I am at home with mouse hand. I must deal with this data. The world climate has been changing forever.

Some claim that humans are at fault. Others claim that it is a normal cycle.

What do you think; once more. If you have been here for anytime, you know my opinion. I do have to recommend some things. This is your last chance for input.

Best Wishes,,,

Z

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

Answers

Z,

I can't be arrogant because I'm perfect. Arrogance would be a flaw.

:)

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

I'm with Poole. NEXT QUESTION.

Hymn to ME: I love myself,
I think I'm grand,
When I go to the movies,
I hold my hand.

-- Anonymous, August 15, 2001

Z,

Now for a serious response. :)

I have felt for some time that the ability of man to harm the environment has been horribly overstated. Yes, there are cases where we HAVE had a significant negative impact (like you, I'm old enough to remember when that lake -- was it Lake Erie? -- caught on fire from the pollution).

But the idea that our hairspray can change the global environment? I don't buy it, and won't buy it until I see hard, quantitative data proving that this is the case.

Simply pointing to a general rise in temperatures over a period of a decade or so isn't "proof," either, because there are plenty of climatologists who will argue that these things are cyclical.

-- Anonymous, August 16, 2001

I taped a re-run of the PBS 2 hrs on genetic engineering replete with the guy in the Tony the Tiger suit screaming "what have you done to my cereal?". And I started to thing of the "chain" of crisis promulgated by the ignorants of the political system aided by Scientists mumbling outside their areas of expertise. Global warming, save the dolphins, save the owl, save the jungles (rain forests), save the ozone layer, save the Insects, ban the Bomb (not a bad idea if you could only get Terrorists to agree), close the Nuke plants, OR: a collection of what really amounts to 'Stop the world, we can't handle it, we want to get off............no more progress and we will do anything to prevent that".

Sort of a humanist version of the Pope insisting that Galileo was wrong and the Earth was the Center of the Universe because the Pope said so. Or that Evolution does not exist because Six Day Creation and a 6,000 year old Universe is written in The Book. GLOBAL WARMING IS SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE as are attempts to close all Nuke Power Plants. "DDT" and Rachel Carson. FACT, mosquitoes carry malaria. DDT is the effective anti-mosquito spray. But it kills too many things. So, if you develop a specific anti-mosquito spray or even on that screws up the pheromones is that a way to go. For most reasonable people, yes. The Carsonites? No because the absence of the Skeeter would interrupt the entire chain. Somewhere along the way, this sort of domino thinking was extending into all discussions and then fogged over to become "truth" to the proponents of all the Greenie Thimk. (Thimk is not Think). We have now coming up from the South the "Killer Bee". Does not this mutation of bees also do as much damage to the feeding chain by interrupting it as DDT did? In global warming, we have another sort of 'cumulative effect/chaining reaction/domino theory. When you measure the temperature of one plot of ground every year year after year, you discover something interesting. Every January the NY Times used to publish the full prior years daily temperature plotted like a stock chart. And for some reason, I started to collect them. Mostly because I was told that the last winter or the current winter or summer was far more severe than other years. YET, when you looked at the chart, it corresponded more or less with the former years and the "average temp" band across the chart NEVER VARIED MORE THAN 1 or 2 degrees. Now, that becomes sort of interesting because to me, 'global warming' is a similar thing. One scientist isolates an area or a specialty for one section and that becomces "proof" of some other hypothesis. Yet, there is NO PROOF that there has been any great increase in the average temperature of the Earth nor that 1 or 2 degree increase over the last 100 years has ANY SIGNIFICANT MEANING beyond what HOLLYWOOD could dream up. In short, a collection of IFS, MAYBES, Thus and So but NO CONCLUSION. Same with genetic engineering. For if there is a mutation of RICE or Corn or ROACH that leads to a significant increase in the strain thanks to a superior advantage of the mutation,. what is different than if it is done in a test tube, in a field by a bee or one roach humping another? Whether it is DARWIN, The Biblical Version or a Test Tube the new strain of Rice or wheat or corn will have to go through much the same testing to see if it is edible or better or more tasty or better food value ETC. Toss in the last chunk of Ignorance, the demonstrators against Global Trade and you have a collection that might be a preview of years and years more of civil disorder lead by IGNORANCE which is truly obscene. Obscene in the sense of the Supreme Court: no redeeming social value. Worse. It is the greatest sin of all to me, a WASTE OF MY TIME.

-- Anonymous, August 17, 2001