what if a person owned a stake in a defense contractor that would benefit from war in iraq? you dont think that company, and its backers, would have a vested interest to push the "war" angle even harder?
Are you surprised? It is much easier to talk about Gore because he is a public person who presents dumbed down movies and books so people do not have to feel too challenged. Science, on the other hand, is hard and complicated and has numbers and formulas and weird symbols and guys in lab coats and jargon and joules and glasses and bunsen burners and theorems and data and charts and papers and techniques and procedures and pencils and graph paper and microscopy and lasers and quarks and photosynthesis and polyvinyl chloride and corn and cheese and polyethylene glycol and all sorts of stuff. Oh yeah, and scientists don't know how to talk. There are studes. Here, this chart shows the comprehension rate of scientists talking since 1993 for men and women (chicks are dumb so they are lower). There is an obvious trend:
And it's a rather unremarkable one to point out that there are interest groups with stakes on either side every issue. But if we are going to get into the size of the financial stake to the green side compared to the other side - it is not even close to being close to being close. The tens or hundreds of trillions of real dollars at stake for the anti-environmentalists in the long term doesn't have a practical or theoretical parallel on the other side.
Mrs. B-Bob: Why have you been drinking sullenly for our entire 3-day weekend? B-Bob: Another beat-down at the hands of my tormentor. They call him rimbuad. Mrs. B-Bob: What? B-Bob: It's a who. Rimmy... No wait, that means rimrocker. Mrs. B-Bob: I swear you make no sense anymore. I barely understand 3% of what comes out of your mouth. B-Bob: I know. 3.1%, but that's up from last year.
i would agree. that's why i thought it was funny that the counter argument was made to begin with...to which i respond with my first post in this thread.
Was this a conversation in the past? 3.1% would be 2003 , which you identified as "up from last year" (2002). So that is crazy that you would mention me tormenting you in a thread in 2002 right here, right now (there is no other place a scientist should rather be). PS - I am the original rimmy, thanks. Actually, thank Crisco. Anyway, right now Mr. Rocker is called it way way more than I but in 2002 I think I had the edge. PPS- We all know there is no Mrs. B-Bob. That is one of the things I forgot in my "science=bad" list. There are no female scientists and there are no wives of scientists.
Which one of the guys on White House's payroll wrote the piece? Arctic is melting, North Pole may soon be reachable by boats, Russia, Canada, US, and etc are already exploring ways to extract natural resource up there now we have easier access since ice is melting. Should we wait till the whole continent be flooded before we admit we have a problem?
What puzzles me is that while everyone is attacking the U.S., China is now the number one emitter of CO2 and India I'm sure isn't far behind. So you have Asia basically going to ramp up CO2 to heights unheard of, meanwhile evironmentalists are crying about nuclear and want to use wind and solar - solutions that would require us to live in huts.
Well, given that they have about 8 times as many people, I don't think its unrealistic to expect China to be a higher polluter than the US. Per capita, however, it's not even close. Nonsense. Every time in human history that a new source/method for producing energy has taken root, it's led to all sorts of new technological developments and new industries. This whole fear-mongering thing is pathetic. "Green energy" is not some kind of disaster-in-waiting for society unless you don't at all believe in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people and American economy.
1) Per capita, US come as the #1 polluter, nobody comes close 2) accumulative emission, US comes as the #1 polluter, nobody comes close So far we have done far more damage than anyone else, and right now per capita we are doing far more damage than anyone else. I think it is fair to start from us.
How about starting from less dramatic measures? Say demanding minimum of 30 miles per gallon and we have that technology now? Say higher tax on gas and use the revenue to promote public transportation, if we can do it with cigarettes why no gas?
If you look at the amount of CO2 per GDP though, China is much worse. China's pollution isn't helping it's people neccessarily. While the U.S. is higher per capita, our output of the worlds GDP is about 1/3. We produce 1/3 of the world's goods and services, and 1/3 of the CO2. So per capita is a bit deceptive. As for green energy, it has yet to make a dent. To put things in perspective, if you took all the wind power currently in the world, tripled it, you still wouldn't match a single small nuclear reactor.
Are we also entitled to 1/3 of oxygen and fresh water on the planet? All human are created equal, or all GDP are created equal? Besides if judged by purchasing parity, Chinese GDP is about 80% of American GDP, so there is not that big a gap there if you insist. Having said that, I agree China and India and other developing countries are less efficient on emission. But that is why they are developing countries and we are developed country. We are technologically more advanced. It is unrealistic to request them to be equally efficient. And you cannot ignore one simple fact: accumulatively over the history, US is the #1 polluter, far ahead of those developing countries you want to talk about.
