it's so bad, it's warming up Neptune (http://newsbusters.org/node/12762) too!

Watching the global warming alarmists it's amazing to see how much they completely discount the sun's role in determining the earth's temperature. It's something that can be readily observed simply by stepping outside during the day and at night. Yet, we almost never hear the sun mentioned by Al Gore and friends.

This is despite the fact that astronomy continues to prove that the sun has an influence on its planets temperatures and is likely to be responsible for observable warming of the earth. First came the news that Mars is getting warmer, now comes the news that Neptune is also experiencing global warming

Has it surfaced yet about Halliburton getting no-bid contracts to work on Neptune?




:hahanot:

I don't know about Neptune, but Imp is sure getting hotter!!

:eek: :smile2: :D

Hurry! Rub me with ice and blow on my neck to cool me down Sweetie!

:p:D;)

GGggrrroowwww!!!!

http://www.animatedgif.net/naughty/new/whosyourfroggy.gif

:D hahahaha (It's working now)

Ahhh, so you're feeling froggy honey. *that's not going to cool me down*
;)

that theory would work for me mike IF neptune used to have trees on it and other living beings fucking things up.

thats kind of the point Ivan. It has never had those things yet still is experincing global warming.

thats kind of the point Ivan. It has never had those things yet still is experincing global warming.
exactly!:thumbs:

Ive a better idea.
Why dont we let on that Global Warming isnt a human made problem.
That way America and China can keep they're competitive edge while pumping all sorts of shit into the air.

:D hahahaha (It's working now)

Ahhh, so you're feeling froggy honey. *that's not going to cool me down*
;)


No, Imp, he's not feeling Froggy. He doesn't even know where I live.

If not trees and people what do Neptune and Earth share. Oh, a common sun. Could it be the sun that is the chief cause of global warming?

No, Imp, he's not feeling Froggy. He doesn't even know where I live.

Don't tell him where you live if you want to keep it that way. I told him where I live and he hasn't stopped feeling impish. ;)

Ive a better idea.
Why dont we let on that Global Warming isnt a human made problem.
That way America and China can keep they're competitive edge while pumping all sorts of shit into the air.
I don't think it's so much that paul. Are you trying to say that man has put out sooo much shit that is has affected the entire universe? That would be impossible. It would only show effects here on earth.

Froggers right, it's the sun that is creating warming on all the other planets as well.
A few years back I read an article about the universe expanding and then imploding. I wished I had saved it but basically it spoke of the ice age occurring on earth when it had expanded at it's furtherest point. Now it is imploding and the planets are getting closer to the sun because of the shrinking universe. It's nothing man has done.

Neither theory has been proved beyond doubt, but why wait until its maybe too late andthey find out the solar theory was wrong,if we act now on fossil fuel burning plus whatever the hell else we pump out,and it was proven that it was the sun, we'd have a nice clean planet to fuck up all over again.

Why can't both theories be working at the same time?

Its 'known' that gloabal warming existed before the industrial revolution.

It's also 'known' that the build up of greenhouse gases cause global warming.

The two are not mutually exclusive and in fact evidence for solar based warming means that the effects of man-made warming will be multiplied and require more of a necessity to act.

The fact is that this is a situation where the side of caution is by far the only real choice for survival. You want to risk killing almost if not every human on the planet because you WANT to keep living a wasteful lifestyle? If so do us all a favor and if/when the warming is proven beyond a doubt kill yourself for crimes against humanity.

OK, its a deal monkey. You stop driving cars and when global warming reaches levels that start to destroy the planet I will kill myself.

I don't think it's so much that paul. Are you trying to say that man has put out sooo much shit that is has affected the entire universe? That would be impossible. It would only show effects here on earth.

Froggers right, it's the sun that is creating warming on all the other planets as well.
A few years back I read an article about the universe expanding and then imploding. I wished I had saved it but basically it spoke of the ice age occurring on earth when it had expanded at it's furtherest point. Now it is imploding and the planets are getting closer to the sun because of the shrinking universe. It's nothing man has done.

That's wierd. Expert scientists have concluded with at least 90% certainty that man is causing global warming. Oh well, good thing we have Frogger's amateur opinion to rely on.

Btw, if the Earth heated at this rate just from getting closer to the sun, the Earth would melt in a few thousand years. Such a theory makes you wonder how the Earth has been around for several billion years.

That's wierd. Expert scientists have concluded with at least 90% certainty that man is causing global warming. Oh well, good thing we have Frogger's amateur opinion to rely on.

Btw, if the Earth heated at this rate just from getting closer to the sun, the Earth would melt in a few thousand years. Such a theory makes you wonder how the Earth has been around for several billion years.
I never said man hasn't created global warming.
I was disagreeing with paul that mankind's 'effect on global warming' was affecting the entire galaxy.
I think we should stop harming our atmosphere and take huge steps to correct it. With that said, nature has a way of taking care of things and there is nothing man can do about it. We are just parasites on this rock and mother nature will spring clean soon enough.

I wished I'd have saved the article I was talking about, but it was years ago and very interesting. It had to do with the expansion and shrinking of the universe and the effects.

*haha, I never knew there was a 20000 character limit per post here. Live and learn*

Meanwhile...something I found from 2000. interesting

20 Ways the World Could End
Swept away.
By Corey S. Powell

We've had a good run of it. In the 500,000 years Homo sapiens has roamed the land we've built cities, created complex languages, and sent robotic scouts to other planets. It's difficult to imagine it all coming to an end. Yet 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors. In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the "Doomsday argument," a statistical way to judge when we might join them. If humans were to survive a long time and spread through the galaxy, then the total number of people who will ever live might number in the trillions. By pure odds, it's unlikely that we would be among the very first hundredth of a percent of all those people. Or turn the argument around: How likely is it that this generation will be the one unlucky one? Something like one fifth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today. The odds of being one of the people to witness doomsday are highest when there is the largest number of witnesses around— so now is not such an improbable time.

Human activity is severely disrupting almost all life on the planet, which surely doesn't help matters. The current rate of extinctions is, by some estimates, 10,000 times the average in the fossil record. At present, we may worry about snail darters and red squirrels in abstract terms. But the next statistic on the list could be us.


Natural Disasters

1 Asteroid impact Once a disaster scenario gets the cheesy Hollywood treatment, it's hard to take it seriously. But there is no question that a cosmic interloper will hit Earth, and we won't have to wait millions of years for it to happen. In 1908 a 200-foot-wide comet fragment slammed into the atmosphere and exploded over the Tunguska region in Siberia, Russia, with nearly 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Astronomers estimate similar-sized events occur every one to three centuries. Benny Peiser, an anthropologist-cum-pessimist at Liverpool John Moores University in England, claims that impacts have repeatedly disrupted human civilization. As an example, he says one killed 10,000 people in the Chinese city of Chi'ing-yang in 1490. Many scientists question his interpretations: Impacts are most likely to occur over the ocean, and small ones that happen over land are most likely to affect unpopulated areas. But with big asteroids, it doesn't matter much where they land. Objects more than a half-mile wide— which strike Earth every 250,000 years or so— would touch off firestorms followed by global cooling from dust kicked up by the impact. Humans would likely survive, but civilization might not. An asteroid five miles wide would cause major extinctions, like the one that may have marked the end of the age of dinosaurs. For a real chill, look to the Kuiper belt, a zone just beyond Neptune that contains roughly 100,000 ice-balls more than 50 miles in diameter. The Kuiper belt sends a steady rain of small comets earthward. If one of the big ones headed right for us, that would be it for pretty much all higher forms of life, even cockroaches.
2 Gamma-ray burst If you could watch the sky with gamma-ray vision, you might think you were being stalked by cosmic paparazzi. Once a day or so, you would see a bright flash appear, briefly outshine everything else, then vanish. These gamma-ray bursts, astrophysicists recently learned, originate in distant galaxies and are unfathomably powerful— as much as 10 quadrillion (a one followed by 16 zeros) times as energetic as the sun. The bursts probably result from the merging of two collapsed stars. Before the cataclysmal event, such a double star might be almost completely undetectable, so we'd likely have no advance notice if one is lurking nearby. Once the burst begins, however, there would be no missing its fury. At a distance of 1,000 light-years— farther than most of the stars you can see on a clear night— it would appear about as bright as the sun. Earth's atmosphere would initially protect us from most of the burst's deadly X rays and gamma rays, but at a cost. The potent radiation would cook the atmosphere, creating nitrogen oxides that would destroy the ozone layer. Without the ozone layer, ultraviolet rays from the sun would reach the surface at nearly full force, causing skin cancer and, more seriously, killing off the tiny photosynthetic plankton in the ocean that provide oxygen to the atmosphere and bolster the bottom of the food chain. All the gamma-ray bursts observed so far have been extremely distant, which implies the events are rare. Scientists understand so little about these explosions, however, that it's difficult to estimate the likelihood of one detonating in our galactic neighborhood.

3 Collapse of the vacuum In the book Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut popularized the idea of "ice-nine," a form of water that is far more stable than the ordinary kind, so it is solid at room temperature. Unleash a bit of it, and suddenly all water on Earth transforms to ice-nine and freezes solid. Ice-nine was a satirical invention, but an abrupt, disastrous phase transition is a possibility. Very early in the history of the universe, according to a leading cosmological model, empty space was full of energy. This state of affairs, called a false vacuum, was highly precarious. A new, more stable kind of vacuum appeared and, like ice-nine, it quickly took over. This transition unleashed a tremendous amount of energy and caused a brief runaway expansion of the cosmos. It is possible that another, even more stable kind of vacuum exists, however. As the universe expands and cools, tiny bubbles of this new kind of vacuum might appear and spread at nearly the speed of light. The laws of physics would change in their wake, and a blast of energy would dash everything to bits. "It makes for a beautiful story, but it's not very likely," says Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. He says he worries more about threats that scientists are more certain of— such as rogue black holes.

4 Rogue black holes Our galaxy is full of black holes, collapsed stellar corpses just a dozen miles wide. How full? Tough question. After all, they're called black holes for a reason. Their gravity is so strong they swallow everything, even the light that might betray their presence. David Bennett of Notre Dame University in Indiana managed to spot two black holes recently by the way they distorted and amplified the light of ordinary, more distant stars. Based on such observations, and even more on theoretical arguments, researchers guesstimate there are about 10 million black holes in the Milky Way. These objects orbit just like other stars, meaning that it is not terribly likely that one is headed our way. But if a normal star were moving toward us, we'd know it. With a black hole there is little warning. A few decades before a close encounter, at most, astronomers would observe a strange perturbation in the orbits of the outer planets. As the effect grew larger, it would be possible to make increasingly precise estimates of the location and mass of the interloper. The black hole wouldn't have to come all that close to Earth to bring ruin; just passing through the solar system would distort all of the planets' orbits. Earth might get drawn into an elliptical path that would cause extreme climate swings, or it might be ejected from the solar system and go hurtling to a frigid fate in deep space.

5 Giant solar flares Solar flares— more properly known as coronal mass ejections— are enormous magnetic outbursts on the sun that bombard Earth with a torrent of high-speed subatomic particles. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field negate the potentially lethal effects of ordinary flares. But while looking through old astronomical records, Bradley Schaefer of Yale University found evidence that some perfectly normal-looking, sunlike stars can brighten briefly by up to a factor of 20. Schaefer believes these stellar flickers are caused by superflares, millions of times more powerful than their common cousins. Within a few hours, a superflare on the sun could fry Earth and begin disintegrating the ozone layer (see #2). Although there is persuasive evidence that our sun doesn't engage in such excess, scientists don't know why superflares happen at all, or whether our sun could exhibit milder but still disruptive behavior. And while too much solar activity could be deadly, too little of it is problematic as well. Sallie Baliunas at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says many solar-type stars pass through extended quiescent periods, during which they become nearly 1 percent dimmer. That might not sound like much, but a similar downturn in the sun could send us into another ice age. Baliunas cites evidence that decreased solar activity contributed to 17 of the 19 major cold episodes on Earth in the last 10,000 years.

.6 Reversal of Earth's magnetic field Every few hundred thousand years Earth's magnetic field dwindles almost to nothing for perhaps a century, then gradually reappears with the north and south poles flipped. The last such reversal was 780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue. Worse, the strength of our magnetic field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century. Why worry in an age when GPS has made compasses obsolete? Well, the magnetic field deflects particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic subatomic particles from deep space. Without magnetic protection, these particles would strike Earth's atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered ozone layer (see #5). Also, many creatures navigate by magnetic reckoning. A magnetic reversal might cause serious ecological mischief. One big caveat: "There are no identifiable fossil effects from previous flips," says Sten Odenwald of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is most curious." Still, a disaster that kills a quarter of the population, like the Black Plague in Europe, would hardly register as a blip in fossil records.

7 Flood-basalt volcanism In 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland erupted, spitting out three cubic miles of lava. Floods, ash, and fumes wiped out 9,000 people and 80 percent of the livestock. The ensuing starvation killed a quarter of Iceland's population. Atmospheric dust caused winter temperatures to plunge by 9 degrees in the newly independent United States. And that was just a baby's burp compared with what the Earth can do. Sixty-five million years ago, a plume of hot rock from the mantle burst through the crust in what is now India. Eruptions raged century after century, ultimately unleashing a quarter-million cubic miles of lava— the Laki eruption 100,000 times over. Some scientists still blame the Indian outburst, not an asteroid, for the death of the dinosaurs. An earlier, even larger event in Siberia occurred just about the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, the most thorough extermination known to paleontology. At that time 95 percent of all species were wiped out.

Sulfurous volcanic gases produce acid rains. Chlorine-bearing compounds present yet another threat to the fragile ozone layer— a noxious brew all around. While they are causing short-term destruction, volcanoes also release carbon dioxide that yields long-term greenhouse-effect warming.The last big pulse of flood-basalt volcanism built the Columbia River plateau about 17 million years ago. We're ripe for another.

8 Global epidemics If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.


Human-Triggered Disasters

9 Global warming The Earth is getting warmer, and scientists mostly agree that humans bear some blame. It's easy to see how global warming could flood cities and ruin harvests. More recently, researchers like Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School have raised the alarm that a balmier planet could also assist the spread of infectious disease by providing a more suitable climate for parasites and spreading the range of tropical pathogens (see #8). That could include crop diseases which, combined with substantial climate shifts, might cause famine. Effects could be even more dramatic. At present, atmospheric gases trap enough heat close to the surface to keep things comfortable. Increase the global temperature a bit, however, and there could be a bad feedback effect, with water evaporating faster, freeing water vapor (a potent greenhouse gas), which traps more heat, which drives carbon dioxide from the rocks, which drives temperatures still higher. Earth could end up much like Venus, where the high on a typical day is 900 degrees Fahrenheit. It would probably take a lot of warming to initiate such a runaway greenhouse effect, but scientists have no clue where exactly the tipping point lies.
10 Ecosystem collapse Images of slaughtered elephants and burning rain forests capture people's attention, but the big problem— the overall loss of biodiversity— is a lot less visible and a lot more serious. Billions of years of evolution have produced a world in which every organism's welfare is intertwined with that of countless other species. A recent study of Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior offers an example. Snowy winters encourage wolves to hunt in larger packs, so they kill more moose. The decline in moose population allows more balsam fir saplings to live. The fir trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which in turn influences the climate. It's all connected. To meet the demands of the growing population, we are clearing land for housing and agriculture, replacing diverse wild plants with just a few varieties of crops, transporting plants and animals, and introducing new chemicals into the environment. At least 30,000 species vanish every year from human activity, which means we are living in the midst of one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history. Stephen Kellert, a social ecologist at Yale University, sees a number of ways people might upset the delicate checks and balances in the global ecology. New patterns of disease might emerge (see #8), he says, or pollinating insects might become extinct, leading to widespread crop failure. Or as with the wolves of Isle Royale, the consequences might be something we'd never think of, until it's too late.

..11 Biotech disaster While we are extinguishing natural species, we're also creating new ones through genetic engineering. Genetically modified crops can be hardier, tastier, and more nutritious. Engineered microbes might ease our health problems. And gene therapy offers an elusive promise of fixing fundamental defects in our DNA. Then there are the possible downsides. Although there is no evidence indicating genetically modified foods are unsafe, there are signs that the genes from modified plants can leak out and find their way into other species. Engineered crops might also foster insecticide resistance. Longtime skeptics like Jeremy Rifkin worry that the resulting superweeds and superpests could further destabilize the stressed global ecosystem (see #9). Altered microbes might prove to be unexpectedly difficult to control. Scariest of all is the possibility of the deliberate misuse of biotechnology. A terrorist group or rogue nation might decide that anthrax isn't nasty enough and then try to put together, say, an airborne version of the Ebola virus. Now there's a showstopper.

12 Particle accelerator mishap Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, raved that a particle accelerator experiment could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world. Surprisingly, many sober-minded physicists have had the same thought. Normally their anxieties come up during private meetings, amidst much scribbling on the backs of used envelopes. Recently the question went public when London's Sunday Times reported that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York, might create a subatomic black hole that would slowly nibble away our planet. Alternately, it might create exotic bits of altered matter, called strangelets, that would obliterate whatever ordinary matter they met. To assuage RHIC's jittery neighbors, the lab's director convened a panel that rejected both scenarios as pretty much impossible. Just for good measure, the panel also dismissed the possibility that RHIC would trigger a phase transition in the cosmic vacuum energy (see #3). These kinds of reassurances follow the tradition of the 1942 "LA-602" report, a once-classified document that explained why the detonation of the first atomic bomb almost surely would not set the atmosphere on fire. The RHIC physicists did not, however, reject the fundamental possibility of the disasters. They argued that their machine isn't nearly powerful enough to make a black hole or destabilize the vacuum. Oh, well. We can always build a bigger accelerator.

13 Nanotechnology disaster Before you've even gotten the keyboard dirty, your home computer is obsolete, largely because of incredibly rapid progress in miniaturizing circuits on silicon chips. Engineers are using the same technology to build crude, atomic-scale machines, inventing a new field as they go called nanotechnology. Within a few decades, maybe sooner, it should be possible to build microscopic robots that can assemble and replicate themselves. They might perform surgery from inside a patient, build any desired product from simple raw materials, or explore other worlds. All well and good if the technology works as intended. Then again, consider what K. Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute calls the "grey goo problem" in his book Engines of Creation, a cult favorite among the nanotech set. After an industrial accident, he writes, bacteria-sized machines, "could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days." And Drexler is actually a strong proponent of the technology. More pessimistic souls, such as Bill Joy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, envision nano-machines as the perfect precision military or terrorist tools.

14 Environmental toxins From Donora, Pennsylvania, to Bhopal, India, modern history abounds with frightening examples of the dangers of industrial pollutants. But the poisoning continues. In major cities around the world, the air is thick with diesel particulates, which the National Institutes of Health now considers a carcinogen. Heavy metals from industrial smokestacks circle the globe, even settling in the pristine snows of Antarctica. Intensive use of pesticides in farming guarantees runoff into rivers and lakes. In high doses, dioxins can disrupt fetal development and impair reproductive function— and dioxins are everywhere. Your house may contain polyvinyl chloride pipes, wallpaper, and siding, which belch dioxins if they catch fire or are incinerated. There are also the unknown risks to think about. Every year NIH adds to its list of cancer-causing substances— the number is up to 218. Theo Colburn of the World Wildlife Fund argues that dioxins and other, similar chlorine-bearing compounds mimic the effects of human hormones well enough that they could seriously reduce fertility. Many other scientists dispute her evidence, but if she's right, our chemical garbage could ultimately threaten our survival.


Willful Self-Destruction

15 Global war Together, the United States and Russia still have almost 19,000 active nuclear warheads. Nuclear war seems unlikely today, but a dozen years ago the demise of the Soviet Union also seemed rather unlikely. Political situations evolve; the bombs remain deadly. There is also the possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange. And a ballistic missile defense system, given current technology, will catch only a handful of stray missiles— assuming it works at all. Other types of weaponry could have global effects as well. Japan began experimenting with biological weapons after World War I, and both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with killer germs during the cold war. Compared with atomic bombs, bioweapons are cheap, simple to produce, and easy to conceal. They are also hard to control, although that unpredictability could appeal to a terrorist organization. John Leslie, a philosopher at the University of Guelph in Ontario, points out that genetic engineering might permit the creation of "ethnic" biological weapons that are tailored to attack primarily one ethnic group (see #11).
16 Robots take over People create smart robots, which turn against us and take over the world. Yawn. We've seen this in movies, TV, and comic books for decades. After all these years, look around and still— no smart robots. Yet Hans Moravec, one of the founders of the robotics department of Carnegie Mellon University, remains a believer. By 2040, he predicts, machines will match human intelligence, and perhaps human consciousness. Then they'll get even better. He envisions an eventual symbiotic relationship between human and machine, with the two merging into "postbiologicals" capable of vastly expanding their intellectual power. Marvin Minsky, an artificial-intelligence expert at MIT, foresees a similar future: People will download their brains into computer-enhanced mechanical surrogates and log into nearly boundless files of information and experience. Whether this counts as the end of humanity or the next stage in evolution depends on your point of view. Minsky's vision might sound vaguely familiar. After the first virtual-reality machines hit the marketplace around 1989, feverish journalists hailed them as electronic LSD, trippy illusion machines that might entice the user in and then never let him out. Sociologists fretted that our culture, maybe even our species, would whither away. When the actual experience of virtual reality turned out to be more like trying to play Pac-Man with a bowling ball taped to your head, the talk died down. To his credit, Minsky recognizes that the merger of human and machine lies quite a few years away.

...17 Mass insanity While physical health has improved in most parts of the world over the past century, mental health is getting worse. The World Health Organization estimates that 500 million people around the world suffer from a psychological disorder. By 2020, depression will likely be the second leading cause of death and lost productivity, right behind cardiovascular disease. Increasing human life spans may actually intensify the problem, because people have more years to experience the loneliness and infirmity of old age. Americans over 65 already are disproportionately likely to commit suicide. Gregory Stock, a biophysicist at the University of California at Los Angeles, believes medical science will soon allow people to live to be 200 or older. If such an extended life span becomes common, it will pose unfathomable social and psychological challenges. Perhaps 200 years of accumulated sensations will overload the human brain, leading to a new kind of insanity or fostering the spread of doomsday cults, determined to reclaim life's endpoint. Perhaps the current trends of depression and suicide among the elderly will continue. One possible solution— promoting a certain kind of mental well-being with psychoactive drugs such as Prozac— heads into uncharted waters. Researchers have no good data on the long-term effects of taking these medicines.


A Greater Force Is Directed Against Us

18 Alien invasion At the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a cadre of dedicated scientists sifts through radio static in search of a telltale signal from an alien civilization. So far, nothing. Now suppose the long-sought message arrives. Not only do the aliens exist, they are about to stop by for a visit. And then . . . any science-fiction devotee can tell you what could go wrong. But the history of human exploration and exploitation suggests the most likely danger is not direct conflict. Aliens might want resources from our solar system (Earth's oceans, perhaps, full of hydrogen for refilling a fusion-powered spacecraft) and swat us aside if we get in the way, as we might dismiss mosquitoes or beetles stirred up by the logging of a rain forest. Aliens might unwittingly import pests with a taste for human flesh, much as Dutch colonists reaching Mauritius brought cats, rats, and pigs that quickly did away with the dodo. Or aliens might accidentally upset our planet or solar system while carrying out some grandiose interstellar construction project. The late physicist Gerard O'Neill speculated that contact with extraterrestrial visitors could also be socially disastrous. "Advanced western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come in contact with, even in those cases where every attempt was made to protect and guard the primitive civilization," he said in a 1979 interview. "I don't see any reason why the same thing would not happen to us."
19 Divine intervention Judaism has the Book of Daniel; Christianity has the Book of Revelation; Islam has the coming of the Mahdi; Zoroastrianism has the countdown to the arrival of the third son of Zoroaster. The stories and their interpretations vary widely, but the underlying concept is similar: God intervenes in the world, bringing history to an end and ushering in a new moral order. Apocalyptic thinking runs at least back to Egyptian mythology and right up to Heaven's Gate and Y2K mania. More worrisome, to the nonbelievers at least, are the doomsday cults that prefer to take holy retribution into their own hands. In 1995, members of the Aum Shinri Kyo sect unleashed sarin nerve gas in a Tokyo subway station, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000. Had things gone as intended, the death toll would have been hundreds of times greater. A more determined group armed with a more lethal weapon— nuclear, biological, nanotechnological even— could have done far more damage.

20 Someone wakes up and realizes it was all a dream Are we living a shadow existence that only fools us into thinking it is real? This age-old philosophical question still reverberates through cultural thought, from the writings of William S. Burrows to the cinematic mind games of The Matrix. Hut of the Institute of Advanced Studies sees an analogy to the danger of the collapse of the vacuum. Just as our empty space might not be the true, most stable form of the vacuum, what we call reality might not be the true, most stable form of existence. In the fourth century B.C., Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu framed the question in more poetic terms. He described a vivid dream. In it, he was a butterfly who had no awareness of his existence as a person. When he awoke, he asked: "Was I before Chuang Tzu who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being Chuang Tzu?"


:)

Expert scientists have concluded with at least 90% certainty that man is causing global warming.
I'd like to see this research, and the rationale behind it.

I'd like to see this research, and the rationale behind it.....

That's wierd. Expert scientists have concluded with at least 90% certainty that man is causing global warming. Oh well, good thing we have Frogger's amateur opinion to rely on.

Btw, if the Earth heated at this rate just from getting closer to the sun, the Earth would melt in a few thousand years. Such a theory makes you wonder how the Earth has been around for several billion years.

Being around for several billions, surviving meteor and comet strikes, massive volcanic activity, continents upheaving, toxic atmospheric compositions, earthquakes, cosmic radiation, magnetic reversals, solar flares, only to be brought down by SUV's and hairspray. What a sad way to go.

That's wierd. Expert scientists have concluded with at least 90% certainty that man is causing global warming. Oh well, good thing we have Frogger's amateur opinion to rely on.

Btw, if the Earth heated at this rate just from getting closer to the sun, the Earth would melt in a few thousand years. Such a theory makes you wonder how the Earth has been around for several billion years.

How about a bit more honesty, Leper. SOME scientists have concluded with SOME degree of certainty that man is causing global warming. Among those SOME scientists the amount of global warming that is anthroprogenic is thought to be anywhere from miniscule to great.

You don't have to rely on my amateur opinion. You can be a bit more honest and a bit less of a GW cheerleader and do a simple Google search to find many sceptical scientists.

How about a bit more honesty, Leper. SOME scientists have concluded with SOME degree of certainty that man is causing global warming. Among those SOME scientists the amount of global warming that is anthroprogenic is thought to be anywhere from miniscule to great.

You don't have to rely on my amateur opinion. You can be a bit more honest and a bit less of a GW cheerleader and do a simple Google search to find many sceptical scientists.

Don't worry, I don't rely on your amateur opinion. I listen to science, not laymen speculation. As for honesty, I doubt you care about that, but here you go:

A news article from CNN about it:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/02/02/climate.change.report/

Your own government, which also happens to be one of the most skeptical countries as far as climate change is concerned:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html

Here's the report on climate change created by a huge international panel of scientists:

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM040507.pdf

No, we're not talking about some obscure google-produced quote attributed to an isolated scientist from upto 10 years ago, or an Exxon-funded statement saying "there might be other causes than humans behind global warming." This is an international contemporary, peer-reviewed report consolidated from general scientific consensus and research.

And I just did a google search on "global warming skeptics." The top three websites I got were EnvironmentalDefense.org, skepticism.net, and wikipedia, in that order. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to give me a little more direction as to what you're basing your views on. Or you could just admit your opinions are based on Fox News, oil-industry-funded propaganda, Rush Limbaugh, and/or Dubya himself.

Please, please, please show me a link that even comes close to the reliability and credibility of the links I just gave to you!

Heres one from today about CO2.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6665147.stm

Im surprised that the article you posted listed "Global epidemic" as a non-man made disaster. I mean the black plague was man made to some extent. It wouldn't have spread nearly as prolifically (hence being a plague) if people hadn't gotten religiously histerical and killed of all the cats.

The next 'global epidemic' will be long overdue. It will be a product of our medical culture. Everything on Earth has always retained a balence. Humans have willfully disrupted this balence. One way we have done this is through the size of our population. When any population gets too big there is either starvation or an epidemic. The only reason we havent had an epidemic is because of our advanced medical system but sooner or later the microbes will pull ahead.

Frankly my money is on #11 - genetically modified destruction of the worlds food supply. It might not kill us though, just make us feeble and weak. Not with a bang but a wimper.

who wants to bet that in 50 years we are in exactly the same place we are now?

who wants to bet that in 50 years we are in exactly the same place we are now?

Considering your history of mistaken assumptions, I'd be happy to make that investment.

I never said man hasn't created global warming.
I think we should stop harming our atmosphere and take huge steps to correct it. *


have you realized what exactly that will involve? since all of it is driven by money, you have to get car companies, electric companies, etc.., to bite the bullet and sale it all real cheap to have any real effect anytime soon. at the prices these products are sold now, only the rich can afford to buy an electric car, or even a hybrid. poor people still get screwed.

why not wire up every home to a PERSONAL wind electric generator, solar panels, etc., instead of selling them large WIND FARM produced electric? why? money to be made.

it took YEARS to produce the effects we have now, and it will take YEARS for it to reverse. possibly even a generation or more. so SLOWLY changing isn't going to do much at all to reverse the effects going on now.

unless you are actually willing to just STOP. but that takes cooperation. people helping each other. people not stabbing each other in the back to get ahead of the jones', or stepping on the little man.

capitalism won. and it will reap its benefits sooner or later. to me, "global warming" WILL solve the human issue.

Considering your history of mistaken assumptions, I'd be happy to make that investment.

your on. meet back at this thread in 50 years. If the world is 2 degrees hotter I will say you were right

have you realized what exactly that will involve? since all of it is driven by money, you have to get car companies, electric companies, etc.., to bite the bullet and sale it all real cheap to have any real effect anytime soon. at the prices these products are sold now, only the rich can afford to buy an electric car, or even a hybrid. poor people still get screwed.
I have little to no faith in mankind either, Ivan. It COULD be done, but more than likely not. It's on the scale of Nations now, although we as individuals could make a small impact.
North Korea has the right idea. they make it mandatory to turn the power generators off at dusk and back on at dawn. The heat index over large cities is amazing and if nations followed suit, it would make a difference. It would help 'lower the heat' so to speak and will calm some storms. *Air pollution is another story.*
Although that is still not going to change whatever the effect that is causing Neptune to heat up.

Now, don't be painting us rich folk with the same brush. I know plenty of welfare bums who are on state assistance that leave every friggin' light on in the house day and night because they are not footing the bill.

That door swings both ways, doesn't it?

I own an SUV and a cadillac deville, but I hardly drive unless I have to run an errand *ie take my son somewhere or load up for the month*, I spend most my time at home with an occasion of going sightseeing. I walk everywhere here I need to go. The store is a mile away and I walk thru the trails instead of driving. I don't fly, anywhere, ever. My heat, air con, and electric is around $50 a month, my water the same and that's only because the sewer is moved to the next town, otherwise it'd be $20.
Poor folk can walk to the store just like some of us rich folk do too.

I choose to live in the Southern Appalachian national biosphere reserve for a reason. ;)



why not wire up every home to a PERSONAL wind electric generator, solar panels, etc., instead of selling them large WIND FARM produced electric? why? money to be made. Why not? Why not do it yourself and capitalize on it?
One of my very best friends owns 287 acres of the Adirondacks in Upstate NY and lives in the middle of it. They are completely independent of modern day conveniences. They have installed solar panels, and a windmill that collects there own electricity. Many times they make too much and it gets set to a reserve, they end up selling it to electric companies and make a profit from it. Although their reasons were for self sufficiency and in their effort created too much. So they earn a profit from it, soo what?


it took YEARS to produce the effects we have now, and it will take YEARS for it to reverse. possibly even a generation or more. so SLOWLY changing isn't going to do much at all to reverse the effects going on now.

unless you are actually willing to just STOP. but that takes cooperation. people helping each other. people not stabbing each other in the back to get ahead of the jones', or stepping on the little man.

capitalism won. and it will reap its benefits sooner or later. to me, "global warming" WILL solve the human issue.
Yeah, we didn't get to this stage overnight, and it won't change overnight either. But you have to understand that there are other forces at play here too.
In order for Neptune to be heating up, something is happening in our galaxy. Man can not change or hinder that in one bit. That galactic change will effect the earth too, so I can't blame mankind for melting the Ice although they had their hand in the pot. I think it was bound to happen anyway.
The melting ice is/will make a big change in our earth's weather and as a result, in the death of many of humans. The change would have taken place if there were 200,000 million people or 700,000 million people. You just notice it more when more people die.

Now.
What about the galactic changes? Surely it will have dire results. What do you think they are?

Edit:typo

you have a DTS? take me! take me now!

your on. meet back at this thread in 50 years. If the world is 2 degrees hotter I will say you were right
ok, but how are we going to measure it? asphalt, concrete and A/C screw up accurate measurement.

you have a DTS? take me! take me now!

I think she meant STD :D

I think she meant STD :D

:eek:


:lolhit:

CHEVY BLAZER *for the record!!! :D

:lolhit:

CHEVY BLAZER *for the record!!! :D
s-10 Blazer or Deliverance Blazer?

ok, but how are we going to measure it? asphalt, concrete and A/C screw up accurate measurement.

rectally of course, with my special boot shaped thermometer

I think she meant STD :D
you do not make jokes about the Deville Touring Sedan!:rant:




j/k

hey what happened to that old kook who followed you from yahoo?

s-10 Blazer or Deliverance Blazer?
I dunno. s10 I guess. 4 dr, 4wd.

Looks like this...

http://cing.theautodealer.com/images/items/4472bd9b-6ff1-41d3-b51c-18c730bcb893/198/m198750.jpg

I dunno. s10 I guess. 4 dr, 4wd.

Looks like this...

http://cing.theautodealer.com/images/items/4472bd9b-6ff1-41d3-b51c-18c730bcb893/198/m198750.jpg
wouldn't this go over better in TN?

http://images.webkrafters.com/trinity/25700/85chev25724-1.JPG

hey what happened to that old kook who followed you from yahoo?
he lost his temper and got his buttkisk kicked by the mods...until he apologizes to Imp.

only the rich can afford to buy an electric car, or even a hybrid. poor people still get screwed.

The "rich" people going out and paying a premium to buy a hybrid are the ones getting screwed. It's going to take them a long time to make their money back in gas savings. Meanwhile, the cheap cars get nearly the same mileage as a hybrid.

you do not make jokes about the Deville Touring Sedan!

What are you, Jack Klompus or something?

you have a DTS? take me! take me now!

My parents have one, you'd have to get in good with them. :D It's a very, very sweet car!



wouldn't this go over better in TN?

http://images.webkrafters.com/trinity/25700/85chev25724-1.JPG


hehehe, probly. But I wouldn't be able to pick Sammy up that far to get him in.

hehehe, probly. But I wouldn't be able to pick Sammy up that far to get him in.
if he's still having problems with stairs, a rope ladder isn't going to do much good:(

i had an IH Scout II...that thing rocked when i had the roof off. pity i broke the gas petal off :lolhit:

if he's still having problems with stairs, a rope ladder isn't going to do much good:(

i had an IH Scout II...that thing rocked when i had the roof off. pity i broke the gas petal off :lolhit:

He tries at the stairs, he needs a boost to get him in the blazer.

I bet! How'd you brake the gas pedal off?

Gas guzzlers.
Your destroying the planet, people.

your on. meet back at this thread in 50 years. If the world is 2 degrees hotter I will say you were right

Yeah right, the world is already approximately 1.3 degrees hotter, and you're still latching on to every excuse in the book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

Gas guzzlers.
Your destroying the planet, people.

And Americans wonder why the rest of the world hates them...Hell, threads like this make ME hate Americans.

OK Leper. Im dying to know what you drive now.
A pic would be nice also cause Im not up to scratch on American cars.
Please.

OK Leper. Im dying to know what you drive now.
A pic would be nice also cause Im not up to scratch on American cars.
Please.

I don't have a pic cause my car really isn't very pretty. My car is a Toyota Tercel....It's small as far as this country goes...4-cylinder. It gets around 30 mpg (I don't know what the European conversion would be). Nothing spectacular, but I bought it in college, so I couldn't be too choosy.

Yeah right, the world is already approximately 1.3 degrees hotter, and you're still latching on to every excuse in the book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

amazing what shrinking the scale on a graph can do. makes it look lie a huge jump doesn't it?

I don't have a pic cause my car really isn't very pretty. My car is a Toyota Tercel....It's small as far as this country goes...4-cylinder. It gets around 30 mpg (I don't know what the European conversion would be). Nothing spectacular, but I bought it in college, so I couldn't be too choosy.
OK, No probs man. Toyotas are fantastic, not sure they do that model in EU.
I once had a Toyota Corolla, great car.
For the last 15 years Ive drove diesel cars. Those big 4x4s in the above pics only sell well in EU when they're diesel.
Why does America not adapt this idea?

amazing what shrinking the scale on a graph can do. makes it look lie a huge jump doesn't it?

Your nitpicking skills rivals dharma's. :lolhit:

so you think shrinking the scale on a graph to add dramtic effect is OK? They should show the entire scale from what is normal to what they define as the tipping pint of disaster as it were. that way we really know how close we are to the end. I am sure they know the exat temperature, or PPM of CO2 when life will become void, they are experts after all.

It's completely irrelevent. This thread isn't about global warming graphs. Leper called you on your bullshit and you found something else to bitch about with global warming.

its not BS. I said 2 degrees, he said 1.3 (+/- .30 degrees as stated in the article) so really it could only be 1 degree.

OK Leper. Im dying to know what you drive now.
A pic would be nice also cause Im not up to scratch on American cars.
Please.

This thread wouldn't be complete without a pic of my caddy.:D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/tormented/IMG_0331.jpg

**and I was wrong Mikey. It's a Lincoln town car my parents drive *I just got off the phone with them and asked to be sure*. Pics of it in a few months when they stop to visit, on thier way to travel across america.**

Steering wheel is on the wrong side Imp, any wonder you have them accidents.

Steering wheel is on the left, just like in the van one I posted. I'd surely die immmediately if I were to go to another country if it was on the right.

Needless to say, no one can blame me for global warming, I hardly ever drive.

its not BS. I said 2 degrees, he said 1.3 (+/- .30 degrees as stated in the article) so really it could only be 1 degree.

We still have 50 years to go on your bet. Doesn't look like it'll be that hard to pick up 1 degree.

thats true, it picked up one degree while I was waiting for my coffee this morning

thats true, it picked up one degree while I was waiting for my coffee this morning

Hurry Trav, run outside and suck up some UV rays!

Steering wheel is on the left, just like in the van one I posted. I'd surely die immmediately if I were to go to another country if it was on the right.

Needless to say, no one can blame me for global warming, I hardly ever drive.Hmmm, have to find something else to blame you on now.

you cant blame mem either, I buy carbon offsets!

carbon offsets,are a feel good factor nothing else.

no way, Al Gore, the dali lama of global warming says they work, so it must be true.

Fuck Al Gore.
Hes stupid first and Democrat second.

but he made a movie about global warming, with 20 foot long graphs and everything.

Yeah I didnt bother watching it. About a couple of thousand trees were killed flying him round the world promotong it.
I dont know all his policys but on this one all hes done is give western governments an excuse to tax us yet again.

careful mang, your about to be labled a moron for not jumping on the global warming band wagon.

So because Gore's a hypocrite, global warming has been debunked! Good call.

no, thats not the reason. the reason is becuase the whole premise of global warming is that our climate should never change. Climate changes, that's what it does. Its like if the climate goes up or down, then that is somehow bad. we dont control the earhts climate, and couldnt if we tried.

The earths temperatures may be getting hottoer, but you know what? it would be getting hotter if we were driving cars or not. Just like in the past when humans were not even present. The debate is whether man has an effect, or even more stupid, if man is causing it. I say no. you say yes.

There would be a very small margin up or down in temperature that human life could tolerate.

what is a very small margine? I want some figures. How many PPM CO2 are needed to end life on the planet? HOw many PPm CO2 on Venus? What are we at now? We always get figures about years, so I am assuming somewhere one of these scientists has calcualted the number of years based on PPM CO2 and a figure in which he decided the CO2 make up would be very harmful. Out of the total CO2 how much is caused by man? What percentage?I am just tired of man made global warming enthusaists blurting out "facts" taht they never back up and just expect us to beleive, and if we dont they call us stupid.

Yeah, it changes with the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. There's 600,000 years of data proving this. What is it, a coincidence?

what changes with the level of CO2? and in the 599,820 years preceding the industrial revolution what caused the CO2 levels to fluctuate?

what changes with the level of CO2? and in the 599,820 years preceding the industrial revolution what caused the CO2 levels to fluctuate?

CO2 levels rise in the winter when the trees lose all their leaves and stop absorbing CO2. Conversely, in the summer the CO2 levels decrease. The temperature changes with the CO2 level.

CO2 is not the only factor in temperature change, its note ven the most important.

Why does America not adapt this idea?

Because of the attitude displayed in this thread. Many Americans (perhaps more than half) care more about having a huge or sporty vehicle than the environmental consequences of driving those vehicles.

what is a very small margine? I want some figures. How many PPM CO2 are needed to end life on the planet? HOw many PPm CO2 on Venus? What are we at now? We always get figures about years, so I am assuming somewhere one of these scientists has calcualted the number of years based on PPM CO2 and a figure in which he decided the CO2 make up would be very harmful. Out of the total CO2 how much is caused by man? What percentage?I am just tired of man made global warming enthusaists blurting out "facts" taht they never back up and just expect us to beleive, and if we dont they call us stupid.

You don't want figures. You want excuses. I've provided links with enough figures to make your head spin (which, by the way, is why you rely on expert opinion)

you provided a link to a graph. as stated earlier a graph showing a range of 2 degrees spread over 600,000 years can look quite intimidating. All I want is the upper limit of the graph and how close we are to those, thats all. Just some graph showing we are 1.3 degrees hotter since some arbitrary date with no reference to some sort of cut off point and how close we are to that is poinltess.

Trav,living in Northern California, do you not think that Global Warming has had a bad effect on your neck of the woods.
No matter how you view Global Warming.

there has been no effect of global warming here. It is and has been hot in the summer for as long as anyone can remember. maybe if you give me some specific effects i can llok for I can keep my eye open. I tend to ignore most of the signs becuase according to the media everyhting that happens weather wise is becasue of global warming, and I mean everything. Even giant winter storms.

I was thinking on the lines of dryer weather, more fires, maybe water becoming a problem, that sort of thing.

we never get rain in the summer, it is always hot and sunny from june to november. Fires are a lways a danger in California, and water is sometimes scarce, sometimes abundant, depends on the snow pack.

no, thats not the reason. the reason is becuase the whole premise of global warming is that our climate should never change. Climate changes, that's what it does. Its like if the climate goes up or down, then that is somehow bad. we dont control the earhts climate, and couldnt if we tried. hmmm...funny that. Guess what Trav, people die. The wholoe basis for our medical system is that people shouldn't die. I have yet to see one single post, ever, from you denouncing what doctors do or claiming they are interferring with nature. not one. how convienent.

there has been no effect of global warming here. It is and has been hot in the summer for as long as anyone can remember. maybe if you give me some specific effects i can llok for I can keep my eye open. I tend to ignore most of the signs becuase according to the media everyhting that happens weather wise is becasue of global warming, and I mean everything. Even giant winter storms.

That's not what I hear about the wine-producers in your part of the country...changing temperatures means a hell of a lot to them. Then again, if it doesn't affect you personally, then it must not be true.

hmmm...funny that. Guess what Trav, people die. The wholoe basis for our medical system is that people shouldn't die. I have yet to see one single post, ever, from you denouncing what doctors do or claiming they are interferring with nature. not one. how convienent.

wtf are you babbling about? Name me one doctor who ever said people shouldnt die.

That's not what I hear about the wine-producers in your part of the country...changing temperatures means a hell of a lot to them. Then again, if it doesn't affect you personally, then it must not be true.

you mean the thought of changing temperatures, as the climate has not actually changed here.

CO2 is not the only factor in temperature change, its note ven the most important.

:rolleyes: But it is a factor and we can do something about it.

you mean the thought of changing temperatures, as the climate has not actually changed here.

Wrong again Trav. Here's a scientific study documenting the increased fires in the Western United States, which you say is not happening.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1128834v1.pdf

And here's an article about wine-growers concern with climate change:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fo-wine24jan24,0,6446615.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Granted, you will dismiss everything I'm linking to you with bald denials based on nothing but your or Rush Limbaugh's personal convictions.

He tries at the stairs, he needs a boost to get him in the blazer.

I bet! How'd you brake the gas pedal off?
the same way i blew up the engine...driving like a 19 y/o:@@:

This thread wouldn't be complete without a pic of my caddy.:D
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/tormented/IMG_0331.jpg

**and I was wrong Mikey. It's a Lincoln town car my parents drive *I just got off the phone with them and asked to be sure*. Pics of it in a few months when they stop to visit, on thier way to travel across america.**
either/or...Mikey likes big cars. it might have something to do with the '72 Delta 88 i had in HS.

Gas guzzlers.
Your destroying the planet, people.
hey! i bumped the MPG up a whole mile per gallon by changing the spark plugs...all the way up to 7.5:lolhit:

OK, No probs man. Toyotas are fantastic, not sure they do that model in EU.
I once had a Toyota Corolla, great car.
For the last 15 years Ive drove diesel cars. Those big 4x4s in the above pics only sell well in EU when they're diesel.
Why does America not adapt this idea?
big pick-ups do sell well in diesel...the fuel just isn't as widely available as gas. and they will sell better over the summer now that refinery problems have "corrected" the disparity in petrol/#2 pricing. diesel in now selling for less than gas for the 1st time since the hurricane season 2 years ago.