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Admin
Fortunately the moose also eats vegetation which, in growing, sequesters those same greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Driving a car, on the other hand, releases gases that had been sequestered for millions of years.
Earth's climate has changed throughout geological history. Carbon dioxide was once at much higher levels than today. It won't kill all life if the level goes up again and the climate warms. It might even increase the Earth's ability to sustain human population.
But the pain is in the change. Relocation of the world's fertile zones and deserts and sea levels will disrupt all that mankind has built based upon the present climate. There will be disasters (from the human perspective) that dwarf the Dust Bowl and Katrina. So even if climate change is natural, it's in our interest to take economically justified steps to prevent it.
Admin
what the heck... we have no Chinese around here except me?
this one sounds like Japanese -> Chinese machine translation to me
Possibly English -> Chinese Translation?
Still English -> Chinese machine translation but "thread" in the context should be "討論串" instead of "线程", and like you said, "WTF" couldn't translate properly.
besides, the "ether lord fucking net" probably translated from "Ethernet 主幹", which literally means "Ethernet main-trunk".
since "主" can be translated to "main" or "lord", and same goes for "幹" to "trunk" or "fuck", the machine cutely decided to split Ethernet into 2 words and insert "lord fucking" into the middle! XDD
captcha: "ewww", my chingish sucks
Admin
So, I assume I can keep using the WordWeb software if I lease an SUV? What if I finance it? Then can I use the software until I've paid off the loan?
Admin
OK. Let's take that at face value. Where does the Moose get the CO2 to fart out? From the food it eats. What does the Moose eat? Plants. Where do the plants get Carbon to build up bulk? The atomsphere. What is the net contribution of the Moose + the Plant to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere? Right about zero.
Now, where does the car get it's CO2? From underground reserves of crude oil. Not quite the same closed cycle, is it?
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Kyoto is about reducing CO2 emissions. Even if Europeans do not accomplish the Kyoto goals of CO2 reduction completely (we still have time until 2012), it's still a fact that per capita emissions of CO2 in Europe are less than half those in the USA.
There is some controversy over diesel soot emissions, but modern diesel engines actually produce less CO2 than gasoline engines of equal power.
I recognize that it will be a long hard road to effect lasting change in Europe, but most US-Americans have not even made the first step.
Even if your accusation that Europeans are self-righteous about this was correct, it would still be nothing more than an argument ad hominem or an instance of the two wrongs make a right fallacy.
Even if my neighbor is a lazy idiot, that does not justify if I am one, too, and it does not justify not taking action.
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Now you're just taking the piss, with the JPEG screenshots, aren't you?
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Yes, that's the idea. If there is less demand for air travel, then the supply of flights will decrease. Perhaps instead of seven nonstop JFK->LAX flights a day, we might see three or four.
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While this is all true, a hybrid non-SUV still gets more gas mileage than a hybrid SUV. While anti-SUV zealotry is perhaps a little bit out of hand, the fact remains that the number of people purchasing SUVs is gigantic, and way out of proportion with the number of people who derive a real benefit from having a four-wheel drive all-terrain vehicle. For most people, they're little more than status symbols and vanity vehicles.
Attaching a little stigma to buying an SUV might well prompt some people who would otherwise buy a 9mpg SUV to buy a 30Mpg sedan, or someone who might buy a 30Mpg hybrid SUV to buy a 50Mpg hybrid sedan. You may not hit the people with the most inefficient cars, but any success in such a campaign would have significant net effects on emissions, given the large share of the market they occupy today.
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"Registered disabled"? Beg pardon?
I guess this is an attempt to justify driving a motherfucker farm lorry (SUV) with a disabled badge. Yeah -- like a disabled driver or passenger can clamber into or out of a stupid fucking clown monster truck (SUV). Pull the other one! It's got bells on and it isn't made of wood!
On the other hand, you'd have to be mentally disabled to be hypnotized into buying something like a Ford Excursion or a bloody CHAV-rolet Suburban.
BMW X3 drivers, on the other hand (because they usually have two hands), cannot read. At least, that's the only conclusion I can draw, given the bad reviews it's received.
Assholes.
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Well, no, not really. Air travel is a necessity in our world, so you refusing to participate will not bring the industry crashing down. And if enough people stopped flying, all that would mean is that the large jumbo jets that transport hundreds of people for a relatively low cost (I think the math works out to around 100 mpg per person for a Boeing 747) would be replaced by small private jets (like Al Gore's) that transports only a few people for a relatively high cost per person.
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http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2007/04/vegans-vs-hybrids.html
So: perhaps WordWeb needs to update its license terms?Admin
I think this attaches a greater stigma to people who don't buy SUVs because it makes us all look like idiots like the guy who thought up this license.
There are a few other problems with this whole anti-SUV hysteria. First, they can carry more passengers, and there are people in situations where that is a necessity. Either they need a car that can hold 6 or more people or they will need to take two cars everywhere. Second, they only consume more fuel if driven the same amount. I imagine its not that uncommon for the lower mileage to make SUV owners more conscientious over how much they drive. If a SUV owner drives half as often because its too expensive to fill the tank, then he isn't going to consume any more fuel than the guy driving the car that gets twice the gas millage. Its not the car that really matters, its how much gas you end up putting in it.
I agree its retarded to buy an SUV and use it exclusively to commute to work and pick up the groceries. But its just as retarded to categorically declare them to be the work of the devil.
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Even if you take for granted that there is a need for air travel, surely you can't be arguing that none of it is discretional? Certainly, some face-to-face meetings could be conducted over the phone, a vacation could be taken closer to home?
I'm not sure what you're basing your conclusion about small private jets on, either. Currently, when a flight is undersold, it gets canceled, and the passengers distributed to other under-full flights. I don't see why jets would have to be made smaller given that it's certainly possible to reduce the number of flights per day between specific destinations.
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Except if you are a not eating the cows, then they are just living happy lives, farting away. And furthermore you are destroying plants which help reduce greenhouse gases. And all those beans you eat cause you to create more greenhouse gases yourself.
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I understand that there are legitimate uses for SUVs. I'm not sure that carrying around passengers is one of them, as minivans can carry more, and generally get better gas mileage, but certainly people who need to go off-road, or drive on bad roads in any kind of weather might need them.
I'm not claiming that all SUVs and SUV owners are evil. I'm claiming that there are a tremendous number of people buying them for nothing but a status symbol, and a little overt sneering might reduce that. If it stops being cool to own one, 90% of them will disappear off the roads, and that's huge.
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If people stop eating cows, there will stop being cows. Nobody will pay to raise giant herds of cattle if it is not profitable. Consider veganism to be a contribution to the reduction of the demand for beef.
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Actually I believe you used to have something similar yourselves. You know, the great transcontinental railroads, world-famous marvels of American engineering that opened up the continent and basically formed the backbone of the emerging superpower. Whatever happened to those?
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Once you no longer have enough passengers to fill one flight to or from a destination, you can no longer cut costs by cutting flights. You can only switch to a smaller (less fuel-efficient-per-passenger) airplane, or you can combine routes into a longer (less fuel-efficient-per-passenger) multistop flight.
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They're neither as fast as airplanes, nor as flexible as cars and trucks. Trains these days are used mainly for moving vast amounts of cargo from one place to another: the typical freight train is a mile long. Have you ever actually been to the US? I've found that most Europeans have no clue about how big the place is, or how far it is from one city to the next. To give you an idea, I'm in Spokane (population 250,000). The nearest city of similar size is Seattle (population 600,000), 300 miles away. That's about as far as from London to the border with Scotland.
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... or you can reduce the frequency of flights. Besides which, per-passenger emission reduction is not the overall goal, but rather total emissions reduction. I don't think it's a stretch to think that if there are not enough interested passengers to fill out 777's, then the air travel industry will be using drastically less fuel, total, than it is now.
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The fact that our trains are largely relegated to cargo hauling in the US is as much a result of rotting, underfunded infrastructure as anything else. The fact that the most significant point of interest near your city is 300 miles away would make a great reason to build a nice, high capacity point-to-point mass transit link between the two cities. Like a railroad. It's far enough that it's a pain to drive, but not far enough that you'd casually buy a plane ticket.
Well, it would make a great reason if the two cities had good enough public transit that you could actually get around once you got there.
Admin
And it's people who raise these cows even though the human metabolism works fine without beef or cow's milk.
Yes, some will be able to do just that (if they have the money), but not everyone as CO2 certificates will be made more scarce. You do realize that in a free market, prices increase if demand exceeds supply by a larger margin?
There is nothing to predict, the temperatures are already rising. This is an evidenced fact.
There is also in the scientific community no serious controversy over the primary cause of this increase. I recently read an open letter by some born-again US Christian who claimed that the temperature increase was due to the "Sun burning out" marking the end of the world. However, scientific evidence from the internationally renowned observatory in Davos, Switzerland, does not support this interpretation. In fact, the Sun's intensity has decreased slightly over the course of the last 20 years, on average (there are always small fluctuations). Solar irradiation used to be closely correlated to global average temperature, but no longer - now temperatures are rising even though radiation immissions are stagnant or slightly recessing. The only explanation for this fact that has stood up to significant scientific scrutiny is the greenhouse hypothesis. This does not "prove" that it's true, of course (for one, no scientific theory is ever considered "proven"), but this makes it very clearly the preferred explanation of the phenomenon.
We had (and to an extent still have) the same naysayers in Germany. As you may or may not know, Social Democrats and Greens won the 1998 election and formed the so-called red-green coalition. This coalition passed a number of laws including:
When these laws were passed, opposition parties claimed that they would have disastrous effects on the competitiveness of the German economy and cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.
At the same time, the Bush government has blocked almost all attempts to reduce the US' consumption of fossil fuels or subsidy renewable energies.
Incidentally, however, the German economy grew faster than the US economy in 2006, something which did not happen often in the last 20 years. The number of unemployed, which had temporarily increased, has recessed at an historically unprecedented rate. At the same time, Germany has acquired the first rank in the booming industry of wind power plants and the second rank in the equally booming industry of photovoltaics (after Japan). There are now hundreds of thousands of jobs related to renewable energies. Despite some turbulences, German car manufacturers are doing well.
Even though most of these effects cannot be causally attributed to the eco-laws, it is now very clear that the economical disaster that some had foretold has simply not happened. In fact, the ideological opposition to CO2-reduction policies that used to be characteristic of the largest opposition party at the time (and now government party), the CDU (Conservatives) has waned to a degree that the CDU member and German chancellor Angela Merkel has actually set more ambitious CO2 reduction goals than even the predecessor government.
Let's look at other industries, for example the automobile industry. I can count the number of Chrysler or any other US automobile brand vehicles that I see in Stuttgart, Germany, over the course of one month, on one hand. Now one could assume that since Germany is famous for its large automobile industry, Germans would simply preferentially buy German cars for patriotic reasons. To an extent that may be true, but by and large, one would be mistaken. I see plenty of cars from Japanese, French, Italian and even Korean producers. How come?
It's quite simple, actually. In Germany, US cars have a reputation (exceptions notwithstanding, this reputation is generally well-deserved, I might add) as gas-guzzling road monsters. Of course, not all Germans fit your clichè of the frog-kissing tree hugger, so why would that cause such bad market acceptance? And again the answer is simple: Due to the high gas taxes, most people simply cannot or do not want to afford cars that barely manage 22 mpg or less (in German terms, that woulld be about 11l/100km or more). Those who do don't usually like Dodges etc. for other reasons, but that's a different story.
As is mentioned in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", a majority of existing US car models do not even meet the Chinese energy efficiency standards (nor EU standards). The EU is intent on making the existing standards more strict. Other countries in the developed and the developing world (with the notable exception of the US) have done the same or expressed an intent to do so. In fact, some US states have done the same because they do not accept the eco-oblivious attitudes of the Bush government and don't want to wait for legislation on a federal scale.
Sanctions for violations can include outright bans (not likely) and, much more likely and already practised, stiff taxation. As a matter of fact, the German government is currently working on legislation that will increase owner taxes for cars that emit a lot of carbon dioxide (which is for practical purposes equivalent to saying energy-inefficient cars).
What does this mean for US car producers? If they continue to maintain their Reality Distortion Field and insist that CO2 or gas mileage are of no particular concern to their business, then this means further loss of market share in foreign markets and further marginalization on an international scale. Actually, the big US car producers have lost market share even in domestic markets as conflicts in the Middle East such as the Iraq War have caused gas prices to soar. If this effect is still less pronounced than in other countries, it is mostly due to gas taxes which are still very low in the US compared to other developed countries.
Let's take a look at another country's automobile industry - that of Japan. Japan has some of the strictest automobile energy efficiency laws. Japanese producers have consequently taken energy efficiency much more important than US producers. One Japanese producer, Toyota, has recently come forth with the world's first industry series hybrid cars which use a supplementary electrical engine to increase gas mileage. One of the two current models, the Toyota Prius, does over 50 mpg. Toyota's market share is on the rise in all major markets. Moreover, while US producers are fledgling, Toyota is the most profitable car producer worldwide.
To cut a long story short, even if the US government does not pass more strict eco-laws, the global changes in policy that have happened, do happen and will happen will still have a profound effect on the competitive viability of US industries. Those companies who have understood this will stay in the business. Those that do not will perish or at least fade into irrelevancy. Even a superpower like the US cannot live off its domestic market alone - not while you still need other countries to accept $$$$$$ in return for oil, anyway. A trade deficit as huge as that of the US can be maintained for some time while foreigners are still keen on the USD, but in the longer term, if the US cannot support its currency production with exported goods, the US dollar will lose further value and you will get less and less oil or any other good from a foreign country for every dollar that you spend. Some US polticians, the Imperialists, say that if foreign countries will not sell their resources to the US in sufficient quantities, then the US, being a superpower, can just wage a war and take said resources by force. But the Iraq War has shown how well that works after all. And let's not forget what happened to other empires such as the Roman Empire and the British Empire.
Not passing eco-laws will not prevent these forces from acting upon the US economy. On the contrary. While in the short term this makes it easier for US producers to slow down their decline by counter-balancing losses in foreign markets with relative stability in the domestic market, in the longer term this will merely disincent them from adapting to the inevitable changes. It's not hard to predict for the strategical mind which I consider myself to be what kind of damage control the US goverment would actually exercise if it were worth its money: To issue laws that force US industries to adapt to the changes in international demand at a high rate but still sufficiently slow to prevent them from getting into deep financial trouble.
If the US government does not do this, then all wishful thinking aside, only those manufacturers who have wisened up on these issues and changed their long-term strategies (such as, for instance, Intel Corp. since Paul Otellini has taken over, and Apple Computers) will continue to prosper or even be able to effect a comeback. (And of course, those manufacturers whose business does not have much to do with ecological questions will not be affected much.)
Which leads me to one last and personal point on this topic: I have heard others here in Germany advocate a boycott of US products as long as the US does not take steps to protect the climate. But I am the happy owner of a highly energy efficient PowerBook G4 and the soon-to-be very happy owner of a highly energy efficient Mac mini. My personal opinion is that if a company has learned its lessons, it makes no sense to punish it for what its government may or may not be doing. As far as Apple and post-Prescott-Intel are concerned, this is clearly the case. Both have been making fantastic and energy efficient products lately IMHO.
Which are about as plentiful as the number of geologists who think that the Earth was zapped into existence some 6000 years ago. (In addition to the fact that they all seem to have Big Contracts with Big Oil.)
Admin
Anyone see this on the second page? "under 100% a line soon the term, the data changes the hair rate into the 148800Mbps/each"
What's that for? 1488000 Mb/s? =o
And I like the sound of the "Deliver the way" feature on the third page: "Save to combine to turn the hair quickly"
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Admin
Obligatory bash.org quote: (http://bash.org/?428467)
<Dubious|Laptop> gotta go give a training session on Cisco. lates. <{pdX}aldawg> isn't cisco a form of oil they sell at supermarkets <Dubious|Laptop> thats Crisco. Its not often that you find someone who is both technology and culinary-impaired, but you have shattered that paradigm.
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Actually, it is possible, by modifying the vehicle with a ramp to take a wheelchair. You need the larger-sized vehicle for the capacity to take a wheelchair without having to get the person in and out of the chair. In some cases, a wheelchair-bound person can drive a car by driving a powered wheelchair up into the driver's position and then operating the suitably-modified car with their hands.
Being able to drive his wheelchair straight up a ramp into the passenger position has made enormous time savings in my sister and brother-in-law's life compared to how long it would otherwise take to get him into a vehicle -- from half an hour down to about two minutes.
Getting onto a bus or train in a wheelchair in England though ... So worthless you may as well not bother. The stations won't support it, the bus that turns up won't have a ramp or it will be busted, or the train will come in on the wrong platform (as they do) and that platform won't be accessible with a wheelchair, for example the one on the far side of a footbridge. You will have to get the points re-set to send the train to a different platform anyway (the one in this side of the footbridge), and what if there's a non-stop train coming in on the lane that goes through the platform you need to use?
Addendum (2007-09-01 00:42): Ah, screw it. I'm thinking of people carriers.
Admin
I do agree there's a lot of people who drive SUVs without a need for them, but there are plenty of people who do need them, especially in my state (Minnesota). And I'm never going to fault somebody for driving a hybrid vehicle of any kind (well, maybe those shitty GM hybrid trucks that don't even get 19mpg)
The author of that license agreement is oversimplifying a complicated issue, but they're probably too stupid to realize it. And I really doubt they're stigmatizing anyone. The only real effect will be making people more defiant. Call it the "RIAA" effect if you will (the rate at which the RIAA complains about music is directly related to the number of people downloading illegal mp3s).
Admin
Oh shit, I've just realised you said MOOSE, not MOUSE! There goes my imagination...! Uh!
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The real WTF here is that they've run three articles together into one.
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well said!
Admin
Oddly enough as far as I can tell the Chinese word for "port", as in Ethernet port, seems to be 端口 [duān koǔ], the constituent hanzi meaning "end, terminus" and "mouth, open end", respectively. No mention of any giving cones anywhere.
Admin
I agree that buses aren't in the same league though, and having an adapted vehicle is sensible.
Admin
The Crisco specifications are in reality a poor translation of the Voynich Manuscript...
Admin
I actually have no problem with it.
Of course, it would be PGP encrypted. No PGP key, no order.
And I don't use raw credit card numbers on the Internet anyway. I use the one-time credit card numbers generated for a specific order. Some of the credit card companies offer this.
Admin
In reply to AdTs long post on the economical effects of CO2 reduction policies: Well said. I might be quoting you in a report one of these days ("environment and chemistry" being one of the classes I take this semester.)
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We'd need a HUGE number of people taking those trains before they'd be worth it -- and it's just not viable.
Keep in mind that the three hundred miles he cites is on the low end for distances people might need to go around here. You can go fifteen hundred miles in a straight line without hitting any national borders, from where I am.
It's the old story; Europeans have to get used to the idea that, in the US, two hundred years is a long time. Americans need to get used to the idea that, in Europe, two hundred miles is a long distance.
I think that, in practice, the economy is moderately efficient. Trains are simply not competitive with cars for most US travel, and for the long hauls, planes win out hugely just on raw speed. Of course, cars have their place too -- we've been known to drive 1400 miles to go to a convention, simply because we needed to be able to carry luggage.
And no, I couldn't have taken a train; even if they had one, it would have most likely been noticably slower, and we'd need several times our population density before it'd make sense to have direct train connections for all possible pairs of two points fourteen hundred miles apart.
Admin
To paraphrase AdT, your industry is being destroyed already. As global acceptance of the Greenhouse Effect grows, so does the market for people wanting low carbon impact products. By catering to this market you make money, by ignoring this market, you lose money (see Ford and General Motors).
Admin
How much energy does it take to actually produce crude oil? We don't know, because we can't produce it. It's a non-renewable resource. Once we run out, it's gone. Also, using oil just emits CO2 and other pollutants without actually cleaning them up. While using ethanol can actually clear some CO2 from the atmosphere vis-a-vis the plants used to produced ethanol.
Admin
The real WTF is that it's OK to drive an SUV and fly more if you bribe..., I mean buy the Pro version.
Talk about carbon credits...
Admin
Frankly, I don't see a case for the claim that reducing greenhouse emissions entails some kind of economic catastrophe. Certainly some change, but where's the evidence for a cataclysm.
I'm also kind of unsure where the attitude that since we don't know for sure that it's our fault implies we should sit around with our hands folded. Even if there's only a 20% chance that our efforts will turn back environmental catastrophe, seems like a chance that might be worth taking, and most a lot of the measures that would need to be taken also have side benefits, like reducing smog, reliance on unstable political regions for oil, and road congestion.
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And I thought it had something to do with the pressure differential above and below an airfoil. Silly me!
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In theory, law of supply and demand dictates that this is broadly correct. In practice, airlines have been known to fly empty planes to avoid losing their runway allocation at certain airports... can't remember which low cost carrier that was, I think it was Ryanscare
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Can't anyone hear the vegetables scream?
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You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the dark, with the carrots screaming?
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In that case, Britney Spears is a great example of the poor quality of American music.
X is a member of set Y. X has the property Z. Therefore, all Y are Z
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Well, if cows (and sheep and so on) weren't domesticated and farmed, there wouldn't be nearly so many of them. On the other hand, if we all stopped eating beef tomorrow and left them to run wild, without predation, there'd be even more. So what we really need to do is have a mass cull, eat nothing but roast beef, boef bourginion, beef wellingtons and calfs foot jelly for 6 months, and then become vegans. Only without the beans.
And incidentally, although it isn't so funny, it's actually burping bovines that cause the most emissions.
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Much as I love sneering at the Septics, I don't think we can hold the high ground on the subject of rail... Pretend to be Dutch and try again.