Global Warming Debate

Yep, couldn't agree more mate and it is equally dangerous and unscientific !

Originally Posted by: PonyOneI'm pro socialization of some things. I think capitalism run rampant is a very, very bad thing.

Capitalism cannot "run rampant". Capitalism is simply allowing individuals to decide how to spend their money. What you are saying is you object to individuals' choices. What is scary is that you want the government to stop them and make them do what you or some other busy-body thinks is right. What happens when some do-gooder decides you shouldn't be aloud to buy anything larger than a 15W amp, with your money, so as not to damage your hearing or to avoid "noise-pollution"? Here's an idea. How about we "socialize" your guitar gear?

Originally Posted by: AkiraDude, over-reaction.

You're right. I did over-react. How about we make the limit 30W, that is more reasonable.

Originally Posted by: AkiraI think there is no need what so ever for the overly blatant attack on PonyOne and other people on here who share similar views as him.

It was not a blatant attack on him. I think PonyOne is one of the most informed and helpful posters on this site when it comes to guitars. It was an attack on socialism and other belief systems that rob the individual of his freedom to express himself and better himself through hard work.

Originally Posted by: quickfingers...and given with our increasing abuse of the environment, the affects would be increasing so much faster than before, and with worse concequences.

That's just it -- in every conceivable measurement, the major industrial nations of the world are much cleaner and more environmentally sound than we were even ten years ago. Deforrestation [in the first world] is a myth; we have more forrests now than we did 100 years ago, the water is cleaner, the air is cleaner and landfill space isn't a problem.

What I do find concerning is the way in which Recycling is being pushed upon us; in most cases, recycling is MORE polluting, MORE expensive and LESS energy efficient than throwing out your newspaper or plastic bottle and starting over from scratch. It's not that the idea is bad, it's that in most cases the TECHNOLOGY isn't ready yet and so we're subsidizing something which is harmful and inefficent rather than funding the research we need to make it something viable.


And yes, the Scientific debate about global warming is a farce; I refuse to take a side in it simply because there has been no real debate and only the hysterics (who were wrong about a human-induced ice age) are getting the research dollars.


Penn and Teller have done a couple of good episodes of their show, BULLSH*T that I recommend to anybody here if they want to be more informed on these issues.

No matter your political views the climate is changing!! now whether this is a man made event or a natural event is up for debate . Our climate IS in the process of changing, take the gulf stream; in the last few years scientists have noticed that this is indeed changing its natural behaviour, its slowing down . And for some this is proof that something is up with the climate but my opinion on this is that slight changes happen to our climate all the time and only in the last few decades scientists have a means to observe these changes and changes like the one we see now happen every so often. Now man could be making this happen at a much faster rate with the pollution and so on, but planet earth is used to change and in that sense it can cope with a lot more than we think, indeed mother nature will make what changes it needs to, to deal with our pollution naturally!! So were in for a roller coaster ride with our climate no matter what and so the best thing to do is look to the future and see what we can do together to help deal with this change for its not global warming its global warning!!

the fact that the temperature has increased overall 1 degree in the last twenty or so years (which it is indeed longer) is terrifying thing, considering that the polar caps have risen 15 degrees. people seem to say its "not as bad as activists make it" but by simply looking at some charts of tempurature variations dating back hundreds of thousands of years, the last one hundred years has experienced an uncomparable jump, and we are so close to the point of no return that it its scary. the damage done in the recent years can be reversed; the earth is a very versatile thing. but the two things preventing that are 1) the fact that we as human beings are defying the comon idea that nothing is as powerful as the earth itself (which we have been able to prove wrong with our vastly increasing technology) and 2) the misconception that one person is powerless to stop it. while this is a time for the leaders to step forward and...lead, our governments are doing no such thing (with the exception of a few countries, none have made any realistic goals or restrictions to begin eliminating uneccesary wastes). so what are we to do? so many people sit back and do nothing becuase their government isnt on their back, making them change their lifestyle. this is too big of a crisis to simply play the blame game, and if it doesnt start small, it wont start at all. we have abused this earth for so long, and we are reaching the age of conciquences.

i was camping this weekend in the highlands of oregon.....105 degrees.....the sun hurt :mad:

yea...its very true. im not saying that certain companies have not made certain efforts to reduce their overall emissions, its just that there are so many more numerous and powerful ways to screw stuff up nowadays. i hate to bring the cliche atomic bomb into the mix, but we have weapons capible of not only blowing us all up, but poisoning the very earth we stand on for hundreds of years. in the bigger scope, its a matter of, can we handle technology wisely? we as a people are like children fooling with their dad's hand gun; oblivious to real conciquences and too stubborn to give up certain royalties in the sake of common-sense.

Some interesting points guys, but i'm amazed no one has yet mentioned the most obvious and real cause of global warming, and its got nothin to do with cfc's, cars, industry or any other reason Tony Blair can think of to tax uk motorists to death! quite simply the earth doesn't move in a true circle around the sun, it moves in eccentric circles (think of the kids drawing toy 'spiragraph') and over periods of millions of years moves closer to and further away from the sun, hence ice ages and global warming!! its easy really! the place i live (Derby, England) was under water 150 million years or so ago, and will be again one day due to this natural phenomenon of global warming, eventually there will be another ice age followed by more global warming, i mean think about it, how d'ya all think we came out of the last ice age? it certainly weren't with the help of cfc's and the internal combustion engine! THE ONLY reason ANY government can even spell global warming is caus global warming equals an excuse to scare the s**t out of everyone so therefore screw you all out of more taxes, believe me folks, all the taxes in the world AINT gonna stop nature!!

CO2 is a natural part of our enviroment but the bad thing is the huge amounts we are producing these years. Forest fires produces huge amounts of CO2, much more than your average automobile but the isue is the amounts of cars! We (The human race) are responsible for a huge increase in the CO2 amount on planet earth, I don't think anyone can disagree with that. Just look at Tokio, people have to wear masks to breath - that cannot be good!
I believe we should be careful not to overlook how big a factor we can be to our enviroment.

Originally Posted by: sgreggin every conceivable measurement, the major industrial nations of the world are much cleaner and more environmentally sound than we were even ten years ago.

I don't know where you get that from but I do find it hard to believe. The air can't possible be cleaner when we have millions of engines burning oil everyday. It must have some inpact!!

the way i see it, is that even if it was remotely plausible, and we did stop absoloutely everything releasing co2 and **** tomorrow, there would still be all the emissions from yesterday, last year, 1996, you get my jist, thats not to say that we can't try and keep what is released now to a minimum, but what is already up there can't be stopped, and that seems to be most of the problem (correct me if im wrong because im not at all educated on the topic.....) and seeing as many people are now doing their uptmost to keep their emmisions to a minimum, there isn't much more we can do, even if it is a big problem.. i mean, we can't exactly stop all of the trucks and vans running can we?? in fact, i dont think we could stop half of them and still keep the global economy in any way healthy, same could be said of factories and **** i spose....

Originally Posted by: strat-manSome interesting points guys, but i'm amazed no one has yet mentioned the most obvious and real cause of global warming, and its got nothin to do with cfc's, cars, industry or any other reason Tony Blair can think of to tax uk motorists to death! quite simply the earth doesn't move in a true circle around the sun, it moves in eccentric circles (think of the kids drawing toy 'spiragraph') and over periods of millions of years moves closer to and further away from the sun, hence ice ages and global warming!! its easy really! the place i live (Derby, England) was under water 150 million years or so ago, and will be again one day due to this natural phenomenon of global warming, eventually there will be another ice age followed by more global warming, i mean think about it, how d'ya all think we came out of the last ice age? it certainly weren't with the help of cfc's and the internal combustion engine! THE ONLY reason ANY government can even spell global warming is caus global warming equals an excuse to scare the s**t out of everyone so therefore screw you all out of more taxes, believe me folks, all the taxes in the world AINT gonna stop nature!!

sorry to burst your bubble bro, but scientists take ice core samples dating hundreds of thousands of years back, and like i said before, no natural record in history can make sense of how rapidly we are careening toward distaster. to us its a long ways away; hundreds of years later this will obviously be a much larger issue than it is now, but in the span of natural progression, this is like a bolt of lightning in comparison to how fast our environment is being polluted.

Originally Posted by: quickfingerssorry to burst your bubble bro, but scientists take ice core samples dating hundreds of thousands of years back, and like i said before, no natural record in history can make sense of how rapidly we are careening toward distaster. to us its a long ways away; hundreds of years later this will obviously be a much larger issue than it is now, but in the span of natural progression, this is like a bolt of lightning in comparison to how fast our environment is being polluted.

Ya not bursting my bubble dude, i'm a realist not a fantasist, every 300 million years the earth passes thru an asteroid belt (for around 10 million years) that bombards the planet with rocks tens of miles in diameter, man cannot survive this! man may not be helping the enviroment, but, take away all the polution we caus from whatever means and you still CANNOT stop global warming, you can only MARGINALLY slow down the INEVITABLE, one day the earth will die, again! scientists can take all the samples they like dude, but NO one controls nature! just ask the poor people of Tsunami or New orleans!

Originally Posted by: AICI don't know where you get that from but I do find it hard to believe. The air can't possible be cleaner when we have millions of engines burning oil everyday. It must have some inpact!!

You attributed this quote to me. It is not mine, although I agree with it.

Originally Posted by: quickfingers...no natural record in history can make sense of how rapidly we are careening toward distaster...

That's quite a statement. I'm just curious if you know of a website link that supports this (with actual data that is)?

Originally Posted by: PonyOneIf you want to simplify it down to its most short-sightedly basic interpretation. The overall system of capitalism is one where the means and methods of production, as well as the organization of services and of overall trade, is run by privately owned businesses who take investments from other private individuals to finance growth.[/QUOTE]

Actually, capitalism is not a system at all. It is the spontaneous order of individuals freely interacting with one another-providing services and remuneration.

Originally Posted by: PonyOneWhat this means in practice is medications that are out-of-reach for many of the people who need them. It means that it costs $1300 to go and get your ankle looked at for a half an hour at a hospital (yes, that's how much they charged me to sit there for a couple hours and then have a doctor tell me it was sprained, write me a presciption for Motrin and give me a print out from webmd.com!!). I have insurance, thankfully, but what about those who don't have insurance? What about the millions of hard workers who staff the shops that we go and exercise our freedom of financial choice at who work at places like Barnes and Noble and The Gap, who are notorious for trying as hard as possible to not give employees benefiets, who schedule their employees for 28 or 29 hours a week so that it goes under the 30 hour mark that equals full-time and necessitates medical benefiets? And before you say "well, they're free to go work somewhere else," which is true on a theorietical level, on a practical level it can be very difficult to find work at that level that will support someone in a major urban center enough to give themselves basic niceties like a car and an apartment let alone school to get them a "real" job. And then the argument comes back to "where do we get the people to staff those low-level jobs that make the basic infrastructure that makes capitalism work from in the first place, and is it right to stand by and go off of legal technicalities that fleece them of their a decent life?"[/QUOTE]

All of these things will still have a large cost. In fact, in socialist countries they are more expensive because of the inherent inefficiency of a command economy. Also, in the US, drug companies give away millions of dollars of drugs to indigent people. That is called actual charity.

Originally Posted by: PonyOneWhat about companies like Enron, who screwed thousands out of hard-working, devoted people out of their life's work, orchestrated a massive financial raping of the public, all for the gain of a few guys at the top? A few years ago the company was held up as a model of capitalist success; now it's synonymous with completely and utterly unethical business practices, and they're just the ones who got caught.[/Quote]

Enron pales in comparison to the fraud and waste committed by the welfare programs in the US. Billions of dollars every year. It makes Ken Lay look like a piker. Ken Lay was held responsible. The government keeps taking my money with the threat of force and is never held responsible.

Originally Posted by: PonyOneIt's the disproportionate dispersal of power, and the average working people who fall for the myth of "anyone can make it" that those very greedy individuals perpetuate to get others below them to spend more money and adhere to it like a religion that frustrates me and pisses me off.

This is false. Most millionaires are average working-class people who save their money and spend wisely. There was a great book written about this called The Millionaire Next Door. Only about 20% of wealthy people inherit their wealth. Also, young people tend to be in lower income brackets while older people tend to be in higher ones.

[QUOTE=PonyOne]Examples of modern socialist countries: Germany, Sweden, Japan... all of them have large numbers of socialized offices and caps on commerce and industry in the interest of the public, but still allow many free-market financial practices.

They have some of the highest unemployment rates because of the oppressive taxation to support their welfare states. Also, products are dramatically more expensive their(Germany, Sweden...). In Sweden, where my great grand parents were from, they have massive housing shortages because of the rent control. In France, another socialist economy, industry and wealthy people are fleeing because of the taxation. In fact, there was a story last week from France that said about 1 millionaire was leaving France every day because of a tax called the "solidarity tax". It is the equivalent of the Alternative Minimum Tax here in the US. It's purpose is to take even more money from wealthy productive people(i.e. soak the rich). The story stated that some people had an effective tax rate of 130%. In other words, their entire salary was taken plus 30%. No wonder they leave their country.

[QUOTE=PonyOne] Yeah, you can spend your paycheck however you want! But you're a member of that nation's society, and as such, you pay your dues and you enjoy knowing that no matter what, you have healthcare, you have a (decent) education, and so does everyone else.

All of the services you mention are some of the worst in the US(you forgot the post office). In fact, people who pay tens of thousands of dollars in property taxes still pay an additional $10,000-$20,000 to send their kids to private schools. That is how poorly government provides services. In nations with socialist healthcare, private hospitals are created because the government run ones are so bad.

[QUOTE=PonyOne]I like being able to choose what kind of guitars I own, and that I drive a Jetta with a 2.8 liter V6, that I wear Pumas and Doc Martens and listen to the bands that I want, but none of that has anything to do with a contemporary socialized government. I could still have all of the above if I lived in any of the countries I noted above.

And it would cost you twice what it does here because of the taxes.(in other words you couldn't have those things there, especially if you were lower class) And that is what "global warming", the political issue, is all about - taxes.

Thanks for the lively debate. I really do appreciate your posts about guitars - you're quite knowledgable on that subject. God Bless you brother.

Originally Posted by: quickfingers...scientists take ice core samples dating hundreds of thousands of years back, and like i said before, no natural record in history can make sense of how rapidly we are careening toward distaster.

Well, regarding this post and my last post above, looking into this on my own I came across this site of climatologists.and specifically that topic of ice cores. It's mainly a forum that will post an article and then scientists will respond to it with rebukes, Q&A's, and such. Also notice the links on the right that cover various topics. In my brief browsing through there it seems like a very fair and balanced atmosphere...haha, pun intended.

Originally Posted by: strat-manYa not bursting my bubble dude, i'm a realist not a fantasist, every 300 million years the earth passes thru an asteroid belt (for around 10 million years) that bombards the planet with rocks tens of miles in diameter, man cannot survive this! man may not be helping the enviroment, but, take away all the polution we caus from whatever means and you still CANNOT stop global warming, you can only MARGINALLY slow down the INEVITABLE, one day the earth will die, again! scientists can take all the samples they like dude, but NO one controls nature! just ask the poor people of Tsunami or New orleans!

The levees broke after the hurricane hit, because the government did a ****ty job on building the levees. Sooo, not completely nature related. Not to attack you or anything.

I recycle my cans. I'm not sure if I believe in global warning. All I know is that the movie Day After Tomorrow was lame... besides it being radical, it was just a bad movie in general.


Congratulation on being appointed professor by the way Doc.

Oh global warming... The national trend that has swept the nation... much like the trendy "classic-rock" fads that high schoolers are going through right now. People seem to think that because they watch a television special on National Geographic or the Discovery Channel that they're all the sudden an expert... Not saying that about any one here... Just people in general that wish to debate Global Warming as an issue. There is no television special or internet websites that will give you a completely unbiased opinion on global warming. Depending on where you read the information will depend on what opinion you will have been convinced to believe...

Global warming... what does it mean? The heating of the earths crust and/or atmosphere... which creates drastic changes in habitats and weather patterns around the world.. directly, or indirectly as an affect.

Theory... what does it mean? An educated guess or ideology based on information... NOT scientific evidence.

To me, Global Warming is a natural occurance. One in which numerous environmental agencies are pinning on general industry around the world. Granted, there may be adverse affects from the mass amount of by products our plants omit into the air... To say that it's heating our Earth to the point that it's melting thousands of square miles of ice is absurd... These people clearly forget the fact that our Earths core is in fact a molten ball of lava... sperated by only a few hundred miles of crust... Our planet generates it's own heat... Cracks in the crust of our planet could cause drastic changes in the atmospheric and crust temperatures... They also neglect the fact that we are, in fact, in a solar system that revolves around a constantly burning ball of gas..... thousands of times larger than the Earth. Some say the solar system is expanding... we're going away from the Sun... that... by definition is theory. Whose to say our solar system is not being pulled into the sun... rather than spinning away from it? Whose to say that someday our planet will be too close to the Sun for anything all to survive...? Theories... table top day dreams... I don't even feel like going into the other theories that I've read up on... one in particular the thoughts that the Earth itself is growing........ Which is just as much theory as Global Warming. I'm not negating the theories set forth by others... Simply sharing other equally scientifically possible avenues that the debate can go.

By the way... My team won the debate. I was on the Con side of "Global Warming: Man Made Disaster"

It's all theory, and should be discussed as such.