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Alaskan Village Sues Over Global Warming
hightower_40 writes to mention that a small Alaskan village has sued two dozen oil, power, and coal companies, blaming them for contributing to global warming. "Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal areas."
IANAL. It would seem to me that if you are going to sue someone for causing you harm, you would need to sue everyone involved. In this case, that would mean sueing almost everyone in the world. It's not fair to target one small group just because they have money. IANAL.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Socialize costs.
It's sad to see this kind of thing going forward because there are too many forces arrayed against it for it to actually be successful.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Hey, I've got an idea. I'm going to sue McDonalds and Walmart for turning half the country in to fucking fatasses. This makes it much harder for me to fuck a fit woman.
How much do you think I can get?
... coastal what?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Let's just hope the trial happens before the village gets flooded...
Isn't global warming just a scam? :)
The oil companies didn't put the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's the billions of people who drive cars and heat their homes.
So, are the people going to sue themselves?
I hate useless civil suits that tie up the legal system, But I hate oil companies. I love an underdog and cheer when they take on a giant...
As a tree hugger I say "woo!" as someone who is going to pay for this in one way or another (read: energy costs) I'm not very happy.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I do love the part where they're complaining that global warming is keeping them from hunting "whale, seal, walrus, and caribou". Maybe Leonardo diCaprio should make a movie about that!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
than anything else. I live in Alaska and can tell you the driving force behind this is actually "The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Native American Rights Fund -- plus six law firms." The natives in the village use gas-powered vehicles for transportation and (generator) electricity for their homes, suing the people who provide the source for those items.
Shoot, why don't we all climb on board. Oh, wait - I drive a car to work and use natural gas to heat my home, plus electricity to power my net activities...
...to recoup their losses from Christmas.
would throw this out. But it's filed in California, maybe it has a chance?
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
I've been working so hard to warm the planet up, with my CO2 belching truck, but the lack of sunspots has made this year the coldest and snowiest winter since the 1960s....
This is my sig.
so that I can sue for wind damage to my property caused by global warming exacerbation of El Nino winds...
Then, I'm going to sue US automakers for making too many cars with poor pollution standards, followed by litigation against California for not implementing better greenhouse gas controls, and finally a class action against the Bush administration for not forcing people to curb greenhouse gas emissions upon threat of pre-emptive nuclear strikes for non-compliance. Clearly those people need to be bombed because they are wasting precious oil resources to create greenhouse gases.
Is it just me or does anyone else think the warmer climate may have affected more than the villagers are letting on about?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If anything is substantially responsible for increasing the earth's temperature, it's that nuclear-reactor-in-the-sky.
Why not sue everyone who drives a car then?
The term might mislead some Slashdot readers. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Claims_Settlement_Act
which established:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Native_Regional_Corporations
We're talking about the established tribal "village," which is a legal entity representing a group of natives for purposes of interacting with the Regional Corporations, not the traditional meaning of the word. The easiest comparison would be if you took recognized Native American tribes from the lower 48 and segmented them up into "villages" of roughly the size of a rural town.
Good (for some values of "good") timing on their part, what with the news that the world is actually cooling, including the most snowfall in 50 years in North America, and record levels of Antarctic sea ice.
Here we are, trying to keep our planet warm with a nice, insulating layer of carbon dioxide, and the darn ol' sun has to go and become less active.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
They're looking to cash in on the "environmental windfall lottery",
Just follow the money.
A million bucks each and they'll go away happy. It doesn't cost a million bucks a head to relocate people, unless you're relocating them to the ISS.
Kevin Smith on Prince
they bouhgt into the lie that man contributes to global warming. it has happened naturally over millions of years. the defendants of this case don't contribute one iota to the problem.
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
and sue the whole world.
Is this Alaskan Village totally eco-friendly, using solar panels, dogsleds and paddled kayaks for all their energy needs? Or do at least some of the villagers consume fossil fuels (either directly by burning them in their gasoline/diesel engines or oil furnaces, or indirectly by consuming electricity generated from coal or buying bananas transported from the tropics on jet planes)? If they do use fossil fuels then they should sue themselves...
I am not a lawyer (yet), but it looks as if the villagers are going to have a hell of a time proving duty and proximate causation. I wonder if this case is anything more than a publicity stunt.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
and they'll make the lawsuit last long enough till the Alaskan village is fully submerged!
So be sure to break out those "the debate is over/you're a shill/denier" nostrums to stiffle debate, boys. You're going to need them...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Wouldn't they be obligated to prove that any global warming is indeed caused by human activity, and not a natural occurrence?
Global warming is something of a controversial subject in some circles (like mine, where this has been one of the coldest winters in a very long time). So won't the plaintiffs have to *PROVE* both that "global warming" is (at least to a significant degree) man-made and that the defendants bear significant culpability for it, in order to win the lawsuit? The outcome could be rather interesting to those debating the global warming topic.
Simpsons did it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2502431.stm
Er, wait. It wasn't the Simpsons... but someone did, or tried anyway.
Are they going to sue us back to the last ice age?
Now we shall see if the man made global warming myth will hold up in court.
I don't know if it is the same in the US but in Canada the natives are exempt from paying taxes on the gas they use and other controlled goods, and technically have a status different unto itself. I lived in the NWT in Frobisher Bay for four byears, and believe me; Everything is gas powered, My father was RCMP and since the temperature would drop below -50 during the winter the Vehicles that the towns people would use would run 24/7, otherwise they wouldnt get them started again...This means filling them with EMENSE amounts of gasoline, and this is onyl once facet of the lifestyle... These aren't communities where Global Warming adn all the other hot platform topics are discussed in teh same manor and regular light they are here...this is, in comparison, a small rural community who (as has been done time and time again) is being exlpoited.... You can't tell me the motivation of this arguement is to either A)help the environment, or B)seek compensation for an action that has slighted their lifestyle in any particular direct way... Howeevr, you CAN convince me very easliy that the arguement is about money and getting all you can...and was probobly proposed by the law firm representing the village... The exploitation of an indivduals, or a social groups, ignorance is the bigger crime here... -Adam
cost per person to relocate inhabitants = $30,000
cost per person to have lawyers sign moving agreement = $970,000
going to law school and specializing in environmental law
Exxon is presently trying to get the SCOTUS to overturn $2.5B punitive damages awarded to fishermen and other interests affected adversely by the Valdez spill (interesting story... drunk driver, I mean captain). Anyhow, it is related because punitive damages are weird.. they got $2.5B earlier, the court may reduce it, to what $1.25B? And Exxon wants to pay $0. How much is appropriate?
At least in the oil spill, one defendant is involved, Exxon. In global warming, who is culpable, and to what extent? Who suffered, and what dollar amounts? And what is an appropriate punitive damages number? Adn think of the endless appeals.
I always value any information put together by legions of idiots with political agendas.
Oh boy, here we go again. The IPCC... that political bunch of wankers. Do you guys know how to do anything but proclaim you're right because "everyone" agrees with you? I really love how everyone doesn't actually agree, but anyone who disagrees is automatically crucified for being a blasphemer by the cult of global warmers.
- The burning of Christian martyrs by Nero
- The burning of Rome itself under Nero
- The Government of Pompeii for failing to properly mitigate the greenhouse gas footprint of Mount Vesuvius.
They also filed a Friend of the Court brief on behalf of the Clovis populations, pending the location of the culpable party or parties for the meteor, or Clovis descendants for that matter. Ok, seriously folks... We hear so much about how these "native peoples", what Daniel Quinn in Ishmael called "The Leavers" live in balance with nature. But nature changes, with or without our helf. And change they must... or else. I am neither a Global Warming Nay Sayer, nor DoomSayer. Global warming happens. It's part of nature. WE are part of nature. Get over it. If you have to, move on. Try Houghton, Michigan. You might like it. They have a university there where you can learn technical skills to combat global warming (or prove it doesn't exist, I don't care which) And they have a great hockey team.Dude, you've posted to slashdot. No way in hell you're going to collect from McDonalds for not getting laid! BTW, I wrote a journal last year that can help you.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Will be created by clearcutting whole tree farms to make the paper a case of this magnitude requires.
If only there was a book that came up with this premise...released in 2004...by a famous author...through HarperCollins... Oh wait.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
I hate frivolous lawsuits, or lawsuits that clearly only benefit the lawyers and no one else, but I also hate the oil companies with a passion as well.
Global Cooling, Global warming and environmentalism are distractions. As the mass media creates climate illusions, Big Brother clamps down by opening our mail, suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like "America Deceived" from Amazon, rigging elections, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting wars based on blatant lies. Prevent our loss of rights then handle the environment.
Last link (before Google Books bends to gov't Will and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)
Where the villagers win and the big corporations lose.
Fight global warming with aikido!!!
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
I hope there IS global warming. This winter was frikken cold!
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Local weather does not refute a global climate trend.
It is incredibly disheartening to see so much willful ignorance & denial of science on this site.
"No," says the Eskimo, "it's just frost on my mustache."
~~~
(What the hell, I've got some karma to burn.)
http://thethaifamily.com/son/jokes/helf.jpg
http://www.pawalaw.com/practice-areas/environmental-litigation.php
What a mooch!
Why do people continue to blame others for the bad things in life that happen to them? The only ones that will really benefit from such law suits are the lawyers. They will get 33% off the top and then all the fees they incurred to bring the lawsuit. The people they represent will get a small fraction of anything that is actually awarded.
And if they do win the law suit in the next 15 to 20 years what will the do then? Actually move to someplace else? Doubtful. People have a bad habit to cling to places and things long after they have become useless.
Climate change is going to happen, ignoring the discussion about it being man made or not, it will happen. People need to do what they did long before the lawyers and green peace got involved, adapt to the changes. In the past various warming and cooling periods forced people to migrate to different areas of the globe. Well guess what, they need to do that now, or find a way to live in the changed environment. If their traditional hunting and fishing is disrupted by the climate change then they need to find something else to hunt and fish. If nothing is available then they need to find a way to import what they need. If they don't have the jobs and money to do that then MOVE SOMEPLACE ELSE THAT HAS WHAT THEY NEED! It is not going to cost that much to move a family to a different location. Load up the dog sled and head south.
This also goes for those on the coast that get hit with hurricanes. (Funny that the last couple of hurricane seasons have been much quieter than predicted...) If you can't afford the insurance for the house you bought on the coast then sell it and move in land. DON'T EXPECT THE REST OF US TO PAY FOR YOUR BAD CHOICE!
How many of these plaintiffs took money from these very same oil companies by way of the Alaska Permanent Fund? Where were the complaints then? Should the people who took money be liable? I think so.
I suggest we use the APF to pay this lawsuit, then watch how fast it gets forgotten.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
"The Fund grew from an initial investment of $734,000 in 1977 to the current sum of approximately forty billion dollars as of July 13, 2007. "
I find it more than a little distasteful that these greedy s.o.b's think they can collect on both ends.
These effects where noticed, many hypothesis was bantered around,and the media reported what they read on the day.
SOme people thought there would be cloaud cover, and therefore less heat on the earth, some believed the heat would be absorbed. both would create significant climate change.
As time marched on, more and more data was collected, many ideas were discarded.
Now we have gone from a split, to a consensus. It is working exactly like science should, data is collected, tested, Theories get refined, or discarded.
Bearing in mine the 'global warming' i.e. climate change doesn't mean everything stays the same, it's just a few degree's warmer. It means the flow of the Ocean will change; which can radically change the overall climate.
Being skeptical is fine, as long as it's balanced by studies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Hilarious, but PLEASE include a NSFW flag next time...
But they are targeting everyone! These companies will pass the costs down to the customers in an effort to regain profit levels. Add more suits like this, and using fossil fuels suddenly becomes a lot less economically efficient. Many, many people are sued indirectly for their fair share of the compensation.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
At lest they are working on new job skills now that fishing and hunting are out fo the question.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Are you freaking kidding me? There are many studies the show no relationship between sunspots and global climate trends.
That as an interesting idea in th 70's. Now it's dead.
Good luck on quiting smoking, stay strong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Try the seal ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Can we sue them for killing endangered species just so they can continue tribal traditions?
No, I guess that's not politically correct.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I find it very difficult to believe that any reputable scientist would claim the Sun heat the earth. Would you like to try and source that claim for me, or maybe easier for you, you could just admit that in your rush to post you assumed you understood what you were replying to, but didn't.
I'll gladly accept either choice.
"would claim the Sun doesn't heat the earth"
I hate fixing my own posts...
I saw a documentary about this village on TV a while ago. And while the problems they were facing were serious, I simply could not muster any sympathy for them. Why?
a) The village is small, maybe 500 meters in diameter. And still, EVERYONE drove around with ATV's. No-one walked
b) Whenever they showed them eating, they ate from disposable plates.
While their contribution to global warming is miniscule, it does raise a question: if they have done nothing to prevent global warming (in fact, their lifestyle has accelerated it), do they have any moral leg to stand on when it comes to suing others for their problems?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Once again proving that as humans evolve, we become less able to cope with our changing environment. Arguably, this one trait is the only reason we've made it as far as we have. How long before these poeple are put on some extinction list somewhere.
I know, sounds cold, but lets stop suffering the stupid people.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Don't you see anything wrong with that chart?
Claim a trend is wrong by comparing the history of the trend to a month of data is laughable.
Also, global climate means more energy,and has such wilder fluctuation . When it continues to trend down after 15 years, AND the amplitude of fluctuation stays consistent with the last 150 years, give me a call.
"However, researchers at DMI continued to work, eventually discovering what they believe to be the link. The key factor isn't changes in solar output, but rather changes in the sun's magnetosphere A stronger field shields the earth more from cosmic rays, which act as "seeds" for cloud formation. The result is less cloud cover, and a warming planet. When the field weakens, clouds increases, reflecting more light back to space, and the earth cools off."
A quote from the article your quote links to.
I am assuming by 'Cosmic Rays' they mean things from outside the Suns influence.
But what the hell does this mean:
" which act as "seeds" for cloud formation." Cosmic Rays cause clouds?
I notice the conveniently leave out of much of a protection it gives. Clearly the difference is minute are we would be dead.
Of course, there is no telling how much the writer gets wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... i wonder who the cavemen sued when the ice age hit?.... pathetic
Oops, sorry. Most of my journals involve drinking, hookers, reefer, and drunken stoned hookers. One of them was titled NSFW, but I would have thought that a journal about getting laid wouldn't need an NSFW tag.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
First, I didn't proclaim I'm right. Second, I didn't say that "everyone" agrees. I merely said there's a scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions is causing global warming. That consensus is shared by the Joint Science Academies, U.S. National Research Council, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, among others. I'm sure you can find some scientists and perhaps even some groups that disagree. That doesn't mean the consensus has not been reached.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
Sorry, you are wrong. Nuclear power is fossil heat energy of a sort (it dumps it much faster than normal decay from uranium left in the ground, similar to how coal or oil dumps heat fast when it is burned, what took millions of years is now one day in a coal or oil burning "thing" or a year or two with a load of nuke fuel), leading to an increase in global warming because of the speed of the heat released compared to natural heat loss out of the atmosphere into space) and modern solar is cleaner than anything else out there and is as close to being a perfect heat and carbon and everything else "neutral" source as it gets.. Just the facts, you'll just have to deal with it and your last century now debunked business and alleged "science" FUD against solar.
Nuclear power is just another traditional energy monopolist rape your wallet forever source, it is slightly greener than coal (and only if you completely ignore radioactive waste, including the mine tailings and ground water pollution, add those in, plus having wars fought over who gets to use and own nuclear, or threats of wars, and figuring in the cost of military protection for nuke plants and assorted waste for the next several thousand years), but that's about it, not even close to being "green". "Green" means heat neutral/less pollution, and with new anode coating advances and thin film production now hitting and being sold and a dozen new companioes springing up to supply them, we are at best only a few years away now from solar PV even being cheaper in financial cost than nukes on a watt per buck ratio. And if you haven't seen it yet, Sharp is now going to be building very large lithium ion batteries for home storage of solar generated electricity, meaning practical 24/7 use.
fission power = 20th century tech, fusion power (solar) = 21st century tech
And the combined tech doesn't even scale anyumore, look at yesterdays huge florida mass blackout, that tech is now past prime, the next wave of electricity will be widely distributed and independent of last centuries grid, meaning less potential failure nodes, no more one some little powerline or plant going down knocking out huge areas. Just because they shut the reactors down yesterday doesn't mean it worked, on the contrary, it just emphasized the design failures-the blackout still happened, and delivering the electricity is the *entire point* of having a powerplant and monopoly distribution system-no delivery=failure.. You have to look at the whole delivery stack, not just one component. Nukes failed it bigtime yesterday for all practical purposes, their design and implementation could not handle what was in essence a very small problem.
The old tech, including nukes, was OK for last century, but this century is going to need some adjustments, just "more of the same" old crap is not going to cut it. That would be like saying the solution to gas hog SUVs is just to build more of them so they might be cheaper. Sorry, that just fails the practicality test.
As there is no conclusive proof that global warming is caused by man, the courts have to rule against the plaintiff and it will stop this foolishness.
BTW, how much of the Northwest passage is still open? How many million kilometers of ice have reformed in the past several months? How many times has this cycle occured in the past several millinieum? Duh.
Scientists, start your beenie tops.
"The Alaska Permanent Fund is not money from oil companies."
Ok.
"The People of Alaska decided that they will let companies pump their oil out of the ground, for which it charges the oil companies a fee."
So the money comes from the companies. What did you think I was wrong about again, since your statement here agrees with me?
"They aren't "taking money" from the oil companies, the oil companies are taking their oil, getting rich, and giving a bit back to the people whose oil it is."
You say the people are getting money. From whom? As you JUST stated "the oil companies". So I'm right, as you say there.
That was just about the worst attempt at proving me wrong ever. You just said they're taking money from the oil companies, several times in the same post, which apparently was supposed to prove something. Unless you were trying to prove "the people take money from the oil companies", you failed totally.
I mean, you couldn't have agreed with me more if you actually agreed with me.
"How does this mean they are supposed to somehow be grateful to the oil companies?"
They're not straw man, let's stick to arguments I made (even though you failed badly at rebutting those too).
"How does this make them greedy?"
Ah, the meat of it. When you take a payoff from an oil company, knowing that they will change the environment in acquiring the oil to give you your payoff, while also forcing them to establish a trust fund to mitigate said environmental changes, then turn around and try to use the legal system to extort money for something you've already been paid for? THAT makes you greedy.
"Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly "lost" ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.
Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming."
-Newsmax.com
HaHa - Michael Crichton thought of it before they did.
I mean, of course we can understand the root cause of the erosion of a single sandbar in Alaska in a global environment in which everything is changing and evolving constantly, right?
"The new and latest religion"
by Janer Cristaldo
~~~~~
About ten years ago, I wrote that someone who saw clearly the void of faith that would devastate the West was Italian director Nanni Moretti, in Palombella Rossa. The film came in '89, significantly the year when the Wall of Berlin fell. The story has as its main character a communist deputy that suddenly loses his memory.
The final scene is emblematic: in a highway, hundreds of youths run to greet the sun. It is inaugurated the new religion, the worship of nature. Not by chance, the privileged interlocutor of the Dalai-Lama -- word that modestly means Ocean of Wisdom -- in Brazil is Fernando Gabeira, former marxist guerilla fighter that switched his faith in History for the ecological militance. Gyatso intuited quickly this western turnabout and now preaches in defense of the environment.
I read in today's El País: "The climate change has mobilized scientists that study it, engineers that seek technological solutions, and economists that measure them. And it also starts to take a spiritual dimension that is converting it, in the opinion of some, into the new religion of the 21st century. A new ecological spirituality. The messianic language and the nearly religious instruments that are utilized break the more rational plans and silence in a public opinion more skeptic before past causes."
As well know the ornitologists who peck me. Their zeal is religious. Before the hypothesis of the extinction of the swamp streamcreeper, they brandish the apocalypse. Without intending to analyze the so called global warming -- since I do not have the instruments to do so -- I distrust it. For it is preached with the same divine wrath of John of Patmos. To bet on the apocalypse is a comfortable bet. For the apocalypse won't come right away. It's always in the future. Therefore, while it won't come, its prophets are not proven wrong.
Late the past year, the newspaper says, Al Gore arrived in Seville to speak of his movement against climate change. In his eagerness to reach his audience, Gore, who is a deeply religious man, uses phrases such as: "Noah was told to save the living species and this today is still our duty." Before preaching to the ambassadors or disciples that belong to his movement, 1700 all over the planet, he asks of them a "spiritual connection".
To biologist Miguel Delibes de Castro, "the structure that Gore organized is almost religious, with disciples that spread the good word, like Jesus Christ." To biologist Miguel Ferrer, "the radical ecological trends have much in common with religious schools. More and more one hears that man is the evil, destructive being and he must be expelled from the last of paradises."
One of Al Gore's 200 ambassadors in Spain is Juan Negrillo. Asked about the connection between his speech and religious feelings, he said: "All religions have their roots in faith, and in that sense the ecologist message and climate defense can be mistaken for as a religious message, because, as we are not able to touch, smell, weigh or see the CO2, it's almost a question of faith in the scientific community."
Who has not heard of Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, that regarded Earth as a living being? Here in Brazil, we had a loon that earned fame as ecologist, José Lutzenberger, that believed deeply in that mystical theory.
"But what we are going to do first: unveil this wonder, or will we continue as a cancer in Gaia's organism, devastating, causing mass extinctions, intoxicating to the point of no return?", Lutzenberger wrote, and continued:
"In the time of that mortal threat that was the oxygen pollution crisis, that nearly extinguished the life forms then existing, Gaia, rather than succumb, knew how to benefit. It transformed a ferocious enemy into a powerful ally, a factor of more life, of more complex life, more perfect, more diversified, more harmonic - a st
Circumcision is child abuse.
Why would I want to slow global warming? It simply fulfills revelations that the world will end in heat and fire. I'm sure some god will place me in a lovely place when the rapture happens for all i've done to support them. Now if I could only figure out which god will take care of me during the rapture.. Perhaps I should hedge my bets...
2. Look at The Cryosphere Today: http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh
3. These guys are locked-in by ice right now!
The next pasture is always greener
The big push for at least a decade was that we were being threatened by global warming. The ice caps were going to melt, the seas were going to rise and who knows what else was going to come with that. All we hear about is some impending doom initiated by humanity. Except that it never actually arrives; it's always going to happen some day soon.
On now that evidence is arising that discredits the notion of global warming the terms get switched around on us. So now it's climate change. The nice thing about this term is that it's so all-encompassing. Any time we get weather a bit out of the ordinary it's chalked up to be due to climate change, specifically man-made climate change.
Last month is snowed lightly in Baghdad for the first time anyone can recall. You'd think so impressive an event would be covered more than it was. I eventually found a brief Agence France-Presse story about it. Predictably they stick a bit in there about how this was due to climate change. Like there's a set temperature for any spot on Earth.
I guess the implication is that the Earth's climate has always been static. I can't help but think that Creationists should be the most ardent believers of man-made climate change given that they're convinced the Earth is only 6000 years old.
Forecasters can barely predict the weather into next week and I'm supposed to accept has fact incomplete computer models that predict the weather in the next 50 or 100 years. More importantly, I'm supposed to subscribe to the belief that a global temperature increase is inherently a bad thing.
A while ago I was reading about the history of Japan, specifically the Jomon period. It turns out that between 4000BC and 2000BC temperatures tended to be several degrees Celsius higher then they are today and the seas are believed to have been 5m higher. The fascinating part was that the people living in Japan at the time thrived during this era, having developed rice-paddy farming and government control. When the climate cooled the population of these people declined dramatically. This trend is reflected around the world. Europe endured famines in the 1300s during periods of cooling and glacial expansion.
Unfortunately, it seems to be taboo to argue against man-made climate change. Any evidence critics put forward is dismissed off-hand. The double-standards are laughable. A believer will use a localized event as evidence of climate change. A critic does the same and their argument is discredited for being based on local weather.
So now we have these eskimo pulling what is essentially a publicity stunt. Well, it's worse than that. Behind them are a pack of scumbag lawyers looking to line their pockets.
That's probably as close to an admission that you lost this debate as I'll get, so thanks.
Have a nice day.
If these people realize that, according to William Ruddiman, a leading paleoclimatologist and a name that should be known to anyone remotely familiar with the global warming debate, greenhouse gases caused by humans have possibly staved off the onset of another cyclical cooling period that would possibly render these tribes' homes even colder and more uninhabitable than they are now.
But, as others have noted, this stunt reeks of little more than a pack of money-grubbing hypocrites jumping on a high-profile bandwagon in order to extort large amounts of money from the "bad guys." The chance that they're really all that well informed about the mechanics of climate change seems pretty low.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
"Gore, like many people, needs air travel to do his work"
Before you get defensive, that is as good a reason as any. It's certainly good enough for me.
Now, to my questions (real questions, not those silly "I know the answer, but I'm a slashtroll trying to prove my point questions).
1) Does he fly commercial? If not, does he "airpool"?
If the answer is no to those questions, fuck him. Any excuse he gives as to why he isn't doing these things is just that, an excuse.
In this case, a tax analogy is applicable. If, as Al Gore believes, people who make more money should pay more tax, then why shouldn't someone who uses more energy have to do more to offset?
2) Why isn't "I need it for work" a good enough reason for me and my SUV? Or everyone else? We are taking Mr. Gore at his word that he needs it, is he (a professional politician and former aspiring lawyer) somehow more believable when he says he needs something?
I would really like to know the answer to #1 by the way. I suspect he takes a private jet, and it's only his flunkies that are on it, but I don't know that for sure, and would actually like to be wrong.
Here, see for yourself. No complicated science, just photos:
http://www.everybodysweather.com/Static_Media/Polar_Ice_Cap_Melter/index.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1023esuice.html (scroll down)
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/15/arctic.nwestpssg/index.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060914-arctic-ice.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/arctic-20070515.html
http://geology.com/nasa/antarctic-ice-sheet-melting.shtml
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMYTC13J6F_index_0.html (scroll down)
I bet they don't hate the oil companies when they're getting those subsidy checks every so often just because they live in Alaska.
or else!
Actually it is funny that you mention trends. From what my science teacher taught me the earth has been around for billions of years. So saying 150 years is a trend is laughable, try using a trend that is billions of years old, which I will outline below. My science teacher taught me that when dinosaurs where on the planet the earth was very warm, possibly warmer than it is now. Then it got really cold, the ice age. Now it is getting warm again. So the trend over billions of years is for the earth to get really warm and then really cold and then warm again and then cold over and over. So it seems to me that the earth is in a warming period before it starts another cooling period. And I assume that when it does start the cooling period the same "End of the World" types will be complaining that it is all our fault and we need to give more money to the UN so they can save the world from evil America.
JusTech'n - Where Technology comes home
"To this end, village residents have pursued relocation for the last twenty years."
http://www.poa.usace.army.mil/en/cw/Kivalina/Executive%20Summary.pdf
This town was going to disappear weather there was global warming or not. Global warming is now their excuse to get someone else to pay for it.
"Destroying someone's culture impacts them personally, in a way that is not right or just."
I'm sorry, culture is a function of the people who create it, so unless you're going to fabricate some great genocide here, the culture isn't destroyed at all, just altered.
Hyperbole like yours is for weak ass arguments.
Don't forget to mention the part where Exxon has incurred $3.4 billion in cleanup expenses and fines, and has already paid the compensatory damages (nearly $300 million) to the plaintiffs in the case. The point of punitive damages is (supposedly) to punish, not to be a windfall for the plaintiffs.
"Yes, and we can measure the varying input FROM THE SUN and most people have come to the conclusion that the increase in global temperatures can not be explained by changes in sunspot activity (or 11 year cycles, or 20 year cycles or what the current theory is). Which is what Black Parrot was referring to."
Yay. Now read it from the top, so you realize why Black Parrot was told off.
The point you have appeared to miss is that OP was saying the Sun should be a defendant, as it contributes to the warming of the earth ( and by contributes, I mean is almost totally responsible for).
It was a joke. As in, wow this is a stupid case, maybe something equally absurd like suing the sun is next because it too contributes to heating the earth. You didn't get it.
"So a single data point (a single year) is suddenly incredibly significant now that it supports YOUR side of the argument?"
What argument? He's not discussing global warming, he's discussing how cold it has been THIS YEAR. His claim is, the sun is partially responsible.
See, what you did was assume someone was attacking your pet theory, and rushed to defend it. If you'd read what you were replying to, you'd realize no one was attacking global climate change, they were observing that the sun has a role in warming the earth.
Reactionary, look it up so you don't behave like one again.
When did they say that their product didn't produce carbon dioxide when combusted?
Trying to blame people for centuries of being ignorant is the height of stupidity. Are you going to sue the Italians because the Romans contributed to the desertification of North Africa? You going to sue everyone who ever imported an invasive species for all the problems caused by that one plant, mollusc, or rodent?
I think you should start off suing everyone who ever used a petroleum product, which is pretty much everyone on the planet, and then move to the oil companies, whose crime is getting rich off providing stuff we just can't get enough of.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I knew the second I had the audacity to ask tough questions about Gore that his acolytes would mod me down.
Of course, they know what the answers to the questions I asked are, and would hope to see me modded off the plant in order to avoid answering them.
- bush's ranch is more eco-friendly than gore's:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
Food production, medicine, transportation, water treatment, sewer treatment...Moving back to subsistence sounds good for about 5 minutes, until you think about it.
We can sustain 6 billion people today because we can grow the food, we can purify the water, and we can process enough of our waste to keep from drowning in it. Drop electricity (for example) food production goes through the floor, large-scale food preservation becomes impossible, heat cannot be provided, so we'd need a few billion camp fires every night. Waste would be untreated, fouling water supplies in short order. Most places don't have reliable local water supplies that can be drunk unpurified, so that's already a problem...Disease levels go through the roof, and no hospitals, so mortality runs right there with it...
Pre-industrial revolution there were about 500 million people on the planet. If we went back to subsistence, we'd be back there pretty quickly...If we were lucky we'd be able to maintain around that level.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not only that, but they must also show that the oil/coal/etc. companies believed that global warming was real. Keep in mind that the tobacco companies didn't get into serious trouble until the facts of the case for the link with lung cancer were so well established that it was not reasonable that a tobacco executive would be unaware of the link.
Even though the consensus points towards global warming as a fact, there are legitimate scientists who dispute this, not to mention that the climate/weather link runs both ways -- a local cooling does not refute a global warming, so the particular warming of this area is not necessarily caused by a global phenomenon. This makes the whole issue very muddy; if there was a 60% probability of this happening anyway, and global warming made that a 70% probability, then who's to say where the causality lies?
Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming.
All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
So I did a little research. It was actually the first snow in about 100 years. One poster says the last snow was January 22, 1916; though I can't confirm that.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
I can't believe Exxon is still able to fight over this case. Just goes to show how powerful Exxon is and how much capital it has to take on the government and anyone else who steps up. I am sure the fight has not been cheap. Meanwhile....
For those that don't remember, this was a pretty blatant case where a company was negligent (or certainly the company's personnel). History here
Yet, somehow...they've managed to do nothing but fight since the incident happened. I can't blame them for fighting to reduce the award. I am just astounded that they haven't been beaten and punished already. It's still going on. 14 years later. Over those 14 years, they have been punished exactly zero.
I am in awe of their delay tactics. Astounded, actually...
Um, am I the only bio-guy who notices the data showing that CO2 increases preceed temperature rises? If the water in the ocean warms up (whether from the sun...which has been, overall (what about "6 years" of "cooling" gross?), warmer: and all it takes is a few years of higher E-input NET than has been the norm for a while...then the gas solubility decreases (by many magnitudes); thus even if the sun started cooling again it wouldn't matter: the CO2 released would insulate the planet to such an extent that more heat would be trapped and so more E would act upon the water molecules and continue decreasing gas solubility.
The worry-warts aren't worried so much about the planet as grants: and it's easy to play on fears to keep them coming to continue your research (on the side of your sensationalist popular-science career). Anyone who's ever done academic research knows the difficulty of grant-keeping after the difficulty of getting. Trouble is people start to believe their own stories and become religious about them. All the solar planets and bodies evidence warming right now (not just mars). Earth especially because of the systems and feedback mechanisms.
If we're so worried about Carbon emissions we can do two things: first, we can plant a lot more plants; increased carbon emissions induce an explosion of growth in nearby flora so long as other conditions are favorable to plant health: second, we could block the sun: but personally I'm against planetary manipulation in the scale of the planet's cycles; it's a bit like Gene therapy: we thought it was mostly junk until we started killing subjects by putting things into the junk. Science hates to admit ignorance, or to let loose of explanations in favor of admitting its ignorance(even when evidence demands it); just today that came up in genetics.
Who do these Alaskans think they are to have a right to the benefits the natural environment gives even as those dissapear? They have to adapt like anyone else. Obviously there are things in this world which more predatory which unfairly (and often illegally, or at minimum unethically) harm people's livelihoods. But to blame "global warming" and then energy companies for it...grasping. Uh huh: I want these people brought before the courts after this to face charges of abusing the legal system as is happening for the video game guy.
Intelligent idiots are we. | Evil men do not understand justice.
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm
That comment made me have naughty thoughts about Jamie off Mythbusters.
Posting anonymously because of the restraining order...
Woo! And my captcha is 'arouses'!
>It appears to me that those who said that the SUN was causing global warming due to increased sunspot activity, that has recently subsided, were correct.
Judge for yourself: the last almost-30 years of direct satellite measurement of solar output. Besides, increased solar output wouldn't make nights warm up faster than days.
Its shades of gray; not much difference between them just how and when you are screwed.
False dilemma.
There are better things that are cheaper than both coal, oil, and nukes. (That is, if you put reasonable costs on the environment as well as the government welfare which never gets mentioned.)
Nuke power has never been cost effective. I have yet to hear from a credible source that any nuke plant made a profit when you included all the government overhead costs within 20-30 years. (Solar cost of return is about 20 years and after that you don't have to pay for fuel or waste or much regulation.) Smart grid management and power storage plants are possible TODAY at reasonable pricing. (How about giving those some of that free money?) I am not against nuclear power for its danger but its practicality.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You will get absolutely nowhere by supply him with facts ...
Right, random moron mouthing off on slashdot with the usual "correlation not equal to causation" bromide (which you didn't phrase accurately) must be believed over the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic global warming/climate change.
Ahhh, your overwhelming scientific consensus again. Words from the holy gospel at Realclimate.org. Let us read about it, shall we? From your article:
Wow, that just oozes confidence, doesn't it... but let's look at the individual points made here:
As for "I don't understand where these people are coming from saying that warmer temperatures are bad", try asking the people in coastal areas and island nations such as Tuvalu, who have already been displaced, what they feel.
Sure, and while I'm at it, why don't you ask the entire population of blue states in the north eastern US if they'd like to be buried under a mile of ice again any time soon. That has always puzzled me.
That's nice... I've also discussed that consensus in this story once already, so I'll just link you to that as well. Not that I expect you'll actually read any of it... because hey, you've got a consensus. What do facts have to do with it?
You need to stop thinking so small. I'm thinking Pluto, god of wealth. Those are the deep pockets. Sue him and his damn planetoid or whatever they're calling it now.
I would consider 3 weeks of net profits to be a very MILD punishment when there was gross negligence at the hands of Exxon.
The supervisors of the captain didn't want to punish a friend even though they had known for over 3 weeks that he had started drinking on ship again after already being suspended and being provided treatment. This is all very well documented including internal emails indicating that not only immediate supervisors but higher level managers knew and is referred to in the judgement by both the judge and the jury as GROSS negligence.
The people in Alaska that were affected by the spill had their entire lively hoods taken away as tourism, fishing and seafood production was severely harmed and was the primary economy in Prince William sound (and much of Alaska for that matter). Losing all their ability to make money to the point of being completely gone for over 5 years after the spill. The damages covered part of that but don't think for a minute the damages awarded to the individuals covered all their loses, at best it covered what they could document and no more. Neither do the damages cover the time they had to wait to receive their award as the trial took years after the spill.
The punitive damages were originally awarded as 5 billion and reduced on appeal to 2.5 billion. The supreme court has set a baseline rule that punitive damages shouldn't exceed 9 times the actual damages and at 2.5 billion the punitive damages amount to ~5 times actual damages (well within the supreme court guidelines), along with being only 3 weeks of profit and the payout to each victim at a measly $70k when their ability to make a living and even acquire food was destroyed for over 5 years (and years to recover actual damages) is a mild punishment at best.
In addition, I'll never understand how someone could imply that the cleanup expenses were anything other than an absolute obligation for Exxon and have nothing at all to do with the damages and negligence involved. That 3.4 billion was mandatory in my opinion and plays no part in reducing their obligation to the people who's lives they destroyed nor does it play any role in the punitive damages they owe to punish them for their gross negligence. Exxon got off very easy IMO for something that should have cost them their company.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
- The arctic icecap is growing again now that it's winter in the Northern hemisphere. Duh.
- The small amounts of carbon dioxide given off by humans before the industrial revolution were enough to stave off an ice age. Well, I wonder what catastrophic effects the widescale burning of fossil fuels and forests will have?
- Over the past year, the global temperature has gone down somewhat. But the original poster of that data says that it is an anomaly and does not mean global warming is reversing.
- The solar minimum is causing temperatures to decrease. The solar minimum is over, so we'll be looking at warming again for the next several years.
Now, I'm no climatologist, but it still seems to me that there's still a consensus among scientists that manmade global warming is occurring. Could you point me to some actual facts and conclusions written by a scientist that might persuade me to think differently?What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If they don't move, they will need to build domes to live in.
"Funny that the last couple of hurricane seasons have been much quieter than predicted..."
Perhaps not:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/gifs/atlhist_lowres.gif
While your statement is technically* correct, your intent to imply there are fewer hurricanes as a trend is not.
Your confusing two issue. People who continue to buy houses in areas prone to disaster and people who have lived in the same place for hundreds of years and not having this disaster strike.
DO you know how nasty it is getting up there? berry's that have been pick for countless generations are dying in their pods, lakes of fish dying, land literally sinking, Ice that with no record of it melting, ever, is disappearing.
So enjoy your nice warm blanket of comfortable ignorance, but don't try and spread your crap around where people actually look at facts, and trends.
Fuckers lie you will continue to say there is no problem until they draw their breath. Then you will whine on how it's other peoples fault.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
assum getting energy from the wind comes at no cost?
TYhere are uisually put where there are strong winds; which are often migratory paths for birds. The Wind farm in califormia kill 1000's of birds a year.
The wind slows down, so what efect does taking energy from the wind have? does it change rain fall patterns? certianly, does it change bird migration? wetlands? inland rainfall?
I'm not saying we should try it, just thet we should remember that we don't get something for nothing. Also,'renewable energy' is a marketing phrase.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If I hypothesised that the average score produced by throwing a die is 3.5; and you threw a die, and it came up as 1; would that disprove my hypothesis?
Based on the implied point of your post, I'm guessing you think the answer is yes. May I suggest looking up the words "average" and "trend" in a dictionary?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
(Frankly, I'm surprised they had space to print some bollocks about global warming in between the Diana conspiracy theories and 365-days-a-year Madeline McCann coverage...)
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
That's 3.3 weeks of profit from 2006, a record year for Exxon. They made about a fourth that much in 2002, and certainly even less in 1989 when the incident occurred. Oil prices in 1989 were less than a third what they are today, and Exxon hadn't merged with Mobil yet in 1989, either.
They're also suing the Red Dog Mine, which digs out piles of zinc and pays piles of money to the regional Indian group, for dust in the ocean which testing can't find a problem with. They're also complaining about a creek which is cleaner than when the mine began. "Kivalina takes Red Dog to court over air quality complaints"
Isn't it a bit suspicious that at a moment financial markets (stocks, loans, currency) are having serious problems, a new "virtual" market springs up, the carbon offsets market. Sorry but where there's tons of money involved, I tend to get a bit critical about the "facts" they base their decisions on.
>> So, basically what I'm saying is that I don't worry about nuclear power because there is nothing to worry about.
.
And nuclear only produces 30% of the greenhous gasses for the same amount of energy put into the grid. As the resources deplete rapidly in the next 50 years, the less economic the minerals, the harder it gets to extract the uranium, the more CO2 will be produced.
It sounds good until you take into account how hard space-walruses are to catch.
Surely any reasonable defense lawyer could argue that the ice caps are also melting on Mars, ergo global warming could be argued to not be man made.
So, we can all sue M$ for creating the PC which caused file sharing? Hint: the OS, on installation creates a file called "Shared Music".
The data is now nearly conclusive that sea ice and glacier reduction have been on a straight line trend starting from 1830 or so. There were no significant human CO2 emissions then.
I'm just waiting until I get mine!
If anything is substantially responsible for increasing the earth's temperature, it's that nuclear-reactor-in-the-sky.
"The view that the sun is the source of observed global warming seems credible mainly to people who are open to believing that the entire scientific community has somehow, over a period of several decades, failed to adequately study, analyze and understand the most visible influence on the Earth's temperature."
...
...
"And that brings us to a recent study by the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which examined "all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate," such as sunlight intensity and cosmic rays. The study found that in the past 20 years, all of those trends "have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures."
"Those trying to prove the sun is the sole cause of warming have a double challenge. First they would have to show us a mechanism that demonstrates how the sun explains recent warming, even though the data shows solar activity has been declining recently. (In the past, increased warming was associated with an increase in solar activity). They would also have to find an additional mechanism that is counteracting the well-understood warming caused by rising emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The doubters have done neither."
source: Salon.com: The cold truth about climate change (yes, in the USA, Salon is considered liberal media, but please read & judge the source material yourself.)
"I couldn't care less what you think about any subject"
Fixed my own post.
"Most monkeys quite enjoy flinging poo"
Why on earth would you think I want to hear about your family if I don't care about you?
That was actually fairly witty. My tutelage has paid off, young asshopper. You have achieved mastery of dick-fu.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
From today's sun watch
"The sun is again blank as short lived sunspot 983 has disappeared. The solar flux is very low as well."
It's a disaster of a year. Get ready for the ice age.
This is my sig.
"You're in a flamewar on Slashdot"
No, a flamewar implies that there are two sides.
This is just me kicking your ass. What's happening now is that you still don't realize it.
"I think it's pretty well established you're a loser by that alone."
Hmm, what does that say about you then chief?
Fail again, damn you make it easy to make you look stupid.