I imagine the other industries there are as much (or more) to blame, but the "implosion" didn't kill off the steel mills as you seem to think. The US still produces more than 90 million tons of steel per year, behind only China and Japan.
Lots of pollution over the US. Lots over Europe. Lots over Japan. Less over less-developed nations. How much of that is because the industries are located there, and not in the other nations? Some of these industries require a lot of electricity, and so are difficult to place in other countries. Those areas export to the less-developed nations. Rich providing goods for poor. Now do you get my point?
No, but the number produced in other nations isn't that large. How many cars does Sudan make? How about Indonesia? Thailand? A lot of those made in the US are still exported to other nations, and I suspect that, with a few exceptions such as Japan and maybe a handful of European nations, even those countries that do produce cars and trucks don't do so to nearly the same volume as does the US.
The blob over Canada looks to me more like it's over the industrial sections of the Northeast, particularly the steel belt running from Ohio through Pennsylvania. I know the steel producers are regularly villified for pumping evil into the air, so perhaps this is just one more of them.
No, it's not, but it is a reason for careful analysis of what we're going to do. For example, in California, traffic is bad. Some people have suggested new freeways, which cost something in the range of a billion dollars per mile in the LA area. There have even been attempts to force such construction through various means. A good idea, since we can use more routes to get places, but a better idea might be to analyze the traffic flow and rebuild some of the interchanges to improve traffic flow.
I still have not seen anyone provide evidence that the current upward trend is actually caused by increases in various greenhouse gases. Correlations have been shown, and some effects have been linked to the temperature increases, but while many people, including some Slashdotters, have said that other ideas have all been debunked, I've still seen no evidence of it. Among the other things I've seen suggested are increased solar output and increased geothermal activity below Greenland. The trouble with those that have dismissed such things is that I've seen only very recent mention of them (in the last year), and yet they get dismissed out of hand, and never with reference. That bothers me, because it just seems that the people arguing against them don't want to deal with them as they might upset their worldview.
That would be an odd timetable for something developed as the US main battle tank which didn't begin to arrive in US units until 1980. So far as I've been able to find, only Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have been buyers of the Abrams.
I thought you might like this page. I happened to find it last night when I saw the first mention of the CO2 changes, and I went looking. For the last few years, I have been seeing mention that 1998 was the warmest year on record. This was fine in 1999 -- 1998 was the latest year in which data was available for the full twelve months. Even in 2000, 2001, and 2002, I figured that complete data wasn't analyzed yet. This kind of thing happens in complex analytical environments.
By the end of 2002, and on through this year, I was still hearing how 1998 was the warmest year on record, so I finally went looking in a real effort to find numbers, and I found that site. I ran some of the numbers (the global mean surface temperature [GMST]) in a spreadsheet and put them in a graph, and while there's a definite increase in the last, oh, roughly 30 years, I also see that the average temps jump around -- a lot. The in 1999, GMST decreased by 0.24 degrees C, the largest drop in the time recorded (1880 to present). There was a further decrease of 0.01 degrees the next year, followed an increase of 0.15 degrees and then 0.05 degrees, and then 2003 was flat. If the current trend for 2004 holds, it will be a touch cooler this year. All of the years are very erratic when looked at in terms of the annual changes instead of cumulative changes.
I'll admit, I'm not a climatologist (nor are most of the people here). There are benefits to come from conserving energy and coming up with more efficient means of energy generation (look at the benefits of Los Angeles air in the last 30 years), and they should be encouraged. But with as much as the numbers jump around, I'm not entirely sure that man has as much to do with it as many people think.
China's oil use is becoming very significant. Oil consumption in China jumped more than 11% in 2003, and looks set to exceed that this year. China expects usage to jump by 50% from 2005 to 2010, and to double from 2010 to 2020.
I read something last year that underground coal fires in China are a major CO2 producer, equaling that of all of the cars and trucks in the US. Trouble is, they're either hard to get to, or expensive to put out, so China lets them burn.
That has much more to do with how American "environmentalists" go so far out to one side, and almost always refuse to compromise. They want zero emissions, but refuse to accept nuclear reactors. They want nuclear waste stored safely, but then refuse to allow it to be transported, even inside of steel-reinforced concrete containers under armed guard and with tracking devices. They want solar power to become a main source of energy, but don't bother to get informed about what goes into making them, or the batteries that store the power overnight.
I have some environmentalist friends, and they are willing to compromise on things. The ability to logically compromise shows intelligence that seems to be lacking in many. I don't have any problem with helping to cap CO2 emissions, even though I'm not entirely sure that man-made global warming exists. If it means more efficient vehicles, factories, and power plants, then so much the better. I can buy a new car that gets a hundred miles to the gallon, and spend the money saved on gas elsewhere. But such should be approached carefully, evaluated, and planned well, instead of hurtling headlong into something that may not have a point.
They rejected the last one because it gave them everything except one point: the right of return.
And you might want to look into how Palestinian snipers use demonstrations for cover when they want to take shots at the Israelis. There are times when the Israelis go off and shoot the wrong person, but it's not 100%, and there have been numerous Israelis brought up on charges for improper conduct up to and including murder.
When did they pick up Abrams tanks? I've never heard of them using the M1, favoring the home-built (and arguably as good or even better) Merkava instead.
And the AK isn't popular there because the Soviets flooded the area with it (thought that helped, I imagine). It has much more to do with the AK being an incredibly simple weapon to manufacture, as it is in numerous countries, and costing as little as $40 in some places, as opposed to the $400 and up an AR-15 or equivalent costs.
I suspect that there is a coming reckoning in the Palestinian territories as more and more of the youths there realize that they've been had by the senior members of their groups, and have had friends go off and blow themselves up while their superiors (or at least relatives of superiors) live in luxury and never want for food or shelter. Already there have been gunfights between some groups and the police over perceived cronyism in the ranks of the Palestinian Authority.
But do you think that scandals such as Enron/Worldcom occur because there isn't enough regulation, or because there's so much regulation that 'dubious accounting practices' become the norm?
Weren't the Enron and WorldCom financial scandals signed off as valid accounting by the very companies (in this case, outside accounting firms) that you claim would help to prevent this from happening by allowing public trust to be placed in them, at least up to just before their bitter ends?
My mom is from Chicago, my maternal grandmother from St. Louis, my dad from the Northwest, my paternal grandfather from Boston, and my maternal grandmother and great-great-grandmother were from Tulsa. All of them pronounced it with a soft 'g' so I tend to think that this is the dominant pronunciation around the US at least. However, Dictionary.com has two entries with differing pronunciations -- the American Heritage Dictionary has it with the soft sound, and the Webster's has the hard sound.
Lending some weight to the one side, though, I believe that John Carmack has said that it was pronounced with the soft 'g' around id. Since they presumably coined the word, they do have some say in how it's pronounced.
The FCC has been handing out fines over Stern's behavior since at least 1992, and I think even longer than that. Fines over his behavior are not even remotely novel.
Even most of those disappearances are problematic when you go back and look at what was actually documented.
Take the mystery of Flight 19. Five TBM Avengers take off in clear weather for a training flight, and are never seen again. A PBM Mariner plane sent to look for them also disappeared. Many believe that UFOs or a time warp or something like that were involved. In reality, it was probably pilot error on the part of the flight leader that got him and 13 other men killed in the initial flight, and 13 more in the search. They took off from Fort Lauderdale for a practice bombing run and overwater navigational exercises. A couple of hours later, the lead called in reporting that they weren't sure where they were. Despite a flight plan with the first two legs flying almost due east for 120 miles, the lead apparently thought he was in the Gulf of Mexico, and was trying to fly east or northeast to find land. Eventually, they probably ran out of gas, had to ditch in stormy seas, and the waves ate the planes. It happens, and sometimes there's no wreckage at all. The PBM Mariner sent to look for them and which subsequently went missing likely exploded in flight -- the planes were notorious for that problem.
Even the famed story of the Mary Celeste, found near Gibraltar in December 1872, has little to do with reality. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the tale of the abandoned ship as the basis for his story about the Marie Celeste, but added in some things to make it spooky. Over the years the tale has grown to be an abandoned ship discovered in pristine conditions with still-warm, half-eaten breakfasts on the table, and evidence of violence or foul play. In reality, the ship wasn't in great shape, apparently having been abandoned before a major storm two or three weeks before, and about the only things that weren't wet and/or broken were some clothes locked in a trunk. The British Board of Inquiry never settled the exact fate of the crew, but it's likely that they abandoned ship for some reason relating to a perceived or real danger, and couldn't get back to the ship or to land before the storm rose and sunk their boat.
There are occasional real mysteries, but they are very few and very far between.
No, my point is that the US military is not immune from prosecution, and serious prosecution at that. These aren't the first ones pulled up on murder charges. There has been at least one case where a soldier fired on a car at a roadblock outside of the rules of engagement, killing the driver, and was subsequently arrested on murder charges. The military punishments for them are similar to civilian punishments: prison for 20-to-life, or possible execution. They serve their time at Leavenworth, which most people will tell you isn't Club Fed.
Yeah, there are some who will escape based on circumstances. Whether you supported the war or not, we're there now, we're going to be there for a while, and we have to make the best of it. Withdraw and the place will collapse into complete anarchy. I'll grant you that we could probably use a shift in how things are handled there, maybe pushing up border enforcement and boosting publicity of Coalition work like school and hospital construction.
And thirdly, while Clinton may very well have believed there were WMDs in Iraq, Bush had no evidence to that effect whatsoever, lied to the American people about it (and continues to do so to this very day)
Clinton had access to much of the same information as did Bush later on. That he said he also believed that Iraq had banned weapons suggests that he saw something earlier on that would lead him to believe such.
As for Bush having no evidence, I will give some credence to the idea that the nuclear program was overblown at best. After Israel destroyed Osiraq, it would have been nearly impossible to properly reconstitute the program without having access to a nuclear reactor. But chemical and biological weapons were another story. British intelligence believed that Iraq possessed such weapons, too. So did Russian intelligence. So did Egyptian intelligence. So did Jordanian intelligence.
Did they all lie, too?
Finally, if he's continuing his "lie...to this very day," then why has Colin Powell come out and admitted -- and has for months now -- that the programs may well have been dismantled, and that there probably will not be any discoveries of such weapons?
Clinton was answering to a civil case when he purjured himself. No president in his right mind goes under oath in a government investigation. Clinton would have done the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I imagine the other industries there are as much (or more) to blame, but the "implosion" didn't kill off the steel mills as you seem to think. The US still produces more than 90 million tons of steel per year, behind only China and Japan.
You're missing my point.
Lots of pollution over the US. Lots over Europe. Lots over Japan. Less over less-developed nations. How much of that is because the industries are located there, and not in the other nations? Some of these industries require a lot of electricity, and so are difficult to place in other countries. Those areas export to the less-developed nations. Rich providing goods for poor. Now do you get my point?
No, but the number produced in other nations isn't that large. How many cars does Sudan make? How about Indonesia? Thailand? A lot of those made in the US are still exported to other nations, and I suspect that, with a few exceptions such as Japan and maybe a handful of European nations, even those countries that do produce cars and trucks don't do so to nearly the same volume as does the US.
Among the larger nations, the US has the highest per-capita emissions in many things. But I think there's something more complex here. For example:
How many nations produce automobiles? US vehicles are used around the world.
How many nations produce aluminum? This is an extremely power-intensive procedure. (Anyone know what fraction of the US grid goes to these plants?)
I'm not sure about worldwide aluminum production, so I may be off there, but it's something to consider.
The blob over Canada looks to me more like it's over the industrial sections of the Northeast, particularly the steel belt running from Ohio through Pennsylvania. I know the steel producers are regularly villified for pumping evil into the air, so perhaps this is just one more of them.
No, it's not, but it is a reason for careful analysis of what we're going to do. For example, in California, traffic is bad. Some people have suggested new freeways, which cost something in the range of a billion dollars per mile in the LA area. There have even been attempts to force such construction through various means. A good idea, since we can use more routes to get places, but a better idea might be to analyze the traffic flow and rebuild some of the interchanges to improve traffic flow.
I still have not seen anyone provide evidence that the current upward trend is actually caused by increases in various greenhouse gases. Correlations have been shown, and some effects have been linked to the temperature increases, but while many people, including some Slashdotters, have said that other ideas have all been debunked, I've still seen no evidence of it. Among the other things I've seen suggested are increased solar output and increased geothermal activity below Greenland. The trouble with those that have dismissed such things is that I've seen only very recent mention of them (in the last year), and yet they get dismissed out of hand, and never with reference. That bothers me, because it just seems that the people arguing against them don't want to deal with them as they might upset their worldview.
During the 70s?
That would be an odd timetable for something developed as the US main battle tank which didn't begin to arrive in US units until 1980. So far as I've been able to find, only Egypt, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia have been buyers of the Abrams.
I thought you might like this page. I happened to find it last night when I saw the first mention of the CO2 changes, and I went looking. For the last few years, I have been seeing mention that 1998 was the warmest year on record. This was fine in 1999 -- 1998 was the latest year in which data was available for the full twelve months. Even in 2000, 2001, and 2002, I figured that complete data wasn't analyzed yet. This kind of thing happens in complex analytical environments.
By the end of 2002, and on through this year, I was still hearing how 1998 was the warmest year on record, so I finally went looking in a real effort to find numbers, and I found that site. I ran some of the numbers (the global mean surface temperature [GMST]) in a spreadsheet and put them in a graph, and while there's a definite increase in the last, oh, roughly 30 years, I also see that the average temps jump around -- a lot. The in 1999, GMST decreased by 0.24 degrees C, the largest drop in the time recorded (1880 to present). There was a further decrease of 0.01 degrees the next year, followed an increase of 0.15 degrees and then 0.05 degrees, and then 2003 was flat. If the current trend for 2004 holds, it will be a touch cooler this year. All of the years are very erratic when looked at in terms of the annual changes instead of cumulative changes.
I'll admit, I'm not a climatologist (nor are most of the people here). There are benefits to come from conserving energy and coming up with more efficient means of energy generation (look at the benefits of Los Angeles air in the last 30 years), and they should be encouraged. But with as much as the numbers jump around, I'm not entirely sure that man has as much to do with it as many people think.
China's oil use is becoming very significant. Oil consumption in China jumped more than 11% in 2003, and looks set to exceed that this year. China expects usage to jump by 50% from 2005 to 2010, and to double from 2010 to 2020.
I read something last year that underground coal fires in China are a major CO2 producer, equaling that of all of the cars and trucks in the US. Trouble is, they're either hard to get to, or expensive to put out, so China lets them burn.
That has much more to do with how American "environmentalists" go so far out to one side, and almost always refuse to compromise. They want zero emissions, but refuse to accept nuclear reactors. They want nuclear waste stored safely, but then refuse to allow it to be transported, even inside of steel-reinforced concrete containers under armed guard and with tracking devices. They want solar power to become a main source of energy, but don't bother to get informed about what goes into making them, or the batteries that store the power overnight.
I have some environmentalist friends, and they are willing to compromise on things. The ability to logically compromise shows intelligence that seems to be lacking in many. I don't have any problem with helping to cap CO2 emissions, even though I'm not entirely sure that man-made global warming exists. If it means more efficient vehicles, factories, and power plants, then so much the better. I can buy a new car that gets a hundred miles to the gallon, and spend the money saved on gas elsewhere. But such should be approached carefully, evaluated, and planned well, instead of hurtling headlong into something that may not have a point.
They rejected the last one because it gave them everything except one point: the right of return.
And you might want to look into how Palestinian snipers use demonstrations for cover when they want to take shots at the Israelis. There are times when the Israelis go off and shoot the wrong person, but it's not 100%, and there have been numerous Israelis brought up on charges for improper conduct up to and including murder.
When did they pick up Abrams tanks? I've never heard of them using the M1, favoring the home-built (and arguably as good or even better) Merkava instead.
And the AK isn't popular there because the Soviets flooded the area with it (thought that helped, I imagine). It has much more to do with the AK being an incredibly simple weapon to manufacture, as it is in numerous countries, and costing as little as $40 in some places, as opposed to the $400 and up an AR-15 or equivalent costs.
I suspect that there is a coming reckoning in the Palestinian territories as more and more of the youths there realize that they've been had by the senior members of their groups, and have had friends go off and blow themselves up while their superiors (or at least relatives of superiors) live in luxury and never want for food or shelter. Already there have been gunfights between some groups and the police over perceived cronyism in the ranks of the Palestinian Authority.
Weren't servers in the US siezed last week, though?
Except for when domestic intelligence laws would be broken, and then a request for information through the CIA routed through MI5 would be possible.
But do you think that scandals such as Enron/Worldcom occur because there isn't enough regulation, or because there's so much regulation that 'dubious accounting practices' become the norm?
Weren't the Enron and WorldCom financial scandals signed off as valid accounting by the very companies (in this case, outside accounting firms) that you claim would help to prevent this from happening by allowing public trust to be placed in them, at least up to just before their bitter ends?
How do you move it if there's no gas or the battery is dead then?
My mom is from Chicago, my maternal grandmother from St. Louis, my dad from the Northwest, my paternal grandfather from Boston, and my maternal grandmother and great-great-grandmother were from Tulsa. All of them pronounced it with a soft 'g' so I tend to think that this is the dominant pronunciation around the US at least. However, Dictionary.com has two entries with differing pronunciations -- the American Heritage Dictionary has it with the soft sound, and the Webster's has the hard sound.
Lending some weight to the one side, though, I believe that John Carmack has said that it was pronounced with the soft 'g' around id. Since they presumably coined the word, they do have some say in how it's pronounced.
"Gibs" comes from "giblets," referring to the little pieces left behind. It's pronounced with a soft 'g.'
The FCC has been handing out fines over Stern's behavior since at least 1992, and I think even longer than that. Fines over his behavior are not even remotely novel.
Even most of those disappearances are problematic when you go back and look at what was actually documented.
Take the mystery of Flight 19. Five TBM Avengers take off in clear weather for a training flight, and are never seen again. A PBM Mariner plane sent to look for them also disappeared. Many believe that UFOs or a time warp or something like that were involved. In reality, it was probably pilot error on the part of the flight leader that got him and 13 other men killed in the initial flight, and 13 more in the search. They took off from Fort Lauderdale for a practice bombing run and overwater navigational exercises. A couple of hours later, the lead called in reporting that they weren't sure where they were. Despite a flight plan with the first two legs flying almost due east for 120 miles, the lead apparently thought he was in the Gulf of Mexico, and was trying to fly east or northeast to find land. Eventually, they probably ran out of gas, had to ditch in stormy seas, and the waves ate the planes. It happens, and sometimes there's no wreckage at all. The PBM Mariner sent to look for them and which subsequently went missing likely exploded in flight -- the planes were notorious for that problem.
Even the famed story of the Mary Celeste, found near Gibraltar in December 1872, has little to do with reality. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the tale of the abandoned ship as the basis for his story about the Marie Celeste, but added in some things to make it spooky. Over the years the tale has grown to be an abandoned ship discovered in pristine conditions with still-warm, half-eaten breakfasts on the table, and evidence of violence or foul play. In reality, the ship wasn't in great shape, apparently having been abandoned before a major storm two or three weeks before, and about the only things that weren't wet and/or broken were some clothes locked in a trunk. The British Board of Inquiry never settled the exact fate of the crew, but it's likely that they abandoned ship for some reason relating to a perceived or real danger, and couldn't get back to the ship or to land before the storm rose and sunk their boat.
There are occasional real mysteries, but they are very few and very far between.
See? They were successful!
My mistake. I meant 2003. Simple typo.
Jeez.
No, my point is that the US military is not immune from prosecution, and serious prosecution at that. These aren't the first ones pulled up on murder charges. There has been at least one case where a soldier fired on a car at a roadblock outside of the rules of engagement, killing the driver, and was subsequently arrested on murder charges. The military punishments for them are similar to civilian punishments: prison for 20-to-life, or possible execution. They serve their time at Leavenworth, which most people will tell you isn't Club Fed.
Yeah, there are some who will escape based on circumstances. Whether you supported the war or not, we're there now, we're going to be there for a while, and we have to make the best of it. Withdraw and the place will collapse into complete anarchy. I'll grant you that we could probably use a shift in how things are handled there, maybe pushing up border enforcement and boosting publicity of Coalition work like school and hospital construction.
And thirdly, while Clinton may very well have believed there were WMDs in Iraq, Bush had no evidence to that effect whatsoever, lied to the American people about it (and continues to do so to this very day)
Clinton had access to much of the same information as did Bush later on. That he said he also believed that Iraq had banned weapons suggests that he saw something earlier on that would lead him to believe such.
As for Bush having no evidence, I will give some credence to the idea that the nuclear program was overblown at best. After Israel destroyed Osiraq, it would have been nearly impossible to properly reconstitute the program without having access to a nuclear reactor. But chemical and biological weapons were another story. British intelligence believed that Iraq possessed such weapons, too. So did Russian intelligence. So did Egyptian intelligence. So did Jordanian intelligence.
Did they all lie, too?
Finally, if he's continuing his "lie...to this very day," then why has Colin Powell come out and admitted -- and has for months now -- that the programs may well have been dismantled, and that there probably will not be any discoveries of such weapons?
Clinton was answering to a civil case when he purjured himself. No president in his right mind goes under oath in a government investigation. Clinton would have done the same thing.