A Change Of Climate?

[Dr. Shane]

Obama's Science Team

President-elect Barack Obama filled two top science jobs Saturday. In the process, he signaled a new White House emphasis on climate change.

Harvard professor John Holdren will be the chief White House science adviser and marine biologist Jane Lubchenco will run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Obama said his White House is determined to turn back toward science...

Speaking with Democracy Now this summer, Holdren had this to say:

"I think that most people — even most scientists — continue to underestimate how far down the path to climate catastrophe we've already traveled."

Holdren won't be alone in his views among influential White House voices. Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu, Obama's choice for energy secretary, said something similar to NPR reporters earlier this year:

"I don't think the American public understands [there's] a reasonably high probability some very bad things will happen," Chu said. "They fundamentally don't understand that, because if they really felt that then they would do something about it."

Both of these men stress the importance of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions soon...

It's hard to know how quickly Obama will push for legislation to limit greenhouse-gas emissions. Getting the right bill through Congress could be difficult with so many other priorities, including the looming financial crisis.

But there are executive options available that would bypass Congress, including asking the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, Shogren says. That could prompt Congress to move on the issue.

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[fccool]

Recycling as it is found today is one of the biggest jokes there is. Ironically it does more damage to the environment than producing new plastics/paper while taking a net energy loss, which is being subsidized by the taxpayers money who are beliving that they are doing a "good thing".

If the companies/countries really cared about the environment, then we would pitch the plastic packaging of products all together and restore the good old days of glass (which is extremely easy to re-wash and re purpose), and "open products" that are carried in net bags (which I would always take as a kid when going to a store). Do we really need to wrap tiny pair of headphones in 10 times as much plastic as it goes to make the headphones? .... and in a way that makes them extremely hard to open if you don't have a knife or scissors? So, it's inefficient to begin BUT

maybe by recycling... they mean recycling the inefficiency of it all. Now it makes sense!

[Woody]

This is very true cool ... Depending upon the county that you live in ... recycling may just be a total farce. It often times just doesn't happen at all. At work we were very careful to recycle ... we sorted our colors of papers even. In the end ... we found that they dumped all of our recycling items for our county in the same place as the rest of the garbage. It was a farce. The entire county was fooled. What a joke on us. Apparently ... it was just too expensive to recycle. The county just couldn't admit it and so just didn't tell us.

[olger]

I just read Calvin Beisner's book. Environmentalism is fast becoming the principle rival of Christianity. It is a religion - a false one I thnk.

[fccool]

We use recycled glass in our house. And I think that there are valid application to recycling certain materials... such as metal, and glass. BUT, when it comes to recycling paper and plastic.. . you get a loose/loose situation. You loose by subsidizing the industry, and environment looses because of more emission and waste.

Do you think that many of these businesses would be able to operate apart from the government subsidies? I hardly believe so, because the results are loss of revenues... especially now when demand for products is curbed.

I don't think that the answer is recycling... but reforms. Many of these packaging and "cleanliness" is superfluous and unnecessary. We don't use napkins at home and eat just fine, but we use them in restaurants because of their availability. The same goes with packaging. There might be a psychological preference of shiny securely packaged electronic toy, but there's no need nor justification for such packaging in many cases where preserving quality is at stake. On top of that, you end up paying for the packaging and print jobs, even if you already know what you want and trust the product on bases of the quality of the product and not the promises on the box.

So, instead of recycling inefficiency, why not pushing to get rid of inefficiency and excess? There would be less garbage that we have to worry about turning into a eventual garbage once again.

[Woody]

HEY ALL

YES I am sure that there are some places that recycling

is a farce. BUT there are some stores in my town and the

surrounding towns that sell recyclable items. Like they

have numbers on the plastic bottles---recyclable napkins---

recyclable bathroom tissue.

dgrimm60

How can we be cetain that the items labeled as 'recycled' are truly 'recycled'?

[Neil D]

Truely, the nay-sayers have not researched out the industry nor have they seen a problem nor do they care to....Despite the warning of top scientists, despite the evidence in front of them, despite thier continued ignorance , they persist in thier opinions....even when the bible indicates those same things...

And when adventists show conclusive proof of the Sabbath-Sunday issue to non-adventists, the adventist are amazed at the 'rejection of the Holy Spirit"...And here others are showing adventists conclusive evidence of global warming from experts in the field, and we continue to persist in our myths...We don't believe anything outside our myths...We refuse to become current....

[Dr. Shane]

The Adventist leadership seems to be on the global-warming bandwagon from what I can tell by watching Hope Channel and LLBN. I am not convinced that global warming is totally man-made although I am sure we are adding to it if not causing most of it. However all this carbon we are putting into the environment was there before the flood so by putting it back I don't believe we are going to destroy the earth although we will change the climate to be different from what it is today.

[olger]

It is not surprising that people who seek social popularity would take up social causes.

The best thing you can do for the poor, is not to become one.

oG

[Woody]

It is not surprising that people who seek social popularity would take up social causes.

The best thing you can do for the poor, is not to become one.

oG

Amazing. Just Amazing.

You need to take a look at Matt. 25

[fccool]

It is not surprising that people who seek social popularity would take up social causes.

The best thing you can do for the poor, is not to become one.

oG

I don't look at it that way. I look at it as a giant fund raiser scam for a problem that is still highly debated.

Just like cancer fighting fund raisers. They are trying to find the "cure for cancer", but in actuality seeking cure for cancer is like seeking cure for death. Instead of emphasizing the healthy lifestyle, the emphasis is to fix the problems accumulated in the body through the years of abuse and neglect... and fix these in a year of essentially cutting parts of the body out, or killing cells of the body with chemicals that will likely cause more dangerous problems down the road.

And all of the billions of the raised money goes to fund this never ending search for a cure, instead of concentrating on causes and prevention.

[Dr. Shane]

By burning up fossil fuels we are putting all the carbon back into the environment that was trapped in the plants and animals buried in the flood. Obviously there was a lot more carbon in the air at that time. It didn't rain then either so the environment was radically different. What will happen to our environment today if we pump all that pre-flood carbon back into it? Well,,, that is what we don't know. Certainly it is something to be concerned about. I don't buy into the computer models that the global-warming alarmists use. Computers cannot even predict a hurricane season, I am not going to rely on them to predict something much more complex like global warming.

[Neil D]

It is not surprising that people who seek social popularity would take up social causes.

The best thing you can do for the poor, is not to become one.

oG

"Lord, I thank thee that thou has provided all that I have. I thank thee that you have not made me a female. I thank thee that you have not made me like the homeless. "...he said, following Olger instruction....

[/TIC]

[Neil D]

By burning up fossil fuels we are putting all the carbon back into the environment that was trapped in the plants and animals buried in the flood. Obviously there was a lot more carbon in the air at that time. It didn't rain then either so the environment was radically different. What will happen to our environment today if we pump all that pre-flood carbon back into it? Well,,, that is what we don't know. Certainly it is something to be concerned about. I don't buy into the computer models that the global-warming alarmists use. Computers cannot even predict a hurricane season, I am not going to rely on them to predict something much more complex like global warming.

We don't know a lot of things...For example, since there was "so much" carbon at the time, what it did in it's natural/living state to the atomsphere...We don't know various bio-mechanisms that were in place to keep the atomsphere clean then...nor what cause the flood. Sure, it rained, but what caused the rain to happen? Was it a meteor? Did the antidiluvians raise the temperature of the earth? Since they were at least as smart as we were, what make us think that they could not make mechanical machines that thru out hydrocarbons as well? LA has tar pits with dinosaurs in them. Gasoline was definately available then as well...

No, the safest way is to reduce the amount of global warming is to convert our energy system from hydro-carbons to hybred innovations.

[Bravus]

...like my wife's sudden, random lung cancer after never smoking and living as healthy a life as possible. I can get behind the general principle of prevention complementing cure, but not the massive generalisation of it replacing cure.

[Bravus]

...and the cancer analogy is an odd one, since cutting our CO2 emissions and reducing deforestation would be pretty much exactly analogous to healthy living for the planet - prevention, not cure.