Isn’t that interesting?
Evidently, the polar ice caps on Mars have been diminishing for the past few years due to…hold your taters……solar irradiance. Solar what? Irradiance, that is.
Irradiance as defined by the Dictionary.com - incident flux of radiant energy per unit area.
Just wait a minute; where does that radiant energy come from? Why yes, it comes from our nearest star (the Sun).
So, why is that important? Well, it seems that Mars and Earth share the same Sun and thus the same solar irradiance is affecting both planets. I wonder if the Mars equivalent of Al Gore is aware of this info?
Is it not possible, Mr. Gore, that the Sun is our enemy right now during this current cycle of climate changes and not we, the people?
9 comments:
"BALDERDASH!" Those little green Martian men used up their atmosphere long ago making their fossil fuel burning flying saucers and their nuclear fusion powered death rays! Do we want to end up like them?? Hug a tree!
Why is it that so many so-called "people of faith" resist the idea of stewardship of the earth? Explain it to me. Is it just because Al Gore is the pointman for this? Who cares?
- Humans pollute. Responsible people should do what they can to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Why? Because it's good for the planet. It's not a left-wing vs. right-wing thing. it's a good thing to do. And nobody is really having to make any big sacrifices in order to do it.
- Oil drives our geopolitics. People are dying in Iraq right now because of oil. We would not give a damn about WMDs or human rights in that country if it didn't sit on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves. Otherwise, we would be invading a country every other week. If this had really been about human rights and "Islamo-fascism," we would have invaded Saudi Arabia. Let's be honest about it. So doesn't it make sense to conserve what we get and make the most efficient use of it? Isn't it less than responsible to drive cars that get, say, less than 20 miles per gallon? And here's the bonus: we'd pollute less. It's a two-fer.
It's easy to mock and be sarcastic. Divorce the Gore factor from your brains for two minutes. Dumping millions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere and the water every year is not "natural." It is bound to have a negative effect. So why wouldn't rational, caring people - especially those who have kids - want to help stop this, each in her/his own way?
I'm asking a serious question here. Attempting to dialogue. I'll wait past the sarcastic put-downs and insults I'm sure will follow. Just answer my questions from your perspective, so I can understand where you're coming from.
Because I really don't get it.
I have never said that I resist the stewardship of the Earth. Quite the contrary, I support stewardship.
What I don’t support, however, is the ridicules ‘science’ that is fueling the latest media fixation on speculative data that is agenda driven. According to ‘science’, the media during the last hundred years, has jumped on the latest climate changes four different times only to end up with it’s foot inserted firmly in the mouth that should have never been open in the first place.
It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas.
There have also been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the last few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing and a new 2006 study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the sun was responsible for up to 50% of 20th-century warming. See: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL027142.shtml
There’s just too much bad science out there pushing a global agenda that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans….just like the previous 4 times in the last century.
People are dying in Iraq right now because of oil. We would not give a damn about WMDs or human rights in that country if it didn't sit on top of one of the world's largest oil reserves. Otherwise, we would be invading a country every other week. If this had really been about human rights and "Islamo-fascism," we would have invaded Saudi Arabia.
Not true. I could argue along those same lines that, If it were about oil, we'd have invaded Venezuela, Kuwait, or some other country with thick oil reserves and not one with such a tough and battle seasoned army, with such undefined and hard to defend national borders, and with such a violent sectarian separation of the populace. If what you say is true, then, militarily speaking, it is not strategically sound. If what you say is true, we'd have secured their oil fields, pipelines and ports and let them starve and rot on the other side. If what you say is true, then we would not have invaded the barren, and damned near useless landscape of Afghanistan.
What I don't understand is why it is so hard for you folks on the left to grasp that evil exists and that evil has a name, and it must be confronted and combatted where it lives. Pacifism is just what the Islamo-facist terrorists want from you and I. Why can't you grasp the fact that they won't stop. Hell, they even tell you they won't stop. They preach it. They shout it from the hilltops and yet you and your kind refuse to hear it. You still think that we can rationalize with them. You still think that we can reason with the unreasonable. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why liberals have no fortitude. Morally, they stand for nothing and therefore there is nothing worth fighting for and so they prefer the "cut and run" method which AUTOMATICALLY and permanently negates, defiles and defeats everything that every Coalition soldier has bled or died for in Iraq. If it were simply about oil, Quake, our task would have been much simpler. If we were the money hungry oil hogs you make us out to be, our task would've long since accomplished.
I have no argument with your insistance that humans be good stewards of the earth. But the simple fact is that you will not, nor can you put a stop to all that you label as "harmful emissions". Perhaps you can slow them. Perhaps you can limit them. Perhaps you can decrease their harmfulness but you will not stop production of those substances which produce harmful or pollutant byproducts. You will never have your "Green Planet". We will never go back to horse and buggies. We will never go without our modern comforts. We will not go without our mass and private transit or trans-oceanic shipping traffic. We'll never settle for life without the abundant paper products we consume. We will never sink back into the age where we will choose to go without or to even go with less. Our world economy is absolutley dependent on modern electronics and communications...the plastic keyboard on which you are typing...the electricity you're burning to use it. You might throw your tin cans in one trashcan and your glass in another, Quake, but just how much are YOU willing to go without, because make no mistake...that's exactly what this boils down to...going without...going with less. You may burn less than your neighbor, and if so...good for you. But, despite your best efforts, humanity, as a whole, will not move technologically backwards. Dream all the scenarios you want, man it just will not happen.
Now I totally agree that if there are better and cleaner ways of achieving the same results then those ways ought to be explored, developed and implemented. And I wholeheartedly agree that because we are scientifically more "enlightnened" now as to the dangers of environmental pollution than we were at the beginning of the industrial age, we are duty bound to find the cleanest ways that we can economically support to accomplish our industrial objectives. But you have to grasp the reality that if those "ways" are cost prohibitive then they simply will not come to fruition. And bad or "doctored" science with bogus or "interpreted" results that starts with an "assumed end result" and works backwards to prove it's hypothesis, will do absolutley nothing to further that cause.
To those of us who believe that there is an end to this world as we know it (an end which is far nearer than the "thousands of years" projected by this "bad science") and a new beginning after that end, your scientific results, bogus or not, means little.
Like it or not, humans consume. It's what we do. Some consume more than others. Your level of consumption is directly proportional to your level of creature comforts. And since I don't live in a tent, eat berries and wipe my butt with a leaf, I'd have to say that I'm living pretty comfortably right now, Quake....how 'bout you?
Nobody is saying we have to give up all that much, really.
How much sacrifice is there in driving a fuel efficient, less polluting car (like mine)? How hard is it to live in a house with energy efficient appliances, compact fluorescent bulbs, porper insulation, weather-stripped windows? How hard is it to support mass transit by using it? How hard is it to CONSERVE? NOBODY said ANYTHING about living in a tent (like folks do in some places) or using a leaf in the way you mention.
It boggles my mind, that for beings who think we're so damn smart, that we can't see this as an opportunity and not a communist plot.
‘Beings so smart’….like Al Gore, the leader of this faux movement?
This man is so hypocritical when it comes to ‘doing with less’. From http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm, we see that Gore’s lifestyle is more than 5 of us put together…….
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.
Gore has held these apocalyptic views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Oxy has been mired in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas.
Living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.
Humanity might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River.
The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life?
Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.
The idea that disgreement with the global warming crowd is a wholesale abandonement by Christian of stewardship is an incorrect presumption. We can agree that we should not pollute and abuse the natural earth that God has placed us upon without agreeing that human activity has a cumulative affect on the environment to the point of a doomsday scenerio.
What is more incredible to me is that "Christians", or "people of faith" disregards some of the basic tenets of Christianity when it comes to global warming. For example, God promises that we will have "seed time and harvest", promising seasons of the year until the end of time. (There is much more to the scripture referenced above, but in the interest of brevity, I will not re-quote the entire passage.) Revelations also gives us an idea of the end of time, and the culmination of too many greenhouse gases are not mentioned as a cause.
I find it to be more logical that people of faith would agree to be good stewards of the earth, but dismiss the doomsday prophecies of the global warming church.
WD,
I blogged on this very subject just recently. I'd appreciate it if you would give my post a read and let me know your thoughts.
In Christ,
CD
I'm a Christian with conservative upbringing and at the same time I have a very strong appetite for progressive science.
I believe that any scientific discovery carries the risk of easily stripping certain conservative institutions of power and influence; this is a terrifying prospect for them, and therefore this is precisely why these sort of institutions will oppose anything scientifically progressive.
All it takes is one instance where a Mars rover finds fossilized microbes (or what not) within burried ice pack or geothermal vents (or wherever), and the results could lead to anarchy within the church, or more accurately, within the institution's sphere of influence. Ben Bova has written a number of books on this compelling premise.
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