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RedditGeorge Bush won't ask Congress for permission for torture or domestic spying. But when it comes to energy policy – he is very, very concerned about the limits of his presidential powers.
According to The Washington Post, he "renewed his call for Congress to give him the authority to ‘raise' mileage standards for all passenger cars." Then perhaps signaling a nod and a wink to his Big Oil friends, "White House officials said later, however, that they didn't know when or how the president would use that authority."
Meanwhile, the GOP Congress is scrambling to flex some 11th hour Election Year muscle of its own by reviewing oil company tax returns and "reaffirming authority for state and federal officials to fight price gouging."
No surprise that they are also attempting to exploit an increasingly squeezed middle-class by once again calling for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge under the false pretense that it will provide economic relief at the gas pump. The truth, as the US Geological Service estimates, is that ANWR drilling would likely produce a total amount insufficient to fill the need for even one year of US domestic consumption and it wouldn't even hit the market for 10 years!
President Bush, too, offered his own rendition of Johnny Law in pursuit of any evildoer oil companies: "We'll make sure that the energy companies are pricing their product fairly. If we catch them gouging, if we catch them -- unfair trade practices, we'll deal with them at the federal government. That's what you expect the federal government to do."
Indeed, many citizens and Democrats have been asking -– if not expecting -– the formerly well-oiled, oil-friendly White House to do that for quite some time. Senators Maria Cantwell, Jeff Bingaman, and Bill Nelson all introduced legislation that would have cracked down on price gouging, as has Rep. Bart Stupak and even Republican Rep. Heather Wilson. In fact, lawmakers have repeatedly called on Bush over the past year to investigate and punish price gouging. But Oil man Bush--head of an administration loaded with ex-oil and gas executives-- is just walking the walk. If he actually talked the talk he'd be calling for subpoenas and public testimony from his oil industry cronies; he'd be calling for an all-out investigation of the industry's pricing practices-- from the wells to the gas pumps.
Even if the GOP does finally crack down on price manipulation, greed and collusion in the oil industry (while also pursuing more drilling and a roll-back of environmental protections) as a result of the public's "we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore" outrage – there is a more important long-range issue: when will we unite around a sane policy to achieve real and lasting energy independence for our nation?
The Apollo Alliance has provided a blueprint for doing just that. This coalition of labor, environmentalists, (enlightened) business people, lawmakers, and social justice activists offers best practices already implemented in states across the nation, as well as its own innovative ideas for achieving energy independence in the next decade (the name comes from JFK's goal to land a man on the moon within 10 years).
Founded in 2003, the group's 10-point plan includes: promoting renewables; upgrading existing energy infrastructure; improving efficiency in transportation, industry, and buildings; research in new clean technology; and Smart Growth for cities and suburbs.
Joel Rogers, Chair of Apollo's National Steering Committee and Director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, says of the plan, "We estimate that $300 billion spent on our plan, would generate about 3 million new jobs…. It would generate a little over $1 trillion in additional GDP over its ten-year development. And, most important, probably, it would reduce our energy costs by better than $300 billion annually. That would effectively…. eliminate our dependence on the Middle East… [and] it should reestablish the American position in what is clearly going to be a gigantic world market for clean-energy technology…. Our plan has been out there for about two years now, and nobody has seriously questioned any of these numbers."
What is –- and has been –- lacking is the political will to challenge the status quo and, in the case of many politicians, to bite the hand that feeds them. But helped along by skyrocketing gas prices, an unpopular war, growing concern about global warming, and an overwhelming majority of Americans who now think that sustainable energy independence should be a top national priority, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to argue with Apollo's message of good jobs and energy independence.
One current proposal that would take an important step is Rep. Dennis Kucinich's Gas Price Spike Act. It would tax oil companies for excessive profits; transfer those revenues to tax credits for Americans who purchase fuel-efficient cars; and establish a program to promote inter- and intra-city mass rail transit.
Other important measures have been recently proposed by Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, who has made alternative energy a core component of his economic platform. Foremost among his proposals is the transitioning to bio-fuels, hybrid technology, and other alternative energy sources.
Ralph Nader -- whose best work has been as a consumer crusader taking on the oil companies -- has also weighed in with a series of smart proposals . It is high time, he argues, to use antitrust action to break up the oil industrial cartel. "The claim by the oil barons that they're just responding to the marketplace of supply and demand is laughable," Nader argues. "A competitive domestic oil industry would not be so able to close down scores of refineries and then turn 'refinery shortages' into higher gas prices at the pump."
The kind of transformative thinking represented most clearly by the Apollo Alliance is exactly what is needed if we are to work our way out of this mess. Election year grandstanding will provide some good theater and a cathartic public shaming of some oil executives. But, after that, let's not find ourselves exactly where we are today – hostage to the oil industry and wondering why we let things get so bad.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel
Thoughts on politics, current affairs, riffs and reflections on what’s in the news and what’s not--but should be.
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Hmmmm. Quite a turn from prior stances.
"We need an energy policy that encourages consumption." (George W. Bush, Trenton, NJ Sept 2002)
"...conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy" (Dick Cheney, May 2001)
...and of course, anyone who doesn't have their planted you-know-where, or isn't a cheerleader for the status-quo, realized ages ago that new technology, such as alternative energy, generates new job and whole new sectors of the economy. However, it needs to be on the same playing field as other industries. How can anything compete with oil while its still suckling at the Federal teat through tax breaks and subsidies?
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 4:45pm
Let's quit calling it Big Oil. That just gives the pill-popping conservatives ammunition to cry class warfare. Let's call it what it really is:
Socialized Oil.
Posted by bjkron at 05/02/2006 @ 5:06pm
ANWR oil..."wouldn't even hit the market for 10 years!"
Which is why we should have started drilling for it over 10 years ago when the issue was first brought up.
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 5:16pm
I spent 3 months in Europe last year. Where I was, there was very little use of the automobile. The government had provided adequate mass, public transit. The public used it.
I look around the US, and I see people unwilling or too lazy to walk a few blocks to buy a pack of smokes or a six pack. I see people too self-centered to get out of their cars to order a burger, but remain in line burning fuel while they order, await it's preparation, pay for it, etc. I see some people too lazy to carry their trash to the trash bin (I'm not talking about homeowners here, but people who live in large complexes) and drive it to the central trash recceptical. I don't see people willing to carpool. I don't see people interested in mass transit, they prefer the solitude of their own cars.
There is a lot of blame to go around with regard to our egocentric use of oil, our me-first attitude to convenience, our disregard for the environment, and our apparent belief that as Americans we are entitled to do what we want. Folks, you don't need to wonder why people in other countries view the US with disdain. Just watch your own energy habits and realize that those habits are destroying the earth, are driving up prices all over the world, and show complete disregard not just for all humans living oon the planet, but all life on the planet.
You wanna spend less at the pump? Try walking to the 7-11 or Circle K once in a while, try getting out of your car when you go to McD's, try carpooling, try using mass transit. Hey, just try it once a week! That's a start! Needless use of your cars (and I say your cars because I decided to quit owning and driving vehicles in 2001 when I researched global warming) causes your wallet to be emptier than it need be, the air to be more polluted than it need be, and the earth to continue to heat up so that glaciers all over the world, especially in Europe and Greenland, are melting. Oh yeah, maybe reduced use of oil would mean Presidents wouldn't find the need to go fight wars over oil, too!
By the way, I have found that being in mass transit vehicles can often be a great experience. You can actually connect with other people, talk, have conversations, learn something, help someone, and find you will enjoy the human contact. The same is true of the occasional walk to the corner for smokes. You might start to make eye contact with other people, acknowledgge they are alive, be acknowledged back, and discover that people are cool and you enjoy them, and that you need not fear them.
Don't blame some amorphous, faceless, "Big Oil" for all our energy problems and the high prices of gasoline. Remember, they couldn't do it if you didn't use so much.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 5:28pm
Oh, and I believe the price gouging at the pump these days has a lot to do with the fact the so-called "Big Oil" can see the writing on the wall. There just isn't going to be the same economy for their product all that much longer, so they are maximizing their profits for however much longer the current market exists.
Forget about new drilling. The only sane approach is to demand that your cities provide, new, clean, well-maintained, regular, mass transit. That is the only real solution. Every day you keep using oil, you detract from the lives and health and prosperity and enjoyment of your children and grandchildren. Every day you continue, you actually destroy your own progeny. I imagine they will be very grateful for that!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 5:35pm
And ANWR ain't a drop in the bucket in its amount of oil reserves. As Katrina said:
"The truth, as the US Geological Service estimates, is that ANWR drilling would likely produce a total amount insufficient to fill the need for even one year of US domestic consumption and it wouldn't even hit the market for 10 years!"
Destroying that pristine environment for something that can't be used for ten years (hopefully long after we have found better ways for getting around) and that will only offset consumption for one lousy year is a waste of the money that will be used to drill it!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 5:40pm
Excellent post, LENNONIST
I for one do not care that gas is $3 a gallon. I laugh with glee at all the whiners who complain about high gas prices. Last week on the news there was a guy in TX who wrote a letter to Bush complaining about the high prices. I celebrated, because that idiot is getting just what he voted for, an unsympathetic and uncaring president who will not lift a finger to get "big oil" to stop gouging that guy.
I HOPE THE PRICE GOES HIGHER!!! Whooo hooo, I will celebrate every dollar increase. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
You lazy fat-assed ignorant masses need to get off your lazy butts and walk; get some exercise you morons. Take the bus, you idiots! Stop contributing to global warming with your gluttonous and narcistic hedonism and do something that is considerate of the rest of the world for once.
I own an SUV and guess what? I keep it parked 6 days a week. I take the bus. I walk. I carpool. It isn't hard, you inside-the-box thinkers. Get a clue, open your minds, look at alternatives for once in your consumption-driven lives...
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 5:40pm
I love you Physics! I too take the bus. I too walk, way more than I take the bus. I too revel at each increase of gasoline prices. I hope it goes so high people figure it out and stop using it so wastefully.
You know, there is a corollary point here. The news is all over how obese our public is. No wonder, all they do is sit, in a chair at home, in a car, in a chair at work. Walking is healthy! You can be healthier at the same toime as you do something good for not only the environment but also for all future life on this planet that would like to follow those alive today and share in the fruits and joys of life on the planet.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 5:45pm
Lenno makes very good points. Oil is on the downside of the Hubbert curve. We have pissed away a very valuable resource (valuable for many things other than its combustability). Why? As stated, most American won't get up offa their fat asses and walk further than the refrigerator - and then whine that they can't afford drive 2 blocks to the Piggly-Wiggly.
As a culture (and I use the term very loosely) America suffers from lassitude and a decided lack of vision. When Hubbert wrote on the decline of oil back in 1956 we listened about as critically as we do now. It's an economy that is going away no matter how much we ignore it. We are only just now even beginning to posit replacements when they could have, and should, been in place decades ago.
As the 2nd and 3rd world aspires to better themselves, the decline will only steepen. ANWR holds 6 to perhaps 12 months of US demand (at current consumption). Maybe $5/gallon gas is what we need to wake up and smell the exhaust. (So much for USC1's cheerleading for the GOP status quo mentality.)
Don't get me wrong. I don't like paying more and may have to move closer to my job. We don't have good public transpo here and I ride my bike every chance I get. We have become terminally mired in an autocentric mentality that Lenno has detailed nicely above...
Change will come one way or the other. That is certain.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 5:48pm
Glad to hear you areon board LOC! I love you too!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 5:50pm
I bet our military in Iraq uses a lot of gas, those Hummers get terrible mileage. plus they are importing gas into Iraq, sold at very subsidized prices paid for, wait for it, by us, yes US
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/02/2006 @ 5:59pm
Does everyone also realize it is far more cost effective to transpoprt goods and materials by train as opposed to by truck? Yet, the trucking industry is another that has us by the gonads. Their power keeps goods and materials moving on the highways, at an incredible waste of money to everyone, while also destroying our environment.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 6:01pm
e should be running mag-lev trains, have cities without internal combustion in the urban core, be more dependent on "soft-tech' approaches to abodes (like insulation on the OUTSIDE of the thermal mass...doh), geothermal, site specific housing solutions and not like every other home, etc. etc.
We get so hardwired as to what is "normal" that even sensible deviation is verbotten.
Its a wonder we've lasted this long....as a species.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 6:09pm
One good bit of news here is that, as the cost of gas goes up, Bush's numbers go down. Yippieeee!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 6:10pm
Ooops "We" and not "e"
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 6:10pm
No species will last another millenium unless we start to get off oil and become sane residents on this island of life in the Universe.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 6:11pm
OK, a millenium is an understatement.
Science predicts serious consequences during this next 100 years. The models I've researched do not make allowances for the continued increase in population over that period of time. We have 6 and a half billion people on earth now, that will double in 35 years to 13 billion, and double again so that by 2075 there will be 26 billion people on the planet. All the global warming experts base their models on prjuections of the use we have today. It's going to get worse at a faster rate than science has predicted because of this. And, this also fails to address that fact that huge populations are not yet sufficiently industrialized to be adding to the problem too much. The future will increase their uses of oil (not just for cars but for heating and industry too).
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 6:17pm
I bet our military in Iraq uses a lot of gas, those Hummers get terrible mileage. plus they are importing gas into Iraq, sold at very subsidized prices paid for, wait for it, by us, yes US
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 05/02/2006 @ 5:59pm
The military gets a price break for buying in bulk, kind of like Walmart.
Yet we cannot extend this economy of scale to national health insurance. Go figure...
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 6:22pm
The news is all over how obese our public is. No wonder, all they do is sit, in a chair at home, in a car, in a chair at work. Walking is healthy! You can be healthier at the same toime as you do something good for not only the environment but also for all future life on this planet that would like to follow those alive today and share in the fruits and joys of life on the planet.
Posted by LENNONIST 05/02/2006 @ 5:45pm
On Oprah yesterday there was a woman who would tie her garbage cans to the back of her car and drive them to the curb. I started yelling at the screen when I saw that...
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 6:24pm
The decreasing albido of the polar regions is also a positive-feedback mechanism for global warming. Already it is impacting Churchill, Canada, a nexus for polar bear movement onto the winter ice shelf of Hudson Bay. As the bay stays unfrozen longer into the Autumn, the bear-human encounter rate has increased.
IT IS HAPPENING NOW, RIGHTWINGERS! SHED YOUR DENIAL!
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 6:27pm
LOC:
I don't believe I ever said that I was against alternative energy sources. I just don't think changing to them will have much effect on global warming. Nor did I think it was realistic to try to promote them when gas was less than $1/gallon (barely 10 years ago).
I definitely AM in favor of green technology, particularly for reasons of energy independence. But I also think it's naive to think we aren't going to need gas/oil at all in the future, so it would be nice if we were developing our own sources here in the US. ANWR is just a small part of that.
BTW, how are environmentalists going to feel when we start chewing up a bunch of land (and it will take massive swaths of land) to put in wind farms, solar farms, etc.? Oil isn't the only resource that "ruins the landscape."
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 6:27pm
I don't believe I ever said that I was against alternative energy sources. I just don't think changing to them will have much effect on global warming.
Posted by USC1 05/02/2006 @ 6:27pm
Or should you have said I just don't feel changing to them will have much effect...?
Or perhaps you've done peer-reviewed research on global warming to contradict our top experts? Or perhaps you have new research overthrowing the established absorption and reflectivity coefficients for carbon dioxide in the UV and IR spectrums? Please share!
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 6:35pm
Before you slam everyone and cheer the high gas prices, remember that not all of us have the benefit of living in urban areas (I know, I know, the free market is there and I should just move myself to where cheap transportation opportunities await, but if I left then there would be no progressive face in my town). Train and bus service are great things, but are not omnipresent. Walking and bicycling have limitations as well. I'm not trying to whine about people who clearly rely on cars to an excess, but it's not so cut and dry at this time.
That said, I share Zero's thorough disgust at the hypocrisy of The Nation and much of the purported leftwing press who use and abuse Nader as it suits them. He's certainly not a likeable person and obviously lacks something on the "electability" scale. But The Nation could simplify its efforts if it simply reprinted all of the thoughtful and topical analysis of Nader rather than hem and haw about what the Democrats might or, more likely, might not do.
Lastly,
ILP,
You watch Oprah? And she didn't impede the progress of your dissertation? Hmm. Then again, I somehow found listening to the wild ideas of Art Bell oddly stimulating as I worked on my thesis.
Posted by tjbehrens1 at 05/02/2006 @ 6:40pm
TJB, That is the first time I've ever watched an entire Oprah show, and it constituted more total viewing time than all of my previous Oprah encounters combined. It was the topic that drew me, which was what you should and shouldn't eat to improve quality of life and longevity.
I was too doped up on antihistamine to do any thesis work yesterday.
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS at 05/02/2006 @ 6:44pm
USC1, and by the way I went there too, oil is and will be a very important resource for a long time. Unfortunately, there are a number of vegetable oil sources that are ignored by our leaders as being promising for use in the future. Yep, we have machines that will need to be lubricated throughout every future millenium, yet, Americans desperately want to consume all the oil they can today and screw the future. There will always been needs for some oil in producing energy whether it be nuclear (ugh) or electric or wind or solar. But, goodness knows, we have to combust it all today in the name of profits for EXXON, CHEVRON, MOBIL, BP, etc.
What sane people realize is this: as we switch over to new energy formats (and we will have to someday), we will create new industries, jobs and economies. We can start by changing the kinds of vehicles we do drive into vehicles that use more efficient sources of energy and that are also cleaner, by doing so, save money and protect the environment. We can demand our cities provide better mass transit, and in so doing find ways to connect with each other better and find a greater culture and a more enjoyable life at the same time as we also protect our environment and try to save some quality of life for pour progeny.
We can use solar for home power in much larger quantities. At the same time, we will also reduce costs for everyone's lifestyle and improve the environment. Again, we will be giving future generations a better world than we will if we just keep using oil.
Yes, we can also have wind power farms. And you know what, those can be placed in areas that do not infringe on our enjoyment of the beauty which is this planet or destroy habitats for plant and animal life.
If you get out of the US and look at what other countries are doing, you will find there are so many solutions, they just don't all generate huge profits for some company, and consequently, businesses don't want to provide them to us. Apparently, profits are more important that future generation. I guess oil execs would rather line up all their spe3rm and eggs and destroy them so they can continue to generate obscene profits. And apparently, so would most Americans, because sticking with oil is doing exactly that!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 6:56pm
TJ, do you regularly attend city council meetings and county supervisor meetings? If so, do you bring up these issues? Do you ask candidates for local offices to address these concerns? I aappreciate that it is difficult to give up car use. I've gone without for 5 years now. It is very hard, especially in the beginning. But it isn't impossible. And, just so I am on the record here, I didn't say destroy your car today. I asked people to start doing something. A suggested one damn dday a week, but yes I k now, that's too damn much to ask isn't it. Finally, if you keep using your car and don't even bother to approach city councils and boards of supervisors to make the needed changes, then, in the words of Stevie Wonder, "You haven't done nothin'."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 7:03pm
I'd like to point out one thing in regards to this issue: convenience kills. You are killing your grandchildren and great grandchildren and so on. You don;'t want to admit it. But you are!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 7:06pm
good point about the truckers, Lennon, and that highway system built by Eisenhower, to move troops. what did we need that for? for the trucking interests.
Los Angeles grew horizontally because it had the best tram and light rail system, which was dismantled by, yes the trucking interests and GM.the love affair with the car is coming to an end. we paid a very high price for that relationship, look at our cities, given over to cars rather than people, this even in NYC, which has arguably one of the best mass transit systems in the world, we can't even keep cars out of Central Park.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/02/2006 @ 7:07pm
Anyone notice how every pro-oil comment on here never even expresses a minicule amount of care about what happens to the world after they are gone?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 7:13pm
All through the day, I me mine I me mine, I me mine
Posted by Lennonist at 05/02/2006 @ 7:14pm
USC
No, but you talk about ANWR like it'll make a lot of difference. It's probably better as a reserve up there for the interim.
Wind farms don't "tear up land" but do disrupt visual asthetics. Land can still be used for farming, pasture, what-not. Could play havoc with migratory waterfowl...sliced goose anyone? Solar...does disrupt land somewhat and does exclude other uses pretty much. Of course, the land we are talking about (SW) is probably only used by dirt-bikers and the sparse aniumal ppl. Not that it is offfered as an exuse....but it's not like the eastern seaboard is prime solar land. BTW: much solar/soft-tech should be integrated into the buildings...
ILP
re: Oprah story....classic. LMAO...Student too?
ALL
Sadly, the only thing that will come close to oil over time is nuclear, unless we get that fusion thing past break-even. (Right now ~50% of world's power is derived from petroleum products.)Assumes though that we keep up our insane level of consumption, and the rest of the world catching up. [Just finished the fossil fuel chapter in our book and moving on to nukes tomorrow....teaching env sci at local CC]
Lenno/ILP
Most estimates rate the Earth's carrying capcity at around 8-10 billion. Oughta be pushing over 7 within the next two years. Safety envelope pushed shortly after. In a grad course we estimated CC using thermodynamics...watts/sq m sunlight, bioconversion/trophic efficiencies, nutrient fluxes, arable land. You get about 4.5 -6 billion "comfortably", about 2 billion USA style, ~8 billion "mainly" vegetarians, 12 billion austere diets.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 7:25pm
Lenno
Short world view is a classic economic F#*%-UP...brought that up on some other thread previous. Only in the here and now...."Where my wallet exists", so why worry about the future. Well, maybe as far as the next coupla fiscal quarters.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 7:27pm
and TJB a student too?
Wow, place is crawling with educated enviro-nuts (ha-ha
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 7:29pm
TJB was, 10 years ago.
Lennonist,
Great points regarding activism. And, as you suspect, I have not done all that I should. I have the advantage of having developed some form of relationship with many of the town leaders (on issues unrelated), and have made comments/suggestions. Primarily, these have involved increasing bike paths and developing the downtown, both which, in my opinion, will help reduce the congestion of vehicles heading to the fringes of town for the shopping strips and WalMarts. Things are progressing on those fronts, due, I am certain, to none of my unsolicited advice. But we are still left with continuing growth on the extremities of town with a very poor system of public transportation.
Posted by tjbehrens1 at 05/02/2006 @ 8:02pm
Lennon:
I don't have a problem with most of your last post (although I'm not really sure what the whole sperm/egg thing was about). I agree that green tech will eventually make the internal combustion engine go the way of the horse and buggy, but that's only going to come about when people demand it. And people are only going to demand it when it affects them personally in the wallet. Fortunately (or unfortunately), that is happening now. Even more fortunate is that we live in a country that has the ability to adapt and innovate when necessary.
Lennon/LOC
I just want to point out that you both made comments echoing the same point that others make about ANWR (leaving aside the global warming argument for now). You would allow the SW land to be used up for wind farms and solar farms because the area is sparsely populated. Well, ANWR ain't exactly China. So what's the difference? Is it because the land is being used for purposes that YOU support?
LOC stole my thunder with the problem with windmills and migratory birds. That is a problem that you're going to have to get past other environmentalists (and they can be a particularly nasty bunch when they don't get what they want). And considering the HUGE swaths of land that would be required for solar farms, well again, see the argument against ANWR.
I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer, as we all know the resistance that green tech will face. but I just wanted to point out that the resistance won't all be from the "evil conservatives." I think a lot of it will come from some of your own.
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 8:55pm
Where are those di-lithium crystals when you need them?
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 8:56pm
Or perhaps you've done peer-reviewed research on global warming to contradict our top experts? Or perhaps you have new research overthrowing the established absorption and reflectivity coefficients for carbon dioxide in the UV and IR spectrums? Please share!
Posted by ILOVEPHYSICS 05/02/2006 @ 6:35pm
No, but I did sleep in a Holiday Inn last night!
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 8:58pm
ILP:
But seriously, no, I just looked at the IPCC's report that stated Kyoto will decrease the expected temperature increase by a whopping 0.05 degrees C by 2050. The report further stated that in order to get a 1 degree decrease, the world (not just the US) would have to decrease CO2 emissions by 50%! (info available on the UN website)
Posted by usc1 at 05/02/2006 @ 9:05pm
USC
Look upthread...I said ANWR is better off being a reserve for now. Sure, we'll drill it eventually. I NEVER said to preserve it for seals and caribou. You inferred it....but I never laid claim to the stance. As to the native rights...whole `nother issue.
The wealthy have already ki-boshed (sp?) windfarms in some areas...too unsightly, noisy, what-not. However, "green energy" won't fill the need. So either we need new energy sources, or the appetite has to change, or both. I vote for the latter.
We (citizens of all nations) need to re-examine what is "normal and reasonable", and yes....sustainable (eeek, he used the "S" word). We cannot as a species continue to increase consumption at these rates. The sheer physics will not allow it.
I guess it was on the "Gore" thread where I was waxing about geothermal (heating and cooling, and some power potential), more conservation (insulation on the outside of buildings...hold thermal mass enclosed), light pipes, natural convection, waste heat re-use.....start redesigning urban environs - decentralized infrastructures, no internal combustion in urban cores....etc. etc.
Yes, we'll probably need nukes to take up the slack...at least for a while. But we need a new paradigm that should have been started 50 years ago. We have, as a nation, stagnated into almost medeival city designs with our thumbs planted firmly in our behinds while the rest of the world actually has been exploring some of these options.
Leader of the Free World. Ha...we can't lead ourselves out of sheer gluttony. We got ZERO business trying to lay claim to "Leader" status.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 9:54pm
USC
regarding "warming"....funny. I just read about the global retreat of glaciers, the second year in a row that Arctic sea ice has failed to freeze over (Eskimoes in bermuda shorts in Feb) - is really cramping their style as they fish from the ice....and a set of global temp data compiled (graphic) here: UEA Norwich CRU or look here: Climate and read the top story (a site run by climatologists) about how a paper in Science used by the US to substantiate "non-warming" models was just plain wrong.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 10:10pm
I'm sure somebody has already asked her, but...uh...
Ms vanden Heuval DOES drive a Toyota Prius..or Ford SUV hybrid, right? (or she only travels by subway or train)....and she never takes a limo...or private jet, right?
Posted by Mask at 05/02/2006 @ 10:33pm
Oil may be beginning to run out, but unfortunately, it has a lot of life left in it. A few examples:
The now-famous oil sands of Canada (thank-you 60 Minutes for your story on it) comprise the largest combined source of natural gas and oil on the planet (Saudi Arabia has more crude but the gas makes up for it). For us greenies, this may be the best fossil fuel option. While it is by no means located in a desolate wasteland, the oil sands are in a remote, sub-arctic climate zone with much less biodiversity than ANWR and the Latin American oil reserves. It is in a friendly, politically stable country and requires less energy to transport into our hungry mouths than most global sources.
With the melting of the North pole ice cap, the international community is literally drooling over the oil and gas reserves of the Arctic Ocean that have previously been unavailable. I don't even know how much is estimated to be there, but Denmark is already laying a claim (disputed by other nations) for a piece of it.
There have been recent claims that the Gulf of Mexico holds more crude oil than previously estimated. This assessment is not agreed upon by all scientists, but it may turn out to last longer than has been predicted.
When all other sources begin to really dry up, how long do you think the US (no matter who is in charge by then), China, India, Russia, EU, etc. will stick to the international nonexploitation agreements?
Like it or not, oil still has a long life ahead of it and we will have to continue to put up with the consequences...
Posted by bjkron at 05/02/2006 @ 10:34pm
Zero
Lovely....I suppose speculators likewise be buying land NW of Houston for waterfront development.
I did see some models that predict the "grain belt" will shift northward into Canada & Siberia. I suppose we'll be riding camels by then!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 10:41pm
BJ
Google "Hubbert Peak" Most all estimates show the world on the downside of the production curve. The only question is "how steep". We may find some Arctic reserves...and tar sands/oil shales have potential but are horrible expensive to produce. Still not at "break even" yet. I think the point is ~$5/gallon as of 2 yrs ago. Haven't looked recently. Nasty bit of mining that is as well...and VERY energy intensive.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/02/2006 @ 10:46pm
Anybody celebrating Bolivas new Socialist governments newest program? Take over those pesky forgien oil companys. That will show 'em and now they can show the left here on the blog how to handle greedy oil companies here and their obviously dishonest profits.
Any bets as to how oil production will go in the coming year in Boliva,,,and they used the military to do it!!!..Got to love those free loving peoples...I wonder what their immigration policy is...
Why hasn't the Nation condemed or praised the Bolivian Progressive government, president and policys?
The silence is defining and deafening....maybe KVH is trying to find a way to blame Bush...if she looks hard enough, she can find one, as it is there..I am sure.
Posted by john maasch at 05/03/2006 @ 12:41am
Lennonist,
Many of us would love to have the advantages of mass transit, but until it becomes widely available 24/7, it's not an option for many of us.
I will say, Seattle has a wonderful mass transit system, but it is still limited.
If I'm going to the movies, book store, library, whatever, I'll jump on the bus and go because I can get there.
My work (which is the majority of my car time) though prevents me from being able to use mass transit or a carpool to commute.
My shifts are 4 10's a week, and I usually work from 2PM to 1AM, which means I can get to work without any problems, but I am unable to get home from work.
When I work the day shifts, my schedule is from 6AM to 5PM, I can get home, but I am unable to get to work.
And, my schedules just don't work for your normal carpools.
Hopefully, someday this will be an option, but for the time being, when I replace my car next year I'll be getting a hybrid vehicle.
Roman G. Powell
Posted by rgpowell at 05/03/2006 @ 01:47am
.
It is true that the American oil industry is totally out for itself with no interest in the nation. Yet it depends on the US military to protect its tankers and foreign assets. And it periodically requests and receives subsidies and write-offs.
The industry has refused to expanded its capacity and that has helped limit supply. It has closed down old refineries without building new ones. It has merely enlarged its existing plants.
There is something wrong here. A business fighting off vigorous competition is not able to pay its CEO $400 million.
These companies are operating in harmony. They are close to a trust. It is time for companies like Exxon and Mobile to understand that they are supposed to be competitors providing gasoline at the lowest possible price, not in picking the American people's pockets.
Which is not to say, that breaking up Exxon will solve our energy problem. The solution lies in nuclear power plants producing ample cheap electricity to mfg hydrogen for fuel cells.
Then a hydrogen auto assembly line has to come into existence accompanied by a hydrogen fuel distribution system. Here is a suggestion of how that might be done.
Posted by nacl at 05/03/2006 @ 02:20am
It's really humorous, in a way. I'm 53, never got married and never had any children. I have no progeny to worry about and never will. Yet, my single focus on this issue is to try and keep in people's minds that what one does for oneself impacts what one will leave to future generations. Maybe not having kids allows me to love 'em more than those who have 'em? Nah, just kidding. But honestly, I do find the lack of concern for future generations disheartening.
This is probably the issue I am most concerned about in life. That is why I can get so intense in discussing it. I hope I have not upset anyone. It's a reflection of caring and love for humanity, for our world, and for the future that drives my passion here.
LOC - With regard to population figures: Yep, I am aware that science says we cannot sustain that much life on the planet. But then, science said back in the sixties when population totals were half what they are now we could not sustain the number of humans we presently have. As far as how I got my numbers, I am projecting based on the growth I have seen in the last 35 years. In that time our world population doubled from about 3 1/4 billion to our approximate 6 1/2 billion at present (and that, remember was kind of a slow growth because the baby boomers got a late start procreating in a general statistical sense). My point is, no one is doing a thing about the continued population explosion, and, quite frankly, I don't see anyone ever doing anything about that. So, if every 35 years we double our population, by about 2040, we should have reached 13 billion, whether we can feed them or not. Likewise, by about 2075, we can expect another doubling to 26 billion. Now, unless you folks can figure out how to convince people to stop having so many babies (short of the Chinese model which is not remotely humane), then the population is going to continue to skyrocket unchecked, and the quality of life for the entire planet will be quite terrible.
TJ, didn't mean to seem like I was calling you out. I apologise for the way I wrote. I just wanted to make the point that there are still avenues for people to pursue as a means of easing the energy problems we face in the future.
RGP - please do not feel you have to answer to me. Actually the person you have to answer to is yourself, your conscience, your children, and your grand children. With regard to Seattle's mass transit issues, I reside in Phoenix. Buses stop here at 10 pm. The only thing I use the bus for is to get somewhere at a particular time. If I am going to the store, I'll walk the two miles. If I am going to the library, I'll walk the three miles. If I have to be at work or an appointment that is time sensitive, then I take a bus. As you can guess, my social life is non-existent. I have Netflix, that's how and when I see movies. I do not tend to go out much at night anymore, and haven't for the last 5 years. I do not expect or ask anyone else to go to my lengths. I don't expect anything. I just ask folks to search their own conscience to determine if they are being reasonable and prudent in their energy consumption, or if they like to just turn on the pump and leave it running 24/7 (that's a gross analogy, not an attempt at indicting anyone).
With regard to ANWR. This amount of oil is about the equivalent of opening an IRA with a nickle deposit. There are issues far beyond conservation which need to be considered. People live there and have done so for thousands of years, maybe tens of thousands. They live a traditional lifestyle. Drilling in ANWR will destroy their lives. If anyone has a right to claim that territory, it is the indiginous people, not the illegal immigrants who have moved in, taken the land, and imposed taxes on the people. But, I suppose, the greed of the many outweighs the needs of the few, and the true rights of ownership that were never respected in the first place.
With regard to solar. Here in Arizona, people have their own homes set up so that solar power provides about 50% of their power use. Imagine that. And the government provides tax benefits for making the conversion. Yeah, it's about a $5000 investment, and you will be in the black for it for a couple of years (assuming you are a homeowner who spends about $250 for electricity per month). The tax benefits do not fully offset the investment. However, if you are going to own your home for more than two years, you will start seeing a savings after the second year on that model.
USC, one can do the solar trip on their own without having to use tons of land for their own home use. See above about my concerns regarding ANWR. I just don't get destroying the environment in a natural reserve that has been set up, not for the beauty of the land (since no one takes vacations to see it that is ridiculous and I admit it), but because of the impact on the animal life, the effect on the sea life, the effect on the human population who does live there, the idea that we made promises to those people and we should be held accountable for keeping our word, and the fact that you are only going to get one lousy year's worth of oil out of it that can't be used for ten years, and for such a paltry amount, we will destroy all the things I just described (including our honorable word) for what amounts to essentially nothing. I am not in favor of forcing anyone to have to live near wind farms if they don't like them, nor in favor of forcing wind farms to be put anywhere. I am in favor of offering people options that can improve their lives, reduce their cost of living, and at the same time improving the environment. Not because I choose so, because, if fully informed, some people will want to make such a choice as is proven by the fact that wind farms exist all over the world, including the good ol' USA in certain California areas.
There is another source of power no one has discussed, and that is the power of the tides. There is technology available to extract power from the movement of waves and tides in the ocean. That technology need not be unsightly, need not harm the environment in any way, and can continue to add to our energy resources.
Peace and love...
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 02:55am
Oh, NACL, everything about the oil industry has monopoly written all over it. Let's start with OPEC and how they set their prices.
The hydro cars are really incredibly viable. If the government would fund the company with hydrocar technology with the same tax incentives and same tax breaks as it gives to our gas combustion auto industry, the assembly lines could be put togther in no time. Those cars would be able to give people all the same enjoyable luxuries that can be had from the automobile. Yep, you could go fast, you could have peower windows, power brakes, stereo, CD and even windshield wipers. The oil and auto industry lobbyists have been preventing the public from reaping the benefit of cheaper transportation (from the point of view of energuy costs involved in running the vehicles), cleaner transportation, and safer transportation in order that they might continue to reap huge incomes and pay their executives exorbitant salaries. Maybe, if big oil execs and auto execs didn't earn 100s of millions of dollars a year in bonuses, we could get gas for under $3.00 a gallon?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 03:09am
Oh, NACL, everything about the oil industry has monopoly written all over it. Let's start with OPEC and how they set their prices.
The hydro cars are really incredibly viable. If the government would fund the company with hydrocar technology with the same tax incentives and same tax breaks as it gives to our gas combustion auto industry, the assembly lines could be put togther in no time. Those cars would be able to give people all the same enjoyable luxuries that can be had from the automobile. Yep, you could go fast, you could have peower windows, power brakes, stereo, CD and even windshield wipers. The oil and auto industry lobbyists have been preventing the public from reaping the benefit of cheaper transportation (from the point of view of energuy costs involved in running the vehicles), cleaner transportation, and safer transportation in order that they might continue to reap huge incomes and pay their executives exorbitant salaries. Maybe, if big oil execs and auto execs didn't earn 100s of millions of dollars a year in bonuses, we could get gas for under $3.00 a gallon?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 03:09am
sorry about the double post, I encountered an internal service error that lead to me double clicking. That certainly was not very conservationist of me, was it?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 03:11am
sorry about the double post, I encountered an internal service error that lead to me double clicking. That certainly was not very conservationist of me, was it?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 03:11am
Thanks for the efforts folks, and include me in the non-traditional "academicians" category, although the Platonist roots of the "academy" tilt the playing field of life toward what Dr. King termed "analysis paralysis." In such a complex environment ostensible idealistic "do gooders" are often more part of the problem(s) than the solution(s). That's why getting behind a program like the Apollo Project is important to consolidate our naturally democratic divergencies into a coherently focused voice. To do this requires time and humility, two relatively rare commodities, I'd say.
Anyway, we're such a HUGE country, I like the hydrogen and mass transit strategies AND I continue to ride my bicycles for local errands whenever possible.
Our three most valuable possessions: our good health (hopefully), our time (and how we spend it - thank YOU, Nation bloggers!), and lastly, IMO, clear consciences (here, let me polish that for you comrade).
Have great Wednesdays friends.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 05:19am
Right on plan!
See, when you're in the oil business, you make the most money when the supply is the tightest. It should be clear to everyone by now that Cheney didn't force us into an invasion of Iraq in order to improve the lives of American citizens in any way whatsoever.
BEFORE 9/11 - CHENEY CREATED A PLAN TO SELL OFF IRAQ'S OIL.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4354269.stm...
BUT HOW COULD THAT BE - WHY PLAN SOMETHING YOU DON'T CONTROL?
STOP.
THINK.
REMEMBER THE ENERGY MEETINGS WITH KEN LAY AND OTHERS?
WHAT WAS THE BIG SECRET THEY WERE KEEPING?
THE INVASION OF IRAQ WAS THE BIG SECRET THEY WERE KEEPING.
THE OTHER SECRET WAS THE PRETEXT.
THE PRETEXT FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ.
THE PRETEXT.
THE PRETEXT.
9/11.
CHENEY DID IT.
PNAC members became deeply entrenched in many powerful and strategic positions once George Bush was installed as President. Clearly, the plan could now become a reality. But, how?
Here's how: The PNAC plan openly called for a "transformation" of the U.S. military into an imperialistic force of global domination. That was more easily said than done. The American people would have to go along with the idea, and that was a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Read the next line very, very carefully:
"The process of transformation," the plan said, "is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor."
Let that sink in: like a new Pearl Harbor...like a new Pearl Harbor....like 9/11. Is there any question that 9/11 constituted a catastrophic and catalyzing event very similar to Pearl Harbor? Is there any question that the PNAC plan for war against Iraq became feasible only because of 9/11? Is there any question at all that PNAC got its new Pearl Harbor exactly at the right moment in history?
They effectively pulled off a coup de etat, by passing Congressional scrutiny, installing the military industrial fascist government they have today. Allied with the globalist elite they are destroying America and the Constitution.
ROLL THEM BACK!
Posted by plunger at 05/03/2006 @ 08:02am
That story about Halliburton acquiring the asbestos liabilities of Dresser Industries raises an interesting point...
Cheney KNEW that Dresser had the most massive liability issue on planet earth (he had to have known) yet decided to pay good money to bring Dresser's problems under Halliburton's tent.
This raises the question...who were the largest shareholders of Dresser - in need of a lifeboat to save their own personal bacon? Anyone named Bush? Anyone named Carlyle?
The deal went like this:
Cheney agrees for Halliburton to take on the Dresser asbestos liability.
It is determined that Bush and Cheney will be (s)elected, and that the PNAC plan will be implemented - using 9/11 as the essential pretext.
Ken Lay plays his role using his Enron smoke and mirrors tactics to create a faux energy crisis in California, causing the public to demand an energy-savvy administration be elected.
With the asbestos liability and other matters hanging in the balance, the election of 2000 simply had to be rigged in order for the plan to go in to effect.
Following the appointment of Bush and Cheney, the secret energy planning meeting established which oil companies would reap the rewards of the pending invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
The timing and the pretext were predetermined, and 9/11 was greenlighted for 9/11/2001. Cheney outsourced the implementation to Mossad, and ran the show from his bunker on D Day under the cover of preplanned drills simulating the exact attack that was proscribed, with NORAD as coconspirator. At least 50 administration officials and countless foreign agents were in on it.
Once the entire charade was concluded, the Administration generally, and Cheney specifically, had every reason in the world to blame Iraq.
The Afghanistan mission could not provide Halliburton with enough revenue to offset the massive asbestos liability claim. Iraq and Iran are essential wars in order to provide cover for the infusion of the billion of TAX DOLLARS necessary to both profit Halliburton for its actual work AND cover the massive asbestos liability claims.
Now you know why Halliburton was awarded the contracts without the need to bid for them. This was all prearranged.
NOTE: Private enterprise pushed its legal/financial obligations onto tax payers using war as the excuse.
The asbestos liability claims of Dresser Industries were ultimately paid by you and me, and our troops in the field, all to ensure that the investors in Dresser didn't take the multibillion dollar loss.
Just one piece of a very large chessboard.
Hang them for TREASON.
Posted by plunger at 05/03/2006 @ 08:03am
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/01/cheney.halliburton/...
Given what we know about VP Cheney's direct financial ties to Haliburton, isn't it clear that he has committed a fraud against the United States for the purpose of illegal financial gain, in accordance with the following statute? Couldn't the same be said of any US official who knowingly made false statements to advance the cause of war, while owning shares of companies that stood to gain substantially from that war? Cheney was acting specifically on behalf of the Contractor, Haliburton, to ensure no-bid contracts were awarded, based on knowingly fraudulent information generated by his own Office Of Special Plans. It might also be construed that any official who had a relationship to the Carlyle Group was also lying on their behalf - for their own financial benefit.
Section 1031. Major fraud against the United States
(a) Whoever knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, any scheme or artifice with the intent - (1) to defraud the United States; or (2) to obtain money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, in any procurement of property or services as a prime contractor with the United States or as a subcontractor or supplier on a contract in which there is a prime contract with the United States, if the value of the contract, subcontract, or any constituent part thereof, for such property or services is $1,000,000 or more shall, subject to the applicability of subsection (c) of this section, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(1) the gross loss to the Government or the gross gain to a defendant is $500,000 or greater; or
(2) the offense involves a conscious or reckless risk of serious personal injury.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/18/parts/i/chapters/...
The financial links between those who lied, and those who benefitted as a direct result of the lies (primarily in the oil and military industries) are clear. The evidence that the President's speech knowingly included a lie about the Niger Yellow Cake is proveable in a court of law under oath.
That the Vice President knew for a fact that the claim was based on a forgery in advance of the President's speech is a given. That he instructed others to ensure that the sentence made it into the speech is also a given. What did the Vice President know, and when did he know it?
Everytime the Vice President knowingly lied to the American People to advance the cause of war, he committed a crime against the United States which both directly harmed other US citizens and directly enriched himself.
Indict Dick Cheney for Fraud.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040216fa_fact...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/politics/main575356.shtml...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030711-7.html...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030714-4.html...
The outing of Valarie Plame falls into precisely the same category, as it was specifically designed to ensure that the lead up to war continued apace...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/10/20031001-6.html...
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of "lies." So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to "justify" an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding "what else they are lying about."
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly-if clumsily (and apparently illegally)-to retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for "Scotter") Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife.
http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern10202005.html...
But there is abundant evidence that senior White House officials were aware of the CIA's doubts regarding the Niger story long before the State of the Union. Nearly a year earlier, in February 2002, the CIA had dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the claim about uranium purchases. When the CIA debriefed him in March, his findings were emphatic: As Wilson explained in a New York Times op-ed on July 6, "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." CIA Director George Tenet claimed on July 11 that Wilson was sent to Niger by junior nonproliferation experts at the CIA acting "on their own initiative" and that senior administration officials were unaware of his mission. But this is not true. Wilson was told by CIA officials that the mission had been specifically requested by the office of the vice president. Indeed, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told Time magazine that Cheney had "asked a question about the implication of the [uranium] report." And, as Wilson tells The New Republic, "When an executive agency is tasked to find something out and it gets an answer, it goes back to the person who requested it." For the White House to suggest that Cheney's office was unaware of the results of Wilson's inquiry strains credulity.
Moreover, there is strong evidence that the CIA clearly conveyed its doubts about the Niger allegation to the White House on more than one occasion prior to the State of the Union. When Bush wanted to include the claim in an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, Tenet personally intervened, imploring Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council (NSC) deputy, Stephen Hadley, to cut the allegation from the speech, which he did. The idea that no one involved with the State of the Union was aware of this earlier, emphatic intervention is implausible. And when the latter speech was being written, the CIA again raised questions about the Niger assertion. According to The New York Times, when NSC proliferation staffer Robert G. Joseph called his CIA counterpart, Alan Foley, to ask about including the allegation in the State of the Union, Foley told Joseph the CIA was not confident about the information.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030728&s=editorial072803...
Indict Vice President Cheney. Put him under oath.
Posted by plunger at 05/03/2006 @ 08:03am
Actually, the Cheney strategy for Iran works just fine from his perspective…
Nuke the place and turn the sand to glass.
This avoids all of the messy stuff (living / breathing humans who want to fight you) and takes Iraq's oil off the market, ensuring Cheney he and his oil buddies will become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, while removing a foe of Israel.
You need to drop the whole morality argument and think like a criminal to understand what these guys are actually up to. If you though invading Iraq was about INCREASING oil supply, you know better now. The opposite is true.
How criminal are they?
Google: Cheney NORAD
Posted by plunger at 05/03/2006 @ 08:05am
everyone seems to start with the proposition that gas is too expensive.the same nutcases that rant on about socialism and the free market are suddenly going ballistic about a price rise of a scarce and getting scarcer commodity. when health care and health insurance rise in price, when housing prices go through the roof every year, when sugar here is five times the world market price, that's ok, but gas, well it's practically a religion here. suck it up, americanos,get a fucking Vespa, and most of all stop whining.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 09:09am
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 05/03/2006 @ 09:09am | ignore this person
Actually, JOHANN, most of those "whining" about gas prices are on the Left, who want to use it as an issue in the November midterms against Republicans.
Minor amnesia though, as most of them forget that back in the days of "cheap gas" in the 1990s, the environmentalists wanted to raise the price by imposing a 50 cent+ gas tax to "encourage conservation" and "reduce use of greenhouse gas emitting fuels".
Now, though, they and many Democrats who supported that idea, bemoan the "$3-4 price of gas caused by the Bush Admin and GOP"....when it's EXACTLY at the price they wanted just 10 years ago! (just based on market prices, not taxes)
Posted by Mask at 05/03/2006 @ 09:43am
"everyone seems to start with the proposition that gas is too expensive."
Many of us don't have this opinion. The actuall cost was higher during the embargoe of the 70s in real adjusted dollars. While I don't like to pay more for gas and the coming increases for everything, I do understand it and adjust my usage accordingly. Most will do the same.
The pressure is coming from the nut case in Iran, who has a death wish for all of us. Speculators and China, India cravings are mimicing our own addiction...prices will never go back where they were a year ago. They may drop after a decrease in usage and the world nervousness calms, but the days of cheap energy are gone..never to return.
Posted by john maasch at 05/03/2006 @ 09:50am
NaCl
We do agree on some issues it would seem.
Lenno
The problem with tidal is twofold: the latitudinal aspects (has to be a sufficient tidal differential...varies by latitude, and depends on "where" and coastal geography), and it does use coastal lands which are gnereally in demand (~60% of world ppl lives within 100km of a coast). Not that its a bad idea...just like everything else there are real limitations.
For all some detail on tidal power at Surfs Up. And a nice "green" company called Blue Energy
There is also the potential for ocean current power...although we wouldn't want to reduce the currents too much. Could have nasty side effects. (There are places using this idea, especially in the UK it seems.)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 09:58am
Corporate oil political dollars go to the GOP / Democrats at an 84/16 ratio.
Posted by freedomplease at 05/03/2006 @ 10:39am
Plunger, si, Cheyney y conspiritorial traitors, no!
Unemployed freedom. Obligations are now less important to me.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 11:00am
That's 5-7-5 haiku at the end of the previous post, poets.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 11:01am
i agree with the others, lennonist, that u have brought up many valuable points on this thread. but in your response to tj yesterday, u said:
"A suggested one damn dday a week, but yes I k now, that's too damn much to ask isn't it."
your constant gush of "peace and love" and "i love you" is refuted by statements like this.
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 11:35am
Lew, is that not redundant?
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 11:37am
wow, salty, is that really u? or did someone hijack your computer?
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 11:58am
Loki, if you read the post stamped 5/03/06 @ 2:55 am, you will notice I apologised for that statement, and that kind of rhetoric. I am a human who is fully capable of erring - I never claimed to be perfect. Hold it against me, I guess, you certainlyhave that right. I do see plenty of others on here making much ruder comments than I. I am not aware of anyone else who apologised to others on here for said rudeness. If you notice, I did not offer the apology in response to anyone calling me out for my rude behavior. I realized it, and I came back here on my own to make the public apology to everyone. I am not trying to extol my virtues, I am not even claiming I have virtues. I am pointing out that I am a fallible man; that when I fail my own moral and ethical values; I try to recify that situation; I am fully capable of admitting I made a mistake all by myself and do so; and in so doing, I do my best to be the best person I am capable of being. I can't do more than that. So, I do not know if the only individuals who ever walked the earth who should be allowed to talk about peace and love and expressing I love you to others should be limited to Jesus, Gandhi, and Buddha under your theory that, by being fallible I refute myself, or not, but I will continue to be myself, continue to express messages of peace and love, and I will likely continue to evidence human failings, and when I do, I will do my best to realize my human failings and apologise for them.
I love you too Loki.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 12:16pm
Loki, if you read the post stamped 5/03/06 @ 2:55 am, you will notice I apologised for that statement, and that kind of rhetoric. I am a human who is fully capable of erring - I never claimed to be perfect. Hold it against me, I guess, you certainlyhave that right. I do see plenty of others on here making much ruder comments than I. I am not aware of anyone else who apologised to others on here for said rudeness. If you notice, I did not offer the apology in response to anyone calling me out for my rude behavior. I realized it, and I came back here on my own to make the public apology to everyone. I am not trying to extol my virtues, I am not even claiming I have virtues. I am pointing out that I am a fallible man; that when I fail my own moral and ethical values; I try to recify that situation; I am fully capable of admitting I made a mistake all by myself and do so; and in so doing, I do my best to be the best person I am capable of being. I can't do more than that. So, I do not know if the only individuals who ever walked the earth who should be allowed to talk about peace and love and expressing I love you to others should be limited to Jesus, Gandhi, and Buddha under your theory that, by being fallible I refute myself, or not, but I will continue to be myself, continue to express messages of peace and love, and I will likely continue to evidence human failings, and when I do, I will do my best to realize my human failings and apologise for them.
I love you too Loki.
Oh, and lest anyone get the wrong idea, let me try to be clear about something. I know that it may appear that I love only those who agree with me, since, for the most part that is who I have expressed it to. So, let me just say, I love you Mask, Maasch, USC, and everyone else on this board. Heck, I do not agree with just about anything Bush has done in office, however, I even love him. I do not limit my love nor do I place qualifications upon who gets it.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 12:19pm
What about telecommuting?
The savings in gas is more than matched by the savings in time -- a double whammy!
Companies have to stop measuring employees by their hours and start measuring their output. In so many industries, physical presence is unnecessary. A weekly trip to the HQ may be needed by some, but teleconferencing works almost as well.
The governments (state and federal) should support virtual companies in every way possible.
Get the cars off the road by eliminating commuting.
I only drive my Prius a couple of days a week a couple of miles to shop. I walk three miles to the movies (each way -- and I'm well over 60). I run a virtual company.
Let's stop being lemmings and start using the gray matter installed between our ears.
Posted by adr at 05/03/2006 @ 12:42pm
It would have been logical to have started working on energy independence 30 years ago when the oil embargo of the mid-70's reminded us that petroleum is a finite resource and we were dependent on oil imports to keep the gears of the economy running. A steady government increase in gasoline taxes and government encouragement for fuel efficiency and mass-transit infrastructure would have been a good start in that direction. Instead the issue was "swept under the rug" and voters selected do-nothing legislatures and pro-business, let-the-market-decide leaders who, for all practical purposes, gave the majority of voters the idea that energy would always be cheap and plentiful. In the short run this illusion fueled an instant gratification business model that helped certain industries (mostly manufacturers) increase their profit margins. Let the good times roll!
Surprise! Oil production has peaked and energy prices are going up! And here comes all those downers like rising costs, inflation, recession. I hope the greedy, hedonistic Baby Boomers enjoy their retirement while watching their offspring deal with energy issues that should have been addressed years ago. We'll be lucky if we are not hit with a major economic depression within the next few years.
As far as I'm concerned, the majority of the middle class is getting exactly what they voted for. Ignorance is not an excuse. Anyone with an average I.Q. could see that the energy policies (or lack of energy policies) of the past 30 years were going to lead to another energy crisis.
Posted by elossman at 05/03/2006 @ 12:55pm
KVH reminds us that Congress' thoughtful solution to the current spike in gas prices is to drill in ANWR, LOC frets that we're on the downward slope of the Hubert curve and Lennonist points out we're on the upward slope of the Malthusian curve, USC1 ( bless his tender heart ) is concerned about the danger of windmill generation to migratory birds, elswhere LOC is going on about global warming even though Senator Inhof has pointed out that studies by the oil companies have discredited the science behind the claim, Maash is concerned about the interests of these same helpless oil companies being harmed by a greedy Bolivian peasant populist movement. And to top it all off here comes Mask with his 9:43 post. And...oh my god I actually agree with him !
I'm so confused. My head hurts. I Think I'll go jump in my car and go for a drive. That always helps me put things in perspective.
Posted by MikeKing at 05/03/2006 @ 1:20pm
When the gas crisis is over 100 years from now those who WISHED that prices went higher, so we all "suffer" for our "sins" will be remembered as fools. Nobody ever got anywhere in this country by wallowing in their own self misery and asking for more. What we need is some bright,ambitious, moral young enginneer to revolutionize the energy industry by inventing a new fuel for our needs. Bright enough to find it (or use whats already there), ambitious enough to want to make a fortune from it, and moral enough who tell the establishment to go screw themselves when they try to buy him off in the interests of the status quo.
Chip Thornton
Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 05/03/2006 @ 1:23pm
chip, do you know the film "the man in the white suit" ? it's about a man who invents a suit that will never wear out, and the chaos that produced.
for Bush high gas prices are a double whammy, takes the attention away from his troubles in Iraq, AND fills the coffers of his patrons, the oil industry.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 1:31pm
Yes the price of gas is high, and that's why for years now auto companies have been developing hybrid cars, which finally you can purchace now. While hybrid technology won't solve all the problems, it is a step in the right direction.
Before I spent time in Europe, I thought everybody would be using public transportation. While this is the case in major cities and towns, in other areas, plenty of people drive and love their cars, (especially Germans). However, a lot of their cars are deisel powered, and would never pass U.S. emmision standards.
Posted by Zeddmen at 05/03/2006 @ 1:37pm
Zedd, " I thought everybody would be using public transportation. While this is the case in major cities and towns,"
that already sets them apart from the US cities. they have been paying almost twice as much for gas. also the new diesel engines are far less polluting and meet even California's emission standards
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 1:56pm
lennonist, i see your point about your apology to tj. and i think i understand what you're saying.
can i ask u, do u eat only locally grown sustainable foods? not only is this another aspect of energy conservation but it taps into other problems we create with our behaviour.
and do u cut the little plastic address windows out of envelopes to seperate the two pieces into paper and plastic for recycling?
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 2:12pm
While I have been following this thread for some time, I've been so immersed in writing an IT stategic plan for my company that I could take the time to post many thoughts on this topic. Now that I have a minute...
Way up thread, someone posted the thought that there simply isn't any energy source that can replace oil. That thought is echoed in Chip's post about wishing for someone "to revolutionize the energy industry by inventing a new fuel for our needs." It seems to me that the solutions have been staring us in the face for quite some time. While there is no "magic new fuel source" there doesn't HAVE to be one.
Someone earlier complained about the "footprint" that would be required for enough solar collectors to replace oil-derived energy. But image every rooftop of every home and building in the southwest topped by solar collectors. Couldn't the entire geographic area could be turned into a net energy producer without increasing the real estate required by a single square inch?
With wind power, again we hear about the amount of land required (as well as the detrimental effects on "migratory waterfowl".)Yet, these windmills can be (and have been) placed in agricultural areas that are still plantable and harvestable and can be (and have been) placed in areas that don't overlap with migratory routes.
Someone mentioned energy sources derived from tidal sources, which was immediately dismissed based on the competition for real estate from general population sources. So imagine every existing dock, jetty, port, etc. outfitted with the float mechanisms required to harvest tidal (and wave) power. Again, without increasing the real estate required by on square inch.
I could go on with geothermal, biomass, methane harvested from livestock waste, burning garbage, etc.) But you get the idea. There is no SINGLE source replacement for energy derived from oil. And there doesn't HAVE to be. A combination of increased energy efficiency, conservation, and implementation of the many, many alternatives, in the places where they make sense, can EASILY solve the issues that are confronting us now. All we need is a decent strategic energy plan. ;-)
Unfortunately, when Jimmy Carter envisioned creating such a plan, he never anticipated that it would come to be created in a secret, back room deal between the Vice President and the oil company execs.
Posted by Lillian at 05/03/2006 @ 2:14pm
You know, Johannesrolf, I do remember that movie, although for some reason did not see it all the way through. I see no end to this crisis, though, except the slow strangulation we are engaged in now, so, as one who finds the concept of lowering his standard of living exxxtreemly distastefull (ha), I look for a John Galt or a Bill Gates for the energy industry.
Chip
Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 05/03/2006 @ 2:17pm
Dangit...many typos. Maybe if I start composing my posts in Word so I can use the in-built spell checker and then cut and paste....
Posted by Lillian at 05/03/2006 @ 2:17pm
By the way, Johannesrolf, I am processing a book for a job we are doing for GPO, specifically FEMA. The Title is ARE YOU READY?
Thought THAT was a scream. They have a lot of balls asking anyone that question.
Chip
Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 05/03/2006 @ 2:25pm
PRESIDENT BUSH: HIS WONDERS TO BEHOLD
The more he infuriates foes, allies and and oil suppliers and spreads fear and dismay about our planet the better off all us opposable-thumbers are.
At $3.00 or $5.00 per gallon of gas, gasoline consumption plummets, carbon dioxide levels abate, global warming reverses, the United States gets a new manufacturing gig for non hydrocarbon technology and in the meantime sis and junior along with their parents are reintroduced to pedal locomotion (bikes and walking) and our "chubby" children crises is history.
One man's 'Incompetence' is oft another's 'Tool.'
God bless George "Walker" Bush.
Posted by cognitorex at 05/03/2006 @ 5:04pm
Yes Johann, redundancy is definitely to be found, and, as you've identified, here again: Unemployed freedom. Obligations are now less; important to me, benefitted from the semicolon, n'est-ce pas?
Remember the pre-fashionably geekish book "Goedel, Escher, Bach"? Maybe my haiku's former and now improved value, thank you, lies too in the meaning to gleaned from another: New improved value. Redacted redundancy. "Get your peanuts here!"
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 6:00pm
can i ask u, do u eat only locally grown sustainable foods? not only is this another aspect of energy conservation but it taps into other problems we create with our behaviour.
and do u cut the little plastic address windows out of envelopes to seperate the two pieces into paper and plastic for recycling?
Posted by LOVELOKI 05/03/2006 @ 2:12pm
I am a vegetarian. I eat organic vegetables and other foods made from organically grown vegetable products, in other words, breads made from organically grown grain, etc. When possible, I purchase my organically grown vegetables from "farmers' markets". I can't do it always, but I do make an effort to do this as often as possible. I do eat cheese. I buy cheeses that do not use rennet (the stomach lining from animals) in the process of congealing the milk products to make cheese. I also eat eggs, and the eggs I purchase are only from "free range chickens". I like butter as well. Since I have discovered Land O' Lakes produces eggs from "free range chickens" (not exclusively, I know), I "reward" that company by purchasing their butter. I do not eat refined sugar, nor do I ingest any products made with refined sugar. If I buy ice cream, which is a very rare event, that ice cream is made with honey. I also sometimes eat ice cream made from non-milk products (soy). I do not eat anything synthetic, nor do I purchase anything that has those red dye numbers and yellow dye numbers, etc. I enjoy fruits, juices. Those, I always buy from local farmers. I hope this answers your question on the food issue.
I get very little mail. I have a cell phone, but no home land line. I rent a room from a friend, so all the home bills come in his name. I possess no credit cards and have no personal debt. Really, the only bill I ever receive is my phone bill. I do separate the plastic window from that envelope for recycling purposes. I stopped buying newspapers. I get my news online from a variety of sources: LA Times, CNN, The Nation, Time Magazine, Z Magazine, The Progressive, Mother Jones and the Washington Monthly. For sports, I can look online at SI.com, ESPN.com, LA Dodgers.com, St. Louis Rams.com and StlToday.com, LA Lakers.com, and Ben Maller.com. I can do the daily crossword and sudoko games on LA Times.com. Hence, I do not gather a lot of needless paper that has to be burned later once I have read it. I have an iPod, and transferred all my music to it, then I sold my CDs. I have books, and keep some, but most I sell to used bookstores so they can be read again by others. Lately, I have been going to the library more to read books. Hopefully, you are getting the picture that I do my best to avoid making a bunch of paper waste. What paper waste does accumulate in our household is always recycled. Does this answer your question?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 6:07pm
California is fortunate to have a Senator like Barbara Boxer:
Thursday, April 27, 2006
I recently introduced legislation to ensure that new cars purchased by the federal government for the federal fleet are the most fuel efficient. My legislation would also provide incentives for states to meet federal standards.
This bill helps the federal government take a big step toward decreasing our nation's demand for oil. By requiring the government to add only the most fuel-efficient cars to our federal fleet, this bill helps the federal government lead by example.
The Fuel-Efficient Fleets Act of 2006 would mandate the following:
1. Require all new federal fleet passenger vehicles to obtain a minimum miles per gallon (mpg) based on vehicle type: The new fuel efficiency standards would be as follows: 45 mpg for cars, 36 mpg for SUVs, 24 mpg for pickup trucks, 20 mpg for minivans, and 15 mpg for vans.
2. Establish a phase-in schedule: The bill would require a phased-in implementation of the new standards.
3. Ensure a reopen provision: The bill would allow the fuel economy standards to be increased, each year, if automotive technology has improved.
4. Create incentives for state fleets to follow the federal government's lead: The bill would provide $100 million in grants as incentives for states to match or exceed the federal fleet standard for their states' fleets. The grants would expire 5 years after enactment.
Our federal fleet purchases can help to lead us to a better, more efficient energy policy. The time to start is now.
Sincerely,
Barbara Boxer United States Senator
http://www.boxer.senate.gov/news/releases/record.cfm?id=254801
Anyone purchasing a personal passenger vehicle that gets less than 14 mpg should be subject to a natural resources profligate waste tax of at least 20%. There is not one good reason why the rest of society should have to tolerate their destructive, antisocial behavior.
Posted by fromredbird at 05/03/2006 @ 6:07pm
Oh, I meant also to say, all my written correspondence with others is done via email. Again, I attempt to avoid wasting paper products.
I do smoke cigarettes. I know, everyone out there will gasp at that! It's so unlike me. HAHA I found, unfortunately, that my taste does not enjoy anything other than Marlboro light 100s. Oh, well, far from perfect.
I do not use any kind of western medicine anymore. I enjoy herbal teas, and other herbal remedies. I will seek out acupuncture when needed. I have seen chiropractors when needed. I almost never get a cold or the flu. I used to suffer from occasional bouts with migraines, diverticulitis and acid reflux. I found that getting my diet together in the ways I have described has ended all of the symptomology of those maladies. I do mean all.
I stay fit with all my walking. Combined with my diet, I weigh today the same I did at graduation from high school (almost 36 years ago now - 5'9" and 142 lbs.).
Let's see, yeah, I drink an occasional alcoholic beverage. My housemate and I buy either Heineken or St. Pauli Girl. A twelve pack usually lasts us a month. During the winter holiday season, I have the occasional brandy (but not in egg nog). I occasionally celebrate some occasion with a bottle of sparkling wine, can't afford real champagne, I like the stuff in the black bottle. HAHA Oh, if at a bar, I'll have 2 Jack Daniels on the rocks. No more though.
I also recycle glass products. I try never to purchase anything in aluminum cans or plastic containers. I cook nearly every meal at home. I save leftovers ands reheat them. I loathe throwing food away.
I do not purchase or wear leather products.
Hopefully, my carbon footprint is pretty small.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 6:25pm
Redbird, I adore Barbara Boxer! I am on her mailing list as well, even though I reside in Arizona not California. I wrote to her one day about 3 or 4 months ago and told her I wanted her to run for President. I received a return mail from her husband! He told me he showed her my email and it really made her day.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 6:28pm
Oh yeah, I do not drink soda pop.
For anyone interested, I found that the primary causes for acid reflux seem to be: carbonation, all those dye numbers, and all that synthetic food. Having stopped using all that (including chips), I find I can eat as spicy of a meal as I like, and I still do not suffer from any kind of acid reflux anymore.
I better put a disclaimer on here. I am not an MD. While I would encourage anyone or everyone to try my dietary policies (sans the cigarettes of course) oh say for one month and see if you don't feel trememdously more energy, greater health, and increased happiness overall. However, please consult your physician before doing so! HAHAHAHAHA
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 6:37pm
eat only locally grown sustainable foods? not only is this another aspect of energy conservation but it taps into other problems we create with our behaviour.
Posted by LOVELOKI 05/03/2006 @ 2:12pm
Also for anyone interested, suggested reading - "Diet for a Small Planet", Francis Lappe. Our predilection for meat decreases the amount of edible food available to the world population. In 1979, for instance, it was determined that 10% of all fossil fuel imported to the US is combusted for gran and bean production. However, 22 to 40 times that amount is combusted for beef production. In 1979, for instance, 145 million tons of grains were used in raising beef poultry and hogs. That only yielded 21 million tons of edible meat, poultry and eggs. Now, one could say that left us with a net deficit of 124 million tons of wasted food if one looked at it form that point of view. Ironically, it was determoined in 1979 that 120 million tons of grains could provide one cup of grain for every human on the planet every day of the year. This waste of grains to feed animals could go a long way to eradicating hunger. By the way, grain puts fat on beef, not meat.
Now, every single pound of beef requires the use of 2500 gallons of water. With our worldwide water shortages, imagine how better used those water resources could be. Furthermore, the water needed to produce one pound of beef is 15 times the amount required for producing vegetable protein. In 1981, it was determined thatr 50% of all water used in the US was devoted to producing food for livestock. We are wasting not only our grain and vegetable resources and fossil fuel imports producing meat, but our water as well.
Ironically, many people counter this with an argument that people require meat. The facts are exactly the opposite. Most of the meat protein humans eat is never digested and turned into fuel for the body. This is due to physiology. We do not possess the correct kinds of digestive acids to extract the protein from meat. Furthermore, all the meat people eat rots in your body as it passes through your intestines. True carnivores and true omnivores have short intestinal tracts that are only about 3 times the length of their bodies. This aids in more rapid removal of decaying flesh as it passes through their bodies. Herbivores possess intestinal tracts about 20 times the length of their bodies to facilitate proper digestion of plant material and grains. Human intestinal tracts are also 20 times the length of the human body. Carnivores possess strong hydrochloric acid in their stomachs necessary in order to pre-digest meat. Herbivores have stomach acid 20 times weaker than carnivores. Human stomach acids are the same as herbivores. Carnivores have acidic saliva with no enzyme ptyalin needed to pre-digest grains. Herbivores possess alkaline saliva with ptyalin, just as do humans. Also, meat and seafood putrefies within four hours of consumption. The remnants cling to the walls of the stomach and intestines for three to four days, continuing to rot inside the human body. This same functioning is not present in carnivores. I also discovered that the flavor in meat arises from the presence in the flesh being consumed of uric acid, one of the great causes of colon cancer. Colon cancer, a rampant cause of disease and death in humans, results from the slow evacuation, and consequent purification, of meat in the human colon. This condition is not present in carnivores or even true omnivores.
What I am getting at is that, most people are killing themselves and the planet simultaneously through eating meat. I know you love that test. Just remember, that taste is the uric acid that could very well lead to colon cancer.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 7:09pm
Lewelge, my redundance comment was that you mentioned a 5, 7, 5 Haiku. I thought that ALL Haikus are 5,7,5. No?
Unemployed can often lead to positive change and growth. I'm not making light of that but rather trying to be encouraging.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 7:19pm
It is not the US Geological Service. It is the US Geological Survey. Fossil fuels are a finite resource. It is for that reason alone that we should be doing our best to save them for future generations. If you do not have a hybrid in your garage you should - or work at home.
Posted by GoZags at 05/03/2006 @ 7:20pm
I know, but at least I was honest. I think honesty counts for some degree of credibility. Anyway, eat your meat, you'll die soon! Oh, and yeah, I smoke all of 5 cigarettes a day.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 7:24pm
Y'all get over to JuanCole.com
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 7:26pm
no problem, freiheit, you, and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Hey, I could have omitted the whole cigarette thing and no one would have known. I endeavor to always be honest. Hence, in response to Loki's questions, I gave as complete an answer as possible and didn't not omit my vice. I'm human, I have vices. I am not going to say I am remotely perfect. But I'm not too bad, at least I don't think so.
Anyway, love and peace to ya Freiheit.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 7:31pm
Lillian
I agree. The only long-term solutions will be local and localized (tailored to locale.) There is a decided need to decentralize and perhaps even "de-urbanize". (Well, maybe "re-think" the urban paradigm....detail back-thread.) Too much "cookie-cutter" reality in the USA.
Lenno
I too recycle most everything I can in my area. Have to cart glass and steel cans in to campus once a month as in my little town can only take plastic 1,2 and newspaper (well, and aluminum, but am not giving that away!) Have a garden, compost heap. Not a vegetarian, but tend to "browse low" on the food chain. With a family of 4 and being a PhD student can't do too much organic buying. (The "right choice" is sometimes not an option, fiscally.)But as mentioned, I do "grow my own" organic stuff. (Can't wait for real `maters!)
Anyways, I bike a lot. Soon will start commuting regular to office (22 mi round trip) which keeps the blood sugar more-or-less stable along with a pretty healthy diet. (Type 2 diabetic....so certain pharmaceuticals are a regular and pricey part of my lifestyle...sigh)
But family of four and usually only 1 bag of trash/week. So try and keep the old footprint whittled down. Now the teenage boy...that's another matter!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 7:33pm
I hear ya LOC, it is very difficult and takes a pretty conscious effort to keep the carbon footprint to a minor level. Kudos on your lifestyle!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 7:38pm
LOL about quitting. I will not say I do not have an addiction, because I certainly do! Yep, I know I should quit. But, I also admit, I enjoy my 5 smokes a day. Partly, I keep smoking because of the addiction, partly I do it because I enjoy it. I figure, 5 a day can't really be all that bad. But, I know it is. So, without wanting to be a hypocrite, I have to admit to some degree I am with regard to the ciggies.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:01pm
Lenno
Sorry, but humans secrete both pepsin and trypsin and a variety of peptidases...all work to digest protein.
Cows in fact do not need to eat "protein" per se because the microflora/fauna (bacteria, yeast, protozoans, mold) in the rumen (1st stomach...which is pH neutral) produce peptides out of other nitrogeneous matter...like urea or even free nitrogen. In fact, if the rumen's pH decreases the cow could become ill or even die. The 4th stomach of the cow...the abomasum, is pretty much like a normal stomach. It goes down to around pH 2.5 when digesting (our own stomach goes down to pH 2, wolves down to ~pH 1) Sorry, but facts are facts.
No doubt the hard-core carnivore has more powerful enzymes, etc. There is even digestive chemistry variation within species (like the prevalance of lactose intolerance among asians.) But humans are omnivores by virtue of evolution. In fact, there is near universal agreement among evolutionary biologists that it was meat of some form that got primates out of the trees and growing brains....related to energy density of the food. Also tricky to get the right balance of proteins required in just veg...can be done, just not as easily as a quick meat "fix".
That being said, I only eat meat a "few" times / week in any quantity. (The bits in soup barely count...) and then it most often NOT red meat which really doesnt' make me feel good. But some chicken, or a little pork in the old stir-fry, a bit of fish here and there - oh yeah. I do also enjoy vegetarian cuisine as well though.
OK....that being said, I am not advocating the "carnivore solution" and agree that meat, by and large, is not-so-good. However, diverse proteins are necessary, especially during growing stages of youth/adolescence. Also, as the mass of humanity increases, it will, by virtue of sheer necessity, shift towards the vegetarian option due sheerly to thermodynamic efficiency. (Unless they choose cannibalism....)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:10pm
Lenno
Just buried one of my oldest and dearest friends a month back. She quit smoking 3 years ago. Too late can sneak up on you.
I quit back in 92. My son came into the room "smoking" a crayon one day. I dropped them and never looked back.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:12pm
...and thanx Lenno...right back atcha
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:13pm
LOC, please do not take this as my not believing you. I would appreciate a source for your info regarding the peptidases and protein digestion. I'd like to look deeper into it.
Here is a handy reference where I got some of mine:
http://www.celestialhealing.net/physicalveg3.htm
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:16pm
Let's try it this way:
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:19pm
I dunno how to use their link thingy
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:20pm
What's Wrong with Eating Meat [celestialhealing.net]
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:21pm
hey I did it!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:21pm
The business about the 50% of water use in US being devoted to food for livestock comes from "Water: The Nature, Uses and Future of our Most Precious and Abused Resource" (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1981)
The other info about tonnage of grains to feed livestock, tonnage of grain to feed humans, the amount of fossil fuels imported devoted to grains and beans vs. beef, the amount of water it takes to produce a one pound slab of steak, all came from "Diet for a Small Planet", Frances Moore Lappe, Random House, 1971, 1975, 1982, 1991. Another Book I used for some minformation is "What's Wrong with Eating Meat?", Parham, Ananda Marga Pubs, 1979.
Figure I better give credit to my sources. Don't wanna be accused of stealing.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:35pm
And for anyone who wants to look up some real science on Global Warming, here's a cool source!
Climate Hothouse Map [climatehotmap.org]
There is plenty of good science here, links to more info, and a whole host of petitions and the like to sign.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:46pm
Lenno
Here tis...will check out yours too. I think these cover most all the point I made.
Human digestion on this page
Cow 1
Cow 2
Wolf gut
Meat and evolution
PaleoDiet
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:46pm
You are a wonderful person LOC! THANK YOU!!!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:48pm
I'm really feeling, the love at this site. Appreciation.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 8:50pm
Lenno
Friend of mine (anthro BA) was telling me about paleodiet thing a while back and how we are evolving away from our "meaty" heritage physiologially as we don't need to tear the flesh off a zebra's ass anymore. The shift from hunter/gatherer to agrarian has led to changes in jaw musculature, teeth patterns, etc. We don't chew the same stuff. Natural selection then no longer favors the big teeth/prognathic jaw. (I, for instance, congentially had no "eye" teeth - the smaller incisors between the canines and frontal incisors.)
Gee...guess I'm "evolved" (lol)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:54pm
thnx Lenno virtual blush
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:56pm
....but yeah, "the McDonald's Society" is horribly inefficient on sheer cological terms.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 8:57pm
LEW, so glad to hear that! Welcome to our little world! You are loved and appreciated.
LOC, yes that is part of what my research showed. for instance:
Carnivores have claws for ripping flesh; herbivores do not. Humans have no claws. Carnivores do not perspire through pores in their skin; herbivores do. So do humans. Carnivores have sharp teeth for tearing the flesh they eat and do not have flat molar teeth for grinding. Herbivores do not have sharp teeth but do have flat teeth. Human teeth resemble herbivores. Another interesting point regards cooked flesh. Carnivores will not eat charred flesh. If a deer dies in a forest fire and its body is ‘cooked', a carnivore will not eat that flesh. Humans prefer cooked flesh to raw meat. Furthermore, when a carnivore eats its kill, it tears right into the organs lapping at the blood as it consumes its prey. The nutrients contained in these ingredients of the carnivore's meal are vital to carnivores. The same is not true for humans.
More meat to chew on, so to speak! HAHAHAHA
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 8:58pm
That was from the what's wrong with eating meat website
And now this, again from Lappe:
We don't even try to encourage greater use of grain and vegetable production in underdeveloped regions. Lappé wrote, "In researching ‘Food First', I began to understand that when ‘experts' praise underdeveloped countries for ‘upgrading their diets', the diet of the majority is often being discouraged. This ‘upgrading' of diets, reflected in statistics showing greater per capita consumption, often means that the well-off minority is eating up hundreds of pounds of grain in the form of meat while the majority is denied even a minimal grain diet."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:02pm
The McDonald's society is, frankly, helping to kill our planet. They add to the problems with water shortages as outlined above. They add to the lack of available grains and vegetables needed to feed the ever-growing human population. The add to the ruination of our soil. They add to the use of fossil fuels as described above. Then, figure in all the additional fossil fuel wasted by people in drive-thrus! Meanwhile, they are constantly increasing the likelihood of getting colon cancer.
People say, there is no variety in a vegetarian diet. Actually, it's the converse in my mind. I am constantly eating different things. Whereas, I don't get the variety in 7 burgers a week!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:09pm
Thank you Lennonist, and too, I'm compelled to apologize for my miswritten haiku poem post, previously. It was a 5-5-5 combination of syllables, definitely not meeting my self-imposed criteria for word efficiency. Here's another shot: I'm really feeling, the love at this site tonight. Appreciation!
Sincere "thank you"s friends. The Nation's blogsite is hip; because of you folks.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/03/2006 @ 9:12pm
Maybe you can answer a question for me LOC. I have seen divergent views on this subject. I have read a lot about how alcohol, for instance, is such a problem because it kills brain cells. Those sources say that brain cells do not regenerate. However, I've also read that every cell in a human body is replaced every seven years, that human cells have a very short lifespan (compared to the human's lifespan) so they have to be making new cells all the time. I wonder which it is? One reason I wonder is, I have read that memories are contained in the brain's grey matter. However, if that grey matter is replaced every seven years, how is it I can remember things from longer ago than seven years?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:14pm
LEW, if that is the case, since you are one of us, then congratulate yourself for making it hip too! :)
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:15pm
Lew
What are you havin? Meat or veg plate today! (ha-ha)
Lenno
We DO have claws....just not very good ones. And canine teeth. And appropriate enzymes. We are omnivores. Built to intake a variety of foods including grains, veg and meat. In fact, we differ more from herbivores internally as we cannot digest even half the complex starches, etc, that herbivores do...we do not have the proper microbial ecology, nor multiple stomachs (well, some folks I wonder....)
But I do agree that meat in "American" (especially midwestern) quantity is decidedly bad.
Turns out that while almost ALL mammals have sweat glands, only humans and horses are covered with "active" sweat glands. Some antelopes can apparently turn them on and off...dunno how that works.
Here is an on-line PPT (probably can't view w/out offfice...although I could be wrong. PPT Shows herbivore gut, ruminant gut, and carnivore...we are closer morphlogically to carnivore, aside from length.
and a brief bit on En carta
Dogs, cats, rats have active sweat glands on their feet...they pant because they must to maintain homeostasis. But so do many ungulates.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 9:32pm
LOC, I gotta throw this out at you. That paleodiet site... I have a little problem with it. I have a hard time accepting any source that purports to be scientific as truly being so when it cites the Bible as a source of information. I may want to look a little closer at that one. I'm wondering if you know all the details of who is behind it?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:35pm
meat is natures conduit for getting all the goodness of grass and weeds in your diet.
too bad we don't feed our livestock grass or weeds anymore
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 9:35pm
I wanna make a joke about just rolling it and smoking it...
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:37pm
so will, how much grass and weed is in your diet?
HAHAHA, ok, heck with it, I made the joke
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:39pm
Lenno
Neurons are the only cells that do NOT undergo mitosis once they are fully devloped (in humans at least)....you got what you got. Although stem cell research has shown promise in regenerating nerual tissue. See Brain all the way down, just before "see also"
Burgers...no variety? Big Mac on Monday, Dbl Cheese on Tues, Qtr Pounder on Wed....ha, ha
And for the record, alchol doesn't "kill" brain cells (urabn legend)...well, at least in non-lethal quantity. Alco-brain It DOES damage them though, mostly reversible....which is why those drunken memories sometimes come back a week later (and you wish they hadn't!)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 9:42pm
...Well, that was a "Paleodiet" at random. Really didn't give it a thorough read. Google the term.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 9:43pm
Whole Foods sells grass fed beef, from New Zealand.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/03/2006 @ 9:44pm
With regard to claws and canines. Look at a bears, who is a true omnivore. Look at a human. Tell me we have claws and canines. We do not have the ability to rip open a dead carcass with our fingers and teeth, rip the flesh right off the bone, and then we really do not dig right into that flesh, through it, into the organs, and then lap up and drink all the blood with it. I could be very wrong, but I'd be more inclined to think the kind of teeth we have evolved more because we started eating meat than that we must have had big canines and long sharp claws in the past that we evolved away from because we started eating plants. The fossil record more accurately refleects what I just mentioned than the converse.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:44pm
lennonist, sorry it took so long to get back to ya. all i have to say is wow, u really walk the talk when it comes to conservation. a really great book i came across the other day is jane goodall's harvest for hope. you'd really like it. i hope it's in your library. one thing i'd add to what everyone has contributed is that we all be aware of the beyond sadistic practices of large corporations with animals. horrifying practices.
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 9:46pm
WillC
...then eating meat is vegetarian by proxy? (Well, the cow was eating grass) Har-har
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 9:48pm
thank you Loki. I do my best. I'm very imperfect, but at least I am, unlike our fearful President, willing to admit my human failings. I do believe strongly in the old saying, put up or shut up, so, if I am going to talk about something, I will only do it if I am doing the thing I am talking about. So, I feel I have to walk the walk or I dare not talk the talk. But, the situation here is, this stuff is extremely important to me, so I take it very seriously. Glad to see you back. I've been waiting around all day for your response! HAHAHA
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:51pm
:)
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 9:52pm
With regard to your info on corporation testing of products on animals, yes, it is absolutely abhorrant. But then, corporations tend not to value anything, and I do mean anything, other than receipts and profits.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:54pm
So is the baby seal slaughter in Newfoundland. Just a terrible thing. Seals are mammals, like us and dolphins and whales and elephants that is a thinking, loving, caring, feeling, playful, emotional creature.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:56pm
I sure haven't gotten much writing done today...
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 9:56pm
Lenno
In the past (way back) all foods were less processed. We aren't eating whole wheat berrries either, nor cracking nuts with our teeth.
per Wikipedia entry on bears "...Normal canine teeth in a carnivore are generally large and pointed used for killing prey, while bears' canine teeth are relatively small and typically used in defense or as tools. Bears' molar teeth are broad, flat and are used to shred and grind plant food into small digestable pieces."
Sounds kinda like Homo sapiens a "brother ominvore" Bear Skull
Although I would remind that the bear IS in the Order Carnivora, family ursidae
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 9:59pm
the product testing is bad. but i was referring to the way they feed them, house them and slaughter them. the way they live and die before they become our food.
what they feed them is important because it affects us directly. how they feed them affects us too, in an indirect karmic way, when we buy and consume their products.
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 9:59pm
One of my environmental science students (intro CC course) thought that "animal testing" of cosmetics on rabbits meant they gave the bunnies a wash out and blow dry. She was horrified by the reality check.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:01pm
(I'm running a "babysitting" class this week at the campus where I teach. 4 days of 4 hours of sitting while IT students take MSCE practice exams on the PCs....hence my many posts this week)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:03pm
Loki, I agree with your sentiments. Karma is an issue I believe in, but only in a sense. Maybe not quit the way you might, if you subscribe to the generally accepted view of it. But all actions have consequences, I do believe that.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:04pm
there is more on this corporate treatment of animals in jane goodall's book, harvest for hope. small farms and ranches do not generally engage in these sick practices. but sometimes even people who sell their wares at farmers markets use growth hormones, genetically altered foods and pesticides. it's best to be informed no matter who u are buying from.
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 10:04pm
Those growth hormones, and all the genetic altering of vegetables tend to reduce the actual food value in the vegetable matter while making the product look big, plump, and pretty. They look nicer to eat, but they have less nutritional value.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:07pm
I am gonna have to get that Goodall book!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:07pm
I won't argue with LOC about the bear/human omnivore topic. I did want to put a counter argument back, but I am not sufficiently informed to argue this either way. I'll just bow to your greater knowledge LOC.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:10pm
I also find it interesting that no one argued back about carnivores not eating cooked meats. Afterall, the food most people give their dogs and cats are cooked.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:11pm
Lenno
I wonder if scavengers do? Time to Google!
Also, re: nutrient values...increased CO2 has a similar effect. Plants grow faster but their metabolics don't produce any more actaul nutrients, just biomass.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:15pm
So, I wonder what happened to the righties. No one wanna agrue that global warming isn't real, against our need for better ways to get around, against our need to be more responsible in energy use, etc?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:16pm
...then eating meat is vegetarian by proxy? (Well, the cow was eating grass) Har-har
Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 05/03/2006 @ 9:48pm
no... your not a vegetarian by proxy, but you are getting the nutritional goodness of grass and weeds.
grass and weeds link 1 [eatwild.com]
grass and weeds link 2 [mercola.com]
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:17pm
I actually bought a used chest freezer from a buddy so I could fill it with free range beef
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:17pm
Might depend on the scavenger. There would be a definite difference between, say a vulture and a hyena.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:17pm
Thanks for the link to weeds and graqsses Will. Gonna look that over too.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:18pm
free range beef, free range chickens, hmmm, outta be call expensive range...
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:19pm
My cat won't eat meat, cooked or raw. Laps up tuna water, but won't eatt he tuna. Weird huh?
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:20pm
WillC
thanks...I did know about EFA differences, etc.(and just being a bit flppant I guess....) But good stuff.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:22pm
I don't think tuna is something a cat would eat in the wild. Nor a chicken, nor a cow. Many cat foods are one of those derivatives.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:23pm
free range beef, free range chickens, hmmm, outta be call expensive range...
Posted by LENNONIST 05/03/2006 @ 10:19pm
I did some research into some of the local washington state ranches that grow grass feed beef, to make it cost effective you have to buy at least a quarter of a cow, though a half a cow would be better.
Then not only is it cost effective but it's even a litle cheaper then the feed lot beef.
all I need to do now is make a space for my freezer and get a few friends to go in with me so I don't have half a friggin cow frozen in my house
:)
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:24pm
Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 05/03/2006 @ 10:22pm
Hey,no offense taken. I'm from jersey.
I've experienced a life time of ball busting
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:27pm
it just means we're buds
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:27pm
I love you guys!
LOC, I just read the stuff on regeneration of brain cells. Actually, the lastest info right out of your link is:
News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Office of Communications Stanhope Hall, Princeton, New Jersey 08544-5264 Telephone 609-258-3601; Fax 609-258-1301
Contact: Steven Schultz sschultz@princeton.edu (609) 258-5729 Date: October 14, 1999
Scientists Discover Addition of New Brain Cells in Highest Brain Area
Finding reverses long-held beliefs and has implications for designing therapies
PRINCETON, N.J. -- In a finding that eventually could lead to new methods for treating brain diseases and injuries, Princeton scientists have shown that new neurons are continually added to the cerebral cortex of adult monkeys. The discovery reverses a dogma nearly a century old and suggests entirely new ways of explaining how the mind accomplishes its basic functions, from problem solving to learning and memory.
New Brain Cells [princeton.edu]
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:31pm
yes they are added, but only if you keep stressing your brain
as in thinking, learning, taking classes
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:33pm
The Gould and Gross discovery also may require neuroscientists to draw a less bold distinction between the brains of humans and other animals, says Fernando Nottebohm of Rockefeller University. Scientists have observed neurogenesis in birds and rats for many years, but assumed that as evolution advanced and mental capacities increased, the brain supported less and less neurogenesis. "What you can say now is that the primate brain is more like that of songbirds," says Nottebohm, who believes that theories of the brain have been too "human-centric."
In line with this information, I'd like to note that I just read another scientific article earlier this week that shows the Noam Chomsky's ideas that only humans can recognize explanatory clauses has been refuted. Songbirds, actually starlings, showed a 90% ability to get As in grammar when it came to grasping explpanatory clauses inserted into their birdsongs. That's better than most human children do in grammar isn't it?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:35pm
Will, I think you ought to add a disclaimer to that last statement. It's goota be a so far as we know right now, since this is opening up a whole new line of inquiry.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:36pm
For their experiments, Gould and Gross took advantage of the unique properties of a chemical known as BrdU. When cells are exposed to BrdU during cell division, the chemical becomes incorporated into the DNA of newly formed cells. The researchers injected BrdU into rhesus monkeys, whose brain structure is fundamentally similar to that of humans. Then, at intervals ranging from two hours to seven weeks, they looked for evidence of the chemical in neurons in the cerebral cortex. In all cases, there were neurons with BrdU in their DNA, which showed that those cells had to have been formed after the BrdU injection.
The earliest cells, found in the walls of the ventricles and then migrating toward the cortex, were not yet mature. By the time they reached the neocortex -- a matter of days -- they had developed into mature neurons. In a final test, the researchers showed that the cells extended axons, the long, thin extensions of neurons that send messages to other neurons. They injected a chemical tracer into the brains of several of the animals a few weeks after the BrdU injections. The tracer has the property of traveling from the end of an axon back to the body of the neuron. An examination of the animals' brains showed neurons that had both labels, the BrdU and the tracer, suggesting that the new cells had formed working axons and were participating in the functional circuitry of the brain.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:37pm
Within the cerebral cortex, the researchers found neurogenesis in three areas: 1) the prefrontal region, which controls executive decision making and short-term memory; 2) the inferior temporal region, which plays a crucial role in the visual recognition of objects and faces, and 3) the posterior parietal region, which is important for the representation of objects in space.
Interestingly, there was no sign of neurogenesis in a fourth area, the striate cortex, which handles the initial, and more rudimentary, steps of visual processing. That contrast suggests that neurogenesis may play a role in performing higher brain functions. Virtually all theories of learning and memory hold that memories are formed by modifications at the synapse, which is the transmission junction between neurons. On the basis of the new findings, it is now conceivable that the introduction of new neurons into the circuitry of the brain may play a role in memory.
WOW this last bit is on the verge of answering my question!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:38pm
Gould and Gross emphasize that any ideas about the functions of the new neurons are highly speculative. But the fact that there is neurogenesis in the cognitive and executive portions of the brain opens vast new areas that can be explored.
Gould and Gross, both faculty members in the Department of Psychology, collaborated with graduate student Alison Reeves and research staff member Michael Graziano. The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:38pm
your right. My comment was based on stuff I've read about axion formation. This research discusses the regeneration of working brain cells.
I wonder if there is any thought tranference as the old die and the new come in.
(maybe that's why i cant remember much about the first grade)
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:39pm
Now I know why I was here all day, this one bit of info is crucial to what I am writing. THANK YOU LOC!!!!!!!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:40pm
Will, your question is not only relative to cognitive neuroscience, but also to philosophy.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:41pm
You're welcome.....
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/03/2006 @ 10:42pm
Either memories are contained in cells, if they are, then the memories have to be transferred to the new cells or memories are lost. If not, then memories are not in the brain at all! While I am not willing to accept the existence of a consciousness that exists after death, I find this whole line of thinking fascinating.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:44pm
Just to join in the lovefest, LENNONIST, I've been vegetarian since '93.
Posted by tjbehrens1 at 05/03/2006 @ 10:44pm
thinking should have been research
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:44pm
Welcome on into the lovefest TJ! May the love flow among us all!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:45pm
Anybody here into Oliver Sacks?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:47pm
i was a vegetarian for breakfast (blueberry cherry banana smoothie)
but an omnivore at lunch (big juicy cheese burger with lettuce, tomato, onion, bun...)
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:49pm
yummy
Posted by Will C. at 05/03/2006 @ 10:49pm
By the way, those red dye numbers... they are obtained by crushing a particular insect.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 10:56pm
there are more links than usual in this thread. they're great links too. thanks all.
Posted by loveloki at 05/03/2006 @ 11:09pm
Glad you enjoyed them! I have too. This has been an interesting day.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:22pm
Here's another one that is cool if you are interested.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:24pm
Green Institute [greeninstitute.net]
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:24pm
The Source Beyond Rove Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal By Roger Morris - Senior Fellow, Green Institute for GP360 Online Date: July 27th, 2005 "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." It was September 2002, and then-National Security Advisor, now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fastening on CNN perhaps the most memorable and frightening single link in the Bush regime's chain of lies propagandizing the war on Iraq. Behind her carefully planted one-liner with its grim imagery was the whole larger hoax about Saddam Hussein possessing or about to acquire weapons of mass destruction, a deception as blatant and inflammatory as claims of the Iraqi dictator's ties to Al Qaeda.
Rice's demagogic scare tactic was also very much part of the tangled history of alleged Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, the fabrication leading to ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson's now famous exposé of the fraud, the administration's immediate retaliatory "outing" of Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and now the revelation that the President's supreme political strategist Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby were involved in that potentially criminal leak--altogether the most serious political crisis Bush has faced. In fact, though her pivotal role has been missed entirely--or deliberately ignored--in both the media feeding frenzy and the rising political clamor, now-Secretary of State Rice was also deeply embroiled in the Niger uranium-Plame scandal, arguably as much as or more so than either Rove or Libby.
For those who know the invariably central role of the NSC Advisor in sensitive political subjects in foreign policy and in White House leaks to the media as well as tending of policy, especially in George W. Bush's rigidly disciplined, relentlessly political regime, Rice by both commission and omission was integral in perpetrating the original fraud of Niger, and then inevitably in the vengeful betrayal of Plame's identity. None of that spilling of secrets for crass political retribution could have gone on without her knowledge and approval, and thus complicity. Little of it could have happened without her participation, if not as a leaker herself, at least with her direction and with her scripting.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:29pm
The evidence of Rice's complicity is increasingly damning as it gathers over a six-year twisting chronology of the Nigerien uranium-Wilson-Plame affair, particularly when set beside what we also know very well about the inside operations of the NSC and Rice's unique closeness to Bush, her tight grip on her staff, and the power and reach that went with it all. What follows isn't simple. These machinations in government never are, especially in foreign policy. But follow the bouncing ball of Rice's deceptions, folly, fraud and culpability. Slowly, relentlessly, despite the evidence, the hoax of the Iraq-Niger uranium emerges as a central thread in the fabricated justification for war, and thus in the President's, Rice's, and the regime's inseparable credibility. The discrediting of Wilson, in which the outing his CIA wife is irresistible, becomes as imperative for Rice as for Rove and Libby, Bush and Cheney. And when that moment comes, she has the unique authority, and is in a position, to do the deed. Motive, means, opportunity--in the classic terms of prosecution, Rice had them all.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:31pm
1995: Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel, in charge of Iraq's strategic weaponry, defects to the West. He tells CIA debriefers that at his command after the Gulf War, "All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed." His claim is supported by continuing reports of UN inspectors and US intelligence, including sophisticated imagery analysis by both the CIA and Pentagon.
1999: The first rumors begin to circulate in Europe that the Iraqis may be trying to buy "yellow cake" weapons grade uranium from Niger, a poor West African country that earns more than half its export income from the strategic ore. Since Iraq is known to have used only amply available Iraqi uranium in nuclear research until its disbanding in 1991, and because Niger's yellow cake is produced solely at two mines owned by a French consortium and the entire output strictly controlled and committed to sale to France, European intelligence agencies and UN officials soon discount the story--though the rumors persist along with other alarming allegations by Iraqi exile groups long working to incite the US Government to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, American embassies and CIA stations in Europe routinely report the rumors in repeated, widely circulated cable traffic to Washington over the summer and fall of 1999. Among the recipients is the nuclear non-proliferation section of the Clinton Presidency's NSC staff, whose files on Iraq, a "red flag" country, are turned over to Rice and her staff when she assumes office eighteen months later
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:32pm
anuary 2001: Parties unknown burgle the Nigerien embassy in Rome. Stolen from the torn-up offices are various valuables along with stationery and official seals, which the Italian police warn might be used to forge documents.
February 24, 2001: "Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass destruction," says Secretary of State Colin Powell. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."
July 29, 2001: "We are able to keep his [Saddam's] arms from him," NSC advisor Rice tells the media. "His military forces have not been rebuilt."
August 2001: An African informant reportedly hands Italian intelligence what are purported to be official Nigerien documents of "great importance." Among them are letters apparently dealing with Niger's sale of uranium to Iraq, including an alleged transaction in 2000 for some 500 tons of uranium oxide, telltale in a weapons program. The Italians routinely pass the letters on through NATO channels to the US, where by the fall of 2001 both State Department and Department of Energy nuclear intelligence analysts doubt the genuineness of the documents, and duly report their findings to Rice's NSC staff.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:32pm
January 2002: In cables cleared by both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Rice, the first high-level reference to the subject after 9/11, Washington asks the US ambassador to Niger to uncover any possible Iraqi purchases of uranium. After talks with senior Nigerien officials and French executives in the uranium mining operations, along with a still wider investigation by the embassy, including the CIA, the ambassador reports back that there is no evidence of such dealings, and no reason to suspect them.
February 2002: Vice President Cheney hears "about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger," according to what his chief of staff Libby later tells Time. In his daily intelligence briefing by the CIA, as Libby relates, Cheney asks about "the implication of the [Niger] report." CIA briefing officers tell Cheney and Libby of the documents passed on months before by the Italians, including the State and Energy Department judgment that the papers are probable forgeries.
A few days later, with the routine concurrence of Rice and her staff, Cheney through Libby asks the CIA to look into the matter further. The Agency has no ready experts in Niger suitable to assign the Vice President's requested inquiry. After routinely canvassing the relevant offices and relatively brief discussion, they seize on the suggestion of one of their operatives working on nuclear proliferation issues, a mid-level CIA veteran named Valerie Plame who has worked abroad and in Washington under "NOC" –non-official cover in private business in contact with several foreign sources. Her pertinent if personal recommendation for the assignment is her husband, then-fifty-three year-old Joseph Wilson IV, a retired Foreign Service Officer who has served briefly as Charge d'Affairs in Baghdad in 1990 and then from 1992-1993 as US Ambassador to Gabon, a seasoned diplomat with experience in both Iraq and West Africa, and even some specialization in African strategic minerals.
February 19, 2002: A meeting at the CIA discusses sending Wilson to Niger. Attending is an analyst from the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research who says the trip is unnecessary, since the US embassy in Niger and European intelligence agencies have already disproved the story of an Iraqi purchase--and whose notes of the meeting, including the facts of Valerie Plame's CIA identity as an NOC operative on WMD and her role in recommending her husband, will be the basis for later crucial memos in the scandal.
Despite State Department objection, the CIA decides to go ahead with the Wilson mission to satisfy the Vice President's request, and the former ambassador is "invited out [to CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia] to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject," as he will remember it. Wilson is introduced to the gathering by his wife, who then leaves the room.
In late February, with the concurrence of CIA Director George Tenet as well as Rice and Powell, Wilson flies to Niger.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:36pm
February 24, 2002: Meanwhile, to further emphasize the importance of the issue and with Washington's concurrence, the US Ambassador in Niger has invited to the capital of Niamey Marine four-star General Carlton Fulford, Jr., deputy commander of the US-European Command, which is responsible for military relations with sub-Saharan West Africa. Fulford meets with Niger's president and other senior officials on the 24th, and afterward confirms the Ambassador's earlier findings, as he later tells the Washington Post, that there is no evidence of the sale of yellow cake to Iraq, and that Niger's uranium supply is "secure." The General's report duly goes up through the chain of his command to the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon and on to Rice at the NSC, Powell at State, the CIA, the Energy Department and other interested agencies.
March 5, 2002: Having met with several Nigerien officials and sources over a ten-day visit and debriefed at length the US Embassy staff and Ambassador (who promptly cables a report on to Powell and Rice), Wilson returns from Niger and gives CIA officers, as they request, an oral report which is the basis for a CIA-written memo on his trip then forwarded to Rice and Powell, and for a further CIA debriefing for Cheney in response to his original request. Republicans will later dispute about how categorical or emphatic Wilson's report and its derivatives actually are at this point. He refers to "an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary" for Iraq who had approached Niger about sales of ore, though adds that Niger "ignored the request." But the essence of his conclusion is, once again, that there is no evidence of Iraq procuring uranium from Niger. In de facto acceptance of this finding, the several Washington agencies involved in the issue, including Rice and her NSC staff, make no other effort--beyond the US embassy investigation, General Fulford's trip, and the Wilson mission--to investigate the matter further in Niger or anywhere else.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:36pm
May-June 2002: With the Iraq-Niger uranium issue apparently laid to rest, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld establishes in the Pentagon, with the full knowledge of Rice, a new Office of Special Plans, under the direction of Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and cabal of neo-conservatives the Bush regime has assembled at the upper civilian reaches of the Defense Department. Believing the CIA, FBI and other agencies in myriad negative reports, including the Wilson mission, have simply "failed" to find existing evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz direct "Special Plans" to gather and interpret its own "intelligence" on Iraq. Meanwhile Rice takes over coordination of efforts to stymie ongoing arms inspections of Iraq by the United Nations.
June 26, 2002: In a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior British officials at Ten Downing Street, Sir Richard Dearlove, "C," head of MI6 British intelligence, reports on what he found during recent Washington conversations at the highest levels of the CIA, White House and other US official quarters. "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD," as a summary records his words. "But intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
July 2002: Concerned at the potential opposition to the war, and to coordinate policy and media relations for the coming attack on Iraq, a special White House Iraq Group (WHIG) is set up, chaired by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and composed of Rice, Rove, Libby, Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, and media strategists Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush aide, Mary Matalin and others. The WHIG is to plan and control carefully all high-level leaks and public statements on Iraq and related issues. "Everything, I mean everything, was run through them and came out of them," a ranking official will say of the group. "It was understood, of course, that Condi or Hadley would clear everything from a policy point of view, Rove and Libby would do the politics, and the rest would handle the spin."
August 26, 2002: "Now we know," Vice President Cheney tells the VFW convention, "Saddam Hussein has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Rice routinely clears this speech.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:37pm
September 2002: Several months earlier, the US and UN embargo of Iraq has seized a shipment of high strength aluminum tubes, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the US State and Energy Departments duly identify as designed solely for launch tubes for conventional artillery rockets. Despite those expert findings, Rice now claims publicly that the tubes are "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."
Apparently reflecting the original rumors of the Iraq-Niger deal and the subsequent dubious documents handed the Italians thirteen months before (copies of which have reportedly been given to MI6 British intelligence by an Italian journalist), a British Government White Paper on Iraq released in September mentions that Baghdad "had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Pressed on the issue by the CIA (on the basis of its now-several reports debunking the story) to drop that statement as inaccurate, the British claim they have sources for the assertion "aside from the discredited [Nigerien] letters," but never identify them. Rice is fully briefed on all these exchanges.
(Eventually, British intelligence officials will admit the 2002 White Paper statement on uranium from Africa was "unfounded." Meanwhile, however, much of official Washington is aware of the CIA-MI6 squabble over the Niger uranium and questionable letters. "The Brits," a Congressional intelligence committee staffer will later tell the New Yorker's Sy Hersh in discussing the issue, "…placed more stock in them than we did.")
It's also that September, in answer to a question in a CNN interview about what evidence the White House has of Iraqi nuclear weapons, that Rice makes her infamous quip, a line first authored by Mary Matalin--"We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:37pm
September 26, 2002: In closed-hearing testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (with a transcript closely reviewed by Rice), Powell refers to "reports" of an Iraqi purchase of Nigerien uranium as "further proof" of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
October 2002: Seizing on the British White Paper, despite the documented disagreement of the CIA as well as the State and Energy Departments, the Office of Special Plans inserts in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, apparently one of the few documents Bush reads in this sequence, a reference to the British report of an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. Though the NIE at CIA insistence notes "different interpretations of the significance of the Niger documents," and that the State Department judges them "highly dubious," the reference to Nigerien uranium is listed among other reasons to conclude that Iraq poses a danger to American national security.
"Facing clear evidence of peril," Bush says in a speech in Cincinnati that October, "we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Behind the scenes, an earlier draft of the October speech has also contained a reference to an Iraqi purchase of 500 tons of uranium from Niger, the now-revived claim from the discredited documents of fifteen months before. CIA Director Tenet urges that the White House take out that reference, and though the Pentagon's Special Plans office is pushing for inclusion of the reference, Rice's deputy (and eventual successor) Stephen Hadley, after two memoranda and a phone call from Tenet, finally agrees to drop the passage. Rice is fully briefed on all this.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:37pm
December 19, 2002: As preparations are hurried for the attack on Iraq, a State Department "Fact Sheet," cleared by Rice, asks ominously, "Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?"
The assumption of the Niger-Iraq uranium connection now begins to appear regularly in the President's Daily Brief, the CIA intelligence briefing which is now also drafted under the influence of the Office of Special Plans.
January 23, 2003: In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Why We Know Iraq is Lying," Rice refers prominently to "Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad."
January 28, 2003: "The British government," Bush says in his State of the Union litany on the dangers of Iraq, "has [sic] learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Rice and her staff, of course, have as always laboriously worked and reworked the national security passages of the speech. In readying the address, Rice's NSC Staff assistant for nonproliferation, Robert Joseph, asks Alan Foley, a ranking CIA expert on the subject, about the "uranium from Africa" passage, which obviously refers to the old Niger issue. Foley says the CIA doubts the Niger letters and connection, has disputed the British White Paper (as Rice and Joseph well know), and recommends that the NSC strike the reference. In typical bureaucratic fashion, however, Foley also says it would be "technically accurate" to say that the British had in fact issued such a report on Iraq, however mistaken. With the approval of Rice and her deputy Hadley, the passage stays, becoming a major piece of "evidence" in the case for war.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:38pm
February 5, 2003: In his now infamous presentation to the United Nations, a factor in silencing many potential dissenters in Congress, Powell pointedly omits any reference to the Nigerien uranium. The story "had not stood the test of time," he says later.
That February, too, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as part of his own propaganda for war, issues a Ten Downing Street paper called "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation," which includes a reference to the Nigerien uranium. Thought to be drawn from authoritative MI6 intelligence, the paper is soon widely ridiculed, eleven of its sixteen pages found to be copied verbatim from an old Israeli magazine.
March 7, 2003: In response to a request four months before, the State Department finally hands over to the IAEA copies of the Niger letters, which UN experts promptly dismiss as "not authentic" and "blatant forgeries." "These documents are so bad," a senior IAEA official tells the press, "that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking." A former high-level intelligence official tells The New Yorker, "Somebody deliberately let something false get in there. It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up."
March 8, 2003: In reply to questions about the forgery, a State Department spokesman says the US Government "fell for it." "It was the information that we had. We provided it," Powell will say lamely on "Meet the Press". "If that information is inaccurate, fine."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:39pm
March 17, 2003: Bush, in a statement cleared by Rice, repeats that "Iraq continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
March 19, 2003: Bush orders the invasion of Iraq.
March 21, 2003: Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D. WVa) writes FBI Director Robert Mueller asking for an investigation of the Niger letters. "There is a possibility," Rockefeller says, "that the fabrication of these [Niger] documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."
May 6, 2003: In an anonymous interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Ambassador Wilson--identified none too subtly as "a former US Ambassador to [sic] Africa," says about the failure to find WMDs in Iraq: "It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this [that Saddam had no nuclear program or weapons] for a year."
June 10, 2003: Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman asks the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) for a briefing on the Niger uranium issue, and specifically the State Department's opposition to the continuing White House view that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake. The resulting memo is dated the same day, and drawn from notes on the February 19 meeting at the CIA on the Wilson mission and other sources. Befitting the sensitivity of the information, the memo is classified "Top Secret," and contains in one paragraph, separately marked ‘(S/NF)" for "Secret/No dissemination to foreign governments or intelligence agencies, " two sentences describing in passing Valerie "Wilson's" identity as a CIA operative and her role in the inception of the Wilson trip to Niger. This June 10 memo reportedly does not use her maiden name Plame.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:39pm
June 12, 2003: The Washington Post reports that an unnamed "former US ambassador" was sent to Niger to look into the uranium issue and found no evidence of any Iraqi purchase.
At the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage asks INR to prepare a memorandum on the background of what the Post is reporting, and INR sends to Armitage that same day a copy of the June 10 memo to Grossman. The memo is also sent to Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security (and future UN Ambassador-designate) John Bolton.
July 6, 2003: Outraged by continuing references to the Nigerien uranium, Wilson breaks his anonymity with a sensational New York Times op-ed disclosing his mission to Niger sixteen months before, and the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraqi purchase of ore. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," Wilson writes, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." He tells "Meet the Press," "Either the administration has information that it has not shared with the public or ... they were using the selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision that had already been made to go to war."
Later in the day, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls INR Assistant Secretary Carl W. Ford at home, and asks him to send a briefing memo to Powell about the Niger uranium issue. Ford simply pulls out the previous June 10 memo with its reference to Wilson's wife (her name now corrected from Wilson to Plame), addresses it to Powell, and forwards the memo to Rice to be passed on to Powell, who is due to leave the next day with the Presidential party on a trip to Africa.
Meanwhile, the WHIG is also moving that Sunday to deal aggressively with the Wilson op-ed. They will no longer focus on the too obviously fraudulent claim of an Iraqi purchase of yellow cake--White House orthodoxy before the invasion--but will instead discount the issue, discredit Wilson, and shift blame for the now-embarrassing State of the Union reference. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer is to try to downplay and dismiss Wilson's article on-the-record at the next day's press briefing, while Rice and others begin to make off-the-record calls to the media to do the same. While pursuing their own contacts among right-wing reporters and columnists, Rove and Libby are also to work with CIA Director George Tenet in a statement by Tenet taking responsibility for any inaccuracy in the State of the Union passage.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:39pm
July 7, 2003: Under a barrage of questions at a 9:30 am press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says of the Wilson claims, "There is zero, nada, nothing new here,' adding that "Wilson's own report [shows] that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales." (A reference to the "Algerian-Nigerien intermediary" in Wilson's debriefings… "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the President alleged?" Wilson later that day replies to Fleischer. "These guys really need to get serious.") But as the briefing wears on, Fleischer's defense grows "murkier," as the New York Times reports, and he seems to "concede" that the State of the Union reference to Niger uranium "might have been flawed."
That evening, with the White House scrambling to defend itself against Wilson's resonating charges, Bush leaves for a trip to Africa, accompanied by Rice and Powell. Before the party flies out of Andrews, Rice is in several meetings with Rove, Libby and other senior aides of the WHIG.
The scene now shifts to the plush but still relatively close quarters of Air Force One, the specially configured 747 where the accompanying media are boarded through a rear door and funneled directly to their mid-level section closed off from the forward official compartment, and where Administration VIPs like Rice and Powell are in conference rooms and adjoining lounge chairs in closer and easier proximity and informality than in any other official venue. It is in this setting, soon after takeoff, as the New York Times will report two years later, that Powell is seen walking around carrying the INR June 12/July6 memo detailing Wilson's mission and Plame's identity and role in the "(S/NF)" paragraph. Powell discusses the memo with Rice and other presidential aides on board, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. Witnesses later see Fleischer "perusing" the memo. There are reports, too, of several calls between the plane and the White House discussing the Wilson affair. En route over the Atlantic, Rice and Fleischer both call contacts at the Washington Post and New York Times "to make it clear," the Times will report, "that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's statement about the uranium--the first such official concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war."
It is in these hours of late July 7 and early July 8 that Rove, Libby and other officials get word of Plame's identity from Air Force One. Rove and Libby will hear of Plame in the drafting with Tenet of his mea culpa, but officials on the plane reading the INR memo cannot know or be sure of this, and the memo's passages on Wilson, including his wife, are now relayed back to Washington. Reporters later speculate that Powell might have called either Rove or Libby with such information, but as one concludes aptly, "That was above his pay grade." The President himself might have read the memo and called the two aides. But given Bush's style and grasp, that, too, is implausible, though he may well have been informed of the calls and given his approval. The only official on board Air Force One with the knowledge and authority--motive, means and opportunity--to instruct Rove and Libby in their leaks and so betray Plame was Condoleezza Rice.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:40pm
leaking to him that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame (they use her maiden name), is a CIA operative who instigated her husband's trip to Niger. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," Novak tells Newsweek of the leak. "They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it."
July 9, 2003: Rove discusses the Wilson imbroglio, including the role of Wilson's CIA wife, with columnist Robert Novak, who identifies her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame.
July 11, 2003: Peppered by questions about Wilson's charges, Bush in a press conference in Uganda says, "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services." That evening, aboard Air Force One flying over East Africa, Rice speaks at length with the media about the "clearances" of the President's speech. "Now I can tell you," she says, "if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,' it would have gone without question." She says nothing about the actual maneuvering behind the now-troublesome passage, the Joseph-Foley exchange, the controversial British memorandum US intelligence has disputed, the shadowy history of the yellow cake fraud.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:40pm
July 11, 2003: Back in Washington, working to discredit Wilson, Rove leaks to Time's Matthew Cooper that "Wilson's wife" is, in fact, in the CIA "working on WMD" and has been behind his mission to Niger. Rove "implied strongly," Cooper later emails his editor, "there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger."
After that conversation, in evidence of the central role of Rice and her staff in the betrayal of Plame's identity to discredit Wilson, Rove emails Rice's NSC deputy Hadley that he has "waved Cooper off" Wilson's claim, and that he (Rove) "didn't take the bait" when Cooper offered that Wilson's revelations had damaged the Administration. Hadley immediately relays this message to Rice in Africa.
That same day, after extensive deliberations with Rove and Libby, CIA Director Tenet makes a public statement that the Nigerien uranium allegation should never have appeared in the Bush 2003 State of the Union. "This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches," he confesses, "and CIA should have ensured that it was removed,"
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:41pm
July 12, 2003: When asked by Cooper about Plame being CIA, Libby confirms the story to the Time reporter. That same day, in a talk with the Washington Post's Walt Pincus, an unidentified "senior administration official" brings up Plame's CIA identity, in what is now a widely authorized leak approved by Rice as well as Rove.
July 14, 2003: Columnist Robert Novak, attributing the story to "two senior administration officials" --neither of which is Rove or Libby--identifies Plame as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" who was behind her husband's mission to Niger.
July 20, 2003: "Senior White House sources" call NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell to say, "the real story here is not the 16 words [Bush's reference to Niger uranium in the State of the Union]… but Wilson and his wife."
July 21, 2003: On MSNBC, host Chris Mathews tells Wilson, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says, and I quote, ‘Wilson's wife is fair game.'"
July 30, 2003: Alarmed about the impact of the betrayal of Plame's identity on current and future agents and sources abroad, the CIA asks the Justice Department to investigate the leak, which leads to the naming of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Prosecutor.
September 2003: An unidentified "White House official" tells the Washington Post that "at least six reporters" had been told about Plame before Novak's column appeared. The disclosures, the source says, were "purely and simply out of revenge."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:41pm
This chronology will no doubt continue to expand in the days and weeks ahead. There may well be a ticking time-bomb in the Grand Jury investigation of the Plame leak that goes beyond anything we now envision. In earlier findings in cases of reporters refusing to testify, DC Circuit Judge, David Tatel, a distinguished jurist known for his devotion to civil liberties and especially press freedoms, had stoutly maintained a federal privilege for the media, shielding it from being compelled to testify except under the most exceptional conditions. But then later joining his colleagues in ordering Cooper and the New York Times' Judith Miller to testify, Tatel reviewed extensive secret information from the prosecutor, devoted eight blacked-out pages of his judgment to the material, and concluded that the privilege he had upheld throughout his career as a lawyer and judge had to give way before "the gravity of the suspected crime." No other element of the scandal bodes so ill for the Bush regime.
There is also the intriguing relationship between John Bolton, the regime's stymied appointee to the UN, and Judith Miller, the New York Times correspondent sent to jail for contempt in refusing to divulge her sources on Plame even for a story she never wrote. Bolton's close relationship to Miller, in which many suspect the right-wing lobbyist handed the reporter much of the fraudulent accounts of Iraqi weaponry that ended up on the front page of the Times, may well have encompassed as well the passing of information from the INR memo on Plame, which Bolton saw before Powell or even Rice.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:42pm
Then, too, as the Progressive Review's Sam Smith and Counterpunch's Alexander Cockburn have pointed out from their lonely perch of substance and perspective atop what's left of American journalism, there is, in the end, much less to the whole story than meets the eye. In their too obvious relish of celebrity, Wilson and Plame as heroes are as dubious as the Niger letters. The CIA, and the Presidents who used it as a private mafia, account for a more than half-century history far more catastrophic than a legion of seedy Roves and Libbys or even multiple Bush regimes. Relentlessly corrupt, inept, anachronistic, if ever an institution deserved to be "outed" and prosecuted in its numbers, it is our vastly bloodstained intelligence agency. But as it is so often in politics, we are left with the lesser, still needed reckoning at hand.
And, of course, the larger issue beyond Plame is the Bush regime's Big Lie behind the invasion of Iraq, in which the phantom Nigerien yellowcake was an important malignant element. No government since World War II has more blatantly invented the pretext for waging a war of aggression. The Rove and Libby collusion only begins to peel away the layers of the crime. Rice is the next skein to be pulled.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:42pm
Her manifest failures in the fateful months before 9/11 in meeting the principal responsibilities of the National Security Advisor--the sheer incompetence and shallowness that left so much intelligence uncoordinated, so much neglected or misunderstood--should have been enough to have run her from public office long ago, of course, were it not for her hold on this tragically flawed president, and her deplorable immunity amid the chronic political cowardice of both the Democrats and the media.
Now, however, her role in the Plame scandal cannot be ignored or excused. She alone among senior officials was knowing and complicitous at every successive stage of the great half-baked yellow cake fraud. She alone was the White House peer--and in national security matters the superior--to Rove and Libby, who never could have acted without her collusion in peddling Plame's identity. She as much as anyone had a stake in smearing Wilson by any and all means at hand. If Rove and Libby are to be held criminally or at least politically accountable for a breach of national security, our "mushroom cloud" secretary of state should certainly be in the dock with them.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:42pm
(This article owes a primary debt to the ground-breaking research of Professor Gary Leupp of Tufts University in his "Faith-Based Intelligence," CounterPunch.org, July 26, 2003.)
*
Roger Morris was Senior Staff on the National Security Council under both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, until resigning over the invasion of Cambodia. An award winning author, he has written extensively about the Presidency and American foreign policy.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/03/2006 @ 11:43pm
Mashy, Mashy, mashy! I offer three robust cheers to Bolivia and its people. They were simply tired of taking it in the shorts from spoiled assholes like yourself. Nobody owes you jack! Take a skateboard to work, clown.
Love,
Bloppy
Posted by bloppy at 05/04/2006 @ 12:34am
From the sounds of it all...Dubya will be alone in the WH while everyone else goes off to jail...eating hamburgers no doubt!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 01:00am
Will,
Read your post about free range beef and poultry. I have been buying it for years. Free range turkeys are really good if you can get them fresh and not frozen.
I also bought a buffalo, low colesterol, low fat and better for you. Also can keep the hyde for a rug and the head for the fire place. tastes better than beef..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 01:25am
yppolb,
This is for you..rules to emigrate to Mexico, by the Mexican government...you might like it there since you hate it here..
US Citizens Working in Mexico
The following from a director with SW BELL (now SBC) who worked in Mexico City as a US citizen:
I spent five years working in Mexico. I worked under a tourist visa for three months and could legally renew it for three more months.
After that you were working illegally. I was technically illegal for three weeks waiting on the FM3 approval. During that six months our Mexican and US Attorneys were working to secure a permanent work visa called a FM3. It was in addition to my US passport that I had to show each time I entered and left the country.
Barbara's was the same except hers did not permit her to work.
To apply for the FM3 I needed to submit the following notarized originals (not copies) of my:
1. Birth certificates for Barbara and me. 2. Marriage certificate. 3. High school transcripts and proof of graduation. 4. College transcripts for every college I attended and proof of graduation.
5. Two letters of recommendation from supervisors I had worked for at least one year. 6. A letter from The ST. Louis Chief of Police indicating I had no arrest record in the US and no outstanding warrants and was "a citizen in good standing." 7. Finally; I had to write a letter about myself that clearly stated why there was no Mexican citizen with my skills and why my skills were important to Mexico. We called it our "I am the greatest person on earth" letter. It was fun to write.
All of the above were in English that had to be translated into Spanish and be certified as legal translations and our signatures notarized. It produced a folder about 1.5 inches thick with English on
the left side and Spanish on the right.
Once they were completed Barbara and I spent about five hours accompanied by a Mexican attorney touring Mexican government office locations and being photographed and fingerprinted at least three times.
At each location (and we remember at least four locations) we were instructed on Mexican tax, labor, housing, and criminal law and that we were required to obey their laws or face the consequences.
We could not protest any of the government's actions or we would be committing a felony. We paid out four thousand dollars in fees and bribes to complete the process. When this was done we could legally bring in our household goods that were held by US customs in Laredo, Texas.
This meant we rented furniture in Mexico while awaiting our goods. There were extensive fees involved here that the company paid.
We could not buy a home and were required to rent at very high rates and under contract and compliance with Mexican law.
We were required to get a Mexican drivers license. This was an amazing
process. The company arranged for the licensing agency to come to our headquarters location with their photography and finger print equipment and the laminating machine. We showed our US license, were photographed and fingerprinted again and issued the license instantly after paying out a six dollar fee. We did not take a written or driving test and never received instructions on the rules of the road.
Our only instruction was never give a policeman your license if stopped and asked. We were instructed to hold it against the inside window away from his grasp. If he got his hands on it you would have to pay ransom to get it back.
We then had to pay and file Mexican income tax annually using the number of our FM3 as our ID number. The companies Mexican accountants did this for us and we just signed what they prepared. I was about twenty legal size pages annually.
The FM 3 was good for three years and renewable for two more after paying more fees.
Leaving the country meant turning in the FM# and certifying we were leaving no debts behind and no outstanding legal affairs (warrants, tickets or liens) before our household goods were released to customs.
It was a real adventure and If any of our senators or congressmen went
through it once they would have a different attitude toward Mexico.
The Mexican Government uses its vast military and police forces to keep its citizens intimidated and compliant. They never protest at their White House or government offices but do protest daily in front of the United States Embassy. The US embassy looks like a strongly reinforced fortress and during most protests the Mexican Military surround the block with their men standing shoulder to shoulder in full riot gear to protect the Embassy.
These protests are never shown on US or Mexican TV.
There is a large public park across the street where they do their protesting. Anything can cause a protest such as proposed law changes in California or Texas.
Please feel free to share this with everyone who thinks we are being hard on illegal immigrants.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 01:30am
CPT1:
I think I read much further up the blog that you don't feel that alternative fuel sources would be sufficient for our needs, either current or future.
The fact of the matter is this. There are very few economic encentives at this time for companies to develop alternative fuels sources. In fact, there is a decided economic DISincentive, as we see the profit margins of the largest oil companies expand beyond all belief.
It is historical fact, as was pointed out, again, earlier on this blog that the corporations which had a decided interest in the use of oil (that includes auto companies, tire companies, oil and gas companies, etc.) have done everything to retard the development or use of non-petroleum fuels. The red car is a great example, which were, for those of you who don't know, electric street cars which ran off the grid and were paid for by tax revenues and tolls (depending on where you lived). These very cheap modes of public transportation were literally bought up and dismantled by "independent" concerns which, after congressional investigation, were found to be essentially fronts for the previously mentioned corporations.
And this isn only ONE example of such behavior. And herein lies my quarrel with capitalism in general. There is no morality. There is no brake on the quest for profitability, and hence any and all behavior becomes acceptible. I have no problem with people making money, and lots of it. What I have a problem with is people making money at the direct expense of society in general, and operate in such a way that their goals are directly antithetical to the interests of the masses.
If you look at corporate charters (as I have, I might add), it says (at least in PA, NC, and TX) that the corporations must behave in such a way that does not undermine the interests of the commonwealth. I think that speaks for itself.
Getting back to energy, we all know that the big energy companies are not going to seriously drop research dollars into alternative fuel research. What we need is literally a "Marshall Plan" of sorts. Specifically, let's say we drop $50-100 billion a year (for as long as it takes) funding government scientists (NOT corporate) to develop viable energy alternatives. Make these scientists completely independent, not shills for Big Oil. I bet you that we could develop something legitimate in less than 10 years. The key is, spending the money and not allowing it to be co-opted by corporate America. Once the source (or sources) procurement processes have been develped for mass use, then hand it over to corporations to enact it. And build into the plans some sort of anti-oligopoly policies that are just as stringent as the Sherman anti-trust law. Then ENFORCE the law.
We have so much natural energy, from solar to wind to geothermal to hydroelectric, there's more energy out there than we could ever use. I'm not even ruling our nuclear. But I would rule out corporate control over the technology. I'm sorry, but when you're talking about something as potentially dangerous as nuclear power, I don't cotton to the idea of the corporation being so desperate to cut costs and raise the short term bottom line that safety practices are not followed properly. That goes for anything of that ilk.
The next thing that needs to be done is a SECOND "Marshall plan" for mass transit. Create a true light rail system in this country, crisscrossing the nation, and then at destination points using trucks to move goods.
But a word on this. Here in Pittsburgh, we were up for getting a MAGLEV, only competing with Baltimore for the rights. It would have taken 10 years, and would have brought a mammoth amount of money and jobs to the area. You know what happened? A handful of more affluent (and politically connected) neighborhoods made such a stink that the bid was withdrawn. They were afraid of the sight of a light rail going near their golf courses. It was insane.
The point of that. We need to start using immenent domain for the RIGHT reasons, not for the benefit of some development company whose only goal is profit. If emminent domain is going to be exercised, it needs to be for situations like this. And also, people in this country are going to have to start realizing that these sorts of things are necessary for the long term health of our economy and our world. It's really a simple matter of economics.
Posted by jorcheim at 05/04/2006 @ 08:13am
John, on this we agree
buffalo does taste better than beef
:)
though I'm not sure that I'd want to spend the rest of my life with my juicy steaks head staring at me from above the yule tide log.
Posted by Will C. at 05/04/2006 @ 09:39am
Will,
Me either, I sold the head in a garage sale to a group of college sxtudents, for their house.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 10:23am
"I bet you that we could develop something legitimate in less than 10 years."---Posted by JORCHEIM 05/04/2006 @ 08:13am | ignore this person
If we can spend $50 Billion in 10 years on "alternative energy" and get solar-powered cars....couldn't we spend 2 Billion in 30 years and get them too?
and haven't we done that....since 1976...and still no solar-powered car.
"We haven't made it a priority!!!" So? The Japanese did and the BEST they came up with is the Prius, a hybrid.
Talk of "easy renewables in 10 years if we just spend enough money" has been around since Jimmy Carter, and nobody has found them....I know, I know..."not enough money" and "Big Oil squelching research".
So again, why haven't the Japanese or Europeans discovered this "magic energy" that it only takes 10 years and $50B to discover?
Posted by Mask at 05/04/2006 @ 10:25am
that post by MAASCH above is ridiculous. There is no need to go through all that, unless you're an idiot with no knowledge of Spanish and even less knowledge on the way things work in México. If you obtain a decent job in México, your employer will take care of all the legal bullshit. I've worked in el D.F. (México City), Guatemala, Honduras, Spain, Colombia and never had a problem in any of them, even when working illegally. You simply have to take a trip every 6 or 9 months (depending on how good your stamp is for) and cross a border to re-up. No biggy. And you surely have the time to take off, as there are plenty of holidays, saints days, celebrations, Holy Week, ect to do so.
As far as the protests not being aired on TV, that too is bogus. Check out Telemundo or Canal 5 and you'll see plenty of coverage of all kinds of protests, strikes, violence and brutality, both by the police against the citizenry and by the citizenry against the police, by Mexicans against thier rulers and against the American viceroys. Whoever wrote those comments obviously was just some freelancer or something, because NAFTA has actually made it quite easy for both Americans and American corporations.
As I said, working illegally is quite easy in any country south of the border, and you don't have to worry about being hounded by the government or police, that is, unless you're a total asshole up to no good down here. I'm not saying you will avoid having your picture and fingerprints taken upon entering, say, Brasil, or be toyed with by the officials at a border crossing, but that's mostly because they know how the US treats their paisanos, so they just give gringos a little taste of their own medicine. You know, to make them see how it feels to be treated like an untrustworthy alien, and maybe threaten them to extract a few pesos, and surely get a kick when the normally big Americano sweats it while having his bags searched and documents scrutinied as he wonders what the hell the locals are talking about in that foreign tongue.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 10:27am
escrutinizado, er, I mean scrutinized.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 10:33am
we don't need solar powered cars
we need bio diesel powering our trucks and hyrogen poering our cars
both are very doable, and hydrogen could use the existing infrastructure we have for natural gas so as to provide an almost instant market.
we'd just have to switch over the regulators in our gas appliances... piece of cheese
Posted by Will C. at 05/04/2006 @ 10:35am
Jor,
Pretty good post above, but a few missed points.
1. You are correct, oil companies, car companies and other interested industrys have a disincentive to find aternative fuels. Why would you expect them to find another product that will put them out of business or cut their profits? Their charter and loyalty is to their share holders and not you. They have a fiduciary duty to maxmize profits and not reduce them. Producing profits is in the interest of the commonwealths in the form of wages,services and taxes..
2. Corporations can't be moral or immoral. They are amoral.(kinda like Clinton :) ) The people who run them reflect their morality in the corporations actions and policys. The brake on their behavior is the government in the form of regulations and in the markets.
3. The Marshal Plan was a giant welfare plan in essence. There was a need beyond the scope of man at the time to fix by one nation as well as no resources what so ever to use for rebuilding a destroyed system. Only the US had the cash, the resources and the ability to bring them to the source of the need.. Energy prices are high for a variety of reasons, but there is no similar crisis. Prices are high but there is not shortage of crude stock and there will be lower prices again. Demand will slacken and prices will drop. The hard core truth is that the cost of oil is still the CHEAPEST and most available source at the presesent time. To expect a cheaper and new source can only come when the oil is PROHIBITIVE OVER ALL, and then a new source or solution will come to the market and not from the government. Need is the greatest incentive and motivator.
4. "Rule out corporate control over energy"..how many barrels of oil has the energy department provided to the US consumer? How many dollars has it eaten up? Maybe their budget should be redirected to producing more oil products. For a study in energy economics, what what happens in Bolivia may be an example of government taking control away from private corporations and into their own hands. Watch the availability and price down there...Look at Mexico, largest oil discovery ever for them and inability to get it to market. Why? They are not in that business. Exxon, or whatever is, and will do it faster and cheaper, and yes at a profit. There is no reason Mexico can't be a world player in all markets, being so close to US technology and markets, combined with an ability to grow its own food and is energy independent. Their corporations have very little of their assets in Mexico...why? I am conviced that someday we will wake up to find the "Peoples Republic of Mexico" next door and then watch the influx of immigrants, illegal and otherwise.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 10:55am
Chimi,
My point is to highlight the Mexican immigration laws in light of the present immigration atmosphere. I know I can run around Latin America un noticed if I have enough $ I can speak the language,..hmmm..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 10:58am
I also agree on hydrogen fuels(GEZZ WILL, TAHTS 2 TIMES IN 24 HRS)...does anyone know how much energy it requires to produce hydrogen as a fuel, storage and transport to market as well as saftey issues? IE, The Hindeberg comes to mind and having millions of them on the highway and in the driveway...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 11:00am
Posted by JOHN MAASCH 05/04/2006 @ 11:00am | ignore this person
Actually JOHN, newest theories on the "Hindenburg" place the blame on it's aluminium oxide-embedded FABRIC covering, not the hydrogen.
What COULD be "explosive" about a hydrogen fueled vehicle (as opposed to a hydrogen/oxygen fuel cell vehicle) is the PRESSURE it has to be stored under to be useful....and the fact that even MORE pressurized and larger tanks of it would be necessary at the refueling sites.
JORCHEIM is basically just recycling the old 1970s models of "everybody riding a subway from Miami to Monterey"....and of course, nationalizing the energy companies (like nationalizing health care, nationalizing education, nationalizing airlines and then explaining how calling him a "socialist" is an "evil right-wing smear"!)
Posted by Mask at 05/04/2006 @ 11:16am
For all those who question the validity of Global Warming:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A nagging difference in temperature readings that had raised questions about global warming has been resolved, a panel of scientists reported Tuesday.
"This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected," researchers said in the first of 21 assessment reports planned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program.
The findings show clear evidence of human influences on climate due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols and stratospheric ozone.
There has been increasing concern about global climate change being caused by human activity, in particular the release of gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by automobiles and industrial activity.
But while temperature readings at the surface showed this increase, readings in the atmosphere taken by satellites and radiosondes -- instruments carried by weather balloons -- had shown little or no warming.
There are still some questions about the rate of atmospheric warming in the tropics, but overall the issue has been settled, said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a statement saying that the climate change program was established to reduce scientific uncertainties and "we welcome today's report because it represents success in doing so with respect to temperature trends."
Findings of the report include:
Since the 1950s, all data show the Earth's surface and the low and middle atmosphere have warmed, while the upper stratosphere has cooled. Those changes were expected from computer models of the effects of greenhouse warming. Radiosonde readings for the midtroposphere -- the nearest portion of the atmosphere -- show it warming slightly faster than the surface, also an expected finding. The most recent satellite data also show tropospheric warming, though there is some disagreement among data sets. This may be caused by uncertainties in the observations, flaws in climate models or a combination. The researchers think it is a problem with the data collection. The observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone. The report came a day after the government reported that greenhouse gases widely blamed for raising the planet's temperature are still building in the atmosphere.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday there was a continuing increase in carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide in the air last year, although methane leveled off. Overall, NOAA said, its annual greenhouse gas index "shows a continuing, steady rise in the amount of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/03/warming.temps.ap/index.html
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 11:24am
Mask
Japanese didn't invent the hybrid we all know (the regenerative braking concept), but was in fact invented by Fayetteville, Arkansas electrical enginer Dave Arthurs in 1978-79. American Hybrid
In fact, the US had a good handle on hybrid technology a few years prior and did their best to keep it "on the down low" SHHHHH, its a secret
Hybrids can be modified to get 250mpg hybrids
I must agree with Will C. on energy though. Biodiesel is very viable...and should be pursued with more vigor. (Hell, look all the fast food restaraunts....that alone is a "unnatural resource" And what about liposuction clinics! [somewhat flippant, but technically feasible)
There will never be a solar car....energy density of solar cells can not be that high. (Plus one of my Master's advisors was the Late Luther Skelton , author of "the Solar Hydrogen Energy Economy) As to hydrogen use though, some new technology MUST come into being. We do have the ENV in the UK. But interestingly, the most tantalizing bit of energy technology I've heard for some time is either being developed well below radar, or has been "quashed". A student told me they heard about a "car that runs on seawater", which sounded pretty "X-files". But they seemed sincere so I started looking. Turns out there is substance to it.
In Fall 2005, 2 Russian scientists came forward (to the UK) with a technology that separated hydrogen out of water (using some sort of salt solution as a catalyst) using some kinetic effect. (A "spinning" thing of some sort) to make hydrogen on the fly.
Anywway, the trail goes dead in Dec 2005. Google "OM Energy" and read the the first two hits. Nothing after....but am making some inquiries.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 11:44am
JORCHEIM is basically just recycling the old 1970s models of "everybody riding a subway from Miami to Monterey"..
like what they have in Europe?
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 11:44am
Mask
Metal hydride storage.....kinda like the off-the shelf hydride battery technologically. Turns out metallic "sponges" (at a molecular level) can actually store beaucoup hydrogen. No Hindenburg effect needed!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 11:46am
I would love to ride in a 300 mph train from Chicago to SF or LA or NY...I imagine the cost of obtaining right of way rights and road beds for tracks this long would completely price the train out of reality.
Any thoughts? I am sick of flying every week...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 11:53am
I suppose the government could steal the land for road beds using eminat domain.. but all ears.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 11:54am
Mag Lev trains would be excellent cross country!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 12:02pm
JR,
How far does the train in Europe travel, how fast and how much does it cost to ride? Is it subsidized?
If you travel to Munich from Paris, for example, do you still have to rent a car and travel to a smaller city? How much does that cost now? It has been a while since I have been there.
Also, if I rode the train to St Louis, I would then have to rent a car and go to some smaller city in Illinois...so, am I saving $ over air travel or just saving time in air travel, which in many cases today, has a monitary value. Your thoughts.........
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 12:18pm
Why can't the trains be underground?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:21pm
I did not travel all throughout Europe, however, my experience there was there are trains linking all the towns, with whistle stops along the way. There was no need for me, during my travels to rent a car anywhere. If you are going to a little town, then a brief walk is all one can expect. If it's larger, there are buses, taxis and trams available.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:23pm
However, in response to Maasch's concern, I agree that as the train system is set up currently in the US, there are not enough trains to get a traveler to "anywhere/everywhere" one might need to travel. In order to rectify that situation, a whole new national train system would have to be developed and built. That could provide a lot of jobs. As for the land, why not use the land currently in use by our highway system? That was already stolen via eminent domain. No need to double steal from the public.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:33pm
One thing also about Europe and transportation -
Europeans don't mind walking a few miles on a regular basis, unlike their counterparts across the pond (save for NY city). Ever seen the Americanus who meanders through the maze of cars at the mall or supermarket for 10 minutes looking for the closest spot instead of just parking and walking 50 meters? Too much reliance on technology if you ask me, whether due to laziness or lack of time.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 12:34pm
By the way, when discussion this train system, I am thinking in terms of long distance as well as shuttles for shorter distances. In Europe, my experience was that you could get a train about every 15 to 30 minutes. There were every short lag times of waiting for me if and when I did have to make train switches. If such a system is going to be created in the US, it would have to be similarly conceived.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:36pm
Yeah, actually, once one gets used to it, walking a few miles is not only good exercise, it is also an enjoyable pasttime.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:38pm
Lenno & Chimi
On our campus I often see students waiting in cars for an hour or so for a close parking space to open up, when they could easily park in a further lot and walk 5-10 mins. Truly sad...and these are mostly young and healthy folks!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 12:44pm
...in the car, alone, with the A/C running if its warm and/or sunny I might add!
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 12:48pm
Without excusing that behavior, LOC, it is certainly something that is taught culturally. I think each generation gets lazier and more self-centered. We live in an age/country where convenience matters most. It is sad.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:48pm
All I can say to that is, a quote from George Harrison:
"All through the day, I, me, mine; I, me, mine; I, me, mine."
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 12:50pm
http://www.raileurope.com/us/common/rail_map/index.htm
read 'em and weep
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 12:55pm
That map made me melancholy. When I went to Europe, I did so with the hope of moving there, living there, working there, and remaining there. Unfortunately, not being a citizen of a nation member to the EU, that's all but impossible...
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 1:01pm
I'd begun Oliver Sacks' "Seeing Voices," but put it down with Desmond Morris' "The Naked Ape" when academic priorities intervened about a year ago it seems.
So many good books. Writers dispense wisdom and... Warm sunlight on shrubs.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/04/2006 @ 1:05pm
Dr. Sacks is a fascinating man, I think. Morning, Lew.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 1:11pm
take a look at the railmaps, for each country, I just checked germany and france. like a picture of arteries, and that's what they are. the fact is that we already have the right of ways, we used to have a railsystem in this country. what is lacking is the political will, and that comes from each one of us.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 1:15pm
"As for the land, why not use the land currently in use by our highway system? That was already stolen via eminent domain. No need to double steal from the public."
The highway system will still be need for the spaces in between the smaller citys and trucks need for deliveries. Not all of us live with in 6 feet of 20 million fellow citizens. Out here in the west and midwest, there are hours between minor cities..
The railroads were already given the land rights before there were citys out here, so it is a matter of rebuilding road beds. Also, you won't like it here, but the unions are going to be cost prohibitive once they get involved, for example, the railroads still have a fireman and a brakeman on the trains, with no fires to feed or hand brakes to work, and every single city or stop along the way will want a slice, which raises prices and slows down the train...taking away the advanyages inherent...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 1:31pm
"Give me convenience or give me death."
The US used to have quite an efficient rail system, but Eisenhower's web of highways did away with that, when the tire, oil and automobile industries got together and exerted their influence to create a more congested, polluted and wasteful landscape where coughing cars and acned roads put more and more space at thier disposal, not to mention your nerves and wallet.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 1:32pm
Lennonist,
Why not become an illegal aleign in Europe? What would happen to you? What if you had a job that paid $ 150,000 a year? would they let you stay?
Maybe you could claim political asylem(ie, Bush)..... :)
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 1:33pm
I agree, Johannes. Now, I am going to mention some of the impediments. Not because I want to impede the process (I believe in this as one necessary step wholeheartedly), but so we can all look at the roadbloacks and realize it is a long, hard, uphill battle which we should not allow ourselves to be discouraged from completing.
Economic climate: Hundreds of billions of dollars earmarked for the war in Iraq and a mounting debt on the cost of that war will make most people afraid to commit the dollars necessary to make a truly viable rail system for this country. However, this kind of project will put millions of people to work in every state in the Union. It will actually benefit our economy.
Inertia: Most Americans are creatures of habit (I suppose most people period). They like the convenience of having their own car, going everywhere at the last minute, having the excuse, "I was caught in traffic for why they were late for work or school." They are so used to riding alone, or only with family and extremely close friends that they don't want to ride in mass transit with strangers. They don't want to stop at the store on the way home from work and have to carry them a couple of miles. Europeans, at least from what I saw, tend to buy a few things on the way home most days for that evening's meal. They don't have to do major shopping every week, only once in a while. Riding on mass transit with others provides an opportunity to connect with one's fellow human beings, and thereby create fellowship instead of antipathy. One can also have one's laptop on the train or bus and do some work on the way in and out.
Convenience: Americans in large part really are stuck in a mindset of, "If you are going to make something more difficult, then I'll resist it." But really, when you look at it, the cost of insurance for vehicles will dramatically reduce and most people will probably avoid it by realizing they don't need a personal car at all anymore. The amoutn of a personal budget spent on gas could be moved to other areas: savings, retirement, vacations, fun money, etc. And, once people get used to it, they'll find they actually enjoy the new system.
Responsibility for the Environment: My impression of most of America is that, "Hey, we worked hard for what we've created, we aren't giving it up. I don't care if I am hurting the environment or the quality of life for others." But, by accepting some responsibility, doing something positive about it, and creating a more sustainable future, we can all end up feeling a sense of pride and satisfaction at the same time as we all do something to protect the quality of life we will leave to future generations, who are, after all, our progeny.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 1:34pm
Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 05/04/2006 @ 11:44am | ignore this person
Again, LEFTOF....how is "Big Oil squelching all these fantastic oil-free energy alternatives"....in Europe, Japan, China, Russia? If the technology has been around for 30 years....does Exxon have copyrights on all of it and preventing NON-American countries from producing them?
like what they have in Europe?
Posted by JOHANNESROLF 05/04/2006 @ 11:44am | ignore this person
You mean "Europe"....where they have 5 times the NUCLEAR POWER plants that we do?
Can we follow THAT model as well?
Posted by Mask at 05/04/2006 @ 1:42pm
John, John, John. I didn't want to be an illegal alien. Actually, I had that kind of opportunity offered to me. I suppose I might have taken someone up on it. If I had, I might have found someone to marry, and then created a legal situation as a result. You know, in the EU, it would have been easy to do. All I'd have had to do is get my passport stamped by going across a border for, say a weekend, then returning. I could remain in any of the countries I wanted for 3 months without needing to get the travel stamp before returning. But, see, that isn't who I am or how I choose to live my life. Also, I am not someone who comes from a place where there is no opportunity, but rather only poverty, underemployment, disease and starvation. I didn't have the kind of motivation some feel when coming here. I am not going to judge anyone else for their decisions. I am just saying, that kind of option wasn't for me.
I thought about political asylum. I admit I did. See, after the elections in '04, I said to myself, the smart people in Germany in 1933 got out. So, the smart people in the US in '05 ought to as well. That was my primary motivation. Honestly, though, I seriously doubt it would work. Then, I'd have been stigmatized upon return by my government.
With regard to the trasin system, John, if done on the European model, you might need a few little byways, but all the cities and towns would be linked up. It's really quite feasible. Europe has it that way. As far as the unions, I think, when we start talking about the tens of thousands of new, permanent jobs that would be created, the unions will probably agree to moving current brakemen, etc. into other titles, and guaranteeing their wage levels, so that they can add all the additional personnel that would be required.
No, the actual resistence will come from the auto industry, the oil industry and the airline industry. The airline industry has to be regularly be bailed out by the taxpayer anyway, so to heck with them. Besides, scientific studies done during the three day moratorium on flying in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 showed an incredible amount of our environmental difficulties are being caused by all the airline travel. Furthermore, most of the planes aren't anywhere near full. Talk about a waste. Yet they run a higher frequency rate than our trains do. I am suggesting that a train schedule that has a huge frequency level, like in Europe, will make rail so convenient, planes will be saved for trips across oceans, as they should be.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 1:49pm
LENNONIST,
Very good analysis, but I would add that in addition to the leaded mindset, along with the economic and cultural impediments, I'd say there's also the bigger cultural hurdle of getting beyond the obsession with cars as toys and symbols of freedom, as putting the pedal to the medal in the latest sports car is advertised as being about as liberating as pulling the trigger of a gun. Even down here the idea of having your own car is often dreamed of, despite the fact that there is plenty of efficient public transportation, especially in cities like Bogotá and Medellín, and its very cheap.
People have to get beyond the childish adoration of cars as status symbols, imagining them to serve as passports that allow them to cross the upper echelons of society along with their designer duds, and think more of other people and the society as a whole. When it comes to safety, efficiency, price and speed, you can't compare a car to a train. Sure, you wouldn't do away with any one form - you'd still need taxis, busses and the like, but you wouldn't need nearly as many cars, and I for one love to have someone else drive my ass around.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 2:02pm
As to the auto and oil industries attempts to roadblock comprehensive mass transit, I think it is naieve to say they don't do it. They have for over 30 years at least. A lot of their efforts are done through lobbying. That impacts why politicians won't get behind it.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:05pm
Chimi, I agree with the cultural point. I was ineffective in an attempt to allude to it. Thank you for voicing it more clearly.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:07pm
Should the US some day depend more on locomotives, I'd like to invite CPT on a cross-country trip so I could throw him from the train somewhere between nowhere and goodbye.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 2:08pm
Well, Chimi, I for one believe in love and non-violence. I do not believe it ever serves to point fingers at others, name call, or express hostility. In my mind, all that does is harden people's attitudes against ideas that may otherwise be helpful.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:11pm
I'm just being flippant as usual.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 2:15pm
"think Flint Michigan. Think Akron, Ohio."
whattan idiot, Flint is a wasteland, as are all those centers of industry past.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 2:15pm
"I thought about political asylum. I admit I did. See, after the elections in '04, I said to myself, the smart people in Germany in 1933 got out. So, the smart people in the US in '05 ought to as well. That was my primary motivation. Honestly, though, I seriously doubt it would work. Then, I'd have been stigmatized upon return by my government. "
I can't even come close to compare the 30s Germany with 05 America and neither can my German relatives, or many jews I know who experienced this first hand,..this makes you sound foolish,..where are the gestapo, concentration camps, ethnic cleansing?
"Then, I'd have been stigmatized upon return by my government"
I think your government wouldn't miss your absence, but I think you might have had a problem with your neighbors...
Also, I fly every week and have before and after 9/11, and I have never come accross the situation where you claim... "Furthermore, most of the planes aren't anywhere near full. Talk about a waste. Yet they run a higher frequency rate than our trains do. "
I have never seen so many offers to pay for overbooked flights to passengers. The airlines acually have less planes in their schedules and all are full. They cost more now due to fuel increases, true, but ask them the effect of the taxes on the fuel...which is killng hurting them and me as a ticket payer, too...as far a more than trains, yes tairlines do have more scheduled than trains, since trains take 24 hrs to get where a plane takes 2-4, hence more demand...at a cheaper price. Consumers create the market...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 2:21pm
John, you don't live my life. Don't judge others unless you live in their shoes.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:25pm
My point about the airlines comments, exactly.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 2:28pm
Lennoist,
No I don't and I can only imagine what may have happened to you to have caused the comparison of 30s Germany to 05 America....It sounds like it may have been traumatic and I am sorry for that..if I am correct..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 2:30pm
Seems to me 1933 was when Hitler was fitook office, long before all that was coming had become apparent. Some could see the writing on the wall, others could not. Those that did, left. My corollaries were this (and I know you will disagree on some things and in degrees on some things, but it is my perspective to which I am entitled, I believe, unless your attitude that the only good American is one who shuts up and does as he's told): reduction in civil liberties, rounding up people and putting them in jails because of allegations they are terrorists, suspension of due process for those individuals, cloaking official power in the flag, lies about why we went to war, branding of people who did not agree with the war as unpatriotic, invading a sovereign nation without provocation in violation of all our treaty agreements and UN Charter, prison abuses of a scandalous nature against prisoners or war, the stealing of two elections, shall I go on?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:32pm
Len,
Sure you can go on all you want and you are correct, I can't find anything in your post I agree with or can defend. You are wrong in that I want you to shut up and go along, for if I did, then I would have to do the same at some point...and the fact that you believe all those things and are still here freely voicing these thoughts and expressions kind of nullfies your position on many of the issues you feel are happening...
No, most definetely, you have a right to expresss and believe and voice openly. And, you should execise the francise. I should not be ridiculed for rejecting any or all of your expressions...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 2:38pm
I surely have no complaints for leaving, (actually, my life is so much more rewarding and eventful), and I live in a land 90% of people are too chickenshit to even contemplate visiting. What a shame so many people view the television as some kind of sagacious oracle. I believe to have seen the writing on the wall, but many chapters are still being played out. Either way, I'm literally a rockstar with gainful employment in an amazing country full of beautiful people, so the move was good either way.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 2:40pm
My own personal life has been impacted tremendously and still is in a variety of ways. I am 53, caucasian, and live in Phoenix. I choose to wear long hair and like to often don t-shirts with Lennon, give peace a chance etc on them. I left a mall in Scottsdale and was acosted by a mall security guard. I tried to ignore him. I went on to the bus stop. He followed me. I asked why. He demanded that I not sit on that bus stop. I refused to leave. He had me arrested. lied to the police officer about my behavior and claimed I used profanity toward him. I did not. I had no witnesses, he brought two other security guards over to back up his claim, which was unfounded and which they were not even witnesses to anyway. I was put in jail and left there from 3:30 in the afternoon until 10:30 at night when I was finally released OR, after all buses had stopped running. I had to walk about 15 miles home. Another day, I was walking on a sidewalk and approached a driveway entry to a strip mall. I looked in both directions. One car was approaching from the street and preparing to turn left into the driveway. I made eye contact with the driver of the truck and believed they would not run me down. I looked to the right to make sure no cars were going to leave the mall as I continued to walk across the driveway. When I looked back, I was hit bit the automobile. I was knocked to the ground and still suffer from back injuries as a result. Police were called to the scene. The driver of the truck told the officer that I purposely "ran into her truck and that I damaged her vehicle. The officers threatened me with prosecution for criminal damage until they looked at the vehicle and saw no damage. The never cited the driver and refused to even call for an ambulance. Still another day, on yet another walk on a very hot day, I stopped to sit in the shade of a different strip mall to catch my breath before going into a Safeway to purchase some groceries. While seated, and while talking to a friend on my cell phone, two armed police officers with guns pulled threatened me and forced me to lie on the ground and then detained me. As it turned out, a Radio Shack had sent in word of being robbed. The only description offered was the man had long hair and a dark blue hat (I wore a black one). This is daylight by the way. I was detained. The shop owner (some senile 70+ lady) then identified me as the robber. I told the officers what I had been doing, where I had been (just came from my bank and had a time stamped receipt to prove it. I had never even been in that Radio Shack. As they continued to investigate, they found not only had I never been in that shop, but the real robber was still inside! Yet, I had my life threatened at gun point. I do not know if you know what that feels like, but it isn't pleasant, to say the least. These are just three quick examples. There are a lot more.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:47pm
MASK 05/04/2006
How indeed. Odd how things like "solar" and "hybrids" were not accepted widely until oil companies began to diversify and become "energy" companies. All liberals and hippie tree-huggers before then. One of the largest solar outfits: ARCO Solar. Hybrids, old tech that the auto industry now embraces. However, now the technology gets the gov't favoritism of tax breaks and the public climate that their name is involved so it must be acceptable. I would point Frei & LL to this thought line as well. It is not so much that profit is "eveil" per se, but greed engenders a certain lack of courtesy, or perhaps respect for the public. It stifles innovation if that interferes with the extant (if profitable) paradigm without much respect for social consequence.
I must also reiterate points made by myself and others re: the oil/auto empire quashing the competition of communter light rail long ago, and standard rail more recently. (Aside from other technological advances perhaps.) Now that their infrastructure are primarily dismantled, and the auto is the "normal" expectation, it becomes difficult to shift the group dynamic towards a different idea. It is called social interia. Right / wrong do not play into it, and neither does applicability nor common sense.
Example: At my Master's university we had an forum of Env Sci/Policy faculty doing a discussion on transportation alternatives. The panel members included a specialist on energy and a transportation geographer. You would think "innovation" would result. Did it? No. They discussed new road materials, designs. Types of engines, tires, etc. I chimed in and asked where were the "alternatives" to transportation and why their base-level assumption acquiesced to the status quo of the "auto-centric" mentality. They looked at me like I was from another planet...one did answer after an uncomfortable silence with something along the lines of having to deal with "the real world." So much for ideas....
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 2:48pm
they have planes in Europe and Japan too. as fuel gets more expensive, and it will, trains will become more economical, if we had them that is. the point is that train travel works only when it is part of the mix, and receives the same subsidy as all other forms of transport.
personal example, I can get off the plane from the US, no train for that trip, in Frankfurt Rhein Main, walk downstairs and get a subway to the train station in Frankfurt, and get a train to practically all cities and small towns in Europe, in my case it would be a train to Wiesbaden, change for another train to a little town called Lorch am Rhein.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 2:49pm
To me John, these descriptions of eveent backed up my worst fears.
And to suggest that my presence here and ability to voice opinions is enough, is not completely fair. I still face regular forms of abridggements of my personal freedoms here. But, I am back, and I am committed to trying to make this country a better place, a fairer place, a more humane place, a more loving, considerate, tolerant and accepting place where freedom truly does exist for all, not just conformists.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:50pm
nuclear power in germany:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip46.htm
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 2:56pm
Oh yeah, in the Scottsdale arrest, I was manhandled by the officer. Somehow, in the manhandling, a $200 diamond stud earring was knocked out of my ear and forever lost as well. That wasn't pleasant either, being rouoghed up by a cop. Nor was it fun having 3 security guards and two police officers abuse me as I was being arrested. All, again without witnesses being present and with no bruises, so I could not make a claim against them.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:57pm
In the arrest for the alleged robery, all they had to do was look at how long I had been talking on the phone. There's a record on my cell. I had been on it for probably 20 minutes talking to the friend because I spoke with her while I walked back from the bank. They never even looked at that.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 2:59pm
Oh yeah, and with regard to the back injury, the police refused to even cooperate in giving me the insurance information for the driver of the vehicle so I could make a claim. I had to limp away in great pain.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:01pm
Lennonist,
After reading your story, I must say I am outraged at the treatment you have received by some. I am sure it is not systematic but in your shoes one has to be skeptical in the first degree. If it were in my power or if I were a whitness to your events I would have screamed bloody murder in defense of you. The fact I am a conservative or liberal is irrelevant as I am an American and you were fucked. I had long hair into my late 30s and into my 40s and never was treated that way, although in my 20s it was a different story.( I know longer have hair!)
As a fellow American I am sickened and outraged by your treatment..and I aplogise for the criminals who bore false whitness against you.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:04pm
Lenno
Ouch....sounds like the vehicle driver needed a lawyer shoved up their behind. I get run down by a Chevy van while biking one day. He actually had to run to the right to get me. ouch there too....
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 3:05pm
LENNONIST,
You have huevos to remain in Phoenix. I can't believe this is just a taste of the trials and tribulations you've endured up there. I imagine it's tough being Hispanic in Phoenix, no?
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 3:05pm
JR,
I have often wondered if I might re immigrate to Germany and live for a while to experience the country of my grandparents and mother. It sounds nice. I greatly enjoyed my past 2 visits there, but they were just that, visits...and perhaps my German might be resurrected so I wouldn't sound like an "injured Turk", was that what you called my German :) ?
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:08pm
Just to be clear, in line with my non-violence, I did not resist in any of those situations. I did nothing but assist in the investigations, knowing I had done nothing wrong and believing that my innocense would be proven. Oh, the outcome of the arrest oin Scottsdale? With no witnesses on my side, I had to plead guilty to disturbing the peace (I think is what the charge turned into) and had to pay a fine in excess of $300.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:09pm
Chimi,
I think the majority in Phoenix are hispanic.
I am going to Albequerque next week, should be fun I hope.
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:09pm
Majority Hispanic in Phoenix? Can someone verify this?
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 3:11pm
I think in the city proper but this may not include Scottsdale where the cash is...I am not really sure..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:16pm
John, I know you would have come to my aid. I know any real American would have done so. You know what else? I still feel nothing more than love for those people who did these things to me. Love and pity for their ignorant attitudes. And sorrow for anyone else they run across. Yep, I got screwed. I'm not saying it is systemic, but all happened in the space of a few short months, and all colored my opinions of life in this country. That added to my other views confirmed my opinion at that time I needed to get out of here.
Chimi, I don't know what it is like for hispanics. Phoenix, though, and Arizona in general, is a very redneck place.
I worked for about 10 years as a paralegal for a defense attorney in Flagstaff, AZ. I am not a bum. I have also been a production manager and producer of animation. I am an upstanding citizen who pays taxes and until the disturbing the peace, never had a blemish on my record. As a paralegal for a defense attorney, you have no idea how many times I have heard complaints of mistreatment by officers, about rights being abused. You know what. It's next to impossible to do anything about it. I mean, that kind of thing has to go to the Court of Appeals and maybe beyond. That is prohibitively expensive for just about anyone. The cops know it. If they decide you are a bad guy, they'll treat you like one, and they know they can get away with it.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:18pm
Albuquerque is nice in NM, but in my mind, one of the most beautiful places there is Santa Fe. God it is gorgeous there. If you go to Santa Fe, John, be sure to see the oldest church in American (arguments exist over it and one in FLA), it has a spiral staircase made all of wood, and that was not cut, somehow, they bent it to make it spiral up! Also, the Esplande is a great place. Take a quickie up to SF if you can John!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:22pm
I meant Esplanade. typo, and apologies to Chimi for messing up the language.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:23pm
Just answered my own question,
Race Statistics for Arizona
White: 3,873,611
Black: 158,873
Am. Indian/Alaska Native: 255,879
Asian: 92,236
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 6,733
Other: 596,774
Two or More Races: 146,526
Hispanic/Latino: 1,295,617
Race Statistics for Maricopa County
White: 2,376,359
Black: 114,551
Am. Indian/Alaska Native: 56,706
Asian: 66,445
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander: 4,406
Other: 364,213
Two or More Races: 89,469
Hispanic/Latino: 763,341
Hispanics/Latinos: 25.3% of the population of Arizona is Hispanic/Latino.
Cities With More Than 100,000 People There are 9 cities in Arizona with a population over 100,000. Sponsored Links Maricopa County Condos Enjoy an Amenity-Filled, Carefree Lifetstyle in Beautiful Phoenix! OwnLaTerraza.com
Phoenix Job Fair - May 16 Meet with over 300 companies at the Jobing Career Expo: Tues, May 16 Jobing.com
Phoenix AZ Homes for Sale Free Phoenix MLS search. Homes condos, property. See photos & maps www.ZipRealty.com They are Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe and Tucson. In these 9 cities, the white population is between 70.2% (Tucson) and 92.2% (Scottsdale). The highest percentage of Black population is in Phoenix (5.1%) and second highest is in Glendale (4.7%). The highest percentage of American Indian population is in Phoenix (2.0%) and in Tempe (2.0%). The highest percentage of Asian population is in Tempe (4.7%) and the second highest is in Chandler (4.2%). The highest percentage of Hispanic/Latino population is in Tucson (35.7%) and the second highest is in Phoenix (34.1%). Glendale has the third highest percentage of Hispanic/Latino population (24.8%).
First Page >> Arizona Census
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:24pm
Dunno about population demographics in Phoenix. However, my impression is, where yes, the hispanic population is large, I don't think they are the majority by any means.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:25pm
maasch, that was all just a reverie for me, I haven't been to germany in over 29 years
Frei, you might check out a Michael Moore movie, the one about Flint Mich. is one, and when you confessed to NOT having seen Fahrenheit 9/11, I nearly fell off my chair. my teenage son and his hoodlum friends, not, saw it and discussed it years ago. before you all get your knickers in a twist, Moorer makes films, he is an artist, a political artist. there are others. I like Sue Coe and Leon Golub, who are painters in the great tradition of Goya.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 3:25pm
I don't know Arizona or the southwest for that matter, though I've always wanted to see that part of México - I mean, the US. I've heard Arizona is somewhat transient, that's all. Don't know much more about the people. As far as American churches, you mean shopping mall, right?
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 3:27pm
Yes, what I would have thought, about 1/3 total population is hispanic.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:27pm
Phoenix, Alberqerque, sic, those are places the US stole, and when the treaty was signed they were promised that they could retain their spanish culture AND language. whatever happened to that?
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 3:27pm
Lennonist,
Thank you, and I have been there and it is great..Sante Fe is beautiful...I will check out the church.
I don't think anyone here ever thought you "might" be a bum.....and I can see from your point of view how you come to your beliefs...experience is non refutable, if that is a word.
I am bothered by your treatment...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:28pm
Chimi, I was speaking of Catholic churches.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:29pm
JR,
You like Goya? I have a copy of 'Saturno devorando a un hijo' (Saturn devouring his son) here from a friend in Madrid. People think I'm nuts for liking it, but ever since I saw his work at El Prado in Madrid, I've liked him, especially his dark period. Those paintings got him banished by the King.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 3:29pm
Thank you for your support John. You know, I am not a cry baby or a crier at all really. The day I had the guns pointed at me, I was reduced to a bawling infant.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:30pm
Lennon, what was that thing with the super long posts? going for Plunger or Rese status? that kind of diarrhea leads to the ignore bin.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 3:30pm
Lenno
The staircase...cool. My first's wife's father was a union carpenter and quite religous so had heard about that. Didn't remember where it was...supposed to be very odd circustances. No center support, no nails but pegs (although I do believe there was sawing involved) and after 8 months of work the old man disappeared without being paid.
Stairs
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 3:33pm
But John, on another level, I accept that if I want to exhibit unpopular beliefs in public, there is always the risk of some kind of response. You know, when I walk to the store, with long hair and one of my Beatles shirts on, you should see how the people at Safeway look at me. Often I am looked upon as if I must be a street person. I mean, if you aren't you have a car right! If you aren't you get a hair cut right? Then, when I open my wallet to pay, in cash, and have clearly more than just spare change, they treat me like a human. Why do people feel the need to discriminate against anyone, including the homeless?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:34pm
I apologise Johannes. Did you read it? It is an analysis by a former NSA man in the Johnson and Nixon Administrations who left in dispute over the bombing of Cambodia, that details his assessment of Condi's role in the Plame outing.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:36pm
Yeah, that staircase is amazing. I saw a show on PBS once about it too. But I did visit it in person. Yep no nails. Maybe I am wrong about the sawing. But, they bent the handrail(s?) to go up the spiral.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:38pm
And yes, the guy who built it is discussed in kind of mysterious yterms. He showed up one day seemingly out of nowhere I think to build it and disappeared after it was done.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:39pm
Reasonable to assume...is done to "ship parts" all the time....but not by a lone little old man....
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 3:40pm
JR,
I do business in both and I would say that both areas have more Mexican and Southwestern Indian than Spanish flavor. The Spanish were driven out long before by the French and then the Mexicans,I believe. It was after the whole Texas and Santa Ana affair that the US "stole", or won the area. That is how the world worked in those days..if we follow the trail back and give return all that is America today to its limits, we would have to give America to the Chinese from the land bridge in Bearing Sea...it is all ridiculous..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:41pm
Yes, pics and story on link in previous (3:33) post
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 3:41pm
Goya's pictures of war still speak loud and clear. check the other two I mentioned. Leon Golub has some pictures of torturers and their victims. I'm sure it never occurred to him that OUR gov't would be the former. powerful stuff, not to be missed.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 3:43pm
Thanks for the link, LOC, it was nice to look at the pictures of it again.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:43pm
Left of Center,
I will let you know next week about the stairs.
A gun in my face would have ne in tears and I would also have soiled myself...
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:45pm
hahahahahahahahahah @ soiled myself. Think I was too scared at the time to do that!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:47pm
I was arrested in Mexico and deported in the 70s..I had long hair and hippe beads and the whole garb...it was a great story...maybe later..
Posted by john maasch at 05/04/2006 @ 3:56pm
Hey, by the way John, just so you know, in 1968, I was Treasurer and then President of the Woodland Hills Jr. Republicans and also parlimentarian at the county convention. My background is in an extremely strict view of the Constitution. So, to me, abridgements of that document and infringements on the Bill of Rights are like blasphemy against the Bible for those who believe in God (capitals so as not to offend believers). These old traditional beliefs, in my mind, do not agree at all with much of what the neo-conservative movement is about today. I think there are great differences. Most here see me as ultra-Liberal. Yes, I am against war. Under the Constitution, in my most traditional viewpoint, we should never be engaged in any military activity without Congress declaring war. I'm a very strict constructionist. If you read the writings of Jefferson, Washington and Franklin, they were absolutely against the US getting involved in any conflict that did not involve our absolute security. (I know, you and I will disagree with whether or not our security was involved in Iraq). I also believe that the poorly named Patriot Act is the most unpatriotic thing ever enacted in this country. No abridgement of our Constitutionally guaranteed rights can be passed without it being done by Amending the Constitution. Yet, we have this legislation that did exactly that! I'm sorry, as a strict constructionist, I do not believe that law is Constitutional. I do not belive that anyone has the right to tell a woman whether or not she has a right to an abortion either, at least not as long as it is done before the unborn crosses the threshold into filling the definition of a human. At present, the definition of a human does not include a fetus or an embryo. Hence, Congress needs to redifine what it is to be a human before it would, in my mind, be permissible to extend rights to the unborn or to classify the abortion of an unborn as murder as many call it. See, in my mind, when religions get into the mix and want national morals to adhere to religious rules, then we have interference of church and state.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 3:59pm
MAASCH if that's true I apologize for all my barbs at your expense, above all those poorly aimed, even though I've always enjoyed your posts, especially the ones that have made me angry.
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 3:59pm
I am also someone who adored Teddy Roosevelt for his stance on conservation. He set up our national parks. To me, anyone who wants to drill for oil in one is anti-conservationist and unAmerican. To me, drilling for oil in a sacred spot (so declared when it becomes a national refuge or park, etc.) is an act of greed (not just limited to the oil companies who want to do the drilling, but the people who support it, because they want the oil more than they respect their heritagge and don't seem to care about saving it for posterity).
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:04pm
I am utterly and completely against lobbying. Because, you see, I believe this contravenes what the intent of the Constitution was. I prefer what Jefferson wanted. In his idea, representatives never would make up their own minds about a bill. They would meet with their constituents about it, find out their desires, and the do what a representative does, vote according to the wishes of the people, not their person beliefs. Lobbying gets money interests between the people and their reepresentatives, and in my mind should be unConstitutional.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:07pm
Really, arrested in Mexico? In the 70s? That could have been scary. In 72, (I was also a hippie - course, still am) I and another guy and three girls wanted to go camping in Mexico. We were denied entry at the border because of our long hair!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:08pm
Articulating. Sea strength through diversity. See welcome posts, si.
Posted by lewwelge at 05/04/2006 @ 4:09pm
I broke with Republicans over Vietnam. I am non-partisan to this day. I vote for people who most closely reflect my views of the Constitution, of where there are almost none.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:10pm
ooops, of which i meant, not of where
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:11pm
Wow....ex-hippie here as well. If I can find that HS prom picture with the long hair and crushed blue-velvet tux I'll post it on my ISP server. Laughs for all!
(No wonder we got so much love in here!)
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 4:13pm
I agree with you "ILOVEPHYSICS" high gas prices are the answer to bring sound energy consumption to the US masses. They (we) certainly won't conserve the environment but there is real motivation to conserve money. The shame is where the money is going, that is why I favor higher taxes on gasoline. Actually oil is cheap, we should consider what we have in the ground now our strategic oil reserve for future generations. We should be buying all the Arab oil we can and pumping it back into our old empty wells. It's bound to be worth more in the future!
Posted by hogard at 05/04/2006 @ 4:14pm
that the US "stole", or won the area.
no quotation marks necessary, that was imperialism plain and simple, and it was theft, by means of war, smash and grab.a made up casus belli, a press whipping up a war frenzy, sound familiar? just like Hitler and Stalin with Poland, and that genocide thing, Hitler was a piker compared with the Spanish and British and Americans in the new world. and that slavery thing, DO NOT FORGET, NEVER FORGET.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 4:22pm
Yeah, take it from the Arabs. Stay out of here. Few know that Colombia possesses one of largest unexploited oil fields in the hemisphere along the Venezuelan border. Just one more reason the money for Plan Colombia keeps rolling in...
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 4:23pm
The French and Dutch weren't choirboys in terms of Colonialism either, Johannes.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:25pm
neither were the Belgians, the Russians, the portugese etc. the difference is that these countries do not hold themselves up as paragons of freedom and democracy. and they are not in Iraq either. the collective guilt does not go away, not in 60 or 70 years, not in 200 years. it is important to see ourselves as others see us. what are we teaching in history class these days? in Louisiana and Mississippi? in Nebraska?
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 4:32pm
Who knows, Manifest Destiny, the divine right of Presidents and the Bible maybe?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:34pm
a gun in your face? try a razorblade at the jugular. yes, it happened.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 4:35pm
Johannes, huh?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:37pm
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:38pm
Oh, you are talking about what the invading colonial armies did to indiginous populations. Heck, it was worse than just that. My plight is miniscule in comparison.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:40pm
Surely something as simple as geography isn't being taught these days. The US should be ashamed of this:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/index.html
Posted by chimichenga at 05/04/2006 @ 4:43pm
no I am talking about my humble person, a teenage predator, and the contents of my pockets.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 4:43pm
Oh my... When, what happened?
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 4:45pm
an evening walk in Central Park, moonlight on the lake, a careless me, a long time ago, a humbling experience, I oughta write a book
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 5:22pm
I don't know why I brought it up, so we have something else in common.
my son was victim of an attempted mugging for his Ipod, that was far more scary for me, he took it in stride, as did I, almost 30 years ago.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 5:32pm
a day to remember Kent State. also remember the protest at the Pentagon, what was it '68? face to face with the National Guard. very close face to face. then the order was given for them to put on gas masks and fix bayonets. the minute they put on those gas masks, they ceased to be human beings, they became killer robots. some girls put flowers in the gun barrels. there was a rush toward the doors of the pentagon, and plain clothes cops swinging truncheons, the crowd created a suction effect, pulling one against his will toward the violence, that's when I split. hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? the same could be said to Bush, two more soldiers, the age I was then, snuffed out, for the grandiose fantasies of Bush, and the 30%, aren't you proud? Bush looks like an old old man these days, the look of a cornered rat, eyes darting, but condemned to repeat the lies over and over again, he long ago stopped believing them himself.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 5:59pm
Oh my Johannes. I remember those days well. I believe Kent State happened in 1970 though. I graduated high school that year. Went to college the following year at USC. All the killing depresses me. Then and now. Man's inhumanity to man. No hope in sight. No morals in politics. By the way, Johannes, the long post you mentioned I made, that was intended in the spirit of a "Teach-In" kind of bit of info. I am sorry for having it be so long. It details a lot of good info on the complicity of Condi, Bolton, and all the others in the Plame outing. Shows the accumulation of lies that led up to the war. It's by a reputable writer, not some conspiracy theorist.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 6:17pm
the date I mentioned was of the march on the pentagon, and a short google revealed 1967 for that protest.
I have no quarrel with the substance of that voluminous post, only its length, but that's just me, I just do not have the stamina to cope with that. the Plame outing is one of those emblematic events, that lightening like illuminates events that had remained murky until then.
the most important thing, I think, is that the script has changed, here too.shock and awe has been transformed to shock at how awful these people were and are, that took the nation to this illegal and immoral war. they can make all the excuses they want, this was blind revenge, and cynical calculation, that under the cover of a war, the country could be plundered.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 6:47pm
there are two countries plundered by Bush, Iraq, and our country, and it is OUR country, not Bush's.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/04/2006 @ 6:48pm
You have that right buddy! OUR country. he's supposed to be a public servant, not the darn king!
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 7:13pm
I enjoyed your lengthy posts, Lennonist. I usually breeze right past long, multiple posts, but yours was easy to get through, even if I am still not clear on the absolute connections between Condi and all the nuttiness. It makes sense, but there seemed to be a lot of "well, of course she would have..."
Posted by tjbehrens1 at 05/04/2006 @ 7:25pm
This is true, TJ, however, remember, it was written by someone who has worked in the NSA, so knows it's machinations, knows the players, and understands the system. At least, he documented the timeline well.
Posted by Lennonist at 05/04/2006 @ 7:29pm
Ah. I had not paid attention to the author. That changes things a bunch.
Posted by tjbehrens1 at 05/04/2006 @ 8:05pm
solar panels or wind turbines on every house...with automatic switches to power grid...do-able...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 05/04/2006 @ 10:16pm
i read somehwere once that we could power our nation using solar if we covered an area equal to 17% of the state of nevada.
zoning all new developments to so the long axis of one roof side faces south on an appropriate angle for solar on that latitude and then actual mandating the panels would be a good start
Posted by Will C. at 05/04/2006 @ 10:41pm
WilC & Ibble
Good thoughts although solar not do-able everywhere - too far north or not enough sunny days in some areas. But then there is always wind, microhydro, tidal. I agree in concept, that the sustainable solution is diversity and decentralization. Also a "real" re-examination of what the urban structure should be. Not just energy, but abode design should likewise be site/climatically tailored. (as should transportation.)
We tend to make a structure's design based almost entirely on asthetics and then cram utility into it. This should be re-considered from the other direction. Start with the appropriate use/utility solutions for the given site/area and then drape the asthetic elements around it.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/04/2006 @ 10:58pm
Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 05/04/2006 @ 10:58pm
I saw a program on the discovery channel a few years back which profiled a guy in vermont that paneled one side of his roof. His yearly power bill was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks.
the problem isn't that we can;t put solar panels on every roof, the problem is that a long time ago those who opposed solar made their criticsm about the amortization of the investment as opposed to the long term benifit of the investment.
which is an interesting arguement becuse my car doesn't have to pay for itself, my house doesns't have to pay for itself, my clothes don;t have to pay for themselves, every industry that every got a subsity to include oil and gas and nuclear and coal don't have to pay for themselves... but for some reason solar has to pay for itself
and the funny thing is that we are bitching about setting up a system that has no moving parts, requires no special skills to run, creates no mess after manufacture, is on when the sun is on, doesn't kill anybody or start any wars and can be made out of white beach sand, the same stuff we use to make computer chips out of so there is already an infrastructure for the manufacturing process (and boy do we have beaches).
but if it can't pay for itself in a predetermined period, we won't do it.
we have one fucked up system of priorities sometimes
Posted by Will C. at 05/04/2006 @ 11:43pm
WillC
By and large I agree on points. However, as to components while mainly silicon the cells DO contain a "doping" agent to create the PV effect. And there's the rub. These minor bits are kinda scarce (and varies according to the particualr cell, there are several that work). They are pretty toxic and do entail al the externalities that mining heavy/tosic metals do. If demand goes up we do have another potential pollutant stream and such.
So at the risk of being somewhat "punny"...its not *all* sunshine.
.....and yes, we do have a real fucked up sense of priorities.
Posted by leftofcenter at 05/05/2006 @ 01:08am
"Imagine a far worse scenario. Terrorists acquire a million pounds of the deadly dust and scatter it in populated areas throughout the U.S. Hundreds of children report symptoms. Many acquire cancer and leukemia, suffering an early and painful death. Huge increases in severe birth defects are reported. Oncologists are overwhelmed. Soccer fields, sand lots and parks, traditional play areas for kids, are no longer safe. People lose their most basic freedom, the ability to go outside and safely breathe. Sounds worse than 9/11? Welcome to Iraq and Afghanistan."
"Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymph system which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common."
Getting our priorities straight is more than just important, it is critical.
DU is being used and chemical poisoning on our own soil is happening again on June 2, 2006, when a 700 ton chemical bomb is detonated less than 100 miles from Las Vegas.
Our mental illness in America is at approximately 28%, higher than any other nation State on the planet.
DU researcher Leuren Moret has written the most comprehensive piece of work about what Bush, et al. have done to our planet Earth and species, Homo-sapiens at the web site wherein the most powerful people on the planet go to "think tank," (for real).
Time to wake up America and look at the whole picture. We are being poisoned to death and the Earth has been both "a weapon and a target." Read Mr. Moret at the link below but be ready to face a far greater tragedy than $3 for gas.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.com/article1.htm
Posted by larryo at 05/05/2006 @ 08:08am
there are many more tragic things than $3 gas, which is a symptom of deeper problems.as one who does not own a car, I don't have a dog in this race.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/05/2006 @ 09:33am
On this thread we seem to have some unrestrained advocates of free market principles to correct the environment. That is to say, there are people that believe that we'll be alright and the government doesn't have to do a damn thing.
On the other hand these people over whelmingly support the Republican Party, which "interferes" to an enormous degree in all sorts of agricultural products markets. Essentially subsidies to Cargill. The argument from them is that the market would work but we'd go through periods of shortage followed by boom and since food is so important we need to intervene.
Why is food so different from air?
Posted by freedomplease at 05/05/2006 @ 09:35am
Yes gas is more expensive in Europe than in the U.S. but that is due to taxation, not because of the cost of refining. However, because Europe is much more densely populated than the U.S., (75% of Europeans live in urban areas), more people have access to feasable public transportation, than here in the U.S., and the cost of gas would seem to affect them less.
Even with a reduction in consumption, the world is still dependent upon petroleum based products, and if there is a reduction in demand, countries that sell oil would just reduce supply to keep the price high.
As far as solar and wind power are concered, they do not come close in producing the terra-watts needed for an industrialized society.
I love the idea of ethanol, but would hate to see the Brazilian rainforrest destroyed to produce vegatable oil so we can be enviro-friendly.
Posted by Zeddmen at 05/05/2006 @ 2:26pm
Zedd, so what do YOU suggest.
Posted by johannesrolf at 05/05/2006 @ 5:00pm