Hellfire for all eternity

[George61]

In China, smoking gives you a better quality air than what is normally around you.

[con's fly is open]

I'd heard that gluttony and sloth were combining to kill more and more folks, but I had no idea they were challenging tobacco for the premature death trophy!

I need new vices: less smoking and more sleazy sexual encounters. Yeah, Lust and one other... maybe Envy.

So how much do the rest of you make a month? and what are you wearing?

[Hamish]

tall said:

I'm not arguing that secondhand smoke isn't nasty and obnoxious (not to mention, noxious), just that if a person is in a public place that allows smoking, they shouldn't be chastised for lighting up.

Damn!

If secondhand smoke was merely "nasty and obnoxious" I could buy into what you are saying. However, it is clearly much more than that.

IT IS POISONOUS, AND HAS BEEN SHOWN TO BE CARCINOGENIC IN NON-SMOKERS!

How can anyone claim they are being mistreated by those who ask them not to cause cancer? One does not NEED to smoke. One CHOOSES to smoke. It is that voluntary choice that is the problem. That is why I posed the mind experiment about discharging a weapon that didn't kill very many people, but killed some. My question was, how many (what percentage) of non-smokers would it be necessary to prove had been killed by secondhand smoke before smokers would agree that they should not smoke anywhere that a non-smoker has a right to be?

What is the answer to that question? Do smokers feel ANY responsibility for what they do? They appear to feel they have the RIGHT to leave butts everywhere they are. When they are finished with their smoke, they just grind it out wherever they are. I have seen windrows of spent cancer sticks along city sidewalks, and so have you. They think it is fine to toss their butts in urinals for some other poor bastard to clean up. They throw them on rugs and grind them out, burning a scar in the rug as they do so.

When does it become the responsibility of the smoker to correct the abuse they voluntarily rain down on non-smokers?

As smokers have demonstrated so little courtesy or self control, it has become necessary, over a space of three generations I have witnessed, to impose limitations and inhibitions by force of law because smokers have been so goddamned arrogant about their imagined “rights” and so unwilling to recognize the right of others to have an atmosphere as free of carcinogens as possible.

Factories in the US have been forced to clean up their smoke streams. Automakers have been forced to control the emissions of their products. Paint companies, asbestos manufacturers, engine designers, chemical plants, mines, foundries, etc. etc. have all taken economic hits to clean up their acts. The rule has been, “if business cannot be done safely, it cannot be done.” That set of ideas has made the US more livable, but also less competitive as other competing countries all too often exhibit the same degree of concern for the rights of others as do smokers.

And I say that in the most loving way possible

[Ruth]

natem said:

I'm kind of upset actually. For some reason, I can't ever see the ads here anymore. What gives? I'm missing tons of ad jokes, here.

I don't get the pop-up ads either, Nate. What's REALLY weird is that Crippler gets them. Our computers are linked to the internet through the same little box, so it can't even be blamed on the server or censors.

[Raoul Duke]

hamish said:

Don't fall for it guys.

That was when I first met Raoul.

I was Captain on that flight.

We had him shackled, loaded into a horse stall, and put in the belly under sedation. He was boarded?and disembarked by forklift.

His bill of lading was entitled gorilla of unknown gender.?
At the time he was wearing a medicated diaper. Did they ever find a cure for those sores?

Yeah, but it must be pointed out that I specifically requested this mode of travel. It was the drugs.

No need to suspect my impartiality on this subject because I have none to suspect. But that has no relevance to keeping the discussion civil...

[Mr Nobody]

Ok, this whole page cracked me up.

George, should come to beautiful Nanning, where polution is actually at lower levels than that found in the average taxi driver's waiting room. Well, in the previous vist and this one at least. So far.

Con. The seven deadly sins? Good luck with that. Keep photos and post them on the forum. Or retain for interesting comparisons at teh next "conference". Or for blackmail. Oh, yeah, I earn those leather bondage gear outfits with crutchless edible undies (strawerry by the contract) each month, and I am wearing a whole lot of those red notes.

Popup ads, maybe you guys clicked to make the board ad-free down below.

Did you have to pay extra, Raoul, or was it just the freight rate? And what sort of drugs do they give you if you travel this way?

And I thought I was being civil ...

[Raoul Duke]

The civil part is for all of us...no aim implied.

Making a board ad-free costs money...you can't select it accidentally. I considered it for a while but acame to realize that the ads are actually entertaining.

The ads at the top of the page are a local connection from your computer to Google. If you aren't seeing those ads, Google may just be too busy.

I've never seen pop-ups here. If you're getting them and don't want to, Yahoo has a decent free pop-up blocker.

[acjade]

The pop ups are great entertainment. If you're writing a book and you're stuck for a quircky/whacky job for a character just read the pop-ups.
And I'm wearing pink plastic slip-ons. But have given up the rope.

[Jollyjunklass]

I am not entering into the argument though, since Hamish is already doing what I would better than I can. I am sure Hamish will respond in good time.

I put it into the category of gas weapons, myself. Or biological weapons.

You have entered into the argument.

And you may not realize this but people put out nearly as much green house gas each year as a car. Well, about 2/3. So stop breathing and farting guys!

My point exactly, the whole affair is getting ridiculous.

Shutting down factories etc would kill something like 90% of the planetary population.

Oh, so it's not the smokers after all. Whew, I was starting to feel real guilty for a while there.

Tree hugging is silly. It is only aesthetic. 90% of Oxygen is produced in the sea. Not trees. The whole lungs of the planet thing is crap. I love to see forests but I am not confused about the issues.

We kind of use that as a generic term for environmentalist , not in the literal sense.

I would respond to Hamish but I think it's time to bow out, other than to add many people litter, I have never opted to grind my cigarette butt into my carpet or anyone else's (once again showing how ridiculous the comments are getting) and we too have been forced to clean up our smoke stream. Take a walk down the bay where Stelco is, or Inco, or GM or any one of our fine paper mill factories, and then come back and tell me how much my smoke is interfering in your space.

You know I can understand your points however taking the whole scene to these degrees, only reinforces my views about how mundane and petty non smokers can be.

[Hamish]

Tree hugging is silly. It is only aesthetic. 90% of Oxygen is produced in the sea. Not trees. The whole lungs of the planet thing is crap. I love to see forests but I am not confused about the issues.

I know I risk becoming even more of a nag (if that is possible), but a simple entry in Google, “source of atmospheric oxygen” produced this and thousands of other bits of information.

Please note that the oceans produce oxygen BECAUSE they contain plants (green algae) that photosynthesize sunlight and oxygen is a product. Thus, the ocean produces oxygen because it is a kind of forest. Algae are more difficult to hug, but hug them, and the rain forests as well, we must. The daily destruction of our forests is a tragedy, Ronald Reagan to the contrary not withstanding.

As anyone with the wit to read knows (and everyone within eyeshot of this rant obviously has it), the cause of atmospheric warming – now going on at unpredicted high speed and endangering billions of lives as it does so – is carbon dioxide building as a percentage of the atmosphere. Forests account for a substantial portion of the plants we require to convert the dangerous gas to vegetable mass and oxygen. Plants produced the oxygen that resulted in the Cambrian Explosion and, eventually, us.

IMHO the suggestion that “tree hugging’ is unsupported by science flies in the face of what the worlds ecological professionals have been saying, and documenting, for many years. Such a misunderstanding endangers us all, and our progeny.

www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03186.htm

Ask A Scientist

Chemistry Archive

Atmospheric Oxygen Source

1/29/2004
name Norman A. B.
Question - Is it true that 50-70% of our oxygen is produced by the ocean?
-------------------------------------------------------------
I do not have a resource but that statistic would not surprise me. Oxygen is produced primarily as a reaction product of photosynthesis. Since green algae are abundant in almost all ocean waters, and ocean waters cover the largest surface area on the planet, it is reasonable to expect the major source of oxygen to be from the ocean.

Vince Calder

[Jollyjunklass]

Hey guys,

I have a plan

Lets all sing, everybody now

DOW - the thing that buys the BEER

RAY - the man that sells the BEER

ME - the man that drinks the BEER

FAR - a long way to get BEER

SO - I’ll have another BEER

LA - I’ll have another BEER

TEA - no thanks I’m drinking BEER

And that will bring us back to BEER, BEER, BEER, BEER.

REPEAT until we get forget this thread

[con's fly is open]

Millana, if a debate gets a tad too heated for your liking, there's no cowardice or dishonour in stepping off. We all have a civility comfort zone.

Nuts. last year I backed off these debates because it always turned into Hamish vs. everybody else. Then, in my half-year in Canada, I lived with my best friend, who had read The Skeptical Environmentalist many times and concluded that there was no such thing as ANY environmental problem.

Now I have no stomach for the subject. But I hope others do- arguments yield new ideas (and frequently, links).

[con's fly is open]

Okay, just this once: a single major volcanic eruption spews more greenhouse gases into the air than the combined history of human activity. And this happens several times every century. The Earth takes a couple of years to get back to normal- but get back it does.

[Mr Nobody]

One of my favourite songs. Lalala lalala lalala.

Oh, yeah, and the big CO2 sink isn't trees either, it is coral reefs and the limestone. This is still an invertebrate planet. We only think we are important. I agree Hamish, but we are discussing tree hugging which to me means something different. It is the senseless and useless concentration of saving cute furry animals but not the snakes, the forests but forget the oceans. Tree huggers generally have no idea of what they are doing and do as much harm as good, both to the environment and to the cause of saving it.

Hey, I AM a biologist. And an environmentalist. I just aint no tree hugger.


Cambrian explosing made 99% of all species at that time extinct. Changed reducing atmosphere to oxydizing, which is a nasty poison. Then the rest happened. Evolution proceeds by extinctions. The next one, by ours, I would guess.

And Con is right. The skeptical ecologist is also right, just over done.

Anyway, back to the chorus!

Lalala lalalala lalalala Drinks for everyone!

[Jollyjunklass]

It's not the debate that gets too heated for my liking, it's that I might get too heated for the debate

[Jollyjunklass]

But hey,
That's my issue, carry on folks.

[Hamish]

I'm not sure you're correct about that.

Could you comment on this information?

It is from www.strom.clemson.edu/becker/prtm320/commons/carbon3.html

Fig. 1: Anthropogenic carbon emissions [green circles; 0 - 7 billion metric tons (Gton); scale to left] and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration [red squares; 295 - 365 parts per million (ppm); scale to right] from 1900 to present.

[con's fly is open]

Hamish, I'll have to beg for time. I can't find the study I was looking for in reply.

[acjade]

Oh. I guess all I've got to say in my lifetime experience is yeah, it's hotter. Can this be normal and is the west shelf of Africa really gonna breakoff and cause the MF of all tidal waves? Those guys that think out these theories believe so and if this is the case, LE let's go to Tibet next year. High ground.

[Lotus Eater]

I'm all for Tibet - one of my all-time favourite places. I don't know about hotter across the board, or more natural disasters across the board - I suppsoe I trust the guys who tell me there are without being energetic enough to check for myself. But the last few days have certainly been hot enough!

[Mr Nobody]

Actually, you will not notice the heat increase. Destabilization of Weather patterns, climate, air and sea currents will happen a long time before a noticable rise in temperatures. The apparent heat increase is subjective. Even a couple of degrees will cause major problems. If it warms up much more, maybe we will get out of this ice age we are in. That would take about another 3 degrees average increase. It has been somewhat hotter before, and will be hotter again. It will only really become a problem if the temperature rises sufficiently to sublime CO2 from limestone, then, a runaway greenhouse effect could make it hot enough to make lead runny on the surface. Bad.

But this is unlikely to happen. Human intervention at this time has had no worse effect than any natural change ever. Even the so called great extinction we are causing is minor compared to other ecological DISASTERS. We are definitely a disaster. and a force of nature.

Don't worry about the island thingy off the african coast, it will only damage the east coast of the Americas, and the West Coast of Europe. Nothing to worry about here. If it happens. But hey, I am a fair way from the coast.

There are plenty of things to worry about. All are largely meaningless in the greater context.

Depends, though, I take it personally that any kids I have won't see blue whales, or Dodos, or Hylacines etc. And I like rainforests. And diving off reefs. And nice clear blue skies.

We can'd really damage the Earth. Nothing much can. What we can do is make it unfit for us to live on.

[Mr Nobody]

hamish said:

I'm not sure you're correct about that.

Could you comment on this information?

It is from www.strom.clemson.edu/becker/prtm320/commons/carbon3.html

Fig. 1: Anthropogenic carbon emissions [green circles; 0 - 7 billion metric tons (Gton); scale to left] and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration [red squares; 295 - 365 parts per million (ppm); scale to right] from 1900 to present.

One of the basic principles of science is the simplicity hypothesis. That is, among competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is most likely to be the correct one.

They left out the part "once you have all the facts". They admitted not knowing them. It is a good article.

I am not sure if I am supposed to be commenting or what I am supposed to be commenting about.

It fits what I know.

What it doesn't allow for is that as the concentration goes up, so will the natural use of it. Life works to buffer change, just in big slow cycles. It will catch up.

But if you mean big volcanic events, Con is about right. It takes several years to decades to recover completely. But these would be more like ones that occur every few centuries, like Krakatoa, or Thera, things like that. I think they are called 'super eruptions' or something. There were much worse at times, such as the end of the cretaceous after the meteor. The whole of teh other side of the planet erupted into a series of super volcanoes, and they were more directly involved with the extinction event. Like the bullet enters, but leaves a big hole on exit, sort of thing.

The eruptions that happen a couple of times a century, from memory, are still significant polluters. Definitely more than your average automobile or smoker.

Oh, yeah, also, dust increases with the size of the eruption so the warming is ofset by the dust, so depending on the type of eruption whether it increases or decreases global temperatures.

Some examples:
Krakatoa blew it's top in 1883. Dust particles caused sunsets and is thought to have produced the 'mini ice age" of the late victorian era.
Pinatubo, phillipines, 1991 a sulphur plume, that contributed to global cooling but at the expense of acid rain, poisonous gasses etc.
Nyos, in the cameroon, 1986, was a CO2 eruption.
Tambora, Indonesia, 1815. so much dust that it cause "the year without the sun".

[acjade]

daoding said:

Actually, you will not notice the heat increase. Destabilization of Weather patterns, climate, air and sea currents will happen a long time before a noticable rise in temperatures. The apparent heat increase is subjective. Even a couple of degrees will cause major problems. If it warms up much more, maybe we will get out of this ice age we are in. That would take about another 3 degrees average increase. It has been somewhat hotter before, and will be hotter again. It will only really become a problem if the temperature rises sufficiently to sublime CO2 from limestone, then, a runaway greenhouse effect could make it hot enough to make lead runny on the surface. Bad.

But this is unlikely to happen. Human intervention at this time has had no worse effect than any natural change ever. Even the so called great extinction we are causing is minor compared to other ecological DISASTERS. We are definitely a disaster. and a force of nature.

Don't worry about the island thingy off the african coast, it will only damage the east coast of the Americas, and the West Coast of Europe. Nothing to worry about here. If it happens. But hey, I am a fair way from the coast.

There are plenty of things to worry about. All are largely meaningless in the greater context.

Depends, though, I take it personally that any kids I have won't see blue whales, or Dodos, or Hylacines etc. And I like rainforests. And diving off reefs. And nice clear blue skies.

We can'd really damage the Earth. Nothing much can. What we can do is make it unfit for us to live on.

Are you sure? I mean it really does seem to be getting hotter? Or am I just imagining it?

[Mr Nobody]

Well, some days hotter, some colder for a long time before it is noticable. There will be extreme days, eg warm winters days, cold summer days, hot hot summer days and cold cold winters days that top all records before anything else happens. if this happens every year, then maybe you will start to notice that the summer was hotter/colder than records, and winter colder/hotter than records. Sudden extreme storms for example. Snow falls in places never before recorded.

But the records are only very very recent, so even this is not an indication.

Memory sucks

We have records of people saying it has been "hotter colder, wetter, dryer etc since I was a lad" since people could write. (also the youth of today are more ......and women are more...... etc) And next year, when it is the other way, eg, dryer instead of wetter, they will claim the droughts are worse these days.

Not exactly imagination. Older bodies deal with it less capably, plus memory fades over time, especially of difficulties and hardship and suffering. Otherwise we would never get anything done.

Don't forget though that this is technically an ice age, a bit of warming won't hurt too much. Just invest somewhere other than beach front property if you plan to live more than a couple of centuries.

The real argument that scientists are discussing is whether (or how much of) this is due to human intervention or some kind of natural cycle. We are due for a climate change. Maybe all our efforts are doing is triggering it, or hurrying it along. Or nothing. It is preposterous to think that climate is fixed.

Yes, I am sure. Average temperatures have risen about half a degree or maybe one degree now. Most people cant tell a 3 degree change. A four degree difference is that between an ice age and a warm interglacial. We are in an ice age because there is ice on both poles, which is the definition. Or, to be generous, a cold interglacial.

I have discussed this with professors of climatology, physics, etc. quite thoroughly. Both sceptical (and skeptical) and otherwise. And I can read the data myself anyway. I did some climatology etc for a whle at Uni. Was considering physical geography instead of biology as a major. Plus I have a good friend who was a lecturer in this area. Well, actually he was mostly into social geography and anthropology, but he knows his stuff in the 'physical' arena also.

Oh, yeah, also, there are not more disasters each year than ever before. There are more reports of disasters, since we have better communications. Disasters happen just as regularly as ever. But, we consider a disaster where people die. So, more people more disasters in that respect. It is another subjective phenomenon.

PS I am a card carrying member of the Australian Skeptics. I have been a semi-active member for many years. I have spoken to experts in many fields about the kinds of things we are discussing. I can't quote chapter and verse, since I don't propose changing the world by presenting data. But I can probably find it out, given time. I am still in contact with them all.

[acjade]

daoding said:

PS I am a card carrying member of the Australian Skeptics. I have been a semi-active member for many years. I have spoken to experts in many fields about the kinds of things we are discussing. I can't quote chapter and verse, since I don't propose changing the world by presenting data. But I can probably find it out, given time. I am still in contact with them all.

Does this mean you don't believe in UFO's, Mr N?