Re: OT: One more for the deniers


"Les Cargill" <lcargill@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Elvis Kabong wrote:
"Les Cargill" <lcargill@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Elvis Kabong wrote:
"J.P." <jpasano@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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REBATE08COn Tue, 13 May 2008 17:23:01 -0700 (PDT), Keep Believing In
Lies <lordkoos@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
World Carbon Dioxide Levels Highest for 650,000 Years, Says US Report
By David Adam The Guardian UK
EVERY TIME I read some horse*** such as this I know it is total crap!
Anyone see why? These stupid mutherfuckers haven't lived long enough
to do research on nearly 3/4 of a million years of ANY FUCKING THING!
The end. Next thing you know some ignorant cocksucker will be on PBS
trying to sell the flowers made dinosaurs line of crap.And the carbon
dating thing goes outta whack after a few thousand years also.
Millions of years my ass! Mulay ***!
Ok, let's assume the threat of extreme climate shifting (global
warming) is just a myth, a hoax or something us humans
cannot prevent.
But what's so fucking wrong with trying to make Earth a better place?
Define "better" in a categorical and irrefutable manner. Which
version of Earth's climate is best?

Less fucked up by humans mucking about as retards without
respect for the balances and symbiosic relationships in nature
who could care less if they if it all gets out of whack. Then
there's that wonderful attitude of who cares about what our
descendents inherit - let them deal with it.

We will all do things that have long term effects. We can try to mitigate
them as best we can, but we'll muck it up.

I'd love to see a comprehensive boondoggle for more advanced
forms of energy be established, but ... once you get beyond a certain
number of people on the planet, it's gonna be ugly no matter what
tech is in use.

And the answer to "we need fewer people!" is always "you first."

Or better
yet, the *Rapurists* attitude and resulting actions: go ahead
and let the Earth get fucked up. We'll be leaving the Earth
before it gets too uninhabital anyway.


Okay then. My point is that I am not sure anybody can state
clearly what the optimum state of the atmosphere should be.

The ... director? of NASA made this point and got his "speaking
in public ticket" pulled, but that doesn't make it untrue.

Let's assume that you do as the tree-huggers do, and assume a
roughly 1790 climate is optimum. What was Earths population of humans in
1790? About one-tenth of today's population.

And your point?


We have many mouths to feed. Absent fossil fuel technology, the
planet can support roughly a pre-technological population. About
one tenth of the people alive today.

What's so wrong with trying to use cleaner, more efficient renewable
forms of energy?
Where are they? Are they more economically efficient that oil? After all
the US uses a lot of oil to create mass quantities of bulk food products
that the rest of the world depends on.

If the anti-drug histeria didn't exist, we could at least be growing
hemp (which grows a lot faster than trees) for paper instead
of chopping trees for toilet paper for one thing. What about
more solar and wind power usages? In the long run, it pays
for itself and beyond.


Hemp is a great fiber crop, no doubt. Solar and wind are out there, but
we go through... about 20 million barrels a day. That's quite a lot.
One barrel is roughly 1700 kWh. 34,000,000 kWh, IOW. One 25 foot wind
turbine produces about 2 MW - 50 MW per day. But that energy isn't very
moveable. You'd have to start with 680,000 (divided by efficiency
) to replace oil imports.


Maybe this is Bad (indeed, it can be quite bad ) but *today*, if
we change that, lots of people will die. But that's okay, right?

I see what you're getting at, but how about this one?
What fucking good is it if you don't have to pay
*any* fucking taxes and not have to give a *** if every
oxygen producting plantlife is chopped down and almost all
of the oxygen in the atmosphere is depleted but you
can't fucking breathe or the air is so fucking polluted
you can't breathe, but you get own a fleet of SUVs
from all of those wonderful tax breaks?


One thing has little to do with the other.

What's wrong with not destroying the fucking planet
by chopping off the tops of mountains and polluting the valleys and the
water in the valleys and leaving the devistation without any attempt
to reforestation?
What's wrong *with* it? Which version of Earths ecosystem is the 'best'
one? Defend your belief .... somehow.

Oh that would be the one like the nouveau rich in China insisting
on eating delicacies like shark fins so the fishermen continually
net sharks, cut off their fins, then throw their bodies into the
ocean. That's a real wise approach, wouldn't you say?


I dunno. What's the perfect number of sharks to have? There
were mountains of buffalo bones in Cody, Wyoming.

I have been utterly and totally brainwashed by Boy Scout training -
leave it better than you found it - but that's only valid on
certain parts of the planet. You can go tell a Chinese peasant who
is dislocated from farmland his family/tribe has worked for millenia
that he is no longer welcome on the planet. We'll watch.

Why would I tell *any* farmer such a thing?


Because when we cut energy consumption to cut food production, he's
probably gonna feel it. If not directly, then indirectly as
prices rise to accommodate reduced production.

Did you know that really reliable food sources were not a "taken
for granted" thing until the Great Plains were farmed, very late
19th, early 20th Century?

You and I never have to think about where food comes from, for the
first time really in the history of our species.

What were all those people in "Deliverance" so upset about Oh yeah.
All their land was gonna be lake bottom.

What event occurred in the United States between roughly 1929 and
1941? What were the roots of it? What did it mean and symbolize?

But they acted as if resources were infinite. I'm suggesting rationality
and practicality with *finite* resources.


I understand. They didn't actually *know* what the limits were. Truth
be told, we don't much, either.

What's wrong with not polluting the air with more and
more carbon oxides? What's wrong with trying to save the oxygen
producing plankton that is being killed off from the fresh water
melting
of the poles? What's wrong with conservation of the natural resources?
What's wrong with not clear-cutting old growth forests?
What's wrong with not polluting the air and water and
ground on Earth?
What's wrong with trying to clean up the stinkin' by-products
instead of releasing them into the air or water sources?
So other than hand-wavey Star Trek techno-magic, how is this
to all be accomplished? Have you ever dealt with the California
Air Resources Board? I have.

More people need to go green and demand the changes.


But they really can't. Most people are one paycheck away from living
in a van down by the river. And that's the lucky ones.

What's wrong with less dependence on foreign oil?
What's wrong with trying to improve the quality of life for everyone?
That's easy. Just have 9 of ten people kill themselves.

Ok, I'm aware that the ever growing population and longer
life expectancies are putting more of demand on recources,
but that means we need to be even MORE wiser, efficient
and less wasteful with the finite resources.


I agree. But we can only move so fast.

Where's the harm in any of this?


Oh goodness....think it *all* the way through. *All* the way. Start
with Disc 1 of "Connections" by James Burke....

Are you referring to the very first original series when he was much
younger and zipping around place to place for every development
stage or the much more slower paced remake of the original series
(which BTW, I thought was boring compared to the original)?

I am pretty sure it's the first one - "what do you do if the lights go
out - and stay out." How do you survive? Well... you don't.

I don't own them, but I've seen them both and prefer the original
series. And from having seen it and how one by-product became
another's useful component in the advancement of technologies
and so on, I can't believe no one has yet found a way to use and
simutaneously render nuclear fission waste harmless by now instead
of trying to sweep it under the rug by burying it.


The energy densities are mind-boggling. Containment is awaiting
some major genius-breakthrough. If at all. It's been 70 years away
for 70 years.

Ed



--
Les Cargill



--
Les Cargill

Excellent responses Les.

BTW, I have another show my brother and I used to watch
in the 80s but I can't recall the name. It was all about
new and modern efficient technologies being developed
in Australia. Most of the devices featured on the show
every week had elegant simplicity, were very common
sensible and ingenious. And every week we saw it
together we'd always ask the same question: "Where
can we buy this stuff?" There were never any ads
on TV or newspapers or magazines for them
and not in any of the catalogs of all sorts we'd
get in the mail. We didn't have the internet
back then either, yet we would have gladly
bought some of those products to reduce
energy consumption.

I used to do a lot of photo darkroom work
for photo art. In the darkroom, the main objective
is to use your time as wisely and efficiently as
possible. I like that kind of challenge. I incorporate
that same objective even and especially today
with my energy uses. Not only has utility rates
gone up from the rising price of oil, our
privatized utility company is making all of its
customers pay for the Katrina damages.

BTW, did you see another recent post of mine
about some author I'd seen on CSPAN talking
about his book and stating how by the time
the oil supply completely runs out, alternative
energy technologies will simply not be in
place to replace it and what the results
will be like? I'll cut and paste it below:

He said that since the US and China are burning up the oil
at such a rapid rate during this state of depletion, that
alternative technology will simply not be in place to easily
shift to when the oil runs completely out.

He went on to say that traveling long distances will cease
to exist for the most part since energy will be so bleedin'
expensive. Corporate farms in California will cease to
exist because it will become cost inefficient to transport
its produce all around the country. In fact, more and more
people will get into gardening, and that there will
be so many people defying city zoning laws by "illegally"
working in their homes or property that the city authorities
won't be able to do a damned thing about it.

You can also expect more people riding bicycles or horse-
drawn carriages and people simply walking here and there.

Does this mean I will kneejerk and get rid of my gasoline
powered vehicle? Does this mean I will dump all of my
electrical and electronic gear? No! But even if this is a
bogus threat, I suggest that everyone invest in buying
as many hand tools as one can accumulate *anyway*.
After all, you never know, but it's not unlikely that one
day you will have to repair or build something for someone
in exchange for food.


.