Steamboat Today: Challenge - Calling ALL CO2 Hysteria Pimps

kielbasa (Matthew Stoddard) says...

LOL! Long-answer short: educated guess.

May 29, 2007 at 7:23 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

kielbasa (Matthew Stoddard) says...

First logical step- How did anyone take the temperature 420,000 years ago? Was it measured in Fahrenheit, Celsuis or Kelvin at that time?

(wait for it...)

May 29, 2007 at 5:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

Sbvor, I am not a scientist, and I don't play one on the internet, BUT:

I can tell that you know next to nothing about science, because the first thing you learn in any science class is the scientific method, under which you develop a theory from observations, and then test the theory, and if it passes enough tests, you accept the theory. If the tests are repeatable and concise, the theory becomes widely accepted, which is the best you can hope for. Nobody even remotely familiar with the study of science would claim that they 'have proven, beyond any doubt' anything scientific, so this assertion alone discredits your ability to analyze this. (for what it's worth, this is the same argument the creationists use against evolution, that it's only a theory, so we shouldn't teach it, which also displays complete ignorance of the scientific method)

As for global warming, I personally don't have a theory on global warming's causes, or time to read your articles or look up any other ones, but I do have a question for you:

You anti-global-warming people are so vehement in your protests, and so eager to beat your chests about your right to pollute, and 'I don't like Al Gore so I am going to use more energy' and all that. What I don't get, and maybe you can shed some light on, is why does the fact that you don't believe that theory mean you want to pollute more, just in spite of it. Even if man-made global warming is not a real phenomenon, pollution is still bad-our atmosphere and resources are finite, so when you use things, they are gone, and when you spew more pollution than you need to, it is being trapped by our atmosphere. People kill themselves by closing the garage door and running their car, and yet your side of this debate insists that you should pollute more because you don't believe in global warming. WHY??? Over long periods of time, is pollution trapped in our atmosphere a good thing? Is it any different than committing suicide by closing the garage door to trap the fumes? I don't think so, and I am curious why your team apparently does.

November 20, 2007 at 6:12 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Bubba,

In fact, pollution is way down. Reduction of emissions in this country has contributed to the drought in Northern Africa, because fewer condensation nuclei have been carried there by the jet stream.

The climate is like the stock market. There are so many variables involved that you can only describe what it DID, not what it will do.

I've seen a lot of shows on Science and Discovery and all that which show that there are cosmic as well as planetary effects on the climate. The way all these things interact is a tough problem to solve, and even tougher to predict.

One thing I know for sure if you can trust the fossil record; it used to be a lot warmer on Earth than it is now, during the time of the dinosaurs, and there was no industry at all.

When the climate warms up, CO2 production increases. The reason we have more CO2 from industry is that we have a warmer climate which produces more food for people who then go out and create things which cause additional CO2 and other pollutants.

By the way, the evidence for Creation is all around us. This computer, the keyboard, the internet, the Steamboat Pilot, all the housing (affordable or not) and vehicles were created by US. No other creature on the Earth has the power to create in such volume and diversity. If God created us in His image, then wouldn't we also be creative?

If something as complex as a living cell can arise by chance in a mud puddle, then why don't we find objects as simple as bricks in mud puddles and 2x4s growing in the forest?

Geological and cosmic effects are far greater than anything man can do. I'm all for reducing pollution, including recapturing C02 as we produce it and turning it into methane as a renewable fuel. That way, we recycle the carbon we emit. It can be done, and the byproducts are valuable, and it's all renewable. With oil at $95 a barrel, it's also economically feasible. The thing is, we'd better use our creativity to adapt as the climate changes, because a single cosmic event can offset anything we as humans on this planet might try to do.

Hybrid vehicles, domestic solar energy (meaning each house), and coal-fired power plants which recapture the CO2 and turn it into methane are all viable solutions to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and do something about CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but we're not going to control cosmic and geologic factors which have led to climate change in the past.

The dinosaurs died out because they did not have the ability to adapt to the changing climate fast enough to save themselves. We might be able to do it because of our inborn talent for creativity. Is that creativity a product of evolution, or did it come from our Creator? And, if it came from evolution, why didn't the dinosaurs develop a technology during their time on the planet, which (if you believe the fossil record) was hundreds of millions of years longer than our 200,000 or so years as humans.

November 20, 2007 at 8:26 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

Sbvor, since you apparently did not understand my first post, I DON"T CARE about global warming, nor do I have an opinion as to whether it's man made, by carbon dioxide or something else, or whether it is a cyclical thing, or whatever. My question to you is why do you anti-al-gore people who care so much about proving that global warming is not caused by man insist on using your belief as a reason to pollute more? Pollution, not limited to carbon dioxide, is poison to us and our planet, even if it does not cause global warming, so why use your scientific surveys that you incessantly cite to justify poisoning the earth more? Even if global warming is caused by something totally out of our hands, pollution is still bad. That was my point. Try to understand it.

Also, the garage analogy was not meant to imply that we will eventually all choke to death on vehicular exhaust, as much as underscoring that pollution is poison. Even if I never succumb to it, it is still poison, and I don't want to ingest any more of it than I have to, any more than I will put small doses of arsenic on my dinner, just because it isn't enough to kill me.

Do you get it? I don't care about what your scientist says, or al gore's scientist says about global warming. I just wanted to point out that your rant about proving beyond the benefit of the doubt only proved that you don't understand the scientific process, and to question why you people insist on polluting more just because it doesn't cause global warming.

November 20, 2007 at 7:24 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

And ID-

That is an interesting take on creationism- Man created the built environment, so the bible must be right.

By the way, according to creationists, the fossil record is also a hoax- god created the earth in 6 days, back about 6000 years ago. 200,000 years of Humans? Nope. Dinosaurs, Nope.

Now to answer your question about bricks and 2x4s: Bricks do not evolve, they are rocks. They don't breed, so there is no natural selection. Although, I would bet money that a perfectly brick shaped rock has naturally fallen from a cliff somewhere at least once, probably even in this state. But 2x4s, now that is a harder one to answer. Humor me for a moment and suppose that a pine tree had a mutation that caused it to grow as a 2x4, rather than a round trunk. Comparing this tree to the other trees out there, with round trunks that taper towards the ground, it would not be as stable, and thus would not be able to reach as far towards the sky without tipping over. Thus, it would either stay below it's cousins in the forest, and not get enough sun, and die off, or it would grow too tall and break off. Either scenario would result in it being less likely to reproduce, so eventually, through natural selection, this mutation would die off. Similarly, same scenario, 2x4 shaped tree. Caveman walks up, says 'hey if I cut down all of those trees and arranged them 16 inches apart, I could have a much nicer house than the cave I'm currently in.' They all get cut down, can't reproduce, and therefore, we don't have them. Either way, a tree shaped like a 2x4 is at a reproductive disadvantage to normal trees, so this mutation would not last.

Since I am not sure I understand your hybrid view of creationism which allows for a fossil record, please explain: Do you believe that everything went extinct during the last glacial period/iceage/whatever, or that something survived? I was always under the impression that some species had managed to survive, and that we are descended from one of those- in which case, some 'dinosaurs' were able to come up with the technology, whether it was hiding in a warm cave, wrapping the skin of a less fortunate dinosaur around them or whatever. Incidentally, maybe that is why we have advanced so far in a short time period compared to dinosaurs, because we are descended from some of the only species that survived the ice age.

November 20, 2007 at 7:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

sbvor, you crack me up.

I will go head to head with you, me breathing oxygen from a cannister, you breathing from a car's tailpipe, and see who gets poisoned first.

But that's not the point. First of all, I do not, nor have I, advocated regulation in favor of curbing pollution, I am a firm believer in the free market. You are putting words in my mouth by assuming I am for regulation. All I am wondering is why you people feel that you SHOULD pollute because you find scientific theories that discredit global warming theory. Whether or not pollution is the source of global warming, I still don't understand why polluting more is the response your team comes up with every time.

And speaking of scientifically illiterate, you still have not addressed my question about your apparent disregard of the scientific method. I maintain that your continued assertion that providing links to various scientific studies (or other threads you posted in) 'proves' anything is scientifically flawed, because using the scientific method, theories are not proved- at best they fail to be disproved enough times that they become accepted theories. So every time you say that you have proved something, you are only proving your ignorance of science. Perhaps you should follow the advice in your last post more often?

November 20, 2007 at 9:27 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Bubba,

An all-powerful God could have created the world to look any way he wanted. The universe could have been created to look like it's billions of years old, and the fossils could have been created in the ground to test our faith.

Evolutionists claim that, given enough time, anything can occur by chance. If that's true, we should be able to, indeed, walk around and pick up nicely shaped bricks from mud puddles. There should be Rembrandts and Picassos laying around underground, waiting to be dug up and hung on the wall.

If you went back and took an airplane starting with the Wright Flyer and buried a new design from each year, waited a million years, and then dug them up, you'd have a perfect "fossil record" documenting the evolution of airplanes. All the evidence would be there, just like it is with the bones.

The final, critical test of evolutionist theory will be for mankind to gather the elements found on the primordial Earth (according to the scientific theories) and create one living cell capable of reproducing itself without using any previously living matter. That ought to be very simple, given what we know about life and our ability to manipulate matter down to the molecular level. One little 'ol cyanobacterium out of the lab would prove everything, wouldn't it?

According to the theory, man evolved from some mammal ancestor which survived the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs. That's only been 65,000,000 years. The dinosaurs had 186,000,000 years, or 120,000,000 years more than it's taken us, to evolve into an intelligent species able to create technology. So, you tell me: Why aren't we digging up dinosaur fossils sitting in houses and automobiles that got caught in the last great extinction?

Are you saying that humans are here because we just got really, really lucky and the beneficial mutations that made us intelligent only took about 2,000,000 years from the time "man" first arose in the fossil record? If that's true, the dinosaurs had really lousy luck. They should have had 120,000,000 years of culture and civilization behind them when that asteroid hit if their rate of mutation was the same as ours.

So, if you wanna 'splain US, using the theory of evolution, how do you 'splain the failure of earlier life forms to evolve intelligence and produce technology given almost three times as long for it to happen?

So-called "religious" creationists spoil their argument by bringing in dogma -- like that Noah took dinosaurs on the Ark, but they all died out, like the unicorn, in the "new" world left by the flood.

So, I'll close by asking you to provide the fossil record that led us to the "grape tomato." (Which was created by gene splicing, in the lab, by a process some would call "intelligent design.")

November 21, 2007 at 2:01 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

Bubba,
You'll have to forgive ID. He deduces that if an uber intelligent jet jocky engineer couldn't figure it out there has to be a god greater than himself to have manifest it. Natural Selection is the perfect engineer and that moshes his mellon.
Happy Thanksgiving!

November 21, 2007 at 7:08 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Hadley,

Au contraire, mon ami. Part of knowing what DID happen is knowing what did NOT happen, and why.

We do, indeed, have proof of natural selection. We also have proof that human intelligence arose in far less time than the dinosaurs lived on Earth. So why the difference? Current theory says that human intelligence evolved because we ate meat and provided enough protein for the brain to grow. The 80,000 calories riding on most shapely female bottoms is there because that's what it takes for the brain of the fetus to develop during the third trimester.

Some dinosaurs ate meat too, didn't they? That's what the fossil record says. So how come they did not develop larger brains and become intelligent and develop a culture and a technology?

There are species older than man which have not "evolved" in any meaningful way. Crocodiles and sharks are good examples. These species shared real estate with dinosaurs, according to the fossil record. Why haven't they also evolved and changed in the last 65 million years?

You've got to fill in the holes in all these theories. Grape tomatos are a very recent development created by man. Maybe such intervention by a higher form of life is responsible for the advent of the human species too.

November 22, 2007 at 4:14 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

ID,
My jab was tongue in cheek. I was ribbing type a fellows such as yourself who try to reverse engineer everything to inrreducible complexity. No hors d'oeuvres for you at the next Mensa meeting mon bonhomme!
And again I wish you and yours a Happy Thankgiving!

November 22, 2007 at 4:51 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Hadley,

I do, in fact, qualify for Mensa based upon SAT scores from my junior year of high school, but have not joined. I only discovered my eligibility recently, on a dare.

It's enough to understand why so many people don't understand me. Being smarter than 98% of the population explains a lot . . .

What I'm looking for is that 1 out of 100 in the room who is smarter than ME! I need to ask some questions.

November 22, 2007 at 5:32 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Sbvor,

And your bore-sighted view of natural selection prevents you from considering anything else.

We have derailed natural selection through conscious action. Saving sick kids who would have died from genetically trasmitted weaknesses has, guess what, resulted in growing numbers of genetically transmitted diseases. We managed to kill off millions of physically fit men during WW-II, leaving the 4-F types at home to reproduce. So, now we have a bunch of homosexuals, hippies and misfits to deal with that would have never had a chance to arise in the population if the strongest men had been able to stay home and reproduce with the most desirable females.

Almost all domesticated animals and certainly most breeds of dogs are a result of intentional breeding, not natural selection.

The reason we have a "missing link" between modern humans and more primitive ancestors could very well be a result of genetic engineering or selective breeding. We werern't there. We don't know what happened.

If you will break out of your blind belief in Darwinism as the ONLY process working to produce our present day world, you might find some interesting questions which really have no definitive answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly valid response to the question of how we got here.

We know how Golden Retrievers got here. Why are you so sure that a similar process did not produce modern humans?

November 23, 2007 at 8:48 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Sbvor,

Oh, okay, I did not assume that Homo Sapiens is the final step in our evolution. Maybe not.

However, how about sharks and crocodiles? They stopped evolving long ago. Modern man has not really changed much in the past 25,000 to 50,000 years, right? We know that from preserved prehistoric human remains.

Our ability cannot place us above the God who created us, if that's what happened. It only supports my point that we are made in the image of a creator, which means, we were created with the ability to create. Maybe our genetic adaptation ceased when we were given the ability to change our environment rather than simply adapt to it.

Let's talk about something more relevant, like, how to produce methane directly from the CO2 in the air and hydrogen in water using solar power to obtain a "zero sum" carbon cycle for vehicular fuel. Zero net CO2 from vehicles should be a big deal, right? If NASA can do it robotically on Mars to produce methane fuel for a return trip, then surely we can do it here much more easily. The raw materials are essentially free, and methane fueled hybrids make it practical for virtually all forms of non-commercial transportation.

November 23, 2007 at 11:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

Makes sense to me.

November 26, 2007 at 10:29 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

sbvor,

Maybe you don't want to be able to make fuel in your back yard using air, water and sunlight, but I do.

CO2 is highly relevant as a natural resource. The beauty is that, since all the lunatics think we've got too much of it. using it up will not cause a problem. They can't complain about it, and in fact, should help fund it.

November 25, 2007 at 12:55 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

ID

This one goes to your argument about how life is impossible to replicate currently from inorganic compounds.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news...

For a rebuttle to the rest of your argument I would like to direct you to Richard Dawkin's book "The God Delusion". If you have the time and the inclination to read this book, you may find yourself gaining access to the 2% of the population that are seeking answers to greater questions than you are asking. I am glad that you are willing to ask questions. It shows that you still have capacity to learn regardless of your entrenched and highly educated beliefs.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Ri...

November 25, 2007 at 5:21 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Hadley,

You're not that Wiccan that used to bug me at work, are you? The one whose mind I blew when I suggested that mabye a willow tree WAS created in the image of God -- that maybe EVERYTHING is created in the image of God, but we're the only ones who write about it.

People who study higher mathematics sometimes discover that there are abstract relationships which seem to reveal the laws of the universe. For example, the fact that integrating over a function (a line on a chart where there is no more than one "y" value for each "x" value) gives the area under the curve is one heck of a coincidence. Mathematicians were forced to invent the "limit" to explain why calculus works, because they had to come up with some explanation other than, "That's how God created the Universe."

A skillfully crafted plot that leads to a surprise ending is something that the playwright sets out to produce from the beginning. You don't just sit down and write until some random series of keystrokes produces the final scene.

Many years ago, I was going through a bad time. I needed a friend to talk to, just to know that someone cared. The telephone rang, and it was my friend, calling to ask how I was. The thing is, she was over 4,000 miles away. A stack of papers on a shelf over her desk had fallen, and when it was all over, only a single sheet, with my telephone number written on it, remained in her lap.

Chance? Sure it was chance. But WHY did it happen just at that time, "by chance."

If each of us only spent half as much time celebrating the wonders all around us as trying to explain how there was no higher being invovled in the process, think of what we could accomplish. And, just between us, the people spending their time trying to prove that God exists (the "creation science" buffoons) are even more foolish than the ones who are trying to prove that God does not exist. Either way, we'll never know in this life.

If I was superstitious, I might think that Satan was using this to sap our creative energies away from solving real problems which we CAN solve.

So what if your little book claims that my brain is wired to "expect" a God? My radio is wired to resonate with the proper frequencies, because otherwise, there would be no reception.

How about getting your evolutionist buddies to come up with an "evolutionary advantage" as a result of an inherent belief in a higher power. If it was not something that made us more fit to survive, then why do us lucky modern humans have it?

Guilt, sorrow and remorse over wrongs done to other people are real feelings which many of us experience. They are not things we "learn" any more than we learn to feel love. I think that if survival of the fittest was the only natural motivation given to us by evolution, we would not feel guilt or remorse. I mean, geez, why NOT kill grandma and eat her if we're starving? Isn't that what a survivor would do?

November 25, 2007 at 6:25 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

Hadley,

I read the RMN article. So what? We can replicate DNA in the laboratory and amplify it millions of times to identify criminals from something as small as the DNA found in a single cell.

We cannot take that replicated DNA and make a living cell from it. That's the test.

November 25, 2007 at 6:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

I am not a Wiccan. I subscribe to no religion or belief system. In fact, the only thing I believe in is doubt. I don't have the answer to lifes great question and I surely won't gain access to it in what is left of my short time composed of this carbon structure. Who knows, you may be right after all. And yes, I am capable of understanding higher math and other abstract concepts in the context of my ignorance. Regardless the thing that I am trully comfortable arguing with you is your logic. It fails on many levels when you factor "faith" out of the equation. So do many aspects of quantum mechanics as I'm sure you'll be quick to point out. So be it, I would rather look for proof in all of its subjective glory. I'll believe it when I see it as opposed to I'll see it when I believe it. Try the book and give me your feedback. With your superior intellect, what are you afraid of? Maybe God is asking me to test your faith? I look forward to your input and perhaps my own edification on the subject via your feedback.

November 25, 2007 at 6:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Hadleyburg_Press (anonymous) says...

ID,
Reread "Lord of the Flies", by William Golding. Subjective allegory of course, but very entertaining.

November 25, 2007 at 6:56 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

ID, I guess I am an 'evolutionary buddy.' So how's this: Without guilt, remorse, sorrow, we would not have a society- if people did not have the feeling of 'right and wrong,' and experience some level of discomfort after committing a 'wrong,' there would be no culture, we would just be animals fighting eachother for scraps of food. So one might say that the reason our society has been able to have so many achievements is the advantage we have vs populations of animals, in that we can congregate, divide tasks, etc., without 'killing grandma.' So, in a way, these religions that have instilled this concept of 'right and wrong' ARE an evolutionary advantage, because without that feeling, whether it is inherited or learned (a totally different debate), the scientists that created our current technology may have been too busy trying to find their next meal, or worse yet, being the next meal, to invent anything.

How's that for an evolutionary advantage?

And by the way, your assertion that our evolution started when the dinosaurs went extinct is overlooking the fact that the mammalian ancestor that outlived the dinosaurs didn't spontaneously come to life at the beginning of the ice age, so really, t=0 is eons before you are claiming. And one might say that the extinction of the dinosaurs is the lucky event that led to all of this, because rather than hiding from big scary predators, our ancestors had time to sit around and think, and delegate duties like 'priest' and 'scientist.'

and sbovr, sorry for changing your topic here- my point is still that CO2 is irrelevant, all the other crap coming out of exhaust pipes on vehicles and powerplants is poison, so why use the fact that you don't believe in man-made global warming as an excuse to pollute more than necessary.

November 25, 2007 at 6:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

bubba (anonymous) says...

OK, fair enough, I just lumped you in with many others who take the time to bash global warming theories- as I said before, I don't claim to know anything about it, but it seems most people who dispute it (and I perhaps unfairly lumped you in with these guys) make the next step to say 'so I'm gonna get in my V-10 pickup to go buy some 2-stroke oil for my snowmobile and crank up the AC in my house, because Al Gore is a Wacko....' And then complain when fuel costs go up...

Interestingly, we probably wouldn't even need to have fuel efficiency discussions if the US government hadn't subsidized Oil interests and auto makers for so long- government involvement hurts on both sides...

November 25, 2007 at 8:07 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

id04sp (anonymous) says...

All,

My whole point in all of this is that there are many things we cannot know. Lots of those things really don't make any difference anyway.

There are many "systems" which are stable over certain ranges of values, but break down in a non-linear fashion outside those limits. For example, the further your body tilts from the vertical, the less you are able to determine your actual angle of tilt by reliance upon the inner ear and other non-visual sensors.

We really don't know the point at which CO2, water vapor, methane, solar output, ice cover, etc., will cause our climate to go into a hotter or colder phase. The important thing to remember is that science is wrong as often as it's right, but we just don't hear so much about the "wrong" answers that come along before the "right" answers are determined.

Give your kid a tool kit and send him out to remove one nut or bolt from your car. Sometimes, the missing piece will never make a difference and will never be noticed. Other times, the car won't start, or maybe a wheel will fall off. This bore-sighted fear of C02 invites us to do something, but we don't know whether the result will be favorable in the long run.

One thing is certain. Any national program that seriously reduces C02 emissions is going to be BAD for Steamboat Springs and for skiing in the Rockies overall. Things will get more expensive, and people will stay home instead of coming out here to ski, and that will be the end of skiing for all of us.

November 26, 2007 at 9:33 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Oswald (anonymous) says...

Sbovr,
Wow! You are really convinced that global warming is a fallacy! It's good to have convictions. It's also good to examine all of the information available and make an informed decision. I'd like to spend the time to read all of the posts on this page. But I work for a living. And I have to finish Don Quixote first, so I can bring it back to the library (although you may be just as entertaining). I'm glad to see that you are keeping most of your incendiary, convoluted, rhetoric confined in an appropriate space, not polluting the forums meant for community discussion of specific issues. I look forward to future conversations. And to reading your blog.

November 26, 2007 at 9:36 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )

Oswald (anonymous) says...

Take a look at the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere over the last 500 - 20,000 years. I wish that I had a link to a graph here, but you are the "expert". You can tell where the industrial revolution is without looking at dates. This is not to prove the human influenced "global warming" argument, but Carbon dioxide is poisonous to people and most of the other living things on the earth. Great.
You wouldn't catch me dead watching CNN. If Al Gore was a reliable source for information, then he probably would have been recognized by a prestigious organization founded and operated to recognize people of exceptional merit ( like the Nobel foundation). I'll get back to you as I digest more of this.

November 27, 2007 at 4:33 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )