I really like that so many people want the cold hard facts about whether man is responsible for global warming. And they want the numbers on pieces of paper - to crunch the data before they will decide to go out on a limb and say that they agree this is happening because these numbers say so, and that men do affect the environment around them.
Problem is, the numbers can be manipulated to show either - or, and they can take decades to collect and analyze.
I don't think we have that much more time.
So here are the 'facts' as I've seen them.
When I go to my favorite fishing holes, streams, and rivers, I cannot eat the fish I get. They are poison now.
Because of man.
When I am driving on the interstate, I can 'see' a big city I am approaching well before I get there, over the horizon, by the dome of brown, misty smog and crap in the air above it. The same brown smog that causes 'Know-Zone' days where you should not re-fuel your vehicle until 6PM. The same brown misty crap that causes smog alerts, where the local government has to warn the young and old to stay inside for their own health.
Created by man.
And I see that my Dad and the other farmers I know are not allowed to use certain pesticides anymore because those pesticides almost made the American Bald Eagle extinct, or they have contaminated water wells for a hundred miles in the recent past.
Made by man. Sprayed on a field. Affecting our World.
I see stretches of brown, dead trees that have been killed by acid rains because of contaminants originating hundreds of miles away.
30 years ago (?) a huge river caught on fire because of the crap that men were putting into it from many miles upstream.
And does anyone remember the Love Canal making so many children so sick ?
I see the laws that HAD to be made to stop people from dumping their used motor oil out back, or using and releasing all the CFC's that opened up a hole in the ozone layer ? Which, btw, seems to be closing again since the bans ?
I see the Extra Diligence Required now in watershed areas, because what folks dump on the ground - ends up in peoples drinking water for hundreds and thousands of miles.
Sept 11th, 12th, 2001. Aircraft are banned from the skies over America. Resulting in some of the most beautiful, blue, and cloudless skies anyone living can remember seeing. No artificial clouds from vapor trails. No unburnt fuel or nasty emissions ( stand on an airport tarmac sometime.. that crap is nasty, and it'll give you a quick headache ), none of that crap pumped into the air on those days, as it is every single day of every single week otherwise.
I see signs of mankind affecting the environment in huge swaths, everywhere I look. And I marvel that we have grown so used to seeing it, that we come to accept these things as natural. Like being surprised at the cloudless skies for 3 days in 2001. Or we write it all off as a small price to pay for progress. Like the unfortunate sicknesses and cancers so many suffer when something mankind has been doing ends up being proven to hurt people.. usually many years after the facts, and well after the company responsible has made their money and vanished.
So, somebody here wants to tell ME THAT MANKIND CAN'T AFFECT AND DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT !!??
That what is happening CAN'T BE OUR FAULT ?
BULLSHIT.
I got news for ya. Man has become a force of nature in a way. There are so many of us, pumping so many different un-natural things into the air and water and soil, that we are indeed affecting the world we live in. Big Time.
That little smokestack you can see out your window, or on your drive to work each day, seems like it can't be cause for much concern. And by itself, maybe it isn't.
But you aren't looking at the BIG picture.
When you next see that smokestack, imagine many thousands of them right there, all beside each other, and all of them belching out crap. That is a small portion what America is putting into the air. Every Single Day.
Now imagine Many Thousands MORE of those smokestacks, each one belching even more crap out of them than the first bu
Just got the email this morning... AT&T just revised their terms of service with their high speed internet services to include wording about throttling customers who use 'excessive' of bandwidth in their opinion, as well as only allowing redress by arbitration or small claims court. Page is here http://www.att.net/csbellsouth/s/s.dll?spage=cg/legal/att.htm&leg=ytosAug08
Terms changed are " AT&T High Speed Internet Service Description
The Service is composed of narrowband or broadband access to the Internet provided by AT&T. The Site, provided by AT&T and Yahoo!, is composed of a broad selection of on-line resources including email, communication tools, forums, shopping services, search services and personalized content and branded programming. Broadband access is provided in speed tiers of: (1) 200 Kbps to 768 Kbps downstream (not available for AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service), (2) 769 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream; (3) 1.56 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps downstream; (4) 3.1 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps downstream; and (5) 6.1 Mbps to 10.0 Mbps (available only with AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (collectively ?Service Capability Speeds?).
The speeds identified above are Service Capability Speeds, which are the downstream rates at which your line transfers Internet access data between the network interface device at your home, office or apartment building to the first piece of routing equipment in AT&T?s network. Service Capability Speeds should not be confused with Throughput Speed, which is the speed at which your modem receives and sends Internet access data (?Throughput Speed.?). These speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Throughput speed depends upon many factors including customer location, destination and traffic on the Internet, interference with high frequency spectrum on your telephone line, wiring inside your home, office or apartment, the capacity or performance of your computer or modem, the server with which you are communicating, internal network factors, and the networks you and others are using when communicating. In order to provide a consistently high-quality video service, AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet throughput speeds may be temporarily reduced when a customer is using other U-verse services in a manner that requires high bandwidth. This could occur more often with higher speed Internet access products. It may be necessary, for some AT&T High Speed Internet users, for AT&T to set a maximum downstream speed on a customer line to enhance the reliability and consistency of performance. While this performance optimization process will prevent some customers from obtaining the maximum downstream speed capability, service capability speed will not be set lower than the service tier you have purchased. "
Which could bring your 6Mbps service down to 3.1 Mbps. They do not say where the tripwire is.
The rest of the paragraph is
" a. IP Addresses. AT&T High Speed Internet and AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet Services are provided with either a dynamic Internet Protocol (?IP?) address, a static IP address, or multiple static IP address service (as applicable) at AT&T?s sole discretion. The dynamic IP address is a single Internet address intended for use with a single Member Account and any associated Sub Accounts. The static IP address or multiple static IP address is intended for use with a single computer or a network of computer/servers. You may not use the Service in a manner that is inconsistent with these intended uses. "
" * Termination of Voice Service. With AT&T High Speed Internet Direct service, we can deliver the benefits of broadband without a home phone connection. For customers who terminate their home phone service with AT&T ? but not their high speed Internet service ? we have added new language that will ultimately enable us to maintain a customer's broadband connection at the
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I really like that so many people want the cold hard facts about whether man is responsible for global warming. And they want the numbers on pieces of paper - to crunch the data before they will decide to go out on a limb and say that they agree this is happening because these numbers say so, and that men do affect the environment around them. Problem is, the numbers can be manipulated to show either - or, and they can take decades to collect and analyze. I don't think we have that much more time. So here are the 'facts' as I've seen them. When I go to my favorite fishing holes, streams, and rivers, I cannot eat the fish I get. They are poison now. Because of man. When I am driving on the interstate, I can 'see' a big city I am approaching well before I get there, over the horizon, by the dome of brown, misty smog and crap in the air above it. The same brown smog that causes 'Know-Zone' days where you should not re-fuel your vehicle until 6PM. The same brown misty crap that causes smog alerts, where the local government has to warn the young and old to stay inside for their own health. Created by man. And I see that my Dad and the other farmers I know are not allowed to use certain pesticides anymore because those pesticides almost made the American Bald Eagle extinct, or they have contaminated water wells for a hundred miles in the recent past. Made by man. Sprayed on a field. Affecting our World. I see stretches of brown, dead trees that have been killed by acid rains because of contaminants originating hundreds of miles away. 30 years ago (?) a huge river caught on fire because of the crap that men were putting into it from many miles upstream. And does anyone remember the Love Canal making so many children so sick ? I see the laws that HAD to be made to stop people from dumping their used motor oil out back, or using and releasing all the CFC's that opened up a hole in the ozone layer ? Which, btw, seems to be closing again since the bans ? I see the Extra Diligence Required now in watershed areas, because what folks dump on the ground - ends up in peoples drinking water for hundreds and thousands of miles. Sept 11th, 12th, 2001. Aircraft are banned from the skies over America. Resulting in some of the most beautiful, blue, and cloudless skies anyone living can remember seeing. No artificial clouds from vapor trails. No unburnt fuel or nasty emissions ( stand on an airport tarmac sometime.. that crap is nasty, and it'll give you a quick headache ), none of that crap pumped into the air on those days, as it is every single day of every single week otherwise. I see signs of mankind affecting the environment in huge swaths, everywhere I look. And I marvel that we have grown so used to seeing it, that we come to accept these things as natural. Like being surprised at the cloudless skies for 3 days in 2001. Or we write it all off as a small price to pay for progress. Like the unfortunate sicknesses and cancers so many suffer when something mankind has been doing ends up being proven to hurt people.. usually many years after the facts, and well after the company responsible has made their money and vanished. So, somebody here wants to tell ME THAT MANKIND CAN'T AFFECT AND DESTROY OUR ENVIRONMENT !!?? That what is happening CAN'T BE OUR FAULT ? BULLSHIT. I got news for ya. Man has become a force of nature in a way. There are so many of us, pumping so many different un-natural things into the air and water and soil, that we are indeed affecting the world we live in. Big Time. That little smokestack you can see out your window, or on your drive to work each day, seems like it can't be cause for much concern. And by itself, maybe it isn't. But you aren't looking at the BIG picture. When you next see that smokestack, imagine many thousands of them right there, all beside each other, and all of them belching out crap. That is a small portion what America is putting into the air. Every Single Day. Now imagine Many Thousands MORE of those smokestacks, each one belching even more crap out of them than the first bu
Just got the email this morning... AT&T just revised their terms of service with their high speed internet services to include wording about throttling customers who use 'excessive' of bandwidth in their opinion, as well as only allowing redress by arbitration or small claims court.
Page is here
http://www.att.net/csbellsouth/s/s.dll?spage=cg/legal/att.htm&leg=ytosAug08
Terms changed are
" AT&T High Speed Internet Service Description
The Service is composed of narrowband or broadband access to the Internet provided by AT&T. The Site, provided by AT&T and Yahoo!, is composed of a broad selection of on-line resources including email, communication tools, forums, shopping services, search services and personalized content and branded programming. Broadband access is provided in speed tiers of: (1) 200 Kbps to 768 Kbps downstream (not available for AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service), (2) 769 Kbps to 1.5 Mbps downstream; (3) 1.56 Mbps to 3.0 Mbps downstream; (4) 3.1 Mbps to 6.0 Mbps downstream; and (5) 6.1 Mbps to 10.0 Mbps (available only with AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet service) (collectively ?Service Capability Speeds?).
The speeds identified above are Service Capability Speeds, which are the downstream rates at which your line transfers Internet access data between the network interface device at your home, office or apartment building to the first piece of routing equipment in AT&T?s network. Service Capability Speeds should not be confused with Throughput Speed, which is the speed at which your modem receives and sends Internet access data (?Throughput Speed.?). These speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Throughput speed depends upon many factors including customer location, destination and traffic on the Internet, interference with high frequency spectrum on your telephone line, wiring inside your home, office or apartment, the capacity or performance of your computer or modem, the server with which you are communicating, internal network factors, and the networks you and others are using when communicating. In order to provide a consistently high-quality video service, AT&T Uverse High Speed Internet throughput speeds may be temporarily reduced when a customer is using other U-verse services in a manner that requires high bandwidth. This could occur more often with higher speed Internet access products. It may be necessary, for some AT&T High Speed Internet users, for AT&T to set a maximum downstream speed on a customer line to enhance the reliability and consistency of performance. While this performance optimization process will prevent some customers from obtaining the maximum downstream speed capability, service capability speed will not be set lower than the service tier you have purchased. "
Which could bring your 6Mbps service down to 3.1 Mbps.
They do not say where the tripwire is.
The rest of the paragraph is
" a. IP Addresses. AT&T High Speed Internet and AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet Services are provided with either a dynamic Internet Protocol (?IP?) address, a static IP address, or multiple static IP address service (as applicable) at AT&T?s sole discretion. The dynamic IP address is a single Internet address intended for use with a single Member Account and any associated Sub Accounts. The static IP address or multiple static IP address is intended for use with a single computer or a network of computer/servers. You may not use the Service in a manner that is inconsistent with these intended uses. "
" * Termination of Voice Service. With AT&T High Speed Internet Direct service, we can deliver the benefits of broadband without a home phone connection. For customers who terminate their home phone service with AT&T ? but not their high speed Internet service ? we have added new language that will ultimately enable us to maintain a customer's broadband connection at the