as you found it. But in your case it’s paved and polluted and in mine it was a land of renewable resources from diet to building resources. I agree with you however, we must change our life style if we hope to improve the quality of the habitat we live in. Less packaging, grow our own foods etc. BTW how many crops do you produce in your city Ian? What do people grow in their yards and roof tops? Many folks sporting window boxes of food in your city? If your not part of the solution your part of the damn problem and from the cheap seats urban neighbors are far from self sufficiently.

Man has utilized fossil fuels since the discovery of fire. I understand form the scientific community that is quite some time. I don’t suspect it will change. We haven’t run out yet and I suspect we have a wee bit of spare time. Canada has larger oil reserves than what has been consumed to date! That’s a lot of oil. Not a good source of energy but, better than any alternative out there.

Maybe we should burn dead bodies and garbage to fuel our energy demands. I Don’t expect folks to stop breeding or to stop consuming and wasting.l Hell looks like we got us a renewable resource lets get rid of Shell Oil and drive the economy on the byproducts we produce.

In the mean time Global warming is marketing for the eco terrorists and is not supported by all scientists as you claim Ian. In fact if you google global warming myth you will get around 4 million hits. Hardly the consensus you claim son.

Let us try to stay on topic … this add was about global warming no?