^^ That's one of the most stunning comments I've seen here--ever. Just wow.



Would you care to look again?

12/2/2009 10:16:03 AM

I know what it looks like and I know what you will fixate on ad nauseam. I'll go ahead and save you the trouble by directing you towards the words I put in quotes and not "exactly like" or "carbon copy of" which is how you read it.

12/2/2009 10:22:45 AM

Quote :

"Looking 'more like' North Korea wouldn't actually be all that bad."

HockeyRoman

What did you really mean then?

12/2/2009 10:29:54 AM

I meant "Looking 'more like' North Korea wouldn't actually be all that bad."


Would you like to defend the egregious waste of energy from light pollution that leads to the deaths of millions of birds?

12/2/2009 10:33:04 AM

As long as people are paying for power, they should be able to keep the lights on whenever they want. I don't even know how millions of birds are dying because the lights are on, but who cares...they're birds.

12/2/2009 10:40:26 AM

Wow. . . Now that, hooksaw, is a stunning and very disturbing comment.

12/2/2009 10:49:50 AM

No, dude, it's not. You're suggesting that people be forced to turn their lights off at night in order to save birds. I agree that it would be a good idea for people to turn their lights off, but they shouldn't have to.

12/2/2009 10:53:38 AM

^^ Are birds more important than people? You act as though people are simply running lights to kill birds--and that there is no benefit from the lighting. Hospitals, schools, and emergency services all use lights--and some of those lights are even used to help animals.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 10:59 AM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 10:58:42 AM

Yes, I said that. Totally. . . What I am saying, however, are that people are extremely wasteful with their energy usage to the detriment of wildlife and as ^^ has already admitted there is a wide spread ignorance of the problem. While I don't necessarily feel that birds are more important that people, I don't believe that people are more important than birds. More aptly to this discussion I don't feel that someone running a parking lot full of lights or huge ass unoccupied office buildings with lights ablaze is a prudent use of energy resources especially when they cause profound harm to the environment.

12/2/2009 11:10:50 AM

Quote :

"While I don't necessarily feel that birds are more important that people, I don't believe that people are more important than birds."

So they're of equal value. Glad we got that cleared up. If a business or government is running lights in an unoccupied office building or parking lot, they're throwing away a lot of money, and that should be enough incentive to shut them off. Of course, government entities have absolutely no incentive to cut costs because they're taking from an unlimited pool of money.

In any case, big cities have all but destroyed the ecosystems that were once there. It's pointless to try to force all people to turn off their lights at night, especially since that's the time that lighting is most necessary, just to save some insects and birds. There are plenty of places for those animals to live other than cities. You can't expect people to stop living their lives.

12/2/2009 11:28:14 AM

Quote :

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." --Jesus Ma 10:29-31 || Lk 12:6-7 "

12/2/2009 11:33:15 AM

Quote :

"There are plenty of places for those animals to live other than cities."

It isn't even that the birds that are being decimated live in the cities (because by and large they don't). I would advise you to educate yourself on the matter and come back with more than just "humans can and will be wasteful so nature can just deal with it".

12/2/2009 11:47:22 AM

^ All this talk of birds--is it okay if I have a chicken sandwich for lunch?

12/2/2009 11:59:13 AM

Quote :

"I don't feel that someone running a parking lot full of lights or huge ass unoccupied office buildings with lights ablaze is a prudent use of energy resources especially when they cause profound harm to the environment."

Tell that to the woman that gets raped in an unlit parking lot after working late in the office

Until you get all the criminals to play nice and only during the day parking lot lights and street lamps serve a safety function.

Sure some of the lights left on at night are wasteful. In my household no lights are left on over night. My company prides themselves on selling energy efficient energy systems, they even send out a "Green" email newsletter that I had to unsubscribe from b/c I can only take so much BS. I find it all humorous b/c we have probably 7-8 large Plasma TVs scattered around the building and they're left on 24/7 regardless of whether anyone is here or not. All our lights are activated by movement so they're not on when nobody is here but I think the TVs being left on more than cancels out any savings there.

12/2/2009 12:22:23 PM

"Eduardo Zorita of Germany’s GKSS...
a senior US scientific official"

Quote :

"note that I said scientific groups. reading is FUNDAMENAL"

Lol. I don't even know what you're disputing. All of the people quoted represent scientific groups.

You have to concede that this issue has stirred up internal debate within the field, and that the scientists are not all corrupt like you want to believe.

12/2/2009 1:54:37 PM

Quote :

"You have to concede that this issue has stirred up internal debate within the field, and that the scientists are not all corrupt there isn't a true scientific consensus on AGW like you want to believe."

12/2/2009 2:07:44 PM

Quote :

"What I am saying, however, are that people are extremely wasteful with their energy usage to the detriment of wildlife and as ^^ has already admitted there is a wide spread ignorance of the problem. While I don't necessarily feel that birds are more important that people, I don't believe that people are more important than birds."

There seem to be a lot of birds in urban areas, even more in suburban and rural areas. By what mechanism do you believe the lights are killing birds? From a quick Google search, it seems most of the deaths occurred half a century ago and that many of the birds that were most affected by night lighting (night migratory birds drawn by warning lights on radio towers and flood-lit smoke-stacks) are already dead. The species that remain migrate during the day or have been weeded out by natural selection to ignore such lit structures. All that leaves is birds being kept awake at night, which should shorten their life, but not threaten extinction, and would only be a local phenomenon, as much of the planet is still unlit at night.

This being the case, it is undeniable that harm was and is caused, but what could have been done differently? It would kill more than just a few pilots if we did not put warning lights on our radio towers and nuclear power stations. And how is this not just more of the cost of living on planet Earth? We humans are a benefit to planet Earth. We irrigate the deserts, manage water resources to avoid droughts and floods, control disease, and dramatically increase the productivity of the planet's photosynthesis (our crops attain efficiencies up to 8%, natural flora doesn't even come close to 1%). Not to mention the potential protection we offer from interception of extinction level meteors. Sure, not all human's are as nice to our environment as North Americans, but they are planning to improve the situation, and as they do the harm will subside and the benefits we provide will grow.

12/2/2009 3:11:32 PM

I'm not a big fan of birds. Nasty little dinosaurs. They had it coming.

Quote :

"We humans are a benefit to planet Earth"

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 3:23 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 3:22:49 PM

we are neither a benefit nor a detriment. we just are. the sun will supernovae in a billion or so years anyway.

12/2/2009 3:36:30 PM

^actualy it won't. it will however 'burn out' enough to the point where it's unable to support earth native life though.

^^leftist nazis want all humans to die. see.


[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 3:42 PM. Reason : d]

12/2/2009 3:40:44 PM

^^you forgot to mention helping plants with increased CO2 concentration

12/2/2009 3:42:24 PM

Plants destroyed the earth first. (oxygen catastrophe)

Indeed, we are neither a benefit or detriment in the big picture. I don't care about endangered whales, something will grow back to take their place eventually. But in terms of the most important metric, mainly our own species' ability to survive, we are most certainly a detriment to our habitat. That we can support more of ourselves for a short period of time is delaying the inevitable.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 4:01 PM. Reason : leftist nazis want all other humans to die ]

12/2/2009 3:56:05 PM

the only thing i have problems with the left wing is that it isn't ENOUGH left wing. you claim all this bullshit nonstop about protecting the environment but take literally the most retarded steps or meaningless ones to 'fix' it according to your totally unscientific explaination to fix it.

spit in the ocean as far as i'm concerned. (and china keeps laughing!)

conservatives take the opposite approach. turn loose society to a major extent and lets see how far we can take it till we push the envelope industrially and technologically. hey there might be a hiccup along the way in terms of pollution, but in the process we want the same goal of a clean earth that humans can share properly with nature. it's just gonna take a hundred or so years. and yes we might 'rape' the earth according to your definition, but after that is done, we will have figured out the best way to make do with this planet.

liberals plan is like only trying to hit the brakes on ours but barely. like i said, spit in the ocean. you are just being a pest on our lives at this point.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 4:14 PM. Reason : d]

12/2/2009 4:12:56 PM

^ holy shit, it's like watching rush limbaugh's ass cheeks flapping back and forth after a prolonged fart

12/2/2009 4:42:14 PM

"Climate change denial is the new article of faith for the far right":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/dec/02/climate-denial-far-right

12/2/2009 5:05:59 PM

no it's not. they knew it all along. now they just have proof

Quote :

"^ holy shit, it's like watching rush limbaugh's ass cheeks flapping back and forth after a prolonged fart"

you need to be bitchslapped. that is if you can find time no to literally suck al gores dick off.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 5:16 PM. Reason : d]

12/2/2009 5:15:35 PM

Quote :

"Nevertheless, the denial lobby – and it is denial rather than scepticism because they reject all of the evidence they don't like and embrace any alternative theory no matter how flaky"

stopped reading after this

12/2/2009 5:15:42 PM

^ That's why you fail. You aren't interested in reading anything that runs counter to your worldview. Try using that college education your daddy paid for, and THINK, instead of spouting off RNC talking points.

12/2/2009 5:16:51 PM

they are all in a big pissy wad about this b/c they are finally getting a chink in their armor that is holding up this huge propaganda machine for world domination. the leftists are getting shit on right and left. watch how defensive they get now....

12/2/2009 5:17:21 PM

Oh no, you've really got something on them now! Watch them use the same techniques to defend themselves that 'publicans use every time they get called out! Oh no!

12/2/2009 5:19:24 PM

prove to me that global warming is occuring. oh wait you can't!

/thread bitch

12/2/2009 5:20:43 PM

^^^^I stopped reading after that because I've always been a skeptic, not a denier.

Good to see that all the evidence of collusion and altering data isn't swaying you one bit from your own deadset opinion that AGW is definitely real

And you tell ME to think?

12/2/2009 5:22:07 PM

^^ oh this is fun. i know you are but what am i?

^ Being a skeptic is fine, skepticism is healthy if it drives a real, honest, dispassionate discussion of the issue at hand. I'm telling pack_fudge here to think, because he's hell-bent on a quest to prove how awesome he is.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 5:26 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 5:22:12 PM

The problem is, all the skeptics have been silenced and criticized as there has supposedly been some huge consensus amongst the scientific community that warming is real and caused by humans. Its sad that it takes hacking into computers and stealing information to actually open up a real debate, instead of immediately silencing anyone who even doubts AGW with the premise that OMG YOU MUST WORK FOR EXXON, OMG YOU MUST KNOW MORE THAN 99.99% OF SCIENTISTS WHO AGREE THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL

My stance hasn't changed in 7 years. Peoples' reactions to my stance have recently changed though.

12/2/2009 5:29:05 PM

^ I respect being a skeptic for the sake of having a real conversation about the issue. It's the partisan nature of some of the responses being shown here that cheapens said conversation.

12/2/2009 5:47:03 PM

Quote :

"Lol. I don't even know what you're disputing. All of the people quoted represent scientific groups."

Bullshit. In neither of those quotes were the people REPRESENTING the group. Rather, the people were speaking for themselves. Again, reading is FUNDAMENTAL.

Quote :

"From what I have seen, there is no evidence of research misconduct, but the only way to clear the air now is through an investigation."

Then clearly the author has his head up his ass. Telling someone to delete data and emails? Wake the fuck up, dude. I need read nothing else, because this guy clearly isn't thinking straight.

Quote :

"That's why you fail. You aren't interested in reading anything that runs counter to your worldview. Try using that college education your daddy paid for, and THINK, instead of spouting off RNC talking points."

Bullshit. When someone says something that blatantly stupid, then it is clear they have nothing worthwhile to say, so why waste your time? In fact, not reading any further would be a great example of "using that college education" by filtering out worthless drivel. And, besides that, that is basically what the "scientists" in question have been doing for years now: "what, they don't believe in AGW? they must be idiots!"

12/2/2009 6:45:35 PM

I'm not gonna take issue with most of your post, but I will say that "blatantly stupid" is a pretty subjective term when it comes to how people perceive most science.

12/2/2009 6:49:24 PM

true. But, in what TT quoted, there was no discussion of science going on. It was just an attack on anyone the author deemed stupid enough to be a non-believer.

12/2/2009 6:52:48 PM

Quote :

"there has supposedly been some huge consensus amongst the scientific community that warming is real and caused by humans."

There is practically a consensus and polls show it.

84% of scientists think that the earth is getting warmer due to human activity.

http://people-press.org/report/528/

Here is a list of scientific organizations that agree that includes various polls:

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

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 6:53 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 6:52:54 PM

That allegedly tons of scientists think humans are making the earth hotter means nothing. Every scientist used to think that there was a "life force" that brought life from dead things. It took Pasteur's experiments to prove that it didn't exist. it took one person to disprove every one else.

Besides, the claim of a "consensus" was a big lie the first time it was touted. Read this and learn why.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/consensus.pdf
Basically, since I know you won't read it, the claim of a "consensus" was first made by an article in the journal Science. There was no peer-review done on the article whatsoever. And practically all of the claims that could be objectively established one way or another were found to be false. The article was so poorly written, that the crux of the article, the search term used to search the scholarly records, wasn't even reported properly. What was the journal's response to the person who brought up this revelation? "Shut up." What was the response of the article's author? "Your information wasn't peer reviewed." Only, it had been.

12/2/2009 6:54:03 PM

Quote :

"It was just an attack on anyone the author deemed stupid enough to be a non-believer."

Most of my complaint with things related to science is when they become sky-falling talking points on both sides of the political divide. If a scientist with an agenda gets called out, that's fine with me. I just don't think that in that instance someone that's a bleeding-red conservative has the authority to use that as evidence of how his positions are correct. Disproving someone else's evidence is not the same thing as presenting evidence of your own correctness. Someone's gonna quote that back, I'm sure, but I'm watching this more as a disgusted-with-all-parties outsider, rather than someone who's hugging a tree or a smokestack.

12/2/2009 6:59:20 PM

Quote :

"Tell that to the woman that gets raped in an unlit parking lot after working late in the office"

I should have specified that my beef is with unfocused lighting. Shielded lighting would shine only where it's needed and help keep the sky dark as it should be.

Quote :

"From a quick Google search, it seems most of the deaths occurred half a century ago and that many of the birds that were most affected by night lighting (night migratory birds drawn by warning lights on radio towers and flood-lit smoke-stacks) are already dead."

link?

Also, hooksaw, you may want to check your source on your N. Korea in the dark pic.

Quote :

"you forgot to mention helping plants with increased CO2 concentration"

Yes, helping them by making them less nutritious.

Quote :

"hey there might be a hiccup along the way in terms of pollution,"

Here are a few of your "hiccups"




[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 7:03 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 7:01:50 PM

Quote :

"That allegedly tons of scientists think humans are making the earth hotter means nothing."

LOL

You guys are clowns. It's either "There is no consensus!" or it's "The consensus doesn't matter!"

12/2/2009 7:10:51 PM

no. it's both. false dilemma FTL.

do you really think that a consensus means anything in science?


btw, I like how you haven't addressed anything I've said...

12/2/2009 7:15:11 PM

Quote :

"do you really think that a consensus means anything in science?"

Why don't you tell us all why consensus means nothing in science?

And to answer your question, yes, I do think it means something. It also means something when it comes to policy making, which is highly relevant to the issue.

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 7:31 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 7:25:31 PM

I already did. Because every scientist could say it's true, and yet it still not be. Again, Pasteur.

12/2/2009 7:31:57 PM

Well, I'd put forth that consensus is generally what the scientific community should aim for. But that should be consensus backed up by verifiable, rigorously-tested data.

IMO, we may have been keeping accurate temperatures for a hundred years or more in a lot of places, but we have more conjecture and inferred fact on things that are thousands of years old. Clearly some of this is logical conclusions taken to extremes.

That said, there are other things going on in our environment that human beings have played a part in. I'd worry at least as much about trace amounts of antibiotics and other drugs ending up in the water table. I'd worry about the massive "islands" of trash floating in the oceans. I'd also worry more about trying to cut emissions of known carcinogens from industrial exhaust/effluent, because frankly that's a healthy thing to do.

12/2/2009 7:43:48 PM

You showed that a consensus NOT based on science means nothing in science. I would hope you think that a scientific consensus today means a lot more than it did during the time of Pasteur. Last I checked, scientists no longer accept life force as a leading theory, or any other magical phenomenon. The only thing close to that today would be found in the depths of theoretical physics.

12/2/2009 7:50:05 PM

^^I agree with all of that except the very first sentence. The scientific community should strive for what you say in the 2nd sentence. A consensus isn't something thats provable again in a controlled experiment, its the current majority opinion based on whatever.

^studies will come out and say coffee is good for you then a year later a study will come out and say it gives you cancer...just because we're a lot more technologically and scientifically advanced than we were 150 years ago in Pasteur's time doesn't mean we can't be wrong nowadays or, perhaps according to the emails, that the consensus has been exaggerated

[Edited on December 2, 2009 at 7:53 PM. Reason : .]

12/2/2009 7:50:07 PM

Quote :

"I'd also worry more about trying to cut emissions of known carcinogens from industrial exhaust/effluent"

Careful there. You'll get apathetic responses like:

Quote :

"The vast majority of exposures to carcinogens are the natural kind, since no one feels like outlawing natural killers, and the artificial chemicals which have been proven to cause cancer are usually abandoned."

Quote :

"If you live long enough, you will get cancer. (even if you live in a bubble)"

12/2/2009 7:57:18 PM