Oops. More unsettling news about slippery slopes. A U Cal prof has done some studies that show that arid-ification (-ization?) leads to a lot of carbon being released from the soil itself. This along with the phenomenon of the Arctic Ocean absorbing much more heat as open water than in ice covered mode gives me concern about tipping points and increasing momentum.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

It's not all bad...

We've had an extreme drought in Atlanta this summer and fall, which is of course mostly bad, espeically if you live on Lake Lanier, which is disappearing, or if you own a landscaping business...

But on a positive note:

Business is BOOMING for car washes, because we aren't allowed to wash our cars at home right now. They're raking in the cash, and they all recycle most of their water (some even recycle all of it).

Even better:

I spent most of the past summer and fall in town this year (unusal for me, I travel a lot)... and didn't get ONE SINGLE MOSQUITO BITE!

Mike

__________________
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1979 300 SD
350,000 miles
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1982 300D-gone---sold to a buddy
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1985 300TD
270,000 miles
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1994 E320
not my favorite, but the wife wanted it

www.myspace.com/mikemover
www.myspace.com/openskystudio
www.myspace.com/speedxband
www.myspace.com/openskyseparators
www.myspace.com/doubledrivemusic

The newer wash bays I believe recycle all the wash water, must have very good filtering systems......I hope

Seeing as the earth has warmed and cooled a whole bunch of times all through history, how can you explain those "global warming" trends? No SUV's to blame back then. And the amount of crud spewed in a volcano dwarfs anything manmade.

The 4 good questions never asked:

1) Is there global warming? yes, it occurs and always will, as will cooling

2) Is the current trend abnormal from historical patterns (assuming for sake of argument it is warming now)? uh, no

3) Are human responsible? No again. Its been going on longer than we existed by far, plus it is occuring on Mars (explain that)

4) Assuming all of the above is true (it is warming abnormally and man is responsible), is it a bad thing? Global cooling causes everything to DIE. Warming creates prosperity in nature. In the middle ages grapes were grown in England and Greenland was farmed.

Don't listen to Al Gore, he is a clueless clown. Follow the money trail and you will see where his motivation come from.

With all that said, why is it we can't just come out and say we should stop polluting the atmosphere because ITS HARMFUL TO PEOPLE? Thats sound like a perfectly good reason to me. No need to make up bogus claims based on junk science.

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MB-less

Al Gore has become a convenient red herring in this story. Plenty of people with a far greater background in science have opinions on this matter that fall very close to Gore's.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Yeah and people who starve in the midst of prolonged drought have nothing but sunny blue skies, day after day.

Amazing how 'rainy day' has become synonymous with 'bad weather.'

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Every silver lining has a cloud.

It's not. The hippie world-is-ending environmentalists and those they have brainwashed want you to think it is. Man caused global warming, carbon neutrality, carbon offsets, etc. It's all a boat load of bullsh**.

True, but a lot *more* scientific types are now debunking the global warming myth, and Al's "concensus" isn't even a "majority".

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MB-less

Are you kidding me? Do you think people who have died from drought related issues are grateful for a lack of mosquitoes?!? How many other civilizations have gone belly up due to prolonged drought?

You think this is a passing deal? I don't. When it becomes way too clear that we are in difficulty, I'll take no pleasure in telling all the denialists "I told you so."

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

What are you a teen-ager or early 20s? This is brash, unthinking arrogance, often manifested as the 'arrogance of youth.'

But you're partly right. Thinking that CO2 is a pollutant that can be scrubbed from smokestacks is purest fantasy. The only way to turn that CO2 into the non pollutant category would be to add the same, more actually, energy that was released in the combustion and end up with carbon and oxygen, not yet reacted. And that would sorta fly in the face of the reason the CO2 was made in the first place. Besides, AFAIK, there's not an easy way to make that happen, quickly anyway.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

You're pretty sure of that, eh?

Dude, the way we've been living for the past 100 years, and to some extent the last 300 represents a tiny bit of human history and a really tiny bit of the history of life on the planet. And yet folks like you with a vested interest in the status quo seem to believe that there could in no way be any sort of error involved in our thinking or behavior.

We're talking about us GDit, the you-knighted snakes of Americay, what could possibly be wrong?

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Looking at this from a very broad perspective, it seems reasonable to me that there are cyclical events in nature that wipe out existing life and get life started anew. It's not a license to be complacent or irresponsible but not extracting another barrel of oil from this day forward isn't going to stop the cycle or alter it substantially. What's a few human generations in the scale of the earth's age?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for quitting oil cold turkey, but not because of anything Mr. Gore says.

Sixto
87 300D

I see the problems that derive from high tech, use of machines etc., as being much more complex than just CO2 in the atmosphere. We pave something like 4 or 5 square miles a day. Even Schwarzeneggers own Repo aides say that at the current rate, the Central Valley in California, perhaps the most productive ag land in the world, will be taken over by suburban sprawl in 100 years.

We have a number of freight trains heading for the same spot, so to speak, and the near future is likely to be somewhat hairy.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Denialists? More like rationalists.