Ban That Evil and Deadly Chemical!!

[Ricamundo]

Just saw this Youtube vid excerpted from Penn and Teller's "Bullsh!t!" movie. it's a stitch up, but it just goes to show how gullible and eager to be seen to go with the flow mnay of us are these days.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzLs60ZaNW4

[fragger]

Unbelieveable! Some people will sign anything if they're told they should, or if it sounds like it's the environmentally correct thing to do. I believe you can blame a scare-mongering media to a large extent for instilling that type of mindset.

Funny sketch, but a bit of a worry too.

And don't get me started on governments and "climate change".

[RedRaven]

And don't get me started on governments and "climate change".

Hahahahahahaha.  :-X

[mandru]

I present the following points of interest:
*Stockholm climate conference
*World wide imported dignitaries (flown in)
*World wide imported foods (flown in)
*Imported limousines (driven in from surrounding countries because there weren't enough domestic limos to shuttle conference attendees and their entourages from their private jets to the conference center)
*Thousands of dignitaries' family members brought along for the party

Conclusion: Nothing resolved other than a general agreement to do it again soon

Question 1: If these are our best and brightest why are they expending a larger carbon footprint for these events than many impoverished third world countries annual carbon debt?

Question 2: Why didn't any of these people refuse to attend and try to promote web conferencing instead?

Question 3: Is anyone else sick of being told "Do as I say, not as I do" by these people?

Sorry, that's as nice as I can be on this topic. There are several other pointed questions that I usually include with the 3 above but I would really hate stepping on someone's toes over this. At least in this forum.

[mmosu]

but I would really hate stepping on someone's toes over this. At least in this forum.

Step away man! We're with ya!!

[Art Blade]

if you have something to say, I'd like to know. Should you step on my toes, I'd have my pet elephant step on yours. For a couple of hours. ;D

Really, the vid was not even shocking me, I see people sign stuff on the streets as long as a good-looking person rubs it under their noses with just enough charm or some desperate voice etc. Not everyone signs everything, but there are enough people out there that would sign whatever paper as long as they don't sense any trick.

There is a side effect though, some people (including myself) are so fed up with that crap, they wouldn't sign anything anymore, even if it were important. If someone with a scribbling pad on their forearm, balanced the way a waiter does with a tray, takes one step towards me, I will pull a face that will freeze their blood in their veins and march on unimpressed.  ;D

[Ricamundo]

I don't want to come across all heavy and political, especially here, but i guess i posted the vid because i'm getting increasingly sick and tired of being told that i will die in 10 years if i dont stop driving, flying and ...gasp... daring to turn my furnace(natural gas) on on cold winter days.

The whole Copenhagen conference seemed to be about giving the third world yet another handout(as if all the billions handed out already had done any real good). The fact that sub saharan Africa has suffered mightily over the decades is not in dispute. I remember the commercials on TV from the '60 showing starving kids in Biafra. Only until recently, the starvation, etc was said to be caused by droughts, floods, insects, war, and corrupt dictators.

Now those starving are said to be suffereing because of climate change. Are we to believe that all the other problems there have suddenly disappeared?

I've been following the CIF pages(Comment is Free) at the English newpaper The Guardian for a while now. It seems to be the home of the "We're All Gonna Die!!" crowd. MMGW hysteria is alive and well there. While im no Climatologist, or any kind of scientist, the whole debate has become so polarized, so politicized, with both sides so entrenced, i despair we'll ever stop throwing billions of scarce resourses at a problem that may not even be a problem.

Meanwhile, the obvious solution, nuclear power, at least a short term solution, is ignored. No, we must shut down every fossil fuel source, and live in cold, dark lives, hoping that the wind farm will supply enough power today to cook a hot meal. >:(

And what of over population? This is another no go zone for Warmists. As long as world population cintinues to rise as quickly as it is, no amount of turning down the heat, using compact flourecsent lightbulbs, or taking the bus will stop the steady rise of CO2 in the atmosphere.

No, it's all about white Western guilt, on a massive scale. We were sooo bad the last century or so, daring to build an industrial society that has given us the highest standard of living, the highest life expectancy, and the lowest infant mortality rate, ever. But because of our past sins, now we must pay the price, and hobble what's left of our economies by giving borrowed $$ to people like Robert Mugabe, so he can sell his Mercedes, and buy a Lexus Hybrid, and that 'll be his contribution to global warming. :D

Oh, and make no mistake. That money will have to be borrowed. And who might the lender be?  China perhaps?

Anywho sorry for the long winded rant. I just wanted to get this off my chest!

[fragger]

Good on you Ricamundo! Mate, that could be me talking, I couldn't have ranted it any better! Your opinions exactly match my own.

I'd like to add this: Political, social and economic considerations aside for a moment, the fact is that we live on the surface of an incredibly dynamic object, Earth, the climate of which is driven by a great many forces: atmospheric, seismic, geothermal, volcanic, tidal, solar, meteoric, sunspots, and who knows what else, all of which are beyond our ability to assimilate into any kind of predictive modelling process. Of course the climate is changing, it can't stay the same forever while being subjected to so many forces and variables. It has always changed, and it always will, naturally. We are unable to know what it will do in the future. We don't have the ability to predict the weather a week from now, let alone be able to say what it's going to do a decade from now.

Example: Circa 600-700 AD, the Maya were driven from their population centres by a severe, decades-long heat-wave and drought. About 900 years later, the first conquistadors marched into what would become the USA over a frozen Rio Grande. That's climate change, it happens naturally and there's not a damned thing we can do to stop it. No amount of bill-passing, protocol signing or legislation is going to make a scrap of difference.

As for CO2, the amount generated by human civilization is almost infinitesimal compared to what rises up out of the world's oceans every day from the millions and millions of tons of biomass therein.

These misguided, Al Gore-worshipping nongs prancing around saying "we must act now to save the planet" are the epitome of human stupidity and ignorance. And arrogance - as if human beings can make any kind of difference to 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons of rock, water, atmosphere and biomass, existing in an incredibly complex system the whole of which is beyond our ability to comprehend, hurtling around a nuclear fusion-powered variable star at over 100,000 kph while being subjected to stupendous tidal, gravitational and electromagnetic forces. We do not have that kind of power (thank God), nor do we have the power to "change" the climate to what we want, should it go in a direction that doesn't suit us. You might as well ask a bunch of fleas to alter the trajectory of a demolition ball.

Haven't these people ever heard of ice ages? Natural global warming is what triggers them, and it's been going on since before humans came down out of the trees (I suspect the other monkeys kicked us out).

And yet, we're told that by riding bicycles instead of driving our cars and preventing cows from farting we can save the world. The sad thing is, many people are being sucked into believing it, like those twits adding their names to a petition to ban water.

It's almost enough to make you despair for the human race.

That's my rant. You had to go and get me started Ric, didn't you ;D

[mandru]

Ricamundo, it's a sad state of affairs when making a personal observation automatically gets self-labeled as a rant.

Here's something to ponder. The passes through the Alps that Hannibal used to bring war elephants in to attack Northern Italy are currently under 200 feet of glacier which means if he had faced the same conditions, then as now, he would have had to have found another route or another tactic.

OK, I've never been to the Alps and I haven't personally seen the glaciers that Hannibal didn't have to deal with. I gathered this information from a current series of geology programs running on the History channel called How the Earth Was Made.

This specific episode was dealing with the sculpting of the Alps. It's an acclaimed series that is using the latest computer graphics for heightened illustration and presents its material in a sensible understandable format, including beautifully filmed on site location shots with exciting step by step analysis of geological processes to lead the audience through a subject that typically is met with snores.

I think it was the excitement of being able to "strut his intellectual stuff" that caused one of the geologists, knowing that his w@&k is being showcased in the program, to stand there with an ebullient grin and his hand on the face of the glacier as if he were posing for a photo with a record breaking marlin that he'd just hauled into the boat and drop a bombshell on the climatology scientists by saying "Hannibal's crossing would have been a walk in the park compared to what he would face these days with these 200 foot deep glaciers blocking his way."

What I got out of that was an understanding that climate change was going on even back in Hannibal's time long before our current "Green House Gasses Crisis."

In the absence of our supposed current self absorbed and irresponsible climate changing behavior how could it have been warm enough back then to melt the glaciers out of passes of the Alps? That is of course unless one could assume that environmental warming and cooling is normal and instead of throwing money at it trying to fight it, plow some resources into being able to ride through the perfectly normal ebb and flow that our biosphere hands us or does that make too much sense?

Science based on consensus is no longer science. Rather I should say it shifts over to the Science of Social Control. I tend to think of Galileo's censure over his findings that the Earth was not the center of our solar system.

It's the politics of fear and we know that a population whipped into a panic against a coming crisis is much easier to control like herd animals (reflecting on the point the video was trying to make that kicked this thread off and Penn's urging people to "Stop Being Sheep").

When in the heat of fear the people look to their leaders and cry "Oh, tell us what should we do?", "He seems to have a plan! Lets follow Him!", "Who's caused this? Who should we be hating and how are we going to make them pay for what they've done?".

We tend to make it far too easy for politicians and their manipulators of fact with less than socially redeemable motives.

It's a reoccurring  pattern time and again. Flail the masses with fear, round them up into an easily handled group and push them where ever you want them to go.

Keep movin', movin', movin'
Though they're disapprovin'
Keep them dogies movin'
Rawhide!
Don't try to understand 'em
Just rope, throw, and brand 'em
Soon we'll be living high and wide.
My hearts calculatin'
My true love will be waitin',
Be waitin' at the end of my ride.

Rawhide!
Rawhide!

- Ouch!- (Hell, I could probably write a Masters Degree dissertation out of the content of the social commentary material from the song Rawhide if it was possible to find a college that wasn't so infested with liberal agenda that they'd consider it. There's entirely way too much to cover here  :-\)

Isn't it funny how appropriate that snippet of the familiar tune is to our current global crisis? Especially the line "Soon we'll be living high and wide". You could safely bet you're retirement fund (if any one was foolish enough to cover it) that the manipulators of so this called science of Climate Change don't have the general population in mind as part of the "We".

Gee, did I just reveal some the motive behind my enjoying the concept of PZ's Christmas bonfire so much?  ;)


Additional:

I see that fragger just posted while I've spent a few hours composing and editing this and can only say that he and I seem to be in agreement. That is other than I would point out that on a recent television interview Al Gore commented that geothermal was the way to go because of the millions of degrees in the Earth's molten core that could be harnessed (I have paraphrased his general comment but left the content untouched and the Earth's actual core temp is under 6000 degrees F just to keep things in focus).

That's our Al! Never let science get in the way of a point he's trying to make.  :D

If you anagram out Al Gore you get Large 0. I read that round bit at the end as a zero but that's just my personal observation.

[JRD]

Hey.. let me in!!  ;D

Some data:

150 million years ago: South America and Africa were joined and Antarctica was A TEMPERATE FORREST!

130 mya: South America and Africa start breaking apart - Earth`s average temperature is about 10 degrees celsius higher and temperatures in the south pole and equator aren`t that different. There is only a small ice cap right in the extreme south pole, about 88 to 90 degrees latitude south

65 mya: break up of South America and Africa is complete, but the Drake passage in the extreme south of South America still closed - South America and Antarctica are still connected.

30 mya: Drake passage is open. Antarctica is now an "isolated" continent. Oceanic circulation around Antarctica begins, causing a thermal isolation. Formation of colossal ice caps begins in the southern hemisphere. Earth`s temperature drops as a consequence of a cold oceanic circulation and the gradient between south pole and equator increases.

20 mya: ice ages are now more frequent and intense. We leave the "green house" era behind and enter what is called the "ïce era". Overall temperatures are dropping, but high frequency cycles (thousands of years) causes temperatures to rise and drop as well.

1,8 mya: huge glaciation takes place, huge sea level drop as a consequence of water trapped as ice in the poles

18,000 years ago: after the last glaciation, earth`s temperature begins to rise again but another drop is recorded - known as Last Glacial Maximum - low sea level and lower temperatures.

After that event temperature is NATURALLY raising and oscillating (high frequency cycles)

These evidences are recorded at the bottom of the oceans as a depositional history of our world - I like to think of it as a black box of our planet - it records whatever happens. They have been studied by many different institutions throughout the world in different times by different scientists and the fact that they generally agree is an unbiased proof of consitency

My thoughts on the subject are:

- Oscillations takes place at a rate of a few thousands of years at a time (and it's been going on for the last 150,000,000 years) while Mankind is measuring temperatures for the last 150 years.
Sorry Al, we cannot see the cycles with such a short time window.
- Mathematical models are as good as the data that feeds them and are extremely dependant on what assumptions are made when developing the model - they must be simplified because we cannot create a model that considers all variants on our environment, hence, models are all short sighted.
- Mount Etna alone have thrown hundreds of times more gases in the atmosphere than all Mankind since the industrial revolution in the end of the XIX century
- The raising of our modern civilization sure changed the landscape as big cities were built, rivers deviated, forrests burnt down and so on. But it cannot affect the overall climate, only on local scale.
- If there is one good side effect of all the alarmism is that we are becoming more conscious about our role in polluting the world!!

Man.. we should be discussing it over a pint (or tea, or coffee)  ;D ;D ;D

[mandru]

Man.. we should be discussing it over a pint (or tea, or coffee)  ;D ;D ;D

Or a bonfire.  :P

Which interestingly enough is where climate change fanatics would like to roast us for not being properly cowed by their scary talk.  ;)

[Art Blade]

JRD, special thanks for that post  :-X

all the rest of you: a very nice read for me  :-X :)

[Ricamundo]

Thoughtful and heartfelt replies guys. :-X I'm not well educated, or well read, but the current media fed hysteria over AGW annoys the crap out of me. I know we, as a modern society, must lower our voratious use of non renewable resources, as fossil fuels will run out eventually, even coal.

There is nothing wrong with putting money into developing alternate energies, but for the love of god, stop with the shouting, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth.(Im talking about the most ardent AGW believers here, btw).

You know the type, they will brook no argument about our supposed plight, no, these days, climateology is the only field of science that im aware of that is settled, done and dusted, we already know what we need to know, and if you arent on the bandwagon, then you're a heretic, a denier, a Neanderthal. ::)

While all this is going on, i worry that real undenialble problems, over population, disease, deforestation, air and water pollution, are being put on the back burner because they arent sexy, like the new religion that AGW is.

Now people who should know what they are talking about , are warning of the next big time scam..cap and trade..coming to a near bankrupt economy near you. >:(

[mmosu]

That's precisely the problem Ricamundo, the real problems aren't sexy, and they are much more difficult to solve, and so people choose to selectively ignore them while distracting us from the fact that they're doing it by waving their arms in the air and fist-pounding about something that they think they can parlay into getting another new law passed (or another term in office). 
I'm also in agreement with what JRD said - I have always been suspicious that the climate "changes" that we think we've been seeing are actually cyclical in nature, and that we haven't been monitoring temperature with any accuracy for long enough to see it.  (P.S. - for those of you outside the U.S., Al Gore is a tool, and now nearly everyone in this country accepts that  ;D).  I think the evidence that has been presented for "global warming" is anecdotal at best, and there is a lot more w@&k to be done before any firm conclusions can be drawn.
That being said, do we need to reduce our consuption of non-renewable resources? Yes.  Will our continued carbon emmisions and use of fossil fuel affect the environment?  Almost assuredly.  But we need to make these changes for the right reasons, not because some politicians scared us into it with a "half-baked truth".  I've heard real experts who believe that our planet is more than capable of "healing" itself - the fact that the hole in the ozone layer has shrunk is evidence of this.  People need to learn to see through the "we're gonna die tomorrow" scare tactics that politicians are using.

[fragger]

If you anagram out Al Gore you get Large 0.

Love it! ;D ;D :-X :-X

And mandru, I agree with you 100% regarding the fear factor. Yesterday it was bird flu, the day before it was the Y2K bug, today it's climate change, and tomorrow it'll be something else. Keep them doggies movin', can't have people getting contented with their lots or they might just start thinking for themselves and - shock, horror - might just come to the realization of how inept and venal their leaders really are and decide to turf them out of office. Naturally the politicians want to avoid this at all costs, they're very comfy in their seats and will do whatever it takes to stay seated. They're hooked on power, and like any hardened junkies, they'll go to any lengths and take any action to get their fixes with no concern for the people whose quality of life they wreck along the way. If the course of action they feel they need to take to stay in power means scaring the bejeezus out of their constituents at all times, so be it - that's the course they'll take.

People need to learn to see through the "we're gonna die tomorrow" scare tactics that politicians are using.

Absolutely, and in a nutshell :-X

Cheers, you guys! If only more people in the world had the perspective, intelligence, and plain common sense that the members of this esteemed site display. Time and again I'm impressed by the perceptions presented here. You're a bright bunch, and that is the truth, convenient or not :) :-X

[mandru]

Think magic act, a magician will cause his audience to see what he wants them to focus on so that he is able to manipulate his props and cause something to appear, disappear or any number of objects to trade places or show up in an unexpected fashion.

The better a magician is at balancing the sleight of hand while keeping up an entertaining patter and being amusing in general the better the audience's perception of him as being a great magician and showman.

Now let's take that same concept and apply it to politicians world wide. If they want to take attention off of something they are doing that they don't want any one to see or catch on to until it's way too late, creating public fear is a powerful smoke screen and commonly used tool for that showman as a professional politician.

The really scary part of this process is that when Fear as a conditioning agent is used on a population the subject pushed forward to create fear is generally pretty benign but the things that are going on behind the smoke screen, the manipulating political sleight of hand, can be literally terrifying in its broad scope of damages through loss of rights, loss of well being and public's loss of having their voices heard and recognized by leaders reminding them (the leaders) that they will be addressed for betraying public trust.

I've not even mentioned financial costs to a population through corruption and pocket lining by officials when they no longer fear the voice of the people because it has been sufficiently stilled by stealing their hope.

Look at Haiti and the terrible catastrophe that is going on there. It was once one of the richest island nations in the Western hemisphere but after generations of unchecked sacking and pillaging of the country's wealth and resources by corrupt officials it has been left unable to address this crisis while literally billions upon billions of US dollars have been pumped into their economy and into relief efforts for its people.

That's not counting all of the matching funds, resources and professional people (Doctors, Nurses, construction teams and even mission workers) that have come in from other countries world wide because they saw need and wanted to help the Haitians.

It's a gut wrenching tough SOB of a lesson but any country, any people, anywhere political power is left unchecked and without balances that place the reins of national steerage firmly in the hands of its populace the current condition of Haiti is the best that a population with a self serving government can hope for in the long run.