By the way, here is a good lecture on climate change. Note the following passages, with source link at bottom:
Paleoclimatic and instrumental data records indicate that earth's climate has exhibited dramatic changes over a variety of time and space scales. Such changes are evident in both the precipitation and temperature records. For example, global temperature has increased by about 0.6 C during the past 100 years, while global precipitation over land areas has increased about 10 mm during the past 100 years. Although these changes are small relative to paleoclimate changes, the 100-year time scale over which the recent changes have occurred are infinitesimal in comparison with the time scale of the paleoclimatic changes. Thus far, no single theory has emerged that satisfactorily accounts for the climate changes through time. This is due in large part to the complexity of the climate system and its many feedback processes. Some feedbacks may amplify climate changes (positive feedback) while others may dampen climate changes (negative feedback). Moreover, the inherent natural variability of the climate system makes it very difficult to identify climate change with a high degree of certainty.
Earth's temperature fluctuates naturally. Current greenhouse gas concentrations are not high enough to cause major distortions in climate. It is unclear if the distortions are presently so small as to be unmeasureable or whether they are being masked by other changes. The earth is now about as warm as it has been in the past 150,000 years; 1995 is record warmest year and the seven warmest years in the record have been since 1982. Other indicators that point toward global warming include: Glaciers worldwide have receded 11% over the past 150 years, and as much as 50% in some areas; Ice shelves are retreating around the Antarctic peninsula; Global mean sea level has increased 1-3 mm per year over the past 100 years.
I'll further point out that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo put (according to USGS estimates) nearly 30 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. By comparison, humanity injects 7.7 billion tons per year. Global climatic effects of the eruption were net reductions in global temperatures, although arguably these were the result of airborne ash and not anything to do with CO2. Still, the point is clear: the global temp depends on a lot of things other than CO2. I'll also point out this study paper concludes that a 1% fluctuation in solar output can be equal to all CO2 emissions worldwide -- manmade or otherwise! In the grand scheme of things, C02 is actually a relatively small player when it comes to global weather, at least as far as we understand it now.
NASA research indicates that if all countries implemented all facets of the Kyoto accords, global temps would be affected by about 0.7C by the year 2050 -- almost too small to measure! I can provide source links if you like, but if you google for it, you'll find it. I didn't even have to look hard.
The point of all this is simple: we don't know enough to make any decisions at this point, certianly not ones that have deleterious effects to large numbers of people (be they Americans, Ukranians, or Belgians, it doesn't matter -- nobody likes losing their job). The U.S. is not being selfish by refusing to sign the treaty, it is being sensible. Other countries signing it have everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. Politically, it's great for them, and I doubt the environmental side of it comes into play very much. After all, some of the dirtiest, unhealthiest air on the planet can be found in India, China, and Russia. Do they care about the environment? I doubt it. Do they care about damaging the U.S. economically? Absolutely.
Links work just fine for those of us who aren't stupider than shit.
Again, I must complement you for immediately defining your level of maturity and intelligence. It will make it easier for me to frame the following discussion so someone down at your level might have a chance at understanding it.
Since the links were broken, I did my own Google search on "Abu Ghraib prisoner death" and came up with this. We have photos of servicemen showing the "thumbs up" over Iraqi bodies in the prison. How did they die? Sources conflict. Some say he died during interrogation. Some say he died of a head would sustained in the attack in which he was captured. You, being judge, jury, and executioner, have already decided the answer without any benefit of hard evidence, hearing any testimony, or anything at all except seeing a photograph and reading a newspaper. I'm sure tomorrow you'll be taking the bar exam and heading off to a wonderful life of being a lawyer. After all, you've got it all figured out, don't you?
I will offer you this one bone: abuses did indeed take place, and it appears several servicemen and women practiced not only bad taste but unspeakable conduct totally unbefitting a soldier, sailor, or Marine. If you'll note, those involved are being prosecuted and imprisoned themselves.
But to tar the entire U.S. military with this same brush is not only unfair, it's ludicrous. There are a few hundred thousand U.S. troops in Iraq right now. Even if every single guard at Abu Ghraib commited a crime, that still represents less than one tenth of one percent of all deployed forces in the area. Unless they have another agenda, no sane, thinking, intelligent person would even attempt to do what you're doing. But, then again, you're a liberal, and thinking is a somewhat alien concept. You'd rather feel than think. Apparently, evolution is something that's more or less passed you by, isn't it? Because you're doing far more instinctive knee jerking than thinking here, and higher brain functions are a part of that whole evolutionary package, aren't they? Bah, I'm talking to a monkey here, wasting my time. Go burn a flag and worship Stalin or something.
No flame intended, it was an honest question. What a liberal sees as a possible weakness is almost certainly what a conservative would see as a strength. A simple acknowledgement that there are two sides to every issue is all I was getting at.
Oh, and you need to retake your civics class: senators are not "governing official[s]", they're legislators.
Picky, picky, picky...yes, technically they are legislators, but in the heat of the moment the best descriptor I could come up with was "governing official." I'm well aware of what a legislator is, it's just my skull-bound dictionary couldn't find it at that particular second.
Btw, I hope that one day, your senators will take a broader view of the national interest than you do. Global warming does not respect national borders.
What, pray tell, is "the national interest"? Interpreted literally, I see that as "whatever is in the best interests of the nation in question," which seems to be at odds with your follow-up "Global warming does not respect national borders." What I think you're trying to say here is that you hope a future U.S. legislator takes other nations into account for future policy. Sorry, I don't see it that way. Briton's want the U.K. to be on top. The French want France on top. The Russians want Russia on top. Ditto Chinese. Ditto ditto Japanese. It goes on and on. Wherever I'm at, that's who I want to be on top. It's human nature, and I'm not afraid or ashamed to admit it. It does not discount altruism on my part, but it by no mean obligates me to it.
If you had a solid foundation backing up the current global warming claims, I'd agree with you. No such foundation exists because the scientific community is fractured on this subject. As I stated in several earlier and related posts, for every unbiased, non-partisan expert study found backing global warming (or "climate change" as it's become trendily named), there is a corresponding counter-study with opposite results. Discounting the bitter partisans on both extreme sides (the ultra-environmentalists, which are really closet anti-capitalists, and the ultra-capitalists which are for total environmental exploitation at any cost), there are a lot of credible, informed, educated, non-biased people in the scientific community that simply cannot agree as to why the Earth is getting warmer. To take steps, any steps, to combat something you don't even understand, especially when said steps carry significant economic penalties, is unwarranted and uncalled for. What is called for is more studies, more data, and more time. The Earth won't burn to a fiery cinder if we wait five or ten years to figure out what's really going on, and we might just save everyone a lot of hardship if we do so. To claim otherwise is not only silly, it's unscientific.
Look, don't paint this as some sort of attack on the environment. Anyone with half a brain knows that if we manage to wreck this planet it could potentially destroy humanity. However, you wouldn't submit to chemotherapy unless (a) you were sure you had cancer and (b) you were sure the cancer was a type that would respond to chemotherapy. To do otherwise would (a) make you spend money on treatments that had no effect, potentially preventing you from spending money on more effective medicine, (b) make you very ill, which would negatively affect your lifestyle and perhaps even your lifespan, and (c) potentially deprive someone else in real need of chemotherapy from obtaining treatment due to finite availability of resources. All analogies are imperfect, but the arguments and their subsequent points outlined above should be obvious.
For something this big, we need more than a simple "second opinion" from the doctor, we need overwhelming evidence. A stab in the dark, hoping we're fixing the right variable, can do a lot more harm than good.
Hey, you're two for two on dead links. Let's see, first you make wild accusations, I call you on them, then you provide me with two dead links to "sources" you claim corroborate your story. Are you sure you're not Dan Rather?
Hed did you see those pictures of prisoners that were crufied on jail doors and metal beds? Har Har HAr that shit is funny.
If you're attemping to be humorous, I think it's prudent for me to inform you that you're failing miserably. As for the pictures you speak of, no, I haven't seen them, which is central to my argument that you ought to provide them. If you've seen them, you should do so immediately to prove me wrong. Try some links that actually work this time.
Hey I am a liberal.
What a total fucking shock.
You are sick, sadistic retard. You are one of those people who get better longer lasting erections when you hear about people being killed in your name and tortured. Do you tell your wife or girlfriend you are picturing a prisoner being sodomized with a broomstick when you are fucking her?
You know, you should really step back and take a look at yourself sometime. You're offensive, rude, nearly illiterate with your grammar, and utterly intolerant of someone who simply wishes to express a differing view of things. I thought liberals were supposed to be so tolerant and understanding of diversity. After all, isn't that what you chant at your union meetings? Or does that wonderous tolerance and love of diversity only extend to those who think like you? Orwell would be proud of your ability to reclassify the English language.
You can reply, but I will ignore it. I tend to refrain from engaging in intellectual arguments with idiots, so I'll just say I'm done with you and leave it at that. Go spew yourself silly somewhere else.
So, for instance, when Senator Martinez comes up for re-election, his opposition to Kyoto can be made into a campaign issue.
Turn that around and you can also say "Senator Martinez's support for American interests and jobs can be made into a campaign issue."
You really haven't examined this from more than one angle, have you? I'm going to vote for the candidate who best supports American interests, not Russian interests, not Chinese interests, not Indian interests, or any other national interest. And, as an American senator, that's what I'd expect any American governing official to do. This globalization stuff is something non-U.S. nationals have come up with as an excuse to damage the U.S. economically and politically because they can't do so militarily.
Fair enough. And while retaining American jobs at the expense of global climate change is certainly in our short term interests, a good case could be made that averting global climate change is in our overall best interests (as in, for instance, not losing California to the Atlantic Ocean.
And if there were convincing, unequivocal, non-debatable, overwhelming evidence supporting the idea that climate change is being done by humans, I'd be more than happy to use my Power of the Polls to put a politician in office that put strict measures in place. Thus far, no such evidence has come to light. There are as many studies for "climate change" as there are against it. And while there are a few obvious partisans in both camps (the anti-capitalists generally push their agenda's through environmental legislation, the corporate types fund their own studies saying it's all hogwash), there are several non-partisan, respected, credentialed scientists on both sides of this fence that no one can say climate change is our fault or not. In absence of definitive evidence, taking measures that are clearly punitive are uncalled for, which I why I do not support the Kyoto protocols.
There's a direct analogy to be made with outsourcing (although it may not make me any friends on/.). Although outsourcing American jobs is certainly not within our short term interests, the consensus among economists is that it is within the medium/long-term interests of both America and its trading partners.
I agree entirely, both that it won't win you any friends on/. and that it's entirely correct. If America tried to fight outsourcing with protectionist laws, domestic companies would eventually find themselves unable to compete with foreign firms operating without such restrictions. Those companies would fail, workers would be laid off, and our economy would suffer for it. Although some are being laid off now and some are suffering, overall the impact is negligible. During the Clinton years, an unemployment rate of 5% was considered stellar. We're at that now. The only reason people aren't rejoicing is because we got spoiled by the sub-2% unemployment of the 1999-2001 technology boom.
We can argue 'til the cows come home about whether we should prioritize short or long term interests. The consensus view among environmental scientists is similarly that emissions can bring about global climate change, and global climate change can bring about some very, very bad things.
Undoubtedly. However, these bad things may come to pass with or without human interference if we assume the global warming is a natural trend. Personally, I do believe it, because solar output is trending higher. A warmer Sun gives a warmer Earth, no? Is such a warming unprecedented? Well, that depends on who you ask. We know very, very little about our Sun and the Earth's climate in general, so little that we can't even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days. To say that we can accurately predict what the weather will be like in 50 years is, in my mind, ludicrous given the paucity of data currently on hand.
The primary accomplishment of globalization has been the expansion of US commercial power around the globe. That's not something non-US nationals came up with. Incidentally, I think that expansion of US commercial power is primarily a good thing, even if it does cause widespread short-term problems.
Forgive me, I was arguing "globalization" from the perspective of politics, not economics. Clearly the rest of the world would benefit from an economically-weaked U.S. in the sense that the playing field would be "more level." I, as an American, do not want to see that happen. Call me selfish, call me arrogant, call me whatever you want, but I'm an American first and everything else second. If push comes to shove, I want American ideals and American principles at the top, not muddled down somewhere between Syria and Belgium. The re
How about having a chemical light shoved up your ass?
Daniel Pearl is dead. D-E-A-D. Dead! A few hundred school children are also dead. Dead, as in "not alive," as in "will never grow up and play games, fall in love, get married, have kids, grow old" kind of dead. If you had to choose between getting a chemical light stick shoved up your ass and being killed, you'd choose the former any day of the week and twice on Sunday's because it's nowhere near the same as being shot in the back by an AK-47 or having your living head sawed off your body on television.
How about being beaten to death?
Show me documented proof that a prisoner was beaten to death. Thus far, no such evidence has surfaced, so your claim is fabricated as far as I'm concerned.
How about having your chest kicked hard enough to break a couple of ribs? How about being strapped to a board and continually dunked in the river?
Again, I'm going to point out the difference between being dead and not being dead. Saddam Hussein's sons fed people into plastic shredders feet first, and you're bitching about people being dunked in rivers? You're not just stupid, you're dangerously stupid. Your hatred of Bush, of America, and of our troops is so blinding, you're more than happy to overlook the real attrocities in your zeal to call everyone you disagree with a baby killer.
How about being crucified to a jail door for days at a time?
Again, show me proof. Thus far, no such incidents have been publicized. You're the one making the accusations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you don't have it, you're just fabricating things again. You sure you're not Dan Rather?
are able to excuse any act no matter how vile as long as that act was committed by a republican.
And you, sir, are able to overlook, refuse to acknowledge, or otherwise ignore any act no matter how vile as long as that act was committed by anyone not a Republican. Where was your moral outrage when Uday and Qusay were running rape rooms in Baghdad? Where was your anger when Abu Ghraib was being run by Saddam's goons, where torture by having limbs hacked off or being fed into shredders was commonplace? Oh, you've forgotten about that, haven't you? Such a typical liberal. Please, be my guest and pout a bit more to get out all that post-Kerry-flop anger you're holding inside. It's fun to watch a childish fool such as yourself throw a tantrum. It reminds me why I'm glad I'm nothing like you.
I know you're---sorry, "your"---probably going to want to throw a nice party with some bud and hamburgers and freedom fires to celebrate your overwhelming mandate of 3%, so y'all best get to it. (You probably had a tough time with learning maths and stuff, so understand that squiggly thing at the end of the number three means 'out of 100').
Those who cannot argue their points attack their opponent, which you've so ably demonstrated. I can see it is a waste of my time to try and educate you on your shortcomings. However, one thing is clear: your poster boy for American socialism got his ass handed to him in the election, and that's after all the Michael Moore's, Dan Rather's, and Al Franken's threw everything they could, every dirty trick, every half truth, every outright lie and fabrication, and every fear-mongering suggestion ("Bush will steal your social security! Bush wants to poison you with arsenic! Bush wants to start global thermonuclear war!") they could at him. John Kerry can take his purple hearts (you know, the ones he claimed to have thrown away before he decided to not throw them away) and go cry into his beer somewhere.
You go ahead and take the blame for stuff that's not our fault. Be my guest. You've obviously got some sort of guilt or inferiority complex that's forcing you to feel like being an American makes you a bad guy, so go ahead and feel glum. I'm proud to be American right now, and I'm proud of our president, proud of our military, and proud of what we're doing. You're the party of appeasers like Neville Chamberlain, I'm the party of Winston Churchill. You go figure out which one won the last major global battle.
The Euro's growth is indeed impressive. When the EU can back that up with solid economic growth as a percentage of GDP, then I'll be impressed. Until then, the US economy remains the envy of the world.
While the number of skeptics has been depicted as a very small group, one petition has been signed by over 17,000 scientists and engineers. The vastmajority of skeptics are well informed. Indeed some skeptics come across as positive, brilliant, human and interesting, far from the mediocre scientists that they are frequently depicted to be.
Go ahead. Read the whole article. There are some great gems in there that show there is indeed another side to this issue. If there's a media bias, it's that you only hear about one side of it, the we're-all-going-to-die-because-gluttonous-American s-drive-SUV's side. But if you want to pretend that everyone who opposes global warming (or "climate change" as it's now being called) is a meritless nutcase, you just go right ahead. Only a fool makes a judgement based on half the available evidence.
Intelligence failures leading up to the attack on 9/11
Since the French, Germans, Russians, and Brit intelligence agencies were all saying the same thing, I think you ought to include them just to be fair. But you're not interested in being fair, are you?
Abu Ghraib atrocities
What happened to Daniel Pearl was an attrocity. The killing of hundreds of innocent schoolchildren in Beslan by Muslim terrorists is an attrocity. Wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude for photographs is not an attrocity -- except in your morally twisted mind.
Leaking Valerie Plame's name
If she had actually been an undercover agent at the time, this might've had legs. As it was, she was not, and her identity as a CIA worker was well known. Her name was not "leaked" by any stretch of the imagination -- except yours.
Failing to find evidence of WMDs in Iraq
I'm sure the soldiers who got doused with Sarin gas shells will be pleased to know they weren't really hit with Sarin.
Failing to provide crucial evidence to a German court, allowing Abdelghani Mzoudi (one of the masterminds behind 9/11) to go free
When such evidence may expose U.S. intelligence gathering efforts, we have more than enough right to not divulge it to anyone. Besides, it's not like the E.U. has a sterling record in actually prosecuting and holding onto these animals. You don't even have a death penalty over there.
Compromising the cover of Al Qaeda cover Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan for no reason other than to brag how he was supplying the US with intelligence.
Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages. Your description of his activities as an "Al Queda cover" is not only wrong, it's stupid. Not that it surprises me in the slightest.
Now go on back to moveon.org, democraticunderground.com, michaelmoore.com, or wherever it is you get your jollies from these days. Kerry lost, Bush won -- deal with it and get over your sour grapes.
Except it isn't able to pay your own government's bills. America's economy is running on credit, which is not a good way to go at all.
And the EU is doing better? I think not. The EU would kill to have our unemployment levels, our productivity levels, and our economic growth levels. You see, America understands something European socialists never will: low taxes lead to economic growth, and high taxes lead to economic stagnation. A "nanny state" like those so popular in Europe can only maintain itself with high taxes and government subsidies, but that is not an equation for growth. Anyone who knows anything about business knows that "running on credit," as you put it, is sometimes necessary to get a larger economic gain.
An automobile engine may produce power, but it requires a starter to get it moving - i.e. a net energy deficit to begin with. If someone stupidly mandated "I refuse to put power into that engine until it starts producing power!", that engine will never run.
So, for instance, when Senator Martinez comes up for re-election, his opposition to Kyoto can be made into a campaign issue.
Turn that around and you can also say "Senator Martinez's support for American interests and jobs can be made into a campaign issue."
You really haven't examined this from more than one angle, have you? I'm going to vote for the candidate who best supports American interests, not Russian interests, not Chinese interests, not Indian interests, or any other national interest. And, as an American senator, that's what I'd expect any American governing official to do. This globalization stuff is something non-U.S. nationals have come up with as an excuse to damage the U.S. economically and politically because they can't do so militarily.
Hey! Look there! You've just made my Foe list is record time and with one of the shortest qualifying posts I've ever seen. Your ability to quickly and concisely display your idiocy is a credit to your breed. Bravo! Now go read your Karl Marx and leave the rest of us grown-ups alone.
Have you ever stopped to consider that Russia, China, et. al. may have an overriding reason for enforcemnent of the Kyoto protocals outside of the environmental concerns? If you haven't, you should.
Right now, America's economy is arguably doing better than any other economy on the planet. Since we're at the top of the heap, we have nowhere to go but down. Therefore, anyone who is "below" us in the economic pyramid has a very vested interest in seeing us taken down a few notches -- environment or no environment. Given that Kyoto only penalizes developed nations and gives a virtual blank check for emissions to "developing" nations like India and China, the Kyoto accords seem more like a political jab than any sort of environmental band-aid. As is popular in socialist and communist circles, the rich get hit with all the penalties so the poor can "catch up."
If you take the political angle of Kyoto and couple it with the fact that there are as many studies against global warming as there are for it, the whole treaty smells very fishy. Is the planet getting warming? Absolutely. Is it because of mankind? That's extremely debatable, and only a bitter partisan would ignore the fact that the scientific community remains bitterly divided over whether the Earth is warming naturally due to things like solar maxima and minima or whether it's due to CO2 emissions -- or whether it's due to something else completely different.
I for one would like for more research to be done before any knee-jerk treaty is clamped on the U.S. -- or any other country, for that matter. The highest calling for a scientist is to seek the truth and leave emotionalism out of the equation. Right now, I don't think anyone has enough evidence to accurately say what's going on either way, which means more research is needed. A good scientist doesn't jump to conclusions, but that's precisely what's going on here with this treaty.
It may not be efficent to count the absentee ballots; it will guarantee an accurate representation of the will of the people in the vote count.
In a presidential election "the will of the people" is expressed solely and completely by the electoral vote, not by the popular vote, so your idea is pointless. The will of the people is being represented according to the wills and wishes of the Founding Fathers, and I think they had a far better grip on things than you do.
Now, if you were talking about voting on a race or an issue that is determined by a popular vote, there are still situations where every vote does not need to be counted. Consider the following scenario: if, during a popular vote tally, one contender has attained 51% of the vote, it is useless to count the rest because it will make no difference in the outcome. Now, if you're in to bragging about stupid statistics like "my candidate lost, but he/she got 49% of the vote" then of course you want all the votes counted, but such a statistic is just plain childish. It doesn't matter how big the margin is, it matters who won. Anyone who tries to claim the loser of a contest has some sort of legitimacy because he or she "came close" is just practicing sour grapes.
More does not necessarily guarantee better. But I will agree that I'd always prefer more choice to less choice.
How about counting *every* absentee vote, regardless of whether the race is close or not.
Why? Let us suppose candidate A has a 130,000 vote lead over candidate B, just as Ohio had. If there is nothing left to count but absentee/provisional ballots, and those ballots number less than the 130,000-vote lead of candidate A, there is no possible way candidate B can prevail, even if 100% of those ballots were in his favor. Thus it's a waste of time to count them. It would not alter the results. It might alter the popular vote numbers nationwide, but that is irrelevant to our electoral process.
It's way too open in the US. People getting ready to vote at 3 or 4 PM may watch the news, see that one candidate is winning (when about 25% of the vote has been tallied, if that) and not go to vote when they could have possibly made a difference seeing as the votes they saw were from a different state or district.
On this we agree. I would support a law preventing any news agency from calling any state until all states have closed their polls -- including Hawaii and Alaska. No exit polls, either, as they can be similarly misleading. We Americans need to learn a little patience here.
I think you're thinking a little bit simplistic here.
No, I think he's being a lot simplistic here, but that's just part of the larger mindset of Slashdot. "Linux GOOD! Microsoft BAD!" It's become the sheep's favorite thing to say during intense meetings on this Animal Farm we call Slashdot. You can lead a zealot to the truth, but you cannot make him think.
Excepting the energy lost due to aerodynamic drag and gravitational attraction during the boost phase, any spacecraft retains all energy put into it during the boost phase. Therefore, if it took a half a million pounds of fuel to put you in orbit, and you lost 50% of it to drag/gravity during launch, you have to either (a) bleed off a quarter million pounds of fuel worth of energy or (b) burn a quarter million pounds of fuel to slow yourself down to zero velocity.
I would say the tourism industry, which was built because people are willing to spend millions/billions/trillions to go somewhere, disproves your statement quite nicely. Or did you forget that tourism is a for profit industry?
We need to start doing something to reverse the trend or the costs will be catastrophic. The causes don't matter and the facts are indisputable: the Earth is getting warmer and there is more CO2 in the air.
Using your logic, you could also say "the Earth is getting warmer and there are more humans on Earth than 100 years ago. Therefore, we should kill enough people to put our population numbers back to what they were." You've just arbitrarily chosen CO2 as the linchpin of your argument. You could have just as easily chosen a huge number of other variables, each of which may be just as important or even more important to the overall climate equation. But, hey, doing something is great, right? Sure, let's just make a decision based on incomplete, unsupported findings by a few scientists and disregard the equally-valid counterclaims of other scientists.
Your mentality in this is alarmingly uninformed, but common these days. It amounts to saying "we don't care what science says, we know what's going on and we're going to do something about it." Try being a bit more humble and you'll see the utter folly of your argument.
Let me tell you what would happen if everyone suddenly decided to think like you: everyone would focus on CO2 emissions to the exclusion of everything else. Research into possible other causes of global warming would wither and die. If you're wrong, you just made the situation much, much worse by jumping to an unsupportable conclusion.
There are three possible cases here: CO2 is reponsible for it all, CO2 is partially responsible, or CO2 has little or nothing to do with it. You're taking case #1 and calling everyone else liars. However, with better studies and more exacting information, we can emphatically say that CO2 is or is not the bogeyman we need to be pursuing. I'm not saying we wait forever, but a delay of a decade might give us much more valuable insight into a global climate we know very, very little about.
If history has shown us anything, it's shown that the more important the decision being made, the more reliable and voluminous the data must be before making that decision. Your thinking would shortcut that entire process. I again urge you to rethink your position on this and consider that science is far from being "done" with the entire question of climate change. This is not the Dark Ages of mysticism, so quit acting like you've got a crystal ball telling you the infallible truth.
Global warming deniers at this point are in the same class as creationists, Holocaust-deniers, and flat-earthers -- it's not that they're being dismissed out of hand, it's that their arguments have been proven wrong time and time again, to the point that there's really no point in continuing the argument, and yet they just keep going.
Allow me to interject something here. What you're really arguing is two separate things. First, you're saying the Earth is getting warmer. Second, you're attributing that climate change solely, completely, and unequivocally to human-caused CO2 emissions. While it's easy to argue the former, it is nearly impossible to prove the latter, but that's what you're trying to do here.
Is the planet getting warmer? Yes, it is. Global reviews agree on this no matter what. But is this change due to humans? Consider, for a moment, that our sun varies its solar output quite a bit over a fairly regular period, heating and cooling the entire planet. As it so happens, the sun *is* warming up a bit right now, so naturally the planet would get a bit warmer. I'll quote from the following website:
The sunspot or solar cycle does not have the same magnitude every eleven years, however. Entire cycles can have lower activity levels than usual, as during the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1700, or the upcoming maximum might have more activity than ever. A look at the sunspot plot for the last two centuries will show the fluctuation in minima and maxima.
I think it's safe to say NASA knows a bit more about this solar phenomena than you do. It's also worth noting that these solar cycles do not have predictable magnitudes. It could be that this solar maxima is unusually large. There could also be larger patterns outside of the standard 11-year solar cycle that we do not yet understand about our sun.
So, not to put too fine a point on it, your insistence on referring to those who disagree with you as "lying" is merely showing your own ignorance in this matter. The bald truth is that nobody is sure why the planet is heating up. CO2 emissions may or may not have anything to do with it, although scientific evidence actually does seem to indicate our CO2 output is far below what is necessary to cause global climactic change (a large volcanic erruption can issue more CO2 than a major industrialized nation, yet we don't see massive climate change after those).
So, to use your phrase, I plant to "just keep going" in my quest to discover exactly why the planet might be getting warmer. If it is indeed human-caused, I fully support anything that must be done to curtail it. Now is not the time, however, to close one's mind to the scientific process. The scientific community as a whole has not reached consensus over this issue, despite what the one-sided press would have us believe. Right now, there is just not enough data to blame humanity for any kind of global climate alteration. But if more people reacted like you, making up your mind on incomplete facts, supposition, and wild-assed guesses, we could end up doing more harm than good. I strongly urge you to reconsider your close-minded approach to this issue. You are doing nobody any favors by ignoring evidence you simply don't agree with.
I'll remember your comment the next time someone categorizes Americans as offensive, rude, or of having a myopic, stereotypical view of the world outside our borders. Your kind, mature, intelligent, objective viewpoint speaks volumes.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, forgot the link. Here it is:
m at eChange.htm
http://lawr.ucdavis.edu/classes/atm5/L17-18-Cli
I'll further point out that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo put (according to USGS estimates) nearly 30 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. By comparison, humanity injects 7.7 billion tons per year. Global climatic effects of the eruption were net reductions in global temperatures, although arguably these were the result of airborne ash and not anything to do with CO2. Still, the point is clear: the global temp depends on a lot of things other than CO2. I'll also point out this study paper concludes that a 1% fluctuation in solar output can be equal to all CO2 emissions worldwide -- manmade or otherwise! In the grand scheme of things, C02 is actually a relatively small player when it comes to global weather, at least as far as we understand it now.
NASA research indicates that if all countries implemented all facets of the Kyoto accords, global temps would be affected by about 0.7C by the year 2050 -- almost too small to measure! I can provide source links if you like, but if you google for it, you'll find it. I didn't even have to look hard.
The point of all this is simple: we don't know enough to make any decisions at this point, certianly not ones that have deleterious effects to large numbers of people (be they Americans, Ukranians, or Belgians, it doesn't matter -- nobody likes losing their job). The U.S. is not being selfish by refusing to sign the treaty, it is being sensible. Other countries signing it have everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. Politically, it's great for them, and I doubt the environmental side of it comes into play very much. After all, some of the dirtiest, unhealthiest air on the planet can be found in India, China, and Russia. Do they care about the environment? I doubt it. Do they care about damaging the U.S. economically? Absolutely.
Links work just fine for those of us who aren't stupider than shit.
Again, I must complement you for immediately defining your level of maturity and intelligence. It will make it easier for me to frame the following discussion so someone down at your level might have a chance at understanding it.
Since the links were broken, I did my own Google search on "Abu Ghraib prisoner death" and came up with this. We have photos of servicemen showing the "thumbs up" over Iraqi bodies in the prison. How did they die? Sources conflict. Some say he died during interrogation. Some say he died of a head would sustained in the attack in which he was captured. You, being judge, jury, and executioner, have already decided the answer without any benefit of hard evidence, hearing any testimony, or anything at all except seeing a photograph and reading a newspaper. I'm sure tomorrow you'll be taking the bar exam and heading off to a wonderful life of being a lawyer. After all, you've got it all figured out, don't you?
I will offer you this one bone: abuses did indeed take place, and it appears several servicemen and women practiced not only bad taste but unspeakable conduct totally unbefitting a soldier, sailor, or Marine. If you'll note, those involved are being prosecuted and imprisoned themselves.
But to tar the entire U.S. military with this same brush is not only unfair, it's ludicrous. There are a few hundred thousand U.S. troops in Iraq right now. Even if every single guard at Abu Ghraib commited a crime, that still represents less than one tenth of one percent of all deployed forces in the area. Unless they have another agenda, no sane, thinking, intelligent person would even attempt to do what you're doing. But, then again, you're a liberal, and thinking is a somewhat alien concept. You'd rather feel than think. Apparently, evolution is something that's more or less passed you by, isn't it? Because you're doing far more instinctive knee jerking than thinking here, and higher brain functions are a part of that whole evolutionary package, aren't they? Bah, I'm talking to a monkey here, wasting my time. Go burn a flag and worship Stalin or something.
Why the flame?
No flame intended, it was an honest question. What a liberal sees as a possible weakness is almost certainly what a conservative would see as a strength. A simple acknowledgement that there are two sides to every issue is all I was getting at.
Oh, and you need to retake your civics class: senators are not "governing official[s]", they're legislators.
Picky, picky, picky...yes, technically they are legislators, but in the heat of the moment the best descriptor I could come up with was "governing official." I'm well aware of what a legislator is, it's just my skull-bound dictionary couldn't find it at that particular second.
Btw, I hope that one day, your senators will take a broader view of the national interest than you do. Global warming does not respect national borders.
What, pray tell, is "the national interest"? Interpreted literally, I see that as "whatever is in the best interests of the nation in question," which seems to be at odds with your follow-up "Global warming does not respect national borders." What I think you're trying to say here is that you hope a future U.S. legislator takes other nations into account for future policy. Sorry, I don't see it that way. Briton's want the U.K. to be on top. The French want France on top. The Russians want Russia on top. Ditto Chinese. Ditto ditto Japanese. It goes on and on. Wherever I'm at, that's who I want to be on top. It's human nature, and I'm not afraid or ashamed to admit it. It does not discount altruism on my part, but it by no mean obligates me to it.
If you had a solid foundation backing up the current global warming claims, I'd agree with you. No such foundation exists because the scientific community is fractured on this subject. As I stated in several earlier and related posts, for every unbiased, non-partisan expert study found backing global warming (or "climate change" as it's become trendily named), there is a corresponding counter-study with opposite results. Discounting the bitter partisans on both extreme sides (the ultra-environmentalists, which are really closet anti-capitalists, and the ultra-capitalists which are for total environmental exploitation at any cost), there are a lot of credible, informed, educated, non-biased people in the scientific community that simply cannot agree as to why the Earth is getting warmer. To take steps, any steps, to combat something you don't even understand, especially when said steps carry significant economic penalties, is unwarranted and uncalled for. What is called for is more studies, more data, and more time. The Earth won't burn to a fiery cinder if we wait five or ten years to figure out what's really going on, and we might just save everyone a lot of hardship if we do so. To claim otherwise is not only silly, it's unscientific.
Look, don't paint this as some sort of attack on the environment. Anyone with half a brain knows that if we manage to wreck this planet it could potentially destroy humanity. However, you wouldn't submit to chemotherapy unless (a) you were sure you had cancer and (b) you were sure the cancer was a type that would respond to chemotherapy. To do otherwise would (a) make you spend money on treatments that had no effect, potentially preventing you from spending money on more effective medicine, (b) make you very ill, which would negatively affect your lifestyle and perhaps even your lifespan, and (c) potentially deprive someone else in real need of chemotherapy from obtaining treatment due to finite availability of resources. All analogies are imperfect, but the arguments and their subsequent points outlined above should be obvious.
For something this big, we need more than a simple "second opinion" from the doctor, we need overwhelming evidence. A stab in the dark, hoping we're fixing the right variable, can do a lot more harm than good.
Aahh a republitard.
4 -prisoner-deaths_x.htm
4 %20,909294,00.html
Nice of you to start out by proving your intellect to be so low.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-05-0
Sorry, link is dead. Try again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,128
Hey, you're two for two on dead links. Let's see, first you make wild accusations, I call you on them, then you provide me with two dead links to "sources" you claim corroborate your story. Are you sure you're not Dan Rather?
Hed did you see those pictures of prisoners that were crufied on jail doors and metal beds? Har Har HAr that shit is funny.
If you're attemping to be humorous, I think it's prudent for me to inform you that you're failing miserably. As for the pictures you speak of, no, I haven't seen them, which is central to my argument that you ought to provide them. If you've seen them, you should do so immediately to prove me wrong. Try some links that actually work this time.
Hey I am a liberal.
What a total fucking shock.
You are sick, sadistic retard. You are one of those people who get better longer lasting erections when you hear about people being killed in your name and tortured. Do you tell your wife or girlfriend you are picturing a prisoner being sodomized with a broomstick when you are fucking her?
You know, you should really step back and take a look at yourself sometime. You're offensive, rude, nearly illiterate with your grammar, and utterly intolerant of someone who simply wishes to express a differing view of things. I thought liberals were supposed to be so tolerant and understanding of diversity. After all, isn't that what you chant at your union meetings? Or does that wonderous tolerance and love of diversity only extend to those who think like you? Orwell would be proud of your ability to reclassify the English language.
You can reply, but I will ignore it. I tend to refrain from engaging in intellectual arguments with idiots, so I'll just say I'm done with you and leave it at that. Go spew yourself silly somewhere else.
So, for instance, when Senator Martinez comes up for re-election, his opposition to Kyoto can be made into a campaign issue.
Turn that around and you can also say "Senator Martinez's support for American interests and jobs can be made into a campaign issue."
You really haven't examined this from more than one angle, have you? I'm going to vote for the candidate who best supports American interests, not Russian interests, not Chinese interests, not Indian interests, or any other national interest. And, as an American senator, that's what I'd expect any American governing official to do. This globalization stuff is something non-U.S. nationals have come up with as an excuse to damage the U.S. economically and politically because they can't do so militarily.
Hey Coward! Care to post using your handle so you can get your "-1 Idiot Anarchist" moderation point for the day?
Fair enough. And while retaining American jobs at the expense of global climate change is certainly in our short term interests, a good case could be made that averting global climate change is in our overall best interests (as in, for instance, not losing California to the Atlantic Ocean.
/.). Although outsourcing American jobs is certainly not within our short term interests, the consensus among economists is that it is within the medium/long-term interests of both America and its trading partners.
/. and that it's entirely correct. If America tried to fight outsourcing with protectionist laws, domestic companies would eventually find themselves unable to compete with foreign firms operating without such restrictions. Those companies would fail, workers would be laid off, and our economy would suffer for it. Although some are being laid off now and some are suffering, overall the impact is negligible. During the Clinton years, an unemployment rate of 5% was considered stellar. We're at that now. The only reason people aren't rejoicing is because we got spoiled by the sub-2% unemployment of the 1999-2001 technology boom.
And if there were convincing, unequivocal, non-debatable, overwhelming evidence supporting the idea that climate change is being done by humans, I'd be more than happy to use my Power of the Polls to put a politician in office that put strict measures in place. Thus far, no such evidence has come to light. There are as many studies for "climate change" as there are against it. And while there are a few obvious partisans in both camps (the anti-capitalists generally push their agenda's through environmental legislation, the corporate types fund their own studies saying it's all hogwash), there are several non-partisan, respected, credentialed scientists on both sides of this fence that no one can say climate change is our fault or not. In absence of definitive evidence, taking measures that are clearly punitive are uncalled for, which I why I do not support the Kyoto protocols.
There's a direct analogy to be made with outsourcing (although it may not make me any friends on
I agree entirely, both that it won't win you any friends on
We can argue 'til the cows come home about whether we should prioritize short or long term interests. The consensus view among environmental scientists is similarly that emissions can bring about global climate change, and global climate change can bring about some very, very bad things.
Undoubtedly. However, these bad things may come to pass with or without human interference if we assume the global warming is a natural trend. Personally, I do believe it, because solar output is trending higher. A warmer Sun gives a warmer Earth, no? Is such a warming unprecedented? Well, that depends on who you ask. We know very, very little about our Sun and the Earth's climate in general, so little that we can't even predict the weather accurately for more than a few days. To say that we can accurately predict what the weather will be like in 50 years is, in my mind, ludicrous given the paucity of data currently on hand.
The primary accomplishment of globalization has been the expansion of US commercial power around the globe. That's not something non-US nationals came up with. Incidentally, I think that expansion of US commercial power is primarily a good thing, even if it does cause widespread short-term problems.
Forgive me, I was arguing "globalization" from the perspective of politics, not economics. Clearly the rest of the world would benefit from an economically-weaked U.S. in the sense that the playing field would be "more level." I, as an American, do not want to see that happen. Call me selfish, call me arrogant, call me whatever you want, but I'm an American first and everything else second. If push comes to shove, I want American ideals and American principles at the top, not muddled down somewhere between Syria and Belgium. The re
How about having a chemical light shoved up your ass?
Daniel Pearl is dead. D-E-A-D. Dead! A few hundred school children are also dead. Dead, as in "not alive," as in "will never grow up and play games, fall in love, get married, have kids, grow old" kind of dead. If you had to choose between getting a chemical light stick shoved up your ass and being killed, you'd choose the former any day of the week and twice on Sunday's because it's nowhere near the same as being shot in the back by an AK-47 or having your living head sawed off your body on television.
How about being beaten to death?
Show me documented proof that a prisoner was beaten to death. Thus far, no such evidence has surfaced, so your claim is fabricated as far as I'm concerned.
How about having your chest kicked hard enough to break a couple of ribs? How about being strapped to a board and continually dunked in the river?
Again, I'm going to point out the difference between being dead and not being dead. Saddam Hussein's sons fed people into plastic shredders feet first, and you're bitching about people being dunked in rivers? You're not just stupid, you're dangerously stupid. Your hatred of Bush, of America, and of our troops is so blinding, you're more than happy to overlook the real attrocities in your zeal to call everyone you disagree with a baby killer.
How about being crucified to a jail door for days at a time?
Again, show me proof. Thus far, no such incidents have been publicized. You're the one making the accusations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. If you don't have it, you're just fabricating things again. You sure you're not Dan Rather?
are able to excuse any act no matter how vile as long as that act was committed by a republican.
And you, sir, are able to overlook, refuse to acknowledge, or otherwise ignore any act no matter how vile as long as that act was committed by anyone not a Republican. Where was your moral outrage when Uday and Qusay were running rape rooms in Baghdad? Where was your anger when Abu Ghraib was being run by Saddam's goons, where torture by having limbs hacked off or being fed into shredders was commonplace? Oh, you've forgotten about that, haven't you? Such a typical liberal. Please, be my guest and pout a bit more to get out all that post-Kerry-flop anger you're holding inside. It's fun to watch a childish fool such as yourself throw a tantrum. It reminds me why I'm glad I'm nothing like you.
I know you're---sorry, "your"---probably going to want to throw a nice party with some bud and hamburgers and freedom fires to celebrate your overwhelming mandate of 3%, so y'all best get to it. (You probably had a tough time with learning maths and stuff, so understand that squiggly thing at the end of the number three means 'out of 100').
Those who cannot argue their points attack their opponent, which you've so ably demonstrated. I can see it is a waste of my time to try and educate you on your shortcomings. However, one thing is clear: your poster boy for American socialism got his ass handed to him in the election, and that's after all the Michael Moore's, Dan Rather's, and Al Franken's threw everything they could, every dirty trick, every half truth, every outright lie and fabrication, and every fear-mongering suggestion ("Bush will steal your social security! Bush wants to poison you with arsenic! Bush wants to start global thermonuclear war!") they could at him. John Kerry can take his purple hearts (you know, the ones he claimed to have thrown away before he decided to not throw them away) and go cry into his beer somewhere.
You go ahead and take the blame for stuff that's not our fault. Be my guest. You've obviously got some sort of guilt or inferiority complex that's forcing you to feel like being an American makes you a bad guy, so go ahead and feel glum. I'm proud to be American right now, and I'm proud of our president, proud of our military, and proud of what we're doing. You're the party of appeasers like Neville Chamberlain, I'm the party of Winston Churchill. You go figure out which one won the last major global battle.
The Euro's growth is indeed impressive. When the EU can back that up with solid economic growth as a percentage of GDP, then I'll be impressed. Until then, the US economy remains the envy of the world.
I retort:
i ng.htm
n s-drive-SUV's side. But if you want to pretend that everyone who opposes global warming (or "climate change" as it's now being called) is a meritless nutcase, you just go right ahead. Only a fool makes a judgement based on half the available evidence.
While the number of skeptics has been depicted as a very small group, one petition has been signed by over 17,000 scientists and engineers. The vastmajority of skeptics are well informed. Indeed some skeptics come across as positive, brilliant, human and interesting, far from the mediocre scientists that they are frequently depicted to be.
Source: http://www.austinreview.com/articles/2001_10/warm
Go ahead. Read the whole article. There are some great gems in there that show there is indeed another side to this issue. If there's a media bias, it's that you only hear about one side of it, the we're-all-going-to-die-because-gluttonous-America
Intelligence failures leading up to the attack on 9/11
Since the French, Germans, Russians, and Brit intelligence agencies were all saying the same thing, I think you ought to include them just to be fair. But you're not interested in being fair, are you?
Abu Ghraib atrocities
What happened to Daniel Pearl was an attrocity. The killing of hundreds of innocent schoolchildren in Beslan by Muslim terrorists is an attrocity. Wearing panties on your head and being forced to pose nude for photographs is not an attrocity -- except in your morally twisted mind.
Leaking Valerie Plame's name
If she had actually been an undercover agent at the time, this might've had legs. As it was, she was not, and her identity as a CIA worker was well known. Her name was not "leaked" by any stretch of the imagination -- except yours.
Failing to find evidence of WMDs in Iraq
I'm sure the soldiers who got doused with Sarin gas shells will be pleased to know they weren't really hit with Sarin.
Failing to provide crucial evidence to a German court, allowing Abdelghani Mzoudi (one of the masterminds behind 9/11) to go free
When such evidence may expose U.S. intelligence gathering efforts, we have more than enough right to not divulge it to anyone. Besides, it's not like the E.U. has a sterling record in actually prosecuting and holding onto these animals. You don't even have a death penalty over there.
Compromising the cover of Al Qaeda cover Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan for no reason other than to brag how he was supplying the US with intelligence.
Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages. Your description of his activities as an "Al Queda cover" is not only wrong, it's stupid. Not that it surprises me in the slightest.
Now go on back to moveon.org, democraticunderground.com, michaelmoore.com, or wherever it is you get your jollies from these days. Kerry lost, Bush won -- deal with it and get over your sour grapes.
Except it isn't able to pay your own government's bills. America's economy is running on credit, which is not a good way to go at all.
And the EU is doing better? I think not. The EU would kill to have our unemployment levels, our productivity levels, and our economic growth levels. You see, America understands something European socialists never will: low taxes lead to economic growth, and high taxes lead to economic stagnation. A "nanny state" like those so popular in Europe can only maintain itself with high taxes and government subsidies, but that is not an equation for growth. Anyone who knows anything about business knows that "running on credit," as you put it, is sometimes necessary to get a larger economic gain.
An automobile engine may produce power, but it requires a starter to get it moving - i.e. a net energy deficit to begin with. If someone stupidly mandated "I refuse to put power into that engine until it starts producing power!", that engine will never run.
So, for instance, when Senator Martinez comes up for re-election, his opposition to Kyoto can be made into a campaign issue.
Turn that around and you can also say "Senator Martinez's support for American interests and jobs can be made into a campaign issue."
You really haven't examined this from more than one angle, have you? I'm going to vote for the candidate who best supports American interests, not Russian interests, not Chinese interests, not Indian interests, or any other national interest. And, as an American senator, that's what I'd expect any American governing official to do. This globalization stuff is something non-U.S. nationals have come up with as an excuse to damage the U.S. economically and politically because they can't do so militarily.
Hey! Look there! You've just made my Foe list is record time and with one of the shortest qualifying posts I've ever seen. Your ability to quickly and concisely display your idiocy is a credit to your breed. Bravo! Now go read your Karl Marx and leave the rest of us grown-ups alone.
Have you ever stopped to consider that Russia, China, et. al. may have an overriding reason for enforcemnent of the Kyoto protocals outside of the environmental concerns? If you haven't, you should.
Right now, America's economy is arguably doing better than any other economy on the planet. Since we're at the top of the heap, we have nowhere to go but down. Therefore, anyone who is "below" us in the economic pyramid has a very vested interest in seeing us taken down a few notches -- environment or no environment. Given that Kyoto only penalizes developed nations and gives a virtual blank check for emissions to "developing" nations like India and China, the Kyoto accords seem more like a political jab than any sort of environmental band-aid. As is popular in socialist and communist circles, the rich get hit with all the penalties so the poor can "catch up."
If you take the political angle of Kyoto and couple it with the fact that there are as many studies against global warming as there are for it, the whole treaty smells very fishy. Is the planet getting warming? Absolutely. Is it because of mankind? That's extremely debatable, and only a bitter partisan would ignore the fact that the scientific community remains bitterly divided over whether the Earth is warming naturally due to things like solar maxima and minima or whether it's due to CO2 emissions -- or whether it's due to something else completely different.
I for one would like for more research to be done before any knee-jerk treaty is clamped on the U.S. -- or any other country, for that matter. The highest calling for a scientist is to seek the truth and leave emotionalism out of the equation. Right now, I don't think anyone has enough evidence to accurately say what's going on either way, which means more research is needed. A good scientist doesn't jump to conclusions, but that's precisely what's going on here with this treaty.
It may not be efficent to count the absentee ballots; it will guarantee an accurate representation of the will of the people in the vote count.
In a presidential election "the will of the people" is expressed solely and completely by the electoral vote, not by the popular vote, so your idea is pointless. The will of the people is being represented according to the wills and wishes of the Founding Fathers, and I think they had a far better grip on things than you do.
Now, if you were talking about voting on a race or an issue that is determined by a popular vote, there are still situations where every vote does not need to be counted. Consider the following scenario: if, during a popular vote tally, one contender has attained 51% of the vote, it is useless to count the rest because it will make no difference in the outcome. Now, if you're in to bragging about stupid statistics like "my candidate lost, but he/she got 49% of the vote" then of course you want all the votes counted, but such a statistic is just plain childish. It doesn't matter how big the margin is, it matters who won. Anyone who tries to claim the loser of a contest has some sort of legitimacy because he or she "came close" is just practicing sour grapes.
How about changing us away from a 2-party system?
More does not necessarily guarantee better. But I will agree that I'd always prefer more choice to less choice.
How about counting *every* absentee vote, regardless of whether the race is close or not.
Why? Let us suppose candidate A has a 130,000 vote lead over candidate B, just as Ohio had. If there is nothing left to count but absentee/provisional ballots, and those ballots number less than the 130,000-vote lead of candidate A, there is no possible way candidate B can prevail, even if 100% of those ballots were in his favor. Thus it's a waste of time to count them. It would not alter the results. It might alter the popular vote numbers nationwide, but that is irrelevant to our electoral process.
It's way too open in the US. People getting ready to vote at 3 or 4 PM may watch the news, see that one candidate is winning (when about 25% of the vote has been tallied, if that) and not go to vote when they could have possibly made a difference seeing as the votes they saw were from a different state or district.
On this we agree. I would support a law preventing any news agency from calling any state until all states have closed their polls -- including Hawaii and Alaska. No exit polls, either, as they can be similarly misleading. We Americans need to learn a little patience here.
I think you're thinking a little bit simplistic here.
No, I think he's being a lot simplistic here, but that's just part of the larger mindset of Slashdot. "Linux GOOD! Microsoft BAD!" It's become the sheep's favorite thing to say during intense meetings on this Animal Farm we call Slashdot. You can lead a zealot to the truth, but you cannot make him think.
Excepting the energy lost due to aerodynamic drag and gravitational attraction during the boost phase, any spacecraft retains all energy put into it during the boost phase. Therefore, if it took a half a million pounds of fuel to put you in orbit, and you lost 50% of it to drag/gravity during launch, you have to either (a) bleed off a quarter million pounds of fuel worth of energy or (b) burn a quarter million pounds of fuel to slow yourself down to zero velocity.
I would say the tourism industry, which was built because people are willing to spend millions/billions/trillions to go somewhere, disproves your statement quite nicely. Or did you forget that tourism is a for profit industry?
We need to start doing something to reverse the trend or the costs will be catastrophic. The causes don't matter and the facts are indisputable: the Earth is getting warmer and there is more CO2 in the air.
Using your logic, you could also say "the Earth is getting warmer and there are more humans on Earth than 100 years ago. Therefore, we should kill enough people to put our population numbers back to what they were." You've just arbitrarily chosen CO2 as the linchpin of your argument. You could have just as easily chosen a huge number of other variables, each of which may be just as important or even more important to the overall climate equation. But, hey, doing something is great, right? Sure, let's just make a decision based on incomplete, unsupported findings by a few scientists and disregard the equally-valid counterclaims of other scientists.
Your mentality in this is alarmingly uninformed, but common these days. It amounts to saying "we don't care what science says, we know what's going on and we're going to do something about it." Try being a bit more humble and you'll see the utter folly of your argument.
Let me tell you what would happen if everyone suddenly decided to think like you: everyone would focus on CO2 emissions to the exclusion of everything else. Research into possible other causes of global warming would wither and die. If you're wrong, you just made the situation much, much worse by jumping to an unsupportable conclusion.
There are three possible cases here: CO2 is reponsible for it all, CO2 is partially responsible, or CO2 has little or nothing to do with it. You're taking case #1 and calling everyone else liars. However, with better studies and more exacting information, we can emphatically say that CO2 is or is not the bogeyman we need to be pursuing. I'm not saying we wait forever, but a delay of a decade might give us much more valuable insight into a global climate we know very, very little about.
If history has shown us anything, it's shown that the more important the decision being made, the more reliable and voluminous the data must be before making that decision. Your thinking would shortcut that entire process. I again urge you to rethink your position on this and consider that science is far from being "done" with the entire question of climate change. This is not the Dark Ages of mysticism, so quit acting like you've got a crystal ball telling you the infallible truth.
Allow me to interject something here. What you're really arguing is two separate things. First, you're saying the Earth is getting warmer. Second, you're attributing that climate change solely, completely, and unequivocally to human-caused CO2 emissions. While it's easy to argue the former, it is nearly impossible to prove the latter, but that's what you're trying to do here.
Is the planet getting warmer? Yes, it is. Global reviews agree on this no matter what. But is this change due to humans? Consider, for a moment, that our sun varies its solar output quite a bit over a fairly regular period, heating and cooling the entire planet. As it so happens, the sun *is* warming up a bit right now, so naturally the planet would get a bit warmer. I'll quote from the following website:
.
Source: http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/istp/outreach/solar
I think it's safe to say NASA knows a bit more about this solar phenomena than you do. It's also worth noting that these solar cycles do not have predictable magnitudes. It could be that this solar maxima is unusually large. There could also be larger patterns outside of the standard 11-year solar cycle that we do not yet understand about our sun.
So, not to put too fine a point on it, your insistence on referring to those who disagree with you as "lying" is merely showing your own ignorance in this matter. The bald truth is that nobody is sure why the planet is heating up. CO2 emissions may or may not have anything to do with it, although scientific evidence actually does seem to indicate our CO2 output is far below what is necessary to cause global climactic change (a large volcanic erruption can issue more CO2 than a major industrialized nation, yet we don't see massive climate change after those).
So, to use your phrase, I plant to "just keep going" in my quest to discover exactly why the planet might be getting warmer. If it is indeed human-caused, I fully support anything that must be done to curtail it. Now is not the time, however, to close one's mind to the scientific process. The scientific community as a whole has not reached consensus over this issue, despite what the one-sided press would have us believe. Right now, there is just not enough data to blame humanity for any kind of global climate alteration. But if more people reacted like you, making up your mind on incomplete facts, supposition, and wild-assed guesses, we could end up doing more harm than good. I strongly urge you to reconsider your close-minded approach to this issue. You are doing nobody any favors by ignoring evidence you simply don't agree with.
I'll remember your comment the next time someone categorizes Americans as offensive, rude, or of having a myopic, stereotypical view of the world outside our borders. Your kind, mature, intelligent, objective viewpoint speaks volumes.