I think the environmental movement might get more attention from the people who make the decisions if they give up on the sacred earth-spirit thing and focus on the fact that nobody wants to think of their great grandchildren living in shelters and subsisting on hydroponic fungi.
The fact that you're stereotyping people with a concern for the environment that way (as New Age hippies, basically) shows that you're knowledge has been poisoned by right-wing blowhards who have an interest in discrediting them. Your mind virus has now been propagated. Cure your bias or infect others -- your choice.
Years from now there'll be no doubt. That's exactly the time when it'll be responsible to change government policy to address the problem.
Years from now, a train will slam into us smashing us to bits. That's exactly the time to step off the tracks.
Climate change doesn't happen in four-year cycles and avoiding or alleviating anthropogenic climate change can't be achieved within a politician's term in office. Oversimplifying a complex issue doesn't help advance the debate. It's just mud in the water.
And you believe that every article posted in a peer reviewed publication is accurate? How's your cold fusion reactor doing?
Man, you really are clueless, aren't you? Don't you understand that the cold fusion debate is the total proof that the peer review system works. Cold fusion was very quickly shot down by peer review. Now, what were you saying again?
If you don't get the meaning of "Dinosaurs passing gas" then you must have missed some of the great theories about cow gas having an effect.
That's got to be one of the most delusional misdirections I've run into on Slashdot. I call you on tossing some crackpot theory into this debate (i.e. noise) and you completely miss my point and try to insinuate that I'm too stupid to understand the issue of methane in regard to climate change. FYI -- Cows aren't dinosaurs, and insinuating that methane produced by dinosaurs is in any way related to the current debate on climate change is the epitome of the "junk science" that you decry.
I happen to be college educated and my little brother has a masters in Geophysics.
Great, here's a cookie.
I have another friend with her masters in Hydrogeology who is currently working on the development of fuel cells for cars. I'll stack these degrees up against any journalism major.
Well, you and your friends and family can suit up in your armor and ride off to slay the evil journalism majors. This debate happens to be about a scientific publication by scientists, however, so once again, you're using misdirection and delusion to make your case.
I live in Chicago. Please decribe to me the formation of moraines in Cook County and how the geography of this state was formed. Please explain the factors that lead to their development and how those environmental factors are no longer applicable to the environment today.
More misdirection. The geological conditions of the past are pretty irrelevant to the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in our current atmosphere. And if you thought you were going to razzle-dazzle me with your science talk, you're extremely condescending. I happen to live in a valley carved out by a glacier, myself. Moraines are simple stuff. You'll have to do better than that.
Yet,even after your inept attempt at sarcastic rebuttal,I remain correct.
Ummm...How do you figure? It takes more to be correct than to just state "I remain correct." This is typical of the way the delusional operate, though. They form a belief, then unilaterally declare that the belief is the undeniable truth. From that point on, no amount of evidence can convince them otherwise.
See, here it comes again. A scientific study is published in a peer reviewed journal and the misinformed who refuse to see jump in to regurgitate ideological propaganda to muddy the water. You blame the media for being lazy but you just choose alternate media with an ideological agenda to form your nonsensical and logically-challenged opinions. You use phrases like "sloppy science" but refuse to point out any errors in the science while simultaneously spewing out drivel about "dinosaurs passing gas." Your reference to the coldest day in New York shows that you didn't even take heed of my point about the difference between weather and climate. You say we don't have the data but this article is in reference to a scientific study -- one of many that you refuse to accept. You prefer to ignore sound, peer-reviewed science and throw your hands in the air and muse that it's "less likely that any real solutions will be able to cut through the noise" -- completely oblivious to the fact that it is you who is creating the noise and that the noise you are making is drowning out the signals the science is sending us and making solutions impossible.
Or we could just avoid the problem by not changing our atmosphere by releasing so much CO2 into it. That would be even cheaper, still, and we wouldn't have to take on so much overhead of managing the entire planet's carbon cycle. Do you think we are GODS or something?
You obviously have much greater insight and wisdom than these scientists. Never mind that you don't even seem to know the difference between weather and climate. You'll go on with your head firmly planted in the sand so you can rest easy in your comfortable ideology bubble. "The sky isnt falling people.Move along,nothing to see here.More of the same crap that goes on year after year,nothing new here.Feel free to continue life as it was and bring back regular gasoline." Self delusion can be comforting. It's much easier to deny hard realities than to face them and work toward resolving them. Yes, it's very hard. You may continue sleeping if you wish. Those mean old tree-hugging hippies only lurk in your dreams and fantasies, though. The rest of us are responsible citizens who want a stable world for our children and grandchildren to inhabit.
Nuclear power is dangerous, and the dangers unknown, but it was through studies like this that it was discovered (well, that is an oversimplification, but perhaps the base concept is applicable).
Yes. Oversimplification is an understatement since much of the studies were performed at places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Hanford. Let's just hope that nanotech studies aren't conducted the same way.
Woah, not only is coal cheap, it's a bargin! Can you imagine how much it would cost to illegally destroy thousands of acres of Appalachian hardwood forests and hundreds of miles of streams?
Uhh, I don't have to imagine how much it would cost. It's done every day and that cost is rolled into the product. It's actually much cheaper to mine this way than to use underground or traditional strip mining because large machinery can replace a hoard of miners. Even when you include the cost of purchasing state and federal public offices to make sure they look the other way, it's cheaper.
And they do it free of charge!
No they don't. This is one of the costs that's actually included in the cost of the product. It's just that the true costs of the loss of these resources isn't included in the price.
I realize you were just trying to troll me there but you really need more practice because that didn't even make sense as a troll.
You have to figure the cost of the real estate these items sit on, versus what other purposes the land could be used for.
In the case of other power technologies, the land use is relatively concentrated. Mines, transport routes, powerplants, refineries, etc. don't take up nearly as much space.
If the corporations profiting from fossil fuels were required to pay the real estate costs for the production of their products then solar would come out way ahead. Hundreds of miles of streams have been burried by mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining (no charge) -- Thousands of acres of lakes and rivers mangled by acid rain (no charge) -- Millions of acres of forests damaged by acid rain (no charge) -- Thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of ocean polluted with mercury (no charge) -- All the air on the planet altered in compostion by CO2 exaust with unpredictable consequences (no charge) They get away with it because we let them. We want "cheap" energy but we only get it by ignoring the real costs.
While it would be nice to get away from coal, there are two things stopping this. First, coal is cheap. Second, in recent years they have done a pretty solid job at cleaning up the health risks associated with coal.
First, coal is not cheap. The price is low because the mining and electricity corporations export every cost they can get away with onto the public at large. Mountaintop removal/valley fill mining practices illegally destroy thousands of acres of Appalachian hardwood forests and hundreds of miles of streams. Electricity generation plants dump millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere altering its composition with unpredictable consequences, create acid fog and rain that destroy forests, lakes, and streams, and dump hundreds of pounds of mercury into the environment where it ends up damaging our brains. If mining and generating corporations were forced to be good citizens and not force us to surreptitiously pay for their products' hidden costs then other energy sources would be economically competitive. Instead, they prefer to stuff pennies into the fuse boxes of capitalism and bitchslap any more responsible initiatives with their ill-gotten capital. Second, BWAH HAH HAH HAH. That would be hilarious about the "pretty solid job at cleaning up the health risks" if it weren't so tragic what is happening. Granted, they are better than they used to be, but those gains come from laws passed in the '70s and '80s which are being rolled back now. (See the "Clear Skies Initiative")
It would be better to save the evidence and have the DoJ just destroy Microsoft.
Do you mean the US Justice Department? This administration uses Microsoft as a role model, dude. If arrogant abuse of power is good for business it's good for politics, right?
If that's the way it's pronounced then it's spelled wrong. The i is clearly not between the l and the a. The definition I came up with for spoilation is a synonym for plundering and pillaging.
The word "spoliation", on the other hand seems to have the same definition with the addition of a legal one:
n 1: (law) the intentional destruction of a document or an alteration of it that destroys its value as evidence
Misuse of "Happy Jack"
on
Killer Ozone?
·
· Score: 1
...haven't you ever seen those commercials with the geeky kid who builds one out of wood and kicks the other kids' asses in a race?
Unfortunately, I have. That's the commercial that bastardizes the meaning of The Who's "Happy Jack" and turns it completely on its head.
The song speaks about a kid who's a little slow who gets abused by pricks and bullies, but who somehow manages to remain upbeat and happy despite their abuse, thus prevailing.
The commercial seems to highlight the line "they couldn't prevent Jack from being happy." Presumably implying that you can drive an H2 and put a thumb in the eye of those mean old environmentalists who are just trying to spoil your happiness.
The truth is that people who purchase SUVs desire to be intimidating and domineering. That's not just my opinion, it's documented by market researchers who used that research to recommend to GM that they tint the windows of their SUVs so they look more intimidating. (See The Corporation )
So the H2 driver is exactly the antagonist in "Happy Jack" rather than the protagonist Jack. It just boggles my mind that they used that song in the commercial.
Brandybuck's Law states "the collective inteligence of an organization is inversely proportional to its size." There's a lot of reason for this, but it's a genuine observable phenomena. Just ask anyone who's been in the military.
If it's "a genuine observable phenomena [sic]" then surely there are scientific studies documenting those observations. Please point me to one because I'm currently under the impression that "Brandybuck's Law" is complete nonsense or just a funny observation from a frustrated corporate "human resource." (I can relate.) If a law needs only one contradictory observation to prove it wrong, I offer the following: I've always viewed Novell's products as technically superior to Microsoft's products. Novell, Inc. is also smaller than Microsoft, Inc. But Microsoft is a much smarter corporate player/criminal than Novell so they dominate their market. Novell tends to make stupid marketing and strategy decisions, as well, therefore the smaller-equals-smarter theory is disproven.
Well, if you want to get pedantic... I didn't actually say the corporation was nefarious, I said that the way they used the data would be nefarious -- that is, the usage is nefarious rather than the user.
Stop anthropomorphizing them. The bigger the corporation the dumber it is.
I don't know if you were actually intending to inject some humor into your comment, there, but I hope you realize that you just admonished me for anthropomorphizing corporations then, in the very next sentence, made a comment about their intellect. If corporations do have a level of intelligence, I don't think the size matters that much. It's all in how they use the knowledge they have. It looks like this corporation is using it to the max.
They have this huge database of marketing gold and you think they won't capitalize on it in some nefarious way? You truly don't understand corporate mentality if you think they'll just use that data for inventory purposes. They're going to use every scrap of that data and wring every bit of profit out of it for any and every purpose it can possibly be used for. We could come up with scenarios until the cows come home and still not hit on all the devious ways marketers (and probably government agencies) will make use of this database. You surely understand that a series of purchases can be used to create pretty accurate psychological profiles of the consumers who make those purchases. Suppose that the government wanted a list of all the liberals out there for "security" purposes (you know, those people that "hate America.") That way they can round them up, real quick like, during the next national emergency -- for the safety of all the "good Americans", after all. How about a corporation that wants to market more effectively to promiscuous women so would like a list of them? What if an evangelical group wanted the same data? Surely you can't be that naive about the way corporations work. Human reason and decency don't get columns on their spreadsheets.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you ever seen a mountaintop removal/valley fill mine? We've lost over a thousand miles of streams already. RIP
I think the environmental movement might get more attention from the people who make the decisions if they give up on the sacred earth-spirit thing and focus on the fact that nobody wants to think of their great grandchildren living in shelters and subsisting on hydroponic fungi.
The fact that you're stereotyping people with a concern for the environment that way (as New Age hippies, basically) shows that you're knowledge has been poisoned by right-wing blowhards who have an interest in discrediting them. Your mind virus has now been propagated. Cure your bias or infect others -- your choice.
I'm sick and tired of the truth, too. I wish I had the same kind of sand that you have. It must be comfortable to put your head into.
Years from now there'll be no doubt. That's exactly the time when it'll be responsible to change government policy to address the problem.
Years from now, a train will slam into us smashing us to bits. That's exactly the time to step off the tracks.
Climate change doesn't happen in four-year cycles and avoiding or alleviating anthropogenic climate change can't be achieved within a politician's term in office. Oversimplifying a complex issue doesn't help advance the debate. It's just mud in the water.
Oooh. That was a good one. Very 6th grade.
Why didn't you just say, "I know you are but what am I?"
And you believe that every article posted in a peer reviewed publication is accurate? How's your cold fusion reactor doing?
Man, you really are clueless, aren't you? Don't you understand that the cold fusion debate is the total proof that the peer review system works. Cold fusion was very quickly shot down by peer review.
Now, what were you saying again?
If you don't get the meaning of "Dinosaurs passing gas" then you must have missed some of the great theories about cow gas having an effect.
That's got to be one of the most delusional misdirections I've run into on Slashdot. I call you on tossing some crackpot theory into this debate (i.e. noise) and you completely miss my point and try to insinuate that I'm too stupid to understand the issue of methane in regard to climate change. FYI -- Cows aren't dinosaurs, and insinuating that methane produced by dinosaurs is in any way related to the current debate on climate change is the epitome of the "junk science" that you decry.
I happen to be college educated and my little brother has a masters in Geophysics.
Great, here's a cookie.
I have another friend with her masters in Hydrogeology who is currently working on the development of fuel cells for cars. I'll stack these degrees up against any journalism major.
Well, you and your friends and family can suit up in your armor and ride off to slay the evil journalism majors. This debate happens to be about a scientific publication by scientists, however, so once again, you're using misdirection and delusion to make your case.
I live in Chicago. Please decribe to me the formation of moraines in Cook County and how the geography of this state was formed. Please explain the factors that lead to their development and how those environmental factors are no longer applicable to the environment today.
More misdirection. The geological conditions of the past are pretty irrelevant to the effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in our current atmosphere. And if you thought you were going to razzle-dazzle me with your science talk, you're extremely condescending. I happen to live in a valley carved out by a glacier, myself. Moraines are simple stuff. You'll have to do better than that.
Yet,even after your inept attempt at sarcastic rebuttal,I remain correct.
Ummm...How do you figure? It takes more to be correct than to just state "I remain correct."
This is typical of the way the delusional operate, though. They form a belief, then unilaterally declare that the belief is the undeniable truth. From that point on, no amount of evidence can convince them otherwise.
See, here it comes again. A scientific study is published in a peer reviewed journal and the misinformed who refuse to see jump in to regurgitate ideological propaganda to muddy the water.
You blame the media for being lazy but you just choose alternate media with an ideological agenda to form your nonsensical and logically-challenged opinions. You use phrases like "sloppy science" but refuse to point out any errors in the science while simultaneously spewing out drivel about "dinosaurs passing gas."
Your reference to the coldest day in New York shows that you didn't even take heed of my point about the difference between weather and climate. You say we don't have the data but this article is in reference to a scientific study -- one of many that you refuse to accept. You prefer to ignore sound, peer-reviewed science and throw your hands in the air and muse that it's "less likely that any real solutions will be able to cut through the noise" -- completely oblivious to the fact that it is you who is creating the noise and that the noise you are making is drowning out the signals the science is sending us and making solutions impossible.
Or we could just avoid the problem by not changing our atmosphere by releasing so much CO2 into it. That would be even cheaper, still, and we wouldn't have to take on so much overhead of managing the entire planet's carbon cycle.
Do you think we are GODS or something?
You obviously have much greater insight and wisdom than these scientists. Never mind that you don't even seem to know the difference between weather and climate. You'll go on with your head firmly planted in the sand so you can rest easy in your comfortable ideology bubble.
"The sky isnt falling people.Move along,nothing to see here.More of the same crap that goes on year after year,nothing new here.Feel free to continue life as it was and bring back regular gasoline."
Self delusion can be comforting. It's much easier to deny hard realities than to face them and work toward resolving them. Yes, it's very hard. You may continue sleeping if you wish. Those mean old tree-hugging hippies only lurk in your dreams and fantasies, though. The rest of us are responsible citizens who want a stable world for our children and grandchildren to inhabit.
Nuclear power is dangerous, and the dangers unknown, but it was through studies like this that it was discovered (well, that is an oversimplification, but perhaps the base concept is applicable).
Yes. Oversimplification is an understatement since much of the studies were performed at places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Hanford. Let's just hope that nanotech studies aren't conducted the same way.
Woah, not only is coal cheap, it's a bargin! Can you imagine how much it would cost to illegally destroy thousands of acres of Appalachian hardwood forests and hundreds of miles of streams?
Uhh, I don't have to imagine how much it would cost. It's done every day and that cost is rolled into the product. It's actually much cheaper to mine this way than to use underground or traditional strip mining because large machinery can replace a hoard of miners. Even when you include the cost of purchasing state and federal public offices to make sure they look the other way, it's cheaper.
And they do it free of charge!
No they don't. This is one of the costs that's actually included in the cost of the product. It's just that the true costs of the loss of these resources isn't included in the price.
I realize you were just trying to troll me there but you really need more practice because that didn't even make sense as a troll.
You have to figure the cost of the real estate these items sit on, versus what other purposes the land could be used for.
In the case of other power technologies, the land use is relatively concentrated. Mines, transport routes, powerplants, refineries, etc. don't take up nearly as much space.
If the corporations profiting from fossil fuels were required to pay the real estate costs for the production of their products then solar would come out way ahead.
Hundreds of miles of streams have been burried by mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining (no charge) -- Thousands of acres of lakes and rivers mangled by acid rain (no charge) -- Millions of acres of forests damaged by acid rain (no charge) -- Thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of ocean polluted with mercury (no charge) -- All the air on the planet altered in compostion by CO2 exaust with unpredictable consequences (no charge)
They get away with it because we let them. We want "cheap" energy but we only get it by ignoring the real costs.
Why not add a fuel cell or battery to each dish that would be charged as needed during operation for use as a starter?
It would be better to just wind up a clockwork spring and use that to restart the engine. That way you don't lose as much energy to conversion.
While it would be nice to get away from coal, there are two things stopping this. First, coal is cheap. Second, in recent years they have done a pretty solid job at cleaning up the health risks associated with coal.
First, coal is not cheap. The price is low because the mining and electricity corporations export every cost they can get away with onto the public at large. Mountaintop removal/valley fill mining practices illegally destroy thousands of acres of Appalachian hardwood forests and hundreds of miles of streams. Electricity generation plants dump millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere altering its composition with unpredictable consequences, create acid fog and rain that destroy forests, lakes, and streams, and dump hundreds of pounds of mercury into the environment where it ends up damaging our brains. If mining and generating corporations were forced to be good citizens and not force us to surreptitiously pay for their products' hidden costs then other energy sources would be economically competitive. Instead, they prefer to stuff pennies into the fuse boxes of capitalism and bitchslap any more responsible initiatives with their ill-gotten capital.
Second, BWAH HAH HAH HAH. That would be hilarious about the "pretty solid job at cleaning up the health risks" if it weren't so tragic what is happening. Granted, they are better than they used to be, but those gains come from laws passed in the '70s and '80s which are being rolled back now. (See the "Clear Skies Initiative")
I should also mention that I participated in my first PRT Cram in 1980.
WVU PRT
but which I have to remind myself I will never see in operation in my life.
...before you passed away.
WVU PRT
It would be better to save the evidence and have the DoJ just destroy Microsoft.
Do you mean the US Justice Department? This administration uses Microsoft as a role model, dude. If arrogant abuse of power is good for business it's good for politics, right?
Pronounced:
Spo (long O) Li a (long A) tion
If that's the way it's pronounced then it's spelled wrong. The i is clearly not between the l and the a.
The definition I came up with for spoilation is a synonym for plundering and pillaging.
The word "spoliation", on the other hand seems to have the same definition with the addition of a legal one:
n 1: (law) the intentional destruction of a document or an alteration of it that destroys its value as evidence
Unfortunately, I have. That's the commercial that bastardizes the meaning of The Who's "Happy Jack" and turns it completely on its head.
The song speaks about a kid who's a little slow who gets abused by pricks and bullies, but who somehow manages to remain upbeat and happy despite their abuse, thus prevailing.
The commercial seems to highlight the line "they couldn't prevent Jack from being happy." Presumably implying that you can drive an H2 and put a thumb in the eye of those mean old environmentalists who are just trying to spoil your happiness.
The truth is that people who purchase SUVs desire to be intimidating and domineering. That's not just my opinion, it's documented by market researchers who used that research to recommend to GM that they tint the windows of their SUVs so they look more intimidating. (See The Corporation )
So the H2 driver is exactly the antagonist in "Happy Jack" rather than the protagonist Jack. It just boggles my mind that they used that song in the commercial.
Brandybuck's Law states "the collective inteligence of an organization is inversely proportional to its size." There's a lot of reason for this, but it's a genuine observable phenomena. Just ask anyone who's been in the military.
If it's "a genuine observable phenomena [sic]" then surely there are scientific studies documenting those observations. Please point me to one because I'm currently under the impression that "Brandybuck's Law" is complete nonsense or just a funny observation from a frustrated corporate "human resource." (I can relate.)
If a law needs only one contradictory observation to prove it wrong, I offer the following:
I've always viewed Novell's products as technically superior to Microsoft's products. Novell, Inc. is also smaller than Microsoft, Inc. But Microsoft is a much smarter corporate player/criminal than Novell so they dominate their market. Novell tends to make stupid marketing and strategy decisions, as well, therefore the smaller-equals-smarter theory is disproven.
Well, if you want to get pedantic... I didn't actually say the corporation was nefarious, I said that the way they used the data would be nefarious -- that is, the usage is nefarious rather than the user.
Stop anthropomorphizing them. The bigger the corporation the dumber it is.
I don't know if you were actually intending to inject some humor into your comment, there, but I hope you realize that you just admonished me for anthropomorphizing corporations then, in the very next sentence, made a comment about their intellect. If corporations do have a level of intelligence, I don't think the size matters that much. It's all in how they use the knowledge they have. It looks like this corporation is using it to the max.
They have this huge database of marketing gold and you think they won't capitalize on it in some nefarious way? You truly don't understand corporate mentality if you think they'll just use that data for inventory purposes.
They're going to use every scrap of that data and wring every bit of profit out of it for any and every purpose it can possibly be used for. We could come up with scenarios until the cows come home and still not hit on all the devious ways marketers (and probably government agencies) will make use of this database.
You surely understand that a series of purchases can be used to create pretty accurate psychological profiles of the consumers who make those purchases. Suppose that the government wanted a list of all the liberals out there for "security" purposes (you know, those people that "hate America.") That way they can round them up, real quick like, during the next national emergency -- for the safety of all the "good Americans", after all.
How about a corporation that wants to market more effectively to promiscuous women so would like a list of them? What if an evangelical group wanted the same data?
Surely you can't be that naive about the way corporations work. Human reason and decency don't get columns on their spreadsheets.