in the meantime of choosing the cheaper way, you destroy the environment bit by bit increasing asthma, sinus and lung cancer problems.
Oh, please. I have asthma but I don't appreciate being used as a scapegoat and I would NOT ask the world to go "cold-turkey" and abandon fossil fuels without an viable and economical alternative just to avoid asthma.
Come on, environmentalists contaminate the media more than the worst polluters contaminate the environment.
First, we have to stop using fossil fuels because it's causing global warming. Debunked.
Ok, well, then, we have to stop using fossil fuels because, uhm, we're running out of it. Debunked.
Uhm, we have to stop using fossil fuels to help all the poor kids that have asthma...
Come on... Envrionmentalists would be a lot more convincing if they chose a REAL reason for their cause. They should just come out and say, "We want to make the poor countries richer, the rich countries poorer, and eventually we should all live in the stone age again." Their ideas would still be rejected, but at least they might earn some respect for stating what their intentions truly are/were.
"Camel-jokeys"? Not so subtle about our racism, are we? Isn't it funny that in times of "war" we can proudly wear our prejudices on our sleeve?
Actually, that came from some comedy movie in the 80s. Can't remember which one right now, but talking about the scum that crashed the airplanes into WTC/Pentagon I have no qualms whatsoever in calling them camel-jockeys. Heck, that's more of an offense to CAMEL-JOCKEYS than it is to the low-life that killed 3000 innocent people.
FWIW, I have many friends and business associates that are Arab and/or from the Middle East. I get along with them 100% fine. People from Israel, peopl from UAE, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan... I've done business with them all. Most of them seem like nice enough people.
Incidentally, since you feel it's okay to wage war against an entire country because of the actions of a few
If you followed the news after 9/11, you'll remember that we didn't invade the next day. Not even the next week. President Bush didn't even deliver his terms to the Taliban for 9 full days.
When the terms were delivered--and they weren't unreasonable--the Taliban didn't take them seriously. They waffled, they talked, they chose to give refuge to a terrorist. They did so at the cost of their government.
We didn't invade Afghanistan because of the action of a few. We invaded Afghanistan because they were unwilling to control their own domestic problem (terrorism), and their domestic problem was a threat to the U.S. and, really, all of the world.
The Taliban sealed their own fate with their decision not to cooperate. If they had even talked about the possibility of working with the U.S. in resolving the problem it would have taken a heck of a lot of wind out of the United States' effort to get the whole world on their side. But no, they dicked around and the world noticed. The few friends they had, Saudia Arabia, UAE, and finally Pakistan, broke off relations. Why? There was no way to justify the Taliban's position. It was absurd.
then I'm sure you felt that we should have sent in the military to Michigan after Timothy McVeigh's act of terrorism.
It wasn't necessary. We aprehended him domestically with no problem. Short of invading Afghanistan, how do you propose we should have gone about resolving the problems inside Afghanistan that WERE threatening the world and the Taliban was unwilling to deal with?
Well, curiosity, I did a little more digging. I shouldn't have.
In the three articles I read, this guy basically said that Bush is a murderer, should resign and face charges for attempted murder, blamed Bush for 9/11 because he didn't do anything to improve airport security in his 8 months in office, blamed him for not having more fighter planes protecting the American homeland as if their first reaction would have been to destroy domestic commercial aircraft, believes most Americans "consider themselves environmentalists," and that "the recount is alive and has legs" but only if the Democrats "renominate Gore in 2004." He thinks Bush is so far right that he has alienated his own party, and thinks Bush's approval scores (as high and higher than Clinton's) are indicative of failure. He thinks Bush destroyed the "Clinton economy" in 8 months, when it turns out things were already heading downhill during the Clinton presidency--tax increases tend to do that.
This guy is a waaaay out there. He's like the Rush Limbaugh of the left, but this guy only spews opinions with no facts to back it up.
I went for the conspiracy, but I stayed for the laughs.
Ted Rall has a number of columns on the alleged oil conspiracy.
Yeah, well, I was curious and opened up the page. I haven't found the stuff on the oil conspiracy, but his current "opinion" story was enough.
Who is this idiot? Is he just anti-Bush/anti-Republican or pretty much anti-eveything? He criticized Bush for failures of the Clinton administration, attacked the Bush with virtually the same words that "the right" attacked Clinton during his presidency, and he himself admitted that he has "nothing on Bush... yet."
This guy is a dufus with an opinion. I'll probably read some more of his stuff because it looks humerous, but don't take it too seriously.
there are significant undeveloped oil prospects in the middle east (Afghanistan!... makes me wonder about the real purpose of the war on terrorism
Couldn't resist the obligatory "Every war the U.S. fights is for money and oil." Think about what you're saying. Could it be that we're fighting the war on terror because we're hopping mad about some camel-jockeys wrecking three buildings with 4 of our airplanes and killing thousands in the process? Nah, it's all a hidden agenda to get at Afghanistan's oil...
Also, if you do more research, you will find that the United States has more oil than any other country on the planet. But they do not tap it. They are saving it in case it is needed later and buying up the oil from Saudi and such instead.
We don't use it mostly because, as high as gas prices are, they are cheaper than what we ourselves would produce it for. Why spend $3/gallon extracting and refining our own gas when we can import it for $1.50? We'll start using our own oil reserves as soon as other sources want to charge more for their oil than we can produce for ourselves. Simple economics.
That we will have oil when the world has sucked the Middle East dry is just an additional strategic benefit.:)
Everybody has their own set of music they would rather listen to, but given the nature of the medium we all end up listening to the same crap.
What I don't understand is why ANYONE listens to radio? At all?
I listened to radio in the 80s because I was a kid (read: poor) and new music I liked came out every week. I recorded music off the radio and that's why I sat listening to the radio for hours, waiting for the song I wanted to be played again and hoping the DJ would shut up rather than talk through the intros and fade-outs.
Later in the decade, when I got employed, I went back and bought CDs of all the music I liked. That's about the same time I stopped listening to radio. It wasn't a conscious decision, it's just that I had the music I wanted on CD and, in my opinion, good music tapered off near the beginning of the 90s.
Now we're in the year 2002. Poor teenagers (as I was in the 80s) no longer have to listen to radio to record the music they want, they just download it from P2P. Those that are truly interested in "new/non-commercial music" can also just pop online rather than hoping that there is some local "non-corporate" radio station that plays the weird music they're after.
The fact is, regardless of what station you listen to, corporate, non-corporate, reggae, whatever, it's doubtful you'll like every song they play. In fact, you probably won't like half of them. When you factor in commercials and the DJ talking you're lucky to hear a couple songs you like over the course of an hour. Why bother? I just pop in my one of my mix CDs and I know every song I hear I will like.
I only listen to radio 1) sometimes when I'm driving cross-country by myself I turn on a TALK station, it kind of keeps you company and keeps you "engaged" in the discussion. 2) when there's nasty weather or nasty traffic I surf the stations looking for some station reporting on it. I usually have better luck on AM.
Other than that, why bother and why care? Download the music you like, burn it, listen to it. A whole lot less complicated and more likely you'll enjoy the music you're listening to.
My conditions/strings expand on a daily basis based on new spam I've received. There will always be some spam that hasn't been seen (by me) that will get through, but I just find something in the spam that no REAL message would reasonably contain. I try to be aggresive, but only within reason. I'd rather let 10 spams go free than kill off one non-spam.
I've been doing this for just the last week and a half. I log every spam that gets disconnected. So far there have been no false positives. The only annoyance has been that others using my mail server that forward me their spam sometimes get disconnected because I've already added a filter that catches what they are reporting.:)
I've given up hoping that spammers will go away. They'll be here for quite some time.
That said, I've hacked my sendmail server. It now analyzes mail as it comes in. In addition to the standard blocking of known spammer IP blocks/domains, my sendmail now looks at the stream coming in when the spammer connects to the mail server. Certain conditions/strings are a dead give-away that the incoming mail is spam.
As soon as my SMTP server decides the incoming message is spam, it hangs up cold. No error message, nothing. Just hangs up. Doesn't matter if it comes from an open relay or dial-up, if certain conditions are true, I know it's spam.
My spam count has gone from 30-40 day down to 3-7 per day.
It's actually gratifying to do a tail -f maillog and watch the spammers try, get hung up on, try again, ad nauseum...
This maybe so, but I hope, just to prove a point, that an "Independence Day" scenario happens. Not only would it answer the question of life outside of us, but also it would be a step in the right direction for unity within humanity.
Nah, that's why there was never an Independence Day Part II. 2 years after being almost anhilated by ETs, the world would be bickering about a Palestinian State, one or two Chinas, and export tarrifs.
We have a very impressive ability to work together when we HAVE to. We also have an impressive ability to stop working together as soon as possible.
Unless a second wave of ETs attacked the earth, I doubt a post-ID4 world would be much different than a pre-ID4 world.
Yeah, but the ice on land isn't melting. In fact, it was just reported a few days ago that ice in many parts of Antartica are growing thicker and the temperature is getting colder.
So... there is no indication we have to worry about massive melting. Icebergs breaking off the ice shelfs is natural and not an indication of global warming. Those parts of Antartica that the gloom-and-doom environmentalists expect to warm up, melt, and flood our coast are actually getting colder.
They have the profit advantage on the consoles themselves, but MS doesn't have to care about that at all, and just has more tricks up its sleeve in general.
Don't count on it. Microsoft might have deep pockets to absorb the loss, but the companies that make games for it don't. If interest is less than enthusiastic then there are relatively (compared to PS2 and Cube) few consumers to buy the software. And I, as a software developer, am not going to bother to write software for a platform that doesn't have enough paying users.
So, even if Microsoft can afford the losses, unless they start PAYING companies to write software for their platform (which contradicts the idea of selling the hardware at a loss), I don't think MS' gaming bid is going to last long.
Did it ever occur to you that it is not very hard to tell from what direction a signal is coming? And if, in 1969, the Russians had noticed that there was no audio/visual feed coming from the general direction of the moon that they would have been rather quick to point that out to the world?
Having said I wouldn't touch the political discussion, I will reply to the following just because this section isn't so political in nature inasmuch as "how much should government do" or "how big should government be." Plus it touches on something I've been exposed to for the last 6 years and it's nice to vent.:)
While I agree with you that Latin America government are corrupt in general, that paints only half of the picture, i.e. that businesses in those area also tend to be corrupt. After all, to use an appropriate analogy, it takes two to tango.
You are right. It's a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" issue.
My take is that the companies aren't so corrupt in and of themselves. They treat their customers like dirt and take advantage of their customers because the government won't do anything to stop them; but they're still responsible to their stockholders like any other company.
I see it more as the Latin American society vs. their governments. THAT'S where the tango takes place. It's nasty to condemn an entire society, but Latin American society is corrupt. I honestly don't know whether Latin American society corrupted their governments or if their governments corrupted their societies.
From what I've seen, companies do as best as they can with a corrupt society and a corrupt government. Any given individual doesn't want to be corrupt, but the "system" forces them to be. There is a saying in Mexico, "El que no tranza no avanza." That means "He who doesn't cheat doesn't get ahead." If everyone else is cheating/bribing to get ahead, he who tries to be honest WILL fall behind. So it's dang near impossible for an honest person to get ahead; most people eventually just give in to the "dark side" and accept it as an inevitable part of life... and so the whole problem continues.
Here in Mexico everyone recognizes corruption as a problem, but no-one has a solution and I don't really either. Actually, I do. I plan to move back to the United States later this year.:)
What I believe would go more along these lines: "Global warming is probably real. Until we know for sure that it isn't, we should act as if it was in order not to make the situation worse.
So how do we know for sure it isn't happening? At what point do we say, "Ok, it's not happening."
I myself am already ready to say it isn't happening. The satellite and radiosonde record don't show any global warming in the last 23 years.
I'm certainly in favor of continuing to monitor temperatures, of course. But at this point I see nothing to convince me that global warming is currently happening.
It just so happens that in changing our habits in order to avert this probable catastrophe, we also solve another problem: our dependence on fossil fuels, which has dire economic and geopolitical consequences
And as I've said, I'm in favor of looking for alternatives. I believe that, ultimately, the alternatives will be cheaper and will not just make environmental sense but will make economic and political sense as well.
In the meantime, however, it'd be unreasonable to go "cold turkey" and push an immature technology and punish those that continue to use what works for the time being. It's an unnecessary burden on our economy--and when the economy is burdened, less funds will be available to move that alternative technology forward.
In the NASA papers, they clearly show that the difference is not between recorded surface temperatures, but between recorded surface and atmospheric temperatures. The surface indeed is warming up, but the atmosphere is not warming up at the same rate, and parts of it are cooling instead.
I think there's two ways of looking at this.
My way: Everyone has decided that the temperatures recorded for the last 150 years are right. Damn-near perfect, actually. So perfect that they conclude that these stations are able to detect a 0.6C degree rise in temperature over the last 100 years. Considering absolute zero is -273.15C (0K) and the average temperature on earth is about 15C or 288K (IIRC), then to detect a 0.6C temperature change is talking about a true variation of 0.21%. Even if we assume that only values between -90C and 60C are valid, we're still talking about a variation of 0.4%. I don't know about you, but I believe that all the possible errors at those little white boxes around the world are more than 0.4% and certainly more than 0.21%. Changing urban areas, changing "readers" who may read the stations at different times (especially 80+ years ago), humidity affecting the actual mechanics of the stations (especially 80+ years ago). All of these things affect the validity of the data colleted and I think it's entirely possible, if not downright probable, that these errors are larger than the observed "increase" in surface temperature. I.e., the potential margin of error, especially for older readings, is larger than the the observed increase and is statistically insignificant.
Your way: Assuming that the surface temperature record for the last 150 years is pretty much perfect (a big assumption) and the temperature on the surface has increased, so what? Weather and pretty much everything that happens in the climate happens in the atmosphere, not at ground level. I don't doubt that the cities are warmer than they were. I DO doubt that that makes any difference to the climate if the only change is on the surface.
However, the radiosonde data does not invalidate surface temperature records, because it doesn't measure surface temperatures. The discrepancy is with the expected atmospheric warming and the actual recorded one, which is lower than expected.
I agree that radiosondes don't measure surface temperature. Satellites, however, measure the temperature of the entire "column" of air, from the top down to the surface.
But again, the problem I see is that the surface temperature has no bearing on the atmospheric temperature. This is even MORE true if the surface record is right.
The whole global warming theory suggests that increased CO2 and other greenhouse gasses will cause global warming of the atmosphere--not just of the surface. In fact, this HAS to be true. If the surface is warming and the atmosphere isn't, well, ok, we have surface warming--but it can't be due to increased greenhouse emissions because if greenhouse emissions were the cause, ALL the atmosphere would be warmed--not just the surface.
Thus the question of reliability does not apply to surface temperature measurements (save for the so-called "asphalt effect"), but rather to the computer models used to predict atmospheric changes
Please forget computer models for now.
The point is, the question of reliability is of UTMOST importance and is completely applicable. How can you use temperature data from the last 150 years if there isn't some reasonable assurance that that data is correct? As mentioned above, there are plenty of potential errors in the temperatures that were taken at stations. Even MORE errors a hundred years ago when the "station" might consist of a cowboy at a post office sticking his head out the window and looking at the temperature at high noon (+/- an hour or two depending on his workload).
The whole point is that the 150 year-old surface record most likely contains errors. Potentially very big errors. Whether the computer model (i.e. the method) is right or not is irrelevant if you feed it bad 150-year-old-data.
The NRDC still found that China had in fact decreased its carbon emissions while enjoying a healthy economic growth.
First of all, the first article you mentioned confessed that the reason for the drop is not fully known. Before assuming that this means you can abandon fossil fuels and have a growing economy it would be vital to KNOW what happened.
Second, that same article mentions that worldwide carbon emissions fell by 0.5% while the world economy expanded by 6.8%. Considering they mention that China is the second largest polluter, I would assume (dangerous, I know) that a large portion of that 0.5% decrease was China's mysterious decrease.
Finally, the world economy was expanding by leaps and bounds in 1998 in the tech and dot com industry. Obviously that produced a lot of "phantom" growth with very little additional emissions.
I'd say various circumstances coincided to produce an anomoly in 1998. You certainly can't conclude that because a third would country had a mysterious decline in emission while their struggling economy had growth that it automatically means we can reduce fossil fuels with no adverse affect on our economy.
So the two are not irreconcilable, and the "China excuse" is not a valid reason for the U.S. to drop out of Kyoto...
It IS a valid reason.
As I mentioned before, even if China and India aren't currently large polluters (and it appears China holds second place), the fact that Kyoto would not apply to them INSURES that those companies polluting the developed world would move to those countries where they can pollute as much as they want and probably at lesser cost.
Whether China had a reduction in the mid-90s is completely irrelevant. If you give companies an incentive (there's that word again!) to move to China and India, they will. They'll pollute China and India, take jobs with them, the world won't be any cleaner as a whole, more Americans will be out of work, and once again Americans will be accused of exporting their pollution overseas. Instead of creating political/environmental problems due to our use of fossil fuels, we'll create political/environmental problems because our companies will move to exempt countries and pollute there.
What would have been the advantage of the U.S. accepting Kyoto?
...unless you are suggesting that americans are somehow less capable at taking on the environmental challenge than the chinese are...
Actually, yes. We've achieved a standard of living that requires a certain level of energy--whether it be fossil, nuclear, solar, or whatever. But we need energy. For now fossil and nuclear is what works best for us. Hopefully someday it will be solar. But if you take our energy away from us, YES, it's going to kill our economy and that will have worldwide reprecussions.
Many countries and many societies haven't achieved the same level of industrialization as we have (yet). It would not be arrogant, inaccurate, nor wrong to say that if you take away fossil fuels from someone who scarcely uses it they won't miss it as much as if you take it away from somebody who does. Likewise, if their current system doesn't require it it won't be affected. But the economy that depends on it WILL be.
We probably won't be able to see eye to eye on this, but still I respect your position.
That is conveniently ignoring the fact that China has actually reduced their carbon emissions [peopledaily.com.cn] while developing their economy
The article you cite is very strange. In one section it talks about reducing emissions by 17% while in another part it says that it's emissions have increased by half the rate of growth of the economy. In other words, their emissions are still increasing, just not increasing as fast as the economy. That'd still be good, but it's curious which is right: Did their emissions decrease 17% or did they increase 18% (which is half the 36% rate of GDP growth?).
These are the kind of inconsistencies that you will constantly find in most of these articles. As the article also mentioned, this information was in rebuttle to President Bush citing the problem of emission exemptions in third world countries. Obviously they had to come back with something to rebut that. The fact is, the article itself says that since the 1980's China's emissions have increased 18%.
Regardless of whether or not they have reduced or increased emissions, the concern of the U.S. remains valid. If you slap emission restrictions on the developed world, the third world WILL pollute more. Whether or not China has done well in the last 5 years or so is irrelevant. If you chase industries out of the industrialized world with emission limits, believe me, past performance will be no indicator of future success.
as well as the fact that the U.S. was and still is the biggest polluter in the world.
We also are the most productive. If you look at it from a per-capita standpoint, UAE pollutes more than the U.S.. If you look at it from a per capita GDP, U.S. falls way down the list. I don't have a link for that because I haven't found that information published; but simply divide carbon emissions by per-capita GDP to get a better idea of how U.S. ranks.
You can't expect the largest, and one of the most efficient economies in the world to be so without polluting. Sure, an American might pollute 20 times as much someone from Sudan, but that American probably also generates 100 times more income (these are examples, I don't have the numbers handy).
I will not dispute that the U.S. is the largest polluter. I will dispute whether that single evaluation matters. You must compare pollution on a per capita GDP basis. Otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges.
Me: We are NOT witnessing an increase in surface temperature. Please explain to me why the satellite and radiosonde records both show global cooling and only the relatively unreliable surface record shows any warming whatsoever?
You: I'd like you to give me your sources on this, I'd be curious to read it.
Sources on what? I believe I already provided a link to the radiosonde/satellite/surface record. But let me give you some links:
I'd like to provide more, but my wife is waiting so I must make this fast. Getting all these links together in one place is why I'm working on a site that will provide all this information quickly and easily without having to go to Google each time.
In fact, the only thing the discrepancy in surface measurments vs. satellite/radiosonde results indicates is that the real atmosphere is more complicated that the computer models we have of it so far (duh!).
Uh, the satellite/radiosonde record not coinciding with surface measurements has nothing to do with computer models. The surface record itself is inaccurate. That is to say, not surprisingly, it is much more accurate to send up electronic radiosondes and calibrated satellites than to depend on thousands of people checking thousands of different stations at thousands of different locations subject to thousands of potential anomolies.
That the computer models are broken isn't even an issue. The fact is, if you feed a working model broken (surface record) data it'll obviously break. If they want to come up with a valid model, they ought to be using valid data--and that would come from the radiosonde/satellite data. And that data shows a slight cooling trend over at least the last 23 years.
I don't doubt that the environmentalists could turn that satellite cooling trend into global warming over the next 50 years though. It's amazing what their models can produce, so leave it to them to take data that shows cooling and somehow conclude that there will be warming and rising sea levels 50 years from now.
it does not by itself substantially alter the expectation that some amount of global warming will occur in the future."
Can you not see the inherent bias? They are saying, "Well, here's data that shows global cooling over the last 23 years. But don't get complacent! That doesn't mean there won't be global warming." The disclaimer itself is telling.
The fact that there is a discrepancy doesn't mean that the surface temperature isn't in fact increasing - the only thing that has been questioned following the discovery of these differences is the computer model used to predict atmospheric changes, not the surface measurements!
Again, you're jumping the gun. We're not talking about computer models that are broken. We're talking about historic surface record data from the last 150 years that is the only record which suggests global warming is occurring--and that record seems to be substantially flawed when compared with what we know to be very accurate measurements of radiosondes and satellites.
If the satellites and radiosondes for the last 23 (satellites) to 50 (radiosondes) years are showing a slight cooling and the surface record shows heating, the surface measurements are not reliable. If the recent surface record over the last 25-50 years isn't even reliable, are we really to believe it was any more reliable 100 or 150 years ago?
I'm not even discussing whether or not the models work or not. I'm saying that even if the models were right, the environmentalists are feeding it bad data--GIGO. If you feed the models corrupt data that shows warming in the last 23 years during a time where satellites have shown that there hasn't been any, what do you expect the models to produce?
which according to NASA does not invalidate the fact that surface temperature are increasing
Please re-read the article and check for yourself what "satellite record" and "surface record" refers to. The satellite record is the temperature of ALL the atmosphere (from the surface on up) as recorded accurately by satellites. The "surface record" refers to measurements made by mini-weather stations around the world subject to individual station-by-station errors, human errors, expanding cities.
It's not a matter of the temperature of the surface. It's a matter of how the temperature was taken. The "surface record" is not reliable.
Even if it is not as bad as we may have thought, that doesn't mean it's not there - it just means we've bought some time to do the right thing.
In other words, "Global warming is probably real. But if it isn't, we should act like it is since all it means is that it isn't happening now but will probably happen someday."
I can't argue with that logic. If that's the way you see it then we might as well abandon all research--if our actions with or without global warming are the same, there's no reason to research it.
Incentives are not at all a way to "force" people. You don't have to follow them.
True, that's why I said they were incentives and not truly "forcing" anyone to do anything.
Let's say it another way. "Incentives" are a way of making a minority (or majority) do something they wouldn't otherwise do because the "majority" (government) thinks it's right.
I'm sure you already have taken up on government-sponsored incentives, wether it's tax breaks for retirement funds, or whatever. So that argument doesn't seem to be getting you anywhere.
Actually, I haven't. I work for myself and instead of getting tax breaks I get hit with unemployment tax. I'm funding someone elses incentives, apparently. Which is why it further pisses me off when they give incentives for something I don't even agree with. They're taking MY money to push ME to do something I don't want to.
Anyway, we're drifting. My real interest is in debating global warming. The whole "how big should government be" is a topic for another thread; and actually a topic I don't usually get into because it's a matter of opinion.
No, but he's not particularly friendly towards the United States and that could affect oil prices. It's a variable the Bush administration could do without, for sure. This is a clear case of national interests.
Perhaps you see it as such. I haven't seen Venezuela much affect oil prices except during the coup itself. Oil prices seem much more sensitive to the middle east, war on terror, demand, etc.
Well, it seems to me that the job of the media should be to report the truth, not try to manipulate public opinion against an elected leader because a single person (the owner) has decided so.
I agree. But what if the truth happens to agree with the owner? Then it's not manipulating, it's just a matter of the owner being right and the truth affecting public opinion, not "manipulating it."
the press covers up the truth and paints a darker picture than there really is, because its owner has a clear (and avowed) political agenda, showing soaps instead of images that would disprove its fabricated editorial line. Is that what you are defending? Because that is the analysis of about every independent media, despite the official Bush administration line.
First, I don't even know the Bush administration line.
Second, have you lived in Latin America? I currently live in Mexico and have for the past 6 years. I can assure you, the type of media you are describing in Venezuela is not unique to Venezuela. It's pretty much the norm for most Latin American countries because the governments are downright corrupt. It's difficult to find anything encouraging to report about any of them. And that's the TRUTH. I live here and can attest to it.
But in this case (and we are talking about a precise case, not some hypothetical future) the people didn't want him out - they demonstrated after the coup, causing it to misfire and fail.
And as such he's back in power and I accept that as much as him being out of power.
it's called voting, and in a democracy - even an grossly imperfect one - it is the only legitimate way to do it.
Let me answer my own question above: It is clear you haven't lived in Latin America and don't have much knowledge about what you're talking about.
That's the basic principle of democracy, and you can't say it doesn't apply when the situation doesn't suit your own interest. That is simply undemocratic, and nothing you have said challenges this argument.
Well, we really have diverged from the global warming debate and I'm not going to put much effort into the political side of this for the reasons mentioned above.
I also want to say that I'm in favor of emocracy 100%. I think it's the greatest thing since capitalism.
That said, having lived in Mexico which is now "moderately" democratic (having finally escaped 60+ years of domination by a single "democratic" party), I can also tell you that there comes a time when it becomes clear to a society that the government is so corrupt and the voting process so fraudulent that the only way to create a democracy is to tear it down and start again.
I truly believe that. So did the founding fathers of my country. Your mileage may vary.:)
I probably won't respond to anything else you say on the politial part of this subthread since what I'm really interested in debating is the global warming part.
What agenda could they be pushing? It's not as if they were going to make money off this (if, like you said, they are not climatologists). So I fail to see what they would have to gain in this: no fortune, no fame (really, it's not as if they became rock stars). This doesn't make much sense.
If you look at the Kyoto Protocol, it is clear there would have been no positive impact to the environment. None. Since many developing countries--including China and India, which make up 1 of 3 people on this planet--were exempt. It is obvious that polluting industries would just pick up and move to those areas of the world where labor is cheap and they'd be exempt from the Kyoto restrictions. On a global level the pollution would be the same, just in their backyard instead of ours.
Since that obviously doesn't help the environment at all, all we're left with is looking at what we know it will do: It will shift industries, jobs, and wealth from developed countries to developing countries. It doesn't require an economics degree to figure that out.
So... If it's obvious that Kyoto wouldn't have helped the environment but would have led to a redistribution of jobs and wealth on this planet, what could the motivation or goal be? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. I don't think it's necessary for me to connect the dots for you...
There is, however, plenty of incentive on the other side to say that global warming is just hogwash.
There is incentive on both sides. I'd say 95% (or more) of all reports on both sides are more political thant science. The best we, the outsiders, can do is look for the data in all reports, look for the biases, and try to make sense out of it.
That said... you responded with two paragraphs to my text: "And considering the satellite record coincides very well with the radiosonde record", but didn't speak to that fact at all. The fact is that the two most accurate methods we have of recording global temperature--satellites and radiosondes--both indicate flat or even slight cooling in the last 23 years. Why is that? And please don't tell me that's big oil bias. That comes from NASA.
However you put it, the truth is we are witnessing an increase in surface temperature (including oceanic temperature).
See above. Until you realize that the most accurate methods for recording global temperature do NOT indicate warming, you will be spinning your wheels and repeating the environmentalist party line.
We are NOT witnessing an increase in surface temperature. Please explain to me why the satellite and radiosonde records both show global cooling and only the relatively unreliable surface record shows any warming whatsoever? Those that push the idea of global warming inevitably ignore the two most accurate temperature records because they are not convenient for their arguement and they haven't been able to discredit them. Discrediting the surface record is much easier since the stations are not equally distributed over the earth, don't exist at sea, are subject to poor record-keeping, are not priorities that are given high importance in many countries, and are subject to the effect of local changes in the environment including the heat islands of cities, trees coming and going, etc..
Not to force people, to give incentive. To lead. To act responsibly for the common good, not the privileges of the oil industry shareholders.
"Incentive" is just another way of saying "force." Sure, it's not made law, but taxes or tax breaks are made that essentially push people to do something they would not otherwise do.
I'm not a believer in the benevolance nor the superior intelligence of government. I believe in the people. When someone says "free market" it should be translated to "free people." I believe that when free people see that alternative energy is worthwhile they will start using it all by themselves. If the government has to push people to do it beforehand with "incentives" it's because the technology isn't mature enough yet. Instead of spending money on the incentives, they should spend money improving the technology so that people will adopt it without the incentives.
My government's job is NOT to herd me like a cow in the direction that someone else has decided my life should take.
The Bush administration's hardly-concealed joy at Chavez' temporary overthrow had nothing to do with freedom of the press. Come on! Venezuela has the world's third largest oil reserves!
So what? He hadn't stopped shipping oil to the U.S.
For your information the press in Venezuela isn't free. It belongs to the richest South American media magnate, who happens to be an outspoken adversary of Chavez.
Oh brother, you think "free" means that the press doesn't belong to someone? The press always belongs to someone. The question is whether or not they have the freedom to print/say/report anything without government approval.
Do you really believe these media have any editorial independence from their owner?
Probably not. That's not the point. Freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom from the owner of the press. It's the right to report whatever needs to be reported. I know the press in Venezuela is controlled by a Chavez opponent. That's a GOOD thing. I'd much rather have a press that reports and criticizes the bad things about the government than just goes along and paints a pretty picture and covers up the truth.
The truth is, the Venezuelan media are just a mouthpiece for a corrupt, greedy business elite, nothing else.
And Chavez is just a mouthpiece for a poor, numeros and uninformed population. He said what he had to say to get elected. Sounded good to uneducated poor people. But he can't deliver. Believe me, if he stays president long enough it'll only be a matter of time until the rest of the country--rich and poor--overthrows him as well.
Populist leaders generally are popular (by definition) until the end of their reign when they are often overthrown by the people that used to love them.
Whether the Bush administration likes Chavez or not is irrelevant. He was elected, and if the people don't want him anymore they can vote him out during the next election.
It's irrelevant in the sense that it's an internal issue. I agree the correct way to get rid of a president is to vote him out or impeach him. But if the people of Venezuela were to decide that they've had enough and that they were going to overthrow their own government, that's their internal problem, as long as no-one external instigated it.
Nope. But neither are most of those responsible for drawing up the IPCC report, so I guess I'm equally qualified to speak on the subject.
What kind of data is needed to convince you? I personally doubt that you've been seriously looking for it.
Believe me, I have been looking for it. In my spare time I'm preparing a website that specifically talks to the subject of global warming. However, it is my goal to only reference sites that would either be considered unbiased or actually promote the theory of global warming--my idea being to use their own data against them which would make it hard for my site to be criticized since I'm using their data. But it turns out I'm having a tough time preparing my site because there is so little real data offered by the pro-global warming people. Lots of conclusions based on scientists I've never heard of, but no hard data presented to the reader. Call "global warming" a matter of faith, because there is an absence of evidence being presented.
Again, that's what my experience has been. I'm still working on it, but getting any data out of those people is like pulling teeth.
Note: these are links for "policy makers", so they're probably lighter in scientific data than the Technical Summaries also included on the site. Even then, the evidence is compelling.
There are major holes in the IPCC. They disregard the satellite record and the radiosonde record and instead use the error-ridden surface record. Sure, if you use a broken record all kinds of weird science can result.
The IPCC (and many environmentalists) seem more eager to prove why the satellites are wrong than to consider what it would mean if they are right. And considering the satellite record coincides very well with the radiosonde record it's really hard to avoid the conclusion that they're pushing an agenda, not a pursuit of science.
Or perhaps you can point to the factual errors in the studies...Well, the encouraging thing is that policymakers are slowly getting up to speed and starting to do something about it.
Yeah, they're getting up to speed. Unfortunately they've been pointed down the wrong highway.
I do plan on reading the information you've provided. I've seen it summarized (by biased parties) but I will read it myself.
Well, that's why we have a government, isn't it?
To force people to do what they don't want to do? Perhaps that's your vision of the role of government, it's not mine.
As far as Venezuela is concerned, the links between the White House and the coup leaders are becoming clearer: see this article [msnbc.com] for more info.
I read it. It doesn't seem to have any new information that hasn't already been mentioned in certain circles except that there might be a congressional investigation.
That said, are you familiar with Chavez himself? The article you just cited indicates how he blames the media for the coup d'etat. In fact, I remember watching reports live from Venezuela (in Spanish) that the media itself was taking credit for this. Chavez claims they were spreading lies, the media claims they were spreading the truth.
The article also says that the administration told the Venezuelans "No golpes" (No coup d'etats).
Any way you look at it, Venezuela was an internal affair. There was no U.S. military support, no real political support. At worst, the U.S. didn't fulfill it's typical "policeman" role when it failed to act on behalf of Chavez.
But when a dictator-in-the-making that is threatening the freedom of the press is toppled, is it really surprising that the U.S. wouldn't be entirely displeased? I would agree, Chavez brought it on himself--it wasn't forced on Venezuela by any foreign country.
Me: Actually, oil is not the problem. It's WHERE we get it.
You: Ah, semantics. Gotta love it.
It's not semantics. It's a major difference. If we got our oil from within our own country and our close neighbors we wouldn't be as inclined to get tangled in regional conflicts on the other side of the world.
... it's about a "renewable" energy source... But since it is a long-term goal, concrete action needs to be take now , not tomorrow!
I agree. I would love to see a few billion dollars a year invested into searching for alternative energy sources. I personally like nuclear and solar; although to make solar work we need more research into effective batteries. But solar seems like a silly source to pass up.
America's dependence on oil has caused enough political, economical and environmental damage (most of it outside of its borders) already.
While we're searching for an alternative energy source, I think we should exploit our own oil reserves. This isn't a long-term solution. It's a short- to medium-term solution while we're finding better energy.
Despite ever-increasing scientific evidence to the contrary.
Show it to me. Good hard facts. I have seen no evidence whatsoever--and believe me, I've looked. Beyond smoke and mirrors and very science-lacking news reports I have found little in the way of evidence that carbon is doing anything drastic to the eath. Please show me to that data.
Hey, even Bush and the oil companies acknowledge that burning fossil fuel is bad for the environment and that the reserves of fossil fuel are finite.
They acknowledge it is finite, because it is--although probably not as much so as we think. We were supposedly going to run out by 2000, but we're supposed to run out by 2050 or something. Funny thing that.
As for acknowledging that burning fossible fuel is bad for the environment, I can't speak for them, but my guess is they say that because the current fad is "carbon fuels pollute the environment." And sure, they do. The question is how much. Given the current success of some environmentalists at convincing an uninformed public as to weak or non-existant correlations of data it would be political suicide for him to say anything else.
That is, costs can be spread out over a couple of years, until the actual cost benefits start kicking in. So the transition wouldn't be as costly as they first seem.
I'm not talking about companies that can amortize. I'm talking about individuals that are going to see a $15k gas-based car or a $35k cell-based car and say, "Screw that."
The reason why fuel cells haven't gone anywhere is it can't be done cheap. Companies know consumers won't go for it given those prices so they don't even try, which makes good business sense.
Those "cheap oil prices" won't stay that way, and getting them will carry and increasingly higher political and environmental cost as well.
And when the cheap oil prices go up and fuel cells become, for that reason, more attractive they'll have more success. Free market at work.
But america does not have the moral right to destabilize the entire world just so it can get its oil fix.
I agree. We should get our own oil from within our own borders, or very close neighbors as previously mentioned.
Also, as I said, you're being incredible near-sighted if you believe oil will stay cheap. For your own good, you should encourage the quick implementation of fuel cells and other renewable energy sources right now!
As I've said, I support research. We need to find out how to make alternative energy sources practical and cheap. When they become practical and cheap then the free market will take care of implementing them.
But you can't roll out solar powered cars, etc. today and expect them to be used. The free market will reject them because they aren't mature yet.
Right, Venezuela...as long as a friendly president is in place. And if not, the Bush administration will try to topple him again, huh? See what I mean about the increasing political cost?
Venezuela sells to us regardless of what president is in power. I'm not going to tuch the Bush-wanted-Chavez-gone debate. It hasn't even been touched in Mexico where I live; if there was any truth to that, believe me, the Mexican media would be all over it--they love to report anything that makes the U.S. look bad.:)
The problem is, the world is beginning to be fed up with being there only to satisfy America's energy needs.
Perhaps, but it'll be interesting to see what they think when we STOP buying their stuff. For better or worse, our buying makes many otherwise poor countries either tolerable or downright rich (depending on the country.
You guys are going to have to start behaving more responsible very soon...
Whatever. If everyone was so "fed up" with us buying their stuff they could just stop selling it to us. Me thinks YOU are fed up with what we buy. I think the world is more fed up with our global politics, not with what we buy or what fuel we burn.
and it's also a rather grand assumption to suggest that all musicians like to perform live.
Well, yeah... But it's a rather grand assumption to suggest that I like to work, but I haven't found anyone who'll pay me to do nothing.
Concerts are not charities for bands, they're social events that go way beyond the band...
What? You're saying that these are social events that go way beyond the band. I.e., people go to concerts because they are social events, not because of the band. This is good news for people like Britney that, despite having no talent, will still be able to earn plenty of money by providing a social event to the public.
...and expecting this to become the "new" way for bands to get paid seems a bit naive.
No more naive then expecting people to continue to pay $20 for something they can download for free.
Sounds good to an outsider, but run this up on someone who it's going to affect and they're likely to have some different opinions.
Yeah, they're used to rolling in money and for the most part doing very little. Now they'll probably earn less and might actually have to work. Bummer. Sounds almost like MY life.
To claim that Madonna would be completely unable to have a show with $120 ticket prices seems, too me at least, unbelievable. Now, on the other hand, I have no doubt that through creative, Enron-style accounting any live show by any artist can be made to appear to lose money.
Exactly right. Artists will earn their money in the future from concerts. Concerts should be profitable. If they aren't, they honestly are doing something wrong.
Another point: No-one ever said that Britney will continue to make $10 million a year (or whatever she earns) in this new world. She'll give away her music, earn money from her concerts (which must be profitable!), have to pay her expenses, and she'll earn what's left over. God forbid she only earn, say, $200,000 a year, which is only about 6 times what an average American makes.
That said, all the changes in the recording industry won't change where I personally think these people make their biggest bucks: endorsements. Pepsi will still pay Britney mega-bucks to appear in their commercials. So even if she doesn't earn a cent anywhere else she probably will earn more in a year than I will in my life. What's the problem?
not trying to troll here, but does anyone still listen to TAFKAP? I always thought that 99% of the 80s died out with the decade
Are you kidding? I don't listen to Prince, but I (and many people I know) listen to 80s music almost exclusively. In Mexico most of the English music that you hear is the "classics" from the 80s and early 90s, with the required dose of Britney mixed in.
80's music never died and I actually hear it get much more airplay than 60's and 70's combined. At least in this market...
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, please. I have asthma but I don't appreciate being used as a scapegoat and I would NOT ask the world to go "cold-turkey" and abandon fossil fuels without an viable and economical alternative just to avoid asthma.
Come on, environmentalists contaminate the media more than the worst polluters contaminate the environment.
First, we have to stop using fossil fuels because it's causing global warming. Debunked.
Ok, well, then, we have to stop using fossil fuels because, uhm, we're running out of it. Debunked.
Uhm, we have to stop using fossil fuels to help all the poor kids that have asthma...
Come on... Envrionmentalists would be a lot more convincing if they chose a REAL reason for their cause. They should just come out and say, "We want to make the poor countries richer, the rich countries poorer, and eventually we should all live in the stone age again." Their ideas would still be rejected, but at least they might earn some respect for stating what their intentions truly are/were.
Actually, that came from some comedy movie in the 80s. Can't remember which one right now, but talking about the scum that crashed the airplanes into WTC/Pentagon I have no qualms whatsoever in calling them camel-jockeys. Heck, that's more of an offense to CAMEL-JOCKEYS than it is to the low-life that killed 3000 innocent people.
FWIW, I have many friends and business associates that are Arab and/or from the Middle East. I get along with them 100% fine. People from Israel, peopl from UAE, Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan... I've done business with them all. Most of them seem like nice enough people.
Incidentally, since you feel it's okay to wage war against an entire country because of the actions of a few
If you followed the news after 9/11, you'll remember that we didn't invade the next day. Not even the next week. President Bush didn't even deliver his terms to the Taliban for 9 full days.
When the terms were delivered--and they weren't unreasonable--the Taliban didn't take them seriously. They waffled, they talked, they chose to give refuge to a terrorist. They did so at the cost of their government.
We didn't invade Afghanistan because of the action of a few. We invaded Afghanistan because they were unwilling to control their own domestic problem (terrorism), and their domestic problem was a threat to the U.S. and, really, all of the world.
The Taliban sealed their own fate with their decision not to cooperate. If they had even talked about the possibility of working with the U.S. in resolving the problem it would have taken a heck of a lot of wind out of the United States' effort to get the whole world on their side. But no, they dicked around and the world noticed. The few friends they had, Saudia Arabia, UAE, and finally Pakistan, broke off relations. Why? There was no way to justify the Taliban's position. It was absurd.
then I'm sure you felt that we should have sent in the military to Michigan after Timothy McVeigh's act of terrorism.
It wasn't necessary. We aprehended him domestically with no problem. Short of invading Afghanistan, how do you propose we should have gone about resolving the problems inside Afghanistan that WERE threatening the world and the Taliban was unwilling to deal with?
In the three articles I read, this guy basically said that Bush is a murderer, should resign and face charges for attempted murder, blamed Bush for 9/11 because he didn't do anything to improve airport security in his 8 months in office, blamed him for not having more fighter planes protecting the American homeland as if their first reaction would have been to destroy domestic commercial aircraft, believes most Americans "consider themselves environmentalists," and that "the recount is alive and has legs" but only if the Democrats "renominate Gore in 2004." He thinks Bush is so far right that he has alienated his own party, and thinks Bush's approval scores (as high and higher than Clinton's) are indicative of failure. He thinks Bush destroyed the "Clinton economy" in 8 months, when it turns out things were already heading downhill during the Clinton presidency--tax increases tend to do that.
This guy is a waaaay out there. He's like the Rush Limbaugh of the left, but this guy only spews opinions with no facts to back it up.
I went for the conspiracy, but I stayed for the laughs.
Yeah, well, I was curious and opened up the page. I haven't found the stuff on the oil conspiracy, but his current "opinion" story was enough.
Who is this idiot? Is he just anti-Bush/anti-Republican or pretty much anti-eveything? He criticized Bush for failures of the Clinton administration, attacked the Bush with virtually the same words that "the right" attacked Clinton during his presidency, and he himself admitted that he has "nothing on Bush... yet."
This guy is a dufus with an opinion. I'll probably read some more of his stuff because it looks humerous, but don't take it too seriously.
Couldn't resist the obligatory "Every war the U.S. fights is for money and oil." Think about what you're saying. Could it be that we're fighting the war on terror because we're hopping mad about some camel-jockeys wrecking three buildings with 4 of our airplanes and killing thousands in the process? Nah, it's all a hidden agenda to get at Afghanistan's oil...
Also, if you do more research, you will find that the United States has more oil than any other country on the planet. But they do not tap it. They are saving it in case it is needed later and buying up the oil from Saudi and such instead.
We don't use it mostly because, as high as gas prices are, they are cheaper than what we ourselves would produce it for. Why spend $3/gallon extracting and refining our own gas when we can import it for $1.50? We'll start using our own oil reserves as soon as other sources want to charge more for their oil than we can produce for ourselves. Simple economics.
That we will have oil when the world has sucked the Middle East dry is just an additional strategic benefit. :)
and in the arctic above Canada.
One more "no more oil in 30 years" or "stop driving or we'll flood Los Angeles with global warming sea-level rise" and I'm going to throw up.
What I don't understand is why ANYONE listens to radio? At all?
I listened to radio in the 80s because I was a kid (read: poor) and new music I liked came out every week. I recorded music off the radio and that's why I sat listening to the radio for hours, waiting for the song I wanted to be played again and hoping the DJ would shut up rather than talk through the intros and fade-outs.
Later in the decade, when I got employed, I went back and bought CDs of all the music I liked. That's about the same time I stopped listening to radio. It wasn't a conscious decision, it's just that I had the music I wanted on CD and, in my opinion, good music tapered off near the beginning of the 90s.
Now we're in the year 2002. Poor teenagers (as I was in the 80s) no longer have to listen to radio to record the music they want, they just download it from P2P. Those that are truly interested in "new/non-commercial music" can also just pop online rather than hoping that there is some local "non-corporate" radio station that plays the weird music they're after.
The fact is, regardless of what station you listen to, corporate, non-corporate, reggae, whatever, it's doubtful you'll like every song they play. In fact, you probably won't like half of them. When you factor in commercials and the DJ talking you're lucky to hear a couple songs you like over the course of an hour. Why bother? I just pop in my one of my mix CDs and I know every song I hear I will like.
I only listen to radio 1) sometimes when I'm driving cross-country by myself I turn on a TALK station, it kind of keeps you company and keeps you "engaged" in the discussion. 2) when there's nasty weather or nasty traffic I surf the stations looking for some station reporting on it. I usually have better luck on AM.
Other than that, why bother and why care? Download the music you like, burn it, listen to it. A whole lot less complicated and more likely you'll enjoy the music you're listening to.
Important safety tip, thanks Egon...
-- Sorry, couldn't resist.
I've been doing this for just the last week and a half. I log every spam that gets disconnected. So far there have been no false positives. The only annoyance has been that others using my mail server that forward me their spam sometimes get disconnected because I've already added a filter that catches what they are reporting. :)
That said, I've hacked my sendmail server. It now analyzes mail as it comes in. In addition to the standard blocking of known spammer IP blocks/domains, my sendmail now looks at the stream coming in when the spammer connects to the mail server. Certain conditions/strings are a dead give-away that the incoming mail is spam.
As soon as my SMTP server decides the incoming message is spam, it hangs up cold. No error message, nothing. Just hangs up. Doesn't matter if it comes from an open relay or dial-up, if certain conditions are true, I know it's spam.
My spam count has gone from 30-40 day down to 3-7 per day.
It's actually gratifying to do a tail -f maillog and watch the spammers try, get hung up on, try again, ad nauseum...
Nah, that's why there was never an Independence Day Part II. 2 years after being almost anhilated by ETs, the world would be bickering about a Palestinian State, one or two Chinas, and export tarrifs.
We have a very impressive ability to work together when we HAVE to. We also have an impressive ability to stop working together as soon as possible.
Unless a second wave of ETs attacked the earth, I doubt a post-ID4 world would be much different than a pre-ID4 world.
Nah, I just think companies that are at risk will choose a country other than Germany to operate out of.
This has no affect or precedent in the United States. It happened in Germany and Microsoft lost in Germany.
Remind me not to care...
Hmm, I would too, except... imagine the ping response time? 365,000ms on a good day (season) and 2,700,000ms on a bad day (season).
Definitely won't be telnetting into my Linux shell. :)
So... there is no indication we have to worry about massive melting. Icebergs breaking off the ice shelfs is natural and not an indication of global warming. Those parts of Antartica that the gloom-and-doom environmentalists expect to warm up, melt, and flood our coast are actually getting colder.
Don't count on it. Microsoft might have deep pockets to absorb the loss, but the companies that make games for it don't. If interest is less than enthusiastic then there are relatively (compared to PS2 and Cube) few consumers to buy the software. And I, as a software developer, am not going to bother to write software for a platform that doesn't have enough paying users.
So, even if Microsoft can afford the losses, unless they start PAYING companies to write software for their platform (which contradicts the idea of selling the hardware at a loss), I don't think MS' gaming bid is going to last long.
While I agree with you that Latin America government are corrupt in general, that paints only half of the picture, i.e. that businesses in those area also tend to be corrupt. After all, to use an appropriate analogy, it takes two to tango.
You are right. It's a "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" issue.
My take is that the companies aren't so corrupt in and of themselves. They treat their customers like dirt and take advantage of their customers because the government won't do anything to stop them; but they're still responsible to their stockholders like any other company.
I see it more as the Latin American society vs. their governments. THAT'S where the tango takes place. It's nasty to condemn an entire society, but Latin American society is corrupt. I honestly don't know whether Latin American society corrupted their governments or if their governments corrupted their societies.
From what I've seen, companies do as best as they can with a corrupt society and a corrupt government. Any given individual doesn't want to be corrupt, but the "system" forces them to be. There is a saying in Mexico, "El que no tranza no avanza." That means "He who doesn't cheat doesn't get ahead." If everyone else is cheating/bribing to get ahead, he who tries to be honest WILL fall behind. So it's dang near impossible for an honest person to get ahead; most people eventually just give in to the "dark side" and accept it as an inevitable part of life... and so the whole problem continues.
Here in Mexico everyone recognizes corruption as a problem, but no-one has a solution and I don't really either. Actually, I do. I plan to move back to the United States later this year. :)
What I believe would go more along these lines: "Global warming is probably real. Until we know for sure that it isn't, we should act as if it was in order not to make the situation worse.
So how do we know for sure it isn't happening? At what point do we say, "Ok, it's not happening."
I myself am already ready to say it isn't happening. The satellite and radiosonde record don't show any global warming in the last 23 years.
I'm certainly in favor of continuing to monitor temperatures, of course. But at this point I see nothing to convince me that global warming is currently happening.
It just so happens that in changing our habits in order to avert this probable catastrophe, we also solve another problem: our dependence on fossil fuels, which has dire economic and geopolitical consequences
And as I've said, I'm in favor of looking for alternatives. I believe that, ultimately, the alternatives will be cheaper and will not just make environmental sense but will make economic and political sense as well.
In the meantime, however, it'd be unreasonable to go "cold turkey" and push an immature technology and punish those that continue to use what works for the time being. It's an unnecessary burden on our economy--and when the economy is burdened, less funds will be available to move that alternative technology forward.
In the NASA papers, they clearly show that the difference is not between recorded surface temperatures, but between recorded surface and atmospheric temperatures. The surface indeed is warming up, but the atmosphere is not warming up at the same rate, and parts of it are cooling instead.
I think there's two ways of looking at this.
My way: Everyone has decided that the temperatures recorded for the last 150 years are right. Damn-near perfect, actually. So perfect that they conclude that these stations are able to detect a 0.6C degree rise in temperature over the last 100 years. Considering absolute zero is -273.15C (0K) and the average temperature on earth is about 15C or 288K (IIRC), then to detect a 0.6C temperature change is talking about a true variation of 0.21%. Even if we assume that only values between -90C and 60C are valid, we're still talking about a variation of 0.4%. I don't know about you, but I believe that all the possible errors at those little white boxes around the world are more than 0.4% and certainly more than 0.21%. Changing urban areas, changing "readers" who may read the stations at different times (especially 80+ years ago), humidity affecting the actual mechanics of the stations (especially 80+ years ago). All of these things affect the validity of the data colleted and I think it's entirely possible, if not downright probable, that these errors are larger than the observed "increase" in surface temperature. I.e., the potential margin of error, especially for older readings, is larger than the the observed increase and is statistically insignificant.
Your way: Assuming that the surface temperature record for the last 150 years is pretty much perfect (a big assumption) and the temperature on the surface has increased, so what? Weather and pretty much everything that happens in the climate happens in the atmosphere, not at ground level. I don't doubt that the cities are warmer than they were. I DO doubt that that makes any difference to the climate if the only change is on the surface.
However, the radiosonde data does not invalidate surface temperature records, because it doesn't measure surface temperatures. The discrepancy is with the expected atmospheric warming and the actual recorded one, which is lower than expected.
I agree that radiosondes don't measure surface temperature. Satellites, however, measure the temperature of the entire "column" of air, from the top down to the surface.
But again, the problem I see is that the surface temperature has no bearing on the atmospheric temperature. This is even MORE true if the surface record is right.
The whole global warming theory suggests that increased CO2 and other greenhouse gasses will cause global warming of the atmosphere--not just of the surface. In fact, this HAS to be true. If the surface is warming and the atmosphere isn't, well, ok, we have surface warming--but it can't be due to increased greenhouse emissions because if greenhouse emissions were the cause, ALL the atmosphere would be warmed--not just the surface.
Thus the question of reliability does not apply to surface temperature measurements (save for the so-called "asphalt effect"), but rather to the computer models used to predict atmospheric changes
Please forget computer models for now.
The point is, the question of reliability is of UTMOST importance and is completely applicable. How can you use temperature data from the last 150 years if there isn't some reasonable assurance that that data is correct? As mentioned above, there are plenty of potential errors in the temperatures that were taken at stations. Even MORE errors a hundred years ago when the "station" might consist of a cowboy at a post office sticking his head out the window and looking at the temperature at high noon (+/- an hour or two depending on his workload).
The whole point is that the 150 year-old surface record most likely contains errors. Potentially very big errors. Whether the computer model (i.e. the method) is right or not is irrelevant if you feed it bad 150-year-old-data.
The NRDC still found that China had in fact decreased its carbon emissions while enjoying a healthy economic growth.
First of all, the first article you mentioned confessed that the reason for the drop is not fully known. Before assuming that this means you can abandon fossil fuels and have a growing economy it would be vital to KNOW what happened.
Second, that same article mentions that worldwide carbon emissions fell by 0.5% while the world economy expanded by 6.8%. Considering they mention that China is the second largest polluter, I would assume (dangerous, I know) that a large portion of that 0.5% decrease was China's mysterious decrease.
Finally, the world economy was expanding by leaps and bounds in 1998 in the tech and dot com industry. Obviously that produced a lot of "phantom" growth with very little additional emissions.
I'd say various circumstances coincided to produce an anomoly in 1998. You certainly can't conclude that because a third would country had a mysterious decline in emission while their struggling economy had growth that it automatically means we can reduce fossil fuels with no adverse affect on our economy.
So the two are not irreconcilable, and the "China excuse" is not a valid reason for the U.S. to drop out of Kyoto...
It IS a valid reason.
As I mentioned before, even if China and India aren't currently large polluters (and it appears China holds second place), the fact that Kyoto would not apply to them INSURES that those companies polluting the developed world would move to those countries where they can pollute as much as they want and probably at lesser cost.
Whether China had a reduction in the mid-90s is completely irrelevant. If you give companies an incentive (there's that word again!) to move to China and India, they will. They'll pollute China and India, take jobs with them, the world won't be any cleaner as a whole, more Americans will be out of work, and once again Americans will be accused of exporting their pollution overseas. Instead of creating political/environmental problems due to our use of fossil fuels, we'll create political/environmental problems because our companies will move to exempt countries and pollute there.
What would have been the advantage of the U.S. accepting Kyoto?
Actually, yes. We've achieved a standard of living that requires a certain level of energy--whether it be fossil, nuclear, solar, or whatever. But we need energy. For now fossil and nuclear is what works best for us. Hopefully someday it will be solar. But if you take our energy away from us, YES, it's going to kill our economy and that will have worldwide reprecussions.
Many countries and many societies haven't achieved the same level of industrialization as we have (yet). It would not be arrogant, inaccurate, nor wrong to say that if you take away fossil fuels from someone who scarcely uses it they won't miss it as much as if you take it away from somebody who does. Likewise, if their current system doesn't require it it won't be affected. But the economy that depends on it WILL be.
We probably won't be able to see eye to eye on this, but still I respect your position.
Likewise.
The article you cite is very strange. In one section it talks about reducing emissions by 17% while in another part it says that it's emissions have increased by half the rate of growth of the economy. In other words, their emissions are still increasing, just not increasing as fast as the economy. That'd still be good, but it's curious which is right: Did their emissions decrease 17% or did they increase 18% (which is half the 36% rate of GDP growth?).
These are the kind of inconsistencies that you will constantly find in most of these articles. As the article also mentioned, this information was in rebuttle to President Bush citing the problem of emission exemptions in third world countries. Obviously they had to come back with something to rebut that. The fact is, the article itself says that since the 1980's China's emissions have increased 18%.
Regardless of whether or not they have reduced or increased emissions, the concern of the U.S. remains valid. If you slap emission restrictions on the developed world, the third world WILL pollute more. Whether or not China has done well in the last 5 years or so is irrelevant. If you chase industries out of the industrialized world with emission limits, believe me, past performance will be no indicator of future success.
as well as the fact that the U.S. was and still is the biggest polluter in the world.
We also are the most productive. If you look at it from a per-capita standpoint, UAE pollutes more than the U.S.. If you look at it from a per capita GDP, U.S. falls way down the list. I don't have a link for that because I haven't found that information published; but simply divide carbon emissions by per-capita GDP to get a better idea of how U.S. ranks.
You can't expect the largest, and one of the most efficient economies in the world to be so without polluting. Sure, an American might pollute 20 times as much someone from Sudan, but that American probably also generates 100 times more income (these are examples, I don't have the numbers handy).
I will not dispute that the U.S. is the largest polluter. I will dispute whether that single evaluation matters. You must compare pollution on a per capita GDP basis. Otherwise you are comparing apples to oranges.
Me: We are NOT witnessing an increase in surface temperature. Please explain to me why the satellite and radiosonde records both show global cooling and only the relatively unreliable surface record shows any warming whatsoever?
You: I'd like you to give me your sources on this, I'd be curious to read it.
Sources on what? I believe I already provided a link to the radiosonde/satellite/surface record. But let me give you some links:
NASA: Radiosonde/satellite show cooling, surface record whows warming
Cooling trend found, slight warming due to strong El Niño
I'd like to provide more, but my wife is waiting so I must make this fast. Getting all these links together in one place is why I'm working on a site that will provide all this information quickly and easily without having to go to Google each time.
In fact, the only thing the discrepancy in surface measurments vs. satellite/radiosonde results indicates is that the real atmosphere is more complicated that the computer models we have of it so far (duh!).
Uh, the satellite/radiosonde record not coinciding with surface measurements has nothing to do with computer models. The surface record itself is inaccurate. That is to say, not surprisingly, it is much more accurate to send up electronic radiosondes and calibrated satellites than to depend on thousands of people checking thousands of different stations at thousands of different locations subject to thousands of potential anomolies.
That the computer models are broken isn't even an issue. The fact is, if you feed a working model broken (surface record) data it'll obviously break. If they want to come up with a valid model, they ought to be using valid data--and that would come from the radiosonde/satellite data. And that data shows a slight cooling trend over at least the last 23 years.
I don't doubt that the environmentalists could turn that satellite cooling trend into global warming over the next 50 years though. It's amazing what their models can produce, so leave it to them to take data that shows cooling and somehow conclude that there will be warming and rising sea levels 50 years from now.
it does not by itself substantially alter the expectation that some amount of global warming will occur in the future."
Can you not see the inherent bias? They are saying, "Well, here's data that shows global cooling over the last 23 years. But don't get complacent! That doesn't mean there won't be global warming." The disclaimer itself is telling.
The fact that there is a discrepancy doesn't mean that the surface temperature isn't in fact increasing - the only thing that has been questioned following the discovery of these differences is the computer model used to predict atmospheric changes, not the surface measurements!
Again, you're jumping the gun. We're not talking about computer models that are broken. We're talking about historic surface record data from the last 150 years that is the only record which suggests global warming is occurring--and that record seems to be substantially flawed when compared with what we know to be very accurate measurements of radiosondes and satellites.
If the satellites and radiosondes for the last 23 (satellites) to 50 (radiosondes) years are showing a slight cooling and the surface record shows heating, the surface measurements are not reliable. If the recent surface record over the last 25-50 years isn't even reliable, are we really to believe it was any more reliable 100 or 150 years ago?
I'm not even discussing whether or not the models work or not. I'm saying that even if the models were right, the environmentalists are feeding it bad data--GIGO. If you feed the models corrupt data that shows warming in the last 23 years during a time where satellites have shown that there hasn't been any, what do you expect the models to produce?
which according to NASA does not invalidate the fact that surface temperature are increasing
Please re-read the article and check for yourself what "satellite record" and "surface record" refers to. The satellite record is the temperature of ALL the atmosphere (from the surface on up) as recorded accurately by satellites. The "surface record" refers to measurements made by mini-weather stations around the world subject to individual station-by-station errors, human errors, expanding cities.
It's not a matter of the temperature of the surface. It's a matter of how the temperature was taken. The "surface record" is not reliable.
Even if it is not as bad as we may have thought, that doesn't mean it's not there - it just means we've bought some time to do the right thing.
In other words, "Global warming is probably real. But if it isn't, we should act like it is since all it means is that it isn't happening now but will probably happen someday."
I can't argue with that logic. If that's the way you see it then we might as well abandon all research--if our actions with or without global warming are the same, there's no reason to research it.
Incentives are not at all a way to "force" people. You don't have to follow them.
True, that's why I said they were incentives and not truly "forcing" anyone to do anything.
Let's say it another way. "Incentives" are a way of making a minority (or majority) do something they wouldn't otherwise do because the "majority" (government) thinks it's right.
I'm sure you already have taken up on government-sponsored incentives, wether it's tax breaks for retirement funds, or whatever. So that argument doesn't seem to be getting you anywhere.
Actually, I haven't. I work for myself and instead of getting tax breaks I get hit with unemployment tax. I'm funding someone elses incentives, apparently. Which is why it further pisses me off when they give incentives for something I don't even agree with. They're taking MY money to push ME to do something I don't want to.
Anyway, we're drifting. My real interest is in debating global warming. The whole "how big should government be" is a topic for another thread; and actually a topic I don't usually get into because it's a matter of opinion.
No, but he's not particularly friendly towards the United States and that could affect oil prices. It's a variable the Bush administration could do without, for sure. This is a clear case of national interests.
Perhaps you see it as such. I haven't seen Venezuela much affect oil prices except during the coup itself. Oil prices seem much more sensitive to the middle east, war on terror, demand, etc.
Well, it seems to me that the job of the media should be to report the truth, not try to manipulate public opinion against an elected leader because a single person (the owner) has decided so.
I agree. But what if the truth happens to agree with the owner? Then it's not manipulating, it's just a matter of the owner being right and the truth affecting public opinion, not "manipulating it."
the press covers up the truth and paints a darker picture than there really is, because its owner has a clear (and avowed) political agenda, showing soaps instead of images that would disprove its fabricated editorial line. Is that what you are defending? Because that is the analysis of about every independent media, despite the official Bush administration line.
First, I don't even know the Bush administration line.
Second, have you lived in Latin America? I currently live in Mexico and have for the past 6 years. I can assure you, the type of media you are describing in Venezuela is not unique to Venezuela. It's pretty much the norm for most Latin American countries because the governments are downright corrupt. It's difficult to find anything encouraging to report about any of them. And that's the TRUTH. I live here and can attest to it.
But in this case (and we are talking about a precise case, not some hypothetical future) the people didn't want him out - they demonstrated after the coup, causing it to misfire and fail.
And as such he's back in power and I accept that as much as him being out of power.
it's called voting, and in a democracy - even an grossly imperfect one - it is the only legitimate way to do it.
Let me answer my own question above: It is clear you haven't lived in Latin America and don't have much knowledge about what you're talking about.
That's the basic principle of democracy, and you can't say it doesn't apply when the situation doesn't suit your own interest. That is simply undemocratic, and nothing you have said challenges this argument.
Well, we really have diverged from the global warming debate and I'm not going to put much effort into the political side of this for the reasons mentioned above.
I also want to say that I'm in favor of emocracy 100%. I think it's the greatest thing since capitalism.
That said, having lived in Mexico which is now "moderately" democratic (having finally escaped 60+ years of domination by a single "democratic" party), I can also tell you that there comes a time when it becomes clear to a society that the government is so corrupt and the voting process so fraudulent that the only way to create a democracy is to tear it down and start again.
I truly believe that. So did the founding fathers of my country. Your mileage may vary. :)
I probably won't respond to anything else you say on the politial part of this subthread since what I'm really interested in debating is the global warming part.
The link in your sig is broken, dude.
If you look at the Kyoto Protocol, it is clear there would have been no positive impact to the environment. None. Since many developing countries--including China and India, which make up 1 of 3 people on this planet--were exempt. It is obvious that polluting industries would just pick up and move to those areas of the world where labor is cheap and they'd be exempt from the Kyoto restrictions. On a global level the pollution would be the same, just in their backyard instead of ours.
Since that obviously doesn't help the environment at all, all we're left with is looking at what we know it will do: It will shift industries, jobs, and wealth from developed countries to developing countries. It doesn't require an economics degree to figure that out.
So... If it's obvious that Kyoto wouldn't have helped the environment but would have led to a redistribution of jobs and wealth on this planet, what could the motivation or goal be? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader. I don't think it's necessary for me to connect the dots for you...
There is, however, plenty of incentive on the other side to say that global warming is just hogwash.
There is incentive on both sides. I'd say 95% (or more) of all reports on both sides are more political thant science. The best we, the outsiders, can do is look for the data in all reports, look for the biases, and try to make sense out of it.
That said... you responded with two paragraphs to my text: "And considering the satellite record coincides very well with the radiosonde record", but didn't speak to that fact at all. The fact is that the two most accurate methods we have of recording global temperature--satellites and radiosondes--both indicate flat or even slight cooling in the last 23 years. Why is that? And please don't tell me that's big oil bias. That comes from NASA.
However you put it, the truth is we are witnessing an increase in surface temperature (including oceanic temperature).
See above. Until you realize that the most accurate methods for recording global temperature do NOT indicate warming, you will be spinning your wheels and repeating the environmentalist party line.
We are NOT witnessing an increase in surface temperature. Please explain to me why the satellite and radiosonde records both show global cooling and only the relatively unreliable surface record shows any warming whatsoever? Those that push the idea of global warming inevitably ignore the two most accurate temperature records because they are not convenient for their arguement and they haven't been able to discredit them. Discrediting the surface record is much easier since the stations are not equally distributed over the earth, don't exist at sea, are subject to poor record-keeping, are not priorities that are given high importance in many countries, and are subject to the effect of local changes in the environment including the heat islands of cities, trees coming and going, etc..
Not to force people, to give incentive. To lead. To act responsibly for the common good, not the privileges of the oil industry shareholders.
"Incentive" is just another way of saying "force." Sure, it's not made law, but taxes or tax breaks are made that essentially push people to do something they would not otherwise do.
I'm not a believer in the benevolance nor the superior intelligence of government. I believe in the people. When someone says "free market" it should be translated to "free people." I believe that when free people see that alternative energy is worthwhile they will start using it all by themselves. If the government has to push people to do it beforehand with "incentives" it's because the technology isn't mature enough yet. Instead of spending money on the incentives, they should spend money improving the technology so that people will adopt it without the incentives.
My government's job is NOT to herd me like a cow in the direction that someone else has decided my life should take.
The Bush administration's hardly-concealed joy at Chavez' temporary overthrow had nothing to do with freedom of the press. Come on! Venezuela has the world's third largest oil reserves!
So what? He hadn't stopped shipping oil to the U.S.
For your information the press in Venezuela isn't free. It belongs to the richest South American media magnate, who happens to be an outspoken adversary of Chavez.
Oh brother, you think "free" means that the press doesn't belong to someone? The press always belongs to someone. The question is whether or not they have the freedom to print/say/report anything without government approval.
Do you really believe these media have any editorial independence from their owner?
Probably not. That's not the point. Freedom of the press doesn't mean freedom from the owner of the press. It's the right to report whatever needs to be reported. I know the press in Venezuela is controlled by a Chavez opponent. That's a GOOD thing. I'd much rather have a press that reports and criticizes the bad things about the government than just goes along and paints a pretty picture and covers up the truth.
The truth is, the Venezuelan media are just a mouthpiece for a corrupt, greedy business elite, nothing else.
And Chavez is just a mouthpiece for a poor, numeros and uninformed population. He said what he had to say to get elected. Sounded good to uneducated poor people. But he can't deliver. Believe me, if he stays president long enough it'll only be a matter of time until the rest of the country--rich and poor--overthrows him as well.
Populist leaders generally are popular (by definition) until the end of their reign when they are often overthrown by the people that used to love them.
Whether the Bush administration likes Chavez or not is irrelevant. He was elected, and if the people don't want him anymore they can vote him out during the next election.
It's irrelevant in the sense that it's an internal issue. I agree the correct way to get rid of a president is to vote him out or impeach him. But if the people of Venezuela were to decide that they've had enough and that they were going to overthrow their own government, that's their internal problem, as long as no-one external instigated it.
My opinion.
Nope. But neither are most of those responsible for drawing up the IPCC report, so I guess I'm equally qualified to speak on the subject.
What kind of data is needed to convince you? I personally doubt that you've been seriously looking for it.
Believe me, I have been looking for it. In my spare time I'm preparing a website that specifically talks to the subject of global warming. However, it is my goal to only reference sites that would either be considered unbiased or actually promote the theory of global warming--my idea being to use their own data against them which would make it hard for my site to be criticized since I'm using their data. But it turns out I'm having a tough time preparing my site because there is so little real data offered by the pro-global warming people. Lots of conclusions based on scientists I've never heard of, but no hard data presented to the reader. Call "global warming" a matter of faith, because there is an absence of evidence being presented.
Again, that's what my experience has been. I'm still working on it, but getting any data out of those people is like pulling teeth.
Note: these are links for "policy makers", so they're probably lighter in scientific data than the Technical Summaries also included on the site. Even then, the evidence is compelling.
There are major holes in the IPCC. They disregard the satellite record and the radiosonde record and instead use the error-ridden surface record. Sure, if you use a broken record all kinds of weird science can result.
The IPCC (and many environmentalists) seem more eager to prove why the satellites are wrong than to consider what it would mean if they are right. And considering the satellite record coincides very well with the radiosonde record it's really hard to avoid the conclusion that they're pushing an agenda, not a pursuit of science.
Or perhaps you can point to the factual errors in the studies...Well, the encouraging thing is that policymakers are slowly getting up to speed and starting to do something about it.
Yeah, they're getting up to speed. Unfortunately they've been pointed down the wrong highway.
I do plan on reading the information you've provided. I've seen it summarized (by biased parties) but I will read it myself.
Well, that's why we have a government, isn't it?
To force people to do what they don't want to do? Perhaps that's your vision of the role of government, it's not mine.
As far as Venezuela is concerned, the links between the White House and the coup leaders are becoming clearer: see this article [msnbc.com] for more info.
I read it. It doesn't seem to have any new information that hasn't already been mentioned in certain circles except that there might be a congressional investigation.
That said, are you familiar with Chavez himself? The article you just cited indicates how he blames the media for the coup d'etat. In fact, I remember watching reports live from Venezuela (in Spanish) that the media itself was taking credit for this. Chavez claims they were spreading lies, the media claims they were spreading the truth.
The article also says that the administration told the Venezuelans "No golpes" (No coup d'etats).
Any way you look at it, Venezuela was an internal affair. There was no U.S. military support, no real political support. At worst, the U.S. didn't fulfill it's typical "policeman" role when it failed to act on behalf of Chavez.
But when a dictator-in-the-making that is threatening the freedom of the press is toppled, is it really surprising that the U.S. wouldn't be entirely displeased? I would agree, Chavez brought it on himself--it wasn't forced on Venezuela by any foreign country.
You: Ah, semantics. Gotta love it.
It's not semantics. It's a major difference. If we got our oil from within our own country and our close neighbors we wouldn't be as inclined to get tangled in regional conflicts on the other side of the world.
I agree. I would love to see a few billion dollars a year invested into searching for alternative energy sources. I personally like nuclear and solar; although to make solar work we need more research into effective batteries. But solar seems like a silly source to pass up.
America's dependence on oil has caused enough political, economical and environmental damage (most of it outside of its borders) already.
While we're searching for an alternative energy source, I think we should exploit our own oil reserves. This isn't a long-term solution. It's a short- to medium-term solution while we're finding better energy.
Despite ever-increasing scientific evidence to the contrary.
Show it to me. Good hard facts. I have seen no evidence whatsoever--and believe me, I've looked. Beyond smoke and mirrors and very science-lacking news reports I have found little in the way of evidence that carbon is doing anything drastic to the eath. Please show me to that data.
Hey, even Bush and the oil companies acknowledge that burning fossil fuel is bad for the environment and that the reserves of fossil fuel are finite.
They acknowledge it is finite, because it is--although probably not as much so as we think. We were supposedly going to run out by 2000, but we're supposed to run out by 2050 or something. Funny thing that.
As for acknowledging that burning fossible fuel is bad for the environment, I can't speak for them, but my guess is they say that because the current fad is "carbon fuels pollute the environment." And sure, they do. The question is how much. Given the current success of some environmentalists at convincing an uninformed public as to weak or non-existant correlations of data it would be political suicide for him to say anything else.
That is, costs can be spread out over a couple of years, until the actual cost benefits start kicking in. So the transition wouldn't be as costly as they first seem.
I'm not talking about companies that can amortize. I'm talking about individuals that are going to see a $15k gas-based car or a $35k cell-based car and say, "Screw that."
The reason why fuel cells haven't gone anywhere is it can't be done cheap. Companies know consumers won't go for it given those prices so they don't even try, which makes good business sense.
Those "cheap oil prices" won't stay that way, and getting them will carry and increasingly higher political and environmental cost as well.
And when the cheap oil prices go up and fuel cells become, for that reason, more attractive they'll have more success. Free market at work.
But america does not have the moral right to destabilize the entire world just so it can get its oil fix.
I agree. We should get our own oil from within our own borders, or very close neighbors as previously mentioned.
Also, as I said, you're being incredible near-sighted if you believe oil will stay cheap. For your own good, you should encourage the quick implementation of fuel cells and other renewable energy sources right now!
As I've said, I support research. We need to find out how to make alternative energy sources practical and cheap. When they become practical and cheap then the free market will take care of implementing them.
But you can't roll out solar powered cars, etc. today and expect them to be used. The free market will reject them because they aren't mature yet.
Right, Venezuela...as long as a friendly president is in place. And if not, the Bush administration will try to topple him again, huh? See what I mean about the increasing political cost?
Venezuela sells to us regardless of what president is in power. I'm not going to tuch the Bush-wanted-Chavez-gone debate. It hasn't even been touched in Mexico where I live; if there was any truth to that, believe me, the Mexican media would be all over it--they love to report anything that makes the U.S. look bad. :)
The problem is, the world is beginning to be fed up with being there only to satisfy America's energy needs.
Perhaps, but it'll be interesting to see what they think when we STOP buying their stuff. For better or worse, our buying makes many otherwise poor countries either tolerable or downright rich (depending on the country.
You guys are going to have to start behaving more responsible very soon...
Whatever. If everyone was so "fed up" with us buying their stuff they could just stop selling it to us. Me thinks YOU are fed up with what we buy. I think the world is more fed up with our global politics, not with what we buy or what fuel we burn.
Well, yeah... But it's a rather grand assumption to suggest that I like to work, but I haven't found anyone who'll pay me to do nothing.
Concerts are not charities for bands, they're social events that go way beyond the band...
What? You're saying that these are social events that go way beyond the band. I.e., people go to concerts because they are social events, not because of the band. This is good news for people like Britney that, despite having no talent, will still be able to earn plenty of money by providing a social event to the public.
No more naive then expecting people to continue to pay $20 for something they can download for free.
Sounds good to an outsider, but run this up on someone who it's going to affect and they're likely to have some different opinions.
Yeah, they're used to rolling in money and for the most part doing very little. Now they'll probably earn less and might actually have to work. Bummer. Sounds almost like MY life.
Exactly right. Artists will earn their money in the future from concerts. Concerts should be profitable. If they aren't, they honestly are doing something wrong.
Another point: No-one ever said that Britney will continue to make $10 million a year (or whatever she earns) in this new world. She'll give away her music, earn money from her concerts (which must be profitable!), have to pay her expenses, and she'll earn what's left over. God forbid she only earn, say, $200,000 a year, which is only about 6 times what an average American makes.
That said, all the changes in the recording industry won't change where I personally think these people make their biggest bucks: endorsements. Pepsi will still pay Britney mega-bucks to appear in their commercials. So even if she doesn't earn a cent anywhere else she probably will earn more in a year than I will in my life. What's the problem?
Are you kidding? I don't listen to Prince, but I (and many people I know) listen to 80s music almost exclusively. In Mexico most of the English music that you hear is the "classics" from the 80s and early 90s, with the required dose of Britney mixed in.
80's music never died and I actually hear it get much more airplay than 60's and 70's combined. At least in this market...