President 'has four years to save Earth'

Collateral damage.

Cheers, James

His "no contnent" post was more constructive than yours.

Europe consumes about half as much oil and gas per head as the U.S.A. and doesn't have a persistent structural balance of payments deficit - we sell enough outside Europe to pay for the oil and gas that is imported.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Chris Stringer is claiming that because our species went through a period when our gene pool was small, we went through a "near extinction event".

I pointed out that this event occurred at the time when anatomically modern humans were becoming genetically isolated from whatever our ancestral species was, and had stopped interbreeding with them.

Whenever a new species forms, the first individuals of the new species necessarily form a small gene pool. This isn't what is usually meant by a "near extinction event". and Chris Stringer should have known better

We seem to have out-competed our ancestral species, which means that they failed to get through a real extinction event, probably sometime quite a bit later, but they aren't us.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I can say it in a single word, "Control".

=8-O Nooo, they wouldn't do that. >>:-D

op it.

he

e

he

.

ally.

Thomas L. Friedman tells a different story in "Hot, Flat and Crowded". He's devoted a chapter to China and, unlike you, he's been there and talked to the people.

China is aware that global warming is a problem, and well aware that it is going to get worse. At the moment they get most of their energy by burning coal in inefficient power stations, which not only inject a disproportionate amount of CO2 into the atmosphere, but also foul the air with sulphur dioxide and soot, creating dangerous levels of air pollution in their cities.

If they burnt oil in modern power stations, they'd emit a lot less CO2 per kilowatt hour, and we'd all be better off.

In the long term they know that they are going to have to go over to carbon-neutral power generation - they haven't go the spare agricultural capacity that you have in the USA and they can't afford the crop failures that they'd get if global warming continued to get worse with business as usual. The Communist adminstration survived the

1958-61 famine, but at least 15 million people died, and it hasn't been forgotten.

Getting from where they are to where they need to be is going to take time, and the more technology they can import, the faster they will get there.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

stop it.

the

SA

nce

the

cy.

ically.

They got pretty concerned before the Olymic games, and shut down a lot of the worst sources of pollution.

They know how bad it can get

and are actually cleaning up their act, just as the British did. California still has a smog problem and while they have made some progress, there's a way to go yet.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You'd better.

It depends on the positive feedback involved. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more CO2 in the oceans, which lowers the pH of the oceans and makes like more difficult for the microflora that take up CO2 and eventually sink it to tyhe bottom of the ocean.

You'd have to ask much more specific questions to be able to get an answer.

Water vapour is roughly four times more potent as greenhouse gas than CO2, but the 0.5C rise in global temoerature has only railsed the vapour pressure of water in the atmosphere by about 6.5%, while the CO2 level has gone up by about 35%, and - of course - CO2 and water are both more potent greenhouse gases in the presence of one another than they are apart because they are peculiarly effective in "pressure broadening" one another's infra-red absorbtion line.

In fact they probably produce a significant population of carbonic acid molecules in the lower reaches of the atmosphere, which have their own absorbtion spectrum, though - as far as I know - nobody has measured it in the gas phase.

Wrong, on several counts. Half the CO2 we emit its ending up in the atmosphere. That's less than than the amount we emit, but not "much less" so your original claim was false, and you are the one that got it wrong, and is now refusing to admit it.

Actually, you would. AGW is true and the only debate is about how bad it is going to get and how fast.

The alternative explanations for the warming don't hold water. Denialist web-sites keep on trotting them out, but they have a habit of posting data from the original publications while ignoring the subsequent debate that shot the data full of holes.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

If you don't have the money to fix the environment, making fixing the environment your top priority would be rather pointless.

Of course, if you don't fix the environment, you won't - in the end - have a country or an economy, or anybody left to poll, so you'd better not spend too long on the short term problem.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Joe, thus has it always been.

The majority of college grads have always been the "I Just Squeeked Through" types, who go to college with the sole intent to go to college. It has always been the few, who take that extra something with them both into, and from a college, that make the difference.

And, though a minority, those go getters have always been in pretty good numbers. Not everyone can lead the band, you gotta have a few to blow in the trombones... 8-)

Charlie

But you owe 25% of it to foreign investors, you've been running a big balance of payments deficit since Regan, you've sold off all the assets that foreigners want to buy and have been reduced to peddling sub-prime mortgages overseas, deceitfully packaged to make them look as if they were worth buying.

Norway and Canada have oil, Germany has a large trade surplus, while France does have a trade deficit at the moment

it had been doing well for quite a while.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

7$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrddc02.gnilink.net... p e e

ne

.

We get to do something no other country gets to do :-)

We get to pay off our bills in our own currency :-)

Since we can only do this once, lets REALLY do it :-)

Charlie E. wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If Tesla can build a high performance electric sports car,one could build an electric Miata with equivalent or better performance;it just may not have the range of a gasoline Miata,and take a lot longer to "refuel".

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

067$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrddc02.gnilink.net... :

top

the

A

ce

the

y.

yone

...

of

gs

e.

..

Enjoy it while it lasts - the euro is rapidly taking over as the international medium of exchange, precisely because the Eurozone hasn't been russning a huge balance of payments deficit for the last thirty years.

Probably wise. Print a few more dollar bills and give them to people who will try to exchange them for something that is either useful or at least likely to hold its value, so that the dollar is worth even less on the international market, and the price of oil - in dollars - will go up even more.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

The Church of Global Warming will dismiss the recent cold as "just weather", but, thankfully, the public won't.

I think the AGW hysteria has peaked, and will drop off pretty fast, as these fads do. It's the leisure suit/macarena/bell-bottom-jeans/stock market dynamic... slow rise, fast fall.

Lots of neurotic people will have to find something else to be upset about. Lots of "activists" will need a new cash cow. Everybody here can get back to electronics.

I suppose that last one was over the top.

John

That's a great phrase 'The Church of Global Warming' Puts it right where it belongs.

Cheers

Ian

Thank heavens for that. It is one of the most dangerous pieces of lunacy in recent times. Let's hope the current economic crisis will only speed it on its way.

Too true and there will be an awful. lot of pseudo scientists out of a job

I'd say it was spot on ;-)

Cheers

ian