| Author | Message | ||
     Aesquire |
Ooops. Thalks. http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/201 2/02/07/turn-heat | ||
| Road_thing |
Pollution: Bad. No argument. Global warming/cooling: Natural. At least five cycles in the last million years or so. Reference here. I'm reasonably sure human activity had nothing to do with most of them. rt | ||
| Reepicheep |
RT, you aren't paying attention. If there have been five cycles in the last million years, then those bastards Bush and Chaney must have had Haliburton develop time travel. It's the only reasonable conclusion.  | ||
| Aesquire |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_fair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1500-year_climate_cyc le http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreal_(period) Those "five cycles" are when any civilization was wiped out, completely, mass death and starvation, and hard, hard times for the limited survivors. Ice ages. The normal state of affairs on this planet, and one I'm hoping to miss. Having lived in South Dakota during a cold cycle, ( 1960's ) I KNOW what 50 below feels like, and don't need to feel it again outside a meat freezer. | ||
| Road_thing |
The normal state of affairs on this planet, and one I'm hoping to miss. You and me both! rt | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 012/02/16/MND61N71MS.DTL Here's an elite snob who's mad at the Prez for not being eco-freak enough? Obviously never pumps her own gas or deals with keeping warm in winter. Obama is a great enemy of the middle class. It seems that the Greenies won't be happy until they have utter, total control over all aspects of your life. By dictator. Until all us pesky humans are dead. So the deer can run wild in Snopes park again. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
to think - liberals with money - using it for political gain and clout.... why that is down right damn near .... what they charge the Republicans as doing. Politics - the belief that your own shiate never stinks. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/ RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf I have trouble seeing some of the charts, but on the whole, seems to be one of the best questioning of the Global Climate Scam. | ||
| Firemanjim |
Man is nothing compared to nature when it comes to affecting climate. One volcanic eruption in Indonesia--Mt. Tambora--triggered drop in global temps and as known as the Year Without a Summer----that as ONE eruption!!We don't even come close. | ||
| Sifo |
And we have a solution...  | ||
| Aesquire |
Ah! Public schools. ( if you need an explanation for why the nice young lady's idea won't work..... I'll be happy to tell you. I may mock you for your ignorance, a little. ) However, millions of mirrors in orbit would let you control insolation, and thus he weather and climate. Can I be in charge of who gets heat & light? Because I don't want you to be. | ||
| Sifo |
But the pump out cold air! How can that not help cool the planet?  | ||
| Sifo |
WOW! Why So Many Tornadoes Are Striking the US It's been a long time since I've seen a story like that without blaming "Global Warming". I'm beginning to think we have turned a corner! | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012 /03/how-engineering-the-human-body-could-combat-cl imate-change/253981/ .....One human engineering strategy you mention is a kind of pharmacologically induced meat intolerance. You suggest that humans could be given meat alongside a medication that triggers extreme nausea, which would then cause a long-lasting aversion to meat eating. Why is it that you expect this could have such a dramatic impact on climate change? Liao: There is a widely cited U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report that estimates that 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 equivalents come from livestock farming, which is actually a much higher share than from transportation. More recently it's been suggested that livestock farming accounts for as much as 51% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are estimates that as much as 9% of human emissions occur as a result of deforestation for the expansion of pastures for livestock. And that doesn't even to take into account the emissions that arise from manure, or from the livestock directly. Since a large portion of these cows and other grazing animals are raised for consumption, it seems obvious that reducing the consumption of these meats could have considerable environmental benefits. Even a minor 21% to 24% reduction in the consumption of these kinds of meats could result in the same reduction in emissions as the total localization of food production, which would mean reducing "food miles" to zero. And, I think it's important to note that it wouldn't necessarily need to be a pill. We have also toyed around with the idea of a patch that might stimulate the immune system to reject common bovine proteins, which could lead to a similar kind of lasting aversion to meat products. ..... Of course, bio-engineering the New Human brains into believing in Global Warming and the Current Administration's love for the proletariat would gain even better benefits.......... Let's face it, Global Warming Hoax Deniers, are crazier than most realize. No, crazier than that. the interview continues....... .....Your paper also discusses the use of human engineering to make humans smaller. Why would this be a powerful technique in the fight against climate change? Liao: Well one of the things that we noticed is that human ecological footprints are partly correlated with size. Each kilogram of body mass requires a certain amount of food and nutrients and so, other things being equal, the larger person is the more food and energy they are going to soak up over the course of a lifetime. There are also other, less obvious ways in which larger people consume more energy than smaller people---for example a car uses more fuel per mile to carry a heavier person, more fabric is needed to clothe larger people, and heavier people wear out shoes, carpets and furniture at a quicker rate than lighter people, and so on. And so size reduction could be one way to reduce a person's ecological footprint. For instance if you reduce the average U.S. height by just 15cm, you could reduce body mass by 21% for men and 25% for women, with a corresponding reduction in metabolic rates by some 15% to 18%, because less tissue means lower energy and nutrient needs. What are the various ways humans could be engineered to be smaller? Liao: There are a couple of ways, actually. You might try to do it through a technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which is already used in IVF settings in fertility clinics today. In this scenario you'd be looking to select which embryos to implant based on height. Another way to affect height is to use a hormone treatment to trigger the closing of the epiphyseal plate earlier than normal---this sometimes happens by accident in vitamin overdose cases. In fact hormone treatments are already used for height reduction in overly tall children. A final way you could do this is by way of gene imprinting, by influencing the competition between maternal and paternal genes, where there is a height disparity between the mother and father. You could have drugs that reduce or increase the expression of paternal or maternal genes in order to affect birth height. Isn't it ethically problematic to allow parents to make these kinds of irreversible choices for their children? Liao: That's a really good question. First, I think it's useful to distinguish between selection and modification. With selection you don't really have the issue of irreversible choices because the embryo selected can't complain that she could have been otherwise---if the parents had selected a different embryo, she wouldn't have existed at all. In the case of modification, that issue could certainly arise, but even then I think it's important to step back and ask why we are looking at these solutions in the first place. The reason we are even considering these solutions is to prevent climate change, which is a really serious problem, and which might affect the well being of millions of people including the child. And so in that context, if on balance human engineering is going to promote the well being of that particular child, then you might be able to justify the solution to the child. In the paper you also discuss the pharmacological enhancement of empathy and altruism, because empathy and altruism tend to be highly correlated with positive attitudes toward the environment. To me this one seems like it might be the most troubling. Isn't it more problematic to do biological tinkering to produce a belief, rather than simply engineering humans so that they are better equipped to implement their beliefs? Liao: Yes. It's certainly ethically problematic to insert beliefs into people, and so we want to be clear that's not something we're proposing. What we have in mind has more to do with weakness of will. For example, I might know that I ought to send a check to Oxfam, but because of a weakness of will I might never write that check. But if we increase my empathetic capacities with drugs, then maybe I might overcome my weakness of will and write that check. Let me push you a little on that. The Oxfam example is a clean fit for your argument, but might it be the case that drugs of this sort---empathy increasing drugs---would cause people to generate entirely new beliefs, rather than simply mitigating issues having to do with weakness of will. Liao: It's conceivable, yes, and to be clear, if that's the case that wouldn't be something that we would advocate. We are interested only in voluntary modifications, and we certainly don't want to implant beliefs into anyone. But even then, those beliefs might still be considered yours if they arise from a kind of ramping up of your existing capacities, and so perhaps that could obviate that problem. I suppose there are already drugs that might be belief-inducing. You might think that antidepressants induce new beliefs about self worth, or about the personalities of other people. Liao: That's right. That's a great analogy. If you're very pessimistic about the world, and you take a drug that will cause you to develop a more positive outlook, then in some sense those are beliefs that you already desired. In a case like that the ethical issues might fall away on account of the fact that you previously desired those beliefs, and that you're aware of the consequences of taking the drug. We would want as much transparency as possible with these technologies so that people are aware of the consequences of using them, and that includes empathy-increasing drugs, which, if they had the kind of effects you're suggesting, would require warning labels at a minimum. In your paper you suggest that some human engineering solutions may actually be liberty enhancing. How so? Liao: That's right. It's been suggested that, given the seriousness of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China's one child policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude prescriptions---what we really care about is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that's the case, given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says "you can only have one or two children." A family might want a really good basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one really large child. have to push back a little on that point. It seems like those human engineering techniques would be liberty enhancing only in a context in which there were some severe liberty constraint that doesn't exist now. Is there another way these techniques might be liberty enhancing? Liao: Well, again, I would return to the weakness of will consideration. If you crave steak, and that craving prevents you from making a decision you otherwise want to make, in some sense your inability to control yourself is a limit on the will, or a limit on your liberty. A meat patch would allow you to truly decide whether you want to have that steak or not, and that could be quite liberty enhancing. I'm thinking this guy has completely missed B.F. Skinner..... or maybe not.... Someday, perhaps we'll have effective therapy to relieve people of the belief in Gods. Or just a pill to make you believe Al Gore. ....Taking a look at this from the perspective of deep ecology---is there something to be said for the idea that because climate change is human caused, that humans ought to be the ones that change to mitigate it---that somehow we ought to bear the cost to fix this? Liao: That was actually one of the ideas that motivated us to write this paper, the idea that we caused anthropogenic climate change, and so perhaps we ought to bear some of the costs required to address it. But having said that, we also want to make this attractive to people---we don't want this to be a zero sum game where it's just a cost that we have to bear. Many of the solutions we propose might actually be quite desirable to people, particularly the meat patch. I recently gave a talk about this paper at Yale and there was a man in the audience who worked for a pharmaceuticals company; he seemed to think there might be a huge market for modifications like this. | ||
| Hootowl |
"he seemed to think there might be a huge market for modifications like this." They buried the lead. Make folks believe they're destroying the planet, and then sell them a cure. Gore would be proud. | ||
| Sifo |
Interesting piece, though a scary mindset. I'll pass on the "meat patch". Reminded me of a pair of studies that weren't connected, but the implications are frightening. One study found that certain antidepressants had a tendency to make people more liberal in their thinking. The other study found that antidepressants were so over prescribed and being flushed down the toilet so much that they were now showing up in the water supply. At least that was their theory on how the were getting into the water supply.  | ||
| Kenm123t |
Liberals first rent them a gun sell them a round. Let them retire themselves. They get what they want a world with fewer humans. We get what we want a world with out THEM A perfect deal every one gets what they want. That Study is a perfect example of Idle hands and Minds being the Devils workshop | ||
| Aesquire |
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/286962/dece mber-diary-john-derbyshire The global-warming-hysteria hysteria (GWHH) of the political right is now every bit as annoying as the global-warming hysteria (GWH) of the left. I understand of course that leftist globalist power-maniacs want to use global warming to advance their knavish schemes. As a conservative, I’ll fight that as enthusiastically as I’ll fight all other globalizing, nation-hating, liberty-destroying projects — mass immigration, imperialism (e.g. China’s in Tibet), multiculturalism, missionary wars, “refugee” rackets, common currencies, the United Nations, etc. The fact remains that some things are true even though Comrade Zilliacus says they are true, and global warming is one of those things. Yes, the atmosphere is on a warming trend. Nothing the least bit surprising about that: The chronic instability of Earth’s climate was one of the first large facts ever to come to the attention of our species. And yes, human activity is making some contribution, as, again, it has been doing since our Paleolithic ancestors started setting grass fires to flush out game. Rightist GWHH has in fact passed over into the zone of religious zealotry, as all psycho-social movements tend to do if not restrained by a proper skeptical empiricism (cf. Communism, nationalism, “diversity,” etc.) — and as, of course, leftist GWH did long ago. A conservative is now supposed to assent to the GWHH holy dogma in every syllable and particular, or else be cast into outer darkness. Loyalty oaths can’t be far away. | ||
| Sifo |
Is it warming?  | ||
| Aesquire |
Yes, in the north, it's called Spring. The above article cautions against reflexive attitudes. Just because Bill Clinton says it, it is not automatically a lie. The Climate is changing. It always has, and it will until after the Sun swells up and burns the Earth clean... then the climate will change as the sun cools.... Do we affect the climate? Yes, I'm pretty sure, no matter what Rush says. ( he has zip science education..or interest ) Is CO2 the harbinger of doom? Not a chance. That part, along with the desire to impose a planetary Government, an unelected, self appointed elite... that's a scam. | ||
| Sifo |
They don't need climate change anymore. They have a new theory... CO2 makes you fat. They followed fat and thin people for 22 years and both groups put on weight. It correlates to the rise in CO2 so that must be the culprit! What has happened to science? I could have told them 22 years ago that people tend to put on weight as they get older. Now we have to ban fossil fuels to fight obesity!  | ||
| Moxnix |
Global Warming as Cargo Cult Science-- http://www.drroyspencer.com/ | ||
| Aesquire |
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| Aesquire |
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpps/news/climate-fund -seeks-un-style-diplomatic-immunity-dpgonc-km-2012 0322_18755189 Corrupt UN types enjoy/demand immunity even more than the honest ones it seems. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/india-bans-airlines-payin g-eu-carbon-tax-071522596.html I Knew Indians were smart. | ||
| Two_seasons |
#1 Greenhouse Gas... Water Vapor | ||
| Kenm123t |
You know what the Greenies will want next Drain the oceans ! get rid of that nasty evil water. | ||
| Swampy |
Well, Um, yeah....If you just wait long enough things will go back to what ever normal is for you... 1985 headlines in Michigan were that water levels are so high in the Great Lakes that shorelines are eroding and peoples are in danger of loosing their houses, skip up to 2008, water levels are so low that you have to walk 500 yards from the end of your dock just to get to the edge of the water. I have a friend in Stonington that found old rail tracks running from his garage out to the lake that were used to move a boat during periods of low water. We have nothing to do with it... | ||
| Xodot |
Does anyone else remember the Ozone is disappearing fad? That got us all in a lather for a while didn't it? and where are those heretics now? | ||
| Aesquire |
I have performed the forbidden Freon experiment. I filled a balloon with freon and released it to destroy you all. It fell like a brick. Freon is heavier than air. ( yes, I know that gases mix in the real world and that some freon will rise to the upper, way upper atmosphere to act as a catalyst to break up the constantly created by sunlight ozone. It may even be a problem well solved.) I just can't get over how it only became a problem when the patent ran out and the Mexican factories were going to undercut Dupont. What a coincidence. ( sarcasm ) And I really did release a freon balloon to see what would happen. It did as stated, which was expected. | ||
| Aesquire |
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2 012/03/17/effective-world-government-will-still-be -needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/ (Note that the world government must be ‘effective’; ‘totalitarian carries SUCH negative vibes.) |
