RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
What has me confused the most is warming should be accompanied with enhanced evaporation. Yet when I look at tree rings in central Montana the reduced rainfall that began in the early 70's is still with us. As for recording peak temperatures at weather stations reduced humidity should see wider temperature excursions. We should set records for high AND low. In Montana we have seen that very thing. It also occurs to me if evaporation is lower cloud cover may be lower. This is not an automatic given because clouds really reflect the humidity at altitude and the precipitation model is not a simple one. I'm not advocating one theory or another. All I can say with honesty is the more I study this the more confused I feel. Has anyone looked at the methane hydrate link I posted earlier? Pawnfart has an uncanny record of prediction accuracy. Kirk Original Message- From: Appal Energy [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 8:49 PM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa Correct. And as others have taken such great pains to debunk psuedo-science http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A72-A95C-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDF why should anyone take equal or greater pains here? At least not since the rebuttal was thorough and principally accurate. I'm afraid Mr. Witmer is not much more than a lost looking for a cause. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Olga Lange [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 5:46 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought 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-B4A 8809EC588EEDFp 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
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
Correct. And as others have taken such great pains to debunk psuedo-science http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A72-A95C-1CDA-B4A 8809EC588EEDF why should anyone take equal or greater pains here? At least not since the rebuttal was thorough and principally accurate. I'm afraid Mr. Witmer is not much more than a lost looking for a cause. Todd Swearingen - Original Message - From: Olga Lange [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 5:46 PM Subject: Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought 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-B4A 8809EC588EEDFp 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
Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
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. I must say the report U.S. Climate Action Report 2002 http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car/ sure caused a up roar on the US conservative radio talk shows. With the US battling forest fires in several states US National Interagency Fire Center http://www.nifc.gov/index.html Current Wildland Fire Update NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NATIONAL FIRE WEATHER PAGE US map for Fire Weather Forecast http://www.boi.noaa.gov/firewx.htm it has me wondering how the Bush administration and the US conservative political party would address this unusual weather phenomenon. It would be nice if we could have tapped that energy resource. US officials anticipate record wildfire season by Michael Kahn 13/6/2002 Excerpts from http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=16407 SAN FRANCISCO - A withering winter drought has dried out forests and underbrush across the American West, creating tinderbox conditions that officials fear could explode into a record-setting fire season this summer. Last year marked a minor respite in the perennial battle against US wildfires, with blazes blackening only about 3.7 million acres (1.5 million hectares), down from 2000 when blazes torched 8.4 million acres (3.4 million hectares) in what was the worst fire season in 50 years. So far 1.4 million acres (567,000 hectares) have burned this year, almost double the amount at the same time in 2001 and up from 1.2 million acres (486,000 hectares) in 2000 - putting the season on track for a new record. What we are seeing now in mid-June is more like July or August, Smurthwaite said. Fire season is running four to six weeks ahead of schedule. ` 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 havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
No, we must be good stewards or resign ourselves to living in a toxic waste dump. Einhorn was funded by Bronfman BTW. They are the new owners of duPont. Mad Max is a walk in the park compared to the eggs industry has left to hatch. The oil spill thing is a problem but throwing whole reactors, with fuel, into the ocean is enormously bigger. BTW read Two Years Before the Mast by Dana if you get a chance. The Valdez was a piker compared to that natural spill. That's why I'm in favor of properly done coastal drilling. Get the stuff out of there. Kirk -Original Message- From: Keith Addison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 12:44 PM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought 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 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:
Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana was Re: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa
http://www.gruntose.com/Info/Books/Richard_Henry_Dana/two_years_b efore_the_mast.html - Original Message - From: kirk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 3:39 PM Subject: RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought the world's worst drought to Africa No, we must be good stewards or resign ourselves to living in a toxic waste dump. Einhorn was funded by Bronfman BTW. They are the new owners of duPont. Mad Max is a walk in the park compared to the eggs industry has left to hatch. The oil spill thing is a problem but throwing whole reactors, with fuel, into the ocean is enormously bigger. BTW read Two Years Before the Mast by Dana if you get a chance. The Valdez was a piker compared to that natural spill. That's why I'm in favor of properly done coastal drilling. Get the stuff out of there. Kirk -Original Message- From: Keith Addison [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 12:44 PM To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [biofuel] Revealed: how the smoke stacks of America havebrought 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 -
