Must be too many SUVs on Mars, since it is getting warmer too. Or maybe, just maybe, much of the warming of Mars and Earth has to do with increased sun activity?
And so does the Washington Times which recently reprinted this 1794 Newsweek piece. The kind of language used is eerily similar to the global warming talk today.
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production -- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.
The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas -- parts ofIndia,Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia -- where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree -- a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras -- and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 -- years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term
They would have won a battle to silence their critics, similar to the cartoon riots and the subsequent refusal of newspapers to print the cartoons out of fear, which is one of the apparent goals of radical Islam.
Can there be any more proof that the Dems are unfit to lead this nation? In a time of major issues and challenges, all they can come up (other than the incessant, childish Bush-bashing) with is an expansion of the nanny state? Yikes.
Thanks for the much more substantive response. I disagree with it utterly, but it's been a terribly long day and I don't have the energy to debate the issues any longer.
I will just say that I think that history will look very, very favorably on President Bush.
There's more then enough evidence to say, without a doubt if we leave out alternate dimensions, that there were no WMDs..
Please present that evidence.
Don't get me wrong, there might not have been WMDs at or near the time of the invasion (the Kurds can tell you about other time frames...), but there isn't conclusive evidence that WMDs never existed. In any case, lack of WMDs is loooooong way from supporting the idea that "Bush lied!"
It's too bad that there are no news organizations left that do any kind of investigative reporting. It would be nice to have this guy's claims analyzed by a third party.
You can't possibly be serious. The conservative-hating members of the media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. ad nauseum would be all over this story if there were something to it. The fact they aren't speaks volumes about the story's credibility.
Face it, nutty conspiracy theories don't wash with normal people. Only on sites like Dailykos, DU, and Slashdot are such tales lapped up.
Here an inconvenient question for the tinfoil hat crowd: if the Bush administration lied, then didn't all the major governments of Europe, and many Clinton administation officials, all of whom said Saddam had WMDs and posed a threat?
> Perceived incompatibility may be a factor for some people, but it is certainly not the only reason and probably not even the primary reason why people don't switch.
It is for me... and it isn't "perceived". There are enough real quirks in the translation for me to make the switch to OO. It is, in fact, the *only* thing holding me back. The MS translation *must* be nearly perfect for me to switch.
Reminds of that Guinness rhyme (feel free to substitute your favorite brew):
Some Guinness was spilt on the bar-room floor
Just around closing one night,
And a wee little mousie crept out of his hole
And into the pale moonlight.
He lapped up all of that dark frothy brew
And back on his haunches he sat,
And all the night long you could hear that mouse roar,
"Bring on that god-damned cat!"
2x2 chess is impossible. There is no legal starting position possible since opposing kings cannot be adjacent to each other -- they must be at least one space apart, which would require at least a 2x3 board.
Who says we have been actively hunting him for 12 years? He used an expired visa in Japan and they shipped him out -- what's the problem? Where is there any evidence that anyone in the U.S. was busy hunting him down?
I'm not sure about support for links and bookmarks, but the export function is simple and works well. You get to choose what the intended presentation medium will be (monitor, print, press) so the output will be optimized, and which pages to export, then voila it's done. There is none of the "print to ps then gs" stuff you are talking about.
In my experience, the resulting PDF file opens and presents perfectly in Acrobat Reader.
The only things Reagan destroyed were Democrats, high taxes, lack of confidence in America, the Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Empire. The guy's face deserves to be on Mount Rushmore.
In the meantime, his name on the most advanced aircraft carrier on the planet will do nicely.
I figured about a year ago that I would be switching back to a Mac (I am so sick of Microsoft) and started thinking about the transition, specifically a seamless office-suite transition for my small commercial real estate business. Using MS Office is out of the question.
I decided to use OpenOffice and its gotten better and better with each version. It is now up to 1.1 beta 2 on the Windows side, so the Mac version has a little catching up to do. It is excellent, although it has so many features that it is a bit of overkill for my purposes (read: bloat). It is a very powerful, full-featured office suite.
My only real complaint is the aesthetics, but then that applies to a lot of Windows software. The first thing I do when I do a fresh install of a new version is delete a number of the toolbar buttons and alter the color scheme. I am certain that they will address the appearance on the Mac side. Oh, and OpenOffice doesn't have the most elegant user-interface around. Hopefully they will work on that for the Mac version as well.
I will be buying one of the new G5 Macs in August (woohoo!) and look forward to loading up OpenOffice and following its Aquafication.
Saudi Arabia... and the death toll there puts 9/11 in the shade
Ummm, we haven't knocked off the Saudia Arabian government. They have been an ally of ours for years, although relations have been strained lately since most of the 9/11 terrorists came from there and the Saudi government is being two-faced about its activities.
What death toll are you talking about? Frankly, that strikes me as nutty. Post a link to the news story please.
On second thought, don't bother. It's clear that, in some respects, we see the world very differently. Let's agree to disagree. You can have the last word, if you choose to respond.
Why don't you take on the rest of the wests anti-terrorism strategy? It's really quite simple. We don't go around knocking over governments for our own gain. Then people don't hate us. They don't teach their children to hate us. And we live in peace.
Tell me, which government did we knock off prior to 9/11 that caused al-Qaida to hate us and therefore slaughter thousands of our citizens, not to mention many citizens of other countries?
Why stop something you find useful?
Perhaps you should have read my post a bit more carefully. I stated quite clearly that, in this time of terrorism, I am willing to give the government a bit more latitude than normal. Hey, I want to government to be able to catch these bastards before they kill more innocent people. I don't mind giving them a tool to do the job, but that doesn't mean I want them to have that tool during peacetime.
Oh sure, dirt-digging has been going on since politics began, either by political opponents or the media, and some of it goes too far. Let's face it, though, Clinton did plenty to smear his own name.
Normal dirt-digging using public information is far different however than using the instruments of government (e.g. FBI files or this new information gathering datadase) for illicit or political purposes. Call me deluded if you want, but I don't believe the current administration would stoop to that level. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but I doubt it.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_ice-age _031208.html
http://www.blog.speculist.com/archives/000145.html
Obviously, replace 1794 with 1974!
And so does the Washington Times which recently reprinted this 1794 Newsweek piece. The kind of language used is eerily similar to the global warming talk today.
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production -- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.
The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas -- parts ofIndia,Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia -- where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree -- a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras -- and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.
Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 -- years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term
They would have won a battle to silence their critics, similar to the cartoon riots and the subsequent refusal of newspapers to print the cartoons out of fear, which is one of the apparent goals of radical Islam.
Getzen
Getzen
Getzen
Getzen
Getzen
Finally, something we agree on: I'm glad you are not an American too!
Getzen
I will just say that I think that history will look very, very favorably on President Bush.
We'll see.
Getzen
Please present that evidence.
Don't get me wrong, there might not have been WMDs at or near the time of the invasion (the Kurds can tell you about other time frames...), but there isn't conclusive evidence that WMDs never existed. In any case, lack of WMDs is loooooong way from supporting the idea that "Bush lied!"
Getzen
You can't possibly be serious. The conservative-hating members of the media such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. ad nauseum would be all over this story if there were something to it. The fact they aren't speaks volumes about the story's credibility.
Face it, nutty conspiracy theories don't wash with normal people. Only on sites like Dailykos, DU, and Slashdot are such tales lapped up.
Here an inconvenient question for the tinfoil hat crowd: if the Bush administration lied, then didn't all the major governments of Europe, and many Clinton administation officials, all of whom said Saddam had WMDs and posed a threat?
(Actually, Saddam may in fact have had WMDs which were moved to Syria right before the war, at least according to the #2 man in the Iraqi Air Force. Not enough evidence to say yet.)
Getzen
http://www.aina.org/news/20060106102431.htm
Getzen
It is for me... and it isn't "perceived". There are enough real quirks in the translation for me to make the switch to OO. It is, in fact, the *only* thing holding me back. The MS translation *must* be nearly perfect for me to switch.
Getzen
LOL!
Getzen
2x2 chess is impossible. There is no legal starting position possible since opposing kings cannot be adjacent to each other -- they must be at least one space apart, which would require at least a 2x3 board.
Getzen
Who says we have been actively hunting him for 12 years? He used an expired visa in Japan and they shipped him out -- what's the problem? Where is there any evidence that anyone in the U.S. was busy hunting him down?
In my experience, the resulting PDF file opens and presents perfectly in Acrobat Reader.
In the meantime, his name on the most advanced aircraft carrier on the planet will do nicely.
I decided to use OpenOffice and its gotten better and better with each version. It is now up to 1.1 beta 2 on the Windows side, so the Mac version has a little catching up to do. It is excellent, although it has so many features that it is a bit of overkill for my purposes (read: bloat). It is a very powerful, full-featured office suite.
My only real complaint is the aesthetics, but then that applies to a lot of Windows software. The first thing I do when I do a fresh install of a new version is delete a number of the toolbar buttons and alter the color scheme. I am certain that they will address the appearance on the Mac side. Oh, and OpenOffice doesn't have the most elegant user-interface around. Hopefully they will work on that for the Mac version as well.
I will be buying one of the new G5 Macs in August (woohoo!) and look forward to loading up OpenOffice and following its Aquafication.
Getzen
Ummm, we haven't knocked off the Saudia Arabian government. They have been an ally of ours for years, although relations have been strained lately since most of the 9/11 terrorists came from there and the Saudi government is being two-faced about its activities.
What death toll are you talking about? Frankly, that strikes me as nutty. Post a link to the news story please.
On second thought, don't bother. It's clear that, in some respects, we see the world very differently. Let's agree to disagree. You can have the last word, if you choose to respond.
Tell me, which government did we knock off prior to 9/11 that caused al-Qaida to hate us and therefore slaughter thousands of our citizens, not to mention many citizens of other countries?
Why stop something you find useful?
Perhaps you should have read my post a bit more carefully. I stated quite clearly that, in this time of terrorism, I am willing to give the government a bit more latitude than normal. Hey, I want to government to be able to catch these bastards before they kill more innocent people. I don't mind giving them a tool to do the job, but that doesn't mean I want them to have that tool during peacetime.
Normal dirt-digging using public information is far different however than using the instruments of government (e.g. FBI files or this new information gathering datadase) for illicit or political purposes. Call me deluded if you want, but I don't believe the current administration would stoop to that level. Perhaps I'll be proven wrong, but I doubt it.