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KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
Demonstratively false. Humans DO have an affect on weather. Example: The temperature in cities is frequently warmer than in the surrounding countryside, due to the heat retention characteristics of the pavement. Not even Texas works the same way as Texas. We have a large variety of areas here in Texas. Everything from old-growth deciduous hardwood forests to deserts. About the only major types we don't have in Texas are tundra (we are not in the arctic/antarctic), alpine (we don't have any really high mountains), and tropical (we are not in the tropics). When it comes to vegetation and climate, it is very dangerous to generalize when it comes to Texas. Remember, Texas is bigger than many entire nations. |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
actually Iron seeding does work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization Study the literature. Source 2 on that wikipedia article, for instance. http://marine.rutgers.edu/ebme/papers/Buesseler_et_al_Science_319_Jan_2008.pdf It didn't work the way they thought it would. Oh, the algae grew nicely. It just didn't work the way they thought it would as far as sequestering the CO2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankton Plankton includes a wide variety of organisms. Drifting algae are plankton. http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb/DeadZone.htm Dead zone is caused by algae blooms. Read it. Especially:
Quit talking out of your backside. |
Es99 Send message Joined: 23 Aug 05 Posts: 10874 Credit: 350,402 RAC: 0 |
Although the discussion has moved on a little, I saw this article and thought you'd all be interested. Mini adventure: how far can an electric car go? Reality Internet Personality |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
Demonstratively false. Humans DO have an affect on weather. Example: The temperature in cities is frequently warmer than in the surrounding countryside, due to the heat retention characteristics of the pavement. Somebody should have explained that to W before he was elected to any office In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
actually Iron seeding does work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization Oops I skipped a step.. the result? the same. a dead zone. nuf said In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
At least I can't be blamed for that one. I have NEVER cast a vote for Dubya. Not for President of the USA... Not for Gov. of Texas... I didn't like his political positions. I wasn't all that impressed with him personally either. Heck, he didn't even do all that good of a job when he was owner of the Texas Rangers MLB team. I never voted for his daddy either. I never liked his politics or personality either. Besides, in both their cases, about my most favorable statement I make about them is 'Yankee, go home!'. |
soft^spirit Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 6497 Credit: 34,134,168 RAC: 0 |
Umm.. he wasn't. Janice |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30982 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
Funny, when Congress counted the votes of the electoral college, he had a majority for each term. Or are you under some delusion that people directly vote for President of the United States? I did not vote for electors pledged to vote for him. |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
Per the US Constitution, the President (chief executive) of the Federal Government is elected by the Legislatures of the various states. While each state customarily holds a 'popular election' to decide how they are going to vote, they are NOT Constitutionally required to do so. It is perfectly acceptable for the Legislature of a State to vote amongst themselves to decide how that State's votes will be cast. Article. II. From http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html When Bush vs. Gore lawsuit hit the Federal Court, and it got to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court ruled the only way it constitutionally could... It was up to the Florida Legislature and the procedure that they (the Florida Legislature) had set forth. So Bush won, and won legitimately. There is no such thing as a national election for US President, there are (currently) 50 separate state elections. The 'National Popular Vote' total in the US Presidential election is totally without any meaning whatsoever. The only thing that does have meaning is the results of the 50 separate State Elections implemented under the rules and procedures established by the Legislature in the State in which each separate election occurred. The State Legislatures vote directly for US President through the Electoral College. The People don't vote directly for US President. They get a voice on 'election day' only insofar as currently each state separately holds an opinion poll, under the rules and procedures established separately by each State Legislature, to determine how their Legislature will cast its votes. But that opinion poll is just custom. It isn't Constitutionally required. Edit: In the matter of the election of the US President, only the State's Legislature has standing to set the rules and procedures of the process in their own state, seperately. The State's judicial branch has absolutely no standing to interfere in the process, and the State's Executive branch is compelled to follow the dictates of the State Legislature. The Federal Court system has standing, but is compelled by Article II, Section I to defer to the State Legislature's decisions in all cases. The Executive Branch of the Federal Government has no standing to interfere in the process. The Legislative Branch of the Federal Government (specifically the House of Representatives) only has any standing in the process at all if the Electoral College is unable to reach a decision on its own due to no candidate getting the required majority. If the people in a State are unhappy with their Legislature's decisions, they are, of course, free to vote the Legislature out next election. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
generally speaking though. the electoral college would be making political suicide for any legislature that elected them if they chose to vote against the will of the people. It has happened in party conventions that the electorate voted against how they were elected to vote but I can't recall this ever happening in a real election. In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
generally speaking though. the electoral college would be making political suicide for any legislature that elected them if they chose to vote against the will of the people. Generally speaking, the will of the people in a State in this matter is adequately represented by their votes for members of the Legislature in their State. As I said, if the people in a state are unhappy with their Legislature, vote them out. Why people tend to concentrate on voting in Federal elections and tend to not vote as much in or pay as much attention to the more local elections is beyond me. I consider voting in city/county/state elections to be even more important than voting in Federal ones. I vote in the off-year elections. It is not only your right (unless you are under 18 or a convicted felon) to vote, it is your civic duty. Every election day, educate yourself beforehand on the issues and races/candidates on the ballot. Get off your backside. Go vote.
Huh? Oh, you mean delegates in the political party conventions. Well, those really aren't elections, merely a similar process by which the political parties choose who they are going to nominate to run in specific races. These conventions have, by and large, replaced the 'smoke filled back rooms' with which the parties used to make their choices, though the party big-wigs still have a considerable influence. Take that race in Alaska of late. The primary and convention chose to nominate one person over the objections of that party's bigwigs. The incumbent ran as an independent, and the party big-wigs supported her. She won. As far as those elected to the Electoral College, while they are usually pledged to a specific candidate, they have not always voted that way down through history. Some have voted for a different candidate, and as recently as 2000, some have abstained from voting. However, these little protests have never made a difference in the outcome of the Electoral College. As far as the states holding popular elections to determine the Legislature's votes in the Electoral College: In the first couple of Presidential elections, the overwhelming majority of state legislatures just chose their electors in a vote amongst themselves. By 1812, it was down to about half, as the idea of letting the people in the various states make the choice for their state's legislature caught on. The last time a state legislature directly chose Electors without holding an election was in 1876, but we did get close to it happening again in 2000 in Florida. The Florida Legislature was constitutionally required to choose its Electors by a certain date. If the US Supreme Court had not effectively ended all the legal challenges, the Florida Legislature would have had no choice but to go ahead and make the choice directly itself. If they had not, not only would this have disenfranchised the State of Florida, but since the Electoral College would not have been able to get the required number of votes for a majority (270 votes), it would have thrown the election into the US House of Representatives. States Legislatures have no requirement to hold an election in their State to determine their State's votes for President in the Electoral College. By custom, however, they all do, and have since 1876. Now there is some variation between the various States on exact rules and procedures, but so what? If the voters in a State are unhappy with the job their Legislatures have done on this (or ANY other) subject, they can vote the Legislators out. In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea to do so frequently anyway, at ALL levels of Government. To repeat a popular saying: Politicians are like baby diapers, and need to be changed frequently for the same reason. |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
yes they are elected/picked to represent a party at the conventions. It starts with precinct parties which leads to county parties that leads to the state parties then the national conventions. at each level a person is selected as a delegate to represent an area. they in effect are elected by those present at the election party. This is how it works here in Texas. It may be different in other states. If you want to participate in the precinct party Vote and then just show up at your voting precinct as the polls close. the polling people have the party materials for both major parties and in each precinct you are allowed a specific number of delegates to go to the county party depending on the number of voters for the party in the previous election cycle. the country, state and national conventions. In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
yes they are elected/picked to represent a party at the conventions. It starts with precinct parties which leads to county parties that leads to the state parties then the national conventions. at each level a person is selected as a delegate to represent an area. they in effect are elected by those present at the election party. This is how it works here in Texas. It may be different in other states. I know how it works here in Texas. I've been to a few, including 2 State Conventions in decades past, before I left the Republican Party in disgust. But these 'primaries' are not actual elections. They are Political Party Events, run by the political parties themselves, for the purpose of deciding who that political party will nominate for what race. They just have a surface similarity to elections, and use much of the same apparatus for the actual 'primary', frequently even being at the same time/place as an actual election for other issues. Everything else you mentioned is somewhat behind the scenes, and tends to not be widely known (or cared about) by most party members. |
keith Send message Joined: 18 Dec 10 Posts: 454 Credit: 9,054 RAC: 0 |
actually Iron seeding does work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization Deadzone. Where??? Bacteria devoured methane gas from gulf oil spill, scientists say By Brian Vastag Washington Post Staf Writer Thursday, January 6, 2011; 3:19 PM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010603570.html Last August, just two days into a research cruise to study methane gas spewed into the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon gusher, Texas A&M University oceanographer John Kessler turned to one of his colleagues and said, "Well, it looks like it might be gone. What do you think?" The huge wallop of methane burped up from deep inside the earth was, in fact, missing. Kessler and his colleagues now report in Science that a huge swarm of gas-gobbling bacteria swelled to consume nearly all of the estimated 200,000 tons of methane dumped into the gulf. Methane is the primary component of natural gas and is typically found packed together with oil and other hydrocarbons at drill sites. Before and during the spill, BP estimated that natural gas made up about 30 percent of the output of the Macondo well drilled by the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig. Besides providing some good news for the gulf region, the finding has potential implications for climate change science, too. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and, as the earth warms, climate scientists worry that much more methane will be released from the oceans. "What this tells us is that natural releases of methane from the seafloor with similar characteristics will not make it up to the atmosphere, will not influence climate," Kessler says. While the gusher was still flowing, in June, a team sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had found intense concentrations of methane in the waters near the wellhead, says David Valentine of the University of California at Santa Barbara, who helped lead that work. At the time, that team detected very few of the methane-eating bacteria that naturally live in the gulf. So Valentine and colleagues arrived at a grim - though early - conclusion. "Originally, we had expected that the methane would be consumed gradually," Valentine says. "We really thought it would be around for a year or more." Instead, two to three months after engineers finally capped the well, the gas was gone. All of the evidence points to an explosion of methane-eating bacteria. From mid-August through early October, a team aboard the NOAA vessel Pisces searched an area of the gulf larger than Indiana, dipping a package of sensors into the water at 207 locations. They found almost no methane. Instead, their instruments recorded huge pockets of depleted oxygen, which the microbes use to burn the gas. "If the methane had just traveled someplace else and was hiding, we wouldn't see any reductions in dissolved oxygen," Kessler says. "But if it were consumed by microbes, we should see some reductions in dissolved oxygen, which we did." In fact, Kessler calculated that the amount of missing oxygen almost exactly equaled the amount required by a vast cloud of microbes to consume the entire bolus of methane. "The math worked out scary good," he says. The microbes, known as methanotrophs, were discovered about 100 years ago, and they exist everywhere in the ocean scientists have searched for them. They make a living much the same way a gas fireplace provides warmth: by burning methane and oxygen to release energy, carbon dioxide and water. Back in his laboratory, Valentine, who was also aboard the Pisces, documented the last piece of evidence: striking genetic fragments of a robust community of methanotrophs. He also discovered DNA sequences for an enzyme the microbes deploy to break methane's chemical bonds. "In September and October we found significant numbers of methane consumers," Valentine says. "But because there was no methane for them to eat anymore, we interpret that as being the residual population that had consumed all the methane." Tori Hoehler, who studies methanotrophs at NASA Ames Research Center in California, said the team did a good job of ruling out the possibility that the methane had simply burbled into the atmosphere. "They didn't see any methane coming out of the water column" in June, he says. "The surprise is to see that the methanotrophs can respond in relatively rapid fashion." By contrast, Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, says he is "not surprised at all" by the voracious appetite of the microbes. Hazen spent four months on the gulf studying the giant plumes of oil and gas that initially spread from the well. "We have basically the same data," he says. In August, Hazen reported that bacteria - including several new-to-science species - were quickly reducing the giant plumes of oil. "The good news is that methanotrophs will probably help to deep clean" the gulf by continuing to degrade residual oil and gas, Hazen says. However, Hoehler says the findings offer a double-edged lesson. "There is a built-in capacity for the ecosystem" to deal with oil and gas spills, he says. "That is in some ways a comforting thought. But if people simply have the notion that bacteria will clean up our messes for us, then there will be less of a concern about making messes in the first place. It's nice to know that [bacteria] are there to fix what we've done wrong. But it's not a crutch you want to lean on." |
keith Send message Joined: 18 Dec 10 Posts: 454 Credit: 9,054 RAC: 0 |
Step 1: get off the fossil fuels. Or, maybe we should just examine the motive... UN IPCC Official Admits 'We Redistribute World's Wealth By Climate Policy' If you needed any more evidence that the entire theory of manmade global warming was a scheme to redistribute wealth you got it Sunday when a leading member of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told a German news outlet, "[W]e redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy." Such was originally published by Germany's NZZ Online Sunday, and reprinted in English by the Global Warming Policy Foundation moments ago: (NZZ AM SONNTAG): The new thing about your proposal for a Global Deal is the stress on the importance of development policy for climate policy. Until now, many think of aid when they hear development policies. (OTTMAR EDENHOFER, UN IPCC OFFICIAL): That will change immediately if global emission rights are distributed. If this happens, on a per capita basis, then Africa will be the big winner, and huge amounts of money will flow there. This will have enormous implications for development policy. And it will raise the question if these countries can deal responsibly with so much money at all. (NZZ): That does not sound anymore like the climate policy that we know. (EDENHOFER): Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization. The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War. Why? Because we have 11,000 gigatons of carbon in the coal reserves in the soil under our feet - and we must emit only 400 gigatons in the atmosphere if we want to keep the 2-degree target. 11 000 to 400 - there is no getting around the fact that most of the fossil reserves must remain in the soil. (NZZ): De facto, this means an expropriation of the countries with natural resources. This leads to a very different development from that which has been triggered by development policy. (EDENHOFER): First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole. For the record, Edenhofer was co-chair of the IPCC's Working Group III, and was a lead author of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report released in 2007 which controversially concluded, "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations." As such, this man is a huge player in advancing this theory, and he has now made it quite clear - as folks on the realist side of this debate have been saying for years - that this is actually an international economic scheme designed to redistribute wealth. Readers are encouraged to review the entire interview at GWPF or Google's slightly different translation. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/11/18/un-ipcc-official-we-redistribute-worlds-wealth-climate-policy#ixzz1AnLQXKGV |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
Step 1: get off the fossil fuels. I don't have a link to it anymore or a copy (lost both in a hard drive crash), but... There was a document on the UN website from the late 80's. It was about redistributing wealth from the developed nations to the un(under)developed nations. It was suggested in this document that inventing some 'crisis' might be a way to overcome opposition to this. 'Climate change' was given as an example of a possible scheme to implement to achieve this goal. |
soft^spirit Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 6497 Credit: 34,134,168 RAC: 0 |
Lead, follow, or get out of the way keith. The tired arguments of transfer of wealth pale in comparison to what fossil fuel companies have done to the economy, despite their grossly exagerated claims and conspiracy theories. Janice |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
Lead, follow, or get out of the way keith. What the fossil-fuel companies have done to the economy... Ya mean 'made it possible for so many of us in the developed world to have such a high standard of living'? Because that is what they have done, alright. Without the fossil-fuels, most of us would still be trying to scratch a living out of the dirt (subsistence agriculture). https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE #Texit Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016. Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power. |
soft^spirit Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 6497 Credit: 34,134,168 RAC: 0 |
Lead, follow, or get out of the way keith. More like inspired war after war involving fossil fuel rich environments, in the name of "protecting our interests", buying up and burying hopeful technologies that would lessen our dependance, manipulating politics to favor cheap access(to them) to resource rich public lands, and making sure they are held harmless for all the damage they do in the process, the poisoning of wells streams and waters and destruction of life in their path.... they have a rich and colorful history. And are in the process of fighting and scratching to keep their competitive edge. Let the costs "at the pump" show the true costs, and the alternative fuels are not only economically viable, but economically imperative. Janice |
KWSN - MajorKong Send message Joined: 5 Jan 00 Posts: 2892 Credit: 1,499,890 RAC: 0 |
Lead, follow, or get out of the way keith. War is the natural condition of the human species. War does not need an inspiration, it comes from within us all. The human mind sorts things into a number of sets of categories. A very basic category set is 'us' vs. 'them'. This will NOT change. Fossil-fuels might... *might* be a convenient excuse in some cases of war, but that is it. If we didn't have the fossil-fuel excuse, we would have little trouble in finding another. Buying up and burying useful technologies... This is business. It isn't limited to just the oil companies. See 'us vs. them' above. There is an old saying. 'Business is war'. It is true. Cheap access to resource-rich public lands... Immigration, expansion, farming, cattle, railroads, the list goes on and on... Many have benefited, at a cost to the 'environment'. Why single out the fossil-fuel companies? The fossil-fuel companies are run by humans. Why are you condemning them for acting like it? But then, in condemning them for it, guess what? You are acting like a human too (again, us vs. them). |
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