millsmed

And I think that "Een soviet Russia..." joke comes from the Simpsons right? I just remember "Een Soviet Russia... Car drives YOU" lol

Mmm Grease indeed! lol I'm trying to find the article, it may be in a magazine or on my desktop computer so it'll probably take a couple of days, but talking about it's peaked my interest so I wanna read it again myself, but i remember thinking to myslef "Wow no electric bill anymore? That would rule & change the world!" The main causes of acid rain are gases like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, not carbon dioxide.

The long-term plans for the hydrogen production unit the Japanese are working on (which I'm sure will take quite some time to perfect) will be a unit that will run on the hydrogen it produces and the hopes for the unit will be that after it's been plugged in to give it its starting charge, it can basically supplement your house's electricity needs running on the stored hydrogen in the unit. I'll find the link for it, but the one article on it got into a very brief description of the way it would work. I'm not a physicist so I can't speak to whether things would function the way they said or not, but if we're gonna put a few billion into something, it may as well be something that's a leap forward. Re: the biodiesel, it would depend on which fast food restaurant I got the oil from - if you get your oil from McDonald's the smell will make people crave McDonald's so they can work an exclusivity deal where you'll ONLY use McDonald's fryer oil and pay you to drive around town smelling like a Super Sized happy meal!

Re: the Nobel Peace Prize - congrats to Gore. Do I put a lot of stake in it? Well Al Gore was awarded one, and Gandhi who was nominated 5 times never received the award. Kofi Annan, and Jimmy Carter are also both recipients - under Kofi the UN was its most corrupt since its creation; and Jimmy Carter hardly deserves an award for furthering peace. Gore's presentation was highly sensationalized, and even real climate scientists view many of his predictions and points he presents in the film and say "well I wouldn't go so far as to say that." A further problem is his hypocrisy - the whole concept of "carbon credits" is a damnable joke. To think that an individual can "pay a little extra" and offset their use or misuse of the world's energy resources by putting money into a fund seems great at first glance, but when you consider that people the developing world A) do not have the financial resources to invest in clean energy, and B) don't have the financial resources to pay into similar funds; then if you expect them to be energy clean, you're basically telling them to stick with the squalor in which they live and never develop. It also places the burden of conservation on everyone else - I don't care that he lives in a big mansion. If he really believes in conservation he should lead by example - take some of that carbon credit money and insulate his house properly. Al Gore's a polarizing figure to be leading the campaign of anthropogenic climate change awareness - the world could find a better man to champion the cause; someone who isn't so easily attacked and dismissed as being someone who doesn't practice that which he expects the rest of us to. Carbon Dioxide is not a toxin. Carbon dioxide in high levels is toxic, of course, the same way you can drink too much water and die. For anyone to be talking about CO2 reaching "toxic levels" that will kill you in the earth's atmosphere is amusing but not realistic. Bio-Diesel and Ethanol are an enormous waste of time and money. They're a ridiculously inefficient source of fuel, and rather than investing billions of dollars into developing the infrastructure for an inefficient stop-gap solution, the world needs to find a true "next step" beyond fossil fuel consumption as a source of energy. Something along the lines of the hydrogen fuel-cell cars being developed by Honda (which will still give off CO2, but they'll save a bundle on what used to be gasoline prices). While I don't believe humans are causing climate change, I think most people in North America today actually do believe in the same things. None of us like pollution. No one stands on their lawn and sees a smoke stack spewing out black smoke and things "it's so pretty." None of us like paying insane prices at the gas pumps, and most people I believe want to see the world move away from fossil fuel use. From the stand-point of a conservative non-believer in "AGW" I can say I absolutely believe we need to find new fuels for things like transportation because of the looming threat of a possible conflict with Iran, and because I think it's in our best interest not to line the pockets of middle-eastern dictators or theocratic governments. I resent very much the notion put forward by many of you that conservatives and republicans in general are just ignorant people who sh*t all over the environment and don't give a damn. Rather than spewing this kind of nonsense where we call each other names, we could work toward finding common ground to move forward (i.e. new fuels and conservation/recycling that is in the best interests of both sides of the argument) rather than bashing those of differing opinions. Also, aside from schm0 who lives and breathes this stuff (not attacking you just saying - you read a lot about it I can tell so you never sound stupid) and one or two others I don't think most of you have read more than an article or two, or maybe watched a tv show or d

"its pronounced nukuler" lol

I'm also 100% in favor of improving the efficiency of everything lol I'd love to see a thousand MPG automobile. I own a hybrid pickup truck, and when they eventually do come out with alternate fueled vehicles I'll be driving onea those too (unless the new fuel costs way more). I'm not even really saying anything like we should ignore potential problems. But if there are scientists who have an opposing opinion it HAS to be discussed openly not dismissed as "oil company propaganda". Oil companies don't support climatologists lol they don't need to - our cars run on gasoline and it'll take a lot to shift that. But I'm also opposed to a carbon tax, absolutely opposed. Drive auto makers to improve efficiency or design new systems and then people to purchase those through tax incentives, but don't make a carbon tax that costs the average american $1200 a year or even $500 a year - for some people that's food taken off the dinner table. I opperate my own business, and have several vehicles on the road and that can mean the difference for me between employing 14 people and 15 people, that 15th person loses his job and it all goes from there. Short sighted reactionism to things that may not be happening for the reasons these folks say is serious.

I've never seen such calculations, but I'm sure that an experiment like that would have drastic and severely deadly effects on the global climate. You may think I'm "a trip" but the arguments of those who oppose global warming theory need extreme examples to counter their extreme (and mostly uncorroborated) claims.quote> That's fine to say, but the use of extreme examples that will never happen undermines the relevance of your point. Hardly. You underestimate the scale and complexity of the global climate. Besides hurricanes occur in coastal regions, not where corn is typically grown. I believe you are referring to a tornado. quote> Hurricane - tornado doesn't really matter I picked hurricane cause a hurricane will never hit Iowa.. or will it? Actually, one is made up of theory, which is backed up by thousands of reports, studies and peer-edited review. It is the opponents of this theory that mainly offer conjecture, mostly based on disproved or incorrect information.quote> See that's exactly what people are talking about where you dismiss a point of view that has statistical data backing it up rather than a climate model in a computer. Both sides have statistics, and both sides need to be evaluated, but when one side believes its own claims trump all others and aren't willing to have a dialog that is a problem, particularly when people in Washington and elsewhere in the world are considering policy decisions that will affect hundreds of millions of people in this country. I can question the validity of your information the same way you can do it with mine, and I can find plenty of articles from the growing number of sources speaking out against this railroading. The truth of it is you really don't know what you're talking about any more than I do. I'm not a climatologist, and I'm pretty much positive you're not either. I don't know more than you - you don't know more than me because all of this is theory and you can dispute that all you like, but it's theory. What can we state firmly? The average temperature of the planet is warming. But what is the cause of this warming? You can claim what you do and say there's a consensus but there isn't a consensus and unfortunately there isn't nearly as much money behind the non-man-made movement as there is behind the man-made movement, and the man-made movement's unwillingness to discuss the issues with anyone who isn't first willing to accept/aknowledge that this is a man-made problem is bad science - it's the opposite of what science is supposed to be. but please leave your insults at the door.quote> I appologize - had a long day and was sort of fetching for a fight. I'm cool now and feeling rather embarassed re: the pansey comment. The Constitution of the United States also provided it's citizens to own slaves as property and barred women from having the right to vote. I would hardly call either election "the best possible outcome," but that is an issue for another forum. Bush has ordered the censor of several EPA reports specifically linked to global warming to diminish their findings and hide the truth.quote> My comments with regards to the constitution pertained to the electoral college for how the president is elected. The popular vote doesn't matter in our system. It isn't necessarilly "right" but it is what it is and noone's cared enough to raise it as an issue to date (probably because they figure some day it could bite them in the ass lol).

New to the site and a frienda mine said to check it out - lol I gotta say the dude talking about Venus is a trip! lol you're gonna compare our planet to a planet with 96% Carbon Dioxide? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure you could burn every ounce of petroleum on the planet, plus all the plastic products, and you still wouldn't increase CO2 levels above anything more than what, 5%? lol that's kinda like feeling a light summer breeze in Iowa and saying well if the corn's all cut down it'll decrease wind resistance and we could see a Hurricane. lol Also liked the comment about coconuts in antarctica lol I know that one was a joke but just had to say it was a fun one. But yeah - both sides are a lot of conjecture and theories. The only thing I dislike a whole lot is the manmade folks adopting their beliefs as doctrine rather than maintaining that they're theories based on computer models with thousands and thousands of variables, and a few variables shifting by tenths of a percentage in either direction will skew the results. Also - with respect to schmO's post to AnF - I know him and he's an obama supporter and didn't support anyone in the first election so the whole "you won florida" thing doesn't really compute and is fairly ignorant to presume that anyone who doesn't like Al gore must be an evil republican and a Bush supporter - I'm onea those but he's not, and that comes off as really childish. And with regards to that election's results - Bush won the election and he's the president. Get over it, pansy. The electoral college was in effect then and still is now - it's in the constitution and as far as I'm concerned we arrived at the best possible outcome in both of the last elections. I don't agree with quite a few of Bush's policies, but the Democratic front runners have always scared me.