France has a very impressive engineering history and a strong scientific community. For technology, just look at Concord and Airbus. There are good reasons why France got this project against the wishes of Japan and the USA, and it is not only the French arrogance and stubborness.
Its funny how our American cousins have started attacking one of the great European nations, France, after some French politician tried to stop the current US government making a mistake comparable to Vietnam again. I guess it is a nice way to unify a people who are sending their young to die in yet another avoidable war.
The French, the British, the German, the Russian, the Italian, the Austrian (or these nation states ancestors) have all at different times dominated military in Europe and too often created havoc on the European continent, not to mention the rest of the world. Many of the European wars have been because one of the great nations got the military upper hand (or thougth they had) and wanted to revenge their last loss of land to one of their European neighbours. Look for instance how the land area behind France and Germany has traded owners through the centuries (latest land trade was of course after WWI and WWII). There is symbolic significance that Strasbourg is where the EU parliment is located, a very German and French city in culture, architecture and language for obvious reasons (just look at a map).
And European history is a reminder for all great nations to be careful before starting a war since the rule of war is that it only create losers and no winners. The US should be careful not to inherit (seems its already too late) the European tradition of starting uneccessary wars when having a large army. Just look at China's incredible long history to find an example how a dominant nation does not necessarily at all times need to expand or start wars with all its neighbours (remember Chinese invented gun powder, while it was the Europeans that used gun powder to conquere the world).
After all that, lets look at the last part of your "freedom fries" list. In WWI France had the main war on their own land and sacrified 1,400,000 men. US, which won the war in your history book, lost 116,000. And of course we all agree that WWII that followed, where 40 million people died all over the world, only was won by the US joining in 1943. Especially since the Germans lost 93 % of their forces fighting the Russians.
Anyway, making frog jokes is a nice way for your right wing media, like the Wall Street Journal, to stop USians ask any awkard questions why US marines are dying 3 per day in Iraq at the moment.
It was an interesting article in the Telegraph, I had not seen it before (or the discussion on SlashDot). And it is some interesting points raised in it.
But, there was a very serious short coming of the story though. I did a ISI Web of Science search on the people mentioned in the article (it is a pay service you might have available through your university if you are at one). ISI Web keeps track of who has published in all the major scientific journals back to the 1970's.
And none of the people in the article seems to have published much in serious journals except one of them, Dr CW Landsea. For instance, both Dr Benny Peiser and Prof. Roy Spencer had only two publications:
Seidel DJ, Angell JK, Christy J, et al.
Uncertainty in signals of large-scale climate variations in radiosonde and satellite upper-air temperature datasets
J CLIMATE 17 (11): 2225-2240 JUN 2004
Fender R, Spencer R, Tzioumis T, et al.
An asymmetric arcsecond radio jet from Circinus X-1
ASTROPHYS J 506 (2): L121-L125 Part 2 OCT 20 1998
Not to be bad, but there is no way in hell you are going to get a paper in Nature or Science if your scientific out-put is two small articles. Another one of the people on the list is Prof Dennis Bray
Ungar S, Bray D
Silencing science: partisanship and the career of a publication disputing the dangers of secondhand smoke
PUBLIC UNDERST SCI 14 (1): 5-23 JAN 2005
Bray D, Kruck C
Some patterns of interaction between science and policy: Germany and climate change
CLIMATE RES 19 (1): 69-90 NOV 22 2001
Bray D
Visioning event horizons: Where do we go from here?
CLIMATE RES 15 (2): 83-94 JUL 20 2000
Bray D, von Storch H
Climate science: An empirical example of postnormal science
B AM METEOROL SOC 80 (3): 439-455 MAR 1999
Bray has not published in anything as prestigious as Nature or Science, but the last of the articles above were actually cited by a Science article, showing that scientist who do get to publish in Science at least has notice what he has said.
There is a hierachy in science, it is hard to not get one in any human social structure, and every scientist wants to publish in Nature or Science, because it is a sign that you are among the elites in science. But there is a question why these scientist who publish almost nothing in lesser journals think they have a right to be published in Science just because they don't believe what most other scientists believe. Many scientist who activly publish a lot of quality in good journals, never get the chance to appear in Science or Nature. And of course, Science and Nature got the reputation as the eminent science journal because of the high standards they keep in what they publish.
As I said, one person in the Telegraph piece had published a fair amount, and also was cited quite a lot by other scientist (which is some measure of importance of the work). But Dr. Landsea has actually published in Science, so it doesn't seem like the conspiracy theory works in this example either:
The recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity: Causes and implications
Goldenberg SB, Landsea CW, Mestas-Nunez AM, Gray WM
SCIENCE
293 (5529): 474-479 JUL 20 2001
Actually, we know that the changes going on in the climate right now fits an
exponential growth. And when scientist see exponential growth, they know something will have to break, often very fast. Of course, it is possible that it is not an exponential growth, but when you can fit an exponential to a couple a centuries, there are reasons to worry. There is no stronger evidence that we have trouble than exponentials appearing in the temperature curves, CO2 levels etc, and is just as good an indication of clear and present danger as a gun.
Then again, if you don't know what an exponential is, never mind.
I don't think it is easy to change life style. I certainly don't want to, but I try my little contributions and I hope politicians and technology will both in their way succede to find good solutions to this problem. Ideally, technology will get so energy efficient that changes in our life style will not make our lives less comfertable. Actually, I would love it to be true that in 20 years we would look back and say what strange thing it is that we thought our climate was changing because of us.
We all accept that science often raises questions rather then giving answers when doing research and that never will definite answer be given. The reason science is given so much weight in our society and in debates like this, is just because science is so critical of itself and because good science always accepts that the current accept theory will probably be modified in the future or even discharged all together. This honesty should not be confused with scientist trying to twist the facts or theories being based on insufficient evidence. This honesty is just a reflection that human reasoning can fail and that what makes science successful is an open debate where different interpretation is accepted.
Now, I could try to point out that the scientific consensus that climate change is happening is stronger than ever, whatever examples you can find of scientist saying wrong things in the past. I could also point out it is not only environmental wackos that think the human race will have to deal with the problems caused by climate change. But I will point out, that if there is any valid definition on what science is, it must be what scientist are doing. This might sound like a circular argument, but you can try to find a better one. And the scientist are telling us that climate change is happening, and they base it on their research, which as I say, is science. So, you can say that you don't believe in science will be able to give an answer to this question, and maybe you are right, science and the scientific community might be wrong this time. They have been wrong in the past. But don't fool yourself that you can dictate what is science and what is pseudo-science.
I read some calculation long ago (I think it was a lot cheaper than this scheme) how much it would cost to make the Sahara region green again with forests and get rid of the desert. With all the carbon that could be trapped by making a huge forest (and with the added benefit it would have when more people could live in these areas and produce food here), this is probably as good a suggestion as the one above. Of course, the political will to do this is another matter.
Actually, water vapour is also a climate gas (a gas that traps heat). But water vapour is not as easily to controll as the production of CO2, which is directly linked to energy consumptions of certain energy sources (oil/coal etc). Besides, water vapour is important in cloud formation that also contribute to the protection from heat coming in to our atmosphere. So, its effect is not as straight forward as CO2. Something that is not often known by the lay man is that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere also increases the CO2 in the oceans, which is quite clear from simple physical chemistry. CO2 in water becomes CO3 which makes the sea more acid, with the influence that this has on sea life. Also, again the scientists have been able to measure the increase in the adicity of the sea over the last decades and correlated it with the amount of CO2 produces by humans. Anyway, our global climate is a very interesting system with many factors. Of course a lot of climate science focus these days on how humans influences the global climate and how humans can maybe influence the climate in less harmfull ways.
The problem with your story is if one country that produces the greatest amount of climate gases continues to produce more and more, it doesn't really help if the other 120 countries that sign some treaty try to cut their part, since what counts is the total human production of climate gases, where ever it comes from. While a second-hand smoker can go to another pub to get his pinte with less smoke in it, where do those 120 countries go when the temperature rises, the water line rises and the storms get more violent?
So you are saying that all the climate scientists are bought and corrupted. Because telling the Bush government what they don't want to hear will get them more funding and grants? And the oil industry when funding "studies" that show that global warming is not happening, they are doing it in the interest of sciene and human kind. I guess in bizarro world, you probably would be rigth.
This is one of the things that frustrates me about "climate change"--all evidence is unritically adopted to support the theory. The change in terminology, from "global warming" to "climate change" is itself a shift designed to support exactly this sort of pseudo-scientific scullduggery.
If global warming is only "pseudo-scientific" scullduggery, why do all the best climate scientist think it is happening right now and will get worse? Maybe it is you who only adopt supporting theories that probably are comforting to you, that climate change will not happen in my life time and I will not have to change my life style because of it?
Do you think NASA is measuring an accelerated melting of the ice on Greenland also because of deforestation? I think you should become a bit more critical of your sources, and maybe educate yourself a bit more what challenges the human population is facing now that global warming is happening.
Basically that's what gets me pissed off about this _political_ "waah, we're all DOOMED if you don't follow ME" hype about global warming. It's mis-representation and scare tactics.
Actually, what amases me about the political debate, is that a lot of the people who claim climate sciencists don't know what they are talking about and more research is needed before even doing the slightest initative that might help prevent global warming getting worse, are usually exactly the the same people that says that the risk is too high and we have to have pre-emptive wars however thin the intelligence and fact based knowledge is. I really can't figure out why killing thousands of people on flimsy evidence is so easy and then to turn their backs of thousands of scientific papers with worrying evidence and patterns since "we don't know enough yet to do anything that might solve this possible disaster for human kind"??? A terrorist might succeed to kill thousands of people in one go, or maybe millions, but how many will die if our climate goes beserke and water resources and food resources become to spare for the human population on this earth now?
Another thing that amases me is that people list all these so-called facts, that suggest that global warming isn't happening or that the data only show that global warming only happens in some neighbourhoods around Cleveland, and then don't stop to think why climate scientist who spend a whole carrier studying this don't realise these simple "facts". Do deniers believe that there is some political conspiracy among climate scientist? Or that the journals Nature and Science are deliberatly attacking/suppresing climate scientist that have other evidence than what is published in the major science journals of the world? I really don't know the answers to these questions, but I find it very strange indeed.
Iceland was found by the Norwegian vikings before Greenland (just look in an atlas to discover why). Remember, these lands were found by people in open boats that did not know what to expect when they went on open sea in these directions. Greenland was settled by a viking lord (Eirik Raude) that first had to leave Norway and again Iceland after murdering some important people in both places. The vikings on Greenland knew that the North American continent was there with better living conditions than Greenland, because of the birds that sometimes would be led astry when the wind came from western direction. But Greenland was already too far away from Norway and to dangerous place to live that they could convince many to go there, and there were only a small group that tried to settle on Newfoundland (Leiv Erikson, the son of Eirik Raude.) If Greenland had been a better place to live though (and the word had spread in Scandinavia that fertile land was available), the vikings might have started a mass settling of the North American continent, but that would be all speculation. Remember, to get to Greenland the vikings from Norway had to spend something like a month in open boat on an Atlantic sea that often would give a storm with the potential of killing all men onboard.
There's a reason why "Greenland" is called that: it had thawed and the Vikings could colonize and farm it.
Greenland was not a farm country in the Viking age. The name was chosen to convince others to join the colony; it was a PR trick (that didn't work). Rember, Iceland was called Iceland by the vikings, not a sign of this region of the earth was very hot a 1000 years ago. Actually we are in the warmest periode in 10 000 years it seems, since the ice on Kilimanjaro for instance has not been as reduced as it now for the last 10 000 years. It is true that when the dinosaures roamed, Svalbard which is north of Iceland, was inhabitated by creates that needed warm weather. But that is millions of years ago.
Another misleading name by the vikings that settled the North American continent, is that Newfound land was called Vin-land (which means something like fertile land). (Some vikings settled in Newfound land but left for unknown reasons, the saga mention that the settlers there had problems with the native population. ) It is anyway not know what happened to the small colony of vikings that settled on Greenland. Some think that they had a bad winter and died. There is no historical account of the colony returning to Iceland or Norway. Another theory is that the vikings there joined the eskimos (or whatever they are called more politically correct) and became a part of their gene pool in a matter of speak.
Actually, previously some schools in Norway complained that MS Office was not available in the second way of writing Norwegian (don't ask) and was pushing the Norwegian state to only allow Write programs that were available in both languages. The schools were using Norwegian language laws to push this initative. Because of the (political) pressure, MS released a New Norwegian version of MS Office, I guess mainly to not lose the Norwegian market to OpenOffice. This, even though the so-called New Norwegian language is used much less than most languages in the world (it is not even used much in Norway), and less than many languages not supported by MS Office (like all these Indian dialects). It seems like MS values the Norwegian marked, and I guess they think it is worth fighting for. Especially now when OpenOffice wants to develop new markets.
You can be a pessimist and argue that evidence points to a declining level of freedom and government accountability. Maybe. But that hardly means that we're even comperable to North Korea, Iran, Syria, or any of a number of other totalitarian/dicatorial/theocratic societies.
Your post shows how pathetic the US has become under Bush, you are now trying to be proud of being more free than North Korea. Congratulation. And you try to stop worrying about what is happening to your country because the soul of your country has been in danger before but managed then. Talk about relativisme. So you think because brave people managed to fight apathy and injustice before, you can take it easy and relax and argue that critics should focus on what good is left.
Why not face up to the problems facing your own country instead of finding countries that are doing worse. A lot of the real anti-US rethoric comes from groups or government that want to cover up their own faults or need someone to point at to blame for their own short-coming. But "you-are-with-us-or-a-terrorist" is exactly the same trick, and it is sad to see so many buying it. You still have a free press, use it and don't stop the debate by pointing out that your country is better than North Korea.
Actually, European workers are the most productive in the world. Why should European workers put up with US workers that work long hours without producing?
I'm sorry but IBM is speaking to European workers very clearly here, however I'm not sure they're listening. The constant strikes, the 5+ weeks of vacation, the voting down of the EU constitution to avoid US-style capitalism.
Constant strikes? Are you talking about the flashy French strikes here or what? And yes, European workers do get vacation, you know, since they are human beings. And what the hell does the EU constitution have to do with US-style capitalism? I guess it was an arguemnt in the French non-vote, but it doesn't make it any more true.
These jobs are vanishing into India because of the cost and headache of dealing with European unions, workers, culture, and bureaucracy.
It seems much more of outsourcing goes on in the US than in Europe. We don't have much of it. The EU worries about textiles from China and there are worries internally in the EU since there are different labour standards in the new EU countries, but outsourcing is not high on the agenda for natural reasons. This example is just an USian company doing what seems to be an USian fashion. European companies maybe prefer quality over quantity?
Frankly it's a pain in the ass, and for a market that often has little growth potential. Asia isn't just where the cheap labour is, it's also where the growth is, and the governments eager to work with you, and the best bang-for-the-buck for companies seeking to invest. Until European workers learn to compete aggressively we'll keep on hearing stories like this of companies that just shrug and say "fine, have it your way." Apologies, but something's gotta give.
The EU is the world's largest economy for a reason. And the US government seems to be hell bent on taking away rights from the workers and giving it to the big corporations, and still your economy is doing terrible and the dollar is weaker than ever.
Also, Japan is an island, very much threatened by raising sea levels and increased stormy weather pattern caused by global warming, so their government understands that the Kyoto treaty is important for Japan's (and the world's) future. Kyoto can't stop global warming, but it is a start at least, and it is time to start acting.
Isn't it natural than when the permafrost is melting in the neighbouring areas, that there are more water to fill the lakes where the permafrost is still present?
This isn't about preserving lakes, this is about figuring out what the global warming caused by us will mean for our common future. The early signs appear most dramatically in the artic regions, glaciars in mountain areas in Asia, Africa and on the water level influence on islands in the pacific. But if the melting accelerates, which it probably will, we better look at these examples to see how fast changes are happening and plan ahead.
Why don't you have a look at all the 50 years of treaties that this "constitutional" treaty in most cases summarises and streamlines (there are a lot more members now than 50 years ago). The constitutional treaty includes a few additional changes (like stopping the 1/2 year rotation of the EU president as we have at the moment), but for the most part is a destillation of 50 years of EU law. The new treaty is easy to read compared to what is today's EU law. And who the hell thought law was easy for a lay man to read anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
France has a very impressive engineering history and a strong scientific community. For technology, just look at Concord and Airbus. There are good reasons why France got this project against the wishes of Japan and the USA, and it is not only the French arrogance and stubborness.
There seems to be a slight difference in starting a war unilaterally and building a scientific laboratory unilaterally. Or maybe its just me.
The French, the British, the German, the Russian, the Italian, the Austrian (or these nation states ancestors) have all at different times dominated military in Europe and too often created havoc on the European continent, not to mention the rest of the world. Many of the European wars have been because one of the great nations got the military upper hand (or thougth they had) and wanted to revenge their last loss of land to one of their European neighbours. Look for instance how the land area behind France and Germany has traded owners through the centuries (latest land trade was of course after WWI and WWII). There is symbolic significance that Strasbourg is where the EU parliment is located, a very German and French city in culture, architecture and language for obvious reasons (just look at a map).
And European history is a reminder for all great nations to be careful before starting a war since the rule of war is that it only create losers and no winners. The US should be careful not to inherit (seems its already too late) the European tradition of starting uneccessary wars when having a large army. Just look at China's incredible long history to find an example how a dominant nation does not necessarily at all times need to expand or start wars with all its neighbours (remember Chinese invented gun powder, while it was the Europeans that used gun powder to conquere the world).
After all that, lets look at the last part of your "freedom fries" list. In WWI France had the main war on their own land and sacrified 1,400 ,000 men. US, which won the war in your history book, lost 116,000. And of course we all agree that WWII that followed, where 40 million people died all over the world, only was won by the US joining in 1943. Especially since the Germans lost 93 % of their forces fighting the Russians.
Anyway, making frog jokes is a nice way for your right wing media, like the Wall Street Journal, to stop USians ask any awkard questions why US marines are dying 3 per day in Iraq at the moment.
But, there was a very serious short coming of the story though. I did a ISI Web of Science search on the people mentioned in the article (it is a pay service you might have available through your university if you are at one). ISI Web keeps track of who has published in all the major scientific journals back to the 1970's. And none of the people in the article seems to have published much in serious journals except one of them, Dr CW Landsea. For instance, both Dr Benny Peiser and Prof. Roy Spencer had only two publications:
Seidel DJ, Angell JK, Christy J, et al.
Uncertainty in signals of large-scale climate variations in radiosonde and satellite upper-air temperature datasets
J CLIMATE 17 (11): 2225-2240 JUN 2004
Fender R, Spencer R, Tzioumis T, et al.
An asymmetric arcsecond radio jet from Circinus X-1 ASTROPHYS J 506 (2): L121-L125 Part 2 OCT 20 1998
Not to be bad, but there is no way in hell you are going to get a paper in Nature or Science if your scientific out-put is two small articles. Another one of the people on the list is Prof Dennis Bray
Ungar S, Bray D
Silencing science: partisanship and the career of a publication disputing the dangers of secondhand smoke
PUBLIC UNDERST SCI 14 (1): 5-23 JAN 2005
Bray D, Kruck C
Some patterns of interaction between science and policy: Germany and climate change
CLIMATE RES 19 (1): 69-90 NOV 22 2001
Bray D
Visioning event horizons: Where do we go from here?
CLIMATE RES 15 (2): 83-94 JUL 20 2000
Bray D, von Storch H
Climate science: An empirical example of postnormal science
B AM METEOROL SOC 80 (3): 439-455 MAR 1999
Bray has not published in anything as prestigious as Nature or Science, but the last of the articles above were actually cited by a Science article, showing that scientist who do get to publish in Science at least has notice what he has said.
There is a hierachy in science, it is hard to not get one in any human social structure, and every scientist wants to publish in Nature or Science, because it is a sign that you are among the elites in science. But there is a question why these scientist who publish almost nothing in lesser journals think they have a right to be published in Science just because they don't believe what most other scientists believe. Many scientist who activly publish a lot of quality in good journals, never get the chance to appear in Science or Nature. And of course, Science and Nature got the reputation as the eminent science journal because of the high standards they keep in what they publish.
As I said, one person in the Telegraph piece had published a fair amount, and also was cited quite a lot by other scientist (which is some measure of importance of the work). But Dr. Landsea has actually published in Science, so it doesn't seem like the conspiracy theory works in this example either:
The recent increase in Atlantic hurricane activity: Causes and implications
Goldenberg SB, Landsea CW, Mestas-Nunez AM, Gray WM
SCIENCE
293 (5529): 474-479 JUL 20 2001
Then again, if you don't know what an exponential is, never mind.
We all accept that science often raises questions rather then giving answers when doing research and that never will definite answer be given. The reason science is given so much weight in our society and in debates like this, is just because science is so critical of itself and because good science always accepts that the current accept theory will probably be modified in the future or even discharged all together. This honesty should not be confused with scientist trying to twist the facts or theories being based on insufficient evidence. This honesty is just a reflection that human reasoning can fail and that what makes science successful is an open debate where different interpretation is accepted.
Now, I could try to point out that the scientific consensus that climate change is happening is stronger than ever, whatever examples you can find of scientist saying wrong things in the past. I could also point out it is not only environmental wackos that think the human race will have to deal with the problems caused by climate change. But I will point out, that if there is any valid definition on what science is, it must be what scientist are doing. This might sound like a circular argument, but you can try to find a better one. And the scientist are telling us that climate change is happening, and they base it on their research, which as I say, is science. So, you can say that you don't believe in science will be able to give an answer to this question, and maybe you are right, science and the scientific community might be wrong this time. They have been wrong in the past. But don't fool yourself that you can dictate what is science and what is pseudo-science.
I read some calculation long ago (I think it was a lot cheaper than this scheme) how much it would cost to make the Sahara region green again with forests and get rid of the desert. With all the carbon that could be trapped by making a huge forest (and with the added benefit it would have when more people could live in these areas and produce food here), this is probably as good a suggestion as the one above. Of course, the political will to do this is another matter.
Actually, water vapour is also a climate gas (a gas that traps heat). But water vapour is not as easily to controll as the production of CO2, which is directly linked to energy consumptions of certain energy sources (oil/coal etc). Besides, water vapour is important in cloud formation that also contribute to the protection from heat coming in to our atmosphere. So, its effect is not as straight forward as CO2. Something that is not often known by the lay man is that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere also increases the CO2 in the oceans, which is quite clear from simple physical chemistry. CO2 in water becomes CO3 which makes the sea more acid, with the influence that this has on sea life. Also, again the scientists have been able to measure the increase in the adicity of the sea over the last decades and correlated it with the amount of CO2 produces by humans. Anyway, our global climate is a very interesting system with many factors. Of course a lot of climate science focus these days on how humans influences the global climate and how humans can maybe influence the climate in less harmfull ways.
The problem with your story is if one country that produces the greatest amount of climate gases continues to produce more and more, it doesn't really help if the other 120 countries that sign some treaty try to cut their part, since what counts is the total human production of climate gases, where ever it comes from. While a second-hand smoker can go to another pub to get his pinte with less smoke in it, where do those 120 countries go when the temperature rises, the water line rises and the storms get more violent?
So you are saying that all the climate scientists are bought and corrupted. Because telling the Bush government what they don't want to hear will get them more funding and grants? And the oil industry when funding "studies" that show that global warming is not happening, they are doing it in the interest of sciene and human kind. I guess in bizarro world, you probably would be rigth.
If global warming is only "pseudo-scientific" scullduggery, why do all the best climate scientist think it is happening right now and will get worse? Maybe it is you who only adopt supporting theories that probably are comforting to you, that climate change will not happen in my life time and I will not have to change my life style because of it?
Do you think NASA is measuring an accelerated melting of the ice on Greenland also because of deforestation? I think you should become a bit more critical of your sources, and maybe educate yourself a bit more what challenges the human population is facing now that global warming is happening.
Actually, what amases me about the political debate, is that a lot of the people who claim climate sciencists don't know what they are talking about and more research is needed before even doing the slightest initative that might help prevent global warming getting worse, are usually exactly the the same people that says that the risk is too high and we have to have pre-emptive wars however thin the intelligence and fact based knowledge is. I really can't figure out why killing thousands of people on flimsy evidence is so easy and then to turn their backs of thousands of scientific papers with worrying evidence and patterns since "we don't know enough yet to do anything that might solve this possible disaster for human kind"??? A terrorist might succeed to kill thousands of people in one go, or maybe millions, but how many will die if our climate goes beserke and water resources and food resources become to spare for the human population on this earth now?
Another thing that amases me is that people list all these so-called facts, that suggest that global warming isn't happening or that the data only show that global warming only happens in some neighbourhoods around Cleveland, and then don't stop to think why climate scientist who spend a whole carrier studying this don't realise these simple "facts". Do deniers believe that there is some political conspiracy among climate scientist? Or that the journals Nature and Science are deliberatly attacking/suppresing climate scientist that have other evidence than what is published in the major science journals of the world? I really don't know the answers to these questions, but I find it very strange indeed.
Iceland was found by the Norwegian vikings before Greenland (just look in an atlas to discover why). Remember, these lands were found by people in open boats that did not know what to expect when they went on open sea in these directions. Greenland was settled by a viking lord (Eirik Raude) that first had to leave Norway and again Iceland after murdering some important people in both places. The vikings on Greenland knew that the North American continent was there with better living conditions than Greenland, because of the birds that sometimes would be led astry when the wind came from western direction. But Greenland was already too far away from Norway and to dangerous place to live that they could convince many to go there, and there were only a small group that tried to settle on Newfoundland (Leiv Erikson, the son of Eirik Raude.) If Greenland had been a better place to live though (and the word had spread in Scandinavia that fertile land was available), the vikings might have started a mass settling of the North American continent, but that would be all speculation. Remember, to get to Greenland the vikings from Norway had to spend something like a month in open boat on an Atlantic sea that often would give a storm with the potential of killing all men onboard.
Greenland was not a farm country in the Viking age. The name was chosen to convince others to join the colony; it was a PR trick (that didn't work). Rember, Iceland was called Iceland by the vikings, not a sign of this region of the earth was very hot a 1000 years ago. Actually we are in the warmest periode in 10 000 years it seems, since the ice on Kilimanjaro for instance has not been as reduced as it now for the last 10 000 years. It is true that when the dinosaures roamed, Svalbard which is north of Iceland, was inhabitated by creates that needed warm weather. But that is millions of years ago.
Another misleading name by the vikings that settled the North American continent, is that Newfound land was called Vin-land (which means something like fertile land). (Some vikings settled in Newfound land but left for unknown reasons, the saga mention that the settlers there had problems with the native population. ) It is anyway not know what happened to the small colony of vikings that settled on Greenland. Some think that they had a bad winter and died. There is no historical account of the colony returning to Iceland or Norway. Another theory is that the vikings there joined the eskimos (or whatever they are called more politically correct) and became a part of their gene pool in a matter of speak.
Actually, previously some schools in Norway complained that MS Office was not available in the second way of writing Norwegian (don't ask) and was pushing the Norwegian state to only allow Write programs that were available in both languages. The schools were using Norwegian language laws to push this initative. Because of the (political) pressure, MS released a New Norwegian version of MS Office, I guess mainly to not lose the Norwegian market to OpenOffice. This, even though the so-called New Norwegian language is used much less than most languages in the world (it is not even used much in Norway), and less than many languages not supported by MS Office (like all these Indian dialects). It seems like MS values the Norwegian marked, and I guess they think it is worth fighting for. Especially now when OpenOffice wants to develop new markets.
NRK OGG
NRK ogg
The official streaming is in the windows media format though...
Your post shows how pathetic the US has become under Bush, you are now trying to be proud of being more free than North Korea. Congratulation. And you try to stop worrying about what is happening to your country because the soul of your country has been in danger before but managed then. Talk about relativisme. So you think because brave people managed to fight apathy and injustice before, you can take it easy and relax and argue that critics should focus on what good is left.
Why not face up to the problems facing your own country instead of finding countries that are doing worse. A lot of the real anti-US rethoric comes from groups or government that want to cover up their own faults or need someone to point at to blame for their own short-coming. But "you-are-with-us-or-a-terrorist" is exactly the same trick, and it is sad to see so many buying it. You still have a free press, use it and don't stop the debate by pointing out that your country is better than North Korea.
Actually, European workers are the most productive in the world. Why should European workers put up with US workers that work long hours without producing?
Constant strikes? Are you talking about the flashy French strikes here or what? And yes, European workers do get vacation, you know, since they are human beings. And what the hell does the EU constitution have to do with US-style capitalism? I guess it was an arguemnt in the French non-vote, but it doesn't make it any more true.
It seems much more of outsourcing goes on in the US than in Europe. We don't have much of it. The EU worries about textiles from China and there are worries internally in the EU since there are different labour standards in the new EU countries, but outsourcing is not high on the agenda for natural reasons. This example is just an USian company doing what seems to be an USian fashion. European companies maybe prefer quality over quantity?
The EU is the world's largest economy for a reason. And the US government seems to be hell bent on taking away rights from the workers and giving it to the big corporations, and still your economy is doing terrible and the dollar is weaker than ever.
While today Bush swaggers with a small stick.
Also, Japan is an island, very much threatened by raising sea levels and increased stormy weather pattern caused by global warming, so their government understands that the Kyoto treaty is important for Japan's (and the world's) future. Kyoto can't stop global warming, but it is a start at least, and it is time to start acting.
This isn't about preserving lakes, this is about figuring out what the global warming caused by us will mean for our common future. The early signs appear most dramatically in the artic regions, glaciars in mountain areas in Asia, Africa and on the water level influence on islands in the pacific. But if the melting accelerates, which it probably will, we better look at these examples to see how fast changes are happening and plan ahead.
MS does definitely pay taxes in the EU. But from what I hear MS does not pay taxes in the US. Quite funny.
Why don't you have a look at all the 50 years of treaties that this "constitutional" treaty in most cases summarises and streamlines (there are a lot more members now than 50 years ago). The constitutional treaty includes a few additional changes (like stopping the 1/2 year rotation of the EU president as we have at the moment), but for the most part is a destillation of 50 years of EU law. The new treaty is easy to read compared to what is today's EU law. And who the hell thought law was easy for a lay man to read anyway.