The Environment

[BigJon]

Deleted
by
Nicole Marie

[barfle]

Hmmm, your orsm links definitely show some material that's not appropriate for the office.

[piqaboo]

Thanks for the heads-up, barfle. I'll save this one for home viewing.

[barfle]

I'm just guessing here, but one issue might be that BigJon has a subscription we don't have. I get the home page for an "adult" site.

[OperaTenor]

I get nothing but a blog full of drivel and tons of X-rated porn site ads.

That was certainly a waste of time and bandwidth....

[Nicole Marie]

Sorry BigJon... I had to delete your post. Please remind yourself of the BBB rules.

[dai bread]

Puir cold sheep!

It must be odd to go sailing in sight of icebergs. How are your volcanos doing?

The volcanos took one look at the icebergs and decided it was too cold to do anything but sleep.

Occasionally alarmist reports surface in the paper about an incipient lahar off Ruapehu. Its crater lake got dammed up during its last eruption, and the material is fairly soft. The lake has now risen past the base of the dam, but in the meantime the dam has consolidated. When or even if it will burst is still a matter for conjecture.

A lahar from this lake is a worry because it crosses one of our major ski-fields, and because it will reach the main road and rail in that part of the country and could take them out. Too bad about any passing traffic.

[BigJon]

Sorry BigJon... I had to delete your post. Please remind yourself of the BBB rules.

Oops! Did not intend to offend. Apologies all around. I deep linked to a perfectly benign jpg, but I guess the website in question redirects those to porn spam. I couldn't find the screen shots anywhere else and they were priceless. This news site should give you a flavor of the funny with no offensive content. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,386 ... 75,00.html

[piqaboo]

Occasionally alarmist reports surface in the paper about an incipient lahar off Ruapehu. Its crater lake got dammed up during its last eruption, and the material is fairly soft. The lake has now risen past the base of the dam, but in the meantime the dam has consolidated. When or even if it will burst is still a matter for conjecture.

A lahar from this lake is a worry because it crosses one of our major ski-fields, and because it will reach the main road and rail in that part of the country and could take them out. Too bad about any passing traffic.

Is there any thought of blowing a hole in the blockage during the "dry" season, to prevent and contain the damage?
Seems rather straightforward....

[dai bread]

There isn't a "dry" season, Piq. The lake is fed by snow melt, and by the time summer is over it's pretty full. Then more snow falls to replenish the fields and it also fills the lake, melting in the hot water. The level is set by a fight between evaporation and melting. Melting generally wins, eventually.

Various ways of lowering the lake have been considered, but the consensus so far is that the remedy is at least as bad as the disease because of the difficulty of controlling the flow once the dam is breached.

The mountain is covered with well-monitored warning devices, so this time people will get some notice. Last time they didn't, and a passenger train went off a destroyed bridge.

[Shapley]

London's Killer Fog of '52

[Haggis@wk]

Small nuclear war could lead to cooldown

” The new studies looked at the consequences if two nations dropped 50 Hiroshima-size bombs on each other's big cities. By analyzing population data and distance from blast, scientists predicted a regional nuclear war would kill 3 million people in Israel and up to 17 million in China. The U.S. would see 4 million blast deaths.”

Small?!?? 100 “Hiroshima-size bombs” is her definition of “small”?

[Shapley]

It would help alleviate the overcrowding that Shos is so concerned with. I think we're probably looking at 10, maybe 20 million deaths, depending on the breeze. Acceptable Civilian casualties. A small price to pay for preserving the purity of our precious bodily fluids...

[jamiebk]

London's Killer Fog of '52

London was not the only place where such conditions existed. I grew up in the Pittsburgh, PA area and the main industry was steel, which was made using coal fired furnaces. Everyone used coal to heat. Here is a picture of the town of Donora, PA at noon in 1948

[OperaTenor]

Just finished watching the DVD edition of An Inconvenient Truth. The DVD has lots of updates from the original film, most of which expanded on or clarified points made in the original. There were also a couple of new types of studies presented, like the one on ocean acidity.

I know it doesn't matter what I say here, but Gore does a great, realistic job of presenting his case, and I've yet to encounter anyone open-minded enough to watch the movie who wasn't persuaded to at least rethink their position if it differed from Gore's, based on the soundness of his presentation.

[Shapley]

I suppose, by definition, anyone who doesn't rethink their position is not open-minded?

[Shapley]

I'm not even sure I understand what you mean by "rethink their position". Whenever I see data presented that contradicts my viewpoint, I check the data to see if it is backed up by the facts. So far as I've seen, the data presented by Gore is supported only by speculation and guesswork. As of yet, the evidence does not support his claims regarding cause of global warming.

I have an old science book that opens with the line: "A dog jumps over a fence. Chickens and ducks fly back over the fence. Was the dog turned into chickens and ducks?". In a nutshell, that is what science is all about. Gore presents evidence that dogs are jumping over fences, and he presents evidence that chickens and ducks are flying back over fences, and he is trying to persuade the public that dogs are becoming chickens and ducks. There may be a relationship between the two, but the conclusions are not definitive. Until someone climbs over the fence to and determines what, exactly, is happening with the dogs, chickens, and ducks, Gore's presentation remains nothing more than political propoganda slickly packaged to sell an agenda.

V/R
Shapley

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

I suppose, by definition, anyone who doesn't rethink their position is not open-minded?

Yes, that's what it means. Of course, "rethink their position" means to consider, one more time, all the bases of your original conclusion. It doesn't mean that you necessarily change your position, only that you think it all over one more time.

[OperaTenor]

Gee Shap, the way you've passed judgement on it, I take it you've actually seen the film?!

Or is it simply your interpretation via Faux News' review?

[Haggis@wk]

I posted earlier

I did see it just so I could make fun of it and it was too boring to find anything to make fun of. About two-thirds is a quasi-documentary of Gore presenting to an audience the greenhouse slide show he's been giving for nearly 20 years.

Did you stop to consider that 20 years ago he was predicting a global disaster that we should be suffering from today?

Mostly we see Gore talking and pointing at charts, interspersed with detours into the former vice president's political career: the Florida recount, Gore's stump-speech telling of his son's auto accident and his sister's tragic death from lung cancer.

a boring boring movie

The idea of watching an extended version fills me with a dread reserved for root canals and sinus scrapping.

The total human contribution of CO2 into the enviroment is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.

Once Gore realized that his rantings over greenhouse gases weren't going to stand up against serious scientific scrunity he started looking for other, more dramatic evidence (acid) which the scientific community is still conflicted.

Yes, there is some evidence that the Earth is warming (although it has been cooling since 1979) but guess what? Venus and Mars are also warming. Hmmmm what do all three planets have in common?

I'm curious, Gore's been saying for over 20+ years that in less than 20 years all hell is going to break loose. How many mulligans will he get before someone calls him on his perpetual dichotomy?