Sorry, guys, but I have to keep my reply short since I'm at work. In fact, I may not have much time home tonight either so please don't mistake my brevity for a snide response! Really, I'm just trying to understand the mind-set here !
So, the problem you guys are having with this isn't so much that global warming may not in fact be occurring (it is, you can't argue with melting glaciers!) ...
Glaciers are ice, they melt anytime the air is
above 32f, like in the summer, this does not constitute a crisis
situation. The aggregate temperatures in different areas of the
globe over parts of successive years are never exactly the same,so,
some years you have melting some years you get more
glacier. But that's part of the details that are not part of my
argument...
or whether or not it's man-made, the problem is the government stealing our rights? Correct?
No that's not what I said. My worry is that there is appearing now
a top down philosophy on fixing the global warming hoax by
government fiat and cabinet level EPA rules. The EPA is perfectly
correct cleaning up nasty areas of the earth, I have no quarrel with
that part of what they do. But I have a big problem when they
declare some rodent endangered and more important than some farmers 20 acres
that he worked his *** off to make productive and now cannot use
because of this friggin rodent. Big problem with that. And of course the
curly bulbs, the ethanol from corn and mandating anything that is dumb
or infringes on my individual rights. We have all too long now just given
away too much, and it is becoming absurd. A helmet for every activity now
as an example. Rules that go far beyond what any average citizen understands.
Well, they are, no doubt BUT given that, would you have prefered that the EPA didn't step in & police-up the big businesses that were dumping toxic crapola in our streams decades ago? Your preference would have been that some ethically-minded executive at Company A would have mentioned to the "evil" CEO that perhaps said CEO needs to stop dumping chrome waste into River "A"? When dollars are involved that would never have happened.
Sometimes it's necessary for the big, bad government to step up to the plate & correct someone. The examples are near endless though I will grant that some of them go so overboard as to make me want to toss my cookies in the nearest wastebasket (helmet laws & seat belt laws are great examples! If I'm driving through my wee little town going all of 20 miles a hour behind Gramm's in her Buick do I need to be wearing a seat belt!? Ah, no!).
Sorry, Popeye, Y2K is a bad example. Remember, I'm in the IT field & was quite active in assuring my customers (I was in the field back then) that nothing was going to happen. It's only through the sheer effort of countless thousands of engineers & programmers & technicians, etc. that there weren't any Y2K issues! Been there, did that! We worked our collective asses off to square everything away.
With all due respect to your expertise in IT, logic
tells me that with millions of computers and
networks and timers in compters that really cared
about the century turnover involved when the year 2000 rolled
over that at least one would have gone haywire. Even with all the
lectures and work that went into preventing it. My expertise and
experience in manufacturing processes and quality assurance
systems tell me that it is a statistical certainty that rejects
will be present when large numbers of objects are measured. But
since all systems were changed, if there were any old systems left or
overlooked, which is probable, none noticeably went haywire.
Since 100% changeout from old to new was mandated it follows
that if even one was left it would fail, and I never heard of that happening.
Which leads me to the second reason I think and always
will that Y2K was a scare hoax. Microsoft and other companies in that
business had a staff of thousands of the most intelligent able
programmers on the planet. No one can tell me that someone in
the Microsoft org or their competitor that developed Java could
not come up with a workaround for that flopping over of the year
2000. My logic is fueled by the profound amount of money that
Microsoft and hardware manufacturers like Dell and others made
pushing disaster stories if everyone didn't upgrade their stuff. That
whole thing just plain smacks of manipulation in every way. It stinks to
high heaven if you look at the motivation for the IT Co's. Billions of
dollars to the IT industry world wide. Sorry mate, but you will never
convince me that your hard work made stuff perfect. Great but not
perfect. Too many items to get just right, with not one forgotten system
is not likely. It just explains that nothing would have happened anyway
and Mirosoft Dell and others just saw the writing on the wall and on their bottom lines had
just fallen in their laps.
ps It was likely that the 486 operating system
was incapable of performing suffciently fast into the future. And rather than
explaining honestly to laymen that a wired world couldn't be sustained at those
speeds and since it was all coming together without them speaking, Microsoft
Dell and others just let it happen...smiling all the way to the bank, and a very
bright future for their monopoly.
By the way Pop, I'm 54, hardly a kid & lived through all the same decades of oddities you & Franc have lived through. I do worry about my kids & what kind of world they'll inherit. But, I worry more about the economics of the future (& especially China) than I do about the enviroment. I don't worry about pumping oil out of the Alaskan wilderness, someplace you can only fly into to see (I say pump it dry!) & offshore drilling is necessary & needed. I do worry about billions of tons of plastic floating in the oceans & what happens to the food chain when minute particles are absorbed in the fish we eat.
There has to be a middle ground between those who fear EVERYTHING & those who don't care. Somewhere, over a beer or two (or 3 or 4) I'd be willing to bet, if you & I (or Franc, my man) were elected co-presidents we'd find a compromise!
I've got to end this here.....surprised I took this much time (waaaay past lunchtime ). Back to getting my butt-kicked by a virtualized server.