j_b

since when is it in the norm to "preemptively" invade and lay waste to another country for reasons that have turned out to be pure fabrications? Neither Sean Hannity nor Michael Moore have invaded anywhere that I've heard of (although Moore looks like he's laid siege to his share of all-you-can-eat buffets). So, could you stay on topic please? Or simply shut the fuck up. See you this weekend... i am on topic. conservatives call mmoore an extremist because he opposes the war openly. i am asking: since when is an unjustifyable, optional war that was started under false pretense not extreme? as for your threats/innuendos (in pm's or not) you can shove them where the sun don't shine, loser.

since when is it in the norm to "preemptively" invade and lay waste to another country for reasons that have turned out to be pure fabrications? edit: could you point out one thing mmoore advocates that is beyond the norm?

sorry people, i know, it's laborious. non sequitur. i did not say nor i have ever said any of these things. in fact, i have often said that saddam was a bloody dictator along with many other of our present/former allies.

so apparently cracked thinks that invading another nation, laying waste to it (for the foreseeable future), and killing 10,000's of people for no acknowledged good reason amounts to being moderate whereas opposing such actions is extreme. it's an orwellian reality in cracked's head (pretty fucked up imo but it's not like i am surprised). in fact, all of this tells us more about cracked arrested mental state than about michael moore, who is also a widely read author of many books in the u.s. (actually the most widely read non-fiction author of the last decade) and a movie director applauded throughout the world. eat your heart out.

moore, an extremist? would he be american as apple pie only if he agreed with invading another country for bogus reasons? i think not.

i did not calculate anything but eyeballed it; i just don't see what you mean. can you point out one poll that has done so in this campaign? .... i didn't think so. in any case, to answer your question, i would shut up and certainly not use conditional clauses when someone points out shoddy methodology and absurd bias ... there are many other polls out there that rely on likely voter samples w/ ridiculous bias and i am willing to bet that at this point any spread greater than the margin of error is due to bias that is not historically supported.

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/002881.html "Here is the text from the email I got from Gallup this morning outlining the party ID breakdown in their likely voter samples from their two most recent national polls: Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 13-15 Reflected Bush Winning by 55%-42% Total Sample: 767 GOP: 305 (40%) Dem: 253 (33%) Ind: 208 (28%) Likely Voter Sample Party IDs – Poll of September 24-26 Reflected Bush Winning by 52%-44% Total Sample: 758 GOP: 328 (43%) Dem: 236 (31%) Ind: 189 (25%) Looking at this, again I have a simple question: how can anyone, especially USA Today and CNN, let alone the rest of the media take a Gallup national poll seriously when Gallup knowingly puts a poll out there for consumption with a 12% GOP bias in its likely voter sample that everyone knows does not exist in the country today or at any time in the last three presidential elections?"

hopefully the prospect of a military draft will wake up some of the younger voters. rbw666: i reacted pretty much the same way you did when i read about the tax cuts extension. about the debates: Not-So-Great Expectations: Media's spin favors Bush -- again

the bias in the likely voter sample is the basis for my argument. there is absolutely no justification for it. in this election, i am scared of only one thing: manipulation of the public by the media. if you prorate the gallup poll for a more reasonable likely voter sample, kerry is ahead.

who voted for the last 3 presidential elections: 1992: 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (w/ perot which explain the diff with the other 2 elections) 1996: 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents 2000: 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents remarkably stable, right? bias in gallup likely voter poll for 2004: GOP: 43% Dem: 31% Ind: 25% hmmm ....

not really relevant. these are the final surveys (likely put out hours/days before voting). "On October 25, less than two weeks before the 2000 presidential election, [...] Gallup's national tracking poll showed George Bush leading Al Gore by 7 points. One day later, the Gallup tracking poll had Bush up by an incredible (literally) 13 points." like in 2000, they are manipulating public opinion.

so gallup again has bush ahead by 8 points. similarly to last week, gallup has a huge republican bias in their sample (this week they polled 12% more repubs than dems). such bias is not warranted: in recent elections more dems than repubs have gone voting on election day and there is no indication that anything has changed. are they trying to influence voters and demoralize dems? are they trying to set up kerry as the underdog for the debates? as for the debates, anyone wants to bet that whatever happens the talking heads will say that bush won? don't believe the hype. bush isn't in the lead.

California air board adopts vehicle emission cuts By Leonard Anderson SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California air-quality regulators have adopted the nation's first-ever rules to reduce car emissions linked to global warming, an action likely to prompt tough pollution standards in other states and a legal challenge by the auto industry. The new rules will require carmakers to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in cars and trucks by as much as 25 percent beginning with the 2009 model year, with cuts accelerating as high as 34 percent in 2016. New York and other states may follow the California regulations when weighing their own plans to reduce vehicle pollution, analysts said. [...]

just to be sure: the scientific community is not divided about the late 20th century acceleration in warming being due to anthropogenic emisssions of greenhouse gases. while on average global precip will be greater, the effects of the intensification of the water cycle will be highly regional: intensification of precips and floods at high latitudes but mostly more frequent droughts and heat waves in other regions (examples: northern china, mediterranean regions, etc ...). in other words, ireland and norway will mostly benefit while it will be disastrous for many countries to the south. spin alert: the "medieval warm period" was non-synchronous and not global but regional in nature spin alert: the little ice age was not global but regional it's more like the global warming disinformation center. the first sentence on that page: "There is no serious evidence that man-made global warming is taking place", which tells us a lot about they are trying to achieve. can you find a single scientific reference in the footnote section? i can't but i certainly see the weekly standard, the neocon paper. squid: i don't know if you believe the bullshit you post or if you are simply trolling to get a rise out of people but i am pesonally not amused. it's difficult enough to cut through the fog of spin put out by the fossil fuel energy industry without having trolls perpetuate the myth.

KaskadskyjKozak said: sorry pal, that won't do

you got that backward. you are supposed to prove your assertions, not the other way around. but this once i'll make an exception and disprove your blatant lies: "Overall, 68 sources, or 17 percent of the total on-camera sources, represented skeptical or critical positions on the U.S.'s war policy-- ranging from Baghdad officials to people who had concerns about the timing of the Bush administration's war plans. The percentage of skeptical sources ranged from 21 percent at PBS (22 of 106) to 14 percent at NBC (18 of 125). ABC (16 of 92) and CBS (12 of 70) each had 17 percent skeptics." note that the criteria for labeling skeptics was very conservative. link to above quote now if you need specific instances of pro-war bias, there is plenty more, just scroll down the page and you'll find it: http://www.fair.org/international/iraq.html

case closed? certainly not: What Is Bush Hiding?

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17701

i don't know about humanity but it does appear to be a challenge for michael crichton crichton attempts to paint environmentalists as atheists in need of religion but a majority of americans consider themselves environmentalists, yet few are atheists. in light of what follows, he must mean spin ... what a bunch of doodoo. ddt was banned in the u.s. and a few industrialized nations but it wasn't banned in countries were malaria today is a problem. ddt is still produced in industrialized nations and shipped to the regions of interest. shortly after it was introduced, ddt was used indiscriminately and in massive applications which rapidly led mosquitoes to develop resistance to the pesticide. that is the main reason why international organizations promoted the selective and topical use of ddt. as a matter of fact ddt is still used today inside houses in mosquito-infested regions. ddt is also a dangerous compounds that has been linked to reproductive problems in animals as well as humans. ddt like other organic pollutants dissolves at warm temperature and settles in colder regions which means that organic pollutants can also be found in pristine bodies of water and glaciers at high latitudes. if massive use of ddt hadn't been discontinued, it would have led not only to its being ineffective against malaria but also huge environmental problems. today there exists safe alternative to ddt such as bt and one can only wonder why the ddt issue comes up once more. it must too tempting for the likes of crichton to paint environmentalists as responsible for the death of millions. this guy is too much.

difficult question. there are of course a number of problems associated with interpreting ice core data. oxygen isotope ratios are usually understood to be good proxies for ice volume landlocked in glaciers and icesheets. in turn, some modeling is needed to derive temperature from the raw data which requires some assumptions notably w.r.t. the trajectory of air masses. but, there are independent ways to calibrate the relationship between oxygen isotopre ratios and temperature to insure a reasonable fit (notably via the thermal profile found in borehole). establishing the right chronology is a major issue as well and that becomes more difficult the deeper one gets in the ice mass. site selection for simple flow patterns (ice divide) is critical to insuring a core that isn't messed up by ice deformation. the chronology of the core is then established by counting annual layers via various means, identifying volcanic ash layers, etc ... i recall the following site having a good discussion of the theory behind the methods: http://ethomas.web.wesleyan.edu/ees123/isotope.htm air found in the interstitial space in firn eventually becomes trapped in air bubbles as snow becomes ice. these bubbles are samples of the paleo atmosphere which can be processed to deliver concentrations of co2, ch4, etc ..

Must read: Most senior US military officers now believe the war on Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale

i know little about nuclear power so i'll let others discuss the topic. it seems that waste disposal is a huge issue though.

err ..... i first showed that the analysis presented by tbay was bunk: satellite data of the earth skin temp shows greater warming than the surface temp record: " The 18-year Pathfinder data in the study showed that average global temperatures increased 0.43 Celsius © or 0.77 Fahrenheit (F) per decade, while ground station data indicated a rise of 0.34 C (0.61 F)." http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/Earth_Temperature.html moreover, a recent study shows that older satellite radiometric reading of the troposphere were in fact measuring microwave emissions from the stratosphere where indeed no mixing takes place." since when is nasa a "windbag biased tripe" organization? and the authors of the recent study about radiometric readings are from noaa and the university of washington (don't have a link though) where? i only noted that tbay's sources were coal industry shills and a moonie-owned paper. no, it doesn't: when trying to make a scientific argument use scientific sources independent from industry.

atmospheric co2 has increased 35% since the beginning of the industrial revolution (~1850) and 20% over the last ~45years. http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/07.htm compared to the last 400,000years

satellite data of the earth skin temp shows greater warming than the surface temp record: " The 18-year Pathfinder data in the study showed that average global temperatures increased 0.43 Celsius © or 0.77 Fahrenheit (F) per decade, while ground station data indicated a rise of 0.34 C (0.61 F)." http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/Earth_Temperature.html moreover, a recent study shows that older satellite radiometric reading of the troposphere were in fact measuring microwave emissions from the stratosphere where indeed no mixing takes place. by the way, as far as your source is concerned: "The Greening Earth Society (GES) was founded on Earth Day 1998 by the Western Fuels Association to promote the view that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are good for humanity. GES and Western Fuels are essentially the same organization. Both used to be located at the same office suite in Arlington, VA. Until December 2000, Fred Palmer chaired both institutions. The GES is now chaired by Bob Norrgard, another long-term Western Fuels associate. The Western Fuels Assocation (WFA) is a cooperative of coal-dependent utilities in the western states that works in part to discredit climate change science and to prevent regulations that might damage coal-related industries." http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=499 selective reading! "However, researchers at the MPS have shown that the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20-30 years. They took the measured and calculated variations in the solar brightness over the last 150 years and compared them to the temperature of the Earth. Although the changes in the two values tend to follow each other for roughly the first 120 years, the Earth’s temperature has risen dramatically in the last 30 years while the solar brightness has not appreciably increased in this time." www.maxplanck.de next time go to the scientific source. not a washington times article (a moonie-owned paper btw)