Happy Father's Day

[Fred Harvey]

Re: Happy Father's Day

You compared my spelling to your dictionary.:)

Wots a dichunnary?

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Happy Father's Day

You have to know how to ask proper questions. More accurately would have been to ask how many scientific papers by reputatable scientists.

If someone wants to give me a large grant to write a book either for or against climate change, I could do it.

I would say that I have bought and read about half a dozen books on climate change in the last year. I have mentioned some of the titles over the course of the last year. Two of them were skeptical of AGW. One believed in AGW but thought that it was not a big deal and that the money that was being proposed could solve many more pressing problems like AIDS, Global hunger and various other ills facing mankind. Three were generally by believers in AGW. I'm not sure how many journal articles I have read over the course of the last year, probably in the twenty to thirty range.

From what I have seen written here, Tom O' Donnell probably has the smallest carbon footprint of most of the posters involved in this thread. Paul has one of the bigger ones. As a supporter of Malthusian and Green Party doctrines curiously he has three kids so like Al Gore its more of do as I say and not as I do. Having children is an act of unrestrained optimism. A crime against nature according to some of the eco-terrorists. There will be more breakthroughs in agriculture so don't worry, food won't be an issue for a while.

Personally I like trees and would be reluctant to cut one down without planting more to replace it but the trees I planted would grow faster if there is more carbon dioxide. If you are right about AGW then the temperature is going to go up because India and China and the developing nations are going to burn more fossil fuels regardless of what we do. If you are wrong and warming is due to naturally occurring cycles then we still need to get used to a warmer planet. Once you have taken as many science courses as I have you won't be so worried about that outcome.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Happy Father's Day

I'm afraid I cannot provide multiple peer-reviewed papers from prominent scientists in the field of sheep legs and tails to answer that question intelligently.

Dead president's wit and wisdom redux. Riddle me this and riddle me that. Where's the Caped Crusader when you need him?

[Paul Beckwith]

Re: Happy Father's Day

Vlad says he is from Windsor! I do not think so, I have discovered his real home.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/201006...iouscaveonmars

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Happy Father's Day

Vlad says he is from Windsor! I do not think so, I have discovered his real home.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/201006...iouscaveonmars

Mars is experiencing global warming. I guess that is Canada's fault too. :p

[Gary Ruben]

Re: Happy Father's Day

Paul has one of the bigger ones. As a supporter of Malthusian and Green Party doctrines curiously he has three kids so like Al Gore its more of do as I say and not as I do. Having children is an act of unrestrained optimism. A crime against nature according to some of the eco-terrorists. There will be more breakthroughs in agriculture so don't worry food won't be an issue for a while.

That's an interesting observation. I thought the global warming folks wanted a better planet to leave to the future generations and so he was ensuring there would be a next generation.

A Canadian mining company is currently building a very large nickel and cobalt mine in a Madagascar rain forest. Of course, there's the challenge of being environmentally friendly and the Lemurs.

Electricity is a monster which feeds on itself. When the light go out in a major city for a number of hours, up goes the birth rate. If the temperature heats up, the air conditioners go up, gas or coal powered electricity production is put on line to meet the increased demand and up goes pollution.

[Tom O'Donnell]

Re: Happy Father's Day

...
From what I have seen written here, Tom O' Donnell probably has the smallest carbon footprint of most of the posters involved in this thread. Paul has one of the bigger ones. As a supporter of Malthusian and Green Party doctrines curiously he has three kids so like Al Gore its more of do as I say and not as I do. Having children is an act of unrestrained optimism. A crime against nature according to some of the eco-terrorists. There will be more breakthroughs in agriculture so don't worry, food won't be an issue for a while.
...

Disclaimer: I voted for the Green Party last election, though only because no Libertarian candidate was running in my riding.

The one thing that the Greens don't seem to acknowledge is that it is actually quite inconvenient to live the lifestyle, even a weak version as my wife and I practice. Taking buses, riding bikes or walking instead of cars, growing your own vegetables instead of buying them at the store, not eating much/any meat, having a smaller house, less "stuff", in North America this is just not generally considered desirable. I find it hard to believe that solar-powered cars or electricity generated by millions of wind turbines created with energy from ... wind turbines(?) is going to make for a smooth transition. Unless you are super rich, of course.

In my case, I am operating in my own long-term interests. I believe that society as it is now is just not sustainable and that the Green alternatives, though well-meaning, contain a much too big PITA factor to make them the sort of medicine that the average person is going to want to swallow. So I live an inconvenient lifestyle now in order to try and have a personally more sustainable one later.

However, most people I think are unlikely to think things will be this bad, and even if they are going to be this bad, that it will be far enough in the future that it won't affect them or for science or God or some other miracle to save us all. So they, too, operate in their own self-interests and buy SUVs to go to the corner store for their 5,000 km bananas. Even a million climate scientists providing incontrovertible proof that the human race will be wiped out in 200 years is not going to change that. Why would it? Who's going to be around in 200 years? I see lots of people too lazy and short-sighted to put their trash in the garbage can three steps away from them; these sorts of people are never, ever going to change.

Speaking of bananas, and food more generally, the argument about population growth and resources (or lackthereof) remind me a bit of tournament No-Limit Hold'em. One possible tournament strategy is to go "all in" preflop every hand. It will work a huge percentage of the time. Right up until the last time, when you lose all your chips and presto! you're done. If we could be sure that X% food shortages would mean an orderly dieoff of X% of the population to compensate, that would be tragic but not a disaster. However, I sort of suspect that if I were in the X% I wouldn't go too quietly and probably I am not alone in that.

[Vlad Drkulec]

Re: Happy Father's Day

That's an interesting observation. I thought the global warming folks wanted a better planet to leave to the future generations and so he was ensuring there would be a next generation.

Most of the environmental organizations are pretty clear that they want population declines including Paul's Sierra Club. Apparently they want other people's population to decline and not their own. I'm not surprised at the lack of internal consistency.

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In its policy on population the Sierra Club states, "the 'population explosion' has severely disturbed the ecological relationships between human beings and the environment. It has caused an increasing scarcity of wilderness and wildlife and has impaired the beauty of whole regions, as well as reducing the standards and the quality of living" (Sierra Club).

The Sierra Club recognizes that all of our environmental successes may be short-lived if they do not include efforts to address population growth. (Sierra Club)

Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.”
John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club

Some other of the lead proponents of AGW:

Given the total, absolute disappearance of Homo sapiens, then not only would the Earth’s community of Life continue to exist, but in all probability, its well-being enhanced. Our presence, in short, is not needed.”
Paul Taylor, author of Respect for Nature, A Theory of Environmental Ethics

“I got the impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, I should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds.”
Paul Watson, Founder of Greenpeace and Sea Shepard

“[W]e have no problem in principle with the humans reducing their numbers by killing one another. It’s an excellent way of making the humans extinct.”
Geophilus, spokesman for Gaia Liberation Front

“Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.”
John Davis, editor of the journal Earth First!