jerome t. scuggs' weekly politix thread

[Cylor]

Yeah man, why doesn't the government listen to you? Man, I am so glad you brought this to my attention!! I am so sad I was banned because like, this is very important shit being discussed here. Verry im-por-tan-t shiiiiiit. I just can't fathom, how could The Man ever neglect my best interest?

THIS IS UNTENABLE.

[ShadowHand]

so your proposing we put him in a violent crimes prison yard in a dress and makeup and allow gang rape from about 20 people?

he left a young girl bloodied and mutilated, and thats just her outward appearance. this guy deserves to die. your a piece of shit

you really need to learn how to argue heroin.
"i'm right and you're an idiot" really won't win you too many

[Summa]

Yeah man, why doesn't the government listen to you? Man, I am so glad you brought this to my attention!! I am so sad I was banned because like, this is very important shit being discussed here. Verry im-por-tan-t shiiiiiit. I just can't fathom, how could The Man ever neglect my best interest?

THIS IS UNTENABLE.

thank you for your very useful input

[Heroin Bob]

you really need to learn how to argue heroin.
"i'm right and you're an idiot" really won't win you too many

its not about winning and losing, you should really learn what your talking about (edit: when your right)



p.s. staff still blows

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4232264.ece

hey, Europe! now the US can look at YOUR private data too! Thanks to the EU.

[Vykromond]

All the nerds that run this country

nerds don't run this country

[paradise!]

dude it doesn't matter about all this crap, everyone is afraid to admit that we are stalling until one genius scientist eliminates the need for oil. Well lemme tell ya, it ain't happen. China's entire school system is built upon science and mathematics, while the American one is built upon the arts and humanities. Really want to save this country? Create an ad campaign for children ages 10-16 stressing the importance of engineering. Simple as that.

[Squeezer]

dude it doesn't matter about all this crap, everyone is afraid to admit that we are stalling until one genius scientist eliminates the need for oil. Well lemme tell ya, it ain't happen. China's entire school system is built upon science and mathematics, while the American one is built upon the arts and humanities. Really want to save this country? Create an ad campaign for children ages 10-16 stressing the importance of engineering. Simple as that.

Another insightful bit of reasoning brought to you by:

Paradise!

you're an expert on American AND Chinese social dynamics? :wub:

[DankNuggets]

The warmer water is, the more it expands, thus higher sea levels.

well when water freezes, it expands 9-10%
when heated to near boiling it expands 4%

and since the water we're talking about is right around freezing temp, the degree of expansion due to heating shouldn't compare to the degree of shrinking do to melting water (ice is actually less dense than near freezing water - it floats) Also, this applies to sea ice, which wouldn't add any volume to the ocean due to bouancy (it's floating, already displacing water).

Ice is white and thus reflects heat, water takes it in. This means once the ice is gone, the water will heat up at a much faster rate than it did while frozen.

Yes, ice reflects heat. But the ice will still be there most of the year. The angle of the sun hitting it shouldn't it that much, or would it also warm all of canada and alaska too? I don't know the % of the ocean ice covers, but i'm guessing its not enough to justify "cooling" the ocean by blocking it from the sun.

More carbon fixation? What are you talking about? There will also be increased deserts as well, and large areas of the ocean will be too warm to sustain life (as the warmer water is, the less gases will dissolve into it).

While i said this facetiously, it's not entirely off-base. Light is a big limiting factor in phytoplankton biomass, along with nutrients and temperature. The polar regions of the oceans are by far the most productive regions of the world for carbon fixation. Microscopic diatoms and cyanobacteria account for way more carbon fixation than forests. The gas they need is carbon dioxide, which isn't limiting them at any reasonable ocean temperature. Also, deserts and other terrestrial sources are teh main means for the phytoplantkon to sythesis chlorophyll (it needs Mg or Fe), so more land deserts wouldn't hurt that at all. The ocean wouldn't get too much warmer right there, though it might in the tropics. They're isn't a lot of fixation going on there anyway, so the only danger is pushing the boundary further north, but there'll be more ocean for 'em now w/o those pesky ice caps.

And for all the deserts that global warming would create, it would also create habitable land from tundra, so that's really more about changing land from one form of desert to another, untill the point where there's no more tundra, and only desert.

[Jerome Scuggs]

dude it doesn't matter about all this crap, everyone is afraid to admit that we are stalling until one genius scientist eliminates the need for oil.

you should really watch c-span. seriously. you'll become horrified at how stupid our elected fucking officials are. there are seriously some representatives who have talked about legislating a mandate for oil-independent technology. like yes, the reason we aren't oil free is because we were so stupid we needed these geniuses to realize we just needed a law... no, not because it's completely fucking unfeasible given current technology & economization

edit: c-span at 6 or 7am does a call-in/talk/morning news thing, and it's hilarious.the callers are, imo, people coming home from all-night coke binges, because i've never ever ever heard one that after awhile the host had to just cut it off. a few days ago we played ATHF season 4 disc on the sound and because we were on drugs, the episodes synced perfectly with the host and the guest talking about issues... which was awesome, and then we turned up the volume for the call-in part. some crazy guy was just like "MAN, I DON'T TRUST REPUBLICANS, I DON'T TRUST DEMOCRATS, I DON'T TRUST NOTHIN MAN, BUSH DID 9/11 AND-" and then the host was just like ty for that interesting nugget of opinion (the topic was energy policy). the next one was a prank call (which are hilariously common) and a guy was talking about the actual topic (which made the host nervous because thats how crank callers act to get broadcast on tv) and then the guy was all, "...but i think the energy subsidies need to be RAPED LIKE CHILDR-" and the host looked so sad... I've never seen a normal, good, on-topic conversation on the call-in portion. I love it.

[Epinephrine]

I love how you endlessly contradict yourself in the same post!!! LOL!

well when water freezes, it expands 9-10%
when heated to near boiling it expands 4%

and since the water we're talking about is right around freezing temp, the degree of expansion due to heating shouldn't compare to the degree of shrinking do to melting water (ice is actually less dense than near freezing water - it floats) Also, this applies to sea ice, which wouldn't add any volume to the ocean due to bouancy (it's floating, already displacing water).

Yes that's right, a lot of the ice now is floating, thus even though it expands when it freezes, it contributes nothing to sea levels. Thus it absolutely does not matter how much water expands when it turns to ice, it's a moot point.

Meanwhile water ALL OVER THE GLOBE will expand if heated. Yes, not just formerly frozen ice, but water at the equator will expand as well. Even though the percentages are small, there's still a LOT of water. This will raise water levels globally.

Yes, ice reflects heat. But the ice will still be there most of the year. The angle of the sun hitting it shouldn't it that much, or would it also warm all of canada and alaska too? I don't know the % of the ocean ice covers, but i'm guessing its not enough to justify "cooling" the ocean by blocking it from the sun.

Let's just think about this logically. Since the Earth's orbit won't change, the sun will always give the same amount of energy to the Earth's surface. Currently a large percentage of this energy is bouncing off the ice and reflecting back to space. Even though a lot of energy is bouncing off the ice, the temperature still manages to be not -100, it is still relatively warm in many places even in the arctic, especially in the summer, but NOT warm enough so that the ice caps melt (most of the arctic ocean is iced in all year round).

Meanwhile, if the ice in the Arctic ocean melts, even for a short time this means that suddenly, all that energy currently reflected is no longer reflected (or at least a lot less is reflected) back into space. Where does that energy go? It goes to heating up the water, and by heat diffusion, heating up the Earth. This makes it harder for the water to freeze again in the winter after a long summer as the water will be warmer than what it currently is in the summer (as it is currently ice). This means the water will be frozen for less time, giving it more time to take in more heat by the sun (less reflection), and thus increasingly harder to re-freeze.

This means that the entire arctic will be increasingly warmer, and eventually this will melt the ice which is landlocked, such as ice in Alaska and the Canadian north as well as the massive ice sheets in Greenland which WILL raise water levels when they melt.

See the problem?

While i said this facetiously, it's not entirely off-base. Light is a big limiting factor in phytoplankton biomass, along with nutrients and temperature. The polar regions of the oceans are by far the most productive regions of the world for carbon fixation. Microscopic diatoms and cyanobacteria account for way more carbon fixation than forests. The gas they need is carbon dioxide, which isn't limiting them at any reasonable ocean temperature. Also, deserts and other terrestrial sources are teh main means for the phytoplantkon to sythesis chlorophyll (it needs Mg or Fe), so more land deserts wouldn't hurt that at all. The ocean wouldn't get too much warmer right there, though it might in the tropics. They're isn't a lot of fixation going on there anyway, so the only danger is pushing the boundary further north, but there'll be more ocean for 'em now w/o those pesky ice caps.

And for all the deserts that global warming would create, it would also create habitable land from tundra, so that's really more about changing land from one form of desert to another, untill the point where there's no more tundra, and only desert.

In one hand you argue that the amount of light hitting the earth in the north is minuscule because of the angles and that "Light is a big limiting factor in phytoplankton biomass", but yet you seem to think that melted ice caps will equal more biomass. You can't have it both ways! The Earth's orbit will not change, the amount of light DOES NOT CHANGE.

Then, in one hand you seem to argue that there'd be MORE land/water for stuff to grow on, and then on the other hand you argue that losing more land to desert wouldn't matter because there would be enough 'new habitable' land created. I think you have the balance all wrong. I think at best, we'd see exactly enough new habitable water/land created for as much that is lost. Unfortunately this is not reality as in real life, the amount of surface area concentrated around the poles is very small compared to the surface area at the equator. Losing a few degrees of latitude at the equator to desert/too warm water for life means a LOT of land area, while gaining a few extra latitudes up north is less surface area because the diameter of the Earth is less there.

Look, it's absolutely true that in the long run (millions of years) it matters not at all. We're not really adding any EXTRA carbon to the Earth, so the worst it could get would be like the time of the dinosaurs (before all this coal and oil was created in the first place), when the Earth was significantly warmer. The real problem though is that in this process we'd destroy (via rising sea levels) or ruin (via drought) a lot of the places that we currently love in this Earth, and we'd destroy a lot of the biodiversity in the Earth because nature can't adjust to climate change so quickly. In the grand scheme of things nature will recover, but none of us will live to see that day.

Within our lifetimes, the important matter is that we'd be fundamentally altering this planet for the worse for most people who live on the planet (yes the Saskatchewan farmers that stand to gain from longer growing seasons are in the minority of the planet's population) from ruining of many agricultural lands, creating vastly more deserts, submerging large areas of cities and from increasing tropical disease as the climate is better for disease vectors such as mosquitos to spread. The folly of it all is that we can easily stop it if we just tried. The truly ironic thing is, we don't even want to try because of an idea that trying to stop climate change would 'ruin the economy' (aka quality of life) when in reality, changing the environment as significantly as global warming will do, will dramatically alter our quality of life for the worse much more than any % loss of GDP growth that we can fathom from combating man-made climate change.

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...e-ignored.html

The former President of France drafted the old Constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters three years ago before being resurrected as the Lisbon EU Treaty, itself shunned by the Irish two weeks ago.

Mr Giscard d'Estaing told the Irish Times that Ireland's referendum rejection would not kill the Treaty, despite a legal requirement of unanimity from all the EU's 27 member states.

"We are evolving towards majority voting because if we stay with unanimity, we will do nothing," he said.

"It is impossible to function by unanimity with 27 members. This time it's Ireland; the next time it will be somebody else."

"Ireland is one per cent of the EU".

Mr Giscard d'Estaing also admitted that, unlike his original Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon EU Treaty had been carefully crafted to confuse the public.

"What was done in the [Lisbon] Treaty, and deliberately, was to mix everything up. If you look for the passages on institutions, they're in different places, on different pages," he said.

"Someone who wanted to understand how the thing worked could with the Constitutional Treaty, but not with this one."

France and Germany are putting pressure on Ireland to hold a second referendum which would allow the Lisbon Treaty to come into force before European elections on June 4 2009.

Mr Giscard d'Estaing believes "there is no alternative" to a second Irish vote, a view shared by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President.

Mr Sarkozy, who takes over the EU's rotating presidency next week, will use a Brussels summit on October 15 to force Ireland to find a way out of Europe's Treaty difficulties.

[Spikester]

My cousin was also almost arrested for having lunch with his 5-year-old daughter at a mall when someone reported him for "suspicious behavior." He literally had to show proof of identification to prove he wasn't a pedo trying to take a little girl out.

And this is what's wrong with the USA. Hell, i've heard that you can even get arrested for telling someone to fuck off.

[genocidal]

And this is what's wrong with the USA. Hell, i've heard that you can even get arrested for telling someone to fuck off.

No.

[DankNuggets]

I'm not contradicting myself, i'm playing devil's advocate to something that is beyond the complete comprehension of any one person, and probably the collective intellegence of all mankind. It's foolish to believe we can purposely change the entire climate or predict what will happen down to a T, especially something as nitpicky and speculative as where deserts (based more on weather patterns than shear temperatures) will appear, and how much a body of water that's also beyond measurement will change based on predicted values. We're more than extrapolating, we're doing some good ol' fashion bullshitting. None of this science has been observed enough to predict what will happen. Go ahead and predict the end of the world, that's the more interesting view. I'm gonna stick with boring checks and balances.

Yes that's right, a lot of the ice now is floating, thus even though it expands when it freezes, it contributes nothing to sea levels. Thus it absolutely does not matter how much water expands when it turns to ice, it's a moot point.

Meanwhile water ALL OVER THE GLOBE will expand if heated. Yes, not just formerly frozen ice, but water at the equator will expand as well. Even though the percentages are small, there's still a LOT of water. This will raise water levels globally.

well i find it hard to believe that it will increase at a rate faster than it is now (with arctic ice), that's observable. I find it had to believe because the sketchy info i could find on measured sea level rise and temperature rising shows no actual correlation, just coincidence. A) because we measure mainly ocean surface temperatures, you can't say that it'll warm water 200m below the surface. B) there are too many other factors that aren't held in control to show it's the temperature thats making the ocean expand, not the addition of other water or a myriad of other conditions that effect sea level. So i say that it's a moot point to say that the oceans will all expand because of melting polar ice. 1- can't prove it will expand simply because water in a test tube (controlled environment) expands. Yes water expands when heated, but becuase it's only heated from the top, it will either stratify, with only the top layer expanding, or it will mix and the water really won't get much hotter.

Let's just think about this logically. Since the Earth's orbit won't change, the sun will always give the same amount of energy to the Earth's surface. Currently a large percentage of this energy is bouncing off the ice and reflecting back to space. Even though a lot of energy is bouncing off the ice, the temperature still manages to be not -100, it is still relatively warm in many places even in the arctic, especially in the summer, but NOT warm enough so that the ice caps melt (most of the arctic ocean is iced in all year round).

i'm no astronomer, but i'm sure that it's not exactly the same amount of energy day in day out, but it's probably close enough to not argue that. And since the earth's axis is on a tilt, it doesnt. i guess you mean year in and year out, but that's not what i'm talking about. i thought we were talking about seasonal consequences.

Also, i don't think a large amout does reflect back. Why? because a large amount isn't ice, so by definition, it's not large. Needless to say, more will bounce back with ice than without, but it's not reflecting nearly as much as say the atmosphere. Also, that energy has already been trapped in the atmosphere, so unless we burn another hole in the ozone layer (some scientists actually want to do this) it's not going back into space.

Meanwhile, if the ice in the Arctic ocean melts, even for a short time this means that suddenly, all that energy currently reflected is no longer reflected (or at least a lot less is reflected) back into space. Where does that energy go? It goes to heating up the water, and by heat diffusion, heating up the Earth. This makes it harder for the water to freeze again in the winter after a long summer as the water will be warmer than what it currently is in the summer (as it is currently ice). This means the water will be frozen for less time, giving it more time to take in more heat by the sun (less reflection), and thus increasingly harder to re-freeze.

well i don't think the ocean's gonna absorb it all. the ocean actually does reflect some back, but since it's water, it takes a lot of energy to heat up. conversely it takes a lot to cool off. land heats and cools a lot faster, so i don't think it'll heat up the earth (as in the land). All it's gonna do is get trapped in the atmosphere and make it hotter in the air. Yes, that's bad and will have consequences, but i don't think it's the same consequences that you're coming up with. Shorter/longer sea ice seasons are a byproduct of global warming, not a cause of it.

This means that the entire arctic will be increasingly warmer, and eventually this will melt the ice which is landlocked, such as ice in Alaska and the Canadian north as well as the massive ice sheets in Greenland which WILL raise water levels when they melt.

See the problem?

you've accurately described the heating and cooling of the earth. i think scientists are aware of this, it's the same principle as ice ages in reverse. I don't think that's what we were debating, i'm fully aware the earth is getting hotter. i just don't think that the all the ice melting, which i'm starting to doubt will happen now, anyway, is gonna be a cause rather than an effect of global warming.

In one hand you argue that the amount of light hitting the earth in the north is minuscule because of the angles and that "Light is a big limiting factor in phytoplankton biomass", but yet you seem to think that melted ice caps will equal more biomass. You can't have it both ways! The Earth's orbit will not change, the amount of light DOES NOT CHANGE.

i was referring to the water that, previously shaded by ice, will be available for growth. The amount of light hitting earth doesn't change, but the amount of light hitting the ocean would. i think that's also a part of your arguement. Also, it's light that's needed, not heat. I don't know enough about it to know if they always go hand in hand, ie if the angle would effect heat and light absorption at the same rate.

Then, in one hand you seem to argue that there'd be MORE land/water for stuff to grow on, and then on the other hand you argue that losing more land to desert wouldn't matter because there would be enough 'new habitable' land created. I think you have the balance all wrong. I think at best, we'd see exactly enough new habitable water/land created for as much that is lost. Unfortunately this is not reality as in real life, the amount of surface area concentrated around the poles is very small compared to the surface area at the equator. Losing a few degrees of latitude at the equator to desert/too warm water for life means a LOT of land area, while gaining a few extra latitudes up north is less surface area because the diameter of the Earth is less there.

i'm gonna go ahead and say i'm not qualified to conjecture anymore than you are on the future placement of deserts. Many things besides lattitude and temperature play into it. For ex, in the new world, more land is available in NA closer to the poles than the equator. in africa, it's the opposite. so higher temps would make NA more fertile and Africa less fertile under the assumption that only temps would play into it. I don't know how increased temps/sea level would affect wether patterns either. As it is now, a lot of deserts are deserts b/c the weather moves into a mountain range or something and it only rains on one side. Also, deserts exist at all lattitudes, as do forests (exception polar regions--all desert currently)

if it was even possible to predict where deserts would form and where new land would be viable, then we'd have an argument/debate on it. as it is now, we're both doing more than guessing at it.

Look, it's absolutely true that in the long run (millions of years) it matters not at all. We're not really adding any EXTRA carbon to the Earth, so the worst it could get would be like the time of the dinosaurs (before all this coal and oil was created in the first place), when the Earth was significantly warmer. The real problem though is that in this process we'd destroy (via rising sea levels) or ruin (via drought) a lot of the places that we currently love in this Earth, and we'd destroy a lot of the biodiversity in the Earth because nature can't adjust to climate change so quickly. In the grand scheme of things nature will recover, but none of us will live to see that day.

here's the magnanimous argument that i'll have to concede. Yes, it won't matter a million years from now. We're not adding carbon, we're extracting it. The problem isn't one of existance or utter destruction of life/human race, it's a problem of humanity. We'll either survive or die, that' probably out of our hands. What is in our hands is how we will live in the meantime. We can enjoy ourselves now and make life a lot harder in the future, or we can keep on going it hard as fuck for all eternity (i'm not gonna go back to plowing my own fields and walking everywhere). Face it, i think the quality of life is better WITH global warming than it was pre-Industrail revolution. Now the answer lies with being able to have it both ways: to have the environmental innocence of yesteryear, and to have the technology that's allowed mankind to flourish.