Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (9240)	2/2/2007 8:44:06 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

It's my Tuesday. Or my Monday night, since I just got home (<: ================= Wal-Mart launches new environmental initiative By Rachel Sanderson Thu Feb 1, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Lee Scott unveiled a new "Sustainability 360" environmental plan on Thursday, challenging employees, suppliers and customers to remove nonrenewable energy from their lives. The world's biggest retailer chose London to reveal its latest plans, a day ahead of the release of a long-awaited, authoritative report on climate change, expected to give a grim warning of rising temperatures and sea levels worldwide. "It is the responsibility of every corporation to be more sustainable," Scott told an audience of leaders of many of Europe's biggest businesses including food giant Cadbury Schweppes, consumer products maker Unilever Plc and energy group BP Plc "Whether it's the world's rapidly growing population or the worsening of global warming, we see the need for the sustainable business practices as increasingly urgent," he said. Every week 176 million customers shop in Wal-Mart stores in 14 countries around the world and the company is considered one of few able to leverage its corporate muscle to make direct changes to global energy consumption. Scott launched a first stage of Wal-Mart's sustainability campaign last year and set the agenda for big business by announcing a goal of one day using only renewable energy and creating zero waste. In that effort, the company has constructed experimental stores to test different ways to conserve water or electricity while also cutting waste. Scott on Thursday went a stage further announcing the launch of "Global Innovation Projects" aimed at finding ways to encourage suppliers, employees and customers to take nonrenewable energy off shelves and out of people's lives. As an example, he said if Wal-Mart succeeded in its goal to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs by the end of this year, it would have saved consumers $3 billion in electrical costs over the life of the bulbs, a feat equal to taking 700,000 cars off the road. In Britain, Wal-Mart's Asda, the nation's second-largest grocer by market share, has also pledged to cut its food packaging by 25 percent by the end of next year. Scott said Wal-Mart was also moving in to the sustainability business, after developing research into LEDs, light emitting diodes used to light grocers' freezers that use significantly less energy than other types of lights. Scott came to London to speak at the Cambridge University event at the invitation of Britain's Prince Charles, who earlier this week when accepting a U.S. environmental prize, called on the United States to lead the war against climate change. The U.N. climate panel, in a long-awaited report due on Friday, will say human activities are causing global warming and may bring more droughts, heatwaves and rising seas, delegates told Reuters on Thursday. (Additional reporting by Nicole Maestri) Message 23245703

To: Ron who wrote (9240)	2/2/2007 2:02:14 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 36917

Sorry .. I'm still a skeptic. In no particular order here are just a few of the reasons why I'm not buying this man-made global warming scare: * The United Nations is anti-American and anti-Capitalist. In short .. I don't trust them. Not a bit. The UN would eagerly engage in any enterprise that would weaken capitalist economies around the world. * Because after the fall of the Soviet Union and worldwide Communism many in the anti-capitalist movement moved to the environmental movement to continue pursuing their anti-free enterprise goals. Many of the loudest proponents of man-made global warming today are confirmed anti-capitalists. * Because the sun is warmer .. and all of these scientists don't seem to be willing to credit a warmer sun with any of the blame for global warming. * The polar ice caps on Mars are melting. How did our CO2 emissions get all the way to Mars? * It was warmer in the 1930s across the globe than it is right now. * It wasn't all that long ago that these very same scientists were warning us about "global cooling" and another approaching ice age? * How much has the earth warmed up in the last 100 years? One degree. Now that's frightening. * Because that famous "hockey stick" graph that purports to show a sudden warming of the earth in the last few decades is a fraud. It ignored previous warming periods ... left them off the graph altogether. * The infamous Kyoto accords exempt some of the world's biggest CO2 polluters, including China and India. * The Kyoto accords can easily be seen as nothing less than an attempt to hamstring the world's dominant capitalist economies. * Because many of these scientists who are sounding the global warming scare depend on grant money for their livelihood, and they know the grant money dries up when they stop preaching the global warming sermon. * Because global warming "activists" and scientists seek to punish those who have different viewpoints. If you are sure of your science you have no need to shout down or seek to punish those who disagree. * What happened to the Medieval Warm Period? In 1996 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a chart showing climatic change over a period of 1000 years. This graph showed a Medieval warming period in which global temperatures were higher than they are today. In 2001 the IPCC issued another 1000 year graph in which the Medieval warming period was missing. Why? * Why has one scientist promoting the cause of man-made global warming been quoted as saying "we have to get rid of the medieval warming period?" * Why is the ice cap on the Antarctic getting thicker if the earth is getting warmer? * In the United State, the one country with the most accurate temperature measuring and reporting records, temperatures have risen by 0.3 degrees centigrade over the past 100 years. The UN estimate is twice that. * There are about 160,000 glaciers around the world. Most have never been visited or measured by man. The great majority of these glaciers are growing, not melting. * Side-looking radar interferometry shows that the ise mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate of over 26 gigatons a year. This reverses a melting trend that had persisted for the previous 6,000 years. * Rising sea levels? The sea levels have been rising since the last ice age ended. That was 12,000 years ago. Estimates are that in that time the sea level has risen by over 300 feet. The rise in our sea levels has been going on long before man started creating anything but natural CO2 emissions. * Like Antarctica, the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass. * Over the past 3,000 years there have been five different extended periods when the earth was measurably warmer than it is today. * During the last 20 years -- a period of the highest carbon dioxide levels -- global temperatures have actually decreased. That's right ... decreased. * Why did a reporter from National Public Radio refuse to interview David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma studying global warming, after his testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unless Deming would state that global warming was being caused by man? * Why are global warming proponents insisting that the matter is settled and that no further scientific research is needed? Why are they afraid of additional information? * On July 24, 1974 Time Magazine published an article entitled "Another Ice Age?" Here's the first paragraph: "As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." boortz.com