j_b

it's not just this year, read the article.

the article does not get into the huge human and economic cost of extreme weather but it is very real (tornados, floods, wind storms, etc ..). considering that it would take several decades before we can reverse the human contribution to warming, how long before these costs become greater than investing in non-fossil fuel forms of energy?

for the opportunity to not be pigeonholed at an early age (at least for caucasians). it is unmatched anywhere in the world.

http://www.couloirgraphics.com/AMM/forum/list.cfm?forum=10 not very active but worth a try

do i need to cite a counter-example for every one you mentioned or can you figure it out by yourself. in case you don't, just pick a reasonable newsite and look at the news coming out of iraq over the past month (how many dead civilians, how many coalitions soldiers dead), or do you want to talk about somalia? (you know, blackhawk down). i won't discuss the sex trafficking until you provide a reference (but i do know of trafficking done by civilians working for a us security firm). you'd rather if i used imperial? funny how a few month ago we were refusing the UN more time and all this show was supposed to be over in 6 months.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=421166 Reaping the whirlwind Extreme weather prompts unprecedented global warming alert 03 July 2003 In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire. In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change. The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out). The Geneva-based body, to which the weather services of 185 countries contribute, takes the view that events this year in Europe, America and Asia are so remarkable that the world needs to be made aware of it immediately. The extreme weather it documents, such as record high and low temperatures, record rainfall and record storms in different parts of the world, is consistent with predictions of global warming. Supercomputer models show that, as the atmosphere warms, the climate not only becomes hotter but much more unstable. "Recent scientific assessments indicate that, as the global temperatures continue to warm due to climate change, the number and intensity of extreme events might increase," the WMO said, giving a striking series of examples. In southern France, record temperatures were recorded in June, rising above 40C in places - temperatures of 5C to 7C above the average. In Switzerland, it was the hottest June in at least 250 years, environmental historians said. In Geneva, since 29 May, daytime temperatures have not fallen below 25C, making it the hottest June recorded. In the United States, there were 562 May tornadoes, which caused 41 deaths. This set a record for any month. The previous record was 399 in June 1992. In India, this year's pre-monsoon heatwave brought peak temperatures of 45C - 2C to 5C above the norm. At least 1,400 people died in India due to the hot weather. In Sri Lanka, heavy rainfall from Tropical Cyclone 01B exacerbated wet conditions, resulting in flooding and landslides and killing at least 300 people. The infrastructure and economy of south-west Sri Lanka was heavily damaged. A reduction of 20-30 per cent is expected in the output of low-grown tea in the next three months. Last month was also the hottest in England and Wales since 1976, with average temperatures of 16C. The WMO said: "These record extreme events (high temperatures, low temperatures and high rainfall amounts and droughts) all go into calculating the monthly and annual averages, which, for temperatures, have been gradually increasing over the past 100 years. "New record extreme events occur every year somewhere in the globe, but in recent years the number of such extremes have been increasing. "According to recent climate-change scientific assessment reports of the joint WMO/United Nations Environmental Programme Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the global average surface temperature has increased since 1861. Over the 20th century the increase has been around 0.6C. "New analyses of proxy data for the northern hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest in any century during the past 1,000 years." While the trend towards warmer temperatures has been uneven over the past century, the trend since 1976 is roughly three times that for the whole period. Global average land and sea surface temperatures in May 2003 were the second highest since records began in 1880. Considering land temperatures only, last May was the warmest on record. It is possible that 2003 will be the hottest year ever recorded. The 10 hottest years in the 143-year-old global temperature record have now all been since 1990, with the three hottest being 1998, 2002 and 2001. The unstable world of climate change has long been a prediction. Now, the WMO says, it is a reality.

hu hu h.. talking about yourself in the 3rd person now? what are you 6? that is one step up form the i'm rubber and you are glue rhetort... you are either 6 or fetal alcohol... you are lucky ridicule does not kill. you guys spend countless hours spewing immature tripe, and as it turns out i'd be the retard who thrives on keeping stupid threads open?

talking about yourself in the 3rd person now?

the edit was so you'd understand the meaning of the post. and as it turns out, i was right, you needed help.

sheer brilliance, that... coming from the master of useless repartees, i'll take it.

neener! neener! neener! have i toned down the rhetoric enough to be at your level, yet?

PPPPPPPPPPPFFFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTT You need a new pass time, the being a pussy thing is getting boring no kidding listen to muffy and grow a pair... what about you two growing a brain. in the end it's much more useful.

hey look! another 'freedom' lover

perhaps a mod will chime in to let you know what went down but i had no part in it. in fact, i actually enjoyed seeing how few readers voted. i guess it just shows most people are not as mean-spirited as you are.

40 views, 2 votes. it's what i call getting one's ass kicked.

i am so sorry you have the attention span of a pea

Mtn. Pig and j_b the Fool should be limited to like 2 pages of their bullshit and then have the threads locked down. It's not even funny and a total waste of bandwidth. Both of those idiots are total fucking Tools. You 2 suck ass and instead we should be treated to your countless pages of drivel? and to boot you think you are funny

If they insist a body as ineffective in peacekeeping as the UN take these roles, yup, a mob. again thanks for showing your opportunistic stance. and ineffective relative to what? the colonial administration we installed in iraq? every day we see how effective it is at keeping peace and finding the WMD's.

yeah right, the people of this country fully realize that if this iraq war was to be for the benefit of iraqis and that to deflect iraqi anger away from coalition troops, the UN (an independent body) has to control the process of reconstruction and the people suddenly become a mob? you shmuck. the religious right is ~25% of the population and they all vote. the disenfranchised who don't vote, by definition, don't have righteous preconceptions. if there is any significant increase in the number of voters, you are toast.

Since your definition of "democratic" often seems to basically be nothing more than mob rule without any basis in principle, I'd have to agree. If you however agree on holding some values higher than what a mob wants, then we probably share more in common than you expect. What a bunch of people want must be tested against what it is right to let them do in the first place. For an example of this, no matter how many people vote yes, it's not OK to hold slaves. Is this anti democratic, or merely holding certain values above those of what lots of people might vote is OK? dude your argument is falling apart. you always rail against those that would want to enforce their views upon you and take away your dear 'freedom' and here you are defending minority rule. you know what it's called? opportunism.

no, he would not want to appear to be callous, now would he?

that's about as many as usually control it. We do not live in a pure democracy, thank god. Get used to it. With the UN's sterling record in all the nations still in turmoil, what any 2/3 want is not necessarily actually a good idea. The "we" would be the people of this nation who live under a system based on the idea that it is not the govt that grants rights as goodies to be provided by someone else, but are due to our existence alone by birthright, not govt fiat. That the state exists to protect these rights, not create them. The difference between systems based on negative rights (US) and ones based on positive rights (most of the world) is deep and fundamental. it's always a pleasure to expose how deeply anti-democratic you fundamentally are.

who is we, the 25% of the electorate that currently controls US politics? make no mistake, 2/3 of the US population in the latest polls wants the UN to have control of economic development, government building, etc .. in iraq. don't take your fantasies for realities.

the threat of 'collectivism' is just another skeleton rattled by the far right. they can't use the eastern block anymore so they need another boogeyman. in fact the only collectivism we see is that of a bloated militari-industrial complex (insofar as we all support them with our taxes) and the widespread reach of corporatism. in truth, what we are seeing is a world getting smaller by the day. corporate entities span several continents, diverse information about happenings are readily available and its just not possible to deny anymore what we have known for many decades that unexploded ordinance and landmines in particular are killing innocents way past the end of conflicts all over the globe, that governments and corporations use private proxies to do their dirty work, etc ... if wanting to put an end to random murder and shameless greed is 'collectivism' ... so be it.

i see that you are not going to explain. a quick perusal will show that up to your intervention in this thread, i have ~ 1/3rd as many posts as JG and RumR, half as many as greg, as many as erik, trask, joshk, and a slew of others. so what eating you? i don't make enough inane comments or punctuate my posts with enough slurring to your taste?