Text 5838, 98 rader
Skriven 2007-09-08 21:26:31 av Daniel Prather (152.fidonews)
   Kommentar till text 5837 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Global Warming
======================
  Re: Global Warming
  By: Ross Cassell to Janis Kracht on Sat Sep 08 2007 09:13 pm

 > Cannabalism among Polar Bears????
 >
 > Do you mean what happens to Polar Bear Cubs that meet up with a roving
 > male? Thats mother nature for crying out loud.
 >
 > Now you know why a mother bear with cubs are so dangerous..

As is your habit, you're jumping to conclusions.  Janis didn't specify, so all
you can really do at that point is ask for clarification.  Attempting to jump
straight to a conclusion based on insufficient information does not demonstrate
your intellectual prowess.

 > This happens all over the animal world, its called natural selection.
 >
 > A male that happens upon a female with cubs, or in other mammals that live
 > in packs where a alpha male is deposed, the new male wants his genes passed
 > on and will often kill the existing young, sometimes eating them.

While that may be a part of natural selection, it is by no means all of natural
selection.  Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic, but I think it's worth
mentioning.

 > Now if you can tell me that adult polar bears are cannibalizing each other,
 > then present your evidence.
 >
 > I normally keep the boob tube tuned to NGEO channel, I have yet to see any
 > documentaries that remotely supprt your claim here.

http://scienceline.org/2007/02/05/health_driscoll_polarbears/  There is one
article about adult polar bears eating one another.  While some males of a
species will kill the offspring of another male, it's by no means universal.  I
don't know if it's typical behavior for polar bears.  But, cannibalism also
implies *eating* the victim, and that's something I don't think is typical at
all of most animals.  They might kill the offspring of another male, but I
don't think they usually would eat them.

 > If man has caused global warming, then blame the industrial revolution that
 > is said to have started in 1850, why are you blaming all 157 years of it on
 > one leader of one country when said leader has only been in power for not
 > even 7 of those years, thats .04% of that time???

Possibly because most of the evidence for global warming has not come out until
the past decade or so.  Bush and company have chosen to disregard the
scientific evidence while the US, the world's largest consumer of energy (and
largest polluter of carbon dioxide) shows no signs of easing up.  Bush has even
rolled back a number of initiatives aimed at reducing the aforementioned
pollution problems.

 > If Hillary wins in O8, she can revisit Kyoto, while her VP is carousing
 > with Castro.. <G>

I don't know if Koyoto is necessarily the answer, but the answer is most
certainly "ignore the evidence, if we don't know it's happening then it'll go
away".  That seems similar to cartoon characters running off cliffs, but being
able to slowly walk back to the safety of the ledge as long as they don't look
down.

 > What are you doing to reduce your environmental footprint, got yourself
 > some carbon credits yet?

I don't know about Janis, but I've cut back on my energy usage by making sure
everything is turned off when not in use (unplugged if possible), switching to
CFLs for all my lighting needs, trying to purchase things with less packaging
to reduce waste, composting organic waste rather than sending it to landfills,
recycling what I can (our recycling program here is extremely limited), etc.
When I have more money available I'll probably make some other changes in the
future like appliance upgrades.

 > Tell New York Electric And Gas you dont want their services, you dont want
 > to help them pollute the environment with the way they generate power or
 > via the Natural Gas they provide that larger city to your west..
 >
 > Get rid of your cars!
 >
 > You dont have to wait for government to pass legislation, start now!

This is a stupid argument, and I'm hoping that you're simply being facetious.
Obviously we can't have a modern society without a lot of the modern things we
have like electricity, cars, etc.  The goal isn't to get rid of all these
things, but to make them more efficient.  There is absolutely no drawback to
increased energy efficiency unless all your eggs are in the fossil fuels
basket.

Using less energy saves money, reduces pollution, can potentially help us no
longer be dependent on other nations for our energy production, helps our
health (due to that lower pollution), etc.  Unfortunately it will take
legislation to get some of the stragglers to actually do things where they're
somewhat buffered from market forces, but I know I'd rather just see subsidies
removed (unless they're granted to all methods of energy production), taxes
added to higher polluting items (and the collected funds to go toward
alternative energy and energy efficiency developments), etc.

-- Daniel
--- SBBSecho 2.12-FreeBSD
 * Origin: :: The Realm of Dreams :: bbs.mysticone.com (1:112/10)