Behavior OnLine Forums  
The gathering place for Mental Health and
Applied Behavior Science Professionals.
 
Become a charter member of Behavior OnLine.

Go Back   Behavior OnLine Forums > >

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old February 7th, 2007, 03:00 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
Forum Leader
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Philadelphia area
Posts: 1,143
Default Global Warming

My eyes won't let me read much of the night and I'm too poor to go south in the winter. Instead, I listen to talk radio hosts in Albany, Boston, New York, Cincinnatti, and Atlanta. There is the rebellious hippie chick, Rollye James, who has lived in 30 or more cities and advertises that if you're paranoid, you're tuned to the right station. Mike (Weiner) Savage originates in San Francisco. He is certainly manic, gifted, and a friend of 60's radicals but one who became puritanical and conservative. (He also shares recipes and side tracks to his dog.) There are several others, including the truckers on 700 out of Cincinnatti, and a libertarian, Neal Boortz, out of Atlanta, WBS 750.

"ReBoortz" is on from 2am-5am, a replay of Neal Boortz's commentary from the preceeding day. Boortz is a libertarian. He's also clever enough to surprise me.

This morning's material included the following:

"With much of the country in the freezer, one professor has stepped forward to question the entire premise of global warming. And that's the dirty little secret of the global warming crowd...that there are smart people who don't think there is such a thing as man-made climate change. So aside from the record-setting low temperatures outside, what is the evidence that whatever global warming there is isn't being caused by the actions of man? As it turns out, plenty.

"According to Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Canada, there is no such thing as man-made climate change. He calls the whole thing 'the greatest deception in the history of science.' Is he right? Who knows...but what happened to the idea of open debate? This guy is treated by the media and the Left as some sort of global warming denier...a kook who thinks the Earth is still flat.

"Look, folks .. you can buy this man-made global warming nonsense all you want. Just sit back and believe everything you hear from the political class and the United Nations. Not me. I'm gathering all of the information I can to continue to debunk this alarming campaign.

"Now this certainly isn't going to make the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post, and I rather doubt that you will see it reported on CNN, but over 15,000 scientists who have signed a petition expressing their doubts in idea that any global warming we might be experiencing is being caused by man. That petition says:

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

http://boortz.com/nuze/200702/02062007.html

Thought you'd like to know. But maybe not...

The source of my skepticism about human agents and global warming is simply that so many people believe it. Mackay's book, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions..." reviews tulipomania, South Sea bonds, mesmerism, spiritualism, and buckets of other mass, earth-sweeping fads. Primate minds, like hived bees, will swarm. No surprise. And given more rapid communcations and topics of instinctive salience - war, famine, murder, rape, and sex - the larger those swarms become and the less their tolerance for deviants.

The authors of our Constitution put in a capacitor, a delay, a temporal buffer between what rumor demanded and the actions that might be required. Unfortunately, electronic media reinstate mob violence. The neuropsych equivalent is that of a huge mind with a very small frontal orbital area. There is no extended sense of the future, nor is there sustained attention to any one thing.

Notice that the debate is less about global warming and more about its duration and causes. And I'm not sure how many of us with Africa in our metabolism will complain about dryness or, for that matter, grieve about what will happen to New Jersey. It may also be true that those of us with more of Africa in our nature will inherit the dunes while those remaining guilt-prone Nordic types, the ones who never made children, move north.

JimB

References
Barkley R. (1997) ADHD and the Nature of Self Control. NY: Guilford.
Mackay, Charles (1841/1980) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. NY: Three Rivers Press.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old March 5th, 2007, 03:23 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
Forum Leader
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Philadelphia area
Posts: 1,143
Default Global Brain Has a Seizure?

Humans swarm, no surprise! Mackay started with "tulipomania" recorded about a dozen more examples. I would add the Beatles to his list and suspect that the global warming thing may deserve a place on it. The reasons for my suspicions?

1) I never bought whatever was popular. Whatever the weather, I buy and have always bought last season's clothes.

2) I'm a bit paranoid and find prestige in the number of people who don't respond to my emails.

3) European socialist economies now have trouble paying their bills and face hordes of old and sickly entitled folks and hordes of young males who have no loyalties to the traditional cultures and, therefore, are unlikely tax-payers. They want a system, any system, that transfers money from our pockets to theirs but don't like our own shopping lists of homes for radar sites (Poland, however, and the Czech Republic seem interested and perhaps remember the Russians more clearly than might be true for the French, Dutch, Spanish, or Italians.)

More seriously:

4) There are rumors that Mars heats up in sync with Earth.

5) Ice cores...250,000 years recorded in a Greenland sample, 400,000 in one from Antarctica: The ice indicates that we head up and cool down in a cyclic fashion with a phase of about 1500 years. We are due to get hot, perhaps hotter than now and perhaps as hot as it was 900 years ago.

6) I know people who always have the weather channel on in the background. The weather, like sex and death, may trigger one of those adapted things for digging in, flying north or south, or having a manic episode.

So much for gossip that I agree with and back to paranoia:
Al got an Oscar (for a movie that he neither wrote, produced, nor directed) and the chorus, a cloud of electronic bloggers and watch birds, chants that Al is also an officer and part owner (and founder?) of Generation Investment Management, headquartered in London but with a node in DC. Al gets his carbon offset credits from GIM. Aeschylus, I understand, had similar problems with the chorus...

Finally, an apology.

I'm flummoxed by the relationships between r selection and K selection, applying them to our demographic state and our invasions, and whether MacArthur and Wilson (1967/2001) also match what Toynbee (a controversial but thorough guy) suggested: That we would be the 20th of 20 cultures that rusted away after a few seasons of salt and rain. Thus, I sidetrack these days with far less error-checking and pick up stray obsessions such as my current one with the history of the Czech Republic and other former "East Bloc" nations...something to do with exploratory systems and the Yanomamo but more to do with their guts and how many times we have let them all down when we did what was convenient and comfortable rather than foresighted...

JimB

References:
Mackay, Charles (1841/1980) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. NY: Three Rivers Press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old March 7th, 2007, 04:17 PM
Rosanne Rosanne is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 5
Default Re: Global Warming

Al Gore contributes greatly to global warming with his "Etch-A-Sketch" speeches, all that hot air that spews from his mouth.
I wonder if he road a bicycle to the Oscars, and his followers made me laugh at their hypocrisy as they exited from their limos.

I won't deny that we may have contributed to global warming, but such things
occured before man, perhaps some dinosaur flatulance as well as plant life decaying, produced a large amount of methane.
This is not the first global warming that has ever happened, and I find it truly disgusting that those so-called concerned are profiting off of all the hooplah, many seem to really not be so overly concerned about the real issue.

It also cracks me up with the "environmentally friendly" or "green" marketing strategy, the only "green" I'm seeing is the money the hypocrisy is sucking in.
I'm come from an era, that was "re-cycling" way before it became the fad, so many including myself, are the "real" environmently conscience.

I do not see many of the big business/manufacturers of hybrids (autos), solar panels, and other "earth saving" devices, lowering their prices to help make more of the "earth saving" products more affordable.
If all concerned really had their true heart and beliefs devoted to slowing down earth's deterioration wouldn't you think they'd all work together and "really" help make some positive impact?

Sorry for this rant, but the name, "Al Gore" just irritates me, he's so plastic, I shut off or change stations when he's on his pulpit.
Okay, rant over, I suspect this post will get deleted once read, but thanks for allowing my vent.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old March 11th, 2007, 12:30 PM
James Brody James Brody is offline
Forum Leader
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Philadelphia area
Posts: 1,143
Default Re: Global Warming & "Maybe"

Thanks for the vent about algore. I tend to agree and so, for that matter, did the Clintons when in office. There are rumors of Gore standing in the hallway in order to see who went into meetings.

As for warming: Physicists and popular writers have educated us about "tipping points." A small change produces dramatic, slow to reverse, outcomes. The Gulf Stream could stop flowing or reverse directions, for example.

Another example, the temperature on Venus would melt lead. That atmosphere has very high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Therefore, our high levels of atmospheric CO2 will melt lead here.

The worrisome aspect is that the planet may get very warm but if so, there may not be much we can do about it and the bulk of the effect is probably not of human origin.

On most days, I smell a scam...

JB
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old March 12th, 2007, 10:00 AM
Rosanne Rosanne is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 5
Wink Re: Global Warming

Exactly. Here's a good scam I saw the other day, an ad about investing in some specially processed, pure water, the scare tactic/sales pitch was all about how we are running out of water,blah!blah! Buy shares of our stocks now!
Oh gawd!! And people fall for this, just like they do for faith healers, and Al Gore. "The sky is falling", Al.
Whatever the end will be, shall be, and there is nothing we can do to control the planets, well to my personal ignorance there's not, right?
Sometimes, all this stuff reminds me of a verse in an old song, "the fate of mankind, I fear is in the hands of fools" . . .
After seeing how life is quickly gone after losing loved ones, I've taught myself to enjoy every second of it and not get all neurotic about this doomsday mentality that's running like wildfire, for life slips away all too soon.
Damn! Why do the days pass by ever so quickly, I was just starting to enjoy life.

Thanks for the reply,
Rosanne
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old March 14th, 2007, 11:15 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
Forum Leader
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Philadelphia area
Posts: 1,143
Default Global Warming: Politically Correct Guide

A different point of view:

Horner, Christopher (2007) The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and .... Washington, DC: Regnery Press.

Paperback, sticks holes in the "received view"

JimB
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:19 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Copyright © 1995-2023 Liviant Internet LLC. All rights reserved.