deleted thread al gore

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by blove8

... 1. The Hegelian dialectical formula: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis)...
2. For example: If (A) my idea of freedom conflicts with (B) your idea of freedom then (C) neither of us can be free until everyone agrees to be a slave ...
3. It's good to see this discussion happening here.

Hegel is cited & mis-quoted much more frequently than he is understood, and denigrated & defamed far oftener than he is actually read.

1. This particular formulation of Hegel's logic (thesis, antithesis and synthesis) was actually used by both Fichte and Schelling, but to my knowledge, it was never used by Hegel.
The use of this tridaic jargon, in expounding Hegel, is often a demonstration that the commentator has little or no knowledge of Hegel."

2. Pure balderdash.

3. It is.

[blove8]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Hegel is cited & mis-quoted much more frequently than he is understood, and denigrated & defamed far oftener than he is actually read.

1. This particular formulation of Hegel's logic (thesis, antithesis and synthesis) was actually used by both Fichte and Schelling, but to my knowledge, it was never used by Hegel.
The use of this tridaic jargon, in expounding Hegel, is often a demonstration that the commentator has little or no knowledge of Hegel."

2. Pure balderdash.

3. It is.

Yeah, I shouldn't have posted that example. Now that I look at it, it is balderdash. My bad. Where's the *blush* emoticon?

OK, how bout this example...

... Problem ...
Global Warming

... Reaction ...
Citizens: We need governmental intervention to save us from this global warming!!!

... Solution ...
Global Tax on CO2 emissions.

Would you agree that it's a better example GordMay?

[GordMay]

Much better.
But, remember, the dialectic "synthesis" becomes the new thesis (proposition) and, hence, subject to the same tension & evolution towards a newer "synthesis". It's a never-ending process of evolutionary progress towards a "totality". Each & every step (along the way) remains a part of the process.

[TaoJones]

From Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

"The Future Is Drying Up

"Simon Norfolk/NB Pictures, for The New York Times

"Draining
"The 100-foot-high bathtub ring left by the dwindling waters of Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam.

"By JON GERTNER
Published: October 21, 2007

"Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. . ."

Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/ma...21water-t.html

~ ~ ~

"Inch by Inch, Great Lakes Shrink, and Cargo Carriers Face Losses

"James Rajotte for The New York Times

"A ship carrying road salt pulls into the Port of Oswego, N.Y., on Lake Ontario. The lake’s water level has dropped three inches during this month alone.

"By FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: October 22, 2007

"OSWEGO, N.Y. — From his office at the port here, Jonathan Daniels stared at a watermark etched on the rocks that hug one of the commercial piers — a thick dark line several inches above the surface of Lake Ontario — and wondered how much lower the water would dip.

<snip>

"Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons — or 540,000 pounds — or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers’ Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies. . ."

Go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/ny.../22oswego.html

~ ~ ~

And for a plethora of related articles and information on global warming, from the New York Times, go to:

Global Warming- Science - The New York Times

TaoJones

[delmarrey]

I remember when Shasta Lake use to look like that back in the late 80's/early 90's. They were sweat'n it too! They thought Calif. was going to dry up and blow away. Not so any more. They have learned that it come's and go's just like the weather.

Now they keep having fires in the South.

SHASTA LAKE INFO - ShastaLake.com

BTW The water levels in the Great Lakes in the 30's & 60's were worse then they are now.
www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/brochures/lakelevels/lakelevels.pdf

[Trim50]

Human's fear change. Throughout history, when we can't control or understand change, we tend to blame ourselves either by means of religion, or now, science.

If you listen closely to the proponents of anthropogenic global warming, their ultimate conclusion is always in the form of deduction in response to lack of a better explanation. In essence, they justify their claims as a result of not knowing otherwise by assuming they presently know everything involved in the global processes of weather. I personaly don’t think anything could be further from reality.

[David M]

Originally Posted by Trim50

Yeah, but I would argue (without actually doing the calculation) that the carbon dioxide exchange between the volumes of the oceans and atmosphere dwarf any biological respiration.

According to the oceanographers I work with, the total biomass of phytoplankton is far greater than the biomass of all terrestrial plant life. Keep in mind the oceans cover 71% of the planet.

[Alan Wheeler]

Yeah and did you know that Ants make up one of the largest Biomasses on land. Who would of thought.
I think one of the really big issues we have to contend with today, that we didn't in the past, is Media. It is Global, it is faster than ever before, it is "spectacularised" for headline grabing and the part I really find annoying, it is often wrongly reported. Usually because the story is told before all the facts are in and thus the blanks are often filled in by incorrect statements. So we get a sensationalised out of balance report that shoots around the world like a shockwave.

[David M]

Originally Posted by Alan Wheeler

Yeah and did you know that Ants make up one of the largest Biomasses on land. Who would of thought.
I think one of the really big issues we have to contend with today, that we didn't in the past, is Media. It is Global, it is faster than ever before, it is "spectacularised" for headline grabing and the part I really find annoying, it is often wrongly reported. Usually because the story is told before all the facts are in and thus the blanks are often filled in by incorrect statements. So we get a sensationalised out of balance report that shoots around the world like a shockwave.

True...garbage in..garbage out. Now at light speed!

[cooper]

Even funny is people who think that A. nuclear is cheap and B. that it does not pollute !

[Intentional Drifter]

Nation & World | Mass-extinction study casts cloud on future | Seattle Times Newspaper

Interesting article on some new research regarding tropical sea temps and mass extinctions.

Regardless of whether you think rising temps are a natural process or being accelerated by human activity, they are saying that we are very likely to see very significant changes happening over the next several decades.

So, trying to shift the discussion away some from "who" or "what" is to blame for the phenomenon, it is becoming ever more evident that we are facing some decision points. What do you think we (speaking as a society) should do?

A. Nothing, we are either unconvinced of the need, or too ignorant to do anything useful.
B. Do the best we can to protect ourselves and adapt to changing conditions.
C. Begin our first concerted attempts at intentional terraforming.
D. Build a lot of spaceships and go elsewhere.
E. Combinations of the above (pick and discuss).

ID

P.S. I'm always fascinated by those who somehow view "government" as different from "us", as if it is some alien entity bent on exploiting the citizens. While there have been some of those, true, by and large, governments are the collective expression of the society. It is not "us" vs "them", but just "us".

[Alan Wheeler]

MASS EXTINCTION STUDY CASTS CLOUD ON FUTURE

Now there is one of those news headlines I was talking about.
It serves for nothing, bar creating alarmist reaction.

[Trim50]

Originally Posted by cooper

Even funny is people who think that A. nuclear is cheap and B. that it does not pollute !

OK Cooper...let's run some rough numbers.

Let's start with solar just for comparison first. Being generous, let’s say you get 300kWh/sqkm-day from solar. The estimated electrical energy consumption during 2004 for the entire planet was 47.7 billion kWh/day. This would require approximately 159,000,000 sqkm of solar panels. The surface of the Earth is approximately 510,000,000 sqkm. Even if we doubled or tripled the efficiency of solar collectors…I think you can see the trend. At this point I don’t think I need to run the cost numbers.

The European Commission launched the project in 1991 in collaboration with the US Department of Energy, and it was the first research project of its kind "to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU". The methodology considers emissions, dispersion and ultimate impact. With nuclear energy the risk of accidents is factored in along with high estimates of radiological impacts from mine tailings (waste management and decommissioning being already within the cost to the consumer). Nuclear energy averages 0.4 euro cents/kWh, much the same as hydro, coal is over 4.0 cents (4.1-7.3), gas ranges 1.3-2.3 cents. This report was based on presently commissioned nuclear power plants.

Fuel costs are one area of steadily increasing efficiency and cost reduction. For instance, in Spain nuclear electricity cost has been reduced by 29% over 1995-2001. This involved boosting enrichment levels and burn-up to achieve 40% fuel cost reduction. Prospectively, a further 8% increase in burn-up will give another 5% reduction in fuel cost.

Long construction periods will push up financing costs, and in the past they have done so spectacularly. In Asia construction times have tended to be shorter, for instance the new-generation 1300 MWe Japanese reactors which began operating in 1996 and 1997 were built in a little over four years, and 48 to 54 months is typical projection for plants today.


Source: Nuclear Energy Insititute

Next generation nuclear is assured to be much cheaper and safer based on pebble bed reactor technology…to learn more:

Pebble bed reactor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Nauticatarcher]

as oceans warm more water evaporates which means more rain therefore it should be getting wetter not dryer, humans are very land centric in there thinking but the oceans cover more of the earth

[Intentional Drifter]

Interesting article, but it doesn't sound like they've come any closer to solving the waste problem:

"Since the fuel is contained in graphite pebbles, the volume of radioactive waste is much greater, but contains about the same radioactivity when measured in becquerels per kilowatt-hour. The waste tends to be less hazardous and simpler to handle. Current US legislation requires all waste to be safely contained, therefore pebble bed reactors would increase existing storage problems. Defects in the production of pebbles may also cause problems. The radioactive waste must either be safely stored for many human generations, reprocessed, transmuted in a different type of reactor, or disposed of by a method yet to be devised. The graphite pebbles are more difficult to reprocess due to their construction, which is not true of the fuel from other types of reactors. Proponents point out that this is a plus, as it is difficult to re-use pebble bed reactor waste for nuclear weapons.


Critics also often point out an accident in Germany in 1986, which involved a jammed pebble damaged by the reactor operators when they were attempting to dislodge it from a feeder tube. This accident released radiation into the surrounding area, and led to a shutdown of the research program by the West German government."


Incremental progress, sure, and that's good to see. Far from a paradigm shift, though.


ID