Originally Posted by Kurts

Oops, forgot one more thing........Popeye's comments on Chinese made flour. bulbs:
Tell me just where your incandescent bulbs are made? Frankly, just what the heck ISN'T made in China anymore.......kinda sickens me when I think about it.
LED light strips ARE cool. Actually, I'm thinking about scoring a LED light strip for under my kitchen cabinets. We've got crappy lighting in the kitchen anyways..........
Mercury based bulbs are considered hazardous BUT are also everywhere. The amount in an individual "curly" bulb is tiny & they can be thrown out in the trash. Large quantities of those jumbo bulbs you see in your department or grocery stores require special storage & disposal. The mercury content in most bulbs is coming down. They'll get better.
It's been awhile since I chimed in here so it's time to put my 2 shillings worth of thoughts down electronically :
Global warming myth - well maybe, like I've stated in other posts, we don't live long enough to really know how this will turn out; no long term perspective have we. The Earth has gone through mini-ice ages & mini-hot spells before. The key argument is whether or not this spate of warming we're experiencing is man-made. There's the rub.
Are we warming up? Yup; glaciers melting all over the world kinda point to that, I have no argument with what's in front of my eyes but is it man-made? Are we dumping enough CO2 & Methane & all the other gases into the atmosphere to cause a change in global temperatures. Hundreds of scientists from around the world believe so. The majority of them do not appear to have an "agenda" to do so. But, once again, do we have enough LONG TERM evidence to conclusively say: "Mankind is screwing up the Earth"? I say not quite yet.
I will say that I believe we may not have been decent stewards in the past, look at some of our rivers in the 60's, etc., but I believe we are doing a by far better job. Maybe we can do even better?!
I've got to say this has been a pretty darn civil discussion. I'm impressed !
Time for our evening walk around the park.
Later, guys!!

Originally Posted by Franc Rauscher

Popeye, your the man.

It is so nice to hear another sane voice screaming in the wilderness.

I sometimes feel like an odd lemming. The herd is blindly running somewhere(?) and I stood up to look. Now that I know, I'm screaming at my friends to stop and check it out or they are all going to die!

Refusing to accept the truth about the cliff, they think I'm a nonconformist "because I had the nerve to check it out." Therefore my extreme arguments are invalid and to far to the right. They keep running, I keep looking at the cliff.

Nice to see another lemming standing up.

"If you make government big enough to grant your every want, it will be big enough to take everything you have."

Thomas Jefferson

roadster with a stick


BTW, Most of the lemmings believe another famous American who said
" It isn't pollution that is harming the environment, It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it"
For this kind of thinking, Al Gore won a Nobel prize
And the lemmings believe and follow......

Originally Posted by popeye

It is sad to comment that the majority of these kids with the
...let em blather,eventually they will outgrow it...

Originally Posted by Kurts

I do worry about my kids & what kind of world they'll inherit.

Originally Posted by Kurts

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 !
Didn't get the feeling you were snide. Just efficiently using your resources.

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!) or whether or not it's man-made, the problem is the government stealing our rights? Correct?

Not exactly. The earth has cooled and warmed more than it is doing now, with-in recorded history. This is the first time the event is being audaciously blamed on man. There is also a Huge difference between the subject of pollution and global warming. Despite the similar activities involved, the differences in what we are talking about are huge. So huge that environmentalist screaming foul about some of the solutions to global warming.

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!).

Big business, little business it doesn't matter. When the poop from your out house fouls my well, we(you and I) have an issue. If the government let you do it, I have an issue with the government. When they force me to abandon my well and pay for the clean up, that's a volation of the original covenant under which we both dug our wells and built our outhouses.
That the government, we elected, would provide for the general welfare. The government should protect my property from your activities.

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.

I'll give you this one without argument. My brother in Dallas worked for IBM and was 24/7 on the project for a year.

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 are concerns here, legitamate ones. I worry about China, who had no trouble with the Kyotto Accords because they were exempted and could build anything and ruin as much ecology as they wanted to compete with the US. They demanded we sign it knowing what disadvantage it would place on our industry. Not one US President since G. Bush the elder, has signed it because it is bad law for the US. Treaties , signed by our Presidents, are law of the land under our constitution. Not to be entered into lightly or to appease an extreme minority. None of whom are demostrating in front of the new coal fired power plants China powers up every third day of the year.

Burning fossil fuels may be altering the environment. But burning renewable sources is not a simple answer. Burning twigs and wood is illegal in most of southern CA because of of smog pollution. Even for heating and cooking. And burning corn in our cars instead of feeding the hungry is blatantly IMMORAL. For the government, which we trusted with authority to provide for the general welfare and protect our constitutional rights, legislating this immorality is contradictory to the implied trust. Doing so with half baked science to please the loudest whiners in the electorate is irresponsible.

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!

We may very well be able to sensibly discuss and solve these issues, over a beer. But the Eco-terrorist will take no prisoners, or advice or comprimise.

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.

Originally Posted by Kurts

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.

Originally Posted by popeye

It is about politics
and power over you and your money and your life. Bit by bit they
are going to take away your freedoms. Using the seemingly benign
Trojan Horse of saving the environment

Originally Posted by Franc Rauscher

Black05


Popeye, old friend, you will never power your Crossfire with Hydrogen. Not technicaly or even theoreticaly possible. LNG or propane maybe, but you have a roadster. Where would you put the tank?

I know, on a luggage rack. Wasn't there an old thread on this? This forum can be such a great resource.


roadster with a stick