The Olduvai theory


sorabji.com: What are you afraid of?: The Olduvai theory
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).

By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:44 am:

    Got some time?
    Want a good fright?
    Then read this.

    Brief synopsis:
    World energy production per capita from 1945 to 1973 grew at a breakneck speed of 3.45 %/year. Next from 1973 to the all-time peak in 1979, it slowed to a sluggish 0.64 %/year. Then suddenly —and for the first time in history — energy production per capita took a long-term decline of 0.33 %/year from 1979 to 1999. The Olduvai theory explains the 1979 peak and the subsequent decline. More to the point, it says that energy production per capita will fall to its 1930 value by 2030, thus giving Industrial Civilization a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years.

    This chart shows a peak will be reached in 2003.
    And this chart shows black outs will become more common.

    This was written in 2000.


By semillama on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 10:36 am:

    So what do you think besides scary? Do you think this guy has a good model?


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 10:49 am:

    I am not sure yet.
    But if it is correct, within 10 years, it will cost more energy to extract the oil then the oil itself contains.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 10:53 am:

    The direction the author appears to come from is that the earth itself controls the population, and it appears to be ready to, shall we say, downsize?

    If that is true, we have a lot more to learn about the earth and ourselves.
    What I would like to do is contrast this theory with timelines of past civilizations (Egyptians, Myans, etc).
    It can be argued that the earth has seen a similar process in the past.


By TBone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 11:16 am:

    Gaia means to kill us all!


By semillama on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 12:17 pm:

    well, for one thing, the industrial era started in the 1770s.

    And another thing is that there was zero discussion of alternative energy sources, which are all geared towards the production of electricity.

    And another thing: I never thought I would see the day that spunky would post something that is widely used as a source by left wing environmentalists! (google it and check it out)

    You should go and check out the Apollo Alliance for some solutions.

    Still want that SUV?;)


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 12:47 pm:

    Now wait a minute.
    I am not coming at this from an eviromental perspective, I think most of that is crap used to scare people and control them.
    That being said, you do not have to be a brainiac to know that crude oil is NOT an unlimited resource.
    I'm all for alternative fuels.
    This nation needs to get itself off of OPEC's teat for national security and economic reasons.


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:08 pm:

    "I am not coming at this from an eviromental perspective, I think most of that is crap used to scare people and control them"

    what? scare & control who?


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:11 pm:

    you


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:23 pm:

    how? you wanna flesh that one out cause it ain't jivin to well.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:25 pm:

    I think that is rather obvious, don't you?
    Please don't make me point out the mundane.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:34 pm:

    Oh, right. Liberals want to scare and control people. Conservatives want them to be free and happy. Riiiiight.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:36 pm:

    Just can the bullshit stereotypes and stick to the facts, spunk. Let's stick to the facts, shall we?


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 01:37 pm:

    its only obvious to you, under the assumption than anything even remotely critical of current policy, practice or procedure with regards to the environment is bunk.

    so no.


    its not obvious.


    im wanting you to spell out the idea that fossil fuel depletion thus creating an energy void is somehow used to control people from the environmental slant.

    its a preposterous idea and i want to see you lay your baby out for all to see.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:16 pm:

    "I am not coming at this from an eviromental perspective, I think most of that is crap used to scare people and control them"
    I was referring to using ENVIROMENTAL issues to scare and control, not ENERGY VOID issues.
    I was the one who brought up the FOSSIL FUELs issue. I also said I was undecided in regards to my opinion on the matter, however I saw it as something worth at least looking at.


By TBone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:23 pm:

    Dude, chill.
    Nobody confused you with an environmentalist.
    .
    Sem was just pointing out that you might have some things in common with environmentalists, if for a different reason.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:29 pm:

    Im fine, not upset with sem in the least.


By ANTIGONE on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:37 pm:

    OK then, maybe CUT OUT the CAPS? They INFER STRONG EMOTION.


By Nate on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:42 pm:

    INFER backwards is REEFER.


By Spider on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:43 pm:

    You meant IMPLY, you AUSTRALOPITHECUS AFARENSIS.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:45 pm:

    I STAND CORRECTED, OH WORDSMYTHE.


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 02:45 pm:

    ok then spunk

    "I am not coming at this from an eviromental perspective, I think most of that is crap used to scare people and control them"


    what exactly are you saying then?

    its no one's fault but your own that you are totally confusing in the presentation of your ideas.


By eri on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:00 pm:

    OK children.....if you all don't start behaving yourselves, I will have to put you in separate rooms and give you all spankings in turn :p


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:07 pm:

    ummmmmm
    ok
    Maybe this will help:
    I am talking about looking at the fossil fuel issue from a national security perspective and economic consequences of lower levels of crude oil being extracted.
    enviromental hazards from fossil fuel usage is used to scare and control people.
    Folks who get in a lather over SUV usage are a perfect example.
    Folks that decry the president's decison to back off the kyoto treaty are another.


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:21 pm:

    "enviromental hazards from fossil fuel usage is used to scare and control people."

    oh. so you're an expert on the hazards that fossil fuels DON't create?

    im in a city that is experiencing some of the worst smog in nearly a decade. primary cause. FOSSIL FUELS!


    "Folks who get in a lather over SUV usage are a perfect example."

    How exactly am i controlled and kept in fear by my instance that SUVs are a part of the problem and not the solution? Even on a simplistic basis, how anyone can't agree that they ARE part of the problem is insane.


    "Folks that decry the president's decison to back off the kyoto treaty are another."

    You know....I can't argue the merits or flaws of Kyoto because ievitably you'll end up on one side or the other.

    Preserving the business and industry elite's grip on decision-making

    or the effort to push a global agenda that take a stab at the reasons why Europe is baking, glaciers are melting, air quality is getting worse, and black outs are occuring.

    Again, Kyoto was most likely part of the solution, backing out without offering alternatives was part of the problem.


    using this issue to cite "control and fear" on your part is like reverse psychology. because if there is anything conservative nitwits are good at is using control and fear to manipulate people.




By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:25 pm:

    And talking about energy policy from a national security perspective is NOT playing on fear?

    Saying "We're being controlled by a foreign power" is NOT playing on fear?

    Talking about it from that perspective is NOT a means of controlling people?


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:27 pm:

    All I'm saying, spunk, is you should lay off the liberal bashing. Make your argument without needlessly attacking the left. In general, your positive arguments are good, but your negative ones are shit. Don't taint your positive arguments with your negative ones.


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:32 pm:

    you say you only want to look at it from an economical or security prospective....why not environmental. is that not a concern? environmental could effect all of the above, and vice versa. its all entangled. why do you have the blinders on to anything even "environmentaL"


    this is why youre a closeminded bitch and why you generate such a response. and today im in a particularly vulnerable mood to your hypocritcal idiotic nonsense.

    im just sick of business, industry and government compromising any serious effort to handle and deal with potentially catastrophic environmental matters.

    whats it going to take to wake everyone up!

    Bush cites the blacks outs as a wake up call for restructuring the power grids.

    Maybe. Maybe that too. Maybe alternative energy instead too Mr. Bush. But then again, how would that benefit the energy companies he panders too. they're somewhat behind in that realm.

    to sit back and say "well the evidence isnt 100% in regards to global warming and out contribution to it" is pussy. If they evidence is 51% then do something. Don't wait until glaciers flood Europe, the US suffers catastrophic blackouts, Asia gets walloped by frequent tidal waves and monsoons.


    Its a fact autos contribute greatly to smog. DO SOMETHING.

    Its a fact that the harbor in LA is a huge contributor to smog, DO SOMETHING.

    we've had 40+ days of "unhealthful" air in this city. DO something!










    sorry.


    end rant.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:35 pm:

    am i telling YOU what to do?
    am i telling YOU what to buy?
    am i telling YOU how to live?
    No.

    As for the whole damn greehouse and vehicle emissions/smog issue, BULLSHIT.

    Compared to the previous five centuries or so, the 20th century did show a warming trend, with a globally averaged surface temperature rise of 0.5 C.

    First, most of the warming occurred before 1940 - before 80 percent of the C02 from human activities was added to the air. This means that the early 20th century warming must be mostly natural.

    Second, the climate record of the past 1,000 years suggests this temperature rise is hardly unique. New information about historical climate change obtained from trees, glaciers, ice cores, coral and other sources point towards a widespread Medieval Global Warming from about 800 to 1200 A.D. Subsequently, temperatures dropped markedly, creating a Little Ice Age that persisted nearly to the 20th century. So the 20th century's warming seems largely a natural rebound from the cold spell.

    For more than 30 years, surface temperatures actually fell slightly before starting to rise again in the late 70s. Tropospheric temperatures showed no warming from the inception of measurements by balloon carried instruments in 57 until 76. From 1976 to 1977, an increase occurred. But between 1979, after we started daily global-satellite measurements of tropospheric temperatures, and the present, neither satellite nor balloon data show a manmade warming trend.

    Those who decry human-made global warming say soot from industries has acted as an aerosol to mask a larger warming trend. But that prooves false because while C02 disperses globally, aerosols tend to stick more closely to where they are released. And the southern hemisphere, which is relatively free of aerosols, actually showed a cooling trend.

    The point is that the best data collected from satellites and validated by balloons to test the claim that a human-induced global warming from the release of C02 into the atmosphere shows no meaningful, trend of increasing temperatures, even as the climate models exaggerated the warmth that ought to have occurred from a build-up in C02.


By semillama on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:36 pm:

    Yes. You can't discuss fossil fuels without paying attention to environmental impacts.


    There are some interesting things going on with tidal powered turbines in Britain, I hear. I can't remember where though. And then there's wind power. That has to be the most graceful and aesthetic means of generating power ever developed.


By Spider on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:44 pm:

    Where did you take that information from, Spunky?


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:46 pm:

    spunk, while that position may have its merits to deny fossil fuel emmisions have a negative impact on our health is retarded. air quality suffers greatly, thus increasing respiratory illness.



    sem, haveyou ever driven through the Palm Springs area or northern CA...an hour outside SF?

    Those are two hotspots for wind energy fields. I get completely sidetracked on the freeway staring at the hundreds and hundreds of hypnotic 10 story windmills


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:55 pm:

    Time magazine, August 26, 2002
    and
    Reason Public Policy Institute April 30, 2003 : Article by Joel Schwartz and Steven F. Hayward

    Virtually the entire nation (>99%) now meets all federal health standards for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide. More than 96% of the nation complies with PM10 standards (particulate matter under 10 micrometers in diameter), and the compliance rate is about 70% for EPA’s stringent new annual PM2.5 standard. PM2.5 declined 33% between 1980 and 2000, with the most polluted areas once again achieving the greatest reductions.

    ALA “State of the Air” reports give an entire county an “F” grade if only a single air quality monitor within a county exceeds the EPA’s strict new 8-hour ozone benchmark more than 3 times per year. But in most metro areas only a few monitors ever register an exceedence. In some metro areas, only a tiny percentage of the population lives in proximity to air quality monitors that exceed the EPA standard.

    For example, ALA gave San Diego an “F” for air quality, claiming that San Diego experienced 16 instances of exceeding the EPA ozone standard in one year. In fact, only a single rural location, Alpine, exceeded the 8-hour ozone standard more than 2 times per year. 99.7% of people in San Diego County breathe air that meets both the EPA 8-hour and 1-hour ozone standards. ALA greatly exaggerated ozone levels in other metro areas as well.


By Nate on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:58 pm:

    you ever notice how when you come and just keep fucking and you maintain form and fuck for hours and when you're done there is this, lather.

    lather, man, that shit is liberal. liberal frosting. as in, i took a spatula and carefully spread my liberal frosting over your cupcakes.

    my glock go pop pop pop.



By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 03:59 pm:

    Further proof is the fact that, despite the "hazards" of fossil fuel burning vehicles and "poison" spewing stacks, the average life expectancy in this country has increased by 30 YEARS over the last century.
    Why is that?
    If it is so bad, then advances in medicine and technology used to store and prepare foods should be hamperred by the claims of eviromentalists.

    BTW, I have not mentioned "liberals" once in this thread.


By Spider on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:08 pm:

    (Hey, Patrick, the factoid on the inside of my Snapple cap says that there are 3 times as many cars as people in LA. Think this is true?)


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:12 pm:

    spunk, here in Dallas we have had some of the worst pollution in years this last week. I hadn't really noted it, except for hearing that there was a "double red" air quality alert one day last week. Also, the downtown skyline was obscured by an orange-brown haze. I could hardly see the buildings as I was driving home from work.

    Oddly enough, though, just about everyone I know is sick with some kind of respiratory problem since last week. I even had to miss a day of work, which almost never happens. I've been sick...my girlfriend has been sick...people in my office...friends of the family...

    Summer flu? Possibly. Odd timing? Definately.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:16 pm:

    And, spunk, if you're so hip on the cleanliness of fossil fuel burning emissions, why don't you close your garage door while your car engine runs? Do you breathe gasoline fumes for fun?

    spunk, I'm going to have to start calling you dimlu again. You're arguing that burning fossil fuels does not produce emissions harmful to the human body. You've jumped back into the IDIOT category.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:20 pm:

    SA has not been much better.
    We really had problems last week.

    How many cars do you have driving around downtown?
    There is not a lot of room in ours, but from where you pull into the street that leads to our complex, you get a perfect view of downtown SA, and sometimes there is a haze.
    The hotter it gets, the worse it is.
    I too have seen the LA Basin durring the summer months, and I know what smog looks like.
    The oddest thing, however is this:
    Even on hot nights, after sun set, it clears up.
    Still tons of cars on the roads, factories run 24x7, same with power plants.
    The sun seems to have the largest impact.

    I pointed to scientific data, and benchmarks set up by the EPA.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:25 pm:

    "why don't you close your garage door while your car engine runs?"

    why are you comparing the outdoors to a small, enclosed, non-ventilated area?
    And i am not referring to my own thoughts here, I am referring to scientific studies by scientists.
    So, the data I have cited is not MY data.
    The conclusions I have posted are not MY conclusions.


    You want more sources?


By TBone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:32 pm:

    Ok, let's ditch the environmental angle since it works up the froth and everyone stops listening.
    .
    SUVs use too much gas for their seating capacity. Get a station wagon with all the same parts (and same number of seats) and you get a lot better milage. Cut down the oh-so-american muscle a little, and you've got great fuel economy.
    Using less fuel is good, since we have a limited supply.
    .
    Spunk, i've also noticed that your positive arguments tend to be a lot better than your negative ones. You aren't always the only one, but you tend to be the worst.
    .
    And an SUV isn't a lifestyle. It's a car. And cut out the "Stop telling me how to live" crap. Your rights end where another person's begin. SUV drivers use more than their fair share of fuel, and that affects everyone.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:33 pm:

    Time magazine for June 24, 1974 declared: "However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades."
    In 1974 the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, stated: "During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade." Two years earlier, the board had observed: "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end...leading into the next glacial age."
    How quickly things change. Fear of the coming ice age is old hat, but fear that man-made greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise to harmful levels is in vogue. Alarmists brazenly assert that this phenomenon is fact, and that the science of climate change is "settled."


    HERE ARE YOUR SOURCES:
    Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Virginia, who served as the first Director of the US Weather Satellite Service (which is now in the Department of Commerce) and more recently as a member and vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA)

    Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who found that if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented by all signatories, it would reduce temperatures by a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050, and 0.13 degrees Celsius by 2100. What does this mean? Such an amount is so small that ground-based thermometers cannot reliably measure it.

    Dr. Richard Lindzen, an MIT scientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has specialized in climate issues for over 30 years.

    Jerry Mahlman, Director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, who points out that when regional climate models, of the kind relied upon by the IPCC, attempt to incorporate such factors as population growth "the details of future climate recede toward unintelligibility."

    Gerald North of Texas A&M University in College Station , agrees that the IPCC's predictions are baseless, in part because climate models are highly imperfect instruments. As he said after the IPCC report came out: "It's extremely hard to tell whether the models have improved" since the last IPCC report. "The uncertainties are large."

    Peter Stone, an MIT climate modeler, said in reference to the IPCC, "The major [climate prediction] uncertainties have not been reduced at all."

    Dr. David Wojick, an expert in climate science, who recently wrote in an article in Canada 's National Post, "The computer models cannot...decide among the variable drivers, like solar versus lunar change, or chaos versus ocean circulation versus greenhouse gas increases. Unless and until they can explain these things, the models cannot be taken seriously as a basis for public policy."

    Climate modelers from four separate climate modeling centers who wrote in the October 2000 edition of Nature that, "Forecasts of climate change are inevitably uncertain." They go on to explain that, "A basic problem with all such predictions to date has been the difficulty of providing any systematic estimate of uncertainty," a problem that stems from the fact that "these [climate] models do not necessarily span the full range of known climate system behavior."

    NASA scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy whose satellite data, validated independently by measurements from NOAA balloon radiosonde instruments, show that the atmosphere has not warmed as alarmists theorize.

    Dr. Thomas R. Karl, senior scientist at the National Climate Data Center , who corrected the U.S. surface temperatures for the urban heat-island effect and found that there has been a downward temperature trend since 1940. This suggests a strong warming bias in the surface-based temperature record.

    Scientists from the Scripps Institution for Oceanography who concluded that the temperature rise comes first, followed by a carbon dioxide boost 400 to 1,000 years later. This contradicts everything alarmists have been saying about man-made global warming in the 20th century.

    University of Illinois researchers who reported "a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000." In some regions, like the McMurdo Dry Valleys , temperatures cooled between 1986 and 1999 by as much as two degrees centigrade per decade.

    Dr. Paul Reiter who convincingly debunks the claim that higher temperatures will induce more deaths and massive outbreaks of deadly diseases in a 2000 study for the Center for Disease Control.

    Dr. David Legates, a renowned professor at the University of Delaware and world's leading expert in the hydrology of climate.

    Over 4,000 scientists, 70 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, which says that no compelling evidence exists to justify controls of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

    A 1998 recent survey of state climatologists, which reveals that a majority of respondents have serious doubts about whether anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases present a serious threat to climate stability.

    Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas Astrophysicists who have just completed the most comprehensive review of temperature records ever.

    Dr. Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and a professor emeritus at Rockefeller University .

    Over 17,000 independently verified signers of the Oregon Petition.

    Kenneth Green, D. Env., is Chief Scientist and Director of the Risk and Environment Centre at The Fraser Institute. He most recently wrote Global Warming: Understanding the Debate.

    George H. Taylor, who is the State Climatologist for Oregon , and a faculty member at Oregon State University 's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, manages the Oregon Climate Service, the state repository of weather and climate information. Mr. Taylor is a member of the American Meteorological Society and is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

    Pat Michaels is a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and visiting scientist with the Marshall Institute in Washington , D.C. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels has authored tests on climate and is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to Nature magazine, Pat Michaels may be the most popular lecturer in the nation on the subject of global warming.

    Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University , since 1953, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, and has received numerous international awards;

    Robert Balling, Jr., Professor & Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University who received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma , has authored three books on climate;

    Professor Chris Essex of the University of Western Ontario and of the Niels Bohr Institute's Orsted Laboratory and the Canadian Climate Center co-authored Taken by Storm with Professor Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and the Fraser Institute in Vancouver ;

    Dr. John Reilly, of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, who established the benefits of CO2 on flora;

    So be carefull and think a little before you call me an idiot.


By Spider on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:34 pm:

    Where do you think the stuff that you wouldn't breath in a small, enclosed, non-ventilated area goes?

    I don't understand why you're posting data to back up your arguments, and then implying you don't agree with it. Or something. What exactly are you on about?


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:37 pm:

    smog is generally not seen to the naked eye.

    you cant see ozone.

    thats not to say the brown haze is not pollution.


    "Even on hot nights, after sun set, it clears up."

    no. just your perception clears up. what you are seeing is a combination of naturally occuring haze due to the heat, inversion layers and pollution. when the sun sets, there is no light source to reflect off the haze to make it visible. that doesnt mean its not there. its still there.


    the sun is a factor, but we cant do anything about that. so lets talk about what we can do.


    we can overcome ridiculous lobby efforts on the part of the auto and shipping industries who seek to keep government fuel economy standards to a minimum citing loss of jobs, safety and revenue. you car doesnt have to be smaller to get a better mpg.

    where's the science in that claim?

    why wont the feds or state government invoke standards on ships in the harbor to use electrical power while in port. just one mega cargo ship emits enough toxins to compare with that of a fossil fuel plant.

    the auto makers have the capacity to change, the feds are just too pussy to push them through.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:41 pm:

    Sorry I don't have the time to do the research necessary to untwist stats cooked up by RPPI. (a right wing think tank) Great that you can cut and paste, and offer no actual thought, but we've come to expect nothing les from you, dimlu.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:53 pm:

    i have no problem with imnproving and mandating better fuel efficiency.
    we also have to do something about the cost per gallon of gas.

    i agree, there is no reason for ships who are in port to run thier engines, they should be on electrical power.

    also, we need to work on cleaning the fuel that goes in the cars.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 04:55 pm:

    "also, we need to work on cleaning the fuel that goes in the cars."

    Why, if burning that fuel causes no harm?


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:03 pm:

    oh give it a rest already, tiggy.
    That data IS valid.

    The global warming trend IS a myth.

    get over it.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:05 pm:

    "Why, if burning that fuel causes no harm?"

    Um, since I have no original thoughts, why dont you ask your mechanic? Or check your fuel filter.

    IMPURITIES DEGRADE ENGINE PERFORMANCE AND REDUCE GAS MILAGE AND DAMAGE YOUR ENGINE.



By TBone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:06 pm:

    Dirty fuel damages the engines. :)
    .
    The price of fuel should go up. Demand is always increasing, supply is diminishing.
    .
    Might convince people to be less wasteful. We have one of the lowest fuel prices in the world.


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:11 pm:

    all valid points.


By Spider on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:11 pm:

    Damn you, TBone, for being reasonable.


By TBone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:12 pm:

    Spunk, I agree that global warming is sketchy. I don't know if it's there are not.
    .
    But just because that might be bunk doesn't make other environmental concerns bogus as well.
    Car exhaust is bad for you, and for lots of reasons.
    .
    But note that it has not been proven either way. Evidence exists on both sides.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:13 pm:

    Right. So, spunk, you care more about damage to your car engine than about damage to your children's lungs?

    And, I haven't talked at all about global warming.


By patrick on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:22 pm:

    he's chewing on me.

    im willing to sidestep the idea of warming. in fact... lets just ditch that idea all together and address air quality issues. the problems are still the same. fossil fuel emissions. so if our sensitive conservative doesnt like the reference of "global warming", lets just stick to "air quality".


By spunky on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:25 pm:

    now, back on the smog issue:

    LOCAL WARMING i buy.
    i can see it.
    We have weather bug on our computer.
    I remember durring the summer months, it could be around 95 where we lived, but downtown it was over 100. concrete, traffic congestion, oh yea, that will mess with your lungs.
    GLOBAL warming i do not.


By Antigone on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 05:58 pm:

    Drop global warming. No one here gives a shit about arguing over it.


By semillama on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 06:21 pm:

    "First, most of the warming occurred before 1940 - before 80 percent of the C02 from human activities was added to the air. This means that the early 20th century warming must be mostly natural. "

    This is false. The air temperature warming at the planets surface which has happened since the late 1800s (about 0.3 to 0.6 degrees Centigrade), 67% of that warming happened over the last four decades (this is a range of 0.2 to 0.4 degrees centigrade). The last two decades has seen warming increase by about 0.15 degrees Centigrade per decade.


    "between 1979, after we started daily global-satellite measurements of tropospheric temperatures, and the present, neither satellite nor balloon data show a manmade warming trend."

    Warming trend:From 1991 to 1996, temperatures have averaged a quarter of a degree Centigrade warmer than the 1961-90 average. This is the warmest six year period since global temperatures began to be recorded in 1856.

    You can't compare satellite and other data recorders, such as balloons or meteorological stations directly becasue they aren't measuring the same things. satellites measure temperature through a set depth of the atmosphere (generally no lower than one km above surface and no higher than eight km). the meteorological stations are measuringthe surface air temperature. If you correct the satellite data records for known variations (such as volcanoes and El Nino), the result is a similar trend to the surface records.

    When you account for El nino and volcanoes and delete them from both the satellite and surface records, You get an improvement in trend agreement from 1979 to 1995. Basically, this means that volcanoes and El Nino affects temperatures at the surface and mid atmosphere differently.

    "Further proof is the fact that, despite the "hazards" of fossil fuel burning vehicles and "poison" spewing stacks, the average life expectancy in this country has increased by 30 YEARS over the last century.
    Why is that? "

    Spunky, the impacts of climate change in First World nations have always been projected to be much lower than for the Third World, where people are living in countries without access to a strong health care system. Last time I checked, this was most of the people on the planet.

    Health overall for people in THird World nations can be expected to be adversely affected by heat waves and extreme weather, plus increases in range and occurence of diseases such as malaria, dengue fever and mosquito-borne encephalitis.

    "The point is that the best data collected from satellites and validated by balloons to test the claim that a human-induced global warming from the release of C02 into the atmosphere shows no meaningful, trend of increasing temperatures, even as the climate models exaggerated the warmth that ought to have occurred from a build-up in C02."

    UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) WGI (1996, p 5) : " The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. Since the 1990 IPCC Report, considerable progress has been made in attempts to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic influences on climate. ....Assessments of the statistical significance of the observed global mean surface air temperature trend over the last century have used a variety of new estimates of natural internal and externally forced variability. ......Most of these studies have detected a significant change and show that the observed warming trend is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin. ....More convincing recent evidence for the attribution of a human effect on climate is emerging from pattern-based studies, in which the modelled climate response to combined forcing by greenhouse gases and anthropogenic sulphate aerosols is compared with observed geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of atmospheric temperature change. These studies show that such pattern correspondences increase with time, as one would expect as an anthropogenic signal increases in strength. "

    IPCC WGI (1996, p 14) " CO2 concentrations have increased from about 280 ppmv in pre-industrial times to 358 ppmv in 1994. There is no doubt that this increase is largely due to human activities, in particular fossil fuel combustion, but also land-use conversion and to a lesser extent cement production. "

    IPCC WGI (1996, p5) : "Assessments of the statistical significance of the observed global mean surface air temperature trend over the last century have used a variety of new estimates of natural internal and externally forced variability. These are derived from instrumental data, palaeodata, simple & complex climate models and statistical models fitted to observations. Most of these studies have detected a significant change and show that the observed warming trend is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin."


    IPCC WG I, 1996. Houghton, J. and others.



    Global warming is not a myth, it's a theory that can be tested by examining the data. New methods and models appear all the time due to a refinement in data and new data recovery techniques. Climate change is real. To deny that climate can not change is sticking your head in the sand. The cause can be debated, but the data showing a warming trend is there.

    http://www.unep.no/climate/vitalafrica/english/evidence.htm
    take a look at the graphs.

    http://www.larc.nasa.gov/news_and_events/inside_pages/2002/02-009.html





By Nate on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 12:24 am:

    i would think you small cocks should be more worried about the e.coli in your penis pills.


By spunky on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 12:41 am:

    Sem, it looks like you need to let all those over 4,000 scientists, 70 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, which says that no compelling evidence exists to justify controls of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, know how much smatter you are then they.


By spunky on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 12:56 am:

    I did not deny that weather is changing.
    What I am arguing (along with a hell of a lot more scientists and climantologists then listed here) is that there is little to no DATA to support that human have effected it.

    Western Europeans are roasting and Russians shivering. The western U.S. is parched while the Eastern seaboard is drenched. While the plains in Spain are burning and Texas scorching, Atlanta only has seen only a single 90ºF day. Waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Duck, North Carolina are a chilly 55ºF. While each of these events probably is related, none are related to global warming. The link? The Northern Hemisphere polar jet stream, that fast-moving river of air flowing around the North Pole in the middle atmosphere. The jet stream provides the energy to fuel weather systems, is the pathway along which they travel, and delineates cold regions from warm ones.

    Typically, the jet stream migrates northward during summer and southward during winter as the amount of warm air in the hemisphere ebbs and flows. The more warm air there is, the further north the jet. Vice versa for cold air. In winter, the jet usually is energetic as the temperature gradient (or temperature difference) between polar and tropical latitudes intensifies. As a consequence, in winter the jet tends to take on a slow, meandering form with large amplitude undulations.

    Where the jet dips southward it creates what is called a “trough” in the jet stream. The weather is cool and unsettled. Where it bulges northward (known as a “ridge”), the weather usually becomes pleasant and warm. During a Northern Hemisphere summer (a time with a weaker latitudinal temperature gradient), the jet stream usually is “quieter” and though it may contain more waves than it does in winter, the waves usually are of a lower amplitude and are more fleeting.

    This summer, things have been different. Instead of a relatively quiet and gently rippling jet stream, its is characterized by large, fixed waves. There has been a persistent ridge over the western U.S. and a big, unseasonable trough over the eastern seaboard. Another large ridge has been entrenched over western Europe and another trough downstream of that over Russia. The result has been relatively monotonous weather. Instead of waiting for a change in weather to make its way to you, you’ve had to go find a change this summer. Nobody seems happy about it.

    For the English, the summer has been too hot (with London setting an all-time record high temperature). For the Germans, it’s been too dry. Much of Germany has received less than half its average rainfall. Muscovites are complaining that it’s too cold having experienced their coldest June in sixty-two years. Around here (the mid-Atlantic U.S.) the complaints concern it being too wet. Many eastern U.S. localities already have received more than their yearly average precipitation. No one is pleased. There doesn’t seem to be any “Baby Bear just right.”



    If you live in a hot and dry area, you’ve been bombarded with claims the weather you are experiencing is evidence of global warming. While, if you live in one of the unseasonably cool and wet places, you’ve probably quipped that you wish someone would send a little global warming your way. But despite whatever is claimed or your preferred weather, this summer’s weather patterns are not at all what would occur if global climate were dominated by an enhanced greenhouse effect.


    The computer models that attempt to predict the climate of a greenhouse-warmed future project an enhanced warming from the equator toward the pole with the effect greater in winter than it is in summer. The net effect of such a warming pattern would be to reduce the latitudinal temperature gradient with the consequence of a less vigorous jet stream. In other words, the winter jet stream should become more summerlike, not the opposite. That leaves us with nothing more to explain this summer’s wacky weather than natural variability.


    We are confident this isn’t the first time
    in history that there has been such a persistent jet stream pattern. It likely won’t be the last. But, people are right; it is unusual and it is infrequent. Sometimes people forget though that unusual and infrequent events can occur on their own. There really is no one to blame. But where’s the fun in that?


By TBone on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 03:00 am:

    Guess what? We might lose power because the firesare threatening the lines into Missoula.
    .
    If we do, we'll lose water too.
    .
    I'm excited.


By dave. on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 04:46 am:

    it's like camping out!!


By spunky on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 09:37 am:

    the sorabjiites are having one hell of a week.
    Fire
    Black Out
    Hurricane

    We might just get rain out of it, but what the hell


By eri on Saturday, August 16, 2003 - 10:04 pm:

    We didn't get rain.....I have the massive sunburn to prove it.

    We had a fundraiser carwash today, and I was one of the lucky ones who spent most of the day by the street with a sign. I am so red right now. My skin has that stiff feeling. D took off to go pick some other people there to help and it took 3 hours and she had put my sunscreen in the car. K went out to get me some sunscreen, but as soon as he left, D showed up. Murphy's law. Either way, the sunscreen wasn't enough and I have new lovely tan lines from my new suit and on my legs from my shorts.....lovely.


By spunky on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 01:01 pm:


By spunky on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 02:25 pm:

    Wow. This must be what it sounds like when a tree falls in the forest


By spunky on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 03:20 pm:

    humorless freaks


By cricket on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 03:28 pm:

    *chirp chirp chirp*


By spunky on Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - 05:02 pm:

    A 200-foot-tall giant sequoia tree fell along Sequoia National Park's main road, crushing a sport utility vehicle into a several-foot high pile of crumpled metal.
    get the joke, dammit?

    It's FUNNY, DAMMIT, FUNNY!


By Nate on Wednesday, August 20, 2003 - 06:59 pm:

    what's funny is the hour and a half it took you to come up with the limping one liner.

    By spunky on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 01:01 pm:
    Mother Nature Stikes Back?

    By spunky on Tuesday, August 19, 2003 - 02:25 pm:
    Wow. This must be what it sounds like when a tree falls in the forest


By spunky on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 01:58 pm:

    I was referring to the hour and half that had lapsed with no comments....

    Speaking of this subject, I gotta share this


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