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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (102020)7/6/2007 12:52:57 PM
From: Lazarus_Long  Respond to of 173976
 
You're right! This is the first heat wave we've had in world history!

Did you ever get any edukashun?

Are you still a Communist? Has as much bearing on the subject as your idiotic comment.



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (102020)7/6/2007 12:54:54 PM
From: longnshort  Respond to of 173976
 
So it gets hot in Jackass junction and you think it's Global Warming ? If it gets cold there what is it ? Probably to you global warming. or some other fear of the day



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (102020)7/6/2007 12:55:15 PM
From: longnshort  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 173976
 
Team finds proof of forests in Greenland

ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 6, 2007

Associated Press An international team of researchers recovered DNA from mud in an ice core from Greenland, indicating the presence trees and insects between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago.

Ice-covered Greenland really was green a half-million or so years ago, covered with forests in a climate much like that of Sweden and eastern Canada today.

An international team of researchers recovered ancient DNA from the bottom of an ice core that indicates the presence of pine, yew and alder trees as well as insects.

The researchers, led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen say the findings are the first direct proof there was forest area in southern Greenland.

Included were genetic traces of butterflies, moths, flies and beetles, they report in today's edition of the journal Science.

The material was recovered from cores drilled through ice 1.2 miles thick at a site called Dye 3 in south-central Greenland. Ice cores from another site farther north, 1.8 miles deep, did not yield DNA.

Greenland was discovered by Vikings sailing from Iceland about 1,000 years ago. While it had an ice cap then, the climate was relatively mild and they were able to establish colonies in coastal areas. Those colonies later vanished as the climate cooled.

The new research shows it hasn't always been so cold there.

"These findings allow us to make a more accurate environmental reconstruction of the time period from which these samples were taken, and what we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

The base of the ice is mixed with mud and it was this mud that Mr. Willerslev's team studied.

The DNA, dated to between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago, maybe the oldest yet recovered, according to the team. DNA previously found in the Siberian permafrost has been dated to 300,000 to 400,000 years ago.

However, because of uncertainties in interpreting the age estimates, they could not rule out the possibility that the newly found DNA dates to the last interglacial period 130,000 to 116,000 years ago.

The research was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, National Science Foundation of Denmark, the Wellcome Trust, Natural Environment Research Council, European Union, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, McMaster University, the Polar Continental Shelf Project, Max Planck Society and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

And everyone of those groups are in the pocket of Big Oil, Big Lumber and Bowling Alley Owners of America



To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (102020)7/6/2007 3:13:07 PM
From: one_less  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 173976
 
"The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything we do.

That is why even our most enlightened past efforts have had undesirable outcomes--either because we did not understand enough, or because the ever-changing world responded to our actions in unexpected ways. From this standpoint, the history of environmental protection is as discouraging as the history of environmental pollution. …

…The fact that the biosphere responds unpredictably to our actions is not an argument for inaction. It is, however, a powerful argument for caution, and for adopting a tentative attitude toward all we believe, and all we do. Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future.

We think we know what we are doing. We have always thought so. We never seem to acknowledge that we have been wrong in the past, and so might be wrong in the future. Instead, each generation writes off earlier errors as the result of bad thinking by less able minds--and then confidently embarks on fresh errors of its own. We … can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

Some time in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power. One area where this will occur is in the meeting point of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer technology. What all three have in common is the ability to release self-replicating entities into the environment…"


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I excerpted this from the introduction to Michael Crichton's science fiction novel titled Prey. He also has a lot to say about the dangers of politicizing science.