your comment does not take into account that the number of livestock likely is increasing, while our rainforests and other "CO2 eaters" are decreasing.
No I didn't mention that, but I don't deny it either. I agree that we should stop cutting down trees to graise animals for food. It's incredibly inefficient, and not sustainable on a global scale. You're right there.
However.. "Manure management" is one of the key sources of methane emissions ( http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html ). Methane is one of those greenhouse gases that people tend to attribute to such things as.. I dont know.. global warming...
That's where you're going off course:(
Methane is comprised of carbon that has just recently been captured by plants, which were then eaten by an animal, which produced methane. There is NO net increase in carbon. It's just cycling around the ecosystem. It would only increase CO2 levels if animals ate coal or oil and turned that into methane. But good old methane from animals is just part of the existing balance. It's all about where the carbon came from.
The British don't have it in their power to 'make' anything secular. Look at the problems they had with their occupation of Ireland. Palestine was secular. Period. Israel changed all that. The PLO and Hamas wish to be rid of all the Israeli occupiers is an understandable position considering what they've had to endure. But still, a majority of Palestinians just want to live in their own country in peace. They would be more than willing to accept a single-state solution, even if it meant that some of the occupiers stay around to clean up the mess they've made.
As for this single-state solution turning into a blood bath, you're missing an important point. It HAS BEEN a blood bath since the illegal creation of Israel. A collapse of US support for Israel would surely cause an initial increase in violence, but then it would subside as a more stable solution materialised. No-one who defends Israel ( or US foreign policy ) is in any position to be lecturing others on decreasing violence! And unfortunately, when you have a situation as dire as the Palestinians, a violence is going to be part of the re-organisation. At least it will tend toward a just solution, which a 2-state solution never will be. Israel, as an illegitimate, fundamentalist, racist, fascist state, must be destroyed, and a secular Palestinian state should replace it. Crying foul over violence against the poor Israelis just doesn't cut it.
I advocate an immediate end to the oil wars, US funding of global terrorism... in particular Israel, and a diversion of all war spending to renewable technology research. You are generally correct when you say that each individual renewable technology won't provide a magic bullet solution. But the reason they can't provide now is that there's no money going into R&D. It doesn't make any sense for the energy companies to invest in it, because they'd be throwing their own money into a technology that they can't profit from. They'd prefer to 'claim' and then drill oil, coal, uranium, etc, which they can process and sell back to us. They can't follow the same methods with renewable technology, as it's far more decentralised, and lends itself far more to community-based production and distribution, as opposed to centralised production and distribution.
The same reasons also apply to governments, who are in the pockets of big energy companies.
But the trillion dollars that Bush is asking for from congress for the next 12 months, for example, could instead be spent on renewable R&D. The point is that no-one is going to do this for us. The only way we can get enough R&D money organised is via a sustained campaign targetted at our politicians, forcing them to spend public money on public R&D. Individuals are largely powerless to affect the situation, and the path of least resistance is to burn all the oil, then burn all the natural gas, then split all the uranium, etc, etc, with no concern for the environment impact.
So you're right. No one single technology will save us. But massive public R&D in multiple directions in renewable technology is the way we have to push forward.
I think de-funding terrorism is higher on most Americans to-do lists than stopping Global Warming.
This statement carries the assumption that the main global terrorists are foreign powers with oil. They're not. They're US powers with oil. The foreign ones come a distant 2nd. They exist, sure, but they exist because of US terrorism and foreign policy, not in spite of it. But I agree with the sentiment that 'they' need to be de-funded.
The DOE has an over 20 billion dollar year budget
That's a drop in the ocean compared to the trillion dollars the US is targetted to spend in Iraq over the next 12 months. And the DOE is only looking out for the interests of the oil dealers. Take the California brown-outs, for example. You can't seriously expect the DOE to be investing in renewable technology. The US is quite uninterested in thermonuclear energy ( as you pointed out ), and has starved all R&D in that area. They're pushing nuclear, as well as continued dependence on fossil fuels.
I do share your hopes over ITER and friends though. They're at least trying. I'm skeptical whether they can actually make it feasible, but it seems to be the biggest single technology that might just save us ( renewable varieties being smaller, but still important ).
It all depends on your focus. From the point of view of acid rain and other pollutants, sure, natural gas is 'clean' in that respect. But that's not where all the focus is recently. The focus is on CO2, and in that respect, natural gas is not 'clean'; it's a greenhouse gas.
Again, read the conservative, establishment reports, keeping in mind they come through establishment filters. The facts are getting to the point where even long-term critics are having to make major concessions. For example here in Australia, Howard has been forced in the past year to switch from being a self-confessed 'climate change skeptic' to admitting that climate change is happening and that human activity is the main driving force behind it. Separating man's impact is as easy as graphing the rate of change of temperature during previous climate change periods ( ie previous tipping points when we entered / exited ice ages ), and comparing them to now. That's the basis of all the recent reports that state that human activity is to blame for rapidly increasing temperatures and melting ice caps.
The neo-conservatives have all but abandoned arguing against the scientific consensus. There are still the energy companies who are clinging to this strategy, but it is really a lost cause for them now. What the neo-conservatives are now arguing is that climate change ( as in abnormally fast, human-driven climate change ) is real and something needs to be done about it... HOWEVER... they won't do anything that will 'harm the economy'. This comes from Bush, Blair and Howard regularly. They say "If we reduce our carbon emissions and others don't ( eg China ), then we pay the price is economic prosperity while China continues to burn all the carbon that we would have burned )". This is a powerful argument. One point to make is that it is basically conceding that there *is* climate change. This is good. But then it attempts to pass the buck and prevent anyone from doing anything about it, for fear of losing trade. The answer to this is that a global strategy for dealing with climate change / CO2 emissions is needed.
just exactly what does "Justice for Palestine " look like, and what the $%@$%# does it have to do with invading Iraq for oil?
Good question. It means the right to their own land, for one thing. It means a dismantling of the terrorist, fundamentalist state of Israel and replacing it with an inclusive, secular state ( which Palestine was prior to 1947 ). It means the right of return for all Palestinian refugees - something which the Israelis have always argued Jews should have, regardless of whether they've ever actually lived there before.
As for what it has to do with oil, it's simple. Israel is funded and supported by the US to keep their watchdog in the area. If you remove the US's ability to grab oil in the Middle East, suddenly Israel becomes nothing more than a horrible liability. Once US support is removed from Israel, it will collapse, and Palestinians will be able to move forward to a just single-state solution.
Your quote from God-knows-where lacks any real connection to the issue. You are trying to point out that there are some Muslim extremists. I don't deny that. But I do point out that it is our policies which are creating these extremists, and that we also have our share of extremists. The fundamentalist Jewish position ( Zionist ) is equally as harsh against others and humanity as your quote suggests of Muslim extremists.
If it is the the total destruction and removal of a race, and total religious and political domination by Islam through a violent and bloody war. I would say that your views don't match what you are saying, and you are supporting the most extreme and oppressive ideology that has ever crossed our planets surface.
Israel was founded on just such principles. The dominant Palestinian position has been far more moderate, even to this day. Keep in mind that Israel carried out mass genocide against the Palestinians, and treat them as aliens in their own land. 50 years of this kind of treatment will of course create a lot of people who are angry, to say the least, with their occupiers. But it is a lie to suggest that the Palestinians want the 'total destruction and removal of a race'. What they want, and what they voted for when electing Hamas, is the total destruction of the state of Israel, which is a different thing to the destruction of a race. The racist fundamentalist state must go. The Jews who want to remain in the area can do so, but under a secular Palestinian state.
The Israelis and the US, however, are not interested in a single-state solution, but instead push for a so-called 2-state solution, which in practice has meant continual erosion of traditional Palestinian land, continual escalation of violence, continual increasing in illegal 'settlements' in Palestine, an Appartheid wall that cuts up Palestine into tiny, inaccessible islands in a sea of Israeli occupation, trade barriers, etc, etc, etc. This 2-state solution has been tried for many years under Arafat, and as failed. This is why Hamas has come to power - because Palestinians understand that there simply can be no dealing with Israel - that they will continue to erode Palestine until it doesn't exist.
By the way, good job at shamelessly plugging your political views in a scientific discussion.:/
Forgot to comment on this one. Cheney is a big oil trader, in the same vain as Bush. I hardly think it's off-topic to communicate to other link-minded people that he's coming to Australia, and that there's a demo on today, considering we're talking about fossil fuels, renewable resources, and all. Just because you don't personally agree that burning fossil fuels is wrong, doesn't mean that I shouldn't let others on the left know about what's going to be a great day of activity against one of the most oiled-up neo-cons around:)
There are a number of ways of tracking historical temperature and CO2 levels. One leading way is by drilling into ice ( ironically ) to extract 'cores' that can be sliced up an analysed. The ice traps a number of indicators of environmental variables, in much the same was as the fossil record is created, and new layers are added to the top each year. Analysis of radioactive isotopes present in organic matter gives us an incredibly precise indicator of the date that something was initially frozen. These combine with CO2 levels trapped in the ice and other indicators that allow scientists to build a precise map of conditions over an extremely long term.
So basically, yes we do have accurate data about long-term climate change activity, and the most striking difference that we're seeing now is that the temperature and CO2 levels have always moved together, but never moved this fast.
For more info, and from a decidedly conservative source, the Stern Report ( Stern is an old World Bank Chief Economist, so you don't get much more conservative / establishment than him ) is very eye-opening. He drives the point home very strongly that:
a) Climate change is happening rapidly b) Our CO2-producing activity is the main driving force behind it c) Already it will have massive costs monetary and human costs d) The best plan is to invest massively in a phased shut-down of all CO2 producing activities, to minimize future costs
There are other reports due out soon, including a multi-phased UN report which is coming in the next month or so.
Global warming while it may be real is not anything this planet hasn't been through many many times in the past
That's not really true. We have had climate change in the past, but not this fast. We're seeing changes that would have taken tens of thousands of years in previous changes take tens of years instead. And that's because we're digging up billions of tons of CO2 and pumping it into the atmosphere. No-one's done that before. Things haven't happened this fast before. Even the conservative reports are saying that in 10 year's time, we'll have hundreds of millions of environmental refugees because of changed rain patterns, not to mention other people's land simply being under water.
By your logic, anything that releases CO2 is contributing to Global Warming, am I correct?
No. Only releasing CO2 that has been locked out of the ecosystem for an extended period of time affects climate change. All the rest is already factored into the system, and simple cycles around between plants and animals.
Well, in that case, let's kill all the animals. Dogs, cats, cows, every last one. After all, they're creating dangerous CO2. And then we can all starve to death and we'll die too. That should teach us for breathing. *cough*:P
That's the standard line from the pro-oil PR companies, yes. But it's absurd. The CO2 already in the ecosystem, as I pointed out above, is not contributing to climate change. It's in balance already. The old 'cows farting' line is quite warn out, and completely discredited. Only *new* sources of CO2, such as those locked up in fossil fuels, and which therefore add substantially to the atmosphere when burned, contribute to climate change.
This is a key point that people unsure on climate change are being fooled by. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between plants, animals and CO2.
it's natural gas idiot - it's as clean burning as it gets.
No, idiot. It's as dirty as it gets. It releases CO2. You didn't do well at comprehension at school, did you?
there is litterally billions of tons of ice on this planet. i'm going to just assume you've never even been outside your own little burb on this one
There are 'literally' billions of tons, yes, and they'll largely be gone in 5-10 years. I'm going to assume you've had your head up your arse for the past year or so - climate change is now globally accepted as happening. Catch up.
i think i know whats going on here, your one of these people who needs to feel self rightgeous about something
Dude you have some pretty strange ideas about what motivates people. You're the one who's obsessed with yourself. I'm involved because I see an oncoming catastrophe and I'm going to do something about it. Interpret it as you will, but history ( and the majority of people around the world at this point, I should add ) have already spoken against you. Get off your high horse and come to terms with the effect that you're having on the environment.
ut because the world you live in is really quite good
From where I'm sitting, it's all turning to shit. We have oil wars, growing imperialism, decreasing wages, increasing attacks on civil liberties. I don't see the nice part to it. Nice in your ivory tower up there, is it?
you make up this imaginary enemy to attack
What the fuck dude? You are deluded! There is a very real enemy related to this topic, and it's BP and other Big Polluters who want to profit at any cost - including the entire world we live in. There is the enemy of global capitalism, which drives the destruction of the environment and workers' rights. None of this is a part of my imagination. You are seriously deluded.
your own confusion is eveident in the fact you advertise an anti war demonstation in a thread about drilling for methane trapped in ice
Not at all. The issues are all linked. And this isn't an 'anti-war' demo, it's an anti-Cheney demo, and pulls together grass-roots activists from many different areas, including unions, climate change groups, socialists, peace activists, muslim groups, etc. On the contrary, I think it's highly on-topic. Cheney represents everything we're fighting against collectively, and climate change / oil dependence is one part of the puzzle.
You aren't very good at keeping up with this stuff, are you?
You would think that by now people would get the idea on this point.
Fossil fuels are not clean-burning. They have carbon that's been captured over long periods of time, and when you burn them, you release carbon-dioxide and contribute to climate change. Simple as that.
What's more, disturbing the few remaining bit of ice left on the planet to get to fossil fuels seems to be the absolute height of arrogance considering the position that organisations like BP ( Big Polluters ) has put us in with their past carbon industry. Does anyone think it's actually a good thing that actively contribute to breaking up the ice to grab fossil fuel? The mind boggles!
Australians, Dick Cheney is coming to visit us today. Please come to:
AFTERNOON RALLY: 5.30PM THURSDAY FEBRUARY 22, SYDNEY TOWN HALL
MORNING PROTEST: 8AM FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23 @ SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, CNR ESSEX ST & GEORGE ST THE ROCKS (Cheney will be giving a speech inside the hotel at approx 9.30am)
See http://www.stopwarcoalition.org/ for more details on events. Let's let them know what we think of their energy and foreign policy!
That's a pretty strange thing to say. It's like saying "What's the point of all the other car manufacturers competing with Porsche? They should quit releasing crappy cars and invest in R&D until they can produce a better car than Porsche".
Of course, not everyone buys Porsches, just as not everyone buys Intel's top-of-the-line chip. AMD's chips are always better value. Always.
I've never bought the most expensive CPU available. I always go for the best tradeoff between price and performance. It's called value. Don't they teach anything in schools these days?
If we're talking about typical Linux users, then sure, they can deal with customising their WM. They generally won't use Gnome, for the same reasons that Linus won't use Gnome. I, for example, use Enlightenment.
But it's a different story with a corporate desktop. Configurability isn't the same beast there. What you want is something very simple, predictable, and consistent. That's exactly what Gnome is about.
The problem with all the shit-slinging is that neither side has taken the time to recognise the goals of the other. I think Linus' patches are at least a sign that he does, on some level, understand what Gnome is about, but the spirit that he's offered them in is unnecessary. Linux knows they won't be accepted - this is the only reason he took the time to do it in the first place - to show up the Gnome team. But here's the rubbing point... these changes Linus is suggesting aren't 'missing' because no-one bothered to write them until Linus came along. They're 'missing' because they're not what the Gnome developers actually want. They break the interface guidelines. Gnome devs gnome this. I know this ( and as I've already stated, this goal clashes with my goals, hence I use Enlightenment, but at least I recognise their goal and salute them for sticking to their guns ). Linus also knows this. He is of course free to use KDE, just as I'm free to use Enlightenment, and people who require more conservative desktops are free to use Gnome.
Unfortunately I think it's Linus who has the problem here.
That's the beauty of the GPL. The whole idea is to protect the rights of the community. The article says that companies have been able to leverage open-source against their competitors, but why is this a problem? It's validating and entrenching open-source, including the GPL.
Now sure, some bad companies can use open-source to their advantage, but not to our disadvantage. That's the secret. Only to our advantage. The only area where there's a question mark over open-source is in patent law. But with more people, including big business, using open-source technology, it's progressively in more people's interest to not use patents against open-source, and indeed actively protect open-source software. IBM, for example, aren't about to use their world's-largest patent collection against open-source, because this would be detrimental to them and their customers.
You're missing an important point. The oil lobby have massive funds to throw at propaganda, and all of their 'activists' are of the same type: the paid type. The environmental lobby, on the other hand, is largely grass-roots activists.
Sure there are some personalities who push the message a little further than the rest of us can, due to their fame. But I don't see where you think the ulterior motive is on the environmental side. It's not like being an environmental activist actually pays in monetary terms. At least I've never, ever, known anyone who is getting paid for it. As for people getting 'grant money', that's actually essential. You see, without public money going into scientific research, how is the public ever supposed to get any scientific knowledge that doesn't come to us through the corporate filter ( for example the oil lobby filter )? And I'm really not sure about the 'big enviros' that you talk about.
Anyway, whether 0.1% of the environmental movement is being paid for their work or not, I don't get paid, and don't have any ulterior motives... apart from trying to help avoid the oncoming catastrophe that we're well on course for. This is the big FACT that the the oil ( and nuclear ) lobby refuse to admit. The only point that the energy lobby ever put forward is that sustainable living will cost money. But they fail to mention who's money... it's not our money... it's not even their money, it's their profits. And that's just too bad.
It's pretty easy to tell the wankers that are paid for by Exxon, Shell, etc. Reading over your past comments just confirms this further. Tell me... do you actually have an opinion of your own, or are you just some snotty-nosed brat who has no idea whatsoever what's going on, happily spamming the net with pro-oil-company propaganda?
Oh dear, Billy, you sound a little flustered this time around. Good.
First you make the idiotic statement that someone discoveres a 'full system' exploit for OSX every day, and go on repeating that point. But a) I don't think it's quite that often, in fact I would be surprised if it was one every week, and b) at least Apple fix things in a relatively timely manner. Windows 'full-system' exploits, on the other hand, DO pop up every day, and go unchecked for months without being patched.
You say "we've done a lot to fix security, and Apple hasn't done any of these things". What kind of an claim is that exactly? There doesn't appear to be any substance. Hell, I've done a lot to fix security in my software, and Microsoft haven't done any of these things.
The bottom of page 2 is a classic... you say "No, I think you'll find that Microsoft offered all these user interface innovations long before Apple... what's that you say... oh... that stuff... yeah sure we copied everything from Apple in the past 7 years, but just remember this: Microsoft invented the File Menu". That's some innovation right there, Billy Boy. Without the File menu, I suppose we couldn't open files, right? You should have patented it while you had the chance.
I also like the crying foul over Apple's adverts. Not that I'm an Apple fan, but you can tell by Bill's response that Apple are good at hitting raw nerves.
Say I'm walking down the street, to get to work. There are smokers piled up outside all the high-rise buildings on my way, and I have no option to walk around them, other than taking my chances with oncoming traffic.
What does the 'free market' say about that? Should I buy myself another footpath?
Actually I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you check up on the available tools. Read my comment about above building packages. Also read up on creating stage-* images. You can build up an initial server, tweak it to suit your needs, create a stage-4 image, then install this on all the other systems. You can also use one system to do all the compiling, create binary packages, test everything out, then update all the other systems from the binary packages. Or if you *really* want to be cool, you can set up distcc, which creates a compile-farm out of all systems on a network ( must all have the same version of gcc ).
With the above method, you might still be looking at 2 days for the initial setup, and yes, it will require a little more attention than a point-and-click install, but then you can have everything else done *very* fast. Put the stage-4 image on the network, and then just boot of a CD ( or figure out how to create a network boot image ) and unpack the image. That's it.
You're saying you'd spend less than 2 hours installing stuff, and then you've suddenly got a production system that everyone's using? You have got to be fucking kidding man! Have you ever managed a server, or are you talking through your hat here?
On a production environment, 10-15 minutes is really too much. Especially for minor upgrades (eg. security updates).
Ah. The problem is that you don't know how to use your Gentoo system properly. You can build packages without installing them! Nice, eh? Find an update you just must have? Fine. Build it, create a package, and then when it's time to install the update ( out of office hours / weeekend / whatever ), bring the service down, install from your package, bring the service back up. Simple. Just as simple as updating from an rpm or whatever. Got a problem with the new version you just installed? No problem, as you would have made a binary package of your old version ( which quickpkg ) just before upgrading, right? Gentoo's binary package system is very, very nice.
You also get more intelligent handling of config file updates - etc-update is brilliant for merging new features that external developers ( not Gentoo devs ) have added, and highlighting things that can't be automatically merged in. You don't get that in other distros. Why? Because you're not meant to maintain the system in this way. The idea they seem to hold to is that the user can install essential updates easily ( for example updates to your OpenSSH daemon ), but not a lot else. Want something else? Back everything up, and install the latest version of the distro from a CD.
Security updates. If you knew there was a remote exploit for sshd, would you upgrade? I would.
Exactly. And one of the distinct advantages to running a Gentoo system on a server is that there is *always* support for your system. I ran a slackware server prior to running Gentoo, and it was great for the 1st couple of years, but then it just became long-in-the-tooth. It was getting more and more difficult to keep packages up to date, various packages would rely on other packages being updated also, and then by this time most of the Slackware userbase had moved to Slackware 10 or something, and Slackware 7 really wasn't a server that was fun to maintain any more. I've been running Gentoo ever since, and there is *never* any trouble doing essential security updates, or getting help with my particular release. And lets not talk about what happened to the Slackware forums / mailing lists. That was fucking horrendous.
I've been using Gentoo on our database / web / email / many-other-goodies server since August 2003 ( I keep emerge --sync logs ). I'm running the stable branch on our server, and the unstable ( ~x86 ) branch on desktops. I certainly agree that updates on the unstable branch have to be done thoughtfully, but building binary packages when emerging helps a great deal with disaster recovery. It's nothing that can't be fixed with a little searching.
But on the stable branch, I've actually been very surprised with how... stable... it is ( coming from the ~x86 branch ). I keep a separate binary packages repository for the server... just in case... but haven't actually had to back-track to anything yet. I do updates outside of work hours, and revdep-rebuild when upgrading major parts. I haven't had any catastrophes yet. Actually I haven't even had any mishaps yet. What can I say? If you are confident enough to run Linux on a server, I say you can handle the stable branch of Gentoo.
As for the points the author raised against Gentoo:
1) Too long to do initial install.
This one gives it away from the start. You only install once. But this is at the top of the list. I can't remember how long it took me to install Gentoo on this server, but it was probably 2 days or something. Who cares? That's what time I take installing *any* server. You don't just whack it together and put it into production. You install, you read, you test, you frig around some more. What's wrong with that? The author is no server administrator.
2) Same as point one, just repeated
WTF? Seriously, this author has his head up his arse. On the one hand, he later says that you shouldn't update willy-nilly on servers, and yet then says that it takes ages to update everything. So what, exactly, is he trying to achieve? It takes me about 10 - 15 minutes to update MySQL, which is the most common package I update. What's wrong with that? I back things up, shut down MySQL, emerge the new MySQL package, test, and import form backups if required. No problem? Where is this guy's problem, seriously?
3) Don't like updates, even if they are to more stable packages
Nothing forces you to update packages. Also, no-one claims that packages updates *won't* break things ( though my experience is that in the stable branch, updates *don't* break things ). But if you don't want to update, don't. No problem. If you do want to update, the tools are there to update easily. Sure you should pay attention to what you're doing. It goes without saying.
4) Same as point 3, but with the update impetus being security instead of stablity
Doesn't deserve a response really.
I challenge this author to prove that he's actually used Gentoo Linux for more than 7 days without running crying back to Linspire.
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Methane is not stable. It combines with things quite quickly. Sure, it's a worse greenhouse gas, but it's only around for a short time anyway.
No I didn't mention that, but I don't deny it either. I agree that we should stop cutting down trees to graise animals for food. It's incredibly inefficient, and not sustainable on a global scale. You're right there.
That's where you're going off course
Methane is comprised of carbon that has just recently been captured by plants, which were then eaten by an animal, which produced methane. There is NO net increase in carbon. It's just cycling around the ecosystem. It would only increase CO2 levels if animals ate coal or oil and turned that into methane. But good old methane from animals is just part of the existing balance. It's all about where the carbon came from .
The British don't have it in their power to 'make' anything secular. Look at the problems they had with their occupation of Ireland. Palestine was secular. Period. Israel changed all that. The PLO and Hamas wish to be rid of all the Israeli occupiers is an understandable position considering what they've had to endure. But still, a majority of Palestinians just want to live in their own country in peace. They would be more than willing to accept a single-state solution, even if it meant that some of the occupiers stay around to clean up the mess they've made.
As for this single-state solution turning into a blood bath, you're missing an important point. It HAS BEEN a blood bath since the illegal creation of Israel. A collapse of US support for Israel would surely cause an initial increase in violence, but then it would subside as a more stable solution materialised. No-one who defends Israel ( or US foreign policy ) is in any position to be lecturing others on decreasing violence! And unfortunately, when you have a situation as dire as the Palestinians, a violence is going to be part of the re-organisation. At least it will tend toward a just solution, which a 2-state solution never will be. Israel, as an illegitimate, fundamentalist, racist, fascist state, must be destroyed, and a secular Palestinian state should replace it. Crying foul over violence against the poor Israelis just doesn't cut it.
I advocate an immediate end to the oil wars, US funding of global terrorism ... in particular Israel, and a diversion of all war spending to renewable technology research. You are generally correct when you say that each individual renewable technology won't provide a magic bullet solution. But the reason they can't provide now is that there's no money going into R&D. It doesn't make any sense for the energy companies to invest in it, because they'd be throwing their own money into a technology that they can't profit from. They'd prefer to 'claim' and then drill oil, coal, uranium, etc, which they can process and sell back to us. They can't follow the same methods with renewable technology, as it's far more decentralised, and lends itself far more to community-based production and distribution, as opposed to centralised production and distribution.
The same reasons also apply to governments, who are in the pockets of big energy companies.
But the trillion dollars that Bush is asking for from congress for the next 12 months, for example, could instead be spent on renewable R&D. The point is that no-one is going to do this for us. The only way we can get enough R&D money organised is via a sustained campaign targetted at our politicians, forcing them to spend public money on public R&D. Individuals are largely powerless to affect the situation, and the path of least resistance is to burn all the oil, then burn all the natural gas, then split all the uranium, etc, etc, with no concern for the environment impact.
So you're right. No one single technology will save us. But massive public R&D in multiple directions in renewable technology is the way we have to push forward.
This statement carries the assumption that the main global terrorists are foreign powers with oil. They're not. They're US powers with oil. The foreign ones come a distant 2nd. They exist, sure, but they exist because of US terrorism and foreign policy, not in spite of it. But I agree with the sentiment that 'they' need to be de-funded.
That's a drop in the ocean compared to the trillion dollars the US is targetted to spend in Iraq over the next 12 months. And the DOE is only looking out for the interests of the oil dealers. Take the California brown-outs, for example. You can't seriously expect the DOE to be investing in renewable technology. The US is quite uninterested in thermonuclear energy ( as you pointed out ), and has starved all R&D in that area. They're pushing nuclear, as well as continued dependence on fossil fuels.
I do share your hopes over ITER and friends though. They're at least trying. I'm skeptical whether they can actually make it feasible, but it seems to be the biggest single technology that might just save us ( renewable varieties being smaller, but still important ).
It all depends on your focus. From the point of view of acid rain and other pollutants, sure, natural gas is 'clean' in that respect. But that's not where all the focus is recently. The focus is on CO2, and in that respect, natural gas is not 'clean'; it's a greenhouse gas.
Again, read the conservative, establishment reports, keeping in mind they come through establishment filters. The facts are getting to the point where even long-term critics are having to make major concessions. For example here in Australia, Howard has been forced in the past year to switch from being a self-confessed 'climate change skeptic' to admitting that climate change is happening and that human activity is the main driving force behind it. Separating man's impact is as easy as graphing the rate of change of temperature during previous climate change periods ( ie previous tipping points when we entered / exited ice ages ), and comparing them to now. That's the basis of all the recent reports that state that human activity is to blame for rapidly increasing temperatures and melting ice caps.
... HOWEVER ... they won't do anything that will 'harm the economy'. This comes from Bush, Blair and Howard regularly. They say "If we reduce our carbon emissions and others don't ( eg China ), then we pay the price is economic prosperity while China continues to burn all the carbon that we would have burned )". This is a powerful argument. One point to make is that it is basically conceding that there *is* climate change. This is good. But then it attempts to pass the buck and prevent anyone from doing anything about it, for fear of losing trade. The answer to this is that a global strategy for dealing with climate change / CO2 emissions is needed.
The neo-conservatives have all but abandoned arguing against the scientific consensus. There are still the energy companies who are clinging to this strategy, but it is really a lost cause for them now. What the neo-conservatives are now arguing is that climate change ( as in abnormally fast, human-driven climate change ) is real and something needs to be done about it
Good question. It means the right to their own land, for one thing. It means a dismantling of the terrorist, fundamentalist state of Israel and replacing it with an inclusive, secular state ( which Palestine was prior to 1947 ). It means the right of return for all Palestinian refugees - something which the Israelis have always argued Jews should have, regardless of whether they've ever actually lived there before.
As for what it has to do with oil, it's simple. Israel is funded and supported by the US to keep their watchdog in the area. If you remove the US's ability to grab oil in the Middle East, suddenly Israel becomes nothing more than a horrible liability. Once US support is removed from Israel, it will collapse, and Palestinians will be able to move forward to a just single-state solution.
Your quote from God-knows-where lacks any real connection to the issue. You are trying to point out that there are some Muslim extremists. I don't deny that. But I do point out that it is our policies which are creating these extremists, and that we also have our share of extremists. The fundamentalist Jewish position ( Zionist ) is equally as harsh against others and humanity as your quote suggests of Muslim extremists.
Israel was founded on just such principles. The dominant Palestinian position has been far more moderate, even to this day. Keep in mind that Israel carried out mass genocide against the Palestinians, and treat them as aliens in their own land. 50 years of this kind of treatment will of course create a lot of people who are angry, to say the least, with their occupiers. But it is a lie to suggest that the Palestinians want the 'total destruction and removal of a race'. What they want, and what they voted for when electing Hamas, is the total destruction of the state of Israel, which is a different thing to the destruction of a race. The racist fundamentalist state must go. The Jews who want to remain in the area can do so, but under a secular Palestinian state.
The Israelis and the US, however, are not interested in a single-state solution, but instead push for a so-called 2-state solution, which in practice has meant continual erosion of traditional Palestinian land, continual escalation of violence, continual increasing in illegal 'settlements' in Palestine, an Appartheid wall that cuts up Palestine into tiny, inaccessible islands in a sea of Israeli occupation, trade barriers, etc, etc, etc. This 2-state solution has been tried for many years under Arafat, and as failed. This is why Hamas has come to power - because Palestinians understand that there simply can be no dealing with Israel - that they will continue to erode Palestine until it doesn't exist.
Forgot to comment on this one.
Cheney is a big oil trader, in the same vain as Bush. I hardly think it's off-topic to communicate to other link-minded people that he's coming to Australia, and that there's a demo on today, considering we're talking about fossil fuels, renewable resources, and all. Just because you don't personally agree that burning fossil fuels is wrong, doesn't mean that I shouldn't let others on the left know about what's going to be a great day of activity against one of the most oiled-up neo-cons around
There are a number of ways of tracking historical temperature and CO2 levels. One leading way is by drilling into ice ( ironically ) to extract 'cores' that can be sliced up an analysed. The ice traps a number of indicators of environmental variables, in much the same was as the fossil record is created, and new layers are added to the top each year. Analysis of radioactive isotopes present in organic matter gives us an incredibly precise indicator of the date that something was initially frozen. These combine with CO2 levels trapped in the ice and other indicators that allow scientists to build a precise map of conditions over an extremely long term.
So basically, yes we do have accurate data about long-term climate change activity, and the most striking difference that we're seeing now is that the temperature and CO2 levels have always moved together, but never moved this fast.
For more info, and from a decidedly conservative source, the Stern Report ( Stern is an old World Bank Chief Economist, so you don't get much more conservative / establishment than him ) is very eye-opening. He drives the point home very strongly that:
a) Climate change is happening rapidly
b) Our CO2-producing activity is the main driving force behind it
c) Already it will have massive costs monetary and human costs
d) The best plan is to invest massively in a phased shut-down of all CO2 producing activities, to minimize future costs
There are other reports due out soon, including a multi-phased UN report which is coming in the next month or so.
That's not really true. We have had climate change in the past, but not this fast. We're seeing changes that would have taken tens of thousands of years in previous changes take tens of years instead. And that's because we're digging up billions of tons of CO2 and pumping it into the atmosphere. No-one's done that before. Things haven't happened this fast before. Even the conservative reports are saying that in 10 year's time, we'll have hundreds of millions of environmental refugees because of changed rain patterns, not to mention other people's land simply being under water.
No. Only releasing CO2 that has been locked out of the ecosystem for an extended period of time affects climate change. All the rest is already factored into the system, and simple cycles around between plants and animals.
That's the standard line from the pro-oil PR companies, yes. But it's absurd. The CO2 already in the ecosystem, as I pointed out above, is not contributing to climate change. It's in balance already. The old 'cows farting' line is quite warn out, and completely discredited. Only *new* sources of CO2, such as those locked up in fossil fuels, and which therefore add substantially to the atmosphere when burned, contribute to climate change.
This is a key point that people unsure on climate change are being fooled by. It shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the relationship between plants, animals and CO2.
No, idiot. It's as dirty as it gets. It releases CO2. You didn't do well at comprehension at school, did you?
There are 'literally' billions of tons, yes, and they'll largely be gone in 5-10 years. I'm going to assume you've had your head up your arse for the past year or so - climate change is now globally accepted as happening. Catch up.
Dude you have some pretty strange ideas about what motivates people. You're the one who's obsessed with yourself. I'm involved because I see an oncoming catastrophe and I'm going to do something about it. Interpret it as you will, but history ( and the majority of people around the world at this point, I should add ) have already spoken against you. Get off your high horse and come to terms with the effect that you're having on the environment.
From where I'm sitting, it's all turning to shit. We have oil wars, growing imperialism, decreasing wages, increasing attacks on civil liberties. I don't see the nice part to it. Nice in your ivory tower up there, is it?
What the fuck dude? You are deluded! There is a very real enemy related to this topic, and it's BP and other Big Polluters who want to profit at any cost - including the entire world we live in. There is the enemy of global capitalism, which drives the destruction of the environment and workers' rights. None of this is a part of my imagination. You are seriously deluded.
Not at all. The issues are all linked. And this isn't an 'anti-war' demo, it's an anti-Cheney demo, and pulls together grass-roots activists from many different areas, including unions, climate change groups, socialists, peace activists, muslim groups, etc. On the contrary, I think it's highly on-topic. Cheney represents everything we're fighting against collectively, and climate change / oil dependence is one part of the puzzle.
You aren't very good at keeping up with this stuff, are you?
You would think that by now people would get the idea on this point.
Fossil fuels are not clean-burning. They have carbon that's been captured over long periods of time, and when you burn them, you release carbon-dioxide and contribute to climate change. Simple as that.
What's more, disturbing the few remaining bit of ice left on the planet to get to fossil fuels seems to be the absolute height of arrogance considering the position that organisations like BP ( Big Polluters ) has put us in with their past carbon industry. Does anyone think it's actually a good thing that actively contribute to breaking up the ice to grab fossil fuel? The mind boggles!
Australians, Dick Cheney is coming to visit us today. Please come to:
AFTERNOON RALLY: 5.30PM THURSDAY FEBRUARY 22, SYDNEY TOWN HALL
MORNING PROTEST: 8AM FRIDAY FEBRUARY 23 @ SHANGRI-LA HOTEL, CNR ESSEX ST & GEORGE ST THE ROCKS
(Cheney will be giving a speech inside the hotel at approx 9.30am)
See http://www.stopwarcoalition.org/ for more details on events. Let's let them know what we think of their energy and foreign policy!
That's a pretty strange thing to say. It's like saying "What's the point of all the other car manufacturers competing with Porsche? They should quit releasing crappy cars and invest in R&D until they can produce a better car than Porsche".
Of course, not everyone buys Porsches, just as not everyone buys Intel's top-of-the-line chip. AMD's chips are always better value. Always.
I've never bought the most expensive CPU available. I always go for the best tradeoff between price and performance. It's called value . Don't they teach anything in schools these days?
I have to agree.
... these changes Linus is suggesting aren't 'missing' because no-one bothered to write them until Linus came along. They're 'missing' because they're not what the Gnome developers actually want. They break the interface guidelines. Gnome devs gnome this. I know this ( and as I've already stated, this goal clashes with my goals, hence I use Enlightenment, but at least I recognise their goal and salute them for sticking to their guns ). Linus also knows this. He is of course free to use KDE, just as I'm free to use Enlightenment, and people who require more conservative desktops are free to use Gnome.
If we're talking about typical Linux users, then sure, they can deal with customising their WM. They generally won't use Gnome, for the same reasons that Linus won't use Gnome. I, for example, use Enlightenment.
But it's a different story with a corporate desktop. Configurability isn't the same beast there. What you want is something very simple, predictable, and consistent. That's exactly what Gnome is about.
The problem with all the shit-slinging is that neither side has taken the time to recognise the goals of the other. I think Linus' patches are at least a sign that he does , on some level, understand what Gnome is about, but the spirit that he's offered them in is unnecessary. Linux knows they won't be accepted - this is the only reason he took the time to do it in the first place - to show up the Gnome team. But here's the rubbing point
Unfortunately I think it's Linus who has the problem here.
That's the beauty of the GPL. The whole idea is to protect the rights of the community. The article says that companies have been able to leverage open-source against their competitors, but why is this a problem? It's validating and entrenching open-source, including the GPL.
Now sure, some bad companies can use open-source to their advantage, but not to our disadvantage. That's the secret. Only to our advantage. The only area where there's a question mark over open-source is in patent law. But with more people, including big business, using open-source technology, it's progressively in more people's interest to not use patents against open-source, and indeed actively protect open-source software. IBM, for example, aren't about to use their world's-largest patent collection against open-source, because this would be detrimental to them and their customers.
You're missing an important point. The oil lobby have massive funds to throw at propaganda, and all of their 'activists' are of the same type: the paid type. The environmental lobby, on the other hand, is largely grass-roots activists.
... apart from trying to help avoid the oncoming catastrophe that we're well on course for. This is the big FACT that the the oil ( and nuclear ) lobby refuse to admit. The only point that the energy lobby ever put forward is that sustainable living will cost money. But they fail to mention who's money ... it's not our money ... it's not even their money, it's their profits . And that's just too bad.
Sure there are some personalities who push the message a little further than the rest of us can, due to their fame. But I don't see where you think the ulterior motive is on the environmental side. It's not like being an environmental activist actually pays in monetary terms. At least I've never, ever, known anyone who is getting paid for it. As for people getting 'grant money', that's actually essential. You see, without public money going into scientific research, how is the public ever supposed to get any scientific knowledge that doesn't come to us through the corporate filter ( for example the oil lobby filter )? And I'm really not sure about the 'big enviros' that you talk about.
Anyway, whether 0.1% of the environmental movement is being paid for their work or not, I don't get paid, and don't have any ulterior motives
It's pretty easy to tell the wankers that are paid for by Exxon, Shell, etc. Reading over your past comments just confirms this further. Tell me ... do you actually have an opinion of your own, or are you just some snotty-nosed brat who has no idea whatsoever what's going on, happily spamming the net with pro-oil-company propaganda?
Glad you asked. I do. And I like it. Got a problem with that?
Oh dear, Billy, you sound a little flustered this time around. Good.
... you say "No, I think you'll find that Microsoft offered all these user interface innovations long before Apple ... what's that you say ... oh ... that stuff ... yeah sure we copied everything from Apple in the past 7 years, but just remember this: Microsoft invented the File Menu". That's some innovation right there, Billy Boy. Without the File menu, I suppose we couldn't open files, right? You should have patented it while you had the chance.
First you make the idiotic statement that someone discoveres a 'full system' exploit for OSX every day, and go on repeating that point. But a) I don't think it's quite that often, in fact I would be surprised if it was one every week, and b) at least Apple fix things in a relatively timely manner. Windows 'full-system' exploits, on the other hand, DO pop up every day, and go unchecked for months without being patched.
You say "we've done a lot to fix security, and Apple hasn't done any of these things". What kind of an claim is that exactly? There doesn't appear to be any substance. Hell, I've done a lot to fix security in my software, and Microsoft haven't done any of these things.
The bottom of page 2 is a classic
I also like the crying foul over Apple's adverts. Not that I'm an Apple fan, but you can tell by Bill's response that Apple are good at hitting raw nerves.
That's just stupid.
Say I'm walking down the street, to get to work. There are smokers piled up outside all the high-rise buildings on my way, and I have no option to walk around them, other than taking my chances with oncoming traffic.
What does the 'free market' say about that? Should I buy myself another footpath?
Actually I think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you check up on the available tools. Read my comment about above building packages. Also read up on creating stage-* images. You can build up an initial server, tweak it to suit your needs, create a stage-4 image, then install this on all the other systems. You can also use one system to do all the compiling, create binary packages, test everything out, then update all the other systems from the binary packages. Or if you *really* want to be cool, you can set up distcc, which creates a compile-farm out of all systems on a network ( must all have the same version of gcc ).
With the above method, you might still be looking at 2 days for the initial setup, and yes, it will require a little more attention than a point-and-click install, but then you can have everything else done *very* fast. Put the stage-4 image on the network, and then just boot of a CD ( or figure out how to create a network boot image ) and unpack the image. That's it.
You also get more intelligent handling of config file updates - etc-update is brilliant for merging new features that external developers ( not Gentoo devs ) have added, and highlighting things that can't be automatically merged in. You don't get that in other distros. Why? Because you're not meant to maintain the system in this way. The idea they seem to hold to is that the user can install essential updates easily ( for example updates to your OpenSSH daemon ), but not a lot else. Want something else? Back everything up, and install the latest version of the distro from a CD. Exactly. And one of the distinct advantages to running a Gentoo system on a server is that there is *always* support for your system. I ran a slackware server prior to running Gentoo, and it was great for the 1st couple of years, but then it just became long-in-the-tooth. It was getting more and more difficult to keep packages up to date, various packages would rely on other packages being updated also, and then by this time most of the Slackware userbase had moved to Slackware 10 or something, and Slackware 7 really wasn't a server that was fun to maintain any more. I've been running Gentoo ever since, and there is *never* any trouble doing essential security updates, or getting help with my particular release. And lets not talk about what happened to the Slackware forums / mailing lists. That was fucking horrendous.
I've been using Gentoo on our database / web / email / many-other-goodies server since August 2003 ( I keep emerge --sync logs ). I'm running the stable branch on our server, and the unstable ( ~x86 ) branch on desktops. I certainly agree that updates on the unstable branch have to be done thoughtfully, but building binary packages when emerging helps a great deal with disaster recovery. It's nothing that can't be fixed with a little searching.
... stable ... it is ( coming from the ~x86 branch ). I keep a separate binary packages repository for the server ... just in case ... but haven't actually had to back-track to anything yet. I do updates outside of work hours, and revdep-rebuild when upgrading major parts. I haven't had any catastrophes yet. Actually I haven't even had any mishaps yet. What can I say? If you are confident enough to run Linux on a server, I say you can handle the stable branch of Gentoo.
But on the stable branch, I've actually been very surprised with how
As for the points the author raised against Gentoo:
1) Too long to do initial install.
This one gives it away from the start. You only install once. But this is at the top of the list. I can't remember how long it took me to install Gentoo on this server, but it was probably 2 days or something. Who cares? That's what time I take installing *any* server. You don't just whack it together and put it into production. You install, you read, you test, you frig around some more. What's wrong with that? The author is no server administrator.
2) Same as point one, just repeated
WTF? Seriously, this author has his head up his arse. On the one hand, he later says that you shouldn't update willy-nilly on servers, and yet then says that it takes ages to update everything. So what, exactly, is he trying to achieve? It takes me about 10 - 15 minutes to update MySQL, which is the most common package I update. What's wrong with that? I back things up, shut down MySQL, emerge the new MySQL package, test, and import form backups if required. No problem? Where is this guy's problem, seriously?
3) Don't like updates, even if they are to more stable packages
Nothing forces you to update packages. Also, no-one claims that packages updates *won't* break things ( though my experience is that in the stable branch, updates *don't* break things ). But if you don't want to update, don't. No problem. If you do want to update, the tools are there to update easily. Sure you should pay attention to what you're doing. It goes without saying.
4) Same as point 3, but with the update impetus being security instead of stablity
Doesn't deserve a response really.
I challenge this author to prove that he's actually used Gentoo Linux for more than 7 days without running crying back to Linspire.