Response for George

My friend George sent me this link and asked me to comment on it. So here goes...

http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/ClimateTimeMachine/climateTimeMachine.cfm


Well, the simplest response I can give is that none of it matters.
We are trying to cause panic about the future by using such short range predictions. We (as humans) are so self-absorbed and arrogant to think that the planet has the same life cycle as we do (ie <100 years). The earth is disputed to be over 4-5 billion years old. And that is only a guess by scientists. It CANNOT be measured accurately yet. Trying to predict climate for the next 50 years by what happened in the last 30 is stupid. That's like saying that the earth is going into an ice age by watching what happens outside your window from November to January!

First the period of the last 30 years in regards to northern ice melting is insignificant for the reasons stated above but I found two things interesting.. 1. Because they don't tell you that the winter of 2007 it became the 2nd thickest on record. and 2. The South pole ice mass has been growing for the last 60 years.

In regards to sea level, I don't think they can accurately average global sea level withing 120 or so millimeters when the oceans are miles deep and cover 70% of the planet. The scale is completely out of, well, scale. lol

Carbon dioxide emissions are insignificant because all the carbon dioxide we produce by burning fossil fuels is already part of the carbon cycle. When we start importing CO2 from Venus, I'll start to worry.

Global temperatures is another example of bad data. If we were only concerned with the surface temperature of the planet it would still be flawed on the base of scale and measurement frequency. There's no way that enough measurements were taken in the 1890s to get a good global sampling and that probably holds true all the way up into the 80's when satellites were used enough. Looking at the last 30 years isn't enough to predict the next 30 anyway.
More importantly, they omitted global ocean temperatures which are currently being studied by a group of international scientists in the ARGO project.

http://www.argo.net/


I don't want to spoil the party , but no data they have collected yet shows ANY increase in global ocean temps. I believe they found the opposite. Maybe it's all the melting glaciers cooling the oceans? WRONG ! Don't forget about Antarctica growing!


That's all I can stand for now. I'm starting to irritate myself!

Question for debate.

OK, back to science class again.

If petrochemicals are the leading source of CO2 emissions, where did they come from? Well, I presume that they are the result of organic decay over millions of years. Or to oversimplify, dinosaur and forests and animals over time.

If this is true, then wasn't all this CO2 we are spewing into the atmosphere once part of the environment. I believe it is called the carbon cycle. We are not creating these greenhouse gases, we are merely re-introducing them back into the active carbon cycle.

Bill C-61

It seems that facebook users have actually made a diference. I learned that this bill was going to be introduced back in December of 2007 but there was a facebook group of 20,000 opposed to it.
Now that it has reappeared, there are 50,000 members on that facebook group and other smaller groups splintering off.
I'm happy that awareness is rising.

I'm against the bill as it stands because it will not encourage or enhance business. It will only discourage it. The recording industry is not losing any significant money because of file sharing. In fact, I believe the opposite is happening. Because artists work is more freely distributed, more interest is created and more record / merchandise sales are made. The RIAA cried for years about Napster cutting into their sales, even when record sales continued to grow.

It's CRAP!



If the government wants to discourage rights infringement, make policy that would go after people who sell media illegally. I don't think it's morally wrong to watch a downloaded movie for free, but if someone downloads it, burns it, and sells copies to their friends, that would be criminal.

If bill C-61 is passed, a lot of media that I have paid for, would be lost because I would be forbidden to make back-up copies. CD's or DVD's with copyright protection software on them could not be transferred onto my personal Mp3 or video player without breaking the law.

I am conservative, but I do not support the conservative party on th e basis of this bill. If it causes an election, I will not hold it against the opposition.

Messing with Religion

OK , as a Canadian it doesn't get any closer to religion than Hockey Night in Canada. It's a tradition going back over a half century to congregate weekly at the altar of television and watch our heroes and icons perform.

Hockey Night in Canada says that they will no longer be using the traditional theme song for their broadcast because of a contract dispute with the composer of the song.
They say it's "No big deal" because if they can't settle the contract they will simply start a contest to create a new theme song. Simple right?

Well, this would be as popular with the traditional Canadian hockey fan as throwing out the hymn book at church and replacing it with Karaoke. It just doesn't work.

Make it work CBC! Make it work!

There has to be a simple solution.

It turns out that the composer of the song sued the CBC a few years ago because of a royalty dispute about extra money for foreign telecasts which are not part of the existing contract. Details of the money involved were not released by either side, so likely both are being somewhat unreasonable.

The CBC pays the NHL hundreds of millions for the rights to broadcast the games, I think they could throw a few bucks towards the composer to make this work and keep us humming along for years to come.

Download fines? Not in my Canada

I'm truly upset with an attempt by the Conservative federal government to make us more American. And not even in a good way! I'm talking about prosecuting (or persecuting) internet file sharers.

http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=558674

I read in the National Post yesterday that the Tories intend to introduce legislation Wednesday that includes targeting illegal file sharers with $500 fines. If the Conservatives were looking for a way to make the Liberals carbon tax seem easier to swallow, they found it. Even though I still plan to vote Conservative for now as I have for the last decade, many will not.

Put the two side-by-side for comparison.

A) Impose $500 fines on individual taxpayers who occasionally use an unlawful copy of a ringtone on their cellphone

or

B) Implement a new tax that is revenue neutral (lol - no such thing) that causes big producers of green house gases to pay for global warming.

Neither option seems very appealing to me. But you could probably sell the second option to the people.

I have tried my best to explain to friends and coworkers when we discuss politics that the best way to appreciate the Conservative ideal is that they are the only party that believes that the more money you leave in the hands of the consumer, the better.
I feel the two other national parties (N.D.P. and Liberal) would just like me to endorse my paycheck every week over to them and hope for the best.

But with this move by the feds, I have nothing to defend them.

Looks like Dione might finally find a crack in the conservative shield.

Cold enough for you comrade?

It seems that Canada is attempting to increase it's northern ambitions by investigating the possibility of claiming rights to the seafloor beyond the north pole.

To be honest, I thought that the north pole was an ambitious goal for our aspirations of Arctic seafloor claims. It turns out that UN precedent indicates that a country can claim further than 350 km from their shores if it can be proved that the seafloor is a natural extention of the country's natural landmass.

Turns out the Russians were willing to let us set the pole boundary as good neighbors share an existing fence, but if it turns out that Canada has a right to go further, then we may have to move the fence.

Now, I'm a big fan of diplomacy and being good neighbors, but if Canada has rights to the seafloor then we should protect those rights by whatever means necessary. That would include manned patrols and some sort of security perimeter. Unfortunately Canada has let our military degrade from the second largest navy in the world 60 years ago to a living museum of second hand vessels and our own antiques.

I hope the Russians are willing to play nice, because if it comes down to standofs in the Arctic Ocean, we don't have much of a chance. Don't forget, other neighbors down south had a staring contest with the Russians for half of the last century. The yanks had a lot behind them to keep the stalemate going. We don't.

So if Canada wants the Arctic seafloor rights and the oil and gas deposits therein , we better hope that the Russians are intimidated by our own internal sense of moral superiority because that's all we have.