Mister P-Mosh

I grew up watching shows like Nature, the one about animal life in the U.S. with the guy with the huge beard, reading Ranger Rick and National Geographic, was a member of the Boy Scouts, loved science, and when I was probably three years old I decided that I wanted to be an oceanographer (not that I ever followed through.) So, I can say that yes I have heard of the Yangtze river dolphin before, but I don't consider myself to be an average person when it comes to knowing about animals. I also can't name the others off the top of my head but I know there are a few species in South America and a few in Asia. In particular I'm familiar with the ones in the Amazon river. Also, you have to consider the fact that only 70% of Americans are able to locate China on a map, so I would not even expect people to have heard of the Yangtze River, much less the dolphins. There have actually been some good shows about the Yangtze River in the past, not so much about the animal life, but about the losses of historic sites as a result of building the Three Gorges Dam dam.

Don't let the existence of something that you're not sure how it came about be evidence to you of "intelligent design" when there is no proof it was designed. There is a rock formation I've visited in Northern Ireland called the Giant's Causeway. If you look at it, it appears to be some sort of man-made stone work of columns. The legend says that it was a bridge built by a giant over to Scotland. It appeared to be artificial, prior to our modern understanding of geology. It is now known that the Giant's Causeway was built not by humans, but rather it is a rare volcanic process that caused the stone to sort of crystallize into those odd six-sided columns. It took thousands of years, but mankind finally understood that it was not built by giants or humans.

That's precisely why the separation of church and state (which is a two-way street) is so important. Religion should not control the government because religion is non-democratic and authoritarian. At the same time, banning certain thoughts and speech, including religion, is non-democratic and authoritarian as well. There is a balance that must be met to ensure freedom is protected both ways.

bulwinkl got it right. You're not a dominionist. I don't even know if we really have any here. I saw a movie called "Jesus Camp" that was a documentary following some dominionist children going to a summer camp. Having grown up in TWI I definitely felt sympathy towards the brainwashing those kids were going through. They were being raised to be "soldiers for Christ" and the woman running the camp was praising Islamic suicide bombers for their dedication and saying that Americans needed to raise Christian kids to be that dedicated. I knew these people existed, but seeing them in their element made it even more shocking and makes Martindale-era TWI insanity seem quaint.

...or you could devote your life to doing good and helping people because it is the right thing to do, and because there is only one shot at this. It's easier to deal with poor, suffering, or terminally ill people if you are religious because you can believe that everything will be ok with them later. Not so for an atheist. You have to help these people NOW because otherwise they will suffer throughout their entire lives. Also, since we don't believe in the eternal funland (which would probably be abstinent, since unlike in Islam Christianity makes no mention of a sexual afterlife) we have to do other things to make sure we are remembered after we are gone. These things could be being a good parent so you leave a moral impact on your kids and they grow up well, or you work in medicine and save lives, or you become an artist, or many other things. I think part of the problem is that the people who are most religious tend to feel the most repression, and have the strongest desires to be immoral. That's why you always hear about Christian leaders molesting children or having sex with gay prostitutes, while you pretty much never hear of stuff like that when it comes to atheists. Atheists are usually more comfortable with their morality because we don't require threats of eternal torture to do the right thing.

Bingo! I try to live my life how I want to because there will be no time to make it up later.

I don't want this to turn into a political or dogmatic thread, but there is an author claiming to be a historian that wrote a book that seems to be popular amongst dominionist Christians these days. I haven't seen anyone discuss it here, but the book is called "Ten Tortured Words: How the Founding Fathers Tried to Protect Religion in America and What's Happened Since." It's a book I'm sure a lot of people here would be interested in for various reasons, but there's a problem. It's basically an amalgam of lies and ignorance of history. He gets a lot of facts wrong, and where no facts exist, he just makes stuff up. A perfect example of this is from an Amazon.com review of his book (which I won't link to because I don't want to help his google rank.): Where does this quote come from? Well, according to Mansfield's note, Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. Here is the untortured paragraph from that document, with the words assembled by Mansfield to create his quote in bold. The quote does reflect positively on the right of people to follow their own religion and views it as an important right. What it doesn't do is infer his mangled quote. There are many other examples of this, but I think Mansfield sounds like another VPW, just out to make a buck and brainwash people in the process.

Fortunately, Erin doesn't look like it will do much damage other than the typical flash flooding we get. Dean is a much bigger threat, if it stays on the current track. If it becomes a very big storm and keeps on a route that might take it to Texas, then my wife, daughter, and I will be sent to Dallas.

I have used the term in the past, although I didn't invent it. People refer to the "Invisible Sky Giant" to show others how foreign and wrong belief in the bible feels for those of us that are not religious. If I were to tell you, "I don't believe in God" you would look at it from the Christian perspective because of all the meaning the term "God" has in our society, but if I tell you, "I don't believe in the Invisible Sky Giant", you have no preconceived notions about that term, and might understand my views better. In any case, I'm glad you found it amusing. As far as the "brave new world" awaiting Seth, it's not that great. As an atheist, I would be thrilled to discover some evidence of an afterlife, for example, because that would make life easier. Unfortunately I don't see any evidence of such a thing, meaning that I have to go through life believing that this is all there is, that my life ends, eventually my nation ends, my family ends, my planet ends, my solar system ends, and most likely the whole universe ends. Death is absolute and becomes even moreso over time. Another bad thing about being an atheist, and why I don't go out proclaiming it alot is because it does make you a target for ultra-religious creeps. Most Christians may not like atheism or think it's wrong, but they at least tolerate us. Others, who seem to be part of a growing minority of Christians, view us as practically "seed boys" who could mass-murder at any moment and are not to be trusted. People treat you with more respect if you go to church.

Actually, there are other scientists, both Eigil Friis-Christensen and Carl Wunsch, for example, but there have been many prominent scientists that have spoken out against the film. I'm not sure what "AGW cultists" are, nor have I see the claim that you've mentioned. As far as the timeframe is concerned, it's called science. You still haven't showed me how they can judge CO2 levels other than by using ice core samples, which do not go back to the beginning of the Cambrian era. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I haven't seen any method that would be able to provide most of the data on the graph you provided. I just want to understand the data so I can decide for myself. It is certainly true that CO2 levels were extremely high back then. When the Earth formed, the atmosphere was toxic, but as the planet cooled off, things changed over time. During the Cambrian, there was most likely no life on the surface, so the atmosphere did not have the benefit of trees and plants to balance it out. NASA is a government funded organization. Additionally, I've not seen any evidence of partisanship from them on any of the issues. I'm not sure what the foam has to do with anything, other than the fact that the space shuttles are obsolete and we should have been working on better technology than that (fortunately some private organizations are doing it now, and have some great ideas.) Now, if you want to talk about global climate research on NASA's part, you have to look at Dr. James Hansen. He's been an outspoken about climate change since at least the 80's, and is THE top guy when it comes to the field. Additionally, he's made as much of his data public as he's been allowed, and other scientists have backed up what he said. I'd like to see how he is part of some conspiracy. It's not self-righteous to demand the truth. I won't watch the swindle video, for reasons I've already stated, but even if I had a DVD I doubt I'd waste my time on it. When it came out and I learned about the lies and deception they used to make it, plus the fact that many, if not most of the people featured were getting kickbacks from Exxon, I don't see the point in watching it. I don't know RumRunner, nor what field he is in, or anything about him. I can't really comment on that. I know Krysilis, but I don't know what her background is either. I do know others that I've discussed climate issues with that know what they're talking about. I have an acquaintance that works at Havard and has done work for NASA. I have a friend that went to MIT and is now a professor at a good university in Pennsylvania that is knowledgeable on this topic. I even talked to Al Gore once about global warming, which doesn't make him an expert, but I threw that in there just to make smoke come out of your ears (it is true though.) Even more important, I'm able to look at the data and reports that scientists come out with and see what they are saying. Science is not a religion, so they will never say something is 100% certain all the time. You can't say that the sky is blue 100% of the time because grey clouds move in and night happens too, yet we all say that the sky is blue. The science on climate change isn't 100% accurate either, but the debate in mainstream science has been modified from "is global warming real?" to "to what extent will things get worse?" As far as my employment history, Enron used a technique of projecting future sales to make the appearance of profit right now, and they hid what was really going on. Then, their auditing firm was in on it, so they were not caught until a reporter looked into their financial records in more detail and saw problems. It's different in science because you have to be completely open in order for other scientists to validate what you're doing. Science is about controlled, repeatable research. If a NASA scientist came up with global warming data that was falsified, other scientists should be able to look at data from redundant sources and draw a different conclusion, and expose that person as a fraud. Then they lose their jobs, respect, etc. The closest thing to a conspiracy when it comes to climate change is how politicians like Bush, as well as companies like Exxon, have worked to hide the truth. The politicians censor the scientists and the companies create propaganda to confuse the public. Again, you've specifically looked for a biased source that has no credibility to make your point. However, I did waste a lot of time looking into it, and it seems completely nonsensical. The guy you are linking to claimed that some of the data from China was invalid in a report released in 1990. That guy says it is invalid because he claims to have proof that the weather stations moved, then towards the end claims that there is no way that Wang (the author of the original paper) could have known if the stations moved or not during the Maoist revolution. So which is it, is there proof that the stations moved, or is there no data from that time period? He contradicts himself, which is probably why nobody other than right-wing blogs have taken Keenan's paper seriously. The reason this stuff isn't in "the MSM" has nothing to do with a conspiracy, it's because it's nonsensical.

Congratulations and welcome to the club. The first rule of the club is that there really is no club. No, seriously.

Where is this data coming from? I'm not aware of ice core samples being able to provide data going back that far, and I'm not aware of any other reliable means of measuring that. What method did they use to come up with those numbers?

I can't watch videos because I use a tool to connect to my home PC from work so I can use the unrestricted internet, and it is encrypted (plus I disabled the corporate spyware on the work PC) so they can't see what I'm doing. The point being, I need text, and some pictures (although they only show up in 256 colors) rather than videos. However, if what you posted was "The Great Global Warming Swindle" from Channel 4 in the U.K., that thing is so flat out propaganda and bears no relation to science. Scientists have complained about how they were used in that film, how selective editing made it look like they said things that they did not say, and how the data was just flat out invented by the people making the propaganda film. A person could write a book about it, but you can find some of the debunking of that nonsense here. You obviously didn't read what I posted. The hottest year was claimed to be, and still is claimed to be, 2005. The 1998 thing was from the data from the U.S. only, not the world, and 1934 was only slightly hotter, down to the hundredths of a degree difference. Additionally, you can't measure changes in climate based on a single year or so. There are natural patterns like El Niño that affect the temperature in cycles. You have to take bigger periods of time, like decades, centuries, or longer to see that climate change is happening. I tend to keep an open mind and look at all sources, especially those without an agenda. If you read my posts, I do use mainstream media sources but I also posted links to other sites that are actually related to science and of scientists. Am I also gullible for believing what NASA says? Do you think that Dr. James Hansen is lying? The key difference between you and I is that I sometimes read something and mistakenly believe it. You, on the otherhand, intentionally seek out error-filled propaganda in order to fit your personal view of the world. I have brought statistics from NASA, writings from leading climate scientists, and other information to this discussion and you have ignored it. You bring a documentary that is proven to be false, a blogger that found an error with data that only slightly changed and doesn't mean what you think it does, and many claims with nothing to back them up. You're being taken for a fool by the people that push out that propaganda. Just try to look at this issue without bias and without selectively reading, and you'll see that for yourself.

I read that as well. That's what I get for posting stuff from CNN. CO2 is getting worse as the population increases, so in essence the population issue and the issue of climate change are related. More people means more pollution. However, the worst polluters in the world are Americans. From the statistics I've seen in the past, one American creates as much pollution as entire families in most of the world, and I think compared to some nations, entire villages. So all things being equal, the places with the largest population increases are not the ones that are using up the most resources per person. I agree with this completely, and usually it ends up being cheaper too. It depends. AIDS is very treatable today, and there is a famous conservative blogger that has AIDS and is doing pretty well. For those that live in first-world nations, AIDS is not a mandatory death sentence anymore. It mostly kills poor people, especially in third world nations. Additionally, we really need to restore the funding for international safe sex programs. When Bush ended the funding for organizations that gave out condoms in Africa, he caused HIV infections to rise. Condoms have the combined benefit of usually preventing HIV and pregnancy. It seems like a no brainer to me to hand out and teach people to use condoms. Unfortunately, the religious reich want to force abstinence-only education (which has been proven to have the opposite effect) on everyone. I agree with you completely. Unfortunately, we're stuck with China for the foreseeable future. I wish we could return to a day when "Made In The USA" was the default, especially for critical items like food. When Hurricane Rita was about to hit here in Houston, I saw that there was a great deal of dependency on things that I hadn't seen before. The fact that there was no gasoline available in the city also meant that grocery stores were not stocked as none of the companies wanted to send their trucks here to get stuck without gas. The cops also disappeared, and for a brief few days, I saw things fraying at the edges of our society, at least here. It makes me wonder, if China stopped selling us stuff, or if we had a major economic downturn (which China is capable of causing since they own a huge amount of U.S. debt), would our nation even be able to survive? I think we could easily devolve into Great Depression era living conditions, or perhaps worse, within less than a week should an event like that happen.

I'll take the word of a respected magazine with scientists on staff over a guy on a message board. You'll have to produce some evidence that their claims are wrong. NASA did correct their findings, but the article you linked to is extremely misleading. For example, the revised data is titled, "Contiguous 48 U.S. Surface Air Temperature Anomaly ©". This means that 1) it isn't a measurement of global temperature, and 2) it is only the variation from the mean temperature, not the actual temperature. As the annual temperature gets hotter and hotter, even if it is a gradual process, the mean will also go up, so there should not be a huge difference. Additionally, if you are extremely bored, you can check out the global data. Or for a better explanation, RealClimate has a good summary of what the changes really mean, which is summarized as: You can take the man out of The Way, but you can't take The Way out of the man. Seriously, your post sounds very paranoid. Are you sure devil spirits aren't behind all of this?

Thanks krysilis. I posted an article from EnvironmentalChemistry.com that explains some of this well. Specifically, it addresses the point you've made to a degree: This makes sense, as CO2 levels would have to be fairly balanced for life to exist at all in animal form. Unfortunately, since it is a naturally occurring gas as well, the Bush administration de-classified it as a pollutant, even though it is a greenhouse gas. Actually from what I've seen of the ice core samples, we've never had CO2 levels as high as we have now, even going as far back as we can throughout many periods including ice ages and warm periods. According to an article I was reading about the Vostok ice core samples: So I think there is ample evidence that CO2 levels are unnaturally high, and also in the first article, it discusses how this is a problem, and not natural. One point that I've seen made here is that the ocean might be releasing CO2 and that explains the increase in the atmosphere. This doesn't make sense, as there are other factors, as that article explains: You're right, but not for the reasons you expect, I think. There was a recent Newsweek article that discussed the big business of mixing politics, profit, and global warming denial. I've posted in other threads in the past about the millions Exxon has spent funding kooks and corrupt individuals, but they never seem to have any actual data to prove that climate change is fake. Opposite them, almost all scientists that do work in the field and related fields seem to believe climate change is a threat, that the problems are man-made, and that we need to act sooner rather than later to stop it. The problem is that Exxon and all the other energy companies have more money and a better propaganda machine than the nerds with pocket protectors who are getting their hands on the actual science. I know that although I've looked into this stuff and it makes sense for me to see that climate change is happening, I'm not a scientist and I won't understand every single detail. However, I trust that there is a scientific majority, and that the most respected scientists in the field are 100% on board with this. Additionally, they have made their information public so anyone can try to understand it. On the other side there is a lot of secrecy and fluid doubt about it, and very few actual scientists are on board with the denial side. Those that are, seem to mysteriously get checks from Exxon and other polluting companies.

I didn't know you could use sub tags here. That's interesting. As far as CO2 being a greenhouse gas, it is certainly one. The reason the Bush administration decided to stop calling it a pollutant is because it is a naturally occurring gas. The problem isn't that it's something unusual, but that we release much more than the natural processes of the Earth can absorb via plants, the ocean, etc. Testing the heat retaining properties of CO2 can be done in a lab and has been. If you'd like some information on this topic in non-jargon check out National Geographic's page on air pollution. Basically, CO2 is the big source blamed for global warming, but there are plenty of other factors too. Still, if you want a quick scientific explanation of why CO2 is a greenhouse gas, I found this explanation to be decent: Also, a good graph to look at to show a correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels is here, although it doesn't go back far, but I just wanted to make a point: If you want to see how they are tied going further back, this graph is probably more useful: It shows the relation between temperature and CO2 levels over time.

If you've followed the air filter craze that has popped up over the past few years, that could be a logical conclusion, unfortunately. As far as soot being a cause of global warming, it certainly could be, but that doesn't exclude CO2 which has been proven to be a greenhouse gas. There is a combination of things that lead to climate change, there is no easy answer either way. Also, despite the fact that China has the fastest growing amount of pollution, the U.S. still is the leading source of pollution. See here for statistics. That also doesn't take into factor of how many U.S. businesses operating overseas are responsible for pollution as well. I've personally seen the largest buildings I've ever seen in Mexico with many factories for U.S. companies that have made a whole lot of pollution over the years, and since the U.S. is China's biggest trading partner, we have a big impact on the amount of pollution they make as well by continuing to buy their products.

I am not an expert on measuring air quality, but I heard an interview with a coach of a soccer team that was training in China for the Olympics. The team has had major breathing problems and is unable to really push themselves to the limits because they have problems breathing and their lungs start burning very easily. The coach said something to the effect of that the pollution index in Washington D.C. is about 30 on average. When it gets to 60 or 70 in the U.S., they issue pollution warnings for people with asthma or other illnesses. When it gets to 90, they issue a warning to everyone. In Bejing for the time they were training, the average was around 170. They couldn't train for long, and when they did they had them drink fluids to generate phlegm so they could spit it out. The air is so horrible there that their mouths were full of some sort of grit from the pollution. China really has it out for us and they've adopted a "let's be the richest even if we kill everyone on the planet including ourselves" point of view lately. I know some people that do business in China and have lived in China, and things are changing too rapidly for the Chinese people to keep up. I have a feeling that they will be involved with a major war within the next 10 years.

Tuna, eh? You might want to rethink that. We've reduced the fish population by about 90% worldwide, so while tuna isn't yet endangered, I wouldn't count on it too much. Except for that horrible-tasting farm-raised garbage, perhaps.

Sorry, it is all related but I didn't write my full thoughts. It's still early, and it was even earlier when I started my original post. We have the money to fix and expand our infrastructure without raising taxes. It's called getting our spending priorities straight. We spent about $67.2 billion on Iraq in 2005. On infrastructure, we spend an average of $59.4 billion per year, but the ASCE says we should be spending $94 billion. We could easily take part of the funds for Iraq and divert it to maintain our infrastructure, and it would actually make more money in the long run because it could reduce traffic which would save time, gas costs, maintenance costs, etc. which would filter through to the entire economy. Shipping costs due to oil prices have directly affected the costs of things like food. It would become a win-win-win situation because 1) we'd be out of Bush's Iraq fiasco, 2) we'd have safe infrastructure, and 3) business would benefit. We just need to refocus our attention from destroying other nations so Bush, Cheney, and their friends can profit to taking care of our own nation for the good of all Americans.

The "white" part is very telling. Within your life, there has always been diversity. Blacks have been in this land for centuries, natives have been here even longer (this includes latinos that are either native americans or mixed with Europeans), the Chinese have been here for many years, and other groups have come and eventually integrated after much strife like what we are seeing now with immigrants. However, what is fairly new is that non-whites are not restricted and oppressed to the same level as in the past. Most older whites grew up in segregated neighborhoods, now anyone can move anywhere as long as they can afford it. Our current problems have nothing to do with multi-culturalism and everything to do with greed. Crime is related to poverty, not culture. Poverty mostly exists because the rich upper class has an advantage over the poor and middle classes in the U.S., and they put a barrier in our way to prevent most people from being able to live the American dream. Somebody needs to do the work that the rich people don't want to (yet they want to profit off of us), so someone has to be pushed down. It used to be that blacks were forced into this permanent underclass, but in the post-civil war era that became blacks and immigrants. Now more and more black people are living poor and ending up in prison for non-violent things like smoking pot, which makes even more money for the rich. There's a reason we have the highest percentage of people in prison than any other first world nation, and there's a reason we spend more money on our military than all the other nations in the world combined. It's not for our safety as we are lead to believe, it's to make some rich guys even richer. It's all a money-making scheme that we the taxpayers end up footing the bill for. Whether it's $2,000 hammers, new prison factories, Halliburton's no-bid contracts for Iraq and the millions that just disappear from their pockets, or a "Star Wars" missle defense program that does not work and is designed for an enemy that doesn't even exist, our tax dollars are being spent for no other reason than to make money for the wealthy that run the big corporations. We shouldn't be surprised that Bush was in the pocket of Enron, Cheney in the pocket of Halliburton, most of the members of both parties in the pockets of companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, etc. This is what our "democracy" has devolved to. I don't see a civil war, but our nation is in the process of collapsing. If history is any guide, we will not collapse and go into a civil war, we'll be overtaken by an outside force, perhaps China. In fact, China is threatening to sell off our debt, which would easily cause an economic recession if not a full on depression. The dollar has been fading fast and is not a very good currency anymore compared to things like the Euro. The Chinese are smart in that they bought up over a trillion dollars of our debt and can cash it in at any moment to destroy our country financially, without needing to take on our military. I do agree with you about the cult of individuality becoming one of greed and selfishness. Individualism should be balanced with taking care of family, society, nation, humanity, and the planet. We can't just say, "screw you all, I've got mine" and expect things to continue to be ok. I live in a neighborhood full of middle class families. I only know one of my neighbors by name, and that's because they needed to temporarily use part of my yard to get a machine through to have a swimming pool put in their back yard. I have plenty of neighbors that look like nice people, but I've never talked to them, nor them to me. When out in public, everyone spends time on their cellphones when they are alone because they don't want to deal with the outside public. It's like we are raised to never talk to strangers as kids and we end up staying afraid of people we don't know throughout our whole lives as a result. Anyway bumpy you're getting me to rant in many directions so I should stop now. I don't need to point out what all is wrong with the world because everyone already knows that things are wrong.

They seem to be working on it themselves. ;-)

I read this article for some of the details: Sad news, but this is happening more and more. Expect further man-made extinctions to continue. I hope we can find a way to help the polar bears live, at least.

I would say that in probably 99% of cases where you get an email that has been forwarded to you, it is a lie. If it were true, you would hear about it some other way or experience it yourself. For example, if telemarketers were going to get the ability to robocall cellphones, it would be big news and the media loves to report on stuff like that.