Travis In Austin

Well said. People like Al Gore are the problem from that side of the debate. They are great at rasing money for a documentary, but they can't walk the walk. They are like the folks you mentioned that say they don't want nuke but they don't want carbon. Unrealistic, you can't have it both ways. There are people on the other side of the debate, oil and coal, that do the same. Why MP was successful is they were able to identify problem, show risk and danger, and a reasonable solution over time to for business and consumers to adjust. What is way different about Ozone is we could see it. Firsy by ground detection, radio telescopes. People didn't believe it, said it could be a lot of things. Then we put a satellite up there to specifically look for hole. Low rez, took forever to download compared to now. They got those images in a report and it scared everybody. It took 20 years to get from the identification of the cause of the problem to signing on to a solution. They have been seriously looking at global warming/cclimate change for over 20 years. They will never be able to take a photo, other than ice caps, that shows problem. All they can do is show graphs, and both sides can debate them. There wasn't unanimity on ozone either, there rarely is in science. Einstein didn't agree with Newton on everthing, and Al was eventually proved right. The other thing aboutscience is that it is building blocks. They constantly say, upon each new discovery, that they have stood on the shoulders of giants to get to where they are. I think it is other way on the science, the science becomes pretty well settled, and policy makers/legislators try and bend the science to their theory. The surgeon general slapped warning labels on cigarettes in the 70s and there were legislators, from tobacco states, trying to argue that the science wasn't settled using studies funded by tobacco. They do what they are supposed to do, protect their constituents. Oscarear can tell you how well settled the science was, there was no question. But when billions are involved you do whatever you can. I agree we need to make this last. I do not see being able to colonize anytime before this next century, if ever. I guess we will see if we can get to Mars.

So in Utopia the food is free, but we all have to eat together as I recall, in food halls. Hmmmmm? Do they serve cheese burgers? It might work.

My style changes with the situation, who I amdealing with on the other side. Are they new, have we dealt on things before, what is their style? Gender makes a difference in how I may approach something. I have dealt with the same types you have dealt with. On some things it is just, NO, NO, NO there really is no negotiations but I try to be optomistic because I have worked out things I never thought could get worked out. My closest friend is superb at it, a niche practice of getting things worked out. He doesnt go to trial, if he can't work it out he sends them to someone else to try. I wish I was better at it, that is for sure.

I don't think I did, did I? I wouldn't think it would have fixed it, it has only been 25 years and I would think it would take a lot longer than that. I know that the size of the hole has shrunk and that we now monitor it in real time from a NOAA bird. I have attached a pdf from the Montreal Protocol listing what they SAY it has achieved. I don't think they say they have fixed it, but they claim that it is first UN treaty to have universal ratification, some 20 years after the US was one of the first signers. They claim that is has resulted in a reduction of skin cancer and cataracts to a significant degree. I know that Reagan, despite being urged to oppose it, helped negotiate it and, as in many things, the UK followed. Here is an article from the NY Times about the history of it, I had forgotten that Reagan had skin cancer. A close aide said he thinks he supported it because he liked the outdoors. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/science/the-montreal-protocol-a-little-treaty-that-could.html?_r=0 The article has a nice photo of the Gipper walking in cowboy boots with Maggie at Camp David. The article concludes by saying: "Durwood Zaelke, who heads a Washington advocacy group called the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development that is pushing for the treaty amendment, told me he drew a simple lesson from all this: Durwood Zaelke, who heads a Washington advocacy group called the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development that is pushing for the treaty amendment, told me he drew a simple lesson from all this: However overwhelming global warming may seem at times, we are not powerless in the face of it.." Which was my point, it is obviously a world problem (if global warming is real, and if it is a problem). That doesn't mean that we cannot be the leader in addressing the issue and that others will follow. The MP apparently has had some impact on global warming, and I believe we adopted the amendment mentioned in the 2013 article. I remember Molina and Rowland being all over the news about the discovery, they said something had to be done, and had to be done quick. That was mid 70s when I was in high school and our chemistry teacher was all freaked out by this study. I remember people switching to spray bottles from aerosols because of "the environment." I am sure you can appreciate the culture of those times in California. Twenty years later the MP was a reality and a guy from Mexico City who wanted a PhD from Cal and ends of going to teach at UC Irving and wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry with his mentor. So now the world works on Kyoto and it's outgrowth. Two administrations ago we were in, the last administration withdrew us, and now we are back in. We can be a leader, or not. These world size problems tend to require that everyone acknowledge there is a problem, and then get together to fix it, which I think is the biggest lesson. The use of common sense approach to phase out the bad, bring in the new, and then to bring on as many as you can works. It is kind of everyone has to be in, or nobody is in. Special interests lost in that debate, science won out. Someone said here earlier, follow the money. Despite what some people think, university research in the United States is both privately and publicly funded. It is typically pretty solid. Look where the money is on the side scientists that say there is a problem, and look on the side where people say it is't a problem. It was the same with tobacco, it was the same with ozone, and it is true here. People can wake up on the morning and see what they see, make conclusions from local weather patterns and form an opinion that there is no warming, and it has no consequence. They are not in the mainstream if that poll in Scientific American is accurate. Or then can read one of the studies, or the studies on the studies, and make up their own mind instead of watching CNN, Fox, NBC or whatever. This thread started with a link to an article by a debunked skeptic who doesn't accept asbestos as being in the least bit harmful, evolution, or second hand smoke. He is what we refer to as a prostitute. The question was raised, "is the hype over?" Yes, but not in the sense that Steven meant it. The hype is over, America has chosen science over politics and propoganda and 70% plus of the entire political spectrum have chosen to believe the science. We are back in on Kyoto, the EPA is setting standards. Right now TODAY, coal burning power plants that don't use certain scrubbing pay a carbon tax. There were 4,000 peer reviewed studies that Dr. Green's peer reviewed study looked and, and over 90 percent of them say there is global warming, and it is man made. Peer review, as you know, means something is science. It is a big deal. It is what distinguishes science from opinion based on assumptions. There is apparently 400 or so peer reviewed studies that say there is no global warming, or not man made, in comparison to the 3,600 out there that say otherwise, but no one will cite or mention one. The warming doesn't really matter to me. What I worry about is the ocean, and the CO2 in the ocean. That is manmade, there is no question about it, and it had dropped the pH of the ocean by 30%. That has to stop and people don't even understand why. They need to understand where 50% of our oxygen comes from. When you see a study that says that sea algae is dying off due to pH it is too late. It will take 50 years to adjust it back. T

Yes it is indeed.

Well, not really. How can anyone describe this as a problem for "Americans?" Either individually, or collectively, this is a wild claim. The climate change problem is a result of a global system of organization in place for a thousand years or more. The world is organized as a "for profit resource." That's not a decision of mine or fellow Americans, or the legislators, or the other people around the globe. Americans can do nothing about this. Nor can Germans or Chinese. 7 billion people are involved in profiting from the resource as their reason for being. Oh sure, I'm going to collect cans, turn my thermostat down and change that! Global Warming, or it's cousin Global Cooling, is not so much a scientific discovery as a philosophical one: "Profit is incompatible with sustainable civilization." Think about it. Embedded in the very concept of profit is the contradiction of sustainability. It is self cancelling. But sure, push it down and blame it on the citizens for not making a decision. As I pointed out earlier, 1/3 of the world is food insecure. Well, of course! That's exactly how you extract a profit. You take from the bottom and push it up to the top. Where else would the excess to form a profit come from if not the bottom? This is not a problem for science to solve. It's certainly not a problem for politicians to solve. How do you grab the entire world, shake it, and revise it's goals? By being a leader, by setting the example, like we have always done. We did it on Ozone depletion by being the leader in science, and then one of the first to sign the Montreal Protocol, and now in the monitoring of it. We have half the population of China but put out twice as much Co2. The top ten countries put out 70% of the CO2. When it started raining sulphuric acid in the northern states and people's car paint started peeling off and the level of mercury in our kid's tuna fish sandwiches got to a level that people stop buying it we passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and created the EPA despite other countries continuing to burn coal without scrubbers. Then, when we insisted that others follow suit in the way of trade agreements and other means, we could say that "we are doing it, and so should you." I am guessing we emit way more CO2 than China per capita because they are using more nuclear generation. It takes 10 or 15 years to get a plant online, I think we need to get 10 up and running and the first one should be in Humboldt Bay (not really, but to say we can lower things with nuclear power is certainly true, but it takes a long time to do it). Maybe Terrapower and Bill Gates can get things moving faster on that, hopefully so. This plant used to provide Southern California Edison with 20% of its power, emission free. It is going to take 4 Billion, and twenty years to decommission it. A nuclear storage facility is in the process of getting the permits from the State to be able to store the 4,000 tons of waste that is currently stored there.

Best frys, bar none. They still taste great, I knew they went from tallow to some kind of vegetable oil, it wold make since they would have to use beef flavoring now because they are not using the beef fat any longer. The best mexican food or Tex-Mex cooks, whether it is at someone's home or eating out, you look in their kitchen and you will nearly always find a block of lard from Mexico. They sell it in every store here, both organic lard, and regular, whatever you want. I figure if I hit McD's twice a year for fries it isn't going to matter. T

I pretty much agree with that, but believe it can go from both sides. We had to read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in high school. That book, at the time it came out, apparently stood the country on its ear. It may have even contributed to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, I can't remember exactly. So how do you motivate the fast food industry, the tobacco industry, the meat packing industry to do the "right thing." They will not, absolutely will not, ever do the right thing when they learn of a problem, or at least when they do the right thing they don't have the right PR people to say they did the right thing. Example after example after example shows that they were aware of the problem (or a condition which they didn't perceive to be a problem, for example trying to make cigs more addictive), but made a conscious BUSINESS decision to keep doing what they were doing. Subway, from what I heard, finally had to acknowledge that it was using this material in their bread because it was a preservative that made the bread the way customers wanted it, and the material wan't toxic. Really? It usually takes a whistle blower, or a consumer advocacy group or a lawsuit or sometimes even an agency that regulates/inspects them to push/pull them along. It seems like the only thing that keeps them on their toes is the threat of fines, being shut down or being sued. Just never, ever trust the source. It is hard to know, but you can buy locally grown from farmers markets (of course you never know what they do, but after twenty years I can even figure out what is an organically grown tomato or not), growing it yourself, etc. We have the luxury of Whole Foods being based in Austin, they are all about the source, where it is from, what the impact is, who picks it, etc. They go to the source of the coffee, or the bananas, the fish, and inspect them themselves. You pay a premium, but they are just packed, all the time. I think it is double, by the time you grab all of the stuff you don't really need and isn't available at HEB. HEB, our major grocer, I think pretty much all over Texas now (there are some Randal's, Albertson's/Safeways still around) has taken notice. They thought my having a store every mile or so in Austin would get people to shop there out of convenience (and it is a great store, reminds me of Ralphs or Fry's in CA), but people will drive the extra 15 minutes to get Whole Foods, at a way higher cost. Somehow Whole Foods has an image that you can trust them. For the last two years HEB is doing commercials about the growers, fishermen, wine producers, etc. that supply them with food. They are trying to show that they are selective and put a human side to who they buy from, because they have seen what Whole Foods has done. But how long did it take for people to realize that when purchasing food you may want to consider something else besides price. It used to only be "those" people did that and they had to go to the health food store to get that stuff. Now I am going to go eat lunch, checking every carefully that there isn't a finger or a mouse in my salad. T T

Been looking for 5 years; good but not REAL good Have you tried Josie's? I thought those were great, but it has been a long time. If not you still have Water St. and the corporate HQ Whataburger restaurant.

It was me Dave, I ended it. I went out and got florescent or LED bulbs last night to replace all of the regular bulbs in the house, hit the switch this morning and I must have thrown everything off the grid. Moved what was here back to the original thread now what it is back going again.

I am afraid to read that article, just like I am afraid to watch "Fast Food Wars" based on what I have heard it uncovered. Subway being made out of yoga mat material. I thought no way, that has got to be a hoax. My quick go to source for an instant BS test is SNOPES. Comes back true. I heard that someone had asked Subway what their bread was made out of, got the stall, sent it to a lab on their own, yoga mat. Several years ago I was reading the the label on a loaf of bread, and I am going down the list, whole wheat flower . . . and then saw "sawdust." I couldn't believe it, had to check it three times. Not particlized cellulose or some other watered down version, just "sawdust." I was a fast food fiend for years and years, I just almost completely avoid it now, (well, I am assuming that Franklin BBQ is not considered fast food) but you have to be just as careful with processed foods at the grocery story.

How did you get a pass on the "points." She didn't say she wanted first class to Paris?

What stands out? Just all of it? On the sites I have been on that compare Mp3 to uncompressed/lossless it is pretty dramatic, an overall difference. I figured the clips used were for a reason, to show the difference but I could not place it on anything specific like vocals, bass, drums, etc. I know that it is almost impossible to describe it, but wondered if what you were hearing on that song was what I had heard by streaming examples. Travis

DOUBLE AGAIN

DOUBLE

I agree 100% with that. I used to surf right in front of a reactor growing up ("The Boobs"). It has been shut down now, not over safety issues per se, but it was refitted with new steam generators that turned out to be defective. Edison was going to try and get it back on line but I am sure the cost of overcoming the opposition and all the red tape it was cheeper to shut it down. It is interesting that a part of that state that wants clean air, that has had some of the worst air, would rather have much increased CO2 and whatever else. Apparently 20% of our power in the U.S. is generated by nuclear plants. There is only one left in California now (that sits on a fault), we have two in Texas. I am hoping that TerraPower/Bill Gates can make some headway in Washington on it and get that number up. Politics makes strange bedfellows, not only is he having to get environmentalists to under stand it is in their interest, he has to fight coal, oil and natural gas. If is quite a story to see those guys lined up on the same side. Texas has paved the way for the Dallas billionaire who has a nuclear storage in West Texas for low and mid-level waste to accept, at least on an interim basis, spent rods and other high level waste from all over the country. They may be getting the 4,000 tons that are sitting at The Boobs. How they are going to get it there is going to be a major fight, but the big problem was the waste. It was going to be at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but that got shut down. The facility in West Texas has been expanding and requesting approval for higher levels from the state. I keep seeing articles that they can burn coal absolutely clean, and are getting better and better at it, but I can never find out what it costs to do that. It has to be astronomical, but they never seem to comment on that. Ohio state is going to enlarge their experimental clean burning power plant to something that is commercially viable, http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20140623/FREE/140629930/babcock-wilcox-ohio-state-university-to-design-clean-coal-power On fusion, I have been hearing that it is 30 years away all my life also. But I thought we put several billion into a facility at Lawrence Livermore, and that they have (created, achieved, ??) fusion. Granted, it was something like a fraction of a second and I guess the key in that area is how long you can keep it going. They seem to be all hyped up about getting it to one minute. But as I recall, this was a breakthrough because it was REAL fusion, meaning that output exceeded input which has not been the case with the type of fusion achieved at other locations. I attached a photo of the San Onofre reactor for those who have not seen it and wonder how it got its name. Travis

Well I guess the hype should be over. Now the "scientific" story is about whether consensus in the scientific community should even be the story. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-determine-the-scientific-consensus-on-global-warming/ A partial quote: The point of contention is a peer-reviewed study published last year by Green, a chemistry professor at Michigan Technological University; John Cook, a research fellow at the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia; and 10 other scientists who blog under the collective name of Skeptical Science. The scientists examined 4,014 abstracts on climate change and found 97.2 percent of the papers assumed humans play a role in global warming (ClimateWire, May 16, 2013). That statement quickly got boiled down in the popular media to a much simpler message: that 97 percent of scientists believe climate change is caused by humans. President Obama tweeted the 97 percent consensus. Comedian John Oliver did a segment on it that went viral on the Internet. Predictably, climate change skeptics challenged the study. The Skeptical Science group fended off their attacks. Then fame beckoned. The paper has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, making it among the most popular scientific studies of 2013. Lately, the Skeptical Science researchers have been battling a rear guard attack from within the climate science community itself. Some social scientists, political scientists, climate change communicators—and Tol—question whether informing people of a scientific consensus serves any purpose. To them, climate change is no longer a debate over science. The latest surveys show that 89 percent of Democrats, 79 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans already believe global warming is happening and is at least partly caused by human actions. Rather, the climate debate is now ethical and political; it comes down to what Americans are willing to do today to address a problem that will largely affect their grandchildren. In this realm of moral choice, the 97 percent consensus can be polarizing, said Dan Kahan, a professor of psychology at Yale University. The article from Scientific American brought out something I had not realized before, that people were saying it was the number of scientists, not the number of studies. It is nice to see a guy from Yale get the pleasure of stating one of the few absolutes (not "the obvious", after all he is from Yale) about the debate, "it is "polarizing."

Ouch

Yes. Throw them all out on their behinee's and demand the newly elected members dismantle special interest. It's a start. Now, now. Just toss the lawyers (both sides) and everything will work itself out just fine. Hey now wait a minute, wouldn't that be like sticking your head in the sand? On second thought I'm all for it. Travis

Yes, we can look at motives. 1. Big, dirty industry wants us to believe there is no anthropological global warming. 2. Climatologists agree AGW is serious issue that can shake the foundations of our planet. They want subsidies to study it and prove it. Profiteers want to manage brokerage houses designed to trade on emission allotments. Who do you believe? That's the question. Seems you align with those greedy climatologists and profiteers. The answer, naturally, is unscientific. All it will derive from is the lenses through which you view politics. I don't agree. You were around when Texas, along with other states, got together to take on tobacco which resulted in the dismantling of the tobacco industry. That case was all about science and big tobacco knew they had none and what science they did have, in unauthorized released documents, showed they knew it was harmful, they knew it was addictive, but they could fund around that. You have seen the standard change like I have from Frye to Daubert. I have dealt with science, and "junk science" my whole career. It can be political, certainly. But you know as well as I do that in medicine and science there is funding protocols to keep it as independent as possible, and then there is funding that comes from business like tobacco, oil companies, drug companies and on the other side as well. The Sierra Club and others have their own scientists, etc. UT and A & M are two of the top public research universities in the country (so is Rice). The protocols for research grants, try to eliminate as much bias as possible, but we are dealing with humans who want the money, and humans who give out the money. But in the end, what results is a peer reviewed research study. This is the filter that science used to weed out the junk, the politics, and even is some cases, made up data. I think it works really well. I am aware that administrations try and put a slant on the research that is conducted by various agencies. This gets exposed, it happened with global warming. But as you know, in science where there is disagreement a true scientist will say it needs to be studied further. It sorts it self out one way or the other over time free of politics just like it did with the ban on CFCs over DuPont's strong stance there was no "scientific link." Pretty soon you become the lone wolf in the wilderness. Science has done so with tobacco, DDT, mercury, the ozone layer, Actos, thermography (remember that, they could diagnosis you after putting you in a freezer and then taking a "photo" of you) and on and on and on. When you have "Institutes" created with tobacco money, oil money, chemical company money, drug company money it is pretty easy to see that they are not scientists. The same is true of anti (fill in the blank) people on the other side. I try to read the actual studies myself, both pro and con, if any, and make up my own mind. The key, is finding the real scientists on an issue, and avoiding the funded advocates who may happen to have a scientific background. We deal with this all the time in forensics, I think that is why is so easy to see what is science, what is "hype" and what is advocacy. Scientists in stating and defending their conclusions write a different way, talk in a different way, refer to prior conclusions in a different way then in the world of jurisprudence and political debate. It is pretty easy to spot, at least for me, someone who is defending their conclusions based on observations (a scientist) and someone advocating a position that may be based on scientific data. I have also seen on many, many occasions say, without hesitation, "the research is mixed on that," or "we don't have an answer to that yet, Dr. _________ over at _________ is doing a study on that now." A real scientist will say when the jury is still out. I do agree, when money is at stake, we will all look through the lens that is going to preserve our self interest. My point is that, given time and the desire to find objective answers, science is where to look. I look at all of the peer reviewed studies on the casual relationship between fracking and local earthquakes. The recent SMU study is pretty clear that they were unable to reach a conclusion one way or the other, much more research is needed. While there is a temporal relationship, there isn't one that would withstand scientific scrutiny one way or the other. Eventually there will be some solid scientific data on that, one way or the other. Unfortunately, I think as a result of Denton banning fracking last November, everyone is going to hire there own private research to be done. It will take years and years to sort that out I am thinking.

The Montreal Protocol happened. Opps, you already answered this, I just did a post. I couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the Protocol. I believe it has been amended a few times and the US is at the forefront of it all.

I can, it is pretty simple. Our atmosphere has a layer of ozone that surrounds the Earth. The ozone layer filters out UV light from the Sun. Without it, life as we know it couldn't exist on Earth. Some scientists way back when, the 60s maybe, believed there was a hole in the ozone layer. Some other scientists thought the reason for the hole was being caused by chemicals such as CFCs and HFCs (contained in A/C refrigerants and aerosol sprays). There was a big debate about all of this. Science kept building and more and more data came in. We, being a world leader, sent up some satellites to confirm there was a hole and sure enough there was one and it was growing (slowly) and we, along with other nations adopted an international protocol banning the use of CFCs and other chemicals. We were a couple of years behind in adopting it because the big chem companies like DuPont, were not convinced by the science. The US went ahead and adopted the treaty in the 80s, signed by Reagan, which phased out CFCs, etc. Since then we have been one of the leaders in the agreement, signing on to amendments to the protocol and I believe we signed on to something last year that limits things even further. The hole is supposedly closing or closed up. The 25th anniversary of the international agreement was a few years ago, some science journal I read said that treaty banning CFCs had over 100 states that had joined that that the banning of CFC was working to reverse the trend. We now have a bird up in the air that measures ozone in near real time. It is kind of Deja vu all over again.

in NY , you cant see the sky on smog days , the air has a kinda of a nice odor -like the smell of a car's muffler - you need a mask to filter the nasty dust particles that burn the eyes but again that is not man made ,yep , just natural You are using a micro example to explain a macro phenomena. Does man create smog in New York? Of course he does. Does it change the temperature in Africa? I'm not convinced. the planet turns every 24 hours - next time you use your washing machine - take a close look , did you notice that your clothes got cleaner as they spun around , now add a bit of dirt and spin it , I betcha that your clothes are dirty - same things with a planet -one huge washing machine -instead that the gases interact -it is called global warming - My washing machine doesn't have the best scrubbers nature can make: Trees and plants. Lift top or front load? Just kidding, a topic of another thread long ago and forgotten.

Really? I would like to see it, sincerely, just simply to be well informed. Most, really all, of the scientific "evidence" I have seen recently about the data is from a big oil funded think tank or "Institute." It really isn't scientific, it is spin, misinformation and sometimes just outright lies, just like the Tobacco Institute used to put out. Here is a link to an article that identifies the well know big oil funded "Institutes." http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/11/28/meet-the-climate-denial-machine/191545 The one you frequently see is the Heartland Institute. There are other websites on the other side that have just as much hype on the other side. And then there are a few that are science driven that expose what is science and what is hyperbole. I really would like to see any peer reviewed studies you run across to the contrary, or a mainstream source that makes reference to such a study. I have been burned too many times on studies cited by talking heads on both sides to review a study they cite to prove their point. I have yet to read a study they cite that says what they say it says.

No, it is a Samsung Note3 or something. I think there might be an option to switch to swipe type, I will give it a try. WIth my laptop or pc I use Dragon dictation software, which is my everything I "write" tend to be long winded. With that you have to go back and carefully check on syntax, verb agreement, and other grammatical things which I discover typically after I have made a post. I will try swipe and see if that is better.