People are getting dumber and dumber

[Alondro]

That's not quite accurate.  We're now in the solar minimum, but for sunspots.  The sun is about 2% brighter than during the solar maximum.  But recent observations of intensifying flare activity, which mean magnetic fields are being more distorted and twisted by the fields stirring about in the sun, by SOHO indicate that the sun's magnetic poles may be about to flip, which should then usher in the move to a slightly dimmer sun with many sunspots for a time.

We still do not have an answer for what triggered a very warm period which began about 900 AD, called the LCO (Little Climate Oscillation) in which time the Vikings were able to colonize Greenland and farming was carried out in areas of Scotland which today are cold bogs.  There was no industry in 900 AD, by the way. 

And oddly enough, global cooling is far more detrimental to human civilization than warming.  During the "Little Ice Age", the monsoons in areas of China and India frequently failed and led to devastating droughts, and Europe had years of early winters and late springs which led to crop failures.

If your land is hot, you can get better irrigation or move as the precipitation patterns change.  If everything is frozen, you're utterly screwed.  Just think of the loss of food production if the glaciers which once covered so much of North America and Europe were to return.  Oh, and no one is really sure what caused the Ice Ages either.

Climate is far more complex than politicians wishing to push an agenda are willing to let on.  Fortunately, I am a scientist.  I form my own decisions from the data I gather.  I cannot be fooled either way.  CO2 is a distraction from the real horror.  The levels of mercury in the air and water are such that they have now reached teratogenic levels in vast regions.  Mercury is very close, in fact, to being named virtually the sole culprit in the enormous increase in autism, which ahs reached numbers as high as 1 in 50 births in some regions of New Jersey (surprise, surprise; the mercury levels in those regions versus lower-occurrence regions match very nicely). 

The hormone levels in water from city waste (from tampons and contraceptives) are so high in some rivers that they are actually altering the sexual development of numerous species.

Oh, and did you all know that we have toxicity data on only a tiny percentage of the chemicals that use every day?  Many food dyes were used for decades before they were pulled from the market for carcinogenic effects.

We should be focusing far more on these toxic and developmentally damaging substances than a gas that spews into the air every time we belch or open a Coke.

Bah, may all your soda be flat!

[superluser]

The levels of mercury in the air and water are such that they have now reached teratogenic levels in vast regions.  Mercury is very close, in fact, to being named virtually the sole culprit in the enormous increase in autism

I've heard that there isn't any strong connection between mercury and autism, but otherwise, you've got a great point.  Hormones, mercury, carcinogens, it's incredible what gets into our water supply your body.

[Reese Tora]

No RPing outside the DMFA zone.  I'm just Charles here.   

I thought you were Alondro here?  Who the heck *is* Alondro, then?

*whistles innocently and acts nonchalant...*  Alondro wouldn't be my zanpaktou, not at all.   

Yes, that should be confusing enough.  My secret is safe!   

your zanpaktou?

I gotta watch or read this thing at some point.

Oddly enough, we were having this same discussion on another forum, more or less (regarding global warming)

My stance is that global warming isn't the big problem, but it can make a good banner under which to attract people to the casue of environmentalism, so long as you don't allow it to become the primary goal.  The important things are still cleaning up the toxic chemicals and stuff that we're putting pretty much everywhere.
*(funny, Numbers this last friday, though a rerun, involved a large company illegally dumping toxic chemicals underground near schoolyards.  That's three palces in a week the topic has come up where it rarely does otehrwise.  )

[Alondro]

I gotta love the morons who get on TV advocating environmentalism and then go on about how China is making all these great achievements. 

Uhm, is that the same China with pollution clouds that can be tracked visually from space?  The same China that sent out loads of possibly deliberately contaminated grain products?  The same China that last year had a million-gallon spill of benzene in one of its major rivers?  The same China that will very likely exceed the US in CO2 production (the gas everyone is bitching to the US about) by next year?  The same China that... you get the picture.  They should actually do some research before touting a country for its environmental consciousness if they don't want to make themselves look like even bigger idiots than usual.

Those people live sheltered in their little Hollywood LSD-induced la-la lands and have no idea what the real world is like.   

[superluser]

I gotta love the morons who get on TV advocating environmentalism and then go on about how China is making all these great achievements.

I used to think like you, Alondro.  (In many ways, I still do--just not this one)

Then it occurred to me one day that these might in fact *not* be the same people.  That the global warming activists might not be the same as the Sinophiles.  When you're looking in at any group from the outside, it looks very monolithic, but on the inside, it's often very heterogeneous.  These are two principles that a large portion of liberals probably believe in, but those who believe both are probably in the minority.

Of course, sometimes they are the same people.  Case in point: Albert A. Gore.