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Rewriting Environmental Science
Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."
lol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
for a minute there, i lost myself...
Is that better than eminent?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
When the Polynesians found Easter Island, they found a paradise. Seas teeming with porpoises, huge edible palm trees, bountiful flightless birds and tillable soil from coast to coast.
Unfortunately, they also brought rats with them on their canoes.
The rats ate the birds and bird eggs. The trees were cut down for timber and kindling. The land was farmed to exhaustion. And the entire civilization that arose there quickly collapsed under its own weight.
The whole time, people thought things would last forever, but they couldn't see the end coming.
We have our rats too.
until this story doesn't exist
I recently spoke with an important public health official who told me it is his job to argue for science. Now I'm not sure of his political views and he may love the Bush administration for all I know, I found that interesting and think it applies a lot to what's going on right now with NASA.
That recent Bush appointee that tried to go against the Big Bang theory is just the sort of problem, as is recent funding cuts to NASA. I don''t just blame the current administration however--because it is the scientist's job to convince the public and politicians of the importance of their work, and it is clear that they are currently largely failing at this.
It belongs in both.
Why is this under a "more-reasons-to-privitize" department? I'm all for private ventures going into space, but you're quite delusional if you expect there to be any large scale investment in global warming research by the private sector. Yes, I know there might be some exceptions, but privitization is not going to give us better research.
Better rockets, cheaper missions, maybe... but, in general, this sort of basic scientific research is *exactly* the sort of thing the government should be doing. Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Not to sound like an ass, but I find this post a tad ironic... especially when the article linked above is talking about the problems of filtering science though politics.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
ExxonMobile and its supporters in Washington state, " The earth belongs to man; he can wreck the earth in any way that he sees fit ".
Before 2050, we will know which bit of wisdom is the right wisdom. By 2030, we will have burned up all easily retrieved oil. Significant portions of Artic and Antartic ice shelves will have melted away.
Unless we do something now to create carbon-neutral energy processes and to achieve zero-population growth, we -- rich and poor alike -- will face a miserable future of unstoppable climatic catastrophes.
"Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science." Well, that's what scientists to. As they search for the truth they refine thier views. Things change with new evidence. Politicians have to realize how science works.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
You would think if this person was being censored, he wouldn't be able to tell people he was being censored... or is this his cardboard "KIDNAPPED" sign in the back of the passing stationwagon? Either way, what's scientific about this article? Please file this under hysterics, conspiracy, and politics.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Son, we live in a world that has myths, and those myths have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, PrinceAshitaka? The President has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Big Bang Theory, and you curse the Baptists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the Theory's subversion, while tragic, probably saved souls. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves souls. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall. We use words like God, Intelligent, Design. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very mythology that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Bible, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
The politicization of science is an important issue for science. Why don't you think this is a science story?
It belongs to the science-dissection-by-politics section.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Isn't NASA a branch of the USAF? Wouldnt everyone working for them then be under military juristiction within which they actually *can* tell you what you can and cannot say publicly?
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
This all falls within what I would term as "scientific morality" and while that term has some scary images, the lack of a well laid out definition to scientists and the public could lead to disaster. Consider current trends in science showing : (a) Political control over science and publication of findings.b) Skewed guidelines involving the morality of scientists and science.(c) Lack of backbone in scientists in general to speak up in countries that are technically "free", many times just due to regard for a steady income, and intimated threats. In other words; what are the scientist's responsibilities to society ?(d) The potential for experiments to be conducted in Dangerous areas of research that could end up destroying humanity. (this would have been laughed at before the atom bomb)Included but not limited within this last category would be such things as; Artificial Black Holes,Worm Holes, Vortex theory, Biological Warfare, Nuclear Weapons; (bigger and better), Nano Gray Goo, Global Warming, on and on...Scientific Morality; could be simply defined somewhat as;Having enough wisdom not to destroy our world with knowledge that is beyond our mental ability to use.Responsibility to use said knowledge within certain guidelines, regardless of political influence.Here is a further link to other nightmare potentials of science; http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm Mystery
MYSTERY
I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to write off a geoshities site as a credible source of information (or as any source of information, for that matter).
I'm a hair over 20 years old and I've heard people bitch and moan about the end of the world, global warming, WW3, etc, since I was born. And frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of WW3 than global warming. While I'm all for alternative energy, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, and what not, all the bullshit from BOTH SIDES of the global warming argument have made me extremely cynical of wether or not it should be taken seriously.
Frankly (and I have absolutely no credentials to back up my opinion) I think the sea levels rising several meters of more in the next 20-30 years has about as much chance of occuring as Bush resigning from office so he can star in the next gay cowboy movie. Maybe if people would stop bitching about nuclear power and accept the fact it's 19233274928734 times better than burning shit loads of carbon compounds, the world would be a better place.
Quicktime
However we now live in an age when even this is being eroded and where the forces of politics, never the most rational of disciplines, feel safe in attempting to pervert its path. Will anyone really care? Will anyone notice? Scientific learning is looked down on. You are more likely to be admired in society for your knowledge of baseball scores than buckyballs.
I would suggest to our american colleagues that they look elsewhere for those that will value their work. The US isn't going to get better any time soon, whatever the shade of the next party in power. It's either that or organise your own political party and take control...
Because the Earth has finite surface area and finite resources?
There are plenty of ways to limit population growth, they're just all uncomfortable for the modern man to swallow.
Of course who cares? It doesn't matter now. We can just let our progeny suffer the consequences.
The Bush administration has made so many unsettling power consolidating moves since 2000 that a claim like this really isn't very suprising.
I highly recommend a documentary called "Why we fight"...
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
The links above don't work. Go here instead and click on the links.
We've got 10 years to get our emissions down, or we could be be looking at a flood that will compare to the legends of Atlantis and Noah as New Orleans does to an overflowing kitchen sink. If true, and I tend to think so, that's seriously scary. What are we doing about it? What can we do? Telecommute more? Better home insulation? Switch to subcompact cars? Use clotheslines instead of dryers? Replace coal plants? 10 years isn't much time. Like, not enough time for changes in zoning laws to reduce urban sprawl. We sure can't wait for the next election to throw the idiots out of office.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
...in TFA. He mentions in passing that the previous executive branch crew tried the same thing, but in an opposite manner, he was encouraged to overstate findings.
He's a member of the Illuminati, that's why!
m l
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/nwopopcontrol.sht
The other important, if not newsworthy, quote was
An organization with a culture like that might be right about something someday, but only by coincidence.The problem isn't because the politicians are rewriting the science.
It's because the scientists are rewriting the theology.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Careful taking this guy's point-of-view seriously.... if you don't want to take my word for it, read the smoke and mirrors his sig links to...
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
... the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now; try 60 billion on for size. As for the how ... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen one way or another.
Environmentalists say that the best thing you can do for the earth, the best way to conserve resources, is to not have more than two children. In retrospect, this is obvious
... it's "eminent scientist", not "imminent" ;)
/. puts in thoroughly cheking the submitted stories... ;)
From m-w.com :
Main Entry: imminent
: ready to take place; especially : hanging threateningly over one's head
Main Entry: eminent
3 : exhibiting eminence especially in standing above others in some quality or position : PROMINENT
It's always nice to see how much attention
Actually, if not for immigration, most of the first world would already be in population decline. When people get reasonably comfortable, and childhood mortality is negligible, children are deferred and one or two are sufficent for most to satisfy their need for procreation. We've got one and that was enough for us.
If you want to cut birthrates, it's not the men who are going to have to swallow.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You mean it belongs alittle in both.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Wasn't this the way that the aliens in the 'V' miniseries prevented the humans from figuring out what they were up to? Sounds like a pretty certain parallel to me. I bet Bush has a lizard face underneath that rubber mask.
...while they KNOW exactly that scientists ARE absolutely right. The awful truth is you will be greatful for that... because US government is preparing for worst case scenario - they know that world is facing imminent ( hey, there's that word again :) ) turmoil, which will produce large scale of instabilities, disasters (floods, storms), hungers, wars, probably even epidemies of tropical diseases hitting heavy populated former mild climate belts, and all this is already UNSTOPABLE, whatever we do now (too little, too late). So, they are counting on taking as much advantage as possible from this change, instead of attempting to stop it in vain. "Accepting responsibility" and "Doing something about it" would be noble thing to do, of course, but not much too wise.
Therefore, the 9/11 set of peculiar events are just excuse for fortifying against torrent of refugees that will pour "fore walls and gates", just warming up of engines for greater threats that are soon to come. Likewise is the frantical hunt against WMD - not because of the "mad dictators" who could use them for political reasons, but because they could be used a tool of a blackmail to extort food and drinking water from reserves of "the fortress". Decline to respect Kyoto accord is there for sole purpose of sustaining future (unavoidable) war preparations - producing more steel (CO2 generating process all along!), continuing armed forces training (including occasional local or regional war), etc.
After the Great Extinction of less fortunate human population ceises and US survives as least damaged and still strongest nation, THEN, in World undisputably BELONGING to strongest survivor, it WILL make sense to (it will pay to) try to repair the climate, not NOW. Now... it should be ignored and disputed.
http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/jun 05/carlson_060905_big.jpg - only a slight exaggeration, this really happened
Not necessarily; Developed countries undergo population implosions.
Schools in Japan are shutting down in a wave, starting with the first grades, and then pushing onward through the school. Sometimes, they just shut down entire floors in their schools.
This is happening elsewhere, as well.
People are seriously freaked out about this.
The thing I find amusing, is that many environmentalists have problems with this.
In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
And that strategy is totally being played out.
So when you tell them, "Hey, in Japan, they're freaking out, because people aren't having kids, and it seems to be because they're developed," it tends to not go over so well.
But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley
:-)
Well, when the imminent scientist actually becomes a real scientist, maybe then people will start listening to him
In Siberia, there is a forestry where the tress grows in pairs right next to each other.
While the common wisdom is that each individual trees need space around it to grow, the theory was that this was only true for capitalist trees. Rather than compete with each other for resources, socialist trees would cooperate for the common good.
Every official report from the forestry shows that the experiment was a great success.
Let me the first to make a slight correction to his statement. Republicans are rewriting the science. Republicans. Don't forget this.
With all due respect to James Hansen, the problem here is simple: just how many microseconds after scientists attempted to influence politics did you think it would take before politicians attempted to influence science?
We've seen it everywhere from the debate on Global Warming (where scientists have joined forces with ecologists to engage in massive social engineering in the form of the Kyoto accord) to the debate on evolutionary science (where fundamentalists attempted to redefine science with Intelligent Design) to the debate on gun control (where researchers have attempted to show a direct causal link between guns and crime) and pesticides (Alar, anyone?)
Now, whenever I see a news report on a political topic start quoting "scientists" or "researchers", I generally don't think "oh, good; a concerned scientist trying to weigh in on an important topic", but "whose special interest money is paying for this guy?"
It's hard to play in the mud and not get muddy yourself.
At first thought it might seem like the only way to limit the birthrate would be draconian or orwellian methods - nothing palatable to be sure. However, the truth is much simpler than that.
There is a long-observed direct corrolation between poverty and birth rate. Societies with greater poverty have higher birthrate. Even in China it's commom for city-dwellers to observe the 1-child rule, but poor farmers still have families of 6 or 7 simply because they need all the labor to help create an income. The same is true in the slums of Calcutta where children are needed to rifle through trash piles looking for recyclable goods. This happens across all the great poverty centers: Manilla, Bangkok, Mumbai, Calcutta, Nairobi, Cairo, etc.
Japan is a perfect example of the opposite. They have a NEGATIVE birthrate because the affluence of their society has led many to chose not to have children.
The solution to overpopulation will come hand-in-hand with our solution to many other injustices: great a fair distribution of resources and we'll be able to live sustainable on our planet.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
I fully agree that Washington politics on the environment sucks. But why bring Native Americans into this? Like pretty much all other societies, they caused extinctions, destroyed the environment, and didn't keep their population in check (at least not by choice).
Native American sayings are not a good guideline for modern policies. Tackling issues of sustainability will require science and technology.
In light of this and many other recent stories, I don't believe that we can believe ANY US government agencies any longer when it comes to scientific subjects.
If even the most eminent (or immanent?) scientists in a field can be censored in this way I need a whole new salt shaker (to take pinches from.)
I recall that the Soviets used to send off dissenters to spend a little holiday in the gulags. The White House seems more civilised about it, but they strive for the same effect.
How many trees would need to be planted so that if all other factors remain normal (population growth, green house gas emissions), our net CO2 emissions would start to decline ?
There are more then 10 million people in tokyo alone. You really think Japan can support the population it has now? Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.
Unfortunately they have painted themselves into a corner. The future of mankind is exactly like japan today. This pyramid scheme where the young work to finance the old is going to collapse sooner or later. We can hold if off for a while by opening up the floddgates and letting the dark people work to support us but even that's going to collapse sooner or later.
If japan is to run itself sustainably it probably needs to have something like four or five million people tops.
evil is as evil does
Clearly you haven't heard about the new male Pill.
You take it the morning after sex and it changes your DNA!
" Japan has eaten through it's tree population"
Incorrect. Japan has a large forest coverage, but it chooses to protect this by using cheap imports of wood.
"Population control" is quite a frightening subject once one begins to study the depths of it.
I wrote about five paragraphs after this sentance and deleted it all. I'll just throw out some names of some of the biggest supporters of population control:
Stalin, Hitler, Sanger, Blavatsky..
In zoology, there is ample evidence to show that population growth is self-restraining. That there are several factors, including access to natural resources that control popultion sizes. Why should human intervention even be required? population control has throughout history been a convenient excuse for genocide and the wholesale depopulation of 'undesirable' segments of society. Someone made the suggestion that by eliminating poverty we could control population. Maybe they would agree that population might be more "under control" if we took the shortcut of killing all the poor people.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
>> In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
I am curious to hear your sources.
Here in Holland, many times i see the same problem. Close to where i live, the government wants to build a highway to relieve congestion on a parallel highway. So they hired scientists to study the effects of the new road. It turned out the road would make things worse: instead of relieving the congestion on the other road, it would increase congestion on every other main road in the surroundings.
The scientists, knowing what would happen, leaked this result immediately to the press, but the final report got stowed away in a very deep drawer. Parliamant had a tough job to get the report out of this drawer again.
But. Then came the obligatory environmental impact study. In this study, the former report is completely ignored. The vast increase of congestion is not taken into account in an evironmental impact assessment!
If the politicians have it their way (and they must be quick, everyone knows they will get their asses kicked next elections) we'll have a road that increases the congestion, costs about a billion euro's of tax money and will terribly damage the environment and landscape. But the construction firms will be very happy.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Why would environmentalism be against technology and developing? Progression is not one-dimensional, you see. Almost all environmentalists i know, are really into technology and innovation. They like high-tech renewable energy-systems. Some develop lightweigt vehicles. You know what's the main reason for farmers to switch to organic farming? Theye're curious, they want to try something new. It's the conservative farmers and technicians that stick to unsustainable methods.
Environmentalists (even most from the dreadlock-type) want development and technology. They just want it to take another direction, a light-weight, energy-efficient and elegant route. They think one can have a high (or even higher) standard of living with much less environmental impact.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Population growth is most likely to reach a sustainable limit and level off for a LONG time until we find a way to move beyond the Earth. Most industrialized countries are experiencing population shrinkage (the US would be if it wasn't for immigration). As more and more countries approach a point of full industrialization their demographics will likely shift in much the same way everyone elses has. They will go from booming populations to slowly growing ones to ones that oscillate over long periods of time to reach a sustainable limit. I've heard that this limit is as low as 20 billion people. Birth rates in industrial nations do not much outpace death rates because wealthier better educated people simply do not (on average) have 8 kids.
Bungo!
I think you're leaving out a few factors, though... tradition and religion, for example.
/until/ they had the 5th or 6th child and had to pay for their education, etc.
If a society traditionally has large families, then it doesn't matter whether they live in poverty or health - they're likely keep that tradition.
As for religion - there's highly catholic families here who have 7-9 children. Not because they're poor - in fact, most of them lived in wealth
Of course these probably don't even begin to offset all the people who decide to have only 1 child or no children at all.
Surely, the U.S. has laws against this sort of thing, does it not? If the administration is doing the sort of thing that Hansen is alleging, it would be grounds for criminal indictment, wouldn't it? (Sorry, this is coming from a non-US citizen here.)
http://outcampaign.org/
Are you gonna ask us next to "Open the curtains and admire God's beautiful word, and know that even global warming happens for a reason"? Where to they teach you to talk like this? In some Texaco-city, "Cowboy wanna pump-pump"-bar, or is this Sunday and your last glass at communion? Sell christian somewhere else, we're all stocked-up here! (Noise of Heaven's gates loudly slamming shut follows) ...
I personally, would be dead, but I imagine there would be a bit less population on the planet right now over all..
(and it would suck)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
He actually meant immanent scientist. This guy is everywhere!
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510042
When analyzing the mean-year trend of the Earth's surface temperature for the past 140 years one can discern two sections of monotone linear increase of temperature during two last industrial centuries. The first one begins somewhere in the period 1906-1909. The previous segment demonstrates a weak decrease in the temperature trend, not increase. For explanation of this sudden break we look for a phenomenon of cosmic scale during this time which could have given rise to beginning of global warming with a significant probability. On the 30th June 1908 Tungus meteorite exploded with the power of ~15 Mt TNT at an altitude of ~10 km. Such an explosion could cause considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure in mesosphere. The difference between this mesosphere catastrophe and atmospheric nuclear tests that cause another break in the temperature plot is discussed. The purpose of this report is to open the debate and to encourage discussion among scientists.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I thought "V" was for "Vendetta."
There is an article in the latest issue of New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925434.300 .html
Probably they didn't actually die off until they came in contact with Europeans.
the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now
I keep seeing this rubbish pop up, and I keep knocking it down. Repeat after me, the earth is not overpopulated. You could quite comfortably fit the entire population of the planet in the state of texas with a house and a small garden each. Thats one per man woman and child. Move it to family units and you have a nice big house and a decent bit of land. There is a global food surplus, and its massive, I recall back in the 90s there was a lot of talk about the "bread mountains and wine lakes" of the EU. The problem has always been distribution, and the half cocked dictators and fucked up factions messing with it.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
You are either playing ignorant to get your point in the door, or you are seriously out of touch with the environmentalist community. Or, you are in touch with the environmentalist community, but are seeking to wash it's past out, or claim it's name in service of your ideals, and make it more acceptable to the general public.
Regardless, I find the method of communication irritating right now.
And regardless, I will answer your question: Many environmentalists are against technology because it very regularly leads to unsustainable development practices (such as reliance on oil) and environmental catastrophy (Global Warming, nuclear fallout, clearcutting, soil depletion...) Many environmentalists also oppose it, because they find the technology alienating. Very few people define themselves as just environmentalists; There are usually a collection of concerns that group themselves together.
I have pro-technology environmentalist friends, I also have anti-technology or pro-split technology environmentalist friends. (Separate the "bad" technology from the "appropriate" technology.) I spend time at communes, visit ecovillages, and do all sorts of different trippy things with weird people. Have you? The key word (or banner,) (which you repeated yourself,) is "sustainable," and a bunch of these environmentalists just plain don't believe in technology. They don't see the infrastructure behind manufacturing chips as a sustainable process. Some do. Regardless, most believe in, or at least support, the mythologizing of nature. (I do myself! But for different reasons. I believe in mythologizing everything.)
Here's an experiment to try:
Go visit your local eco village. Start talking about technology, start talking about genetic manipulation, start talking about virtual reality, start talking about pervasive computing, and start talking about the technological singularity. See how far you can get, before people start getting worried or strained looks on their faces. Report back on your experiment here.
I find it funny how many stories are coming out of the same NASA lab about how they are constantly being censored, and aren't allowed to talk to anyone. OK, then how do these stories keep coming out?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration has manipulated information coming out of the lab for their own political benefit, since that is what politicians do. What gets me, is how many high-profile stories I keep seeing about how these people aren't allowed to do interviews. I mean, logic would say that if they aren't allowed to voice their opinion, then they wouldn't be on TV voicing their opinion.The definition of censorship has obviously been softened a lot recently, when you can go on TV and talk about how you are being censored, and what is being censored. I mean, I have been reading articles about how these people aren't allowed to say anything, pretty much since Bush got into office, yet they still seem to have websites up, and go to conferences, and make all sorts of press statements. It is certainly an insidious form of censorship.
I'm not even sure how you tell if someone is being censored any more. In the old days, you could tell because they weren't allowed to say anything. These days I guess you just have watch them on network TV so they can tell you how badly their free speech is being trampled.
Hmm, what's next, people launching $100,000,000 ad campaigns to let us know they don't have any money?
Yeah - if he wants to be free to speak candidly about global warming, he should become a climate scientist in the private sector - like for Exxon-Mobil or somebody.
This space available.
Science and politics don't get on well.
The problem is that politics tries to categorise things into good and bad {and, sometimes, indifferent} whereas pure science does not make such distinctions. Pure scientific phenomena are neither good nor bad; they just are.
For instance, there exists a very simple scientific experiment which would determine once and for all whether or not humans an chimpanzees belong to the same genus. It probably will never be conducted, for political reasons.
The question which remains to be answered is, can political methods be used to control the spread of scientific knowledge? Up until a few years ago I would have thought a resounding NO. Today, I'm not so certain. As technology advances inevitably further and further beyond the understanding of the common person, and so deeper into the domain of multi-national corporations, its uses are being controlled by ever more draconian laws. There is a very real possibility that the world could enter a new Dark Age.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I first learned about Japanese schools closing through a friend, and then confirmed it by talking with another friend's wife, Yumiko. "It's because people are being selfish," she said, with some anger.
My research into NEET, freeters, hikikomori, support this.
As for the environmentalists:
-- the Unibomber Manifesto
You may also want to read Adbusters, Daniel Quinn, and whatever other primitivist tract you can find.
Myself, I just know these things because I've been steeped in the culture of community health centers, co-ops, IndyMedia, various movements and efforts.
I was in the community health center, the other day. I decided to look through the books they had available for kids. I picked one up about a couple of young kids (9? 10? 11? 12?) that find a portal to the future. In the future, the world has been picked apart "by technology," but there's this thriving citadel of Gaia: Where the people have no technology, and have a huge organized society, and have all these rules against developing any sort of technology.
The boy has a prolicivity to inventing, and gets these ideas about machines to make, and things like that. The girl is more "in touch with nature," though, and doesn't see what's so necessary about the boy's machine making.
The long trials in the book are all dedicated to showing that they boy's prolicivities are wrong, and should be avoided, at all costs.
The story ends with the boy realizing the error of his ways, and realizing he should be paying more attention to the universal sisterhood of nature.
I don't remember the name of the book; Sorry. But it's not really tricky to find; These kinds of messages are all over the place.
Here's another source: My best friend Phil. Phil's been my best friend since around 4th grade. (I'm 28, right now.) He went more the green route, me more the technology route. We've stayed up many late nights, talking over all sorts of things. I remember tromping through the golden grass fields back of UCSC. (We both grew up in Santa Cruz.) I remember him telling me about how all the top soil would be gone within 10 years, and there'd be no more food for anybody.
At any rate, we've had many discussions about activist strategy, and we've talked about mythologizing environmentalism several times. I think he thought it was a good idea. Myself, I love nature, but I also love computers and machines and buildings.
I don't have a book or a plan guide that I can point you to, and say: "There! There it is! The master plans! The blueprints!" I imagine there are several of them, floating out there. (EcoTopia?) But I assure you, this is quite real; This is a motive force; People are doing this. First hand, I tell you, people have been talking about this.
It's no more surprising than car manufacturers mythologizing cars.
I read a scientific prediction on the limit of population growth. It will stop at 9 thousand millions in the best case and 12 in the worst case. It's Africa, which has a relatively low population, which will grow the most in the next years. Asia is already slowing down, and Europe and America are decreasing.
I'm sorry I can't tell the reference, I don't have it at hand right now.
Of course, this is if Mother Earth doesn't get fed up with our stupidity and then decides to eliminate a great portion of us with some horrendous plague.
That is a myth.
The fact is disease killed 90% of the Indians when there was contact with the first explorers in the new world. Yet, when settlers and colonists arrived decades later they saw a land of milk and honey. Buffalo every where and abundance. What happened? There were no hunters because they were killed by disease decades earlier and the animal populations exploded. Thus, we have the myth of how Indians were in harmony with the environment.
Not to mention Indians sold captured English colonists to the French and scalped people all the time.
Another bit of wisdom that I read in a co-worker's office:
When the last tree has fallen, when the last river has dried, and the last fish caught, then men will learn that they can't eat money.
In a famous article in a 1967 issue of Science, scientist and Christian Lynn White argues that western Christianity is largely responsible for this attitude, on the basis of Genesis 1:28 "fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
There is certainly some justification for this idea, I have heard it taught in churches in my lifetime. I've been looking into it a little recently.
The 'dominion hypothesis' does not seem to be common in early Jewish writings, and therefore was probably not dominant in the early church either. Augustine's commentary on Genesis does not promote it, although he mentions the idea in passing elsewhere. Aquinas however does support a dominion view, although he bases his argument on natural law rather than Genesis. Luther's commentary on Genesis notes that dominion was granted to Adam and Eve before the fall, but that fallen humanity might would be a bad choice to exercise such power.
St Francis of course was a proto-animal liberationist, but his views were at odds with the dominant viewpoint over most of church history. However, the foundation of the (R)SPCA in Britain (which in turn lead to similar organisations elsewhere), was certainly informed by Christian viewpoints. However, animal liberation is probably peripheral issue within the environmental movement as a whole, since its core concern in animals alive today rather than the future of the planet.
The World Council of Churches has been publishing reports opposing this viewpoint for 30 years, and most hierarchical denominations including the Roman Catholic cheurch have also come out against the dominion viewpoint more recently. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still taught at grass roots level. Catholic teaching of course has some difficulties to resolve with population stabilistation.
On the whole, I would say that there is certainly justice to White's accusation. The difficulty comes in separating the damage done by western industiralisation from the progress acheived. If the dominon (mis-)reading of Genesis is responsible for the damage western civilisation has done to the environment, then must it not also be given the credit for the benefits we have reaped in terms of healthcare, standard of living, increased leisure and so on? However, clearly on the basis of current scintific opinion it needs to be vigorously opposed.
Wikipedia on Lynn White
Land area of texas 261,914 sq miles
6 1%2C914+sq+miles+%2F+6601891967+
e nce8.jpg
http://www.netstate.com/states/tables/st_size.htm
Population of the earth 6601891967
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
math?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=2
102.751476 m2
Yep, you can build a house for everyone in that 10 meters on a side parcel.
Your can have the top L5 section
http://paces.geo.utep.edu/seeley/proterozoic_sequ
enjoy!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
James Hansen has been pulling media stunts like this for nearly 20 years now. Back in 1988, he made a breathless presentation to the Senate, in which he flatly declared that based on his computer model, the upcoming winter of 1988-89 would be the warmest on record.
It turned out to be one of the coldest instead. Hansen's allegedly "perfect" model didn't even include 73 percent of the Earth's surface--the oceans.
The guy's a crank, and a fraud, and a funding whore, but the media (and LeftDot syncophants) lap it up every time.
1. Disclaimer. I do not know to what extent humans affect the weather compared to "natural" phenomena.
2. Compare to (1) I am more confident that the global warming takes place now.
3. Humans are capable in principle to change the climate drastically (for example, "nuclear winter" scenario seems quite realistic).
4. The message coming from (1-3) is pretty clear: "controlled nuclear winter" to offset "greenhouse summer". Blow up some of them Russian nukes in the stratosphere above both poles and see what happens.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
There's no story here people. Well, wait. I guess there is a story. The same uncredible news media organization that brought you faked-with-microsoft-word memos to support a story critical of the president now trots out a scientist who himself has a severe credibility problem in order to beat a dead horse of a story about the Bush administration wanting to censor a lunatic who has publically avowed the need to use alarmist rhetoric to focus attention on his pet issue.
The only difference between north american indians - those "noble savages" - and europeans is that there wasn't enough of them to effectivly fuck things up on big enough a scale to make a difference.
Ever heard of Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump?
It's in Alberta. Look it up - see what happened there. Keep it in mind the next time you hear somebody decry the horrors of the seal hunt.
People are doing it, no doubt. Whether a significant portion of environmentalists - whatever that word exactly means - does it is a different story. And of course, it has no relevance at all to the points of the more practically minded environmentalists, who are looking for sustainable development because, you know, anything less is obviously insane.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
My brother was eminent when my eminence was merely imminent. (Niles Crane on Frazier)
You misspelled "Dated Wisdom from a Hollywood Hack."
Damn, I ran out of mod points, that was funny.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
If the need for profit were eliminated from our global resource allocation system, the need for horrendous waste would be eliminated, and greed would become irrelevant. Power hungry assholes could indulge themselves in some other way, hopefully one that wont destroy our environment.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Earth's population is currently held at artificially high levels because the availibility of cheap energy and chemical supplies in the form of Fossil Fuels.
When the Fossil Fuels run out, we are going to find we can't feed everyone properly and the human population is going to crash, we can either choose to limit population now and decrease it slowly over time or we let Mother Nature choose the appropriate population over a decade or so. I know which I would prefer
Of course, we might find a cheap plentiful supply of energy and chemical feed stock which would avert that situation, but it's unlikely.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
I'm sure he was sincere, but Ted Kaczynski isn't really representative of any mainstream, and very few lunatic, environmentalists.
What are you using the ice shelves for? And I hate cold weather. Global warming needs to hurry up and get here already. It'll be better for the 12 year olds in Singapore that make my coats.
People have less kids because in developed nations they are more of a burden than anything else. In developing countries, you need lots of kids to help farm.
Donald Trump just had his 5th yesterday.
What experiment? I personally have almost no ethics and more than enough money to travel to a country with zero law enforcement (I hear Somalia is nice) and perform any simple experiment, and have no objection to quitting my job and studying biology for a few years. Particularly if the end result of all this is to further discredit various religions.
As far as I'm aware, DNA sequencing has already proved the hypothesis beyond resonable doubt anyway... what problems am I missing?
Please reply ASAP...
The fact is this Hanson guy is a whore and is just dancing for glory with the media. This is old non-news, busted out weeks ago and rehashed for commercial gain by CBS.
Listen to Rush or Hanity today... they'll see this as nuth'in more than piling on by the leftist media to bash Bush. Oh yeah, that's also rehashed for commercial gain by talk radio.
How much fun can we have?
Your post reads very much as an horror story to me.
You see, there are two sides in the Global Warming arena:
- One that says: Global Warming is happening and will turn into a catastrofe. We have to DO SOMETHING before it's too late.
- The other says: Global Warming is not really happing, and even if the temperatures are going up it's all part of the normal long-term cycle of temperature variance. We NEED NOT DO ANYTHING about it.
Both sides support their positions by putting out "scientific" opinions.
The side that defends DOING SOMETHING has to convince people that there is a real problem and we can do something about it.
The side that defends the option of NOT DOING ANYTHING just has to make people not fully believe either side. If they make people cynical about both side's arguments (ie, using FUD techniques) they will have achieved their aim of carrying on as usual and not having to do act on the global warming problem.
By just spreading confusion the Bush team can avoid that enough voters are so convinced of the critical nature of the global warming problem that they press the current US administration to do something about it. If not pressed by enough voters, they can keep on sidding with the lobbyists that fund their campaigns.
Almost all environmentalists i know, are really into technology and innovation.
:-(
Unfortunatly that doesn't seem to be how they come off.
Some develop lightweigt vehicles.
Lightweight vehicals don't offer as much protection. They're also worse in areas where snow is a fact of life. Finally, I haven't seen lightweight vehicles that can tow a boat or camper.
You know what's the main reason for farmers to switch to organic farming?
Because it costs less (no need for pesiticides) and they can sell it for more. For some reason, organic seems to cost more than non-organic foods. Also, many farms are labeling food organic when its not actually organic at all.
They think one can have a high (or even higher) standard of living with much less environmental impact.
Unfortunatly environmentally friendly is more expensive
Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: "Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it."
Uhhh... well you're on TV right now. The White House can't censor 60 Minutes, dude. Fucking say it.
"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public," says Hansen.
What restrictions? Dude! You're on 60 Minutes as you say this complaining that the White House won't let you say exactly what you're saying. How in the fuck are you being restricted?
How does it escape all these people that they are on a national television program and not only are they saying all the things that they claim the White House won't let them say, they're able to EXPOSE the White House for doing this. I just don't get it. The official White House press releases can say whatever the hell Bush wants, he claim the world is made of pink elephant shit if he wants, that's his administration and its business. But clearly nobody is being forbidden from making their opinion known and getting the truth out there. This guy isn't going to be locked up and thrown in prison for publically disagreeing with the president. That's the kind of shit that happens in Iran. And, until recently, Iraq. The irony is lost on these people, that they sit around bitching about how their freedoms are being eroded while simultaneously combating our efforts to secure those freedoms for anybody else.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
From Wikipedia:
"Truthiness is the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination. Stephen Colbert popularized the word during the first episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd.""
What our government and half of the voting population considers to have a lot of truthiness:
"Pollution can always be reversible and not only is under control but over-hyped"
"The USA Leading (aka ""protecting"") the free and the not-so-free world is God's plan"
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
If these "imminent" scientists are being gagged, restricted, etc. by the Bush administration, then how is it we are always hearing about it?
You really want to know this? O.K. Don't say you were not warned. I have rot-13 encoded it, just in case it gives anybody nightmares. I repeat: do not attempt to decode this if you are at all capable of being offended!
Betnavfzf juvpu orybat gb gur fnzr fcrpvrf {sbe vafgnapr, gur qbzrfgvp qbt naq gur jvyq jbys} pna cebqhpr bssfcevat pncnoyr bs oerrqvat.
Betnavfzf juvpu orybat gb qvssrerag fcrpvrf jvguva gur fnzr trahf {sbe vafgnapr, gur ubefr naq gur qbaxrl} pna cebqhpr bssfcevat, ohg gur bssfcevat ner vapncnoyr bs oerrqvat.
V guvax lbh pna jbex bhg gur erfg sbe lbhefrys.
Sorry, but you did ask. If you hadn't been an AC, I could have contacted you by another means.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I saw a tongue-in-cheek poster at the Society for Neuroscience a few years ago, in which the authors compared portrayals of different professions in a large number of movies. Overall, the most negatively portrayed profession was murderer, and scientists were right in there at #2. The methods employed for this survey involved beer and pizza.
The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what science is, what it's useful for, or what scientists do. To be fair, it's not a question with a simple answer like 42. But it's not surprising that people who make policy decisions at all levels of government know nothing whatsoever about science. It's mis-portrayed almost completely in the media, and probably mis-taught at all levels of education. Scientists are not valued by society in any meaningful way.
Any scientist whose work is in the popular press probably has a story about how their work was portrayed in a way to mislead, not inform people. Perhaps someone will repost the link to that recent insightful article about how few science reporters have any science background.
The government has been rewriting science more blatantly in environmental sciences than in other areas. But it's the other kind of rewriting that's more insidious and harmful. Necessarily, most science funding comes from the government. They decide what to fund and what not to fund. Serious scientists get input into this decision, but not the last word. What's insidious about it is that no individual scientist is doing what they do because the government told them. But since there's such an oversupply of scientists, including a healthy supply interested for their own reasons in doing the specific things the government would like, the government can shape science to whatever extent they want without there ever being a single scientist who was specifically influenced.
His employer, the US govt, pays him to work and find out things for it. Not for anyone else. Work for hire.
If he had wanted to preserve his free speech, he ought to have chosen a different employment. Acedemic work would be obvious.
That link is funny, I haven't laughed at wackos on the internet enough lately!!!!
I am dubious it costs less on a per unit yield basis. Otherwise why wouldn't every farmer be doing it? It's the higher-priced niche market that makes it profitable.
Reminds me of a post I saw on usenet a while back where a guy was wondering why he had to pay extra to his power company to buy his electricity from renewable sources. Shouldn't they give him a discount instead to encourage its use?
You're right though that often the cheapest, most convenient way to do something is rarely the most environmentally friendly.
I don't know what kind of environmentalists you hang out with, but as a born and bred son of Oregon hippies, I think you are full of shit. Most environmentalists are far more educated and open minded and pro-technology than you give them credit for. However, where I think you get confused is believeing that pro-coal burning power plant is somehow the equivalent to being pro-technology. I think most environmentalists are, almost by definition, liberal, progressive, pro-progress, pro-equality, and striving towards both inner and external perfection. They are pro-technology because when they look around they say, "there must be a way to do this better." For most environmentalist, this is an inherintly pro-technology stance.
I have a new experiement to try.
Go visit your local Baptist (or any religion, really) church or even a professional football stadium. Start talking about technology, genetic manipulation, virtual reality, prevasive computing, nanotechnology. See how far you can get. Compare your results to your previous results in the "eco village" and see which group is more open to your ideas. I belive that the environmentalists, where they do disagree with you vision, are more likely to be able to express an alternative vision and be able to intelligently debate. Who knows, you might even learn something.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
There is no need to limit population growth nature has a way of keeping populations in check. Aids, Sars, and soon the Bird Flu are natures way of curbing the population. The best way to thin the herd is WAR requiring males of breeding age to fight for their country is a good way to slow the reproduction rates. So I guess Bush is doing his part to help out the enviroment after all.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
The question is always, what technology. As an experiment, you can also visit your local eco village and talk about exciting high-tech area's like solar cells, wind turbines, permaculture or integrated agriculture. You can also go to the local right-wing party and talk about these things. Note the difference in perception.
I think there are many more brands of environmentalists than the 'weird people' you talk about. I'm not into mythologizing, so i have less chance to meet people who mythologize. Anyways, the environmentalists i meet do not tend to mythologize nature. They know nature is cruel, but insist nature can live without man, but man can't live without nature. They like to spend time in nature, but who doesn't. A lot of them would never live outside a city.
Trust me, I work for the government.
EdGCM http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ comes out of the NASA GISS lab http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ that James Hansen heads. EdGCM lets you run your own climate model on your computer! Check it out!
Space and Computers.
This man was an employee and his superiors had every right to edit his analysis any way they deemed fit. just because he was a 'scientist' doesn't mean everything he wrote was factual.
These citizens also saw foresaw Vietna-typem and Iraq-type wars, and they knew understood what the tough part of winning these wars would be:
I liked visiting /. for years, until the dirty hippie liberals came here and took over like they do everywhere. But they are not going to drive me away!
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html
imminent Audio pronunciation of "imminent" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-nnt)
adj.
About to occur; impending: in imminent danger.
vs.
eminent Audio pronunciation of "eminent" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-nnt)
adj.
1. Towering or standing out above others; prominent: an eminent peak.
2. Of high rank, station, or quality; noteworthy: eminent members of the community.
3. Outstanding, as in character or performance; distinguished: an eminent historian. See Synonyms at noted.
Thanks for the prompt reply. However, that experiment has been done already (on Stalin's orders). It failed, the chromosome numbers don't match. I suppose it might be interesting to revisit it with modern fertility and genetic engineering techniques, but it wouldn't prove much if you have to genetically alter one of the subjects first.
BTW, it's hardly an offensive idea by Slashdot standards. Some of the troll posts are much worse, you should try a week reading at -1.
weren't those the bad guys from the cartoon series, "Gargoyles?"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is your co-worker the Onceler from The Lorax? I always wondered what happened to that guy...
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/01061 5071248.htm
Yeah it's not like we live on a 13 Mm diameter sphere of molten hot resources or anything...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
liberals: "yay for 60 minutes! global warming is REAL! Bush lied!"
others: "Wow, what an insubordinate little bitch, thank goodness he was fired.
HMMM, i wonder what's on channel 8 right now."
This is what you get when the big business lobby takes over the government. What did you expect?
If he makes a film as good as his last one (or better), more folks will be in the know.
(Granted, a lot of people won't see it because it challenges what they already believe to be true. If you find such a person, do your patriotic duty. Kill them.)
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
There is an idiom in English for reporting a text containing a misspelling or other inappropriate usage. The poster should have written:
But this imminent (sic) scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush..."
This points out the mistake to the reader while indicating that the poster recognized it.
Jim was mainly persecuted by a 24-year old appointed to NASA's PR department by the administration (instead of normal job application channels because he done campaign work). This kid made the news because he had falsely claimed two college degrees he didnt have and was fired. Jim should lighten up now. If you cant beleive the kids resume, then his press releases are probably all fake too.
the location of YOUR PLOT... my rebuttal was the last link... a lot of TEXAS ain't home building sites.
Further,
yes, you can LIVE in that much space, but can you eat, clother, drink, and reduce waste from that much of the planet?
it's not enough that you have space to live, as space for your
FOOD TO COME FROM, WATER TO COME FROM, WASTE TO DISPOSE OF, CLOTHES & house manufacture? the list goes on.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
-He's a GOVERNMENT employee-
Exactly, he is his own boss. He is working for himself to give himself the best information possible.
It's amazing how many self-important geeks (aka scientists, engineers, etc...) just don't "get" the business world. You have a job. You do work and submit work to your boss. You get paid. The boss gets to do whatever he wants with the work you did for him. Years ago I wrote reports on weapon system performance for my boss. He didn't like my conclusions so he rewrote them. I simply took my name off the reports. I left a little while later. Sounds like James Hansen needs to work for the Sierra Club. So... whatever happened the prediction in 1979 of global cooling? The snow stayed on the ground all summer in Buffalo, NY. Heck, even Spock went out on a limb in his "In Search of" TV show about global cooling.
So because the purveyors of lies and the purveyors of truth both are flawed humans, you're not going to listen to either of them even though you can tell which is which? Lunacy.
Who is trying to gain more power -- the politician or the scientist? Surely the fact that being a politician is the business of wielding power implies the former? Who has the greater vested interest -- a scientist working for the government whose coming to the press could at best get him a book deal, or the politician representing the power of the U.S. government and the lobbyists of multi-billion dollar multinationals?
It's like the Bush administration who tried to discredit Clark by saying he had a conflict of interest in promoting his book. And the Bush administration had no vested interest... except for defending the "preemptive war" doctrine of the only superpower. Surely these interests are equal...
Or maybe, as the many who have come forward to describe the truth-fudging of the administration suggest, they aren't. Maybe one has a little more vested interest in muddying the truth. Naw, couldn't be... both are human!
Of course scientists are human. Of course they want things for themselves. Yet lying and fudging answers is not a good way to get what you want in the field of science. Look at Fleischmann and Pons, who went to the press with research that wouldn't as it stood withstand peer review. Their fame is limited to having their names be synonymous with disgraced scientists.
Is it thus plausible that every scientist who believes global warming and climate change are occuring, which is virtually every one not tied to a party with a vested interest in denying these are occuring, is themselves operating solely for their agendas and not science?
Scientists will always be human. If them being human is your reason for disregarding them (as well as every other human, I would presume) then that's just laziness. Engage your brain, use critical thinking, and try to see for yourself what the truth is through the noise caused by everyone's respective bias. And don't be afraid of the common-sense conclusion that one group may in fact be more biased than another.
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course! If he's everywhere that means he's omnipresent. Who else do we know who's omnipresent? Someone who goes under the stage name of "YHWH" and who we have no pictures of.
So obviously James Hansen is God! He uses His omniscience to warn us of the impeding catastrophe! You might ask why He doesn't simply make the US government let him talk. The answer is that the current US government is His doing! He got pissed because His puppy got run over by an SUV and now He wants to punish us by telling us what's going to happen while making sure that the US government will never, ever react!
Whoa.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
> Why would we need to limit population growth
I had an interesting conversation with my department (Physics) chair once. He pointed out a very practical limit on the human population of Earth, specifically the amount of solar energy which reaches the Earth. If we assume that 100% of the solar energy reaching Earth is converted into food for people, that limit is less than an order of magnatude away from where we are now. Sadly, I don't recall the specific number he said, but I want to think it was in the area of 2x to 3x the current population of Earth. That isn't really all that far away.
"And management of the earth belongs to charismatic leaders who can lead hoi polloi on cruscades in their quest for power."
Yeah, I can see where this is heading.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The coming heat death is a good thing. It will provide humanity a second chance if enough survive to re-establish civilisation. It has to happen.
From wikipedia
"The nation's forest resources, although abundant, have not been well developed to sustain a large lumber industry. Of the 245,000 km of forests, 198000 km are classified as active forests."
245000/377835(area of japan)= around 65%.
I don't know why you think what you think, but I can't honestly say that having 65% of your land area covered by forests really supports the idea that
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood."
In fact, that statement is just ridiculous.
The fact is that forests in Japan are hard to reach, so logging them is more expensive than importing from somewhere else.
So, my I ask you a serious question? Why would you post something that you hadn't researched? Any search at all would have given you the information I have.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Maybe people should try The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
It's no joke, it's The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement!
The documents were proven to be forgeries by Peter Tytell, proof of which was even included in CBS's own Thornburgh-Boccardi report. It's in Appendix 4.
You can't spin this as a liberal versus conservative thing,
Yes - normally you'd expect Conservatives to be FOR conservation.
Intead - they seem to just want to expend our world's resources as quickly as possible. Oh. I'm sorry. "Their" world's resources.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's funny you should put it in a formal argument like that. Just last night, I was thinking about the Catholics' interesting stance on faith and reason - namely, that they are not incompatible and if your faith seems to disagree with sound reasoning, you're misunderstanding either the articles of your faith of the results of the reasoning. I was also thinking of it in a formal way much like yours:
Axiom: The articles of Catholic faith are true.
Axiom: The conclusions of sound reasoning are true.
Therefore: Any apparent contradiction between faith and reason is a misunderstanding.
I really rather like it. It's a good way for a religion to save face and maintain backward compatibility (to use an analogy) while still keeping up with the progress of science. So long as they don't intentionally misunderstand the science to leave it compatible with their faith. It seems of the two, faith is the harder one to ground in fact or otherwise justify (kind of by it's nature), and so would be the one more appropriately prone to change in understanding in the face of an apparent contradiction.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
This was reported on NPR back in January, Hansen was on an interview shortly thereafter (early February, if I remember right), and has been reported online in great detail, including George Deutschs fall from grace after he was exposed as a fraud.
e ak-no-evil.html e aking-news-george-deutsch-did-not.html s a-science-censor-resigns.html u tschgate-in-media.html
For those who didn't know offhand, Deutsch is the person who was primarily (though not solely) responsible for the censorship attempts within Nasa. It turned out he never graduated from Texas A&M as his resume claimed, because he left early to work the Bush campaign - can you say Plum Pie?
Read the Scientific Activist blog entries here (in chronological order):
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/01/sp
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/br
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/na
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/de
The author of the Scientific Activist blog, Nick Anthis, is the person that initially uncovered Deutschs falsification of his resume and tipped off the NYT (and never got credit for the scoop, can you believe that?). This was back in early February.
A few fundamental truths to chew on: A) Most scientists are cheap whores. They got used to supporting liberal doctrines to earn their pay while democrats controlled congress. Now they moan and cry because somebody "moved their cheese", and they have to learn a new set of political doctrines to get their free drink from the government teet. Quick - call the Waaahhhmbulance! B) Global warming is a hoax C) EVEN if it was real it won't hurt anything because the ice caps are like the ice that floats in your drink. They will shrink as they melt and the net change in sea level will be zero point zero inches. D) If Global warming WAS real it would bring enormous benefit to mankind by dramatically increasing the amount of farmable land available - it would offset world hunger significantly. E) There is no Gaia. The earth is just big a ball of dirt. The only thing special about it is that I live here. F) The best way to reduce any greenhouse effect is to fire a lot of useless scientists to decrease their spewing of hot gas.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
How is he muzzled if hes still talking to the press about being muzzled? Doesn't seem very muzzled to me. More likely he has an axe to grind. Everyone has an axe to grind I take no one at face value. Environmentalist are a great example. It seems there religion (and it is a religion of sorts) has little to do with fixing the environement and more to do with promoting socialist progressive ideals.
One example of this is when anyone mentions a potential technical solution to carbon emissions. They poo poo it saying it won't do enough to curb consumption. Which is really what this movement seems to be all about. It seems they don't like consumerism, sprawl, SUvs, cars in general, personal property and the distribution of wealth in the world. I think it's time we start calling them on it. They are all watermelons green on the outside and red on the inside. Oh and by the way same as when you lot espouse your true beliefs without the sky is falling environmental slant. We still aren't interested in your world socialism.
I thought it was a scientists job to find the truth.
Truth is often lacking in short-term profitability.
Someone has to pay those scientists.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
What a time to have used up my mod points.
Make love, not reality television.
Nicely done sir! I do believe I have found a new .sig (with your permission of course)
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
woah, woah, this isn't a monarchy. Last time I checked, NASA was not under the executive branch. They are responsible to congress, then the people. Democracy assumes informed voters, so for congress to receive information that is not as accurate as possible is against the core of both democracy and NASA's purpose. And it isn't necessarily just his wishes. If it is the policy of NASA for its reports to be as truthful as possible, then he is just ignoring a middle manager. If I were working for a company, and my boss wanted me to lie on a report because it would help him, at the cost of the company and the world, I wouldn't find that an ethical course.
Our main sources of energy are still those that were used 50 years ago. For all the technology we've created in the meantime, we are still dependent on those types of energy (fossil and uranium).
The amount of uranium readily available in the earth's crust is pretty much unknown at this time, but I've never heard an estimate anywhere near "thousands of years" worth - especially considering that energy use is increasing everywhere in the world. If India and China start to use the same amount of energy per capita that we do, we've got a fraction of the time you might expect.
My main point - don't rely on technology. We have one chance - and one chance only - to get this right. We all hope you're right. We all hope the sky isn't falling, and we all hope that we have thousands of years of cheap energy.
But would you bet the future of mankind on it?
Last post!
As for what govt employees can do, they first must follow the law. That does include some protection for whistleblowers, but it's not unlimited. Otherwise, they must follow their superior's direction. NASA ain't that far removed from the military. If they have an ethical problem, there may be ethic/compliance complaint channels to follow. Or they could resign. Blabbing to congress outside the legally-described Congressional oversight process is gross insubordination.
The deferal of procreation is doing more to limit population, than the number of children is. When a couple has 2 kids by 20, then 4 grand kids by 40, then 8 great-grand kids by 80; then the population has increased by 14 people in the span of one generation, waiting till 35 increases the population by 6 people.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Why don't you think this is a science story?
Perhaps because it reflects badly on his favorite politician?
That is not an accurate definition of genus and species. There are separate species that can produce viable fertile offspring if artifically forced to mate, and thete are separate species within the same genus that cannot be crossed to produce offspring at all. So your experiment wouldn't actually prove anything in terms of genus or species.
All other primates have twenty four pair of chromosomes. Humans have the virtually identical DNA and virtually identical chromosomes, except he have a mutation that visibly glues two of them together into a single strand. So we have twenty three pair with one of them being double length. In most cases any unpaired chromosome is highly disruptive to normal cell division. Any such crossfertilized egg will fail to divide properly.
Still, if you really wanted to go ahead with that experiminet anyway, you could do some extremely minimal genetic engineering and either split apart the doubled human chromosome, or you could glue together the right pair of cromosomes from some other primate. Then you'd have matched pairs of twenty three or twenty four.
The closest human relative BTW is the chimpanzee, with a mere 1.6% genetic distance / genetic difference from us. That is actually an extremely small difference, considering that any two chimpanzees have a difference of 0.7% from each other. A human is about twice as far from a chimp as any two random chimps are from each other.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Wow! Your right, it is Independent! So are 62 other agencies (see list below). This seems to strech the seperation of powers beyond the breaking point!
e nt.shtml
http://www.firstgov.gov/Agencies/Federal/Independ
African Development Foundation
AMTRAK (National Railroad Passenger Corporation)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Commission on Civil Rights
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
Corporation for National and Community Service
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
Election Assistance Commission
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Farm Credit Administration
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Federal Election Commission (FEC)
Federal Housing Finance Board
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Federal Maritime Commission
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission
Federal Reserve System
Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
General Services Administration (GSA)
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Inter-American Foundation
International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)
Merit Systems Protection Board
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
National Capital Planning Commission
National Council on Disability
National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
National Mediation Board
National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
National Transportation Safety Board
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
Office of Compliance
Office of Government Ethics
Office of Personnel Management
Office of Special Counsel
Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Panama Canal Commission
Peace Corps
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Postal Rate Commission
Railroad Retirement Board
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Selective Service System
Small Business Administration (SBA)
Social Security Administration (SSA)
Tennessee Valley Authority
Trade and Development Agency
United States Agency for International Development
United States International Trade Commission
United States Postal Service (USPS)
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
He also goes on to state that the Clinton administration didn't force its conclusions into his mouth as a scientist. He doesn't mention them ever preventing him from publishing as he saw fit, either.
Both administrations were looking for certain conclusions, okay. It shouldn't surprise anyone, after the wiretapping and the WMD justification and South Carolina 2000 and so on ad nauseum, that Bush's team is the one that got morally confused about ends and means.
This story is about the effect of absolutism on science. The larger story is about absolutism and Bush and his supporters.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.
Actually, Japan has the highest percentage of forestation of any first world country (almost 70%).
As for other imports of Japan, you are more correct: they import much of their food, including staples like rice and seafood. This puts the population of the island at risk in the event of instability of their trading network. The modern economic environment, however, means that the population of Japan is not at risk as long as the world remains somewhat stable and demand for their products remains strong.
The declining birth rate there and in most developed countries is one of the few pieces of good news in the long-term story of human survival on this planet. IMO anyway.
Regards,
Ross
being done.
Follow the money.
Bear with me for a moment.
9/11 was a great wake up call, for Insurance companies.
They relied that they ahd been insuring the risk terrorism for free.
They hate that, so they now include those risks when determining rates.
Then they said, "what other risks are we insuring for free?"
Well, global warming might be one, lets study it. And they did. Not in a political way, but by talking to experts.
Now Insurance companies are adding those risks to the factors for determining rates. Companies rates will be going up.
in the last 10 years, there have been over 700 papers published about global warming, two things are not disputed:
1) That it is happening
2) That man is a very large factor in what we are seeing happening now.
Now, who did the Bush administration and lobbiest go to in order to get an opinion of glabal watming? Michel Chriton. A science fiction author with no creditionals. NASA has the world expert on this, but he is not saying what Bush wants to hear, so he is edited.
A lot of evidence at this time seems to point out the glabal warming is a state, not a 'slow' change. Meaning something in the enviroment changes, and the enviroment moves to find a new point of equilibrium. This can be a lot of sun spot activity, an enormous eruption(were talking far larger the the St. Helen eruption), Comet impact, and yes, man kind spewing millions of metric tons of pollution into the enviroment every year.
We have glacier streaming water year around, glacier that only had a little run off during the summer months are not flowing stream of water. More water flowing out then being added to.
The enviroment is looking for a new equirlibrium, and until it gets there you will see extremes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why would environmentalism be against technology and developing?
it's not environmentalist as in people seeking reasonable ways to protect our mutual environment from damaging changes; but environmentalists as in a quasi-religion with Gaian/Vegan/Wiccan overtones where anything involveing humans are unnatural and tending toward evil, humans with any technology strongly tending toward evil and male WASPs in the US being evil incarnate.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
They're kind of the universally recognized bad guys to conspiracy theorists. Oddly enough, there really was an Illuminati, according to what I understand, but nothing along the lines of this global dominating power, just a sort of small group, with an idea for global domination, several centuries ago. The idea of their existence was enough to keep the rumor mill running.
Global warming is a fact. There are some people(almost all of which are backedd by the fossil fuel industry) that say it isn't, but I find it hard to argue with the global snow melt that is going on.
Ice on the caps is not like ice you your drink. It is denser, substantial denser, and the ice on one of the caps is on land. I'll leave it as an exercise to you to find out which one. If you can't, then you should keep you mouth shut regardless of your opinion.
That doesn't even acount for the glacier the our melting on mountains, in siberia, and all the other place that arn't water.
IT will also icreas the amount of area that can't be farmed. How many farms in the saharra? The mid west of the US will loose much of its grain farmland. Howevfer, on a global scale, you may be correct that farm land will increase, but it will destrow civilization via economic ruin until the globe infrastructure changes to accomidate it.
I do not believe ther is some spirit the guild the earth. I do know that the earth is hugely complex, and you can't have a reaction without an equal and opposite reaction.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I don't know of any published studies that say American scientists are leaving the U.S. in large numbers. However, the U.S. job market for people with degrees in astronomy and the space sciences is horrible right now and it keeps getting worse. I got an e-mail a few minutes ago saying that NASA funding for a program to which I was going to submit a proposal was just reduced from $4 million to $1 million. NASA anticipates that this program is going to get requests for $24 million this year, so quite a few people are not going to get NASA funding. Most of NASA's money is going to support the Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and Bush's half-baked vision for conquering Mars - not science. The more senior scientists I know have told me that they don't ever remember NASA funding in our field being quite this bad before. The NSF is not doing much better.
Currently, I am a researcher supported by soft-money. I've been applying to faculty positions so I won't need to depend so much on NASA funds, but I'm not having any luck. Two faculty positions I applied for were cancelled due to budget cuts about a month after the application deadline. I have been told by several different people that since I am having trouble getting research funding and finding faculty jobs here in the U.S., I should look for positions in Europe. Unfortunately, my European colleagues tell me the funding situation is not good there either, as their countries are also cutting back on funding for many space science programs. I don't really want to move to another country, and even if I did want to leave the U.S., there isn't really anywhere I could go. Funding in the space sciences is tight everywhere right now. I'm hoping I can make the jump to industry, but I'm not sure if the job market in the aerospace industry is any better.
Mate, it's all yours. Enjoy...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
When an unknown blowhard on the Internet makes this pathetically weak and logically worthless argument, it is lame, but understandable. Bilious partisan hatred does that to people posting on anonymous bulletin boards. I've done similar things myself.
For a reputable investigative journalist to make the same argument, it goes beyond lame. It is at the very least an example of reckless, willful, unprofessional, career-ending negligence. It is positively surreal how Rather thought he could produce such documents and then place the burden of disproof on his critics. Journalism simply does not work that way. It's preposterous. Bush is probably President today thanks to the bizarre antics of Rather and his cohorts.
By the way, the proportionally-spaced, perfectly-centered typography is far from the only reason to think these documents are crude modern forgeries. Content analysis shows dozens of reasons they could not conceivably have been written by a Texas Air National Guard officer at the purported time and place, but in all likelihood were forged by an Army National Guard officer unfamiliar with the differing terminology of another branch of service. Bill Burkett, take a bow.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I think every previous response to this statement assumed that the anonymous poster seriously meant what he said.
C'mon, people. Use your noodles. This is obvious sarcasm. There have been no small-government Republicans on the national stage since Barry Goldwater.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
"THere is no appreciable difference between "there are trees but we can't get to them" and "there are no trees""
How sad. Really, that's just embarassing for you.
Ok guy, I can see what you're about. You're one of those pricks who decides when he's proven wrong that he needs to spin it somehow. Guess what?
It's not ether of the things you try to say it is, it's actually
"We have tons of trees, we just value them enough that importing them from other places is cheaper"
More importantly, you didn't say either of those things in your original post, you said this
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not (sic) having to import every square inch of wood."
And that's a fucking lie. They didn't eat through ANY of their tree population, it's just cheaper to get it elsewhere. READ THAT. C-H-E-A-P-E-R. If they wanted to harvest their own lumber, it's perfectly possible, it's just more expensive.
You were wrong, then you followed up with something even more ridiculous. One more and you make the Slashdot troll hat-trick.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Wisdom from the Native Americans, my ass. It was written by a white guy named Ted Perry in 1970.
Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page, where the author noted that "I have found that the text above is not historically accurate, nor even something that Chief Seattle said. I am not going to change the text above because of its impact"?
In other words, Ward Churchill meets Dan Rather. Who cares if it's authentic; let's just keep it out there for its "impact". Feelings and intentions always trump reality in the Red-Green cloud-cuckoo land.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If only their heart were so pure.
If it is true that the polar ice caps of Mars are shrinking, does that mean it too has "Global Warming"?
More specifically: Does that mean man is responsible for "Global Warming" on Mars?
If not, then the Sun is.
That being said, if the preceeding is true, then neither is man responsible for any "Global Warming" here on Earth and it doesn't matter what this "imminent (sic) scientist" thinks or suggests concerning man's cause or solution thereto.
In an executive order by George Walker Bush, Dr. James Hansen has been
declared "Enemy of the State" and will be hunted by the Internal Revenue
Service, Department of State and the Homeland Security Department.
Toodles
I noticed this in the write-up for TFA,
Could this have been done by the censors in the Bush Administration ? An attempt at humour, maybe ? Or (Lord, help us) an attempt at subtlety ?It seems to me that this eminent scientist (he speaks for the NASA, after all), might want to sue somebody. He might hold that an imminent scientist is a fellow who is about to become a scientist - about to obtain his first diploma, that is. In short an eminent scientist is an authoritative voice by virtue of qualification and experience, while an imminent scientist is just a wannabe. There must be grounds to sue here.
Of course, the administration would find a way to put the fault on the Slashdot editors . Who knows, though, if they got sued it might make them drink less and work more - you never know.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
This should be obvious to anybody who has read the commentary here for more than five minutes.
Note that this is not confined to politics; MS-Windows vs Linux vs BSD vs OSX debates also result in various posts waxing vitriolic about opponents' "toolness", as do debates about vi vs emacs, the extent to which copyrights and patents should apply to various media, software, etc., and so forth.
Everything is black-and-white to most people, including most people who post here.
Very few people see the shades of gray, as that would require thinking, and most people (especially Americans and fundamentalists) don't like to think.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
its all just relative
"it's".
To the Slashdot editors and coders:
Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 21 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator.
No, I'm not behind a fucking firewall or proxy, and I didn't click my fucking "Back" button. What happened was that you fucking idiots don't fucking tell me in advance (when I fucking click the fucking "Reply to This" link) how fucking long I have to fucking wait to fucking post. Instead, you wait until I have composed my reply and try to submit it, and only then do you tell me that I should have waited longer. This is totally fucked up. If I didn't have ad blocking turned on, I would email your advertisers and complain about how you treat people who post anonymously when they post useless crap because they are afraid to compromise their kharma.
Oh, and when the fuck are you going to fix the punctuation in your obnoxious message ("It's been X minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" should end with a period/full stop, you stupid motherfucking hamster fondlers)?
Please note that the above is meant to be friendly helpful criticism, and interpret it in that spirit. Thank you.
I don't think it is about disbelief, exactly that global warming might be a problem. But I think what matters -- and why there seems to be almost a _deliberate_ acceleration in resource consumption is that none of these people (Bush, et al) expect to be alive to have to deal with the consequences.
I've heard more than one old person express the sentiment: "Why should I care? it's not going to affect me." Why should these folks entering or in retirement cut back on their standard of living for a time they will never see? Why should those in power care? Isn't he the president of the "me" generation? Isn't it the "me" generation largely entering into power now and the past 4-6 years? The "ends" justify the "means"?
Those in power can take what they want -- they won't have to pay it back.
Yeah, some guy I know pointed out the folly of expression an opinion of something even tangentially related to politics would bring out the lamest of the lame.
How silly of me.
Thanks.
By the way, Windows is always better than Linux will ever be, vi and emacs will never hold a candle to edlin, copyrights should persist until the heat death of the universe and you should be able to patent movie plots.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
(I could probably upgrade to MS-Windows 98 if I wanted, but that would mean putting money in Bill Gate's pocket, which I am loathe to do.
Also, I can't add more memory, because nobody sells the kind that I need any more.)
OTOH, I can boot up the latest version of Slackware Linux (2.2) with no problems at all (except for slow multimedia, which is one of the reasons that I still dual-boot with MS-Windows 95).
I usually run KDE on two X servers as two different users: one for online use, which helps isolate the rest of the system from potential attack, and one for getting real work done.
Try doing that with even the most recent version of MS-Windows!I am not familiar with edlin, but it sounds like a line editor, in which case the "ex" mode of vi(m) should work fine.
However, my favorite line editor is TECO (although the last time that I used it was about 30 years ago).
Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, my humor/sarcasm detector is on the blink.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
We've got one and that was enough for us.
Well, no Darwin Award for you, then!
edlin was the line editor that shipped with DOS back in the day. It made vi look like emacs. I almost mentioned TECO, which I think I used about 20 years ago, but I might be confusing it with something else. EDT on VMS wasn't too bad, given what I was used to at the time.
Can you believe that guy is still trolling me (or that I am stupidly responding)? The sheer amount and degree of that guy's doublethink is staggering. It's like the Marlboro Man ridiculing someone for smoking who has never touched a cigarette. How can people reall be like that without collapsing into a singularity of stupidity?
BTW, if you want to upgrade Windows, I would recommend getting a copy of Windows 2000. While it's game compatibility isn't great for old Windows games (W9x), it is pretty much a completely different OS and will run reasonably well on your hardware. Of course you are still feeding the Beast, but least you are buying something worth the money. Of course actually _buying_ Windows 2000 (or 98, etc) could be a challenge since MS has pretty much abandoned it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The last is the most important. We all should want the USPS to be responsible to its charter, not the president.
They work if you set your referer to http://www.crooksandliars.com/ i.e. with wget --referer
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
clinton isn't in office, flamebait, bush is
"Look all you have to say is "Japan can sustain it's present population sustainably" and prove it then I will be wrong."
Even more sad. When it's demonstrated to you that you've mad a mistake, you reply by changing the subject.
Nowhere did I say anything about Japan sustaining anyhting. I never even alluded to it. So knock that stupid shit off.
You made a factually incorrect statement, then based your entire argument on it. I gave you proof you were wrong, there's far more available for you to find on your own, yet you continue to troll.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous your childish attempts are?
"Sorry."
I'm sure your parents are too, but they're not responsible for the embarassment to them that you've become. No, that's all you and your pathetic attempts to save face after making a factually incorrect statement and then INSISTING you were right about it, despite all evidence being against you.
All YOU have to do is not change the subject, not try to change your argument, and prove that this statement
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood."
is correct. Until then, you're yet another slashtroll who thinks appearing right on a webboard is more important than actually knowing the facts. And I'm right.
Really, yours is the most unseemly and pathetic attempt at equivocation I've ever seen. One day, when you grow up, you'll see how ridiculous your statements are.
Until then, your a fucking troll. And the worst part for you? You know it's true, and you can't do anything about it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...