global warming data...garbage in...

[billc]

You mean these guys helped clear our guys of this scandal...

Yeah, the guy who cleared investigated Sandusky investigated Mann...yeah, you read that right...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012..._jerry_sandusky_scandals_a_common_thread.html

Spanier's "investigation" of Jerry Sandusky was so thoroughly inept that it got him fired. When it was completed, Spanier stated that he had "complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations against Sandusky," and he was fired very shortly thereafter. The recent Freeh report indicates that the investigation was conducted for the purpose of finding nothing. In other words, it was a cover-up.
It wasn't the only time Spanier rigged an inept investigation for the purpose of finding nothing. In 2010, his investigators found that Penn State climatologist Michael Mann had done nothing wrong when he invented his "hockey stick trick," to "hide the decline" and lend false credibility to climate change theory. The difference between the Mann investigation and the Sandusky investigation is that one covered up a sex offender and the other covered up a fraud.
The Climategate "Investigation"
The methodology, however, was equally bad. The "Climategate" investigation was conducted by five Penn State employees. It is available here. The five internal investigators were given a list of four specific allegations of academic fraud, and they proceeded to dismiss the three most significant allegations outright, without investigating them at all. The next step was to read 376 e-mails written by Mann and dismiss 329 of them. After this, they conducted a two-hour interview with Michael Mann, in which he (shocker!) denied doing anything wrong.
The next step was to interview two outside climatologists, noted within the report itself for their personal support of Mann himself and his science, named Dr. Gerald North from Texas A&M and Dr. Donald Kennedy from Stanford University. Naturally, these two friends supported Mann. Next, they interviewed Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT, who accused them of ignoring the most important allegations. They ignored him and moved on. The report actually states this. "We did not respond to him."
After this, the investigators deemed that Michael Mann hadn't done anything wrong. They did not investigate three quarters of the allegations against him, and they did not interview anyone with an opposing viewpoint. President Spanier then stated, "I know they have taken the time and spent hundreds of hours studying documents and interviewing people and looking at issues from all sides." This statement is blatantly untrue, as the report itself indicates. It also sounds disturbingly similar to Spanier's statement about the Sandusky cover-up -- "I have complete confidence in how they handled the allegations against Sandusky" -- which got him fired.

Global warming advocate Michael Mann was cleared by the Penn State committee charged with investigating his conduct. In light of all the revelations in the ClimateGate e-mails, this raises the question of what kind of investigation was conducted. Penn State's official report reveals it to have been a very shallow one. The report even admits to ignoring a respected scientist when he told them their conclusions were wrong. Consider the documents that the Penn State committee's report (PDF) says were used:

Documents available to the Investigatory Committee:
· 376 files containing emails stolen from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and originally reviewed by the Inquiry Committee
· Documents collected by the Inquiry Committee
· Documents provided by Dr. Mann at both the Inquiry and Investigation phases
· Penn State University's RA-IO Inquiry Report
· House of Commons Report HC387-I, March 31,2010
· National Academy of Science letter titled, "Climate Change and the Integrity of Science" that was published in Science magazine on May 7, 2010 Information on the peer review process for the National Science Foundation (NSF)
· Department of Energy's Guide to Financial Assistance
· Information on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's peer review process
· Information regarding the percentage of NSF proposals funded
· Dr. Michael Mann's curriculum vitae
​

While Mann's famous hockey stick curve was exposed as false by both the National Academy of Sciences report and the Wegman committee report (PDF), the Penn State committee consulted neither. How could Penn State investigate whether the errors in Mann's work were honest mistakes or misconduct if they don't even know what those mistakes were? They can't.

Here is the schedule of interviews as listed in the committee's report:

April 12, 2010: Dr. William Easterling, Dean, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University

April 14, 2010: Dr. Michael Mann, Professor, Department of Meteorology, The Pennsylvania State University

April 20, 2010: Dr. William Curry, Senior Scientist, Geology and Geophysics Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

April 20, 2010: Dr. Jerry McManus, Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Columbia University

May 5, 2010: Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology​

Observe what is missing: Penn State did not interview either McIntyre or McKitrick who are the two people most familiar with Mann's faulty science and with Mann's efforts to hide and disguise his mistakes.

During their "investigation" of Michael Mann, a Penn State committee interviewed M.I.T. Professor Richard Lindzen who holds the Alfred P. Sloan char in M.I.T.'s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts. The committee's report (PDF) summarizes Prof. Lindzen's astonishment at how they were "investigating":

When told that the first three allegations against Dr. Mann were dismissed at the inquiry stage of the RA-lO process, Dr. Lindzen's response was: "It's thoroughly amazing. I mean these are issues that he explicitly stated in the emails. I'm wondering what's going on?" . . . .

The Investigatory Committee members did not respond to Dr. Lindzen's statement. Instead, Dr. Lindzen's attention was directed to the fourth allegation, and it was explained to him that this is the allegation which the Investigatory Committee is charged to address. [Emph. added]
​

So they could have asked Prof. Lindzen what they should have been investigating but they didn't. They ignored him. Lindzen concluded, quite reasonably it seems, that the investigation was just a "whitewash." I predicted as much last year.

Yeah, this is the same as the birth certificate thing...yeah, right...:lol:

I have read elsewhere that the British investigation was just as unthorough as the American investigation...

 

[billc]

And here is the British cover up of climate gate...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100031404/climategate-the-parliamentary-cover-up/

James Delingpole

James Delingpole is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who is right about everything. He is the author of numerous fantastically entertaining books, including his most recent work Watermelons: How the Environmentalists are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children's Future, alsoavailable in the US, and in Australia as Killing the Earth to Save It. His website is www.jamesdelingpole.com.

One insider has described Oxburgh's appointment to lead this supposedly neutral investigation into Climategate as "like putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank." Here are just a few more of this scrupulously unbiased fellow's interests, revealed by Orlowski:

In the House of Lords Register of Lords' Interests, Oxburgh lists under remunerated directorships his chairmanship of Falck Renewables, and chairmanship of Blue NG, a renewable power company. (Oxburgh holds no shares in Falck Renewables, and serves as a non-exec chairman.) He also declares that he is an advisor to Climate Change Capital, to the Low Carbon Initiative, Evo-Electric, Fujitsu, and an environmental advisor to Deutsche Bank. For a year he was non-exec chairman of Shell.
​

GLOBE seems especially drawn to the kind of MP who likes sailing close to the wind. Its president is none other than Stephen Byers, recently exposed in the "cash for influence" scandal as offering his services as a lobbyist like a "cab for hire" for a small consideration of just £5,000 a day. And its leading lights have also included Elliott Morley, one of the MPs more heavily implicated in the Telegraph's parliamentary expenses scandal.
As Bishop Hill notes its UK parliamentary group officers also include the redoubtable and incorruptible Labour MP Eric Joyce – "the first MP to claim more than £1m in expenses and on more than one occasion the most expensive MP in the house. He once famously claimed for three oil paintings on expenses "because they looked nice"."
But then, to judge from the research done by Cumbrian Lad at Bishop Hill, GLOBE is very much the kind of body that likes to do things on the sly. Its Memorandum of Incorporation includes this revealing snippet about its purposes:

"To provide a forum for ideas and proposals to be floated in confidence and without the attention of an international spotlight"
​

And some more on the British cover up...

http://drtimball.com/2011/climategate-cover-up-continues-with-cru-hacking-saga/

The spin-doctors put in place two investigation panels that separated out the science and limited their investigation with terms of reference. The University of East Anglia (UEA) and Muir Russell both said the Lord Oxburgh inquiry would examine the science. At a press conference on February 11, 2010, Muir Russell said,

Our job is to investigate scientific rigor, the honesty, the openness and the due process of CRU’s approach as well as the other things in the remit and compliance with rules. It’s not our job to audit CRU’s scientific conclusions. That would require a different set of skills and resources.
​

The Lord Oxburgh investigation was doomed from the start.

A member of the House of Lords appointed to investigate the veracity of climate science has close links to businesses that stand to make billions of pounds from low-carbon technology.
​

The cover-up was easily detectable. Clive Crook, Senior editor of the The Atlantic, wrote a searing indictment of the whitewash.

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.


​

 

[granfire]

Equally sad to want to handicap American industry and punish the American people over a naturally occurring cycle of warming and cooling to which we have little control over.

:lfao:

now you are being ridiculous.

And you have not paid any attention:
Going green can yield enormous profits.
You know, like the poor American people were being punished when they had to buy <gasp> catalytic converters in their cars...
When they are forced to improve their houses so in the end they can have <gasp> lower heating bills...
or not so much trash in their trashcans.

In my estimation the US is still about 20 years behind the curve of what can be done without 'punishing' the American people'

The 'we have always done it this way' is incredible dangerous to our way of life in all aspects.
We pride ourselves in being sentiment beings with the ability to learn...BS my friend, because we keep repeating the same mistakes over again.

 

[billc]

Yes, tell that to the taxpayers who had their money given to Solyndra and all the other green energy companies that have collapsed...

 

[billc]

A little more on the non-investigation of climategate...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/climategate-and-the-big-green-lie/59709/

I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause.

The Penn State inquiry exonerating Michael Mann -- the paleoclimatologist who came up with "the hockey stick" -- would be difficult to parody. Three of four allegations are dismissed out of hand at the outset: the inquiry announces that, for "lack of credible evidence", it will not even investigate them. (At this, MIT's Richard Lindzen tells the committee, "It's thoroughly amazing. I mean these issues are explicitly stated in the emails. I'm wondering what's going on?" The report continues: "The Investigatory Committee did not respond to Dr Lindzen's statement. Instead, [his] attention was directed to the fourth allegation.") Moving on, the report then says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers -- so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false.
You think I exaggerate?

This level of success in proposing research, and obtaining funding to conduct it, clearly places Dr. Mann among the most respected scientists in his field. Such success would not have been possible had he not met or exceeded the highest standards of his profession for proposing research...
Had Dr. Mann's conduct of his research been outside the range of accepted practices, it would have been impossible for him to receive so many awards and recognitions, which typically involve intense scrutiny from scientists who may or may not agree with his scientific conclusions...
Clearly, Dr. Mann's reporting of his research has been successful and judged to be outstanding by his peers. This would have been impossible had his activities in reporting his work been outside of accepted practices in his field.
​

In short, the case for the prosecution is never heard. Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one of them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed, with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.
Further "vindication" of the Climategate emailers was to follow, of course, in Muir Russell's equally probing investigation. To be fair, Russell manages to issue a criticism or two. He says the scientists were sometimes "misleading" -- but without meaning to be (a plea which, in the case of the "trick to hide the decline", is an insult to one's intelligence). On the apparent conspiracy to subvert peer review, it found that the "allegations cannot be upheld" -- but, as the impressively even-handed Fred Pearce of the Guardian notes, this was partly on the grounds that "the roles of CRU scientists and others could not be distinguished from those of colleagues. There was 'team responsibility'." Edward Acton, vice-chancellor of the university which houses CRU, calls this "exoneration".

So no, this is not a fake controversy but a deliberate attempt to skew the outcome in favor of one set of scientists.

And yes, tell me again, with a straight face that Penn State really investigated this...

 

[billc]

This is Graham Spanier who oversaw the investigation of the climategate scandal at Penn State...so tell me again how this has no bearing on the investigation...

Child sex abuse scandal and resignation

Main article: Penn State child sex abuse scandal
Spanier was criticized in 2011 for his initial reaction to a sex abuse case involving former Penn State footballdefensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Sandusky was charged on November 5, 2011 with 40 counts related to alleged sexual abuse of minors.[SUP][12][/SUP] Penn State athletic director Timothy Curley and university Senior Vice President Gary Schultz were also indicted for perjuring themselves and not reporting a 2001 incident in which a then graduate assistant and later assistant coach named Mike McQueary said he witnessed Sandusky abusing a child on Penn State property.[SUP][13][/SUP]
Spanier issued a statement the day the charges came to light in which he said Curley and Schultz had his "complete confidence",[SUP][5][/SUP] and they "operate at the highest levels of honesty."[SUP][14][/SUP] Spanier was criticized for expressing support for Curley and Schultz, and failing to express any concern for Sandusky's alleged victims.[SUP][15][/SUP] After this, he largely dropped from public view. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Board of Trustees ordered him to keep silent.[SUP][16][/SUP] He did, however, cancel head football coach Joe Paterno's weekly press conference due to legal concerns. Paterno was a key witness in the grand jury probe.[SUP][17][/SUP]
A group of Penn State students created the Facebook page "Fire Graham Spanier" in order to call on Penn State's Board of Trustees to fire Spanier.[SUP][18][/SUP] An online petition at change.org called for Spanier's ouster. It garnered over 1,700 signatures in four days.[SUP][19][/SUP]

What did Mark Steyn say again...

The editor of Simberg’s blog subsequently removed this sentence from the post, but it lives on in a post of Steyn’s, to which Steyn added:

Not sure I’d have extended that metaphor all the way into the locker-room showers with quite the zeal Mr Simberg does, but he has a point. Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college declined to find one of its star names guilty of any wrongdoing.
If an institution is prepared to cover up systemic statutory rape of minors, what won’t it cover up? Whether or not he’s “the Jerry Sandusky of climate change”, he remains the Michael Mann of climate change, in part because his “investigation” by a deeply corrupt administration was a joke.

​

​

An old joke was, What do you call a conservative winning an argument against a liberal: a fascist.

Now, what do you call a conservative pointing out that the same guy who investigated the child molesting coach Sandusky, and didn't see anything, investigated the climate gate scandal:a birther...now that is a powerful counter argument isn't it...:lfao:​

 

[billc]

Finally, the predictive nature of climate science...

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/anthropogenic-global-warming-wrong-again.php

A scientific hypothesis is tested by its predictive powers. Scientists reason: if this theory is correct, then X should be the case. They test for X; if they find X to be true, it tends to confirm the theory. If X is not the case, the theory is disproved. Some of a theory&#8217;s implications may relate to the future, and thus can only be tested over time. The anthropogenic global warming theory has been with us for quite a while now&#8211;I first learned about it circa 1970&#8211;so how have its predictions fared over time?
We have written a number of times about James Hansen, one of the leading global warming alarmists. In 1988, he authored one of the most influential alarmist papers, titled &#8220;Global climate change, according to the prediction of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.&#8221; Hansen and his colleagues modeled the global temperature impact of varying levels of future CO2 emissions. This chart, from Watts Up With That, summarizes Hansen&#8217;s 1988 predictions, compared with actually observed temperatures. Briefly, Hansen&#8217;s prediction was off by 150%.

This is probably why Mann and the other guys involved in climategate kept their data from other scientists and went so far as to destroy it...

 

[ballen0351]

:lfao:

now you are being ridiculous.

And you have not paid any attention:
Going green can yield enormous profits.
You know, like the poor American people were being punished when they had to buy <gasp> catalytic converters in their cars...
When they are forced to improve their houses so in the end they can have <gasp> lower heating bills...
or not so much trash in their trashcans.

In my estimation the US is still about 20 years behind the curve of what can be done without 'punishing' the American people'

The 'we have always done it this way' is incredible dangerous to our way of life in all aspects.
We pride ourselves in being sentiment beings with the ability to learn...BS my friend, because we keep repeating the same mistakes over again.

My problem is the politicians that want our gas prices up around 8 bucks a gal. That decided I'm no longer allowed to have regular light bulbs I need to by the 8 to 10 dollar bulbs not the 89 cent bulbs. They ones that decided we don't need more coal plants so my electric bill has gone up every year for the last 6 years straight, the ones that force car makers improve MPGs to crazy levels so my truck with a V8 can't get out of its own way when towing my boat but my 1979 Cherokee with a 30 year old engine pulls like its on steroids. The ones that want to turn our corn into gas so our food prices keep going up and our boat motors and lawn mowers crap out every year due to that garbage they call gas now. All in the name of "going green". If there was so much profit in it why is the govt footing most of the bill to keep it affordable and these "green" companies keep shutting down. All in the name of climate change which has.been happening since the start of time. If the earth temps don't rise naturally in a cycle then how did the temps rise enough to end the last ice age we didn't have factories to speed up the process so the earth had to warm up by itself melting the glaciers that cover most of north America. If global warming is man made how did that happen?

 

[billc]

Ballen, when you make points like that and ask questions like that it turns you into...a birther!!!!!:angel:

 

[Sukerkin]

It's all going to be too little, too late, sadly:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19330307

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19348194

I wonder what the world will be like in a couple/number of generations time? Will it be Waterworld? Or will my favourite interpretation of trends, the Snap Inversion occur and plunge the planet into it's natural state of Ice Age once again?

 

[Tez3]

Whether you believe in climate change being caused by man or not it's surely only sensible to take steps that minimise our impact on the natural world, for selfish reasons if not for the reason that we are the caretakers of the world and should be careful. Insulating your house to cut fuel bills is surely only sensible, recycling is also sensible otherwise we will be inundated with rubbish, landfill sites can only take so much and dumping our waste in the seas isn't the best answer.
When I was a small child in London we still had the infamous 'pea-soupers', they were foul, they also made my mother who had a weak chest (a legacy of the Nazis) very ill as it did many others. The Clean Air Act, did wonders in cleaning up these horrendous fogs, that's positive action to improve our lives as well as doing soming that's also positive for the planet. We simply can't carry on pouring poisons into our atmosphere and seas, whether it causes global warming or not we cannot carry on killing our planet. It is up to everyone to do their best to make our impact on the planet the least we can, it might only be small things but often it's the small things that helps. Cutting up the plastic that holds cans of drinks is one very small thing that would go a long way to help animals http://www.uksafari.com/archive/litter.htm, recycling helps save money as much as it 'saves the planet'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956

 

[granfire]

My problem is the politicians that want our gas prices up around 8 bucks a gal. That decided I'm no longer allowed to have regular light bulbs I need to by the 8 to 10 dollar bulbs not the 89 cent bulbs. They ones that decided we don't need more coal plants so my electric bill has gone up every year for the last 6 years straight, the ones that force car makers improve MPGs to crazy levels so my truck with a V8 can't get out of its own way when towing my boat but my 1979 Cherokee with a 30 year old engine pulls like its on steroids. The ones that want to turn our corn into gas so our food prices keep going up and our boat motors and lawn mowers crap out every year due to that garbage they call gas now. All in the name of "going green". If there was so much profit in it why is the govt footing most of the bill to keep it affordable and these "green" companies keep shutting down. All in the name of climate change which has.been happening since the start of time. If the earth temps don't rise naturally in a cycle then how did the temps rise enough to end the last ice age we didn't have factories to speed up the process so the earth had to warm up by itself melting the glaciers that cover most of north America. If global warming is man made how did that happen?

the deal with the gas:
Stop whining first of all. Everytime I complain about the gas prices here my dad laughs, since they ahve been paying neearly 8 bucks a gallon for many many years now.
The solution: You get a more economical car.
Now, this has nothing to do with punishing the people or <OH EM GEE> the companies. it can be done, it has been done, but oh hey, it won't be done, because of some narrow minded bastards who can't see past the tip of their nose.
They profit (yes, making $$) by not changing things and have DC in their pocket so they can play as they want.

As to what is in the gas...it's about time to take the ethanol out, I don' think we can currently afford to continue that. it is a double whammy currently and I am thinking the people will be suffering here shortly - and no, it has nothing to do with going green, other than shoving dollar bills in one's pockets. I have yet to see anybody liking the ethanol gig - with the exception of the farmers who plant the corn. The US is in drought condition, has been for many years, and large parts of the Southwest have not seen meaningful rainfall in the last several years. To summarize it a little: corn is subsidized to go in the tank, that means less food crops are produced, including such benign things as hay. In turn it costs more in diesel to farm the fields....(now, the price of diesle baffles me, as high as the gas prices are in europe, diesel is ALWAYS much cheaper (relatively) than gas, plus the diesel vehicles are more economical...here in the US the diesel is always much higher than gas, and small diesel cars are virtually unheard of...I am calling scam!)

Alas, too many people do not want to change their way of thinking (btw, don't dump on the polititcians on the gas prices...while in Europe the MAJORITY of the gas price is taxes, it seems like around here it's about 30 cents on a gallon - which I would not have guessed if I would not have friends in the service who can fill up without paying that tax.
The majority of the gas money goes to the poor companies that have been making record profits in the aftermath of Katrina, and only the oilspill put a damper on the business.Which btw, also showed that those poor companies are only too willing to save a couple hundred thousand bucks, which would be like pennies to you and me.


and sheesh, government is footing the bill...DUDE, that is what government is supposed to spend the money on: Things that benefit ALL the people. You know, like streets, hospitals, schools, building codes, environmental regulations....
The light bulb thing? oh poop, they cost more. had a guy tell me how he saw immediate savings on his light bill. Over the expected lifetime of said bulb you should see a total net gain. However, since you won't get a fat check in the mail when it burns out, you dismiss it as hippie treehugger crap.

ok, again: I will try to explain - in layman's terms - how this climate change could be man made, ok?

Some time in the late 1800 somebody made the discovery that oil is fantastic to put in lamps (the whales approved) and to power the internal combustion engine (as well as furnaces)
Oil: organic matter, as in carbon compounds, C for short, that has been sealed away from the atmosphere for a long, LONG time.
That means that is the CO2 from when the earth was young.

in the beginning it did not matter much, because little was used. But not any more.

Now, add to that that we destroy forested areas at the rate of may acres a day. Trees, too store carbon compounds over their life time, so what they collected during their 80 to several hundred year life span - in the case of the rain forest deforestation - is released into the atmosphere as well.

add to that coal which is still in use in many places, in plants that have not seen any improvements since ever, extract little energy and even less pollutants. Meaning you will have to burn a lot more than you should have to with new technology.

So, man kind has been extracting carbons from down below and releasing them into the atmosphere for a good 200 years now. And wonders of wonders, it's still there.

But at one point mankind actually did seek for solutions: London Fog was not a weather phenomenon as much as it was a case of pollution (on a side note, in Victorian time I have heard, the Thames was a toxic slush, you'd better not fall into), and the LA smog lead to the implementation of catalytic converters. And I do believe most of us (maybe not billie) are old enough to remember the complaints of the auto industry when they were forced to put those things in. How badly they were being punished.
Hm, they are still around, the profit margin is not depending on the cat, and they adjusted just fine. They just did not want to do the work, so they had to be forced.

The industry is punishing itself for shutting down innovation. And heaven help me I don't see why they are doing it.
As I said before, and I will repeat it again: the US are at least 20 years behind in terms of ecological awareness. Even the big push to go green a couple of years ago (I kid you not, I was out of the country for 2 month and when I got back even walmart had a huge influx of 'eco' junk in the shelves it was really that drastic!) did not make a real dent in it.

There are those companies that will make excuses as to how the public won't accept it. It's BS.
All the grocery stores here give you arms full of those little plastic bags (even though they sell the reusables, they are not set up, really, to reuse them) I am sure management will tell you they can't do away with them because the customer expects them.
BS! Tge German grocery chain Aldi is adhering to the German model: BYOB, bring your own bag. The plastic bags they do have are expensive. They have also trained their customers to return their carts to the store...and all to get that QUARTER back they put in the lock....the American public CAN learn a new trick!

Another thing that bugs my German mentality: It's been done for 30 years elsewhere: reduce the amount of packaging needed.
And I am not even going on about double and tripple wrapping stuff in oversized containers (but that is a pain, having a pill bottle that is 90-95% air and cotton)
No, why not just sell less fillers! You know, super concentrated detergents. Why buy water form some place else...The containers can be smaller, saves money there, and transport space, which translates into money.

There is no need to buy a super sturdy plastic container for each time you have to get laundry detergent. Use the above method, make the packaging small and the customer can add the water. You can reduce the waste (and heaven knows, the plastic going in the landfill is a waste of precious oil and resources) by not throwing the big plastic bottle away but something that isn't bigger than a zip lock bag.

omg, forcing people to recycle...there is MONEY in that.


oh well, narrow mindedness is king these days...

Our children and their children will probably have to mine our garbage dumps for materials we thoughtlessly tossed aside.

One can have a posh life being green, one does not have to become Amish (which is btw a spiritual mindset, not a forced on one. many of those guys are pretty damn rich and modern agriculture is looking at their farming methods for pointers...)

And I might as well just delete the above, because you and billie are deliberately obtuse on these matters....

 

[Tgace]

Lol..."we fixed acid rain"...

Bull ****.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson297.html

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[Xue Sheng]

What?

Sent from my Kindle Fire using Tapatalk 2

What is; Who, ____, Where, When, Why, How, and What time.

 

[pgsmith]

I've said before that I shouldn't, but sometimes I just can't help myself. Since you seem to have a hard time thinking tyhrough this stuff for yourself, I am going to help you ...

My problem is the politicians that want our gas prices up around 8 bucks a gal.

Your high gas prices are not decided by politicians, they are decided by corporations. The oil industry figured out that they could make more money by refining less gasoline and diesel fuel, and so pushing the price up, than they could by building more capacity and selling more gas and diesel at lower prices. The governement doesn't own the oil industry, it is more the other way around.

That decided I'm no longer allowed to have regular light bulbs I need to by the 8 to 10 dollar bulbs not the 89 cent bulbs.

Not sure where you live, but I can go into my local Home Depot and buy a cheap light bulb if I want to. Of course, buying the cheapest light bulb available with no thought to how it is being used is just stupid, but I could do it if I wanted to.

They ones that decided we don't need more coal plants so my electric bill has gone up every year for the last 6 years straight,

Your electricity bill has gone up because a certain political party decided that the government shouldn't be regulating electricity, and allowed it to revert to publicly owned companies with the stupid idea that competition would lower electricity rates. So, less government interference is responsible for your electricity rates, not more.

the ones that force car makers improve MPGs to crazy levels so my truck with a V8 can't get out of its own way when towing my boat but my 1979 Cherokee with a 30 year old engine pulls like its on steroids.

Your V8 can't pull your boat mainly because of pollution controls, not efficiency. Improving the efficiency of the engine (and thus the gas mileage) would result in more power, not less. If you were smart, you'd have bought a diesel V8 for towing since it gets much more power and torque, as well as getting much better gas mileage and lasting much longer.

The ones that want to turn our corn into gas so our food prices keep going up and our boat motors and lawn mowers crap out every year due to that garbage they call gas now.

That is also something that was put in place by the industry lobbyists. Environmentalists such as Sierra Club were against using ethanol in gasoline, but giant corporate farming interests like Monsanto pushed Bush into backing ethanol.

All in the name of "going green".

No, all in the name of corporate profits, green was simply the excuse that was used so a non-thinking and distracted society wouldn't complain.

If there was so much profit in it why is the govt footing most of the bill to keep it affordable and these "green" companies keep shutting down.

The government shells out far grerater amounts of money to subsidize industries that have absolutely nothing to do with 'green'.

All in the name of climate change which has.been happening since the start of time.

No, as i've just pointed out, most of it is in the name or corporate and political greed. While you are absolutely correct that climate change is a constantly ongoing thing. However, since we don't know how much affect we are having on the climate, we need to be as careful as is resonably possible to make our impact as little as possible. After all, animal droppings have been flowing into rivers since the start of time, but if we don't regulate our raw sewage, it will quickly kill any river it drains into. Trying to clean up after ourselves should be a natural inclination, not something the government has to force you to do.

If the earth temps don't rise naturally in a cycle then how did the temps rise enough to end the last ice age we didn't have factories to speed up the process so the earth had to warm up by itself melting the glaciers that cover most of north America. If global warming is man made how did that happen?

If you'll stop parroting what others tell you to say and think for yourself, you'll realize the stupidity of that question. Just because man may not be causing the current global warming trend does not mean that we are not contributing to it, which we most certainly are. Are you willing to bet your grandchildren's lives on whether or not whatever we are voluntarily contributing to glabal warming will not be anough to tip the scales over the edge? If we use the sort of reasoning that you are suggesting, then we could say that since ozone has been occuring naturally since time began, that we don't need to worry about the excessive ozone from car exhausts that is killing people in cities on hot summer days.

Stop and think about more than the surface, or what the local political pundit says you should be thinking. It's the only way we'll ever have any chance of taking back control of our lives. Of course, that's just my thoughts ...

 

[ballen0351]

I've said before that I shouldn't, but sometimes I just can't help myself. Since you seem to have a hard time thinking tyhrough this stuff for yourself, I am going to help you ...

Gee thanks you so kind

Your high gas prices are not decided by politicians, they are decided by corporations. The oil industry figured out that they could make more money by refining less gasoline and diesel fuel, and so pushing the price up, than they could by building more capacity and selling more gas and diesel at lower prices. The governement doesn't own the oil industry, it is more the other way around.

Nope its when the Govt decides we need to have this blend for this time of year, that blend of that time of year. Its when they refuse to allow new refinaries and open new drilling grounds, its when they keep adding higher and higher taxes onto a gal of gas to Punish record profits. When the president says id like to see gas prices reach 8 bucks a gal thats a problem.

Not sure where you live, but I can go into my local Home Depot and buy a cheap light bulb if I want to. Of course, buying the cheapest light bulb available with no thought to how it is being used is just stupid, but I could do it if I wanted to.

not for long several states have outlawed incandescant bulbs. I believe here I have about 2 more years then poof gone.

Your electricity bill has gone up because a certain political party decided that the government shouldn't be regulating electricity, and allowed it to revert to publicly owned companies with the stupid idea that competition would lower electricity rates. So, less government interference is responsible for your electricity rates, not more.

Not when the electric company has asked for and been denied approval to build more plants to meet demand by a certain political party

Your V8 can't pull your boat mainly because of pollution controls, not efficiency. Improving the efficiency of the engine (and thus the gas mileage) would result in more power, not less. If you were smart, you'd have bought a diesel V8 for towing since it gets much more power and torque, as well as getting much better gas mileage and lasting much longer.

And why are they adding more pollution controls? Oh acid raid no wait ozone oh wait no global warming oh no wait now its climate change

That is also something that was put in place by the industry lobbyists. Environmentalists such as Sierra Club were against using ethanol in gasoline, but giant corporate farming interests like Monsanto pushed Bush into backing ethanol.

And? I dont care who wanted it he Govt demanded it and pays for it and now I need to replace my small engine machines like weed wackers and chain saws every other year at best some have not even made it thru a season.

No, all in the name of corporate profits, green was simply the excuse that was used so a non-thinking and distracted society wouldn't complain.

The government shells out far grerater amounts of money to subsidize industries that have absolutely nothing to do with 'green'.

No, as i've just pointed out, most of it is in the name or corporate and political greed.

And?

While you are absolutely correct that climate change is a constantly ongoing thing.

Thanks you can stop there thats all that matters

however, since we don't know how much affect we are having on the climate, we need to be as careful as is resonably possible to make our impact as little as possible.

I dont disagree I think there are far more inportant pollutants we need to worry about then C02

After all, animal droppings have been flowing into rivers since the start of time, but if we don't regulate our raw sewage, it will quickly kill any river it drains into. Trying to clean up after ourselves should be a natural inclination, not something the government has to force you to do.

I agree

If you'll stop parroting what others tell you to say and think for yourself, you'll realize the stupidity of that question.

So answer the question then? we have come out of ice ages in the past without the help of excess CO2 which proves temp rise and fall with or with out people.

Just because man may not be causing the current global warming trend

Yep thanks again you can stop there

does not mean that we are not contributing to it, which we most certainly are.

Stop being Al Gores parrot and think for yourself its happened long before man and will happen long after we are gone.

Are you willing to bet your grandchildren's lives on whether or not whatever we are voluntarily contributing to glabal warming will not be anough to tip the scales over the edge?

Im not will to bet there financial futures on a natural cycle we have no control over.

If we use the sort of reasoning that you are suggesting, then we could say that since ozone has been occuring naturally since time began, that we don't need to worry about the excessive ozone from car exhausts that is killing people in cities on hot summer days.

The stupidity of people not smart enough to find some A/C and drink some water is what killed them not car exhaust

Stop and think about more than the surface, or what the local political pundit says you should be thinking. It's the only way we'll ever have any chance of taking back control of our lives. Of course, that's just my thoughts ...

If You want to take control of your life by turing it over to Al Gore Have fun but I dont buy what he is selling.

 

[ballen0351]

the deal with the gas:
Stop whining first of all. Everytime I complain about the gas prices here my dad laughs, since they ahve been paying neearly 8 bucks a gallon for many many years now.
The solution: You get a more economical car.
Now, this has nothing to do with punishing the people or <OH EM GEE> the companies. it can be done, it has been done, but oh hey, it won't be done, because of some narrow minded bastards who can't see past the tip of their nose.
They profit (yes, making $$) by not changing things and have DC in their pocket so they can play as they want.

As to what is in the gas...it's about time to take the ethanol out, I don' think we can currently afford to continue that. it is a double whammy currently and I am thinking the people will be suffering here shortly - and no, it has nothing to do with going green, other than shoving dollar bills in one's pockets. I have yet to see anybody liking the ethanol gig - with the exception of the farmers who plant the corn. The US is in drought condition, has been for many years, and large parts of the Southwest have not seen meaningful rainfall in the last several years. To summarize it a little: corn is subsidized to go in the tank, that means less food crops are produced, including such benign things as hay. In turn it costs more in diesel to farm the fields....(now, the price of diesle baffles me, as high as the gas prices are in europe, diesel is ALWAYS much cheaper (relatively) than gas, plus the diesel vehicles are more economical...here in the US the diesel is always much higher than gas, and small diesel cars are virtually unheard of...I am calling scam!)

Alas, too many people do not want to change their way of thinking (btw, don't dump on the polititcians on the gas prices...while in Europe the MAJORITY of the gas price is taxes, it seems like around here it's about 30 cents on a gallon - which I would not have guessed if I would not have friends in the service who can fill up without paying that tax.
The majority of the gas money goes to the poor companies that have been making record profits in the aftermath of Katrina, and only the oilspill put a damper on the business.Which btw, also showed that those poor companies are only too willing to save a couple hundred thousand bucks, which would be like pennies to you and me.


and sheesh, government is footing the bill...DUDE, that is what government is supposed to spend the money on: Things that benefit ALL the people. You know, like streets, hospitals, schools, building codes, environmental regulations....
The light bulb thing? oh poop, they cost more. had a guy tell me how he saw immediate savings on his light bill. Over the expected lifetime of said bulb you should see a total net gain. However, since you won't get a fat check in the mail when it burns out, you dismiss it as hippie treehugger crap.

ok, again: I will try to explain - in layman's terms - how this climate change could be man made, ok?

Some time in the late 1800 somebody made the discovery that oil is fantastic to put in lamps (the whales approved) and to power the internal combustion engine (as well as furnaces)
Oil: organic matter, as in carbon compounds, C for short, that has been sealed away from the atmosphere for a long, LONG time.
That means that is the CO2 from when the earth was young.

in the beginning it did not matter much, because little was used. But not any more.

Now, add to that that we destroy forested areas at the rate of may acres a day. Trees, too store carbon compounds over their life time, so what they collected during their 80 to several hundred year life span - in the case of the rain forest deforestation - is released into the atmosphere as well.

add to that coal which is still in use in many places, in plants that have not seen any improvements since ever, extract little energy and even less pollutants. Meaning you will have to burn a lot more than you should have to with new technology.

So, man kind has been extracting carbons from down below and releasing them into the atmosphere for a good 200 years now. And wonders of wonders, it's still there.

But at one point mankind actually did seek for solutions: London Fog was not a weather phenomenon as much as it was a case of pollution (on a side note, in Victorian time I have heard, the Thames was a toxic slush, you'd better not fall into), and the LA smog lead to the implementation of catalytic converters. And I do believe most of us (maybe not billie) are old enough to remember the complaints of the auto industry when they were forced to put those things in. How badly they were being punished.
Hm, they are still around, the profit margin is not depending on the cat, and they adjusted just fine. They just did not want to do the work, so they had to be forced.

The industry is punishing itself for shutting down innovation. And heaven help me I don't see why they are doing it.
As I said before, and I will repeat it again: the US are at least 20 years behind in terms of ecological awareness. Even the big push to go green a couple of years ago (I kid you not, I was out of the country for 2 month and when I got back even walmart had a huge influx of 'eco' junk in the shelves it was really that drastic!) did not make a real dent in it.

There are those companies that will make excuses as to how the public won't accept it. It's BS.
All the grocery stores here give you arms full of those little plastic bags (even though they sell the reusables, they are not set up, really, to reuse them) I am sure management will tell you they can't do away with them because the customer expects them.
BS! Tge German grocery chain Aldi is adhering to the German model: BYOB, bring your own bag. The plastic bags they do have are expensive. They have also trained their customers to return their carts to the store...and all to get that QUARTER back they put in the lock....the American public CAN learn a new trick!

Another thing that bugs my German mentality: It's been done for 30 years elsewhere: reduce the amount of packaging needed.
And I am not even going on about double and tripple wrapping stuff in oversized containers (but that is a pain, having a pill bottle that is 90-95% air and cotton)
No, why not just sell less fillers! You know, super concentrated detergents. Why buy water form some place else...The containers can be smaller, saves money there, and transport space, which translates into money.

There is no need to buy a super sturdy plastic container for each time you have to get laundry detergent. Use the above method, make the packaging small and the customer can add the water. You can reduce the waste (and heaven knows, the plastic going in the landfill is a waste of precious oil and resources) by not throwing the big plastic bottle away but something that isn't bigger than a zip lock bag.

omg, forcing people to recycle...there is MONEY in that.


oh well, narrow mindedness is king these days...

Our children and their children will probably have to mine our garbage dumps for materials we thoughtlessly tossed aside.

One can have a posh life being green, one does not have to become Amish (which is btw a spiritual mindset, not a forced on one. many of those guys are pretty damn rich and modern agriculture is looking at their farming methods for pointers...)

And I might as well just delete the above, because you and billie are deliberately obtuse on these matters....

Ok so again ill ask a simple question. If we are causing this then how did the earth warm up on its own before people.
according to scientists we are still in the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist. So by your theroy up until the 1800's when we discovered coal and oil how during the prior 2.5 million plus years did the earth warm up on its own to melt the rest of the ice that covered much of north america. Also why did it stop warming up on its own and now only during the last 200 years did it start warming again at our hand?

Also there were 4 prior ice ages to this one so how did we cool down and heat up for each of the prior ones with out mans help?

 

[ballen0351]

Whether you believe in climate change being caused by man or not it's surely only sensible to take steps that minimise our impact on the natural world, for selfish reasons if not for the reason that we are the caretakers of the world and should be careful. Insulating your house to cut fuel bills is surely only sensible, recycling is also sensible otherwise we will be inundated with rubbish, landfill sites can only take so much and dumping our waste in the seas isn't the best answer.
When I was a small child in London we still had the infamous 'pea-soupers', they were foul, they also made my mother who had a weak chest (a legacy of the Nazis) very ill as it did many others. The Clean Air Act, did wonders in cleaning up these horrendous fogs, that's positive action to improve our lives as well as doing soming that's also positive for the planet. We simply can't carry on pouring poisons into our atmosphere and seas, whether it causes global warming or not we cannot carry on killing our planet. It is up to everyone to do their best to make our impact on the planet the least we can, it might only be small things but often it's the small things that helps. Cutting up the plastic that holds cans of drinks is one very small thing that would go a long way to help animals http://www.uksafari.com/archive/litter.htm, recycling helps save money as much as it 'saves the planet'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_1956

I agree 100% there is no need to make up a fake crisis. We should clean up the earth because its the right thing to do. Focus on real issues not something we have no control over. Plant trees because forests are great places to camp and hike, clean up reefs because they are great places to dive and fish, clean the air from real pollutiants because fresh air is better then bad air. keep sewage out of rivers because people want to boat swim and fish in them. Dont over harvest animals so our kids will get to try them too ect ect ect

 

[Tez3]

I agree 100% there is no need to make up a fake crisis. We should clean up the earth because its the right thing to do. Focus on real issues not something we have no control over. Plant trees because forests are great places to camp and hike, clean up reefs because they are great places to dive and fish, clean the air from real pollutiants because fresh air is better then bad air. keep sewage out of rivers because people want to boat swim and fish in them. Dont over harvest animals so our kids will get to try them too ect ect ect

Plant trees because they are the earth's lungs and because they are home to many species of wildlife, logging also causes landslides and devastion in many places. Clean up reefs because people need to fish to live, clean air because bad air kills people, keep sewage out of water because people need clean water to drink and dirty water kills, don't kill animlas off because they are part of the ecology and balance it.

 

[Tgace]

I agree 100% there is no need to make up a fake crisis. We should clean up the earth because its the right thing to do. Focus on real issues not something we have no control over. Plant trees because forests are great places to camp and hike, clean up reefs because they are great places to dive and fish, clean the air from real pollutiants because fresh air is better then bad air. keep sewage out of rivers because people want to boat swim and fish in them. Dont over harvest animals so our kids will get to try them too ect ect ect

But you don't get it..the only way to FORCE change is by scaring people with imminent extinction.

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