Universally is a strong word. Any evidence for global warming comes with the same amount of evidence against it.
In this article we have people claiming its Global warming causing it, which is said without proof once again...but if we listen to Dr Mörner who has studied ocean levels for 40 years...there is no measurable increase in sea level, and he is an expert in his field...not one person who wrote the Nobel winning report was an expert in sea-level change and yet they make all sorts of claims on being experts on that..
Here is a nice list of everything global warming "causes" as said by the media and scientists:
That tells the story of how bad the NASA datasets are which are one of the main data-sets used in AGW Debate..or we can just get it straight from NASA/..
James Hansen’s colleague Reto Ruedy told the USA Today weather editor:
“My recommendation to you is to continue using CRU data for the global mean [temperatures]. “What we do is accurate enough” — left unspoken: for government work — “[but] we have no intention to compete with either of the other two organizations in what they do best.”
So in other words the NASA data is worse then the data that was doctored purposely by CRU
There is a debate whether you want to bury your head in the sand or not, because the data does not point to ONE thing causing current warming, assuming there is warming considering how much of the data is suspect currently....
And even assuming today's trend is warming, there is debate on the ocean causing a majority of it... Or solar cycles...the science of the climate is far from settled, we have just now scratched the surface...
Very few times I will say this, but very occasionally a comment makes me spit out whatever I am drinking all over the keyboard, and you sir did it. Congratulations sir, now I must be off to clean off my main keyboard..
Yes, we do not like the French here, didn't you hear? They just hold up white flags and yell weird mutterings at us, no real sport there to be honest. Long live the Freedom Fry.
I concur, and the fact that they call a solid planet that "might" have been larger then Earth "Super Earth" says even more volumes about their science. But then again, maybe they just got some super creative genius to write up the press release.
Your comment on Russia is one that should be explained in more detail...and what other stations were thrown out. I know in the case of Russia, it was because stations were under-funded and lax controls meant measurement was not exact if not missing...and I for one understand that case....HOWEVER
This is where I started having a major issue with the global warming movement a long time ago. The SECOND you start picking out sites as unreliable, you are left with data points missing and every other weather station becomes human choice on whether its included in your modeling. Of course this is necessary, but even excluding one station can effect predictions especially when you are drawing the correlation based on just one variable, and there is more then one with climate.....This is a big issue in statistics, and the fact that we can not even be 100% sure on modern data collection of temperature throws modeling this same data into the waste basket. Start over, get new measurement techniques and redo the modeling...that is what I would recommend, but of course its impossible to do that as a climate scientist today now that the "end of the world as we know it" slogan has already been sung.
As a side not, peer reviews simply say whether or not the technique was scientifically sound...if bias was introduced purposely or accidently, peer reviewing this will NEVER catch it. Peer reviews deal with the technique, they do not touch the data gathering methods..
Since you are the expert and the teacher, teach me why its wrong for people to question science?
Once again, its been said over and over again, but the basic tenant of science is questioning theories vigorously until they are proven through exhaustive testing.
Or why climate has anything to do with physics? I am also confused on that point...
All I hear is climate scientists have a "consensus" on what the future holds, and here you quote these people and claim to be one of these experts...Tell me, how is my stock going to do in 5 years? 10 years? 50 years....
It may seem like a bad example, but climate "physics" as you called it predicts the future, and there are many things that we do not know of the future that may effect climate. Even trying to predict 10 years in the future is dangerous because any number of unknowns may pop up...here are 4 examples, and you can tell me how the models take these into consideration...
1. The sun has an unusual period of sunspots. Not beyond the realm of impossible. 2. Major volcanic eruption. We still can't predict volcanic eruptions as of yet. 3. An increase in photosynthesis in plants that actually reduces CO2 from what we predict it will be. 4. Nuclear holocaust and/or insert your doomsday prediction here___________________ .
Again, you are the expert since you appear to be a teacher, so enlighten us all....
Although I agree with most of what you said, why should they be except from paying taxes? Not sure what the IRS has to do with anything on what they do as a rule....but that bit is a little bit interesting to me. I just can't see how a paper pusher paying taxes is bad for an inter-national agency. Yes, give them the immunity to do their jobs, but give me the tax exemption instead please.
Groan. And time for... yet another idiot confusing weather and climate.
You are so right... they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with each other. In fact, I would bet that every snow storm means that the climate is actually getting much hotter... sort of an inverse relationship. Except for in the summer (of course)... that's just the beginning of a 50,000 year global heat wave caused by cars and incandescent light bulbs.
Every stinkin' year, it gets cold and snows in Russia... will global warming ever end?
Local weather conditions have absolutely nothing to do with global climate trends. Global mean temperatures can go up, but locally, you may be experiencing the coldest day of your life. Snow storms in colder, local regions of the globe are not mutually exclusive to warmer global temperatures.
Maybe so on the local conditions at one location, but playing the devil's advocate again, if you change the weather, won't it effect temperatures at some point? Since the reliable models use tree rings and glaciers as their data, if you changed enough snowfall those could be affected at some point and all you have left is 200 years of maybe reliable data based on different gathering methods across the globe....so yea weather patterns could affect climate potentially based on the premise that taking weather patterns from around the globe produces accurate climate models....
And then again, another way to look at it, no matter what technique you use to figure out the climate data, you run into the issue that climate is nothing more then the summation and average of local WEATHER temperatures.
seems weird they would be messing with cold weather precipitation cycles while the rest of the world is up in arms about the effects of global warming...
Groan. And time for... yet another idiot confusing weather and climate.
He may be confusing them, but who is to say that changing weather will NOT effect climate? Any studies to show it doesn't? Seems like he might have a point even as you claim he does not....
Now I was being the devil's advocate there, and more then likely such a small change in weather will not effect climate, but then again, stranger things have happened....
The Smokey the Bear campaign still lives, although its much more minor today then it used to be. The reason is that forest fires are bad that are not planned out in advance...You see our Forestry department (which my father worked for) started their own fires to clear out fire causing underbrush, and to create fire breaks so to speak back in the day. They today also use controlled burning to further help forests along, but never do they want people to start fires....You insinuated that in your comment, and uncontrolled fires are fought very aggressively and to this day fire-fighters for the forestry department lose their lives to protect people from these fires.
There is no catastrophe as you say, and the rule is that they still fight fires to prevent them from getting too large. The reason being none other then the fact that if the fire gets too large it destroys the ecosystem whereas a smaller fire will simply plant the seeds for a new stronger and vibrant forest.
Yellowstone is also a case in point of a catastrophe, but that thought is now in the past and today fires and their benefits to nature are more understood. You find more issues with fires when people plant plants that are not native to the area, a drought occurs, and of course its prime material for a large fire around civilization. We hear about this all the time in California....
The bigger issue in Oregon and Washington is the remnants of old logging camps that left underbrush so thick that forests couldn't come back. Over the years, this has been burnt off or otherwise cleared out to make way for new forests....That is the largest issue in Oregon is bringing back those old areas that to this day are still remnants of lumbering practices back before Teddy R....
The more I hear from climate "skeptics" the more the arguments feel similar to those of the evolution skeptics.
And moon landing "skeptics". And round earth "skeptics". And tobacco/lung cancer "skeptics".
Most people don't have the intelligence or scientific background to make an informed decision on climate change, yet many still somehow think their opinions somehow matter. How on earth they feel they can justify that view, I don't know. These are people who defer to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh for all their political views, and if a scientific truth makes them uncomfortable... well it must be a massive conspiracy.
Fucking imbeciles. I think it's telling that there's an overwhelmingly negative correlation between AGW denialism and scientific education.
And here you are saying skeptics are a bad thing.... Copernicus was a skeptic of science at his time, and now we applaud the science he used and moved along. How many skeptics throughout history should I mention before you get what I am saying here.??
You must not know much about sicence because it is based on theories which are not proven and more then likely through good science can be disproven at a later date...But lets leave it at that, go back to science class and learn a little more please.
To add to this I have made quite a tour of churches, and most christian churches use computers and/or an advanced sound system that requires people who can run it... Even smaller churches with ~100 weekly people have computers to use powerpoint so people can sing along and follow the service. Catholic churches for christian faiths seemed to be the only demonination that didn't seem to use techy people. Not sure on non-christian, but thats just a basic layout of what I saw.
Not that it matters if they have geeks or not...its whether there are any other interests there for you..If you are strongly anti-religious, I would probably say stay away from churches to meet people. If you are neutral, give it a whirl, the worst you do is wake up early for a couple sundays..and thats all it takes to figure out whether you have anything in common with the people. Different churches do different things, some do a ton of cooking, some do a ton of community service, some have other activities you can volunteer at..but whatever the issue, if you just join a church to go every Sunday, you will probably not get to meet the people very well...Well just my two cents on the church angle.
But my advice can be applied for anything on getting to meet people, if you absolutly hate doing something, thats probably a bad idea to go with on meeting people...Its much easier to meet people if you are neutral on something and just want to give it a whirl, because your hatred of the subject will come out.
Your premise misses an entire point though of what Iran culture is going through. You are very correct in saying that there is a distinct difference between people who live in the country versus the city (just like anywhere else in the world.)
However, Iran has changed drastically in the last 30 years. Today, a large majority of the population is under the age of 30. This was not true in the last revolution. In addition, most of these younger people are much more tech savvy and much more libral then the merchants under the shah were 30 years ago....these youths are not rich by any means and have been grown in a culture that shoots first and asks questions later. They know what they live in, even if they are country folk so to speak...
What else has this large majority of the population been through? A 10 year long war that saw uncles, parents, brothers and what not killed by Iraqi's by a regime that cares nothing for the "fodder". So saying that the country is behind the leader can not be taken as script since the country has undoubtably changed since the days of the revolution. Its a different generation that is growing up today.
Now these protests show nothing more but the discontent among a large group of Iranians who of course think the election is tainted. The reason behind the protests means nothing, it just shows that the government of Iran is on borrowed time. Will this be a revolution? Who knows, and at this point its just speculative, but I guarentee you that a different generation is going to grow up and realize its power in just a few years.
The economy is no longer news because unless you live in a cave everyone knows the US is in a recession. I bet you would be posting drivel if this article was about the economy too and how the "world should stop revolving around the US"
Not every story is because the US is trying to invade another country, and to top that off, there is a different president in the white house. Just because the last one was a moron doesn't mean this one is. Stop assuming things that you obviously know nothing about. Like another poster said, North Korea would be absolutly retarded to not announce a missile launch. They would be a parking lot for the next thousand years if they hadn't.
This is how the peak in any non-renewable commodity is tracked at the time it happens. Prices first rise to a huge number, then they drop as demand is quickly squished. Look at it this way, for the first time ever demand in the US for oil actually went down. All peak oil means is highly fluactuating prices at first followed by a gradual decrease in demand. Its not a world or even society ending event.
Oil is also special from other resources in that there are more supplies of it to be found. If a few giant new sources of oil are found, then we could very easily see peak oil being pushed back a couple years from now. This is why everyone who has predicted peak oil in the past has been wrong, in that new sources are discovered which push the date of peak oil back further and further. Although economics generally tell us when the peak happens for any commodity, with oil it is more difficult and actualy production values will end up being the only way we know whether or not we are currently at that peak oil state. But the worst thing anyone can say is that it will never happen. It happens with every commodity that is not infinite, so do not kid yourself.
You have absolutly no idea about what your talking about.
It is not survival of the fittest that is determining population growth, but rather capitalism in the developed nations. It is just not economical to have more then three children unless you make a ton of money. Considering that children on average cost about 100k, its quite a bit if you plan on actually raising the child correctly.
Capitalism is the one way to control population overgrowth without forced abortion. Now we can argue about issues in third world nations and developing nations, but you can not really argue about the hard stastics in Europe and the US that show that the birth rate is actually lower then the death rate. The only reason the US and a lot of other nations are growing is because of immigration.
For China, in order to control growth, they had to resort to some sort of population growth since in communism there is no incentive to NOT have a ton of children.
We shouldn't be wasteful, and I agree that we may be effecting the climate, but stories like this just smack of "the sky is falling" all over again. Why can't we have environmentalism without the alarm? Thats the kind of environmentalist I am, I just want to attempt to stop being wasteful and live more frugally and more in-line with nature (now I know its impossible to be completly CO2 free, but we can do better then we are now.)
There are better ways to combat environmental problems then alarmism.
It is arrogance to assume that we must be what destroys the earth without looking at ALL of the evidence. The CO2 does not attribute 100% to the warming we are experiencing (more like about 10-15%), and I doubt you will find many people who doubt that warming is occuring.
However, something to think about for both sides of this argument: The very fact that we are making a measurable impact on GLOBAL climate should cause us to take a step back and think about ways we can reduce our impact. Most people who read state of fear did not get it. Some state, "see we are not causing global warming" whereas others state "This guy is a hack, this is complete bogus."
Both camps missed the point in that global warming has been taken out of context and instead of thinking through this clearly people are yelling "the sky is falling" after a certain story...and others are just burrying their heads in the sand thinking, "who cares?"
We need to look at these statistics for what they are. We ARE having a measurable impact on climate, but we are NOT the primary cause for the current warming. And no, CO2 today is not the highest or even close to what it was according to paleoclimate evidence...Its just higher then what the models say it should be, and therefore we HAVE to conclude that we caused this increase. The easiest explanation is usually correct in all things, and if people would actually argue about this and not make it a relgion we might actually stop people from the panic they are causing/going through, whatever.
This is what Chrichton was trying to say. We just don't know what the future holds, and this is why we should all be environmentalists, as Chrichton says. The very fact that we are making a measurable difference to our home should tell us that we need to research this more in an unbiased way.
I personally think Chrichton would have loved to read all the arguments on this page, and I am sad to see him gone.. One of my favorite authors who could tell a good story everytime.
Yep. The unfortunate thing is that our system today is not perfect, and that statement right there hits the nail on the head as to what the current problem is in our system. You will see everyone else in this topic go on about the uninsured, about the terrible cost of our healthcare, when the largest issue with our healthcare is what you just stated there.
There is no incentive in the US today to use preventive measures. However, in my current health insurance we are given good money ($75) to take a very involved health screening, and in addition we are paid to do other what I call "healthy living" education stuff.
That and if you can pay for the healthcare, you will pay and pay dearly you will if you are not insured. But that just bags the question: What if those same uninsured had paid out of pocket to see a doctor before the problem had become an emergency? Yes, extremly expensive, but better then an ER visit which is 10 times more. Who knows what the results would be? But personally neither candidate addresses this question....Its all about other problems that are not really present in our current system.
Its not that tasing your stepson is not smart, its the fact that it shows he is irresponsible. Even on the lowest setting tasing has proven to be dangerous and even more so for the young or old. The child had no legal right to request it, and is protected by the law for a reason. This fits in with our sex laws and the old age of consent yadiyadi.
Its a shame that an officer of the law was the one who actually did this test, as he has sworn to uphold the law, and testing devices on children even on their lowest setting is not something a law officer should ever do. And on your own kid? Thats just reckless.
Now I am not going to comment on the favorite Governer atm, but from the standpoint of the cop, he should have known better and yes, he should have been fired immediatly.
Slashdot Mirror
So Al Gore who recently purchased real estate by the beach is a tard by your definition?
And here I thought I was the only one who thought that man was a bloated waste of space...
Universally is a strong word. Any evidence for global warming comes with the same amount of evidence against it.
In this article we have people claiming its Global warming causing it, which is said without proof once again...but if we listen to Dr Mörner who has studied ocean levels for 40 years...there is no measurable increase in sea level, and he is an expert in his field...not one person who wrote the Nobel winning report was an expert in sea-level change and yet they make all sorts of claims on being experts on that..
Here is a nice list of everything global warming "causes" as said by the media and scientists:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
If you want to discuss more: lets discuss NASA data being stacked:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/
As you can tell station data has gone down in last few years, and if you plot it against temperature rise, you get a very obvious trend:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf
That tells the story of how bad the NASA datasets are which are one of the main data-sets used in AGW Debate..or we can just get it straight from NASA/..
James Hansen’s colleague Reto Ruedy told the USA Today weather editor:
“My recommendation to you is to continue using CRU data for the global mean [temperatures]. “What we do is accurate enough” — left unspoken: for government work — “[but] we have no intention to compete with either of the other two organizations in what they do best.”
So in other words the NASA data is worse then the data that was doctored purposely by CRU
There is a debate whether you want to bury your head in the sand or not, because the data does not point to ONE thing causing current warming, assuming there is warming considering how much of the data is suspect currently....
And even assuming today's trend is warming, there is debate on the ocean causing a majority of it... Or solar cycles...the science of the climate is far from settled, we have just now scratched the surface...
Very few times I will say this, but very occasionally a comment makes me spit out whatever I am drinking all over the keyboard, and you sir did it. Congratulations sir, now I must be off to clean off my main keyboard..
Yes, we do not like the French here, didn't you hear? They just hold up white flags and yell weird mutterings at us, no real sport there to be honest. Long live the Freedom Fry.
I concur, and the fact that they call a solid planet that "might" have been larger then Earth "Super Earth" says even more volumes about their science. But then again, maybe they just got some super creative genius to write up the press release.
It all depends on how you define infant mortality, and since the US and GB define it differently that statistic is meaningless.
No idea on Singapore, but if I had to guess.....same thing.
In other words, MN is doing the right thing by making those bastard polluter's pay their indulgences ..
Only one way to get into heaven, and that is to force people to pay for carbon.
Your comment on Russia is one that should be explained in more detail...and what other stations were thrown out. I know in the case of Russia, it was because stations were under-funded and lax controls meant measurement was not exact if not missing...and I for one understand that case....HOWEVER
This is where I started having a major issue with the global warming movement a long time ago. The SECOND you start picking out sites as unreliable, you are left with data points missing and every other weather station becomes human choice on whether its included in your modeling. Of course this is necessary, but even excluding one station can effect predictions especially when you are drawing the correlation based on just one variable, and there is more then one with climate.....This is a big issue in statistics, and the fact that we can not even be 100% sure on modern data collection of temperature throws modeling this same data into the waste basket. Start over, get new measurement techniques and redo the modeling...that is what I would recommend, but of course its impossible to do that as a climate scientist today now that the "end of the world as we know it" slogan has already been sung.
As a side not, peer reviews simply say whether or not the technique was scientifically sound...if bias was introduced purposely or accidently, peer reviewing this will NEVER catch it. Peer reviews deal with the technique, they do not touch the data gathering methods..
"crash course on climate physics" ....
Since you are the expert and the teacher, teach me why its wrong for people to question science?
Once again, its been said over and over again, but the basic tenant of science is questioning theories vigorously until they are proven through exhaustive testing.
Or why climate has anything to do with physics? I am also confused on that point...
All I hear is climate scientists have a "consensus" on what the future holds, and here you quote these people and claim to be one of these experts...Tell me, how is my stock going to do in 5 years? 10 years? 50 years....
It may seem like a bad example, but climate "physics" as you called it predicts the future, and there are many things that we do not know of the future that may effect climate. Even trying to predict 10 years in the future is dangerous because any number of unknowns may pop up...here are 4 examples, and you can tell me how the models take these into consideration...
1. The sun has an unusual period of sunspots. Not beyond the realm of impossible.
2. Major volcanic eruption. We still can't predict volcanic eruptions as of yet.
3. An increase in photosynthesis in plants that actually reduces CO2 from what we predict it will be.
4. Nuclear holocaust and/or insert your doomsday prediction here___________________ .
Again, you are the expert since you appear to be a teacher, so enlighten us all....
Although I agree with most of what you said, why should they be except from paying taxes? Not sure what the IRS has to do with anything on what they do as a rule....but that bit is a little bit interesting to me. I just can't see how a paper pusher paying taxes is bad for an inter-national agency. Yes, give them the immunity to do their jobs, but give me the tax exemption instead please.
Groan. And time for... yet another idiot confusing weather and climate.
You are so right... they have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with each other. In fact, I would bet that every snow storm means that the climate is actually getting much hotter... sort of an inverse relationship. Except for in the summer (of course)... that's just the beginning of a 50,000 year global heat wave caused by cars and incandescent light bulbs.
Every stinkin' year, it gets cold and snows in Russia... will global warming ever end?
Local weather conditions have absolutely nothing to do with global climate trends. Global mean temperatures can go up, but locally, you may be experiencing the coldest day of your life. Snow storms in colder, local regions of the globe are not mutually exclusive to warmer global temperatures.
Maybe so on the local conditions at one location, but playing the devil's advocate again, if you change the weather, won't it effect temperatures at some point? Since the reliable models use tree rings and glaciers as their data, if you changed enough snowfall those could be affected at some point and all you have left is 200 years of maybe reliable data based on different gathering methods across the globe ....so yea weather patterns could affect climate potentially based on the premise that taking weather patterns from around the globe produces accurate climate models....
And then again, another way to look at it, no matter what technique you use to figure out the climate data, you run into the issue that climate is nothing more then the summation and average of local WEATHER temperatures.
seems weird they would be messing with cold weather precipitation cycles while the rest of the world is up in arms about the effects of global warming...
Groan. And time for... yet another idiot confusing weather and climate.
He may be confusing them, but who is to say that changing weather will NOT effect climate? Any studies to show it doesn't? Seems like he might have a point even as you claim he does not....
Now I was being the devil's advocate there, and more then likely such a small change in weather will not effect climate, but then again, stranger things have happened....
The Smokey the Bear campaign still lives, although its much more minor today then it used to be. The reason is that forest fires are bad that are not planned out in advance...You see our Forestry department (which my father worked for) started their own fires to clear out fire causing underbrush, and to create fire breaks so to speak back in the day. They today also use controlled burning to further help forests along, but never do they want people to start fires....You insinuated that in your comment, and uncontrolled fires are fought very aggressively and to this day fire-fighters for the forestry department lose their lives to protect people from these fires.
There is no catastrophe as you say, and the rule is that they still fight fires to prevent them from getting too large. The reason being none other then the fact that if the fire gets too large it destroys the ecosystem whereas a smaller fire will simply plant the seeds for a new stronger and vibrant forest.
Yellowstone is also a case in point of a catastrophe, but that thought is now in the past and today fires and their benefits to nature are more understood. You find more issues with fires when people plant plants that are not native to the area, a drought occurs, and of course its prime material for a large fire around civilization. We hear about this all the time in California....
The bigger issue in Oregon and Washington is the remnants of old logging camps that left underbrush so thick that forests couldn't come back. Over the years, this has been burnt off or otherwise cleared out to make way for new forests....That is the largest issue in Oregon is bringing back those old areas that to this day are still remnants of lumbering practices back before Teddy R....
The more I hear from climate "skeptics" the more the arguments feel similar to those of the evolution skeptics.
And moon landing "skeptics". And round earth "skeptics". And tobacco/lung cancer "skeptics".
Most people don't have the intelligence or scientific background to make an informed decision on climate change, yet many still somehow think their opinions somehow matter. How on earth they feel they can justify that view, I don't know. These are people who defer to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh for all their political views, and if a scientific truth makes them uncomfortable... well it must be a massive conspiracy.
Fucking imbeciles. I think it's telling that there's an overwhelmingly negative correlation between AGW denialism and scientific education.
And here you are saying skeptics are a bad thing.... Copernicus was a skeptic of science at his time, and now we applaud the science he used and moved along. How many skeptics throughout history should I mention before you get what I am saying here.??
You must not know much about sicence because it is based on theories which are not proven and more then likely through good science can be disproven at a later date...But lets leave it at that, go back to science class and learn a little more please.
To add to this I have made quite a tour of churches, and most christian churches use computers and/or an advanced sound system that requires people who can run it... Even smaller churches with ~100 weekly people have computers to use powerpoint so people can sing along and follow the service. Catholic churches for christian faiths seemed to be the only demonination that didn't seem to use techy people. Not sure on non-christian, but thats just a basic layout of what I saw.
Not that it matters if they have geeks or not...its whether there are any other interests there for you..If you are strongly anti-religious, I would probably say stay away from churches to meet people. If you are neutral, give it a whirl, the worst you do is wake up early for a couple sundays..and thats all it takes to figure out whether you have anything in common with the people. Different churches do different things, some do a ton of cooking, some do a ton of community service, some have other activities you can volunteer at..but whatever the issue, if you just join a church to go every Sunday, you will probably not get to meet the people very well...Well just my two cents on the church angle.
But my advice can be applied for anything on getting to meet people, if you absolutly hate doing something, thats probably a bad idea to go with on meeting people...Its much easier to meet people if you are neutral on something and just want to give it a whirl, because your hatred of the subject will come out.
Your premise misses an entire point though of what Iran culture is going through. You are very correct in saying that there is a distinct difference between people who live in the country versus the city (just like anywhere else in the world.)
However, Iran has changed drastically in the last 30 years. Today, a large majority of the population is under the age of 30. This was not true in the last revolution. In addition, most of these younger people are much more tech savvy and much more libral then the merchants under the shah were 30 years ago....these youths are not rich by any means and have been grown in a culture that shoots first and asks questions later. They know what they live in, even if they are country folk so to speak...
What else has this large majority of the population been through? A 10 year long war that saw uncles, parents, brothers and what not killed by Iraqi's by a regime that cares nothing for the "fodder". So saying that the country is behind the leader can not be taken as script since the country has undoubtably changed since the days of the revolution. Its a different generation that is growing up today.
Now these protests show nothing more but the discontent among a large group of Iranians who of course think the election is tainted. The reason behind the protests means nothing, it just shows that the government of Iran is on borrowed time. Will this be a revolution? Who knows, and at this point its just speculative, but I guarentee you that a different generation is going to grow up and realize its power in just a few years.
The economy is no longer news because unless you live in a cave everyone knows the US is in a recession. I bet you would be posting drivel if this article was about the economy too and how the "world should stop revolving around the US"
Not every story is because the US is trying to invade another country, and to top that off, there is a different president in the white house. Just because the last one was a moron doesn't mean this one is. Stop assuming things that you obviously know nothing about. Like another poster said, North Korea would be absolutly retarded to not announce a missile launch. They would be a parking lot for the next thousand years if they hadn't.
This is how the peak in any non-renewable commodity is tracked at the time it happens. Prices
first rise to a huge number, then they drop as demand is quickly squished. Look at it this way,
for the first time ever demand in the US for oil actually went down. All peak oil means is highly
fluactuating prices at first followed by a gradual decrease in demand. Its not a world or even society ending event.
Oil is also special from other resources in that there are more supplies of it to be found. If a few giant new
sources of oil are found, then we could very easily see peak oil being pushed back a couple years from now.
This is why everyone who has predicted peak oil in the past has been wrong, in that new sources are discovered which push the date of peak oil back further and further. Although economics generally tell us when the peak happens for any commodity, with oil it is more difficult and actualy production values will end up being the only way we know whether or not we are currently at that peak oil state. But the worst thing anyone can say is that it will never happen. It happens with every commodity that is not infinite, so do not kid yourself.
You have absolutly no idea about what your talking about.
It is not survival of the fittest that is determining population growth, but rather capitalism in the developed nations. It is just not economical to have more then three children unless you make a ton of money. Considering that children on average cost about 100k, its quite a bit if you plan on actually raising the child correctly.
Capitalism is the one way to control population overgrowth without forced abortion. Now we can argue about issues in third world nations and developing nations, but you can not really argue about the hard stastics in Europe and the US that show that the birth rate is actually lower then the death rate. The only reason the US and a lot of other nations are growing is because of immigration.
For China, in order to control growth, they had to resort to some sort of population growth since in communism there is no incentive to NOT have a ton of children.
We shouldn't be wasteful, and I agree that we may be effecting the climate, but stories like this just smack of "the sky is falling" all over again. Why can't we have environmentalism without the alarm? Thats the kind of environmentalist I am, I just want to attempt to stop being wasteful and live more frugally and more in-line with nature (now I know its impossible to be completly CO2 free, but we can do better then we are now.)
There are better ways to combat environmental problems then alarmism.
Then you would become obese, and would die an early death therefore not threatening the solar system. Problem solved.
It is arrogance to assume that we must be what destroys the earth without looking at ALL of the evidence. The CO2 does not attribute 100% to the warming we are experiencing (more like about 10-15%), and I doubt you will find many people who doubt that warming is occuring.
However, something to think about for both sides of this argument: The very fact that we are making a measurable impact on GLOBAL climate should cause us to take a step back and think about ways we can reduce our impact. Most people who read state of fear did not get it. Some state, "see we are not causing global warming" whereas others state "This guy is a hack, this is complete bogus."
Both camps missed the point in that global warming has been taken out of context and instead of thinking through this clearly people are yelling "the sky is falling" after a certain story...and others are just burrying their heads in the sand thinking, "who cares?"
We need to look at these statistics for what they are. We ARE having a measurable impact on climate, but we are NOT the primary cause for the current warming. And no, CO2 today is not the highest or even close to what it was according to paleoclimate evidence...Its just higher then what the models say it should be, and therefore we HAVE to conclude that we caused this increase. The easiest explanation is usually correct in all things, and if people would actually argue about this and not make it a relgion we might actually stop people from the panic they are causing/going through, whatever.
This is what Chrichton was trying to say. We just don't know what the future holds, and this is why we should all be environmentalists, as Chrichton says. The very fact that we are making a measurable difference to our home should tell us that we need to research this more in an unbiased way.
I personally think Chrichton would have loved to read all the arguments on this page, and I am sad to see him gone.. One of my favorite authors who could tell a good story everytime.
Yep. The unfortunate thing is that our system today is not perfect, and that statement right there hits the nail on the head as to what the current problem is in our system. You will see everyone else in this topic go on about the uninsured, about the terrible cost of our healthcare, when the largest issue with our healthcare is what you just stated there.
There is no incentive in the US today to use preventive measures. However, in my current health insurance we are given good money ($75) to take a very involved health screening, and in addition we are paid to do other what I call "healthy living" education stuff.
That and if you can pay for the healthcare, you will pay and pay dearly you will if you are not insured. But that just bags the question: What if those same uninsured had paid out of pocket to see a doctor before the problem had become an emergency? Yes, extremly expensive, but better then an ER visit which is 10 times more. Who knows what the results would be? But personally neither candidate addresses this question....Its all about other problems that are not really present in our current system.
Its not that tasing your stepson is not smart, its the fact that it shows he is irresponsible. Even on the lowest setting tasing has proven to be dangerous and even more so for the young or old. The child had no legal right to request it, and is protected by the law for a reason. This fits in with our sex laws and the old age of consent yadiyadi.
Its a shame that an officer of the law was the one who actually did this test, as he has sworn to uphold the law, and testing devices on children even on their lowest setting is not something a law officer should ever do. And on your own kid? Thats just reckless.
Now I am not going to comment on the favorite Governer atm, but from the standpoint of the cop, he should have known better and yes, he should have been fired immediatly.
Great idea IMO!!
And to top it off: Even More Irony today !! If I had mod points!....
But seriously, theres always that one comment for us all that we just simply wish we could mod up just once....
and now for even more irony, this comment would be +2 if only someone who liked me had that extra point.