Flying by Air- the carbon footprint

[Tomcat]

(ivana @ Feb. 22 2007,09:24) [Obviously, he has not read State of Fear (by Michael Crichton)...

First off i did make a post about crighton in post 143
Why dont you go and read it. I ignored your first post as did Roadrunner because it mentioned Aliens.

Someone told me to go to a Skeptics website about Crighton , which i did. Isnt is strange that the website thinks Crightons a loony

This is what the Skeptics webist says about state of fear

Quote
Crichton's scientific footnotes--which he promises "are real"--similarly misrepresent reality. In the text of State of Fear as well as in its 20 pages of citations, Crichton glosses over a high profile 2001 National Academy of Sciences report entitled Climate Change Science:

[Guest]

(Tomcat @ Feb. 23 2007,01:25)

(ivana @ Feb. 22 2007,09:24) [Obviously, he has not read State of Fear (by Michael Crichton)...

First off i did make a post about crighton in post 143
Why dont you go and read it. I ignored your first post as did Roadrunner because it mentioned Aliens.

Welcome back TC  

I do believe your post 143 refers to Crichton, or at least refers to the 'Alien' article without having read it ?

For the record    you didn't 'ignore' the post. You answered it in a 'shoot-from-the-hip' fashion. i.e making an assumption without reading it and compounded this by making yet further posts without really reading it  

"Why don't you go read it" ? Indeed. Wise words. Perhaps a case of do what I say, not what I do ?

Anyway, it's all good fun in the FishBox where we won't hold ourselves to the same rigorous standards as the Academia Forum    



p.s It might be helpful to post the link to that skeptics website. I think we all know enough about 'selective' quoting by now

[Tomcat]

http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

I already posted this days ago... get some glasses..
There posted for the last time.....Crighton is not about Science as i understand it and has no relevance to the problem ... zero.....

Its not evidence.... ....and please dont woffle on about when and what i should read.. who do think you are......

Also you stated that Scientists are not trained thinkers
well what about

Viagra
Cruise missiles
Atomic Bombs
DNA
Leptons , Hadrons, Quarks
Particle Accelorators
The Theory of the Electro Magnetic Spectrum
Boyles Law

and so on

[Guest]

I already posted this days ago... get some glasses..
There posted for the last time.....Crighton is not about Science as i understand it. Its baloney.......

Also you stated that Scientists are not trained thinkers...

Thanks for the link TC, I did miss that.   I'll read it fully when work permits

I will, however, say that the article linked speaks mainly to his novel State of Fear. It seems that considering a piece of fiction, even if based on some scientific background, is not quite the same as considering what he wrote in the 'Aliens' lecture which is quite another matter. I haven't read his fiction and analysing that in this context is problematic as it inherently involves a degree of artistic licence.

Back to the 'Aliens' lecture. Have you had the time to read it fully yet ? Your thoughts on that would be more appealing as it seems to address a core issue of this discussion.  

BTW, What I said about Scientists was this :

"An underlying problem of this whole debate is that Scientists are not trained in clear thinking"...... Nuance.

Good to see you read the posts. Better to answer in real time rather than post facto

[Tomcat]

I read as much as i can and would indeed love to spend more time on the forum . As i said i will read the Alien thingy later...

anyway
Science means the interrogation of nature by observation- hypothesis-test- theory- .Thats what they tought me in school anyway and its pretty clear to me.

[Guest]

I just waded through some of that skeptics website. I won't bother to quote anything from there as I could easily find a passage to suit my purpose. Just like Google  

"The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminates factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public. It also promotes science and scientific inquiry, critical thinking, science education, and the use of reason in examining important issues."

You will see I quoted that fully. Enough to see that it is fairly vague for present purposes. I think they 'exposed' that spoon-bender guy Uri Geller didn't they ?

You still avoid the Crichton lecture TC....you will read the 'thingy' later   Would take 5 minutes. It's been 2 days now.... Rather than read the 'Aliens' lecture and respond to the issues, you seem to have chosen the easy course. Do a Google on Chrichton and turn up something derogatory. Rather disingenuous I would say.


Ahhh gotta love the Fishbox  

[katoeylover]

Just tom prove just how different things can be seen - take a look at:

http://www.heartland.org/Article....diRH0ow

This one says Crichton is right.

The truth is you can read into it what you want, and we will never agree.

[Guest]

(Tomcat @ Feb. 23 2007,02:06) http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/crichton/

I already posted this days ago... get some glasses..
There posted for the last time.....Crighton is not about Science as i understand it and has no relevance to the problem ... zero.....

Its not evidence.... ....and please dont woffle on about when and what i should read.. who do think you are......

Tomcat is all about reading the evidence that fits his biases.

To say that "Crighton is not about Science as i understand it and has no relevance to the problem ... zero....." when you have admittedly never read anything by the man is pathetic.

And don't compare New Scientist to Nature. Nature can be political at times, but at least they publish original, peer-reviewed studies. New Scientist does not. Instead, New Scientist spoon feeds unoriginal pseudoscience hype to non-scientists. New Scientist is a lay-nerd publication.

[Guest]

(lemarquis @ Feb. 23 2007,03:09) Ahhh gotta love the Fishbox  

[Guest]

Oh boy. This has gotten heavy duty.

I want to ask this without raising his hackles, but I'm afraid Tomcat is hopelessly stuck in defensive mode now that he's sort of backed into a corner.

Be that as it may, just out of curiousity, I'm wondering TomCat if you believe in God.

[Guest]

Crichton's speech raises issues that are extremely relevant to the whole debate on how 'Science' deals with global warming, among other things. That would be clear if one had read it  

I didn't know much about him before reading it (Jurassic Park ?) however, the content speaks for itself and would be just as valid had it been written by TomCat himself. I am interested in clear thinking, not taking positions and sides.

Of course TomCat you are free to read anything when and where you choose. However, if you are going to persist in commenting, opining and posting on something you still haven't read, then I think that speaks for itself and calls for some prompting. Otherwise it leads one to question the integrity and motivation of the ideas behind the posts. It's quite simple really.

[Guest]

(katoeylover @ Feb. 23 2007,07:17) Just tom prove just how different things can be seen - take a look at:

http://www.heartland.org/Article....diRH0ow

This one says Crichton is right.

The truth is you can read into it what you want, and we will never agree.

There seems to be quite a lot of good information on that website. It would appear to be a little more solid than the Skeptics one. (Anyone remember James Randie ?   )

Of course we can always find something to support an argument. The trick is to sort the wheat from the chaff and to make some judgement as to the strength and credibility of the source.

This all presupposes that one is open to new ideas and willing to consider alternative, even opposing views in the interest of somehow getting to the truth of the matter.  

[Tomcat]

(grunyen @ Feb. 23 2007,12:12) Oh boy. This has gotten heavy duty.

I want to ask this without raising his hackles, but I'm afraid Tomcat is hopelessly stuck in defensive mode now that he's sort of backed into a corner.

Be that as it may, just out of curiousity, I'm wondering TomCat if you believe in God.

1
Im sorry im not a worth opponent of you guys. I takes the view that the IPCC report is a wake up call . Even Senator Mc Cain and his co horts said last week that this debate is over. If anyone wants a copy of the summary ill airmail it to you.free of charge.

2
I do not believe in God.

3 A cause glob warning.........
The lecture by Crichton is not evidence but just his personal Philosophy. The guy contradicts himself by first saying that "Science has forfilled its promise" and going on to rant against the said community. he sounds a lot like Grunyen so no surprise there then. MC has an agenda as you well know that he writes books and so he courts controversy. He should stick to Science fiction
Dont expect me to rely on this drivel.


What about my evidence then that has been conveniently ignored and glossed over


By Jim Hansen
Published: 17 February 2006
A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a Nasa climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the Nasa public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions. The first line of Nasa's mission is to understand and protect the planet.

This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behaviour of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometres of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance.

Hundreds of cubic kilometres sounds like a lot of ice. But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet starts to disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge.

Our understanding of what is going on is very new. Today's forecasts of sea-level rise use climate models of the ice sheets that say they can only disintegrate over a thousand years or more. But we can now see that the models are almost worthless. They treat the ice sheets like a single block of ice that will slowly melt. But what is happening is much more dynamic.

Once the ice starts to melt at the surface, it forms lakes that empty down crevasses to the bottom of the ice. You get rivers of water underneath the ice. And the ice slides towards the ocean.

Our Nasa scientists have measured this in Greenland. And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid.

How fast can this go? Right now, I think our best measure is what happened in the past. We know that, for instance, 14,000 years ago sea levels rose by 20m in 400 years - that is five metres in a century. This was towards the end of the last ice age, so there was more ice around. But, on the other hand, temperatures were not warming as fast as today.

How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth's history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.

It's hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded.

How long have we got? We have to stabilise emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don't have much time left.

Jim Hansen, the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is President George Bush's top climate modeller. He was speaking to Fred Pearce

4
anyway Grunyen if you want a debate about God why dont you stick your neck out and start another Topic.
Anyone who thinks that they can win an internet debate on a porno site needs medical attention.

[rob69in]

(Tomcat @ Feb. 23 2007,17:48) Anyone who thinks that they can win an internet debate on a porno site needs medical attention.

 

Well said, but at least theres been the debate.

[Guest]

I don't remember seeing a poll on religion.

I think a poll on religion would be a good one...