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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (237145)	6/14/2005 2:31:34 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572942

"But what sort of impact are we having, and is it really all that worse from the alternatives?" Good question. Certainly we don't know all we need to know to have models with predictive power. And it very well may be that without some of the greenhouse gasses we are producing we might be headed towards another ice age. We have had a measurable impact on the atmosphere for well over a thousand years. Methane production in rice fields and slash and burn agriculture likely have had a moderating effect for quite some time. But when CO2 levels have been this high in the past, the globe has been very warm. And that is playing with dynamite. Look at the climatic requirements of major crops, their productivity goes way down, assuming they are productive at all, when you try to grow them outside of their requirements of temp., water and light per day. Blindly assuming that they will grow better in warmer weather shows appalling ignorance. True, I expect this from longnshort... Or look at the fossil record. All eras of climatic change are marked by waves of extinctions. Now true, when things bounce back, sometimes there is a higher carry capacity. Cold comfort for the extinctees...

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (237145)	6/14/2005 10:34:50 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572942

CJ, let me also toss out my "Atkins theory" on the environment. As you know, many people, including Bill Clinton, have successfully shed pounds using the Atkins diet and its variant, South Beach. Why is that? Scientists are still actively debating that, but one thing is for certain. When it comes to nutrition and diet, Atkins turned conventional wisdom on its head, especially with his "fat good, carb bad" theory. Remember when carbs were good, and fat was bad? Remember the four food groups, and how that evolved (with millions of dollars in taxpayer money) into the various iterations of the food pyramid? (Have you seen the latest incarnation of that pyramid? It's a joke now.) I don't think its a joke. And its not clear the Atkins/South Beach diets are good for you........or at least not for everyone. Some people can tolerate more carbs than others. I also read recently that its unclear the longer term health effects of both diets. I think the human body can sustain any diet temporarily but I think longer term, real problems can begin to surface. Of course, there are the eskimos who live off only whale blubber but they evolved this ability over the millennia. They also do not live as long as we do. Likewise with the environment. There are probably many factors of the environment that we are discounting or overlooking in jumping to the conclusion of man-made global warming. Are we as humans having an effect on the environment? Of course we are; six billion of us are bound to make an impact. But what sort of impact are we having, and is it really all that worse from the alternatives? I saw CJ's response to your question. Let me add to the dangers of a warming climate. As much as we like the sun and warm air, it may not be that good for us. I have mentioned before that I had asthma and have been curing it slowly through a restructuring of my breathing........the intent of which is to slow your breathing down. What I have learned over the last three years is that warm weather speeds up my breathing. And that's true to a varying degrees for most people. Its not surprising that most road rage occurs during hot weather. Breathing faster makes us less rational, more prone to frustration.......more anxious. In fact, I think climate is a factor in how quickly a people progress. Its a theory that's yet to be proven but I bet we at some future point will find a correlation. So to go back to global warming.........in addition to upsetting the ecology, causing die outs of some species of plants and animals, and the migration of others too cooler climes as CJ suggests, we may see a significant change in the psychology and behavior of Man. ted