Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Mr Witmer Kris, I wish someone would pay me for writing! I am in nobody's employ. I never pretended to know it all. That's exactly what you pretend. You're missing out, there are certainly people who'd pay you for this kind of activity. If my failure to be convinced that the rich have stolen the rain and that the blame for starting the [Sahel drought] appears to lie with the developed world makes me a creep and I should get off this list, let me ask you: do you want to shun contact with people who differ from you, or who disagree with you? Not at all. But I will shun people with hurtful prejudices that they defend with thuggish tactics and a lack of integrity. If this is the kind of reaction that I, a mere lay person with a casual interest in the subject, am accorded, then what shall be the fate of the professional scientist who dissents from the current consensus on global warming? If he uses the same thuggish tactics and lack of integrity as you do, he'll probably get the same treatment (though as I said there are good employment opportunities that go with that, so his fate might be rather comfortable, materially at least, if not morally). If he's an honest investigator, he won't suffer any fate, other than probably to change sides as his knowledge improves, as many thousands have done - most were sceptics, now they think otherwise. Speaking of climate, how about maintaining a climate in which dissenters and skeptics aren't pilloried? You have not been pilloried, Mr Witmer. You have been asked to defend your views but have not done so in an even-handed way. You sneer at newspapers and then quote newspapers in your defence. You offer scientific evidence but when it's questioned you dance away like some latter-day Fred Astaire. For a start, what are the references please for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study you cited, for the NASA study you cited, for your quote from syndicated columnist Alton Chase, and what were his references? Your implying that there's a less-than-open climate of debate here is simply sleazy. But that's what we've come to expect from you. It's a cheap tactic to infer that it's your views that you're being criticised for rather than the way you present them - your views are welcome, your behaviour isn't. We've seen it here before, I guess we'll see it again. You've talked a right load of half-assed crap here about a lot of things - about Africa and drought, about weather and climate, about the media, about science, about economics and politics, about history, about decomposing trees, about environmentalists, about religion, human nature, the universe and all the fish. But that's just fine, feel free, say whethever you like. What is not just fine is that you demand proof and honest tactics from others, but what we get from you is sneers and jeers, evasions and pretence. Such double standards are far from just fine. At the very least, however distasteful you might find it, you need to maintain contact with people like me. Preaching to the choir converts nobody (assuming you are right), and you might actually learn something of value, either directly or indirectly, through interactions with dissenters and skeptics. Don't give yourself such graces, Mr Witmer, you're neither a dissenter nor a sceptic, you're just a denier. Look at the terms you keep using - you're a dogmatist, whether or not you can see it yourself. There is nothing to be gained from maintaining contact with dogmatists. The alternative is not preaching to the choir, it's holding an open and honest debate. As Todd said, get off it. Or go away. snip -- Christopher Witmer Kris Book wrote: I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, Succinctly put, Kris. Keith Addison would get their own damn list. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Christopher Witmer wrote: Todd, if I replied that the feeling is mutual I would be a liar. I believe that all human beings are created in the divine image and therefore worthy of respect. But tell me, does your disdain also apply to the researchers and policy advisors who in the 1970s laid a load of crap on us that human industrial activity is bringing on another ice age? And by the same measure would your disdain not also therefore apply to a religion that claimed infallibility and enforced the idea on pain of death that the Earth was the centre of the universe, round which all else revolved? Or would you concede that it's developed a little since then? Made a complete about-face in fact - the capacity to do that merits respect, far more so than sticking to an increasingly untenable position would have done. (Which is what you're doing.) By far the major part of the 70s thesis was that climate change with human industrial cause promised catastrophe. As Hoagy and others have pointed out, this has a longer history than just from the 70s, and it has not changed, simply developed, as the cause has been exacerbated, the evidence mounted, and the tools of the investigators improved. The exact prognosis has changed, but not as much as you think. The difference between an ice age and global warming might seem rather large, but the difference between the two sets of factors which might cause them is rather slight. That's typical of a complex system undergoing chaotic change. That's why I said you don't know much about the subject you're being so opinionated about and suggested you should do some homework before venturing any further. But you knew better, so you still know worse. I'm afraid this all-but-final citadel you've walled yourself up in is just another house of straw. Any activist convinced of global warming should print out and post above his desk the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article The Cooling World, from which I quote: The evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling, not warming] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it . . . Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects . . . The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality. Remove your inserted brackets and the statement stands up pretty well today. And what you've inserted is irrelevant. I don't think the ice-age scenario has yet been finally disproved, it's just become more and more unlikely as the evidence has mounted overwhelmingly on the side of warming. The inconsistency you keep pointing to just isn't there. The certitude you accuse the researchers and policy-makers of has never been there, and still isn't. They're cautious and responsible, they don't claim any certainties they can't justify. (You should learn from them.) The global climate is changing, overall temperatures are increasing, human industrial activity is a cause, it will get worse, local effects will vary widely. Beyond that, probabilities, not certainties - but anyone who doesn't take a caution from the fact that as the picture grows ever-clearer the cautious predictions are consistently overturned in favour of more severe consequences should perhaps wake up. Again, local effects will vary widely - and yes, indeed, it will also include some areas growing cooler, albeit temporarily. That shouldn't be any susprise with the most complex system we know of going through chaotic change. So this other pet jeer doesn't have much substance either. And I'm afraid all your nonsense about presuppositions and open-mindedness applies primarily to you, as with most of the mud you've flung. There's a lesson in that too. Appal Energy wrote: Frankly, I've got a great deal more respect for a horse that shits on my shoe than I have for someone who comes in all barrel chested and tries to lay a load of crap on me or anyone else. I'd have to agree with that. Keith Addison Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Christopher Witmer wrote: Appal Energy wrote: Your glib and simple dismissal is one of blindness. Todd, My glib and simple dismissal is because I actually have a MEMORY. A rather selective one it seems. I remember all the mountains of irrefutable scientific evidence trotted out by environmentalists in the early 1970s warning that we faced a new ice age unless the government took immediate and massive action. Did they say it was irrefutable? I don't think so. And even if they did, did the scientists who produced the mountains of scientific evidence say that? Today, using much of the same data, No way. Even where the same climate records are used, new ways of crunching them and of correlating them with each other, with other evidence and with huge amounts of new data have produced new and much improved information from the old records. An early 70s mainframe had 16kb of RAM. NASA's new climate-change supercomputer has 1024 CPUs. Other areas have seen similar advances, from ground-level studies to satellites. Hundreds of major institutes all over the world are involved in this work. they claim we are endangered by global warming. These are the same climatologists who can't tell us whether it will rain next Friday, Please go to your dictionary and look up climatologist and meteorologist. but who are certain that the earth's temperature will be x degrees celsius higher in 2011 than today. Nobody claims certainty over that. They make projections, with provisos, and every few months the projections rise sharply on new evidence, and the researchers express their surprise. There is now little serious argument against global warming, nor against man's role in it, there's a broad worldwide consensus on that, but with uncertainty over how much temperatures will rise, and over what the precise effects are likely to be, and where. The picture does, however, grow clearer and clearer all the time, and has been doing so since the late 80s. The proposed solution to this Greenhouse Effect is, surprise!, socialism -- Aaarrgghhh!!! You said the S-word! The sky will fall on our heads if you say that! LOL! more government spending and control, and lower human standards of living. It seems you don't remember this, or maybe your eye glanced over it, as it seems to do. Businesses identify nearly $400 million in Kyoto opportunities -- A best-case scenario for five business opportunities likely to be available because of climate change - and political responses to it - shows New Zealand could earn more than $350 million a year, a group of business executives says. For most companies, climate change is now a risk management issue with significant opportunities. http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1223990a13,FF.html Without action to halt global warming, economists predict that the world as a whole will be 10 times as rich by 2100, and people on average will be five times as well off. Adding on the costs of tackling warming, says Schneider, would postpone this target by a mere two years. To be 10 times richer in 2100 versus 2102 would hardly be noticed. Similarly, meeting the terms of the Kyoto Protocol would mean industrialised countries get 20 per cent richer by June 2010 rather than in January 2010. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns2394 There are dozens of those, I just grabbed the first two. Yet the net rise in world surface temperature during the last century is about one degree Fahrenheit, nearly all of it before 1940, notes syndicated columnist Alton Chase. You sneer at the Technology Editor of The Independent, calling him the Political Propaganda Editor, and at New Scientist, and probably Reuters too now, and at the CSIRO, and now you offer us this guy? Whose non-mumbo-jumbo science credentials are that he's a syndicated columnist? Well, I can imagine you really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find someone who'd say that, if he did, but still. It's crap. And the northern oceans have actually been getting cooler. The much-vaunted 'global warming' figures are concocted by averaging equatorial warming with north temperate cooling. Note too that the recent news article bearing the same title as this message blames not warming but rather COOLING of the Northern Hemisphere as the cause of perennial drought in the Sahel. So which is it? Global cooling, or global warming? Desertification, or ice age? You don't understand the subject very well. You should do some homework, well, lots of homework, before you venture any further. You don't even know the difference between climate and weather. Desertification means a decrease in rainfall, not an increase in temperature. A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study of ground temperature in the U.S. from 1889-1989 found no warming. http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/heatbeat/weather011101.stm Taking the Earth's temperature for 2000 11 Jan 2001 -- The year 2000 is
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
- Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Forests that do not end up in ashes end up decomposing, and the net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere are more or less equal in either case. Christopher, I would have thought that decomposition of forest components took place at a much lower density with there being a good chance that the surrounding vegetation would take up the CO2 produced in the decay process. Regards, Paul Gobert. I've never seen a decomposed forest. Trees die, new trees grow. It's hard to find death in a forest. A dead log is filled with fungi, all the microorganisms of decay, insects... The fungi are usually mycorrhizae, directly feeding the dead tree to living trees. Eventually what's left of the log becomes humus (which also isn't exactly dead), with some release of CO2, which is then taken up again by the plants and eventually the tree that replaces it. A whole forest dies? Acid rain maybe... but that brings us back to the same subject. Neglect land and it reverts to trees. They just stay there unless you cut them down. A forest is an integrated organism, like its ecological opposite, pasture. Both of them cycle and recycle CO2. There is no massive net emission of CO2 into the atmosphere unless you burn them. Then, if left undisturbed, a new forest will grow, taking up the CO2 again. Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. -- Christopher Witmer Tokyo Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Christopher Witmer wrote: Yet the net rise in world surface temperature during the last century is about one degree Fahrenheit, nearly all of it before 1940, notes syndicated columnist Alton Chase. And the northern oceans have actually been getting cooler. The much-vaunted 'global warming' figures are concocted by averaging equatorial warming with north temperate cooling. Note too that the recent news article bearing the same title as this message blames not warming but rather COOLING of the Northern Hemisphere as the cause of perennial drought in the Sahel. So which is it? Global cooling, or global warming? Desertification, or ice age? Global Surface Temperature Anomalies National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html Has a bar chart, at page top, from 1880-2000 for Land Ocean temperatures. A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study of ground temperature in the U.S. from 1889-1989 found no warming. And a recently concluded 10-year satellite weather study by two NASA scientists at the Huntsville Space Center and the University of Alabama also found zero warming. MH wrote: Particulate Matter (PM) from volcanos, forest fires, coal, SO2 and wind swept soil fine particulate matter to name a few tend to cool the earths surface temperature so I understand. The developed world use to utilize wood and coal extensively emitting PM without realizing the results it would seem to me when looking at the above NOAA bar chart. I appears to me the change in energy fuel use transition has reduced PM but CO2 has increased with the expansion of the modern world and population thus adding to increased global warming climate change from my simplistic view. A quote from: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) As a consortium of universities dedicated to educate and research to enrich our understanding of the earth system, UCAR manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) UCAR Office of Programs (UOP). About UCAR http://www.ucar.edu/ucar/about.html On Global Climate Change... Excerpts from John Firor's Lecture: http://www.ucar.edu/40th/Roberts/lectures/firor/firor_exerpts.html In the 1890s, [Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish research scientist and an early recipient of the Nobel Prize] tried to explain what made ice ages by calculating how the temperature of Earthâs surface might change if somehow the amount of carbon dioxide in the air were to decrease. It had been known for some time that carbon dioxide in the air trapped heat near the surface and hence kept the Earth much warmer than it might otherwise be. So, Arrhenius speculated if something ate up a lot of carbon dioxide, the earth should cool and perhaps initiate an ice age. He calculated that removing half the carbon dioxide would cool the earth by several degrees Celsius, perhaps enough to bring on the ice. But he could see smokestacks from his office window, smokestacks, as he put it, evaporating our coal mines into the sky, thereby adding carbon dioxide to the air. So while he was at it, he also calculated what would happen if we increased the carbon dioxide in the air. In one such calculation he estimated that doubling carbon dioxide would raise the average temperature by about 5 degrees Celsius, a large change in the average temperature of the whole earth. He did not foresee the rapid expansion of industrial societies that the twentieth century would bring, so he thought that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air was centuries away, and besides, he thought it might be nice if winters were a bit warmer there in Stockholm. Today we know a lot more. Other gases also trap heat, adding to the estimated warming; fossil fuels produce most of the carbon dioxide, and while they are warming the earth they are also creating urban smog, acid rain, oil spills, land degradation, restrictions to visibility, and tensions in the Middle East. And we know Earth has warmed in the past 140 years. ` Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either of them. You can pin your Malthus, Marx and Freud labels on someone else, if you please, though I'll admit one of my favourite books is Darwin. Not the one you're thinking of though: it's called The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits. It was his favourite too, and it might surprise you. As for the ideological cow patties littering the field, those are all yours. I've stuck to information and data, I can back up anything I've said with a lot more information and data, and I'm not selective about it. You've presented no credible information or data, just ideology. Cowpats, if you will, and I'd agree - everyone's entitled to their opinions, but as I said, this isn't your village pub, and if you insist on airing here what are really barely disguised
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
- Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 12:30 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Forests that do not end up in ashes end up decomposing, and the net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere are more or less equal in either case. Christopher, I would have thought that decomposition of forest components took place at a much lower density with there being a good chance that the surrounding vegetation would take up the CO2 produced in the decay process. Regards, Paul Gobert. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.370 / Virus Database: 205 - Release Date: 6/06/02 Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either of them. You can pin your Malthus, Marx and Freud labels on someone else, if you please, though I'll admit one of my favourite books is Darwin. Not the one you're
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
There's quite a bit of detailed disussion of Lomborg's book at the Scientific American site below: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0B96-9517-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDFp ageNumber=1catID=4 Well said Keith, this guys numbers are totally out of whack. They are so far from correct, that I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. kris --- Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, Mr Witmer It's not often that a person has both Gary North and Bjorn Lomborg quoted at him in the same day. If you and them make three straight saws, I'll be fully confident in cutting a dead straight line with my allegedly bent one. No, it's not something akin to a religious confrontation, not by any means. That would simply be the last resort of someone who's been confronted with contrary evidence and been unable to produce any of his own, abandoning his points along the way as they became untenable, pretending they never existed in the first place, and finally being left without a leg to stand on, and hence this retreat into an essentially non-rational arena, hoping to find safety there. It's just cant. As is the stuff below about science. Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. We've had quite a few discussions about what this list's main matter of business is, and here's the answer: whatever we like. Who says so? I do. And with good reason, which, if you care to, you'll find very rationally outlined in the archives, sans religion, sans politics, and several times. What it all comes down to, in this case, is that you flung about quite a few unwarranted opinionations that you were unable to support when challenged, any more than you'd be able to support those above. But at least now you don't even claim that they're anything but opinions. I'm afraid you don't demonstrate much knowledge of the history of thought or the philosophy of science, nor of the current status of either
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Mr. Witmer, Actually what we have here is someone who issues sweeping generalizations and stereotypic categorizations - day one to present - which, I suppose, is not all that far off from what mainstream religions tend to assail the public with. Seems that you are the only soul brandishing anything in the way of dogmatic theology...that being denial and denunciation of the world that surrounds you, inclusive of all its poxes. Permit me to point out that your own words paint you with the same stripe as you attempt to paint others - not exactly value-free and neutral. You haven't exactly hesitated to bring a basketful of your own pre-suppostions to the table, now have you? Seems that your values tend to be those that deride the values of others who would care to preserve as much natural and human value as possible by diminishing present human impact on the globe which we all depend. Pity that you're the only person who has all the correct answers. Perhaps you should corronate yourself and start your own cult? Or would that take away from your day job, what appears to be one of a professional contrary, corporately funded perhaps, with no other intent than to keep as much valuable time of others tied up as possible? Which pretty much brings all conversation to an abrupt halt. If you need it to be put a little less politely and in fewer words, please feel free to let your imagination roam. What a waste. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 7:59 AM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Well, Keith and other friends, what we really have here is something akin to a religious confrontation, because the disagreement involves fundamental differences in worldview and presuppositions. For example, a perusal of reviews of Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World ( http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521010683/ ) shows that there is virtually no middle ground: everyone either loves it or loathes it. And that has been the case since the modern environmentalist movement began with books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which similarly produces extreme reactions from readers. I have profound disagreements with the entire set of Malthusian, Darwinian, Marxist and Freudian presuppositions that pervade most of modern thought, especially in the sciences. Science is hardly value-free and neutral. The set of presuppositions that any scientist brings to his work will surely affect the outcome of that work. As I see it, modern scientists include lots of brilliant men, and most of them are cutting with a bent saw. It doesn't matter how sharp a bent saw is, it still can't cut straight. The vast majority of scientists study neither the history of scientific thought nor the philosophy of science, and thus fail to recognize that according due to the presuppositions of their modern worldview, there is no way they can explain how science even ought to be possible. To me these scientists seem to be living an incongruity without ever becoming aware of the fact. Be that as it may, I recognize there is a huge body of research purporting to support the conclusion that a global warming disaster is in the making. Well, if our bent-saw researchers continue cutting long enough, they shall come full circle. They shall produce new theories to replace their previous discredited theories, and the new theories will be accepted as gospel, just like the earlier ones were. Not to worry, there will no doubt be a steady stream of new environmental crises to keep everyone fully employed. As for me, I plan to continue driving a biodiesel or SVO vehicle happy in the knowledge that I am thereby saving money and eliminating unnecessary local pollution and waste, but not overly concerned about how that affects the climate/weather on the opposite side of the globe. I will gratefully avail myself of the excellent biodiesel resources available on this list and at websites like Keith's JTF, and shall simply sidestep what I perceive to be the ideological cow patties littering the field. Sorry for having taken up bandwidth with a discussion that, albeit important, is peripheral to this list's main matter of business. -- Christopher Witmer Tokyo Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Kris, I wish someone would pay me for writing! I am in nobody's employ. I never pretended to know it all. If my failure to be convinced that the rich have stolen the rain and that the blame for starting the [Sahel drought] appears to lie with the developed world makes me a creep and I should get off this list, let me ask you: do you want to shun contact with people who differ from you, or who disagree with you? If this is the kind of reaction that I, a mere lay person with a casual interest in the subject, am accorded, then what shall be the fate of the professional scientist who dissents from the current consensus on global warming? Speaking of climate, how about maintaining a climate in which dissenters and skeptics aren't pilloried? At the very least, however distasteful you might find it, you need to maintain contact with people like me. Preaching to the choir converts nobody (assuming you are right), and you might actually learn something of value, either directly or indirectly, through interactions with dissenters and skeptics. Any activist convinced of global warming should print out and post above his desk the April 28, 1975 Newsweek article The Cooling World, from which I quote: The evidence in support of these predictions [of global cooling, not warming] has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it . . . Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects . . . The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality. Again, I point back to the recent articles in The Independent and the New Scientist: if the mechanism as described is correct, then what we have is not a mechanism for global warming, but rather for global cooling. Thus this new research appears to have the potential to cause yet another flip-flop in the consensus on whether the earth is getting cooler, or warmer. What has changed between the 1970s and now where science is concerned? No doubt computer modeling has advanced. But one thing stays the same: human beings are doing the research, and the computer modeling will always be limited by the presuppositions of the people who create them. If the potential for crappy science on a massive scale existed in the 1970s, it still exists today. If the potential for crappy policy advice in the political realm existed in the 1970s, it still exists today. Computers may have advanced; the people who use them haven't. -- Christopher Witmer Kris Book wrote: I suspect that Christoper is a paid propaganda writer. His words sound very much like someone who is involved in the black ops profession. It seems like every list that is set up to do some public good is infected with these folks who just keep causing friction. I sure wish these know-it-all creeps who offer nothing but opinion yet demand proof, would get their own damn list. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Appal Energy wrote: Permit me to point out that [you are] not exactly value-free and neutral. You haven't exactly hesitated to bring a basketful of your own pre-suppostions to the table, now have you? Precisely. The above is not something I needed to have pointed out to me. One difference between you and me is that I am epistemologically self-conscious of what my presuppositions are. I am not accusing anyone of having presuppositions; rather, it is simply a fact of life that all people do have presuppositions. Everyone sees the world through colored glasses, you and me included. Are you aware of what your own presuppositions are? Are you aware of how your epistemological starting point predetermines your own thinking, of what you will accept as valid evidence and what you will reject? The universal tendency among human beings is to think, What my net doesn't catch isn't fish. Epistemological self-consciousness is as important as it is rare. Don't allow yourself the luxury of thinking that you are totally open-minded and free from prejudice. It is an impossibility. Seems that your values tend to be those that deride the values of others That is an observation that cuts equally well both ways here. Perhaps you should . . . start your own cult? (Laughing) Gee, it sounds like I inadvertently stepped on the toes of a true believer. Cult? I can't believe Mr. Prejudice-Free, Open-Minded and Tolerant to All is actually saying this. [You appear to be] a professional contrary, corporately funded perhaps, with no other intent than to keep as much valuable time of others tied up as possible . . . Again, where is your much-vaunted tolerance? Do you have any shred of evidence for this slander? It is solely your inference. Reminder concerning your valuable time: you can always hit the delete key. It doesn't take much time. Which pretty much brings all conversation to an abrupt halt. If you need it to be put a little less politely and in fewer words, please feel free to let your imagination roam. What a waste. Todd Swearingen Todd, go back and re-read your earlier admonitions about tolerance and open-mindedness. You would be well advised to practice what you preach. If this is the only way you can deal with someone who disagrees with you, how confident can you be in what you think you know? If you have the truth, you don't need to start foaming at the mouth and making all sorts of slanders about my motives, etc. (which are sheer conjecture on your part). Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
yah, i heard about this too. its not global warming but global cooling and the next ice age is just around the corner they said. They also said if it were to happen Europe would be first to know cause Europe's climate is supported by the warm waters coming from the equator off the US coast. With Global warming, it breaks off the ice bergs from the North and these drift to the south, into the warm water streams path thus cooling it. Bringing less heat to the European continent. We can all agree that man had something to do with the climate changes happening. Even though there are natural cycles that could lead to this. Man certainly advanced or slowed down the tiemline for these events to happen. The question now is what to do about it and to what extent. Do we suspend everyone's liberties and do what we think could save the planet or do nothing since everyone can't even agree whats causing climate change and what will happen next. Factor in the politics, vested interests and showmanship, well, i'd rather make BD than make myself depressed. It's good that we have this forum to share and debate ideas, this builds concensus and understanding between groups of people and their respective concerns. However in the end, agreeing with one another is paramount for any idea to become action. This problem of climate change knows no borders nor boundaries. And it has to be addressed in the name of Mankind. snip My glib and simple dismissal is because I actually have a MEMORY. I remember all the mountains of irrefutable scientific evidence trotted out by environmentalists in the early 1970s warning that we faced a new ice age unless the government took immediate and massive action. Today, using much of the same data, they claim we are endangered by global warming. These are the same climatologists who can't tell us whether it will rain next Friday, but who are certain that the earth's temperature will be x degrees celsius higher in 2011 than today. The proposed solution to this Greenhouse Effect is, surprise!, socialism -- more government spending and control, and lower human standards of living. Yet the net rise in world surface temperature during the last century is about one degree Fahrenheit, nearly all of it before 1940, notes syndicated columnist Alton Chase. And the northern oceans have actually been getting cooler. The much-vaunted 'global warming' figures are concocted by averaging equatorial warming with north temperate cooling. Note too that the recent news article bearing the same title as this message blames not warming but rather COOLING of the Northern Hemisphere as the cause of perennial drought in the Sahel. So which is it? Global cooling, or global warming? Desertification, or ice age? A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study of ground temperature in the U.S. from 1889-1989 found no warming. And a recently concluded 10-year satellite weather study by two NASA scientists at the Huntsville Space Center and the University of Alabama also found zero warming. snip Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Oh get off it would you? You stated clearly that others bring presupposition to the table and implied sanctimoniously that somehow your thought processes were superior. Now you attempt to disclaim your collective arrogance in the hopes of what? That all of sudden you'll be treated like a bud? Face it. You came off like a jackass and you still do. You want tolerance? The next time you choose to jump anyone's ass in the midst of one of your arrogance, superiority and ego trips think about the word reciprocity. Frankly, I've got a great deal more respect for a horse that shits on my shoe than I have for someone who comes in all barrel chested and tries to lay a load of crap on me or anyone else. I would tend to believe it safe to say that you have reached the furthest extent of your knowledge base - enough so that it's rather clear that you're now being tormented by the abyss of your own ignorance. It's either that or you've either been smokin' too much grass or attending too many self-help seminars. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 8:44 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Appal Energy wrote: Permit me to point out that [you are] not exactly value-free and neutral. You haven't exactly hesitated to bring a basketful of your own pre-suppostions to the table, now have you? Precisely. The above is not something I needed to have pointed out to me. One difference between you and me is that I am epistemologically self-conscious of what my presuppositions are. I am not accusing anyone of having presuppositions; rather, it is simply a fact of life that all people do have presuppositions. Everyone sees the world through colored glasses, you and me included. Are you aware of what your own presuppositions are? Are you aware of how your epistemological starting point predetermines your own thinking, of what you will accept as valid evidence and what you will reject? The universal tendency among human beings is to think, What my net doesn't catch isn't fish. Epistemological self-consciousness is as important as it is rare. Don't allow yourself the luxury of thinking that you are totally open-minded and free from prejudice. It is an impossibility. Seems that your values tend to be those that deride the values of others That is an observation that cuts equally well both ways here. Perhaps you should . . . start your own cult? (Laughing) Gee, it sounds like I inadvertently stepped on the toes of a true believer. Cult? I can't believe Mr. Prejudice-Free, Open-Minded and Tolerant to All is actually saying this. [You appear to be] a professional contrary, corporately funded perhaps, with no other intent than to keep as much valuable time of others tied up as possible . . . Again, where is your much-vaunted tolerance? Do you have any shred of evidence for this slander? It is solely your inference. Reminder concerning your valuable time: you can always hit the delete key. It doesn't take much time. Which pretty much brings all conversation to an abrupt halt. If you need it to be put a little less politely and in fewer words, please feel free to let your imagination roam. What a waste. Todd Swearingen Todd, go back and re-read your earlier admonitions about tolerance and open-mindedness. You would be well advised to practice what you preach. If this is the only way you can deal with someone who disagrees with you, how confident can you be in what you think you know? If you have the truth, you don't need to start foaming at the mouth and making all sorts of slanders about my motives, etc. (which are sheer conjecture on your part). Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Todd, if I replied that the feeling is mutual I would be a liar. I believe that all human beings are created in the divine image and therefore worthy of respect. But tell me, does your disdain also apply to the researchers and policy advisors who in the 1970s laid a load of crap on us that human industrial activity is bringing on another ice age? Appal Energy wrote: Frankly, I've got a great deal more respect for a horse that shits on my shoe than I have for someone who comes in all barrel chested and tries to lay a load of crap on me or anyone else. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Yawn (Stretch with Yawn...) A discussion with Denis Lee would be far more entertaining. Just as wothless but entertaining. - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 11:00 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Todd, if I replied that the feeling is mutual I would be a liar. I believe that all human beings are created in the divine image and therefore worthy of respect. But tell me, does your disdain also apply to the researchers and policy advisors who in the 1970s laid a load of crap on us that human industrial activity is bringing on another ice age? Appal Energy wrote: Frankly, I've got a great deal more respect for a horse that shits on my shoe than I have for someone who comes in all barrel chested and tries to lay a load of crap on me or anyone else. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Africa Has self inflicted droughts.The continued nomadic destruction of the environment called poverty alleviation,come to Afrca and learn how to totally destruct the environment and abuse human rights and create poverty by law. - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 2:16 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Raffingora Garage [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Africa Has self inflicted droughts.The continued nomadic destruction of the environment called poverty alleviation,come to Afrca and learn how to totally destruct the environment and abuse human rights and create poverty by law. Hm, a happy citizen of the new South Africa it seems. Severe drought in the south now, 12 million at risk, that's caused by pastoralists and their much-vaunted but non-existent nomadic destruction? I don't think so. Half a million facing starvation in Angola - because of the reasons you state or because of a thoroughly evil civil war that would have been over decades ago but for US interference and that of their proxies in the apartheid regime? Zimbabwe, sure, there you have a case, but the extraordinary thing is that they didn't kill all the whites 20 years ago, as would have happened in a similar situation in many other parts of the world. Same goes for Sunny South Africa. East Africa? Pastoralists there yes, and much put upon they are, but please try to relate their pastoralism to drought and hunger with some evidence rather than just I say so. I don't think you'll find any evidence. One reason for the hunger, among many others, is the over-dominance of maize (exacerbated by food aid) to the exclusion and neglect of many local crops that are better adapted, less destructive and more nutritious. South Africa certainly knows a lot about creating poverty by law, but that's an old thing there rather than a new one. Come to Africa - I spent 30 years there, and I think what impressed me more than anything else is people's capacity to be blind to anything other than their own cherished notions. All those starving children in the backyard servants' quarters of rich white homes in Johannesburg and elsewhere - But we just didn't know, why didn't they tell us? And: We treat our servants like human beings. Do they still say that there? It's an Africa-wide phenomenon, this kind of blindness and the damage it causes - Third World-wide in fact. Here are a couple of examples: Sustainable Agriculture Pushing Back the Desert -- 24 Mar 2002: Desertification - land degrading into desert - is often blamed on mismanagement and misuse of land. Local people are allegedly guilty of over-farming, over-grazing and allowing their populations to exceed the environment's capacity. Lim Li Ching contests this myth, describing how local farmers in arid Africa are using innovative means to farm productively without destroying the environment, and highlights some criteria for sustainable agriculture. [more] http://www.i-sis.org.uk/desertification.php Good report, have a read. Here's another: Leave the farmers alone http://journeytoforever.org/keith_paul.html ... or stick to your cherished notions, whichever you prefer. Keith Addison - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 2:16 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Forests that do not end up in ashes end up decomposing, and the net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere are more or less equal in either case. Appal Energy wrote: Perhaps you would suggest that the forests must all be in ashes before there's proof sufficient for you? Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
I was thinking more along the lines of a scorched Earth mindset and all forests in ashes before some give credence to the obvious...not simply a forest fire or two. You also don't address the balance of stored CO2 - locked up for millions of years beneath the Earth's surface and billions of acres of forests - all being continually and ever increasingly liberated in the form of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. Just a little matter of the bulldozer pushing the fulcrum further and further to one end, making each and every new contribution an exponential one, not simply a tit for tat on one side or the other of the balance beam. Your glib and simple dismissal is one of blindness - intentional or not. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 10:30 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Forests that do not end up in ashes end up decomposing, and the net emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere are more or less equal in either case. Appal Energy wrote: Perhaps you would suggest that the forests must all be in ashes before there's proof sufficient for you? Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Appal Energy wrote: Your glib and simple dismissal is one of blindness. Todd, My glib and simple dismissal is because I actually have a MEMORY. I remember all the mountains of irrefutable scientific evidence trotted out by environmentalists in the early 1970s warning that we faced a new ice age unless the government took immediate and massive action. Today, using much of the same data, they claim we are endangered by global warming. These are the same climatologists who can't tell us whether it will rain next Friday, but who are certain that the earth's temperature will be x degrees celsius higher in 2011 than today. The proposed solution to this Greenhouse Effect is, surprise!, socialism -- more government spending and control, and lower human standards of living. Yet the net rise in world surface temperature during the last century is about one degree Fahrenheit, nearly all of it before 1940, notes syndicated columnist Alton Chase. And the northern oceans have actually been getting cooler. The much-vaunted 'global warming' figures are concocted by averaging equatorial warming with north temperate cooling. Note too that the recent news article bearing the same title as this message blames not warming but rather COOLING of the Northern Hemisphere as the cause of perennial drought in the Sahel. So which is it? Global cooling, or global warming? Desertification, or ice age? A National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration study of ground temperature in the U.S. from 1889-1989 found no warming. And a recently concluded 10-year satellite weather study by two NASA scientists at the Huntsville Space Center and the University of Alabama also found zero warming. Blind? How about blind faith in the ability of 'experts,' working within a very limited time frame and hampered by massive ignorance, to divine the causes of the world's problems, and to propose effective solutions? I am not opposed in principle to the research, but I have to oppose the so-called solutions which inevitably call for more government spending, more government control and limitations on personal freedom, and forced redistribution of wealth. There is no shortage of cheerleaders for these sorts of solutions because there is no shortage of resentment, envy and covetousness in the world. Scratching many an environmentalist exposes a great deal of resentment of others' economic advantages, or feelings of guilt for being one of the advantaged. And now I would like to conclude with a modest proposal for CO2 storage: Ode to a Dead Tree by Gary North I think that I shall never see A sight as lovely as a tree: A tree cut down for pulp and boards, Cut down for profit and rewards. Whenever forests disappear To fill a bookstore front to rear, The angels sing a glorious song, Especially if the books are long. When trees grow high above the earth I love to estimate their worth. I praise the chainsaw and the axe, Converting trees to paperbacks. I love to contemplate bare hills, Solutions to society's ills. For every tree dragged out by hooks May soon become a shelf of books. When men cry Timber! I rejoice, A perfect use for human voice. The sound of buzz saws is symphonic As long as books remain dendronic. I think of trees throughout the ages Especially as I'm turning pages: Majestic trees in ageless mists Transformed into best-sellers' lists. Down my spine I get the shivers: Giant forests into slivers! Forests growing through long winters; Spring will see them all in splinters. The thought of trees cut down for wood, Serving man as nature should, Literate mankind now confesses: Cut the trees and start the presses! -- Chris Witmer Tokyo Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=304723 Independent News * 16 June 2002 09:06 BDST HomeNews World Environment Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor 13 June 2002 To those who live there, it is as if the rich have stolen the rain. For more than 30 years, the Sahel region of Africa has suffered the longest sustained droughts in the world. In some places, rainfall has fallen by between 20 and 50 per cent. As a consequence, crops have failed on a huge scale; in the worst years, between 1972 and 1975 and between 1984 and 1985, up to a million people starved to death. However, for President George Bush, who has only recently accepted that global warming and climate change are the result of human influences - such as the burning of fossil fuels - the idea of a cause involving the developed world is unwelcome. But new research indicates that pollution from factories and power stations, especially in North America and Europe, has exacerbated drought in countries south of the Sahara. Researchers have little doubt that the two are connected and also that the effect of the drought will last long after any clean-up. There are also warnings that growing industrialisation in India and China is likely to create the same problems on the Indian subcontinent - with potentially disastrous effects for millions more people. According to a report in New Scientist magazine today, climate modelling studies by scientists in Australia and Canada have fingered the clouds of sulphur poured out by vehicles and power stations when they burn fossil fuels for pushing the Saharan rain-belt south. The effect is complex, which is why it has only just emerged from the analyses. New Scientist explains that Leon Rotstayn of CSIRO, the national research agency in Australia, and Ulrike Lohmann, of Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, created a computer model that simulated the interactions between sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants and other sources and cloud. A key element here is that those emissions create huge volumes of aerosols - tiny particles about one micrometre across that can remain floating in the atmosphere for days. They are very efficient at scattering light and forming clouds, which reflect sunlight; both effects tend to cool the atmosphere and the Earth below. The vast amount of aerosols produced especially in the 1980s lingered over the northern hemisphere and tended to cool it down, say the researchers. But it is the final step - to the shifting fortunes of the rain clouds that should linger over the Sahel - which is the subtle one. David Roberts, the head of the aerosol modelling group at the Meteorological Office's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, said: It's an effect of the thermal balance between the two hemispheres. There has to be a rough balance between the north and south hemispheres - you can't have spare energy in one place or the other. If the Earth was completely symmetrical, then the point of thermal equilibrium, where the total energy on either side of a line was equal, would be the Equator. But because the Northern hemisphere isn't the same as the south [because of the vast energy reservoir of the Pacific, which retains energy more efficiently than land] we find that the Northern hemisphere is warmer than the South. However, aerosol-driven cooling of the Northern hemisphere pushes that point of thermal equilibrium south - and with it go the rainclouds that people depend on for their crops in the Sahel. The historical evidence tends to back up the findings. One key change that the researchers point to is that in the 1980s, improvements in emission laws meant that sulphur emissions in particular dropped - because they were blamed for acid rain, which was noticed far more keenly in the industrialised countries than droughts in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr Rotstayn and Professor Lohmann said that droughts have become less severe during the past few years. But that does not mean that they have disappeared. Far from it; the whole of southern Africa is facing a regional food crisis, according to a recent report that notes that a total of six countries in southern Africa have roughly 11 million people who need emergency food assistance. Ironically, the note came from the United States Agency for International Development. But the cleaning of the air in the US and Europe (and the closure through economic failure of many of the worst polluters in eastern Europe) does not mean that the threat is over. If anything, it could get worse. Although Dr Roberts says he is cautious about taking the interpretation of the link between aerosols in the northern hemisphere and the weather in the Sahel as gospel, he says that if it is correct, then there are other areas around the globe that could be
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor I'm a bit puzzled by whose guilt you think is being manipulated, and where political propaganda might come into it - why do you think it's political? (Unless political just means I don't agree with it.) I don't know Dalhousie University, but the CSIRO is not a half-assed establishment, and I doubt they'd work with any institution that was. Nor are the Independent and New Scientist half-assed establishments, given to political propaganda. Neither the CSIRO nor New Scientist deal in mumbo-jumbo science. If you want some mumbo-jumbo, Arthur got it wrong about Bush accepting global warming and human causes. Bush said: I read the report put out by the bureaucracy (his own administration, reflecting the views of scientists in six federal agencies, including Bush's own Council on Environmental Quality) and dismissed it, but Ari Fleischer said he hadn't read it even if he'd said he had. In the early 80s Acres USA, which isn't exactly political, ran a long article saying pretty much the same thing about the Sahel drought. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. How do you know it can't? But if you think that, then what are your grounds for presuming it wrong and writing it off as political propaganda? And couldn't one say the same about this? One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. Do you have any references for that? I think it's far from for sure. Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Whether you like it or not, this report is a great way for Australia to excuse itself for not joining in with the Kyoto crowd. Likewise the US. Its anti-Kyoto comments on limiting developing countries' emissions are perfectly valid - but this looks like it could be a build-up to establishing CSIRO emissions-reduction technologies as the answer to the growing emissions problems from those countries. At least Australia is prepared to raise the issue, however painful it may be. Let's hope that its motives are not totally profit-related. Mark Wilkinson In a message dated Sun, 16 Jun 2002 9:29:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor I'm a bit puzzled by whose guilt you think is being manipulated, and where political propaganda might come into it - why do you think it's political? (Unless political just means I don't agree with it.) I don't know Dalhousie University, but the CSIRO is not a half-assed establishment, and I doubt they'd work with any institution that was. Nor are the Independent and New Scientist half-assed establishments, given to political propaganda. Neither the CSIRO nor New Scientist deal in mumbo-jumbo science. If you want some mumbo-jumbo, Arthur got it wrong about Bush accepting global warming and human causes. Bush said: I read the report put out by the bureaucracy (his own administration, reflecting the views of scientists in six federal agencies, including Bush's own Council on Environmental Quality) and dismissed it, but Ari Fleischer said he hadn't read it even if he'd said he had. In the early 80s Acres USA, which isn't exactly political, ran a long article saying pretty much the same thing about the Sahel drought. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. How do you know it can't? But if you think that, then what are your grounds for presuming it wrong and writing it off as political propaganda? And couldn't one say the same about this? One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. Do you have any references for that? I think it's far from for sure. Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Keith Addison wrote: I'm a bit puzzled by whose guilt you think is being manipulated, and where political propaganda might come into it - why do you think it's political? Well, the opening sentence, for one thing: To those who live there, it is as if the rich have stolen the rain. That is a mighty big conclusion to leap to from a mere computer simulation. It implies an entire political agenda, because if the rich have stolen the rain, then in order for justice to be done, the rich should make restitution -- to restore and make reparations for their theft. People's credulity amazes me: On the basis of our computer simulation, we want you to accept a wholesale restructuring of the socio-political order. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. Do you have any references for that? I think it's far from for sure. Well, I think there is a reference in the Book of Genesis to a severe seven-year famine in Egypt and surrounding countries. (That resulted in the establishment of the greatest totalitarian state known until modern times: Pharaoh taxed at the onerous rate of 20%!) The geological evidence for a much greener Africa in earlier human history is indisputable. Africa's climate has been changing for millennia. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Global warming, inclusive of human contribution, desertification, ozone depletion.all of these are mumbo-jumbo science? Sorry mate. It's not Voodoo...It's Who Do and beyond a shadow of a doubt the who that do is uscontributing considerably more than nature would accomplish on its own. The world doesn't need a consensus and a polite nod from a wind up US yes man before the vast global majority realizes something's afoot. Perhaps you would suggest that the forests must all be in ashes before there's proof sufficient for you? Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Christopher Witmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 8:16 AM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Technology editor? Sounds more like political propaganda editor. The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. I'm glad the case for biodiesel doesn't have to be based on this kind of mumbo-jumbo science, which is probably more accurately described as an exercise in guilt manipulation. Keith Addison wrote: Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa By Charles Arthur Technology Editor Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Sahara has been growing since Roman times. I believe goats are probably responsible for most of the destruction of trees. And trees are a very important part of rainfall. Since science is a topic 4 out of 5 citizens are woefully lacking in, at least in my experience in the United States, the debates/news releases have been over simplified and we seek simplistic truth. Unfortunately the result is a mess. For example the proposed coal electrical generation. I am against it--but not for the CO2 reason. I see the general public as right, but for the wrong reason. That carries danger. And ozone--man's chlorine contribution is less than 1% of the total burden. Eliminate 100% of man's contribution and what have you accomplished? We have some ecological problems that almost make we weep, or alternatively terrify me. If you are busy chasing phantoms how do you see the other problems? Is there a vested interest in misdirecting you if I am an industrialist involved with the ignored problems? For example--How much do duPont and Imperial Chemical donate to ecological movements? Who funded Earth Day? Who made billions as a result? Hopefully that will stimulate your interest. Kirk -Original Message- From: Christopher Witmer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 9:10 AM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa Keith Addison wrote: I'm a bit puzzled by whose guilt you think is being manipulated, and where political propaganda might come into it - why do you think it's political? Well, the opening sentence, for one thing: To those who live there, it is as if the rich have stolen the rain. That is a mighty big conclusion to leap to from a mere computer simulation. It implies an entire political agenda, because if the rich have stolen the rain, then in order for justice to be done, the rich should make restitution -- to restore and make reparations for their theft. People's credulity amazes me: On the basis of our computer simulation, we want you to accept a wholesale restructuring of the socio-political order. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. Do you have any references for that? I think it's far from for sure. Well, I think there is a reference in the Book of Genesis to a severe seven-year famine in Egypt and surrounding countries. (That resulted in the establishment of the greatest totalitarian state known until modern times: Pharaoh taxed at the onerous rate of 20%!) The geological evidence for a much greener Africa in earlier human history is indisputable. Africa's climate has been changing for millennia. Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- Incoming mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.371 / Virus Database: 206 - Release Date: 6/13/2002 --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.371 / Virus Database: 206 - Release Date: 6/13/2002 Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Hi Kirk Sahara has been growing since Roman times. The Romans wrecked the northern part of it, at the Mediterranean coast. Its southward spread into the Sahel is much more recent. I believe goats are probably responsible for most of the destruction of trees. And trees are a very important part of rainfall. Some goats. Some caused by overgrazing in general, largely because national borders (crazily drawn by colonial powers) have cut peoples in half and utterly disrupted nomadic grazing rotations. Severe desert encroachment in the south has largely been a phenomenon of the colonial era, at least as much due to political and economic factors as to pastoralism, and accelerating ever more rapidly in the last 80-100 years. In this period desert encroachment in the north has also worsened considerably. Since science is a topic 4 out of 5 citizens are woefully lacking in, at least in my experience in the United States, the debates/news releases have been over simplified and we seek simplistic truth. Unfortunately the result is a mess. For example the proposed coal electrical generation. I am against it--but not for the CO2 reason. I see the general public as right, but for the wrong reason. That carries danger. And ozone--man's chlorine contribution is less than 1% of the total burden. Eliminate 100% of man's contribution and what have you accomplished? We have some ecological problems that almost make we weep, or alternatively terrify me. If you are busy chasing phantoms how do you see the other problems? Is there a vested interest in misdirecting you if I am an industrialist involved with the ignored problems? For example--How much do duPont and Imperial Chemical donate to ecological movements? Who funded Earth Day? Who made billions as a result? Hopefully that will stimulate your interest. Kirk Indeed. It's well documented, there's a lot of corporate funding going into the corporate environmental groups, especially in the US, to the great cost of the grassroots environmental movements, the society at large, and the environment. For the corporations it's PR money very effectively spent. There's also a lot more corporate money than that going into fighting these issues (if fighting isn't too honorable a word), some of it downright sinister - like PR-generated phantom personalities smearing and discrediting various scientific efforts on the Internet, and worse. Never mind all the money that goes into pockets in Washington, a city of pockets. However, that doesn't mean the issues themselves don't exist. CO2 is a valid argument against coal generation, though far from the only one. And 1% of chlorine is one hell of a lot. I'm thoroughly fed up with that poxy butterfly flapping its silly wings in Brazil somewhere, but with something as complex as climate it's a damned good analogy. If you don't know the precise effects for sure, you HAVE to apply the precautionary principle in such cases. A perceived lack of sufficient evidence cannot be used as a reason to take no action and abandon further investigation, that's illogical. Regarding CO2, the evidence at this stage leaves little room for doubt - no room for the yes or no kind of doubt, only for detail and degree. There's no reason at all that this should divert attention from other pressing issues, many of which are related issues anyway. In ecology everything's connected to everything else. Finally, would you say that Earth Day should be abandoned? That it's accomplished nothing useful, not helped to awaken a single person's awareness to environmental issues? Regardless of who subsequently funded and profited from it, AFAIK the oil spill off Santa Barbara in 1969 was the original inspiration for Earth Day, and helped launch the environmental movement - genuine and sound inspiration, no matter what malcontents may since have climbed on the bandwagon. Their unwanted presence now doesn't mean oil spills are good. Regards Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Christopher Witmer wrote: Keith Addison wrote: I'm a bit puzzled by whose guilt you think is being manipulated, and where political propaganda might come into it - why do you think it's political? Well, the opening sentence, for one thing: To those who live there, it is as if the rich have stolen the rain. The rain would be the least part of it. Maybe you, amongst the beneficiaries, haven't noticed, but yes, those who live there have most certainly noticed, and keep saying so, louder and louder. Anyway, you're trying to knock a scientific report on the basis of the intro to a newspaper article about the report. Even so, it's hardly a political comment. An economic one maybe. That is a mighty big conclusion to leap to from a mere computer simulation. It implies an entire political agenda, because if the rich have stolen the rain, then in order for justice to be done, the rich should make restitution -- to restore and make reparations for their theft. You're reading a lot of stuff that isn't in the report, it isn't even implied, but in fact yes,that is what the poor countries are saying, rain or no rain. There's vast evidence to support their case, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to information about poverty and what causes it, in great detail. The annual UN Human Development Report says the effects of globalisation and increasing economic integration have led to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in nearly every way. In nine years, the income ratio between the top 20% and the bottom 20% has increased from 60:1 to 74:1. Eighty countries have less revenue than they did a decade ago. In the last 20 years of globalization most poor-country economies have gone into reverse, whereas most of them were growing quite well in the previous 20 years. The winds of so-called free trade are very much designed to favour the ships with the biggest sails, with the purpose of extracting wealth and concentrating it among the rich. The average Sahelian would have no difficulty believing that America had stolen his rain too. People's credulity amazes me: On the basis of our computer simulation, we want you to accept a wholesale restructuring of the socio-political order. That's not what the researchers said, nor even hinted at. Talking of people's amazing credulity, you said this: The article's thesis may be correct, but it can't be scientifically established one way or the other, and apparently deemed that sufficient logical basis to dub it mumbo-jumbo 'science'. You've accused two rather august journals and at least one heavyweight science institute of mumbo-jumbo 'science' on the basis something you say may be right and can't be disproved. Maybe there are a few things you feel the need to be credulous about? Climate-change deniers often sneer at mere computer simulations, as if they're sucked out of thin air or Grimm's Fairy Tales or something. They also often chuck the words political propaganda about. The data does come from somewhere, you know. More and more and more of it, and not just from other computer simulations. Isn't it getting a bit difficult not to notice the collapsing glaciers all over the place, the melting tundra, the vanishing wildlife as climate niches disappear, the bleached coral, etc etc etc... doesn't leave much of a safely viewable vista, does it? About the size of a keyhole, eh? Anyway, never mind the computer simulation, never mind the rain either, it has little to do with the socio-political order, everything to do with an inequitable economic system. The Kyoto Protocol itself isn't a political issue anymore in most industrialised countries, it's just a fact. That the bully down the block and a couple of his henchmen and underlings are being a bit backward about it doesn't make it political either, needs a bit of work, but it'll happen in the end. One thing is for sure -- Africa has been experiencing droughts since long before America's smokestacks -- or even America -- existed. Do you have any references for that? I think it's far from for sure. Well, I think there is a reference in the Book of Genesis to a severe seven-year famine in Egypt and surrounding countries. (That resulted in the establishment of the greatest totalitarian state known until modern times: Pharaoh taxed at the onerous rate of 20%!) The geological evidence for a much greener Africa in earlier human history is indisputable. Africa's climate has been changing for millennia. So? What's your point? Are you saying one thing or the other? Or both? There's more to it than geological evidence, and no need to go back millennia. Whether or not the smokestacks story is sound, the Sahel drought is a recent phenomenon. Africa is rather large. I don't think there's any evidence its climate has changed over the millennia any more or any less than other large land masses. You disapprove of the Pharoahs' _mere_ 20% but you don't mind or
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America have brought the world's worst drought to Africa
Whether you like it or not, this report is a great way for Australia to excuse itself for not joining in with the Kyoto crowd. Likewise the US. Its anti-Kyoto comments on limiting developing countries' emissions are perfectly valid - but this looks like it could be a build-up to establishing CSIRO emissions-reduction technologies as the answer to the growing emissions problems from those countries. At least Australia is prepared to raise the issue, however painful it may be. Let's hope that its motives are not totally profit-related. Mark Wilkinson Hello Mark Yes, let's hope. But I think you lost me in the first two sentences. Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter, and it has its own emissions problems. In the US the White House is currently occupied by energy interests. Both countries have already received considerable concessions, as did China and India, but two wrongs don't make a right, and China and India are hardly relevant to the fact that the US has 5% of the world's population, uses 25% of the world's energy, and accounts for more than 36% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. It's happening, we're the main culprits, get used to it isn't much of a policy, certainly not one built to last. Anybody who's not getting into emissions-reduction technologies will seriously miss the boat. The US is already well behind. Businesses there are realising that. Meanwhile, since the EU ratified Kyoto various people have been telling Europe it's time to take the lead again, and not just with climate change. I'm sure the EU is alive to that, and Japan too. They'll put pressure on the US, but at the same time they'll leap ahead. You think little Australia has backed the right horse? I'm not being patronising, but in that league they're little. The Kyoto Protocol should have been a binding agreement reached at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. That was the intention, it was to be the centrepiece at Rio (I was at the ministerial climate conference in Nairobi that preceded the Rio Conference). That much has footdragging accomplished, and more - it probably requires 60% cuts, Kyoto is just a drop in the bucket with its 1990 levels by 2012 or whatever. At any rate, one way or another it'll happen, but Kyoto is not the be-all and end-all, just a stepping stone. More and more countries are seeing it as a business opportunity, most recently New Zealand: Businesses identify nearly $400 million in Kyoto opportunities -- A best-case scenario for five business opportunities likely to be available because of climate change - and political responses to it - shows New Zealand could earn more than $350 million a year, a group of business executives says. For most companies, climate change is now a risk management issue with significant opportunities. http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1223990a13,FF.html Here's another way of looking at it: Without action to halt global warming, economists predict that the world as a whole will be 10 times as rich by 2100, and people on average will be five times as well off. Adding on the costs of tackling warming, says Schneider, would postpone this target by a mere two years. To be 10 times richer in 2100 versus 2102 would hardly be noticed. Similarly, meeting the terms of the Kyoto Protocol would mean industrialised countries get 20 per cent richer by June 2010 rather than in January 2010. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns2394 Not much use being 10 times richer two years earlier if the sky falls on your head in the meantime. Best Keith Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Free $5 Love Reading Risk Free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/3PCXaC/PfREAA/Ey.GAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send quot;unsubscribequot; messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
