I have that Casio watch shown, and it's a very classy looking watch, especially compared to the other Casio databanks that are unadulterated nerdwear. Mine's been great for 3 years. One battery change, and many rainstorms later it still looks and works great.
The only problem is that people seem to be inexorably drawn towards a touchscreen of any sort, whether a monitor or a computer.... 'Wow, you're watch has buttons on the FACE? Let me try it out!'
Went through these, fun to see that they went pretty close to my permanent home (huber heights, ohio -- east of vandalia, ohio on the map) and I think the closest picture to my home is #666! Huber Heights, Ohio the mark of the beast indeed. Well, we did have a kenny rogers roasters restaurant for a while.....yech.
And for once I'm glad to see an application of flash that is interactive, well-designed, doesn't attempt to cause epileptic seizures AND doesn't try to sell me something.
I own this alarm clock and it has a lot of the features you're looking for. 3 Independent alarms (sound, radio, buzzer) settable for 7/5/2 days. Backlit LCD (which I prefer to LEDs for an alarm clock), and "pseudo-jogwheel" in that the alarm time is set with back and forward buttons that act pretty much like a jogwheel instead of the standard minute/hour combo. It's good for a fairly cheap alarm clock.
If it's any consolation to you, Doctor Who DVD releases are also region-encoded, and the only three that are even available in the US are from 1970, 1977, and 1983 respectively! Why do they region encode them? Guess so we don't get to see the British DVD releases before we're allowed to!! Oh, wait, they're already out over here on VHS anyway. Well, I'm sure region encoding Dr. Who serves some purpose, but I haven't figured it out yet.
And remember, this is the same BBC that let Lionheart Television/BBC Worldwide mismanage Doctor Who into television oblivion in the US. They priced it low for years, making it attractive for PBS affiliates looking for a low-cost show, and then jacked up the price quite a bit, thinking stations would keep buying. Wrong. There's a reason you don't see it on your local PBS affiliate any more. It's too damned expensive. And the price never went back down even though Dr. Who's existence on US TV is nearly nonexistant.
Actually, the first hint of major problems with the IOC and the Olympics started in a big way in 1972. The outright fraud shown when the Soviet basketball team twice received extra time in order to make a basket to win the gold medal game against the USA showed the Olympics were on sale to the highest bidder. Corporate sponsorship and political boycotts were inevitably to follow. Blech.
The game you're thinking of is M.C. Kids, and it was actually a very good (and hard!) platformer. It was originally to be used in conjunction with a McDonald's promotion, but they balked out after being shown the finished product (Probably didn't like the difficulty level, I think. As I said, it's quite hard). Check out GameFAQs and search it. There's an awesome walkthrough for it available. Highly recommended NES playing. Excellent gameplay, excellent music, excellent graphics. One of the most unknown NES games ever...
Because CDs and radio are still the most widespread way of distributing music. Traditional record companies and store distribution has a decades heads start on p2p. Lots of obsolete things stay around for years, decades after their time has passed. As I sad, there is a very large amount of inertia to change with something as large and as powerful as the labels and the RIAA.
And I'm sick and tired of anybody who sticks up for p2p and/or criticizes the RIAA is almost certainly stealing bread out of the artists' (and their children's!) mouths themselves. Bullshit. I own a physical copy (sometimes several, I own LP and CD versions of almost all of Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire albums) of 95% of the songs on my hard drive. I admit I'll download a track occasionally I might have heard on the radio or from a friend. But I can point to several albums I subsequently purchased because I downloaded a track or two from the album: Natalie Imbruglia's Left of the Middle, Ghoti Hook's Songs We Didn't Write, Toto's TOTO IV, The Edward Bear Collection, Buggle's The Age of Plastic. If I don't like a track I've downlaoded for free, I certainly haven't deprived the label of anything [under the current system, at least]. There was no potential sale after I listened to the mp3, so there is no potential loss. period. I've never burned an album for anyone nor do I have any burned albums in my possession. [Short of compilation ones I've made for myself]
I own two of the Mannheim Steamroller christmas albums only on LP, and I don't have an record player at college. I downloaded the albums off audiogalaxy. Fair use, I'd say. Or should I have to buy a new copy of everything I own when a new format comes out?
And tracks on long out of print CD's and LP's [one of the best uses of p2p IMO]? How am I hurting the label/artist then? No potential sale again-- it's not even available. Any used copy I'd find wouldn't reimburse the label/artist one red cent anyway.
Yes, some people do download everything in sight, burn copies for friends, and so on. That only goes to make it more clear (and more urgent) that the labels must adapt or die. Copy-protected CD's are a silly waste of time (ooh, way to stick it to the consumer! Wait, it's already out on p2p services by the time the album is generally released), and these services are useless in their restrictiveness. They need a broad, low-priced ($.25-50/track, $7/album) method of distributing music digitally without it choking the end user to death in its restrictiveness. The actions they have taken so far only will alienate users. They NEED to convince them that BUYING MUSIC that THEY LIKE is still the best thing to do. Treating users like criminals will only incite further such activity. Will they change? CAN they change? We will see.
I agree -- they COULD embrace this and make a decent service with fair prices. I could definitely go for something with a LARGE catalog for something on the order of, say, $7 per album or $.25-.50 per track in a non-"secure" format. They'd still make a tidy profit, I suspect.
But as I said, the bigger an organization is the more inertia there is to change. IBM was so out of control with a huge bureaucracy they nearly slid into a brick wall at the end of the 80's. The record companies are almost worse, and I don't know if they can really change their ways in a meaningful fashion. Time will tell, I suppose.
Be careful, you might reveal public schooling's secret. People point to homeschooling as a perfect ground for indoctrination, but they never think what public schools are used for. Most public schools and their teachers are so far to the left its amazing we're not further down the socialist ladder than we already are.
The record labels do not make music. All they have and have really ever had is broad distribution power and plenty of $$$. Artists signed up to a major label get what, 10% of the profit, if that? The importance of the distribution power is largely becoming irrelevant with the internet and the advent of p2p services.
Audio and video pro equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper. Another chip in the block of the necessity of record companies. Personally, I have experienced the massive price decreases and quality increases in the video market. Professional-quality non-linear editing is to be had for less than $2k. 10 years ago that would have been completely unthinkable. Similar advances have been made for pro audio equipment.
The record labels are facing a grim future where they are obsolete. They are dusty old giants whose time is quickly passing, and the inertia to change is immense with them. All they're good for now is to get a CD into a store and a song on the radio. Still rather important, but you don't absolutely NEED them to get your music out to the masses anymore. There are more connected internet computers out there than there are music stores...
It's a shame they're trying to secure their future through legislation, litigation, and strawman services like this worthless thing (of course, done to show how internet users are evil THIEVES.) They will get their comeuppance soon enough.
There was a similar situation (full versions of software on what was supposed to be a "shareware" disk) with a certain Quake shareware CD distributed in stores. The CD also contained (weakly protected) full versions of almost every, if not every iD software released to that point. The crack for the CD is still floating around on the net.
The lesson is: Don't put full versions of software on shareware/free/upgrade only CD's. It will be circumvented, DMCA or no DMCA.
A season? No, Ready-Set-Cook (US) lasted 4+ 'production cycles.' The first two or three seasons had people bring in 10USD worth of any food they wanted, and that admittedly was far superior to a theme ingredient. The first season even showed the recipes at the end of the show and had a different host. The last two seasons or so led to the introduction of a 'theme ingredient' and a significant change in the set, as well as a reduction in time from 20 to 18 minutes. In any case, each team had one real chef and one contestant.
People are droning on and on about how CAMPY this American show will be. Hello! The CAMP makes the fucking show! Chairman Kaga is at least as campy as William Shatner. And if they have Miss Cleo, Jennifer Lopez, Ted Koppel, and some crank from a newspaper restaurant review column judging the dishes, it won't be all that different from Iron Chef in Japan!
And good god man, do you think Iron Chef is taken seriously??
please donate this to OTAP, the Ohio Technology Access Project which gathers computers and parts and gets them in workable condition and redistributes them primarily to disabled and poor individuals. They accept anything, but would prefer if you would donate primarily from the 486 era onwards. Donations are tax deductible as a charitable contribution. We need everything we can get, and very little gets thrown away except software we don't have licenses for, floppy media, severely broken monitors/printers, etc.
And don't think that old dot matrix printer in the corner should be thrown away...believe it or not, small dot matrix printers are a hot commodity! They're durable and cheap to run.
So you view genocide as a useful, justifiable tool and nothing more? Man, I hope you never are in a position of any power over me...
What? Unemployment is up to 6% again? Dammit, just go blow up some homeless shelters tomorrow, ok?
Basically, you believe in tyranny of the "majority" over anyone else (what's best for the people, in your own words). That's a really charming policy, one that would let things like the Holocaust happen again and again unfettered. Then again, that doesn't bother you, as the Holocaust was simply a useful tool, wasn't it? You being so noble and all about this, you would have had no trouble being put to death by the nazis because it would have helped the People, would it not?
P.S. Your idea of only making laws for the "good of the people" is still ethical in nature, whether you admit it or not. Ethics need not necessarily deal in the absolutes of good and evil -- it can just be a guiding philosophy, such as what you said.
Even if we covered the western states in solar arrays, we still couldn't create enough power to power the entire US. You need lots and lots of direct sunlight for solar arrays to work, and many places in the US don't get enough of that to make solar arrays for power generation feasible. (Solar panels for, say, home heating, are an entirely different matter.)
Yes, let's "force" everyone to use solar power. If it causes power prices to skyrocket, say, 1000% (if not more) and singlehandedly destroys the American economy, then all those "environmentally correct" folks will finally get what they always wanted: a destruction of an eeeeevil way of life.
Try and not to contradict yourself either. In one sentence you talk about "capping" non-renewable resource usage as a good thing, and in the next sentence you talk about how price "capping" etc. as a stupid thing. They're both stupid because they create an artificial shortage that doesn't need to exist. Bleh.
the K6 family never supported the OpenPIC standard. The K5 family DID, however (granted no chipsets were ever developed for OpenPIC). It is widely assumed that the K6 also had OpenPIC built-in, but that is untrue. They did not support any type of SMP operation, even "in theory."
What level of confidence will satisfy you? I think that 50% is enough to start taking action. It's my impression that we're well over 95% confident at the moment. It's pretty hard to deny that if you dump a whole lot of stuff that's infrared-opaque into the atmosphere, that it's going to trap infrared more effectively. Unless you reduce the amount of heat coming in to compensate, a really simple calculation says it's going to get warmer. How much warmer we don't know due to the complexity of positive and negative feedback loops, but change such an important forcing function as CO2 concentration and you're going to see an effect.
Ah, but an effect of any consequence? Even if we threw a significant part of the US federal budget solely aimed at helping reducing greenhouse emissions such as CO2 and water vapor, the US alone would affect only a tiny fraction of a degree of warming per year. And no one is going to want to be holding the bag when we find out we crippled our economy and wasted trillions of dollars reducing emissions only to see no discernible effects, say, within a decade. And the borehole graph shows warming well before the industrial age. Do you not agree that even if we were to completely cease polluting now, we'd still see warming? Do you agree or disagree that there was a medieval warm period and a little ice age following that occurred in complete absence of any meaningful human action? This is not a simple case of "It's all our fault. All we have to do is buck up, reduce emissions and we can save the world." I wish it could be that simple. I certainly don't see 95% confidence to spend mucho dinero, and we're still shy of 50% if you ask me. We may exacerbate existing warming, but we still have no way to determine how much might be "our fault." Let's say the global mean temperature is increasing.1C/year, and we are causing a full half (.05C) of it. The best we could hope for is, say, halving our emissions (which is really quite optimistic), reducing global warming to.75C/year only if every nation in the WORLD did exactly as much as we would do to reduce emissions. Not exactly a stellar improvement, especially if it cripples industrialization across the world and has ruinous effects on economies. And who knows how long it might take before we see the real results of our experimenting...decades perhaps. We're not all going to revert to living in caves, grunting in the dark, wondering where we could find a good cup of capuccino.
I have the same gripe about Kyoto. Since I am not in a policy-writing position, I don't think it's productive to expound upon it here. Suffice it to say that the US and EU could probably get a large part of the world (including China) to fall in line by denying foreign aid and trading rights. We still have things they want.
Oh, great, there's a wonderful idea. As if the US didn't have enough ill will towards them, let's try bullying every country into doing our environmental will. The last time we turned our back on the world and placed massive tariffs on imports (in 1930, The Hawley-Smoot Tariff), all it did was deepen a terrible situation, the Great Depression. Hampering free trade is a particularly bad way of getting things done. Doing it in the name of saving the world don't lessen the effects.
The Hockey Stick theory questioned. Orwellian memory holes, here we come. After all, we can't have a medieval warm period (warmer than today claimed the IPCC in 1995!) unrelated to greenhouse gases. That same thing may be happening now beyond our control. It's a shame that borehole data only goes back to 1500. I would have loved to see if it confirmed or denied a medieval warm period from 1000 to 1500.
I suggested looking at John Daly's site as an opposing view as a way to balance the bias shown in the IPCC reports. It's fairly obvious to any reader what John Daly and most of his guest writers think about global warming. Duh.
Furthermore, let's avoid destroying economies over fears of what might happen when we just don't have enough evidence. You see, temperatures were rising before the earnest start of the industrial revolution (the US one, anyway) in the mid-to-late 1800's. Heck, the entire graph from a little after 1500CE shows warming. The graph you reference shows that the earth may be warming (according to that dataset), and even at an accelerating pace, but how do we know that we are causing the warming? That's a potentially more frightening scenario, the thought that the earth might be warming and we can't do a damn thing about it. The earth may still warm even if we destroyed every polluting device tomorrow. Great...
And what do you plan to do to bring so-called developing countries into line? Kyoto gave them free reign and gave the US the shaft, but that's not a solution. Soon enough they will be polluting as much as the US per capita, and they won't care if a wannabe world government like the UN thinks they are being naughty. The US can be shamed and politicized into compliance, even if it is at the expense of the economy, although it is instant political death of whatever president that finally gives in. Clinton dodged the enforcement of Kyoto (among other things), Gore would have done the same, and Bush is at least honest enough to let US citizens to know he hates it (Don't get me wrong, I despise Bush. I didn't vote for him.) In most Americans' minds, economy comes way before environment. Simple as that.
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I have that Casio watch shown, and it's a very classy looking watch, especially compared to the other Casio databanks that are unadulterated nerdwear. Mine's been great for 3 years. One battery change, and many rainstorms later it still looks and works great.
The only problem is that people seem to be inexorably drawn towards a touchscreen of any sort, whether a monitor or a computer.... 'Wow, you're watch has buttons on the FACE? Let me try it out!'
Went through these, fun to see that they went pretty close to my permanent home (huber heights, ohio -- east of vandalia, ohio on the map) and I think the closest picture to my home is #666! Huber Heights, Ohio the mark of the beast indeed. Well, we did have a kenny rogers roasters restaurant for a while.....yech.
And for once I'm glad to see an application of flash that is interactive, well-designed, doesn't attempt to cause epileptic seizures AND doesn't try to sell me something.
I own this alarm clock and it has a lot of the features you're looking for. 3 Independent alarms (sound, radio, buzzer) settable for 7/5/2 days. Backlit LCD (which I prefer to LEDs for an alarm clock), and "pseudo-jogwheel" in that the alarm time is set with back and forward buttons that act pretty much like a jogwheel instead of the standard minute/hour combo. It's good for a fairly cheap alarm clock.
If it's any consolation to you, Doctor Who DVD releases are also region-encoded, and the only three that are even available in the US are from 1970, 1977, and 1983 respectively! Why do they region encode them? Guess so we don't get to see the British DVD releases before we're allowed to!! Oh, wait, they're already out over here on VHS anyway. Well, I'm sure region encoding Dr. Who serves some purpose, but I haven't figured it out yet.
And remember, this is the same BBC that let Lionheart Television/BBC Worldwide mismanage Doctor Who into television oblivion in the US. They priced it low for years, making it attractive for PBS affiliates looking for a low-cost show, and then jacked up the price quite a bit, thinking stations would keep buying. Wrong. There's a reason you don't see it on your local PBS affiliate any more. It's too damned expensive. And the price never went back down even though Dr. Who's existence on US TV is nearly nonexistant.
> The problems really started in 1976
Actually, the first hint of major problems with the IOC and the Olympics started in a big way in 1972. The outright fraud shown when the Soviet basketball team twice received extra time in order to make a basket to win the gold medal game against the USA showed the Olympics were on sale to the highest bidder. Corporate sponsorship and political boycotts were inevitably to follow. Blech.
But what about the artists that use microphones to record their work? Oh, wait, nevermind.
The game you're thinking of is M.C. Kids, and it was actually a very good (and hard!) platformer. It was originally to be used in conjunction with a McDonald's promotion, but they balked out after being shown the finished product (Probably didn't like the difficulty level, I think. As I said, it's quite hard). Check out GameFAQs and search it. There's an awesome walkthrough for it available. Highly recommended NES playing. Excellent gameplay, excellent music, excellent graphics. One of the most unknown NES games ever...
Because CDs and radio are still the most widespread way of distributing music. Traditional record companies and store distribution has a decades heads start on p2p. Lots of obsolete things stay around for years, decades after their time has passed. As I sad, there is a very large amount of inertia to change with something as large and as powerful as the labels and the RIAA.
And I'm sick and tired of anybody who sticks up for p2p and/or criticizes the RIAA is almost certainly stealing bread out of the artists' (and their children's!) mouths themselves. Bullshit. I own a physical copy (sometimes several, I own LP and CD versions of almost all of Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire albums) of 95% of the songs on my hard drive. I admit I'll download a track occasionally I might have heard on the radio or from a friend. But I can point to several albums I subsequently purchased because I downloaded a track or two from the album: Natalie Imbruglia's Left of the Middle, Ghoti Hook's Songs We Didn't Write, Toto's TOTO IV, The Edward Bear Collection, Buggle's The Age of Plastic. If I don't like a track I've downlaoded for free, I certainly haven't deprived the label of anything [under the current system, at least]. There was no potential sale after I listened to the mp3, so there is no potential loss. period. I've never burned an album for anyone nor do I have any burned albums in my possession. [Short of compilation ones I've made for myself]
I own two of the Mannheim Steamroller christmas albums only on LP, and I don't have an record player at college. I downloaded the albums off audiogalaxy. Fair use, I'd say. Or should I have to buy a new copy of everything I own when a new format comes out?
And tracks on long out of print CD's and LP's [one of the best uses of p2p IMO]? How am I hurting the label/artist then? No potential sale again-- it's not even available. Any used copy I'd find wouldn't reimburse the label/artist one red cent anyway.
Yes, some people do download everything in sight, burn copies for friends, and so on. That only goes to make it more clear (and more urgent) that the labels must adapt or die. Copy-protected CD's are a silly waste of time (ooh, way to stick it to the consumer! Wait, it's already out on p2p services by the time the album is generally released), and these services are useless in their restrictiveness. They need a broad, low-priced ($.25-50/track, $7/album) method of distributing music digitally without it choking the end user to death in its restrictiveness. The actions they have taken so far only will alienate users. They NEED to convince them that BUYING MUSIC that THEY LIKE is still the best thing to do. Treating users like criminals will only incite further such activity. Will they change? CAN they change? We will see.
I agree -- they COULD embrace this and make a decent service with fair prices. I could definitely go for something with a LARGE catalog for something on the order of, say, $7 per album or $.25-.50 per track in a non-"secure" format. They'd still make a tidy profit, I suspect.
But as I said, the bigger an organization is the more inertia there is to change. IBM was so out of control with a huge bureaucracy they nearly slid into a brick wall at the end of the 80's. The record companies are almost worse, and I don't know if they can really change their ways in a meaningful fashion. Time will tell, I suppose.
Be careful, you might reveal public schooling's secret. People point to homeschooling as a perfect ground for indoctrination, but they never think what public schools are used for. Most public schools and their teachers are so far to the left its amazing we're not further down the socialist ladder than we already are.
The record labels do not make music. All they have and have really ever had is broad distribution power and plenty of $$$. Artists signed up to a major label get what, 10% of the profit, if that? The importance of the distribution power is largely becoming irrelevant with the internet and the advent of p2p services.
Audio and video pro equipment is getting cheaper and cheaper. Another chip in the block of the necessity of record companies. Personally, I have experienced the massive price decreases and quality increases in the video market. Professional-quality non-linear editing is to be had for less than $2k. 10 years ago that would have been completely unthinkable. Similar advances have been made for pro audio equipment.
The record labels are facing a grim future where they are obsolete. They are dusty old giants whose time is quickly passing, and the inertia to change is immense with them. All they're good for now is to get a CD into a store and a song on the radio. Still rather important, but you don't absolutely NEED them to get your music out to the masses anymore. There are more connected internet computers out there than there are music stores...
It's a shame they're trying to secure their future through legislation, litigation, and strawman services like this worthless thing (of course, done to show how internet users are evil THIEVES.) They will get their comeuppance soon enough.
give the labels a double finger
;)
Wouldn't that be a salute, then?
There was a similar situation (full versions of software on what was supposed to be a "shareware" disk) with a certain Quake shareware CD distributed in stores. The CD also contained (weakly protected) full versions of almost every, if not every iD software released to that point. The crack for the CD is still floating around on the net.
The lesson is: Don't put full versions of software on shareware/free/upgrade only CD's. It will be circumvented, DMCA or no DMCA.
Toledo is socked in with pea soup fog right now. So much for that meteor shower....
A season? No, Ready-Set-Cook (US) lasted 4+ 'production cycles.' The first two or three seasons had people bring in 10USD worth of any food they wanted, and that admittedly was far superior to a theme ingredient. The first season even showed the recipes at the end of the show and had a different host. The last two seasons or so led to the introduction of a 'theme ingredient' and a significant change in the set, as well as a reduction in time from 20 to 18 minutes. In any case, each team had one real chef and one contestant.
People are droning on and on about how CAMPY this American show will be. Hello! The CAMP makes the fucking show! Chairman Kaga is at least as campy as William Shatner. And if they have Miss Cleo, Jennifer Lopez, Ted Koppel, and some crank from a newspaper restaurant review column judging the dishes, it won't be all that different from Iron Chef in Japan!
And good god man, do you think Iron Chef is taken seriously??
And they said all the geeks have left slashdot..... ;)
Perhaps the chances of being an ass actually get higher as the UID approaches zero.....
please donate this to OTAP, the Ohio Technology Access Project which gathers computers and parts and gets them in workable condition and redistributes them primarily to disabled and poor individuals. They accept anything, but would prefer if you would donate primarily from the 486 era onwards. Donations are tax deductible as a charitable contribution. We need everything we can get, and very little gets thrown away except software we don't have licenses for, floppy media, severely broken monitors/printers, etc.
And don't think that old dot matrix printer in the corner should be thrown away...believe it or not, small dot matrix printers are a hot commodity! They're durable and cheap to run.
So you view genocide as a useful, justifiable tool and nothing more? Man, I hope you never are in a position of any power over me...
What? Unemployment is up to 6% again? Dammit, just go blow up some homeless shelters tomorrow, ok?
Basically, you believe in tyranny of the "majority" over anyone else (what's best for the people, in your own words). That's a really charming policy, one that would let things like the Holocaust happen again and again unfettered. Then again, that doesn't bother you, as the Holocaust was simply a useful tool, wasn't it? You being so noble and all about this, you would have had no trouble being put to death by the nazis because it would have helped the People, would it not?
P.S. Your idea of only making laws for the "good of the people" is still ethical in nature, whether you admit it or not. Ethics need not necessarily deal in the absolutes of good and evil -- it can just be a guiding philosophy, such as what you said.
Even if we covered the western states in solar arrays, we still couldn't create enough power to power the entire US. You need lots and lots of direct sunlight for solar arrays to work, and many places in the US don't get enough of that to make solar arrays for power generation feasible. (Solar panels for, say, home heating, are an entirely different matter.)
Yes, let's "force" everyone to use solar power. If it causes power prices to skyrocket, say, 1000% (if not more) and singlehandedly destroys the American economy, then all those "environmentally correct" folks will finally get what they always wanted: a destruction of an eeeeevil way of life.
Try and not to contradict yourself either. In one sentence you talk about "capping" non-renewable resource usage as a good thing, and in the next sentence you talk about how price "capping" etc. as a stupid thing. They're both stupid because they create an artificial shortage that doesn't need to exist. Bleh.
the K6 family never supported the OpenPIC standard. The K5 family DID, however (granted no chipsets were ever developed for OpenPIC). It is widely assumed that the K6 also had OpenPIC built-in, but that is untrue. They did not support any type of SMP operation, even "in theory."
That should be a reduction to .075C/year. Duh.
What level of confidence will satisfy you? I think that 50% is enough to start taking action. It's my impression that we're well over 95% confident at the moment. It's pretty hard to deny that if you dump a whole lot of stuff that's infrared-opaque into the atmosphere, that it's going to trap infrared more effectively. Unless you reduce the amount of heat coming in to compensate, a really simple calculation says it's going to get warmer. How much warmer we don't know due to the complexity of positive and negative feedback loops, but change such an important forcing function as CO2 concentration and you're going to see an effect.
.1C/year, and we are causing a full half (.05C) of it. The best we could hope for is, say, halving our emissions (which is really quite optimistic), reducing global warming to .75C/year only if every nation in the WORLD did exactly as much as we would do to reduce emissions. Not exactly a stellar improvement, especially if it cripples industrialization across the world and has ruinous effects on economies. And who knows how long it might take before we see the real results of our experimenting...decades perhaps. We're not all going to revert to living in caves, grunting in the dark, wondering where we could find a good cup of capuccino.
Ah, but an effect of any consequence? Even if we threw a significant part of the US federal budget solely aimed at helping reducing greenhouse emissions such as CO2 and water vapor, the US alone would affect only a tiny fraction of a degree of warming per year. And no one is going to want to be holding the bag when we find out we crippled our economy and wasted trillions of dollars reducing emissions only to see no discernible effects, say, within a decade. And the borehole graph shows warming well before the industrial age. Do you not agree that even if we were to completely cease polluting now, we'd still see warming? Do you agree or disagree that there was a medieval warm period and a little ice age following that occurred in complete absence of any meaningful human action? This is not a simple case of "It's all our fault. All we have to do is buck up, reduce emissions and we can save the world." I wish it could be that simple. I certainly don't see 95% confidence to spend mucho dinero, and we're still shy of 50% if you ask me. We may exacerbate existing warming, but we still have no way to determine how much might be "our fault." Let's say the global mean temperature is increasing
I have the same gripe about Kyoto. Since I am not in a policy-writing position, I don't think it's productive to expound upon it here. Suffice it to say that the US and EU could probably get a large part of the world (including China) to fall in line by denying foreign aid and trading rights. We still have things they want.
Oh, great, there's a wonderful idea. As if the US didn't have enough ill will towards them, let's try bullying every country into doing our environmental will. The last time we turned our back on the world and placed massive tariffs on imports (in 1930, The Hawley-Smoot Tariff), all it did was deepen a terrible situation, the Great Depression. Hampering free trade is a particularly bad way of getting things done. Doing it in the name of saving the world don't lessen the effects.
The Hockey Stick theory questioned. Orwellian memory holes, here we come. After all, we can't have a medieval warm period (warmer than today claimed the IPCC in 1995!) unrelated to greenhouse gases. That same thing may be happening now beyond our control. It's a shame that borehole data only goes back to 1500. I would have loved to see if it confirmed or denied a medieval warm period from 1000 to 1500.
I suggested looking at John Daly's site as an opposing view as a way to balance the bias shown in the IPCC reports. It's fairly obvious to any reader what John Daly and most of his guest writers think about global warming. Duh.
Furthermore, let's avoid destroying economies over fears of what might happen when we just don't have enough evidence. You see, temperatures were rising before the earnest start of the industrial revolution (the US one, anyway) in the mid-to-late 1800's. Heck, the entire graph from a little after 1500CE shows warming. The graph you reference shows that the earth may be warming (according to that dataset), and even at an accelerating pace, but how do we know that we are causing the warming? That's a potentially more frightening scenario, the thought that the earth might be warming and we can't do a damn thing about it. The earth may still warm even if we destroyed every polluting device tomorrow. Great...
And what do you plan to do to bring so-called developing countries into line? Kyoto gave them free reign and gave the US the shaft, but that's not a solution. Soon enough they will be polluting as much as the US per capita, and they won't care if a wannabe world government like the UN thinks they are being naughty. The US can be shamed and politicized into compliance, even if it is at the expense of the economy, although it is instant political death of whatever president that finally gives in. Clinton dodged the enforcement of Kyoto (among other things), Gore would have done the same, and Bush is at least honest enough to let US citizens to know he hates it (Don't get me wrong, I despise Bush. I didn't vote for him.) In most Americans' minds, economy comes way before environment. Simple as that.