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

To: neolib who wrote (15692)	8/11/2007 3:52:57 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 36921

Actually it was Michael Crichton who was plugging him. "Let’s remember where we live, Kenner was saying. We live on the third planet from a medium-size sun. Our planet is five billion years old, and it has been changing constantly all during that time. The Earth is on its third atmosphere. The first atmosphere was helium and hydrogen. It dissolved early on, because the planet was so hot. Then as the planet cooled, volcanic eruptions produced a second atmosphere of steam and carbon dioxide. Later the water vapor condensed, forming the oceans that cover most of the planet. Then, around three billion years ago, some bacteria evolved to consume carbon dioxide and excrete a highly toxic gas, oxygen. Other bacteria released nitrogen. The atmospheric concentration of these gases slowly increased. Organisms that could not adapt died out. Meanwhile, the planet’s land masses, floating on huge tectonic plates, eventually came together in a configuration that interfered with the circulation of ocean currents. It began to get cold for the first time. The first ice appeared two billion years ago. And for the last seven hundred thousand years, our planet has been in a geological ice age, characterized by advancing and retreating glacial ice. No one is entirely sure why, but ice now covers the planet every hundred thousand years, with smaller advances every twenty thousand or so. The last advance was twenty thousand years ago, so we’re due for the next one. And even today, after five billion years, our planet remains amazingly active. We have five hundred volcanoes and an eruption every two weeks. Earth quakes are continuous: a million and half a year, a moderate Richter 5 quake every six hours. Tsunamis race across the Pacific Ocean every three months. Our atmosphere is as violent as the land beneath it. At any moment there are one thousand five hundred electrical storms across the planet. Eleven lightning bolts strike the ground each second. A tornado tears across the surface every six hours. And every four days a giant cyclonic storm, hundreds of miles in diameter, spins over the ocean and wreaks havoc on the land. The nasty little apes that call themselves human beings can do nothing except run and hide. For these same apes to imagine they can stabilize this atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. They can’t control the climate. The reality is, they run from the storms." Michael Chrichton – State of Fear – p.618 - 619

To: neolib who wrote (15692)	8/11/2007 9:35:04 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36921

So why are you quoting plugging him? Because whither warming is right or wrong, he puts it in perspective. Do you have any idea how big this NASA temperature correction is? They tried to sneak it by the media. With their cooperation, of course. When you start looking at how much of all this was based on "'98 was the hottest year" and now that is refuted, it really drives a hole though the theory. But since this is politics, and not science, you will see them go blithely ahead with this nonsense. Reminds me of Moses coming down the mountain with "9, no 8, 7, 6...commandments."