wow all that wording and statement just to say: "Bush stated the obviouse today... everybody agreed...

<font color="#0099cc">Apparently it was not Bush but the EPA that did this and there has been no official word from the president, latest word has it that he may have been blindsided by his own people. And as for obvious, I think not. It would only be obvious to people who don't do any research and learn that it is a far from certain issue.</font>

Quote:

1. Wrong. Not only is the Rainforest in south america NOT gone, it isn't even close(never was), it is even regaining ground that it had lost, it was never even in danger of being gone. This South American Rainforest issue was never about ecology or nature. It was a gigantic scam (originated in the USA most likely in California) to bilk hundreds of millions of dollars out of concerned citizens and the government. This has been a very public revelation in the US of late, though the papers have been more concerned with the Terrorist issues lately.

Where is this information coming from? Could you point me in the direction? This is contrary to what I know and I would be interested to hear that this is true. In the office where I work there are satellite pictures of the degrading rainforest. It keeps getting worse and worse. I was reading about tree poachers a while ago. I'll try to find the article again.
Regardless of whether the rain forest is growing back, it will never be the same. There is no way that the undergrowth can come back now that we've stripped the soil and used it for cattle grazing land.

Quote:

2. First off, I umm think you shouldnt be quite so inflamatory and antagonistic in your posts about the American head of state. You are most likly to offend some Americans...and we are all striving to keep the peace here. Secondly, Just because he is making a political move doenst mean it is scientificly based..as I have said repeatedly there was no new science no new revelation involved, what was involved was republican seats in the house and senate that are up for election this year, in about 4 months. So I say again, a politician making a policy change does not good science make. </font>

The only reason the Bush wanted to drill in ANWR was political. There's only six months of oil in there in the first place and setting up the infrastructure and taking it out of the ground would lose the oil companies money and take a prohibitive amount of time. Bush's reason was that if he could win the ANWR battle it would be a slap in the face of the environmentalists. The oil didn't matter. Killing a bunch of trees and Caribou was all he cared about.

The idea that volcanoes are doing damage to the environment is a Limbaughism. When Mt. Pinutabo blew it's top in the 90's the amont of sulfer dioxide that was released into the atmosphere caused a reduction in global temperatures of just under 1/2 a degree.

Here's a quote from, I believe, the book "The Way Things Aren't". A response to Rush Limbaugh's book "The Way Things Are". It is to this second volume that the excerpt is refering when it says chapter 15.
Anyway, the thought that Shrub would renege so heavily on his former anti-environment stance is surprising to me. Who took our president and replace him with a pod person? I wanna shake him by the hand. :D [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

DeSoya

Commendable that someone (Bush) is displaying an open mind on the topic for a change - good to see someone is thinking of the children - and the Llama's :D .

"Won't someone think of the Llama's"

Read and enjoy, the source of this article is Patrick Moore one of the founders of Greenpeace.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/ar...TICLE_ID=17543

<font color=orange>I'm a pretty conservative person here, as most of you know, but I too, think the environment has changed due to air pollution. I know that the the trees in the smokey mountains near my home are beginning to die. I work on the 24th floor of an office building and I am looking towards the mountains now has I type this and I can't even see them today. They are only about 30 miles away.
My best guess is that I can see about 10 or 15 miles right now. The weather is sunny here BTW.

When Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Treaty, I think what he really had in mind was to figure out a way whereby there would be the least impact our economy. When Bush took over, he inherited a slumping economy. That would have been the wrong time to enact any sort of change demanded by the Kyoto Treaty. It could have potentially driven us into another depression if it were handled wrong. Now that the economy has stablized somewhat, what you may be seeing is a shift in policy back toward conservation and environmental clean up. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

Personally, even had he decided to enact the Kyoto Treaty, I don't think the votes in Congress where there to ratify it. Clinton didn't even have the votes.</font>

Fact:

The average ice thickness of the North Pole has DECREASED by 20cm over the past 2 yrs.

Just so ya know...

<font color = lightgreen>Aw, shucks. I was going to move up to the North Pole in a couple of weeks. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

The only reason I can see for the Bush administration to switch their official stance is political. I am beginning to see his overall position crumbling away at the edges, what with the "who knew what and when?" fights about the FBI and CIA and India/Pakistan taking precedence. House, and some Senate, races are due for elections this year and he is fishing for votes from those who are more green-oriented, thus the typical election-year issues of taxes, environment, Social Security, and education will come up more often.

By the way, I'm surprised no one started a heated thread about Bush's little speech he gave at West Point. One link to the speech story is here. Basically, he wants to be able to make preemptive strikes against potential terror sources. Think about that....</font>

[ 06-04-2002, 01:10 PM: Message edited by: Azred ]

Maybe he finally noticed the unprecendented melting in the anartic. The massive ice shelves to breaking off are kinda obvious.

Isnt one of the principles behind global warming that it only takes a small rise in global temperatures to have a detrimental effect? Also I gandered that most of the damage was already done pre-1970, When unregulated industries spewwed massive pollution, most of which have already been banned or limited, but still seeped into ground water and still fall in rain today. We are just adding weight to the problem now. The long term effect that isnt so obvious is the real danger from what I understand about the issue. Please correct me if my conclusions are wrong.

Damn it if I cant remeber the titles of the few books I have read about this. There is one really good book in particular, that was very moderate and informative about a whole variety of pollution problems ranging from acid rain, rainforest depletion, as well as global warming. Does anybody know a book like this? Most of my info has come from magazines like time and national geographic or tv shows.

There is a show on the Discovery channel and TLC that explains what happens if a slight change in deep ocean current temperature occured because of global warming and the melting of fresh polar ice. They demonstrate how deep ocean currents act as a temperature regulator for the surface world. Disrupting this cycle would occur because the fresh polar water would dilute the heavy salt water that is perpetually sinking at the root of the current. Surface water temperature would begin to rise, as the cold deep currents that keep water cool grind to a halt. This would cause massive rain storms as more water and heat would rise into the atmosphere. This in turn causes the ice caps to melt more, further changing the salinity of the water and causing the oceans to rise onto land. The real humdinger is that eventually the cold water that is usually pushed along the bottom of the ocean would rise up. Air masses will cool farther away from the equator and clash with the warm air near it. Rainstorms become massive hurricanes as the earth gradually cools. The atmoshpere only gets so warm before the amount of water it absorbs begins to saturate and insulate.

So at this point all the world's land masses are flooded, great typhoons and thunder storms rip across temperate climates. Clouds total cover the earth and its as humid as New Orleans everyday. Then it slowly cools. Glaciers form as the ice caps start to grow again. Before you know it Ice age! What really got me is the evidence they presented that showed this climatic change has occured before, linking it to past ice age. All this from a small change in global temperature.

Humans may still cause it with our pollution, but science shows that the Earth's oceans correct themselves over time (thousands of years) anyway. So even if some humans manage to survive all this, at least our *edit* future *edit* ancestors can look forward to an Earth that is like paradise in some places for its suitability as a planet for humans, animals and trees.

I would hate to see it turned into Hoth.

P.S. Duh, how could I forget paragraphs? [img]smile.gif[/img] and ancestors from the future, what was I saying in that last paragraph? I read to much sci-fi!

[ 06-04-2002, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

<font color=orange>What ancestors? If this happens there will probably be none!

BTW, use paragraphs! That's real hard to read! [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>