[lug] Anyone else hate to get rid of old equipment?
Carl Wagner
carl.wagner at verbalworld.com
Wed May 26 09:11:00 MDT 2010
I wrote this yesterday before all the responses came in, then got busy
with other things.
I guess most of you will view me as a 'Flat-Earth'-er. ;-)
---
OK were are drifting off topic here, BUT,
I would really like to see a debate about Global Warming from this
group, as I would expect the average intelligence to be quite a bit
higher than the general population and no one has any 'direct' skin in
the game. And every discussion I see on the net, people are talking AT
each other, not debating the issues.
First, I believe that everyone should start out skeptical about any new
idea. Anyone have issues with that?
In full disclosure I am a skeptic. But I am also fairly good about
recycling and think polluting is bad. I am just not convinced that CO2
is polluting. How many pounds of CO2 are in the average tree? How
many trees are in the world? How much CO2 is consumed by plankton?
At first I had trouble understanding why all the 3rd world and 'up and
coming country's' like India and China would buy into it, then I
realized that they were going to get billions or trillions of dollars to
help them develop there economies in a green way. All the scientists
would loose massive grant money if it were to be proved untrue. With
global warming ALL governments get to extract more control (power) over
their citizens). Big business wins as they get to build the green
technology. The power companies win as they get to replace their old
plants with newer 'green' plants that probably employ less people, and
the get the PUC's to pass rate hikes to pay for it. I am not claiming
conspiracy, just a bunch of groups looking after there own interests.
Who losses? The middle class. They have to pay higher rates as
dictated by the PUC's. They have to pay for the 3rd W.C.'s to develop
green infrastructure. All products and services go up in price. Gas
prices go way up.
Some points I would like to see discussed:
1) Isn't NASA supposed to release all data, programs into the public
domain if not security related. Why the secrecy?
2) Why the secrecy at the CRU?
3) Have they proven that the email/source code was cracked and not
leaked by an insider?
4) Forget the email. Some of the source coded seems rather damming.
5) Why did the tree ring data diverge from the temperature data
around 1960? (Mike's nature trick)
6) As tree ring data diverged from temp. data, is it a valid proxy?
7) What happened to the medieval warm period and the little ice age
that was in the earlier IPCC report?
8) I saw a report from a geologist last week that said we are
entering period of global cooling and that this is a normal approximate
30 year cycle. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/292142
9) Phil Jones said that there was no statistically significant
warming that has happened in the last decade.
10) What happened to the Global cooling that was on the cover of Time
magazine in the late 70's
11) To make a significant dent in our CO2 emissions, would destroy our
economy completely.
Kyoto is supposed to keep emissions at 1990 levels? That
won't help if CO2 is the problem.
12) Where did all the temperature monitoring stations go? And why
are the remaining ones favoring warm places?
13) Refute www.surfacestations.org, about how the stations are sited
very badly.
14) A couple of months ago, someone (I don't remember who) from the
CRU said that half of the 0.6C rise was due to ocean current (Intertidal
something) I can't currently find this so ignore it for now.
15) I have heard that current models do not include clouds as a
factor, I think because their effect is to complex.
16) How do you disprove global warming as everything seems to be
caused by it?
17) Why is scientific consensus important? In what other fields of
science is consensus important?
18) I don't believe that there is consensus:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6
So in essence, I don't trust the raw data, and without that, garbage
in->garbage out.
And I am concerned with anything that will cut my standard of living in
half or worse. Remember Cap and Tax is just the start.
What if we spend 30 Trillion dollars and it turns out to be a naturally
occurring event. How do we get the money back?
Don't believe the above? What would it take to get back to 1850 carbon
emissions levels? Kill off 80% of the population?
I did see one scientist who was in the warming camp that said that
instead of trying to reduce emissions, we should be looking for ways to
deal with the effect of climate change.
I have a lot more questions but this should be a good start. If anyone
has any ideas where to move this debate (if it actual starts), I would
love to here them.
And I am not above being convinced. But pictures of glaciers calving
into the ocean are not convincing as if they did not do that, all the
oceans would be solid ice, as glaciers continually move to the sea. And
according to 'Deadliest Catch' the sea ice went much further south last
year than it had for many years.
Carl.
Bear Giles wrote:
> Actually for most of human history you didn't just dump stuff in a
> pit, the scraps were reused and reused again. It's only an extremely
> affluent society that can afford to toss things away, and an even more
> affluent society that can make crap that has to be thrown away because
> it has such low residual value. That's why the emphasis is on Reduce
> and Reuse first, with Recycle a distant third. That doesn't mean you
> have to make things cheaply, it means that you need to have more value
> from what you do make.
>
> (BTW I can't understand how anyone in Boulder, with all of the
> research labs, could have any doubt about the reality of global
> climate change. Maybe the cause is still open for debate, but not the
> existence of sustained and measurable change.)
>
>
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Maxwell Spangler
> <maxlists at maxwellspangler.com <mailto:maxlists at maxwellspangler.com>>
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 13:18 -0700, Dru Whitledge wrote:
> > Jeeze, I hate to even contemplate incurring the wrath of the tea
> > party or the right wing reptilian republicans -- but isn't this a
> > perfect function for "bigger government" -- at least a little bigger
> > -- at minimum managing the information part ??
> >
> > Free markets (and I like free markets, I really like 'em) can and
> > will do the job eventually, but are obviously (and historically)
>
> Thousands of years of humanity have gone by and we see the same
> problems: waste, corruption, tyranny, greed.
>
> Will a shift of responsibility from government to business via
> unregulated markets change this? Will a shift of responsibility from
> business to government via more regulation change this? I don't
> know..
> Probably depends on the specific industry and situation.
>
> The true solution is individuals recognizing right and doing so,
> recognizing wrong and avoiding it, and showing leadership to others by
> sharing these values and guiding others to follow them.
>
> This discussion on recycling our computers is important because it
> allows each of us as individuals to make a choice to do the right
> thing.
> If we start there and continue it with leadership -- sharing and
> guiding
> others to do the same -- we will effect real change in society.
>
> Somewhere along the way people join government and accept slow pace,
> waste and ineffective behaviours and it gets in the way of their
> ability
> to do the right thing. Somewhere along the way people join
> business and
> accept spending less money on safety, accident prevention and accident
> recovery and it gets in the way of their ability to do the right
> thing.
> Years later a coal mine explodes and workers die or an oil rig
> explodes
> and the situation cannot be contained. People blame the business,
> people blame government, but I wonder whether these would have
> happened
> if individuals defined their values and stuck to them despite the
> organizations they work within. Doing this is the real challenge.
>
> To me, how we deal with small issues today like recycling
> computers sets
> the stage for how we deal with bigger challenges in the future. I
> choose to consume less, reuse and recycle, and I choose to dispose of
> toxic things in the best way I know. I do so because I recognize
> it is
> right.
>
> Imagine what the world would be like if they had my conviction and
> went
> on to operate coal mines and oil rigs. Could we deal with less
> government regulation? Absolutely! But unfortunately I observe
> that my
> convictions are in the minority theses days so I'm satisfied with
> a fair
> amount of regulations to keep less principled people in check.
>
> PS. Glad to be part of a group of people who invest in such spirited
> discussion!
>
> --
> Maxwell Spangler
> ========================================================================
> Linux, Unix and Database Administration
> Currently: Boulder, Colorado
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maxwellspangler
>
>
>
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