storm1977

Bill an arguement could be made that warmer H20 does NOT equal stronger storms. Strong storms are the result of the polar equitorial temperature gradient.... The earth as you know is system always trying to balance itself... The Equator is warm and the poles are cold. Storms/hurricanes are a means of energy transport from the equator toward the poles.... As the differece in temperature becomes smaller, there will likely be weaker and less storms. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

always the wise ass... ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

NO ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008220 Climate of Fear Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence. BY RICHARD LINDZEN Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes? The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions. But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming. If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming. So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation. All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry. Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions. And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen. Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Kyoto's Quiet Anniversary Thursday, February 16, 2006 By Steven Milloy Global warming alarmists marked the Kyoto Protocol’s first anniversary in subdued fashion this week. The treaty so far has been a failure and its future doesn’t appear much brighter. As tallied up at JunkScience.com courtesy of the global warmers’ own data, Kyoto is estimated to have cost about $150 billion so far, while only hypothetically reducing the average global temperature by 0.0015 degrees Centigrade. At that rate, it would take 667 years and cost $100 trillion to hypothetically avert just 1 degree Centigrade of global warming. But such infinitesimal estimates of averted global warming would only apply, of course, if Kyoto’s signatories actually complied with its provisions. They are finding it virtually impossible to even do that. Kyoto obligates the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent from 1990-levels by 2012. But the European Environmental Agency projects that EU greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 will be 7 percent above the 1990 levels. The Russian news agency Novosti took a charitably long-term view of Kyoto noting, “Many people question the effect of the measures outlined by the Kyoto Protocol on the climate. Today, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is approximately 370 PPM (units of these gases per million units of the air). "In 2012, as compared with the base year of 1990, their concentration will increase by 18 PPM, if the Kyoto measures are not carried out, or by 16-17 PPM, if they are implemented. It transpires that the effect of these measures on the climate is a mere 1-2 PPM. This fact allows the critics of the Kyoto Protocol to describe it as ineffective. But experts maintain that a reduction by even 1 PPM is quite good, considering that the task of stabilizing greenhouse emissions in the atmosphere has been set for a hundred years, not for five.” I doubt that world leaders, however, will perpetually sacrifice 2 percent or more of their nations’ annual economic growth, year after year, for no tangible benefits. While Kyoto’s failure may be news to the public, it’s not to former vice president and global-warmer-in-chief Al Gore, who smugly admitted on Jan. 4 at a political gathering that included yours truly, “Did we think Kyoto would work when we signed it [in 1997]?... Hell no!” Gore explained that the actual point of Kyoto was to demonstrate that international support could be mustered for action on the environment – quite an expensive political exercise. A year into Kyoto, global warmers seem to be focusing more on melodrama than science. There’s NASA scientist Jim Hansen’s claim, first reported in the New York Times, that the agency is trying to “silence” him by asking to preview his lectures, papers and Internet postings before he goes public. To Hansen, this “seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States.” Hyperbole aside, Hansen cannot credibly claim to have been censored on global warming. He first sounded the climate alarm in 1988 congressional testimony and has since been quite outspoken on the topic. He gives more speeches than the agency’s head, according to NASA. Hansen’s problem isn’t that anyone is trying to silence him; it’s that he has a track record of being wrong – for example, overestimating 1990s warming by 200 percent. Then there’s the new Al Gore movie – a documentary production of his global warming lecture and slide show – that was recently screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie’s promotional material features penguins trekking as in the hit documentary “March of the Penguins” – but across a desert rather than Antarctic ice. To those unfamiliar with the global warming controversy, Gore’s one-sided movie may appear compelling. Pictures of melting glaciers, ominous temperature graphs and cartoons for the science-impaired – one features Mister Sunbeam trapped by the Greenhouse Gas bullies – give the impression that the planet is doomed unless we cede control to global warming alarmists. “We are recklessly, mindlessly destroying the Earth. As Lincoln said, ‘We must disenthrall ourselves. And then we will save our country.’ And our planet,” Gore said in a statement. “Reckless” and “mindless” are certainly some of the terms that occurred to me after watching Gore’s slide show. Some glaciers are receding, but others (omitted from his slides) are advancing. No one knows what causes glaciers to advance and retreat – the physics are complex and much more is involved than simply air temperature. University of Virginia climatologist Pat Michaels points out, for example, that, “Glaciers [in Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska] have been receding ever since John Muir first publicized them in the 19th century” – well before the advent of significant manmade greenhouse gas emissions. Gore’s graphs imply that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide historically have preceded increases in global temperature. But a 2005 study in the journal Science reported that higher temperatures may actually have preceded increased carbon dioxide levels in the past – the opposite of the global warming hypothesis. Were that fact mentioned in Al Gore’s movie, the Kyoto Protocol might not survive its second anniversary. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Not really the point.. whether or not it work. It is the Idea of it. If it turns out that Russia's intent was cause US casualties, there should be severe consequences. I hope you can see that. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Cover-Up News Network http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/03/25/saddam.russia/index.html Fox http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,189094,00.html Reuters http://today.reuters.com/News/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-25T103044Z_01_N24241162_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-USA-RUSSIA.xml&src=cms ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

On a similar note... Hydrogen Fuels cells burn more fossil fuels than a normal combustion engine.... Why? Because oil is burned by the machinery used to create the hydrogen (not sure of the hole processes). Currently, it take more oil or coal put in to the system than is taken out by the fuel cell. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

It is not only that, but the rules already state that the local management needs to be american. They are running terminals here, not security.... The best was Barbra Boxer bitching about all this, but not even knowing several of the ports in her own state were being run by communist China.... Laughable!!! ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Personally I have no problem with the Port Deal. Let it happen, this is a freemarket after all, and better to have them investing in the US where it is in their best interest not to have terrorist acts occur. But, I thought this was funny, because how STUPID this could make Hillary look... WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton coached United Arab Emirates officials on how to handle the Dubai ports controversy two weeks ago - but didn't tell his wife about that conversation, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton disclosed yesterday. The telephone chat, which took place while the former president was traveling in Pakistan last month, ended with him advising state-owned Dubai Ports World to voluntarily submit to a 45-day probe, said people familiar with the exchange. That puts Bill Clinton publicly in line with his wife's position that the ports deal could compromise national security, even though his tight relationship with Dubai officials is proving something of a political embarrassment to New York's junior senator. Yesterday, conservative columnist Bob Novak reported that the ex-president urged the Dubai official to hire former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart to handle damage control on the ports, despite the fact that Lockhart's consulting firm, the Glover Park Group, is a central part of Sen. Clinton's political operation. When Sen. Clinton was asked yesterday if her husband discussed the conversation with her, she replied, "No," adding, "The president, my husband, supports my position, a position that is rooted in legitimate concerns about security." The former president's Dubai discussion, first reported in yesterday's editions of the Financial Times, underscored the awkward commingling of Hillary Clinton's political aspirations with her husband's personal and financial relationships. The revelation came on a day when Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he would "do everything I can to kill the deal," The Associated Press reported. "Dubai cannot be trusted," he said, calling the UAE "a bazaar for terrorist nations." Also yesterday, a British court gave DP World the legal go-ahead to acquire the UK company that operates U.S. port terminals in six East Coast cities, including Newark/New York. Zim, Israel's largest shipping company, sent Sen. Clinton a letter yesterday rebutting congressional claims that DP World barred Israeli cargo vessels from doing business in Dubai. "We are very comfortable calling at DP World's Dubai ports," wrote Zim chairman Idan Ofer. The senator's fundraisers have tried to cash in on the popularity of her anti-DP World stance, sending out a Feb. 27 e-mail listing her recent comments and directing donors to a Web page to make "Friends of Hillary" contributions. That pitch is complicated by the former president's recent actions: He was paid $450,000 for a recent Dubai speech, and the UAE chipped in between $500,000 and $1 million for his presidential library. In November, Clinton referred to the pro-U.S. Dubai government as "a role model" for the Mideast. "Sen. Clinton, the Democrats, they shouldn't try to politicize this," said House Homeland Security chairman Peter King (R-Seaford) http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-port4648092mar03,0,6420466.story?coll=ny-homepage-bigpix2005 ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/02/14/do1402.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/02/14/ixopinion.html Enjoyable opinion piece from a Brit regarding the Hunting accident with Cheney. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

I would also add, there really weren't any credit cards or mortage companies in the 30's.... again skewing you results. The people putting this data together aren't really good at their jobs... ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

That is sorta silly..... It doesn't even make sense. The chart you put up shows government debt and household debt combined.... That is stupid first of all. They should NOT include personal debt in the argument, but if you are going to do that, atleast be clear on what that means.... Home ownership is the highest it has ever been in the USA. So, that means Americans have more "Debt" than they have ever had. Sure.... But it is not debt in the traditional sense. That debt is an investment which can be liquidated in difficult times.... I for instance own a 500,000 house. I still owe 300,000 on the mortgage. You could look at my case and say I am $300K in debt, but what you aren't looking at is the $200K in equity I have. If I turned around tomorrow and sold my house, I would no longer have any debt... infact, I would be $200K in the Black. So, your chart is really meaningless. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

and the winner of the MOST IGNORANT STAEMENT OF THE DAY goes to.... Yup we are in Iraq for their oil.... That's good one buddy!!! How does the Kool aid taste at your place? ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

what is this in reference too? I would say that language like this probably won't change their minds :-) ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Apocalypse ain't nigh Social Security and Medicare notwithstanding, the economy may be in better shape than it seems. By Justin Fox, February 8, 2006: 10:37 AM EST NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - Barring huge tax hikes or huge cuts in promised spending, the U.S. appears headed toward budgetary meltdown a few decades down the road. So what should today's politicians do about it? Over the past half decade, their approach has looked like this: The Democrats downplay looming funding problems with Social Security and Medicare, but talk a good game about fiscal discipline today. The Republicans show few compunctions about running big deficits today, but talk a good game about doing something to fix Social Security's long-run shortfall. (Nobody in either party has any real ideas what to do about Medicare.) What we've ended up with as a result is seemingly the worst of both approaches: A budget deficit that's expected to hit $423 billion this year, no progress on Social Security, and some regress (that is, a bigger gap between spending and income) on Medicare. As a card-carrying member of the mainstream media, I should at this point be expected to start ranting about irresponsible politicians and the dire state they've left our nation in. But here's the thing: We aren't in that obviously dire a state. The economy grew 3.5 percent last year; the unemployment rate is only 4.7 percent. It may not be the best of times for working Americans, beset as they are by outsourcing angst on the one side and high energy prices on the other. But it's not entirely fair to blame Congress and the president for that (although of course many people do). As for the deficit, the $423 billion projected for this year would be the biggest ever in dollar terms. But by the more reasonable standard of its share of gross domestic product it's 3.2 percent -- "well within the historical range,"as White House budget director Joshua Bolten put it in his turgid defense of the president's new budget in Monday's Wall Street Journal. In 1992 the deficit was 4.7 percent of GDP; in 1983 it was 6 percent; in 1943 it was 30.3 percent. 20 percent of GDP! Or not. Then there's the long-run prognosis. If you believe the reports of the trustees of the Medicare program in particular, it's really bad. They expect the program's cost to taxpayers to rise from 2.7 percent of GDP in 2005 to 6.8 percent by 2030 and 13.7 percent by 2080. Social Security, which currently eats up 4.3 percent of GDP, is projected to top out at just over 6 percent of GDP in the 2030s and stay there for at least half a century. Add those together and you get 20 percent of GDP going to the two programs by 2080. In 2005, the total federal tax burden was just 17.5 percent of GDP. If we don't want providing income and medical care to old people to become the sole function of our government, either taxes will have to rise substantially or Medicare and Social Security costs will have to be brought sharply in check. But is it reasonable to do something about this now? When President Bush proposed cutbacks to Social Security last year, Democratic critics correctly pointed out that projecting revenues and outlays 50 or even 10 years into the future is a wildly inexact science. There's still a lot to be said for being conservative about future Social Security commitments, given that it's a lot easier for today's 40-year-olds to prepare for an increase in the retirement age if they're told about it now rather than 25 years from now. With Medicare, though, it's hard to know what to make of the actuarial projections. The experience of the past few decades would seem to indicate that health care costs always go up. But they don't have to. Technological advances and political decisions down the road could either cut costs or send them ballooning. This is something our political system simply can't be expected to deal with intelligently right now. In other words, it's not so hard to see why Washington hasn't done much about either today's deficits or tomorrow's. Today's are of tolerable size, and tomorrow's are, well, tomorrow's. This is the problem with making budget deficits the focus of political discussion. The question shouldn't be whether we can manage a deficit of 3.2 percent of GDP, because we surely can, but what we're getting in return for it (because that money we're borrowing will have to be paid back someday). And it shouldn't be about whether Social Security and Medicare will eat up 20 percent of GDP in 2080, because who knows if that will be true, but how we can design a pension and health care system that's sustainable no matter where the demographic and cost trends lead. Anybody want to start that debate? ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Miked... I like a lot of what you are saying... But I disagree with most of it. The Muslims are not afraid to die for their religion... the extremists of Islam woiuld like to kill every non member of islam.... If you get nukes in their hands even if they know it will be the end of the world, they may view that as what Allah wants them to do.... There sole mission in life to destroy all non believers and bring all muslims to meet in heaven.... Someone a lot smarter than me made this point on TV the other night, and I feel it is a very honest and realistic statement. "We will either be at war with IRAN in the not Too distant future tyring to stop them from obtaining nukes, or, we will be at war with Iran for other reasons farther in the future when they do have Nukes. This is the decision the world faces.... It is not a question of whether we want to fight Iran, but when" ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Why is it that I am finding all this very comical?? (No pun intended). Obviously I don't find Death and destruction comical, but at the same time I am secretly smiling hoping that the rest of the world finally wakes up to see these people for what they are. Look at what happened in France with their Muslim minority, now in Denmark, and now spreading back into the Middle east. These people are ignorant, violent, and worthless. Their true colors are beginning to show through. For some reason though people could NOT see them for what they were when they were cutting off heads on the internet, or dragging dead bodys through the streets..... I supported the wars in the Middle East..., but I too am beginning to think we should just leave and let these gun toting, rock throwing, flag burning, embasy tourching, MORONS kill each other..... It may be racially charged, but let's think for just one minute..... What would a world without Muslims be like? It would be a whole hell of a lot more peaceful that much is true.... As someone ofn fox pointed out the other night, there is a piece in a NY Museum depicting Jesus with an erection and a Condom on it.... are Christians outraged???? Yes. Are they rioting and killing throughout the world??? No!! Ask yourself Why? ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Bill, Just posting this because I know it interests you.... Not here to debate, because to tell you the truth I am not in the mood :-) Anyway, it is some new interesting stuff... May be GW, may not be. Also, did you read the Article that found TREEs may infact produce Methane and may account for 10-30% of the worlds methane production??? Ironic isn't it that all the green people want us to plant trees to scrub out CO2, but those same trees produce Methane which is 10 times worse of a greenhouse gas than CO2. Anyway... new finding on the earths albedo... Robert Roy Britt LiveScience Managing Editor LiveScience.com After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes. That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period. Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood. "The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight," said study leader Philip R. Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate." Cloud changes Earth's albedo is measured by noting how much reflected sunlight in turn bounces off the Moon, something scientists call earthshine. The observations were made at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. The findings will be published Jan. 24 in Eos, a weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. On any given day, about half of Earth is covered by clouds, which reflect more sunlight than land and water. Clouds keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight, but they can also serve as blankets to trap warmth. High thin clouds are better blankets, while low thick clouds make better coolers. Separately, satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8 percent, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13 percent. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased. Research shows condensation trails, or contrails from jet airplanes, fuel more high-altitude clouds. But they have not been shown to account for all the observed change. What about global warming? Earth's albedo appears to have experienced a similar reversal during a period running from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. Goode's team says there may be a large, unexplained variation in sunlight reaching the Earth that changes over the course of two decades or so, as well as a large effect of clouds re-arranging by altitude. How do the findings play into arguments about global warming and the apparent contribution by industrial emissions? That's entirely unclear. "No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing," Goode said in a telephone interview. "No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, 'Are there other things going on?'" What is clear is that scientists don't understand clouds very well, as a trio of studies last year also showed. "Clouds are even more uncertain than we thought," Goode said. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

It's funny... I used to be a pot head. II talked just like many people here are right now. It is a conspiracy yada yada yada...... Believe what you want. Hell, they should legalize pot and tax the SHIT out of it... I agree with you. One joint - $20.00 US. I look at the people I used to hang around with.... the ones who still smoke. Yes, they are functioning members of society, but I would argue not nearly as focuseed and motivated as the non pot smokers... I believe the research, but the truth is, I don't really need the research as proof... I simply just need to look at the people doing it.... All the proof I'll ever need. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Yup... That is the typical response I expected... ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

You still are assuming that the only result of more CO2 would be an increase in Global temperature... But you do not assume that the increase could reasonably cause other unforseen changes because you have already assumed the result... So, millions of years ago when CO2 was 20x higher than now, what happened and why? Pretend we as humans were there at the time with the same technology we have today.... Do you think we would have been able to reasonably predict the future of the environment from an atmospheric stand point? ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

You can think what you want, but let us do a hypothetical for a minute.... John drinks 3 beers evernight before he goes to bed. Steve smokes a joint every night before he goes to bed. Research clearly shows the mental abilities of the pot smoker are affected much more greatly than the drinker. The pot smoker is likely to have less motivation, drive, memory and learning ability over the long run. That is what the research says... Is that Gospel? No. Is that true of most pot smokers? Yes (Most). Therefore, given the choice as an employer, i would RATHER higher someone who does not do drugs than someone that does... Don't like that? Go work somewhere else :-) ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

Yes, alcohol and nicotine are drugs... and though I shouldn't have to explain the difference, I will. First, I can not think of any company which allows you to "Drink on the job" not even bartenders... I am sure there is one out there that you will try to use to counter me, but what is one out of millions... Second, there are many companies banning smoking (nicotine) due to lost time while smoking plus the health affects and lost time due to illness... So there is a move in that direction. You conveniently are getting away from the fact that pot is illegal, but I will ignor that for just a minute. So, caffine is a drug too.... It seems to increase productivity. Nicotines stimulating effects last minutes at best ... "The short-term effects of marijuana can include problems with memory and learning; distorted perception; difficulty in thinking and problem solving; loss of coordination; and increased heart rate. Research findings for long-term marijuana use indicate some changes in the brain similar to those seen after long-term use of other major drugs of abuse. For example, cannabinoid (THC or synthetic forms of THC) withdrawal in chronically exposed animals leads to an increase in the activation of the stress-response system(6) and changes in the activity of nerve cells containing dopamine(7). Dopamine neurons are involved in the regulation of motivation and reward, and are directly or indirectly affected by all drugs of abuse." So, pot efffects output ... as simple as that. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want an alcoholic to work for either. But please tell me how I can test someones urine and conclude they are an alcoholic. ----------------------------------------------------- Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty