Leading Global Warming Skeptic changes mind after watching Al Gore Speak

[multi]

oh wow .. what a fucking genious you are NIc..

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Originally Posted by albed

It's actually an example that Al Gore doesn't really have the concern for the environment that he claims or he wouldn't be abusing it to such an extraordinary degree, just as Jimmy Swaggart doesn't really believe god exists or he wouldn't be provoking his wrath.

Neither of those assertions are necessarily true at all in the real world of course, but if such baseless assumptions help you cling to your bias and dysfunctional version of reality, that's your perogative.

Originally Posted by albed

...and your own claim that global warming can cause global cooling clearly shows just how unquestioning you in particular are.

That is not 'my claim,' it is a theory. (You really just can't help spinning everything can you?) I've not taken any position on its truth, but you can't seem to help yourself from insisting I have, apparently, because you don't have a scrap of information to refute it and yet are still determined to deny it for reasons unknown to anyone save that you are 'not convinced.'

For future reference and based on track record, please know that things which have or have not 'convinced albed' hold for me no redeemable value.

When you can prove that this theorem is not true you will have lived up to the rather unlikely position of supreme authority on matters of the future of the environment which you ridiculously project. Until that time you are so much derisive chatter, mocking the the entire concept of man's affect on the environment based solely on your misguided feeling of superiority to any and all individuals who have any true interest in it, lumping these together as a single 'mindless' entity in order to maintain that delsuion.

In fact when you, or Mazer or Drakonix or anyone else who maintains anthropogenic climate changes are "not supported by science" can produce one bit of scientific evidence that conclusively refutes it, (repeating variations of the phrase over and over doesn't count by the way), I will no longer assume we are merely listening to your preferred beliefs ad nauseum and at that time I will revisit the unlikely assertion that you've managed to transcend science and draw a valid conclusion from an inconclusive set of data and get back to you.

Meanwhile, if you really think the current quality and rate of increase of human industry can continue unchecked indefinitely without any environmental repercussions, I suggest you go sit in the garage with your car running for awhile and think about it some more.


Mazer, at last, the real villains are revealed!

[Drakonix]

High level nuclear waste is commonly processed by immobilizing it in borosilicate glass ("Pyrex", "Duran").

[albed]

Originally Posted by albed
It's actually an example that Al Gore doesn't really have the concern for the environment that he claims or he wouldn't be abusing it to such an extraordinary degree, just as Jimmy Swaggart doesn't really believe god exists or he wouldn't be provoking his wrath.

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Neither of those assertions are necessarily true at all in the real world of course, but if such baseless assumptions help you cling to your bias and dysfunctional version of reality, that's your perogative.

When someones actions conflict with their words then only the weakest minds continue to believe their words.

Originally Posted by albed
...and your own claim that global warming can cause global cooling clearly shows just how unquestioning you in particular are.

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

That is not 'my claim,' it is a theory. (You really just can't help spinning everything can you?) I've not taken any position on its truth, but you can't seem to help yourself from insisting I have,

You've used it in your argument so if you don't think it's true that would make you a hypo...ahh, would make you Ramona.

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

In fact when you, or Mazer or Drakonix or anyone else who maintains anthropogenic climate changes are "not supported by science" can produce one bit of scientific evidence that conclusively refutes it, (repeating variations of the phrase over and over doesn't count by the way), I will no longer assume we are merely listening to your preferred beliefs ad nauseum and at that time I will revisit the unlikely assertion that you've managed to transcend science and draw a valid conclusion from an inconclusive set of data and get back to you.

When something doesn't exist it produces no "proof" of its non-existance, only an absence of evidence. You've become as pathetic as the rest of the religious lamers who demand the same "proof" that god doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Meanwhile, if you really think the current quality and rate of increase of human industry can continue unchecked indefinitely without any environmental repercussions, I suggest you go sit in the garage with your car running for awhile and think about it some more.

While your own religious brainwashing prevents you from comprehending it, more rational people understand that the environment in the U.S. and other advanced countries has actually improved significantly in the past several decades in spite of increased industrial activity and this improvement is spreading to other countries.

And if you think the modern diesel engine in my pickup will cause carbon monoxide poisoning you're once again displaying your vast ignorance.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Mazer, at last, the real villains are revealed!

Cute, but you know I didn't mean it that way. Africa, China, South America, and many other places are rich in resources and are developing as a result. Most of those places don't have the benefit of our environmental protection laws, not to mention our labor and human rights laws. Because of their weak economies they will develop their industries with little regard to public health as we did more than a hundred years ago. Our economy went up when we started taking public health seriously because our natural resources are totally worthless without a strong labor force. Cleaning the air, the water, the soil, all make economic sense in the long run. But when a poor nation suffers a market correction or a recession, environmental issues go on the back burner in favor of the short term issues. That nation's industries will pollute and abuse the environment for as long as it takes for the economy to recover. When they are poor they are sloppy and reckless. When they are not then they're like us, not only concerned about the environment but able to do something about it.

We should be helping poor nations develop for humanitarian reasons, those are more pressing and more immediate than the environmental ones. Along the way we can give them the benefit of our experience, help them preserve their environments now so they won't have to restore them later. But we've become so jaded that we believe the environment is of greater moral concern than world wide poverty. Unfortunately we can't solve poverty by protecting the environment. But knowing that we can protect the environment by solving poverty I think it's time to put the "Oh No, capitalism and greed and free trade is going to destroy the World" argument to bed. Those things won't necessarily save it but the rest of the world will industrialize eventually. Everyone will harvest their ores and their coal beds and their forests and their farm lands, and if we don't help them then we can't stop them from repeating our mistakes.

[albed]

Originally Posted by Mazer

We should be helping poor nations develop for humanitarian reasons,

The "poor nations" have already suffered enough from all the humanitarian help they've received. First advanced medical care to cause their populations to balloon, then food relief to keep them from starving as they destroy the sustainable ecological balance they've maintained for millenia, and now huge numbers of uneducated, unemployed adults with little to do but start massacres, spread aids and destroy their environment.

Large parts of the world would be much better off today if not for all that "humanitarian" help.

[Mazer]

That's because humanitarian efforts have been spearheaded by well meaning imbeciles up 'til now. They've tried to provide what in America would be called welfare, and you're right, their booming populations can no longer sustain their former standards of living (which weren't very high to begin with). Now they haven't a choice, they must industrialize just to survive. Helping them to do so wouldn't be charity because we'd be profiting from it, but it would be the right thing to do, assuming we don't patronize the kinds of business that use slave labor or dump raw sewage into rivers. Since we can't undo the disruptions all our humanitarianism has caused then we may as well invite the rest of the world to join the twenty first century.

[Ramona_A_Stone]

Originally Posted by albed

When someones actions conflict with their words then only the weakest minds continue to believe their words.

Again, logical fallacy. If someone came up to you and said "it is not good to shoot yourself in the head" and then shot himself in the head, not only would you probably continue to believe their words, you might even have more reason than before to do so.

But, while hardly an absolute, I must admit it is an excellent portrait of Bush and his supporters over the past years.

Originally Posted by albed

You've used it in your argument so if you don't think it's true that would make you a hypo...

I used it in my argument as an inconclusive, because my argument is that it's inconclusive, you just can't stand to hear it apparently. I don't have the luxury to approach information and pretend I'm determining its truth by simply sorting it into two categories according to which political agendists find it more popular. That process obviously must be very satisfying for you in some way, but I'll just have to slag along evaluating the merit of ideas according to their own particular cases and inherent characteristics, sometimes not reaching a primary conclusion at all.

Originally Posted by albed

When something doesn't exist it produces no "proof" of its non-existance, only an absence of evidence. You've become as pathetic as the rest of the religious lamers who demand the same "proof" that god doesn't exist.

It is nonsensical to ask for proof of non-existence, but that's not what I asked and just shows the level of your misconception. Anthropogenic changes to the environment are a fact. A fart is one instance, so we have evidence these changes exist.

This is from the EPA "State of Knowledge" site:

What's Known

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
• A warming trend of about 0.7 to 1.5°F occurred during the 20th century. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans.
• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

What's Likely?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities". In short, a number of scientific analyses indicate, but cannot prove, that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are contributing to climate change (as theory predicts). In the coming decades, scientists anticipate that as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise, average global temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise as a result and precipitation patterns will change.

What's Not Certain?

Important scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms. Answering these questions will require advances in scientific knowledge in a number of areas:

• Improving understanding of natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, land-use changes, the warming or cooling effects of pollutant aerosols, and the impacts of changing humidity and cloud cover.
• Determining the relative contribution to climate change of human activities and natural causes.
• Projecting future greenhouse emissions and how the climate system will respond within a narrow range.
• Improving understanding of the potential for rapid or abrupt climate change.

You pretend to know that the sum cumulative effect of these changes is negligible and that certain subsequent changes are not occurring and will not occur. Your vague, primitive and virtually unsubstantiated premise seems to be that man will apparently never alter the environment significantly enough to change the weather patterns and elemental distributions which sustain its current climate. This is a theorem exactly as global warming is a theorem, about things which do exist, and one which does produce what some people consider supporting evidence--which you would think might be worth at least mentioning or attributing to some scientist or another if you had indeed arrived at it through the careful personal evaluation of all the conflicting evidence as you claim.

That global warming is alarmism and stupid and thought up by manipulative hypocrites isn't evidence pertaining to your premise, but that seems to be all you got.

Lack of evidence for one thing is not evidence for another. You're still just chattering about your beliefs like a little monkey.

Originally Posted by albed

While your own religious brainwashing prevents you from comprehending it, more rational people understand that the environment in the U.S. and other advanced countries has actually improved significantly in the past several decades in spite of increased industrial activity and this improvement is spreading to other countries.

I suppose if I were religious in any way that would be cutting. As it is in reality I simply understand that global warming is a probability that may have consequences and therefor it is in our best interest to limit our affect on the environment in whatever ways what we can, and you sound rather hysterical.

And 'improved significantly' isn't really science either, is it? Sounds more like a parrotsquawk to me.

Mazer, charming rhetoric and point well taken, but various estimates show that 70%+ of the total global deforestation, for instance, is the direct result of commercial logging, farming and ranching. Greed is absolutely part of the equation. You can "put the argument to bed" all you want, but the reality ain't goin' to sleep.

collage:
...The "poor nations" have already suffered enough from all the humanitarian help they've received.
...Large parts of the world would be much better off today if not for all that "humanitarian" help.
...because humanitarian efforts have been spearheaded by well meaning imbeciles
...Since we can't undo the disruptions all our humanitarianism has caused

LMFAO

You guys are talking about Iraq, right? Glad to see it finally sink in!

HAR HAR HAR

[Mazer]

Well, I was talking mostly about African nations, but the same does apply to Iraq. I'm hopeful our troops will no longer need to be stationed there and our mission there will become a humanitarian one. Domestic politics will of course make that next to impossible after 2008. But aside from Iraq, Africa has the greatest number of people with the greatest need and we can't ignore that forever.

Originally Posted by Ramona_A_Stone

Mazer, charming rhetoric and point well taken, but various estimates show that 70%+ of the total global deforestation, for instance, is the direct result of commercial logging, farming and ranching. Greed is absolutely part of the equation. You can "put the argument to bed" all you want, but the reality ain't goin' to sleep.

And the reality is that greed, or at least greedy behavior, gives people options. International Paper probably won't stop using tree pulp and switch to 100% recycled fiber for their products, but that is an option available to them, and because they have that discretion we can judge the morality of their business practices. But no matter how we judge them they are better off having the freedom to choose, as are we all.

There are a lot of good reasons to limit the spread commercialism, but the fear of greed is just not one of them. We've shown the impoverished people of the world that they can have more if they want it, and guess what, they do want more and there is nothing wrong with that. Greed is necessary to motivate people to get themselves out of poverty. It's a vice and a sin, but it is like you say a fundamental part of the equation, and we can't balance that equation if we try to limit commercial greed.

[Nicobie]

Originally Posted by multi

oh wow .. what a fucking genious you are NIc..

Thank you...

Common sense isn't so common is it.


Maybe you can take a class. Maybe you can get someone to pay for it as it's obvious that you haven't been able to afford it

[albed]

He's really not that smart multi. Don't let him intimidate you.