Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

You know I was actually pretty upset with the Obama administrations defunding of the space program. My thought had been that of all the programs that the gov't has this was the one where our pooled resources could be used better. However, if this is what they are going to spend my $$ on--yep I am glad they are not getting any more. Private space travel anyone?

The article linked to is as bad about science and NASA as most articles are about gun owners. The article is crap.

However, global warming is not a debate, it is a fact. Get over it. It is not something you can choose to believe in or not, unlike the Easter Bunny. It is a fact that you can choose to understand or not.

tursiops wrote:global warming is not a debate, it is a fact.

I'm pretty sure the aliens are here, and they are disguised as members of 0bama's cabinet. And THEY ARE here to destroy us.

tursiops wrote:However, global warming is not a debate, it is a fact. Get over it. It is not something you can choose to believe in or not, unlike the Easter Bunny. It is a fact that you can choose to understand or not.

I always find it funny when people say this. I know several people who are professionals in weather related phenomenon (far and away above your average meteorologist). They get paid BIG bucks to be right about what goes on in our world. They are not particularly conservative--mostly independents, but they laugh their tails off at global warming and point to just in the past 2,000 years the fluctuations in temperature around the world. What they have said is that if global warming is happening--be thankful--very thankful, because for most (but not all of the earth) global warming is a very good thing.

One of them which I was able to have an indepth conversation with about 3 years ago (before all the leaks about outright fraud and mismanaged data came out) and he said you have to ask yourself a few questions before you can really get into fixing anything.

1. Is the earth getting warmer? The answer to that is we don't know--some places are slightly warmer than they were 10 years ago some places are cooler.

2.If the earth is getting warmer is that bad? This is where you get into morality, and it gets really dicey. Perhaps for the S. American continent global warming is wonderful and produces much more produce and leads to a better life for millions of people, but then for N. Africa it produces a drought. Perhaps it is great for the Russian plains, but is tearing up the West Coast of America with storms.

3. If the earth is getting warmer and that it is bad--are we the cause of it? Volcano's, the Sun, Earth's natural cycles, all these things play a part. We can barely measure the past 100 years with any accuracy--how can we expect to be able to measure the effect of Volcano's. His answer was that we could not do it.

4. If the earth is getting warmer and it is bad, and it is our fault. Is there anything we can do to stop it? Sometimes there are things that you do that you can't reverse. If you cut off your thumb in a meat grinder it is game over. We can't answer the first question--let alone the fourth. So anything that people propose as a solution is simply a method of using pseudo science to control a population.

The person I talked with is a leader in his field. I trust his word far over some politician's, who has been shown again and again to be using fraudulent science to advance his own pocket book.

mamabearCali wrote:1. Is the earth getting warmer? The answer to that is we don't know--some places are slightly warmer than they were 10 years ago some places are cooler.

2.If the earth is getting warmer is that bad? This is where you get into morality, and it gets really dicey. Perhaps for the S. American continent global warming is wonderful and produces much more produce and leads to a better life for millions of people, but then for N. Africa it produces a drought. Perhaps it is great for the Russian plains, but is tearing up the West Coast of America with storms.

3. If the earth is getting warmer and that it is bad--are we the cause of it? Volcano's, the Sun, Earth's natural cycles, all these things play a part. We can barely measure the past 100 years with any accuracy--how can we expect to be able to measure the effect of Volcano's. His answer was that we could not do it.

4. If the earth is getting warmer and it is bad, and it is our fault. Is there anything we can do to stop it? Sometimes there are things that you do that you can't reverse. If you cut off your thumb in a meat grinder it is game over. We can't answer the first question--let alone the fourth. So anything that people propose as a solution is simply a method of using pseudo science to control a population.

The person I talked with is a leader in his field. I trust his word far over some politician's, who has been shown again and again to be using fraudulent science to advance his own pocket book.

It sounds like you talked to someone who actually has a clue. There are additional logical/epistemological problems with the global warming theory and the scientific process. Some people, even relatively smart people, learn one method of reasoning and think it's a tool which can solve every problem. They never really understood the tool and it's limitations. e.g. in order to use the scientific process you must be able to observe something, it's a requirement and there are plenty of examples of things which are not observable or only pseudo-observable.

tursiops wrote:The article linked to is as bad about science and NASA as most articles are about gun owners. The article is crap.

However, global warming is not a debate, it is a fact. Get over it. It is not something you can choose to believe in or not, unlike the Easter Bunny. It is a fact that you can choose to understand or not.

Its funny, when I was a kid it was global cooling that was going to kill us all, and that was the 1980's.

Earths mean temperature is cyclical, we had a miniature ice age ending in the 17th century, IF temps are rising again might this not just be a natural correction?

The other thing that irks me is focusing on CO2, which is actually a terrible at trapping solar radiation (heat) anyway. Pre-human Earth had almost 20 times the ppm of CO2 and was doing fine until it got whacked by an asteroid.

The largest human contribution to global warming is factory ranching and methane (21 times better at retaining heat than CO2).

Kreutz wrote:Its funny, when I was a kid it was global cooling that was going to kill us all, and that was the 1980's.

Earths mean temperature is cyclical, we had a miniature ice age ending in the 17th century, IF temps are rising again might this not just be a natural correction?

The other thing that irks me is focusing on CO2, which is actually a terrible at trapping solar radiation (heat) anyway. Pre-human Earth had almost 20 times the ppm of CO2 and was doing fine until it got whacked by an asteroid.

The largest human contribution to global warming is factory ranching and methane (21 times better at retaining heat than CO2).

There is no way possible to measure man's contribution to changes to CO2, Methane and the various other gases that make up our atmosphere. For example Kreutz mentioned factory ranching, but how much methane was given off by the huge herds of buffalo that used to roam this country? They are ruminants like cattle. How much CO2 is prevented from being released to the atmosphere when we fight wild fires? You would think stopping a fire from burning millions of acres would stop the release of massive quantities of CO2. One of the primary components in California Smog is Ozone, If chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are so good at breaking it down, why didn't all the hairspray used in California break down the smog? My favorite thing is how people think the melting of the polar ice will affect the oceans levels, most of the polar ice is already floating, some at Antarctica is still on land, but much of it is in the water already. Fill a glass with ice, add water until the glass is almost full, the ice is above the rim of the glass. As it melts does the glass overflow? No, it's level doesn't change. It sweats by cooling the air just next to the glass and condenses the moisture from that air condensing it on the outside of the glass. The shifting of the Tectonic plates will have a much greater impact on the change in shore lines and sea level. I am not saying we aren't contributing to the change, but that our impact is probably infinitely small on the scale of what is happening.

GrumpyMSG, it is not the melting of sea ice that is the problem for sea level rise. It is the expansion of the sea water itself as it warms. It doesn't take much warming, because there is so much water. The doomsday scenario is Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets that slide into the ocean; not likely, but that is where the really big and fast numbers come from. But we can't ignore the slow rises either, especially for port facilities. Big bucks to rebuild those puppies.

Kreutz wrote:
The largest human contribution to global warming is factory ranching and methane (21 times better at retaining heat than CO2).

Whew...

For a minute there, I thought you were gonna say "The largest human contribution to global warming is Bush's Baked Beans"....

grumpyMSG wrote:There is no way possible to measure man's contribution to changes to CO2, Methane and the various other gases that make up our atmosphere.

Its inferred from ice core samples. You can can compare the ppm of say, sulfur dioxide in the say, Pleistocene era to those of today. its not exact, but its roughly how comparisons between the past and present are made.

For example Kreutz mentioned factory ranching, but how much methane was given off by the huge herds of buffalo that used to roam this country? They are ruminants like cattle.

Best I could find was from wikipedia (sigh), which says about 1.3-1.5 billion bessies out there, no way the Plains supported even one thousandth of that. Plus we feed em grain, not their natural diet.

I HEART GLOBAL WARMING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tursiops opinion = homer simpson science

I am MAN! Hear me squeak!

I can haz power to change climate at will! All your dollars are mine.

Hand over the gold too...

tursiops wrote:GrumpyMSG, it is not the melting of sea ice that is the problem for sea level rise. It is the expansion of the sea water itself as it warms. It doesn't take much warming, because there is so much water. The doomsday scenario is Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets that slide into the ocean; not likely, but that is where the really big and fast numbers come from. But we can't ignore the slow rises either, especially for port facilities. Big bucks to rebuild those puppies.

No actually that is not the doomsday scenario. If it was it would be a relief--factories can be moved, as can port facilities. The doomsday scenario as far western civilization and global temps goes is what happened about 800-1000 years ago when after a period warm weather (even warmer than today) the temps quickly and sharply dropped off. What happened--crop failures, disease, and disaster. If you want something to be scared of climate wise that is it. That is the thing that will cause death and destruction in the world in fairly short order. An American corn crop failure would cause untold suffering around the world--and that is just one crop.

There are many ecological problems we have going on right now--deforestation in third world countries, the encroaching desert conditions on many major cities in Asia, poor farming techniques in Africa turning fertile ground into sand, major problems with our burning food to turn it into fuel. Serious drought conditions across TX, so bad that towns are disappearing. All these things are problems and I could get behind looking a fixing any of them or talking about solutions to any of them. However, the evidence for global warming (even if it really ever was a concern) has been so tainted with academic dishonesty, lying politicians using it to advance their own agendas, and even out right fraud that I can't even begin to get behind worry about potential ice melts in Greenland when we have real life problems going on right now..

mamabearCali wrote:

tursiops wrote:GrumpyMSG, it is not the melting of sea ice that is the problem for sea level rise. It is the expansion of the sea water itself as it warms. It doesn't take much warming, because there is so much water. The doomsday scenario is Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets that slide into the ocean; not likely, but that is where the really big and fast numbers come from. But we can't ignore the slow rises either, especially for port facilities. Big bucks to rebuild those puppies.

No actually that is not the doomsday scenario. If it was it would be a relief--factories can be moved, as can port facilities. The doomsday scenario as far western civilization and global temps goes is what happened about 800-1000 years ago when after a period warm weather (even warmer than today) the temps quickly and sharply dropped off. What happened--crop failures, disease, and disaster. If you want something to be scared of climate wise that is it. That is the thing that will cause death and destruction in the world in fairly short order. An American corn crop failure would cause untold suffering around the world--and that is just one crop.

There are many ecological problems we have going on right now--deforestation in third world countries, the encroaching desert conditions on many major cities in Asia, poor farming techniques in Africa turning fertile ground into sand, major problems with our burning food to turn it into fuel. Serious drought conditions across TX, so bad that towns are disappearing. All these things are problems and I could get behind looking a fixing any of them or talking about solutions to any of them. However, the evidence for global warming (even if it really ever was a concern) has been so tainted with academic dishonesty, lying politicians using it to advance their own agendas, and even out right fraud that I can't even begin to get behind worry about potential ice melts in Greenland when we have real life problems going on right now..

I'm stunned that hate of Al Gore seems to blind folks, and that allegations of academic dishonesty are more important than whether there actually was any dishonesty! Is it not important that five investigations have cleared those academics of any charges?

As to the rapid cooling a millennium ago. Yes, a serious problem. But the issue was not so much the cooling as the rapidity. We do not and cannot adjust to rapid changes. That's why the melting of the ice sheets and the sliding into the ocean is a doomsday scenario....the changes occur so rapidly, that people and facilities in low-lying coastal areas can't adjust.

i think another doomsday scenario is more likely, however. We stick our head in the sand and claim nothing is happening with climate change that we need to worry about, because we don't want to think that Al Gore and scientists might be right. That would violate our principles and values, somehow.

You mention five ecological problems you could get behind fixing. Three of those are related to the population explosion, two to climate change. We just don't know which of those underlying factors is going to get us first. And, of course, we are definitely the cause of the former factor, and IMHO are at least contributing to the latter.

Sir, when study after study after study is shown to be either cherry picked or outright fraudulent, eventually you cease to trust any study coming out on such topics. When those involved in the studies have something financial to gain from a study coming out a certain way--that is at minimum bad academics. My dad always told me if you lay down with dogs you will get fleas. Maybe a few of the studies have merit and should be examined, but they are going to have a devil of a time persuading those of us who have seen such studies used to advance political agendas at great cost to the freedom and wallets of Americans.

However as I have said before I have talked with people (in depth with one person) who have studied this and read every climate study that comes out and they have told me the evidence is inconclusive as to whether or not the temp of the earth as a whole is actually warming--not to mention whether that has anything to do with humanity. I don't have time to read every journal that comes out so I trust their expertise. Again I will note that the friend I have that says this is not conservative by a long shot. He is very moderate and middle of the road and even leans liberal on many topics.

The ecological problems I mentioned have many causes, most of them dealing with using very old farming and ranching methods that should have been changed out decades or even centuries ago. The other few are likely cyclical as we have seen serious droughts in TX before, this one is just hitting when the population of TX is rising in general. I have heard the stories my grandfather told about the years they had to tote water from the stream just to keep their garden alive and then even the stream that they had began to dry up. Same thing--just 80 years later.

tursiops wrote: That's why the melting of the ice sheets and the sliding into the ocean is a doomsday scenario...

Sorry man, not the way fluid mechanics work.

The ice sheets are already in the ocean; always have been. Whether they are there in a liquid or a solid state has the exact same effect on fluid displacement, namely the oceans will be at the same level they were.

Land-locked glaciers would contribute to a rise in sea-level, but it'd be rather minimal as not all of the run-off would make it to the seas.

The oceans are already huge, a few extra hundred million gallons of water is inconsequential.