Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Chas Cornweller.
The other night I watched the Town Hall Debate on CNN (which actually was less a debate, than a fifty-minute infomercial on Solar Panels and Wind Turbines, as sponsored by Al Gore). The issue of Global Warming, Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, Rain Bombs (my favorite term) and Changing Weather Patterns, to name a few terms used by science, is an elaborate and complex one. It has also been debated now for over sixty years. I have actually seen and read an article from Life Magazine dated August 27, 1956 entitled “Our New Weather” subtitled, “Scientist believe more hurricanes, more tornadoes, higher temperatures and unseasonal storms are part of a long-term change in world climate.” Google it…an enlightening read.
Storm floods Cape Charles (Cape Charles Mirror Photo)
So, yes, the debate continues. And has continued for some time now. The interesting thing is, we are now in the throes of this massive change that is effecting everything from food and insurance prices to shifting national borders. Mass migrations have occurred around the world (Bangladesh 1970-72 due to flood conditions, Middle East region – Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen 1970- present due to drought conditions) There are other hot spots around the world that are either experiencing drastic climate change, but get less coverage either due to apathy or lack of significant impact to the rest of the world’s economy. The point being, the earth is a very complicated and well linked machinelike organism. Many, many people cannot or will not see the earth in this way. It is a deliberate and living organism that operates in ways we have not begun to fathom. We, as a species have had a major impact in destroying vast amounts of forest (Amazonian Rainforest for one) and filling wetlands and rehydrating desert regions. Now, the major cause of the debate that rages today is this…is mankind to blame for climate change?
My take on this question is, no, not directly. Weather/Climate change is inevitable, clear and simple. Geological history has proven that as a fact. Just twenty thousand years ago, the entire Northern portion of the Northern Hemisphere was under an ice sheet. This sheet covered Canada and as far south as northern portions of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Washington State and most of northern Europe and Siberia as far south as France in the west, China in the east. Vast areas that are now under three hundred feet of water were exposed and habitable. This is a scientific fact and indisputable. Was mankind responsible for the great thaw of 10,000 B.C.? Highly unlikely. So, the take away is this. Earth’s weather changes. And it sometimes changes in big ways. So we, as fellow travelers, have that going for us.
But also, since ten thousand years ago, the human population has increased seven billion and counting. That increase finds many, many thousands of millions of humans living on or near a sea coast. The question of sea level rise is really a no brainer. Especially since the nearly completed melting of the last glacial cap the oceans have risen over one hundred feet (some estimates place it even higher!) Twenty thousand years ago, the coastline off the Eastern Shore would have extended miles out into the continental shelf. There was no Chesapeake Bay. Possibly it was just a rivulet, an extension of the Susquehanna or the James, Rappahannock, York, and Potomac. Today, it is a full bay, the largest estuary in the United States and growing. Sea level rise is real. Geological history tells us this. So, in fact, thousands of millions, perhaps several billion, will be directly affected.
With no dis-respect to Mayor Eskridge and his observations of the bay, he is sadly mistaken. With every major storm that blows over the bay, that rise is measurably indicated. Watermen and weathermen call this tides, not sea level rise. Mayor Eskridge also notes that it is erosion that is eating at the island. In that he is correct, but without sea level rise and an influx of increased tidal fluctuation, erosion would not have the effect it is having now. In fact, if the levels were going down, the island would be increasing in size. But, in fact, the island community is doomed. With or without a seawall of less than three feet in height, the timetable for the existence of that island is at best one hundred years. At worst, thirty to fifty years. Another aspect that Mayor Eskridge (and many others) fail to grasp, is the lowering of the crust/mantle directly under the entire eastern seaboard. The east coast is sinking as well as the sea is rising. The drowning of coastal cities such as Miami, Charleston, Savanna, Wilmington (N.C.), Norfolk, New York and many other smaller coastal villages and towns is inevitable. Is mankind responsible for this? Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter, at this point?
The key here is, enlightenment. Opening your mind to the problem and contemplating how to solve it. One solution is, move. Move, far inland and preferably to higher ground. Another, costlier solution is, build a wall and protect the areas. The Dutch have been doing it for years. The city of London is protected from the rise of the Thames River by a series of locks and barriers that open and close on command. A series of dams and dykes have protected (mostly successfully) the City of New Orleans for over a hundred years. It took a modern weather event to expose the flaws in a poorly designed and built system there. The same will occur again in the near future, possibly somewhere along the East Coast. It is as inevitable as the rain falling from the sky.
Lastly, I somewhat joked about the infomercial of the wind turbines and solar panels at the beginning of this discourse. However, energy use is no joke. Fossil fuels have done irreparable damage to our atmosphere. Mankind’s fault? You bet it is. Can we reverse it now? The answer to that is a resounding no. The damage has been done. All it would take to tip this earth into another extinction event is a cataclysmic eruption of any major volcano or caldera anywhere in the world and a release of millions of tons of inner earth gases such as sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide and vast amounts of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. Again, mankind’s fault? No, and mankind would be hard pressed to compete with the amount of gasses released by an eruption of this size. The pattern I am presenting here is two-fold. One, whatever we do from here on out, is incrementally small compared to what Mother Earth can and will hand out. Two, the human species is one of the weakest links in the sustainability of the balance of life on this planet. We are more comparable to a microbe (and a very slow adapting/evolving microbe at that!) on this planet. And as far as microbes go, more a harmful one to the earth. We are like a cancer than a healer. More like a borer beetle in a pine tree than nourishing rain or supportive soil. The human species in its present modern form has been around somewhat give or take a couple of hundred thousand years. The lasting effect we have had on the weather (for better or for worst-does it matter?) has occurred in just under the past two hundred years. We are quickly using up the last of earth’s resources to accommodate our modern existence and crass materialistic values. And while we are busy at this, many voices argue whether fossil fuels are needed or should we convert to another more sustainable source of energy. My question at this point is… does debating about it really matter? Our procrastination has cost us decades of advancement and protection from a looming problem. The alarm was sounded back in the fifties. We didn’t listen.
So, expect more intense hurricanes in the east, tornadoes everywhere, massive wild fires in the western states, higher taxes for everyone, and outrageous insurance rates in the future. Will wind and solar energy sources replace fossil fuels? Absolutely. But, not anytime soon. At least not until the three largest energy companies can come up with a way to reach deep into your pockets and make a profit of renewable energy. Until then, hunker down, buy flood insurance, hip-waders and kayaks and be mindful to keep your fossil fuel burning vehicle parked on higher ground. Because if you wait for politicians to act, you’ll see your village go the way Mayor Eskridge’s will eventually go. And it will take a lot less than a couple of hundred years.
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Way back in 1975 (yes, I know, young people, that was in a different benighted century compared to this highly enlightened one we have now), I was a student at a supposedly prestigious polytechnic institute to the north of you people here in Virginia, working on a master’s degree in engineering, and as such, as a part of the requirements for that degree, I had to do research.
My particular field of research was on the heat and mass transfer characteristics of nuclear cooling tower plumes.
If you have never witnessed a nuclear cooling tower plume, you should make it a point to do so.
And here, let me back up in time even further, back to high school in or about 1960 (no, it wasn’t held in a log cabin) and what was known then as “earth science,” where all of what we talk about today with respect to what is called “climate change” was being discussed, and the key point is the role that water plays in shaping our “environment.”
In a word, water controls our environment.
By way of review, and this used to be elementary, water exists as three phases, all of which are water, those three phases being the solid phase, the liquid phase and the gaseous phase.
What separates those phases, and this is critical to understanding this so-called “climate change,” which I call “global energy change,” is energy itself.
Why does ice “melt,” which is really a change of phase from solid to liquid?
Why does water evaporate, which is a change of phase from liquid to gas?
And why does water vapor, a gas, condense to make liquid water?
And the answer is energy, called in scientific terms, the latent heat of fusion.
For glaciers to melt, which they are doing in our own Montana, and over in the Alps, and elsewhere on the planet, you have to supply sufficient latent heat to make it change phase, also called the enthalpy of fusion of a substance, which is the change in its enthalpy resulting from providing energy, typically heat, to a specific quantity of the substance to change its state from a solid to a liquid at constant pressure.
So where is that latent heat coming from today, and as Chas Cornweller points out above, where did that latent heat come from ten or so thousand years ago to melt those huge glaciers that covered a goodly (bigly?) portion of North America back then?
And the only obvious answer is something had to produce that heat, which is something high school and yes, grade school children in America once used to know, before TWITTER and texting came along to distract and confuse us.
Now, we weren’t around ten thousand years, so we really cannot pinpoint that source of latent heat of fusion back then, but what about today?
Which takes us back forward in time from high school earth science to my master’s project on nuclear cooling tower plumes.
In that type of study, there are two balances that must need be considered – one being the mass balance (all mass must be accounted for) and the energy balance (all energy must be accounted for).
With respect to nuclear cooling towers, the source of energy input comes from the nuclear plant itself, which we were told by Popular Science magazine way back in the 60s or earlier (yes, back into not only the past century, but the past millenium, as well) was going to “harness the energy of the sun for the benefit of mankind.”
Now, think about that for a brief moment, people, the energy of the sun contained inside a concrete building here on earth!
WOW, what a miracle of modern science that is, but is it really?
If we do not know anything else about the sun, other than it is sometimes in the sky and sometimes not, and it might or might not rise in the east and set in the west, depending on what your preference is, we know that it is quite HOT – certainly hot enough to melt ice and evaporate water, anyway, which brings us to the cooling towers and their massive plumes.
To keep a nuclear facility from melting down (no, Trump supporters and science deniers, Fukushima and Chernobyl are not “fake news”), it needs what is kn0wn as a “heat sink,” which is someplace to dump all that energy (waste heat, which is an emission) which does not go into the electrical generation process, in the same way you have waste heat coming out of the tailpipe of your car and under your hood from your radiator, which is yet another modern heat source contributing energy to the global environment.
To the north of you, Lake Ontario in New York state is such a heat sink for nuclear generating facilities on the south shore to dump their waste heat into, and here, the science deniers will jump into this discussion to tell us all that dumping all that heat into Lake Ontario will have NO IMPACT at all, because the lake is so big, and the activities of man are so small that all that heat energy dumped into Lake Ontario is negligible, which is about a pure a grade of bull**** as you can find anywhere on the planet outside of Washington, D.C.
To give this some needed perspective (no, I couldn’t shrink this down to the size of a TWEET, so my apologies for that), let us stop for the moment to review this Associated Press article entitled “Drought could force nuke-plant shutdowns” by Mitch Weiss from January 23, 2008, to wit:
LAKE NORMAN, N.C. — Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
“Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel,” said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power.
“You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants.”
He added: “This is becoming a crisis.”
All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants’ turbines.
At some plants — those with tall, Three Mile Island-style cooling towers — a lot of the water travels up the tower and is lost to evaporation.
Progress spokeswoman Julie Hahn said the Harris reactor, for example, sucks up 33 million gallons a day, with 17 million gallons lost to evaporation via its big cooling towers.
end quote
WHOA, people, what did that just say – something about just one nuclear facility alone pumping 17 MILLION gallons PER DAY into the environment?
WOW!
So where does all that gaseous water go then?
And that answer, if you have ever bothered to watch a nuclear cooling tower plume, is straight up, for tens of thousands of feet, carrying with it prodigious amounts of heat energy high up into earth’s atmosphere, where anybody who has ever been up in a plane knows is or used to be cold.
So what happens when you introduce a hot gas, which is what water vapor leaving a nuclear cooling tower is, into a cold gas, which is what the upper atmosphere is?
Don’t you start to get what is known as “heat transfer?”
Doesn’t energy from the hot substance flow into the cold substance, giving energy to the cold substance it did not formerly have?
Doesn’t that “warm” the cold substance, which happens to be our environment?
Isn’t that why to the north of you, up here in the cold country, people rely on hot water heating systems to keep them warm, because they are so efficient at doing so, given the heat capacity of a pound of water?
So, we have 17 million gallons per day of liquid water from just one nuclear facility being energized to supply it with sufficient latent heat of vaporization to gasify it, which gives us the environmental equivalent of a steam heating facility, where what is being heated by the steam is the cold air above us, which makes that air both warmer and wetter.
But what is happening to the steam as it heats the cold air?
Isn’t it losing heat energy?
And as it loses energy, isn’t there a point where it can no longer remain as a gas, and instead, is forced by nature to have to change phase back to a liquid?
And what happens when the gaseous equivalent of 17 million gallons of liquid water high up in the atmosphere is forced to condense?
Isn’t it going come back down on somebody’s head as liquid water, all 17 million gallons of it?
Think about it, people – where on earth is all that water Chas Cornweller is talking about that pours down on us as warm rain really coming from?
Is the mystery really that big of a one?
Hear, hear! This is the most erudite analysis Ive heard yet.
Mr Cornweller gives us much to ponder but he is correct in saying the time for debate is over. The time for action is now!
Good points, all. And the correct “action” is way past due. Not only in our personal habits but in choosing the right elected officials to help create policy and provide incentives to steer us toward more sustainable and less damaging sources of energy. Erosion, yes, but the bigger problem remains the heated atmosphere which has been expedited by mankind and many people’s denial of this fact.
Yes, because destroying the AMERICAN economy will fix India and China and Africa and the Pacific rim countries pollution.
Derp.
Destroying the AMERICAN economy, Mike Kuzma, Jr.?
Are you kidding us?
Or making light of us, perhaps?
And who’s doing that, dude, destroying the AMERICAN economy?
People looking for some common sense in this country when it comes to preventing further environmental damage and destruction caused by greedy, out-of-control capitalists and bloviating fools who think the activities of humans have no impact on the environment?
What is going to destroy the American economy, and Mike, if it was not propped up right now with $4 TRILLION in funny money printed up by the federal reserve to monetize the federal debt over these last so many years, we wouldn’t have much of one, as it was pretty well destroyed by the federal reserve being asleep at the switch while the GREAT RECESSION caused by the federal government housing policies was going down, is not these people looking for common sense – it is the WEATHER!
Just look at this MARKETWATCH Market Snapshot article by Sue Chang and Barbara Kollmeyer published July 20, 2017:
Shares of Travelers Inc. shed 1.9% after the insurer posted a lower profit amid higher catastrophe and weather-related losses.
The stock, a Dow component, was one of the biggest losers on that blue-chip average.
end quotes
LOSSES, Mike!
Losses related to the weather.
Are you comprehending that, dude?
Does that make it through your barriers and screens to register on your brain that there is something wrong here with the weather?
Or don’t you ever go outside?
It is those losses that are going to destroy our economy, Mike, and that train has already left the station and is gaining speed.
How much faster do you want it to go?
When I wrote this Mike, I knew there would be push back. My whole point is this: the time for debate is over. We have already surpassed several tipping points of which there is no return. Does it matter if man is to blame? At this juncture, it does not. But we should figure out what we are still doing that exacerbates the weather patterns and stop it! At least slow it down altogether. That was what the Paris Accord was all about! Any other statement tied to the Paris Accords is hogwash…propaganda…lies brought to by the fine folks at Gulf Oil and British Petroleum. India and China are already on schedule to change their industry patterns to be more in line with further advances in clean industry. To their economic benefit, I might add. So, Mike, if you are so worried about the American economy crashing; perhaps you should follow banking patterns and the markets and eagle eye the de-regulation of stop gaps put in place by the Obama administration since the crash of 2008. That’s where the real economic harm may possibly occur.
Flooding, massive rain events, tornadoes, hurricanes and increased snowfall (wet and heavy) in the winter…all this WILL occur and IS occurring now! The American economy is being destroyed not by communists, the Chinese, or even your favorite welfare queen just down the street…no, it is being destroyed by poorly educated, low bar reaching, low information gathering, dog barking sycophants who don’t have sense to get out of the rain. Do some research, please….would you? It’s out there and it’s not ALL fake news.
Push back, Chas Cornweller?
Where, pray tell, is there many “push back” in here?
What you got wasn’t “push back,” it was “pushed at,”, and there is a huge difference between the two.
One would think that if there was to be real, meaningful “push back” in here, and I for one would have welcomed the attempt at debate, it would be a science-based refutation of the points made in your post above, the most relevant of which are your statements as follows:
POINT I: My whole point is this: the time for debate is over.
MY OBSERVATION: One would have thought the science deniers in here would have jumped on that to make their point that there is no debate since there is no global climate change that can be attributed to the actions of mankind, which is an absurd statement on its face, but a debating point the science deniers are entitled to put forth in here, nonetheless.
But instead, they stay silent.
One must wonder why.
POINT II: We have already surpassed several tipping points of which there is no return.
MY OBSERVATION: Again, a red meat statement that one would have expected the science deniers to jump on and tear to shreds, arguing from the standpoint that there can be no such tipping points because global climate change or global warming is FAKE NEWS, and again, they stayed silent.
What is up with that, one must wonder.
Why the silence?
POINT III: Does it matter if man is to blame?
MY OBSERVATION: From the point of view of the science deniers, since nothing is happening, there is nothing to blame man for.
POINT IV: But we should figure out what we are still doing that exacerbates the weather patterns and stop it!
MY OBSERVATION: As we go point by point here, we can see how impervious the argument of the science deniers really is – according to them, we are doing nothing, so nothing is happening, therefore, there is nothing to stop.
And you, Chas Cornweller, have no way to refute or unprove their arguments, since to do so, you would have to employ the science they don’t believe in, which would just submit you to more of the mockery that I have labeled “pushed at” above here, where everything you have stated has been negated by simply attaching to you the label of “liberal,”
The science deniers are very skillful, indeed, is supporting their denial of science with personal attacks intended to diminish the stature of anyone questioning their beliefs in the eyes of the public, to draw attention away from the fact that the position of the science deniers is untenable, since to support it, you yourself have to discard every scientific belief you were taught in grade school and high school about the hydrologic cycle, which cycle governs the earth’s climate.
At to the Paris Accord, what that was all about was politics and posturing and show bidness!
It was wish and hope, Chas Cornweller.
It never was binding on the USA, because Obama never bothered to submit it to the Senate for their review and approval as a treaty, just as the Kyoto agreement was a sham.
Who cares right now about any other country than OUR country, Mike Kuzma, Jr.?
What are our long, pointy American noses doing stuck up the butts of every other person and nation on the globe, telling them how they have to live their lives and what they have to believe if they don’t want us sending in commando squads to kill them?
What do you know about India’s and China’s and Africa’s and the Pacific rim countries’ pollution?
Have you studied it?
Have you quantified it?
Have you proposed any remedies that would take precedent to fixing what is being broken here while we bandy words back and forth in here about whether or not science is science, and my goodness, where oh where is all that rain coming from, besides up there over our heads where there are now some billions of gallons waiting to come down on us that were put up there by us way back in the 1970s and every day since then.
Think about that, Mike Kuzma, Jr., dude – how long can you tread water, and how well can you swim in a flash flood?
Have you ever seen a flash flood, Mike?
How they come from nowhere like a speeding train with the destructive power of a herd of bulldozers, taking trees, rocks, houses, cars, septic tanks, whatever is in their path with them, and there is doodly-squat you can do about it, Mike, other than impotently shake your fist at heaven in a rage.
Are you unaware, Mike, of all the flooding that has been happening in this country in recent years?
Are you aware that just yesterday, New Orleans was inundated with 10 inches of rain?
Besides from straight up, Mike, where do you think all that water came from?
Let me ask you this, Mike, since you seem to have a college degree in some kind of rocket science and therefore can understand these more technical things – if you hear on the radio or TV news that the Mississippi River is real low due to drought conditions, have you ever wondered where the missing water went to?
It turned into a gas, didn’t it, and went up into the atmosphere, because as the atmosphere warms up, and Mike, this is something old people out in the country side without fancy college degrees know, as the atmosphere warms up as it has been doing, thanks to the actions of mankind, of which you are one and so bear some degree of responsibility, especially if you are one of those people who keep every light in the house burning regardless of if the room is empty or not, while having the outside lit up like the grounds of a high security prison or SuperMax, as the atmosphere warms up it can hold more water vapor, and so liquid water evaporates or changes state to accommodate what has become a new normal.
And Mike, I know that you know that the atmosphere is a HUGE (bigly) THERMODYNAMIC ENGINE, like a big flywheel in the sky, if you wish, and like a big flywheel, if you put energy into it, as we are doing, and yes, Mike, I sure as hell do mean you, so don’t try to slink off somewhere and hide as if you have no responsibility for anything, that flywheel gets spinning faster, which impacts on inertia, as you recall from your engineering training, and momentum, and being HUGE, once put into a new regime of motion, it, like a battleship, will be a long time slowing down.
So how much more heat do we want to put into the atmosphere to our detriment, Mike, to get that flywheel spinning even faster?
Continue on, pedal to the metal, fire all your guns at once and explode into space?
What’s your thoughts, dude, the candid world would like to know?
Paul, good to hear from you. Thanks for your concise input. (smiley face emoji) The sad truth of this, is the more annual rainfall incurred on the Shore, the more damaging to the aquifer and chance of additional influx of chemical farm product to that aquifer. I didn’t even mention this in my article or other more distressing factors due to climate change. Small doses…small doses. But, thank you again and good to hear from you. Hope all is well for you and yours in upstate NY.
My thoughts run towards…………..there are pharmaceuticals that can help you, buddy.
Bangalore. Ship. Breaking. Yard. Look it up.
Sudbury Nickel Mine. Look it up.
Here, I’ll even give you one: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31478-china-s-communist-capitalist-ecological-apocalypse
Yes, mankind all of whom can fit into Texas and Oklahoma with a nice 1/5 acre lot are the cause.
NOT Mt. St. Helen’s which emitted more particulate into the atmosphere than mankind did in his entire history on the globe?
Then blame my minivan again.
But hey, you keep on keeping on. I for one look forward to our new insect overlords, nee the Chinese or whoever wins out after all of you all destroy the last best hope for the world.
And blame the floods in CC on Globull Werming, not an uncaring, disconnected Local Government that doesn’t clean out the storm drains.
So, Chas…….lemme get this right……….Obama’s economic regs are BAD for America but somehow he REALLY had the best interests of everyone in mind when he got us suckered into Paris Accords?
Cognitive. Dissonance.
Say the word and I’d be glad to explain how the 2008 crash had it’s roots in Jimmuh Carter;s admin, and the crash was set in stone by none other than BJ Billy Clinton.
Now go complain that no one will pay a Goobermint employee to pick up yer trash, eco warriors.
When Obama, or whatever his real name is, loses the protection of the National Security Letter that has protected him from background investigations, he’ll find himself in front of a military court, facing a life in prison.
Yes, Barry Soetoro will find himself relegated to punk status in a prison general population, and there he’ll live Happily Ever After!
My goodness, Mike, what a rant, but dude, you got foam all over your mouth now as a result!
Here, let me wipe it off for you with a cloth before people think you have rabies or something.
There, now that’s better, Mike, you certainly look more presentable now than you did with that foam all over your face.
And that is bad for your heart, dude, not to mention your liver, getting all het up like that, especially about the so-called Paris Accords, which were never binding on the United States because Caesar, in the person of the spindle-shanked Marxist Hussein Obama, never submitted what is a treaty to the Senate for its approval pursuant to our Constitution, which Obama never troubled himself to be concerned about.
So that was all hype and propaganda, that’s all it ever was – words on the wind from a world-class bull******* and con man intended to gull the gullible into thinking Obama was giving them “A REAL GOOD DEAL,” when the fact is, there was no deal, at all.
And dude, what the heck is up with all the pharmaceuticals you are rambling on about up there?
That’s some serious ****, Mike!
How is it that you have such knowledge of it?
I never heard of any of that stuff before, so I had to go to google to look it up, not being sure if you were speaking English or some foreign language.
As I said, that is some serious ****, and you would do well for yourself to stay far away from it.
As to Chas Cornweller, personally, Mike, I think it’s a no sale, as I believe he has more sense than to get himself involved with any if that crap because some stranger on the internet told him it would be good for him, you know what I am saying?
As to the U.S. economy, Mike, hang on to your hat here, dude, because it is an illusion!
It never was sustainable, being based on irrational exuberance, gluttony, greed and consumption, which equates with destruction, and we just happen to be living in its latter days when the chickens are now coming back home to roost, a point which was made incandescently clear just yesterday in the MARKETWATCH article “Americans now have the highest credit-card debt in U.S. history” by Maria LaMagna, published: August 7, 2017, wherein was stated:
They now collectively have the most outstanding revolving debt — often summarized as credit card debt — in U.S. history, according to a report Monday released by the Federal Reserve.
Americans had $1.021 trillion in outstanding revolving credit in June 2017.
This beats the previous record in April 2008, when consumers had a collective $1.02 trillion in outstanding credit revolving credit.
end quotes
Sing hallelujah, say Amen and God bless Murrika, ain’t it, Mike, the one land in the world where you can buy anything you want, even if you have no money, by slapping it on the old credit card, not to worry.
And what about this, Mike:
The New York Federal Reserve released a new report Wednesday that showed U.S. collective household debt balances totaled $12.73 trillion in March 2017, surpassing the 2008 peak of $12.68 trillion.
end quotes
Wasn’t 2008 when we began the slide into the GREAT RECESSION, Mike?
Doesn’t it look like the same slide is starting all over again, because without greed, gluttony and consumption, with its service economy, the United States would have no economy.
Just look at the last jobs report, Mike, as shown in this MARKETWATCH article by Jeffry Bartash published August 4, 2017, to wit:
In July, restaurants and bars hired 53,000 people.
Most other industries such as mining, manufacturing and construction only added a smattering of jobs.
Retailers increased hiring slightly, but they’ve actually lost jobs in the past 12 months.
end quotes
There is your American economy, Mike – the highest number of jobs created were in bars and restaurants, so what does that tell you about anything?
And then there is this, again just yesterday in a MARKETWATCH article by Greg Robb published August 7, 2017:
Bullard (federal reserve official) said the question of whether financial stability should be a goal of monetary policy remains “a hot topic.”
end quote
Are you understanding that debate, Mike, on the heels of the GREAT RECESSION, which put a lot of taxpayer dollars in a lot of rich, private pockets as capitalist losses were socialized to protect them from their own folly – SHOULD FINANCIAL INSTABILITY INSTEAD OF STABILITY BE THE REAL GOAL OF MONETARY POLICY IN AMERICA TODAY?
Were are you on that, Mike?
And while you are at it, Mike, thinking that is, think about this: way back in 1975, which is 42 years ago, or more importantly, 15,330 days ago, times 17 million gallons per day of water vapor put in the atmosphere by just one nuclear facility cooling tower alone, we knew with a high degree of scientific certainly based on data provided by the New York State Power Pool that nuclear facility cooling tower plumes were also carrying liquid water high up into the earth’s atmosphere, and we knew one day it was going to come back down, as it is doing now, as downpours of rain and large hail, and you know what happened to that knowledge?
And of course you do, Mike, given that this is America – it was buried!
POOF!
It was gone, just like that – HUSH!
SHHHHHH!
Don’t tell, people will get upset.
Said I, naïve as I then was, just back from the Army and Viet Nam, not realizing yet that these people were sociopaths devoid of any real feelings towards himan life, being in the game for the money, as they were, “People are going to be more upset when it starts happening,” and Mike, you are a worldly dude, you know what the response to that from the power brokers was, the same old classic that gets wheeled out again and again to put off making decisions and taking action before it is too late – “By the time that happens, we’ll be gone and it will be somebody else’s problem.”
And you know what, Mike, it is – it is now the problem of my grand daughters who are yet children.
I’ll be sure to have them thank you for your indifference to the plight you have helped hand them by your lack of concern for the world around you, and Mike, as always, dude, thanks you from a grateful nation for your input in here.
It’s you…
One of the many things I have learned about people, Jorge, over the years that I have been alive, and I imagine you have learned it too, judging by your dogged determination in a belief that I am the subject of a Newsday article entitled “New York VA center one of slowest to process veterans’ claims” by Martin C. Evans, updated April 29, 2013 @ 10:34 PM, something that isn’t hard to believe, Jorge, because the caption under the picture at the top says “Vietnam War veteran Paul Plante of Huntington poses for a portrait at the VFW Post 3211 in Hicksville Monday where Congressman Steve Israel announced legislation that would force the VA to pay claims automatically if they are not handled within the VA’s 125-day target,” is that once someone latches on to a belief like that, they get an attachment to it so it becomes a part of them, a part of their very psyche and the raison d’etre of their very being, so that they can’t let go of it, as that would crumple their belief in their own omnipotence, an important belief, all in all, Jorge, as I am sure you must know.
So, in your mind, I am that dude in the Newsweek article and that is that.
Being comfortable in my skin, Jorge, and being totally undiminished by the fact that there are people in the world who don’t think like I do, don’t talk like I do, don’t look like I do, don’t dress like I do, don’t eat the same foods I eat, etc., etc., I can live with that, because I must.
See how easily these things can be resolved, Jorge, when two people such as you and I go at these things as adults, without screeching at each other and calling names and all that other frankly immature and adolescent stuff you encounter all too often on the internet.
Just because a lot of people are doing that, screeching at each other and calling names, doesn’t mean we have to, does it, Jorge, and in here right now, we are proving that.
Prove me wrong….
Jorge, get serious here, dude – what you ask is impossible.
I can no more prove you wrong than I could lever the moon into a new position in the sky so its light would stop falling on your bedroom window to keep you awake at night.
It is impossible to prove you wrong, Jorge, because you are never wrong.
It is impossible to prove you wrong, because you are always right, so why would I be so foolish as to waste my time even trying to do so?
Mike…don’t take my silence on this subject as indication of capitulating to your view point. As far as our country looking like the one you grew up in…that ship has long left the station. I don’t know where to even begin on that one. It’s the twenty first century man. Grow up. Regulation and taxes are necessary methods of controlling economies and nation building period. How about you naming one country that successfully grew without taxation and regulation. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
By the way, what happens with capitalism without regulation? Robber Barons. What happens to meat packing without regulation? Ask Upton Sinclair. What happens to banking and the economy without regulation? Every bubble burst since 1929. I could go on, but by all indications…your attention span is about to run out.
Lastly, I am pretty sick and tired of narrow minded, ill-educated people taking facts (yes facts – Mike – real facts, tried and true) and twisting them into some kind of ditto headed rant about taxation and world power squandered with racist overtones. You know, I feel kind of sorry for your grand kids. Because not only will they NOT know the world you and I grew up in, but the world they will experience will be one of deprivation, hardships, inflation, famine and war. And do you know why? Because so many did so little to prevent so few from doing so much harm. By the time someone like you realizes this, it will be too late. Explain that to your grandchildren someday.
Basically liberalism is a willful failure to mature beyond adolescence that can have catastrophic consequences for society.
With luck, the official diagnosis of this disease by a mental health professional will facilitate the search for a cure.
Oh, thank God for someone who finally does understand why we country people to the north of you are so concerned for Mike in here, who people up this way like as a character in this drama, seeing him essentially as a sincere and stolid dude, you know, calm, dependable, and showing little emotion or animation.
But his posts in here having people wondering, especially the Freudians, whether his masculine and feminine sides are seriously out of balance.
I mean, seriously, Jorge, and you are a dude who can comprehend this well: in one breath, the dude is seriously castigating and scorning and mocking Chas Cornweller (being well adjusted and comfortable in my own skin, I am able to call someone Chas without it diminishing my manhood in any way) for being a liberal, as if Mike’s male persona can’t stand liberals, and in the next breath, or post, there is the same Mike, this time apparently operating from the control of his feminine side, relying on an arch or ultra liberal in the person of Bjorn Lomborg to make his points for him in here, which has people up this way wondering whether Mike’s male and female sides know each other, or whether they have never met.
I mean, my goodness, Bjorn Lomborg isn’t even an American for one thing, so what could he possibly know about America?
He’s a foreigner living in a foreign socialist welfare state in Scandinavia.
As to him being a flaming liberal of the kind that Mike’s male psyche can’t stand, Lomborg and his Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus in 2002, which seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics.
You see what I am saying here, Jorge, about why people are now so confused by Mike and about Mike?
At the same time his male psyche is castigating and decrying and mocking and scorning Chas Cornweller in here for alleged liberal tendencies, his female psyche is promoting global welfare using methodologies based on the theory of welfare economics, which is about as liberal as liberal can possibly get, far, far beyond anything even remotely liberal sounding from Chas Cornweller .
So WTF, Jorge.
Do you see the conundrum people are being confronted with here?
They are torn you see, as to which Mike to be loyal to, the one that don’t like liberals, or the one promoting global welfare.
As you say, basically liberalism is a willful failure to mature beyond adolescence that can have catastrophic consequences for society and with luck, the official diagnosis of this disease by a mental health professional will facilitate the search for a cure.
But by then, will it be too late for Mike?
Or will Mike succeed with his agenda to impose global welfare on all of us?
Stay tuned, America, this drama will continue right after the station break, so don’t touch that dial!
As someone commented a few weeks ago, you need to worry about the pain in your legs instead of the Bells, Kuzmas, and Holdens.
Pain in my legs, Joege?
HUH, dude?
What pain?
How on earth could I possibly get pain in my legs from sitting here typing keys on a computer?
Carpal tunnel syndrome, maybe, Joege, although I am not plagued by that as some people are, but leg pains?
That, Joege, is something new to me, people now getting leg pains from using the internet, but you know what, I am not surprised that in America today, yet a new malady or ailment requiring yet another new medication with even more side effects than the last one has been discovered to treat it, since most of these new maladies and ailments, like this “do you have pain in your legs when you use the internet, then be sure to use this doctor-approved vitamin supplement,” are incurable, and so require continued treatment for the rest of your life, but watch out for what those pills and supplements do to your liver and kidneys, besides giving you suicidal indiation.
You would think, Joege, that people would have to be crazy to take that crap, but that doesn’t stop them, which is why we have an opiod crisis in this country today, from people taking pain killers because their legs give them pain when they are sitting there typing on the internet.
As to the Bells, Kuzmas, and Holdens, Joege, they are really none of my concern, and certainly are not my problems.
I am not their keepers, Joege, nor would I want to be, and I am not respo9nsible for anything they do or say, although in truth, I do enjoy, from the perspective of a cultural anthropologist, reading what they have to say about things in here.
Being comfortable in my own skin, Joege, I can make room for the Bells, Kuzmas, and Holdens of the world without it confronting me any, if you know what I am saying.
But hey, Joege, look at the time, dude!
It’s late and I must be running, so you have a real nice day!
But before I go, Joege, any help you can give Mike with that male-female psyche inbalance he seems to be suffering from, where one minute he is a raving, knuckle-dragging conservative Republican reactionary who hates liberals, and the next minute, he is an ultra-liberal promoting world welfare, would be greatly appreciated, because believe it or not, Joege, people really like Mike, as hard as that might be to believe, and they are really concerned for his well-being, in a sincere way, as am I.
Oh, one more thing, Joege, I live outside a small town and have all my life (I’m 71, and my legs are in good shape because I do T’ai Chi, which the neighbors think is some kind of new-age weird stuff because they don’t do it, nor do their relatives), so I am very familiar with how small town people think, being very insular as they are and suspicious of outsiders, as well as territorial, since the small town, while not much on the scale of things, nonetheless is their turf, and they try to keep outsiders out to defend it, as you seem to be trying to do in here with your menacing voice warning me off, and telling me to stay out of Cape Charles, or else, but Joege, you have to try and grasp this one simple fact – the Cape Charles Mirror is not your exclusive hometown newspaper anymore, where only people from Cape Charles can say anything, and that only about Cape Charles, since you don’t want the outside world to intrude on you, which I can understand, having been around small town people all my life.
The Cape Charles Mirror now belongs to the world, Joege, and you and your cohort down there who don’t like outsiders, educated people, people who look different from you, people who don’t think like you and dress like you and eat the same kinds of food as you, can’t keep those people out, as much as you would like to, or myself, for that matter, because we are not living there next to you in your small town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
I know that has to rankle you bigly, outside people getting to use the Cape Charles Mirror to intrude on your little world to say things you don’t like and don’t want said or talked about in your community, where you set the standards, but such it is, dude, and all I can say is that if you can’t get adjusted to that new reality, and if you can’t accept it and live with it, you’re the dude who is going to end up with leg pains as your blood pressure gets higher and higher until BAM, a big vein blows out in your head and POOF, just like that, Joege, you are gone.
Here is the link to the article about you and your leg pain.
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/new-york-va-center-one-of-slowest-to-process-veterans-claims-1.5165026
Wow, no wonder you are confused here, Jorge, about me having pains in my legs, and you are coming by that confusion with good reason.
You thought that Newsday article “New York VA center one of slowest to process veterans’ claims” by Martin C. Evans, updated April 29, 2013 @ 10:34 PM was about me because the caption under the picture at the top says “Vietnam War veteran Paul Plante of Huntington poses for a portrait at the VFW Post 3211 in Hicksville Monday where Congressman Steve Israel announced legislation that would force the VA to pay claims automatically if they are not handled within the VA’s 125-day target.”
Holy cow, and gadzooks, what a coincidence is all I can say, Jorge.
A Viet Nam veteran suffering from leg pains with the same name as me.
I can’t tell you how surprised I was when I saw that.
“Ah, here is where Jorge is being led astray,” was my thought when I saw that, for that is not me.
Huntington and Hicksville are on Long Island, Jorge, as is that Steve Israel politician.
I don’t live on Long Island, and I never have, Jorge.
I did once drive the length of it, looking for some access to a public ocean beach, but I never did find any.
All the millionaires own the beach down there, so that common people like me are not allowed.
Let me say that I do appreciate your concern about the legs of a Viet Nam veteran, but I would be being dishonest with both you and myself if I was taking that concern for myself, as opposed to re-directing it to where it properly belongs, with that Long Island veteran Paul Plante, who is not me.
And Jorge, I appreciate your concern for the health and well-being of veterans in general, which concern is apparent from the fact that you posted that article to bring the public’s awareness to how crappy veteran’s health care is in this country, due to indifference to our plight from congress and the large number of people in this country who have never served in the military, who have never suffered wounds in combat, and so, want that money diverted elsewhere, to programs like the world welfare Bjorn Lomborg is promoting.
Such it is, Jorge, such it is.
I’ve seen that lack of access to veteran’s health care that concerns you so, and rightly it should, if you care about the country as you seem to do, actually drive veterans crazy to the point of where one dude actually went into the lobby of the VA with a chainsaw, which is started cutting up the furniture with, to get some notice to himself and his need for treatment, that is the extremity that people are driven to.
Perhaps you know people who have been put through the same thing down there in Virginia.
As for me, Jorge, I have come to accept the lack of concern, for such is the way things go.
This discussion in here on global climate change reminds me of a telephone conversation I had several years ago with an AP investigative reporter named Jeff Donn based on this e-mail he sent to me:
Thx very, very much for your thoughtful, detailed note.
I am interested in the points you are making.
Could we talk on the phone at your convenience?
Is there a time and number where we could talk next week?
Meanwhile, I guess my first question is: what reason is there to think that this warmer surface water or extra water in the atmosphere poses a problem?
end quote
As you can see from that last sentence, this turned out to be one of the stupidest conversations with a closed-minded fool that I have ever been in.
The conversation had to do with this question: what reason is there to think that this warmer surface water (caused by nuclear facility hot water discharges) or extra water in the atmosphere (put there by nuclear facility cooling towers) poses a problem?
I started the conversation by stating on the record that in light of the facts of the matter, that had to be one of the stupidest questions I had ever heard.
What follows is the “detailed note” of mine that Jeff Donn of the AP refers to above:
Subject: Nuke plants
I have been following your series on nuke plants with great interest, having first conducted research on the fluid mechanics and thermodynamics of nuclear cooling tower plumes while at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1975, research which was subsequently buried by the New York State Power Pool.
As we see rivers today containing massive amounts of water, nobody seems to be asking the question of how did all that water get into the atmosphere in the first place, and perhaps they should, although, truth be told, it is now a bit late to do so.
Your article “AP IMPACT: US nuke regulators weaken safety rules” By JEFF DONN, AP National Writer, 20 JUNE 2011, briefly touched on it as follows:
Called “Oyster Creak” by some critics because of its aging problems, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and ranks as the country’s oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant.
Its license was extended in 2009 until 2029, though utility officials announced in December that they’ll shut the reactor 10 years earlier rather than build state-ordered cooling towers.
end quote
Nuclear plants produce prodigious amounts of heat which must be disposed of to the environment.
Case in point:
“Drought could force nuke-plant shutdowns”
By MITCH WEISS, Associated Press
Last updated: 12:52 p.m., Wednesday, January 23, 2008
LAKE NORMAN, N.C. — Nuclear reactors across the Southeast could be forced to throttle back or temporarily shut down later this year because drought is drying up the rivers and lakes that supply power plants with the awesome amounts of cooling water they need to operate.
“Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel,” said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power.
“You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants.”
He added: “This is becoming a crisis.”
All but two are built on the shores of lakes and rivers and rely on submerged intake pipes to draw billions of gallons of water for use in cooling and condensing steam after it has turned the plants’ turbines.
At some plants — those with tall, Three Mile Island-style cooling towers — a lot of the water travels up the tower and is lost to evaporation.
Progress spokeswoman Julie Hahn said the Harris reactor, for example, sucks up 33 million gallons a day, with 17 million gallons lost to evaporation via its big cooling towers.
end quote
That 17 million gallons lost to evaporation per day from this one plant alone is water in a vapor form that goes high into the atmosphere.
This is what our research back in 1975 was looking into, where does that water go to.
And the simple answer is right up there above our heads, where it is unstable, and thus, will come back down which I believe it is doing now, as our research predicted it would.
And that is not any kind of rocket science, at all, as any little kid who has ever thrown a rock in the air, only to have it hit them in the eye on its way back down could tell you.
And that brings us to the NRC, and cover-ups in the name of continued profits.
Cover-ups done as emergency orders.
When these nuke plants were first licensed, as with the ones on Lake Ontario in NYS, they had a maximum temperature rise for the lake water that they could not supposedly exceed.
Now, like the 17 million gallons per day, each day of operation, with this heat output, you have a cumulative effect, like leaving a pan of water on a stove burner.
No matter how low the heat, it is still going in and the water will eventually boil.
So what did the NRC do when this limit was reached?
Let’s take a look:
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) Items of Interest – Week Ending August 19, 2005
Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, Unit No. 1 (NMP1) – Water Temperature Emergency Amendment
On August 12, 2005, the staff issued an emergency license amendment to Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, LLC (the licensee), which revised NMP1 Technical Specification (TS) 3.3.7, “Containment Spray System,” to increase the maximum allowable lake water temperature in TS 3.3.7.f. from 81°F to 83°F.
This change was requested under emergency circumstances to avoid a reactor shutdown due to a higher than anticipated water temperature rise in Lake Ontario and weather forecasts for higher temperatures over the next 10-day period.
TS 3.3.7.g. requires the plant to begin shutting down within 1 hour of reaching the TS 3.3.7.f. limit and be in hot shutdown conditions within 8 hours and in cold shutdown within 24 hours.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/secys/2005/secy2005-0155/2005-0155scy.html
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collecti…05-0155scy.html
Yes, you got it, they let them take the water temperature even higher, with no review whatsoever of the effects of that temperature rise on the increased amount of evaporation that would cause, given that evaporation is a function of surface area and temperature.
And once heated, that volume of water tends to stay warm, since more heat is going into it, 24/7/365.
I would say that New Jersey wanted cooling towers added to that plant, because the same thing was happening down there.
Then we have the Fort Calhoun plant in Nebraska which discharges into the Missouri River.
Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants – Supplement 12 Regarding Fort Calhoun Station, Unit 1
Final Report U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Manuscript Completed: August 2003
Date Published: August 2003
Division of Regulatory Improvement Programs
Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, DC 20555-0001
The cooling-water circulation system is operated in compliance with provisions of NPDES Permit NE0000418 for Fort Calhoun Station.
The permit currently limits discharge temperatures to 43.3 C (110 F) and allows a conditional discharge temperature of 44.4 C (112 F) under the terms of a Consent Order that was entered into by the OPPD and the NDEQ (OPPD 2002a).
The terms of the Consent Order allow for continued full-power operation of Fort Calhoun Station during the unusually high ambient river temperatures that have been experienced in the Missouri River in recent years.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collecti…/sr1437s12a.pdf
Notice that a GENERIC IMPACT STATEMENT means essentially no review of cumulative impacts, and notice the language about the increased temperature of the river, and ask yourself why the river is getting hot and what that means for evaporation into the atmosphere.
And this goes on and on and on.
end quotes
People are oblivious to the world around them.
They spend their time inside air-conditioned cars and offices and homes, or in air-conditioned casinos and gambling joints or on manicured golf courses like this present mindless incumbent in the white house, and so they are living lives completely isolated from the forces of nature around them, while lacking the basic understanding of the hydrologic cycle that school children and simple country folks whose lives are determined by the weather have.
And it is those people, like this up-jumped casino operator/TV reality star host we now have in the white house, that we turn to for solutions to this mess, as if the very best advice one can get on the environment has to come from a mindless fool who doesn’t even know where the environment even is.
So what is wrong with that picture, people?
As to this so-called AP “investigative reporter,” he was much more concerned with keeping things quiet to preserve a status quo that puts money in his pocket in the form of a pay check, and whatever other encouragements he might be offered to not investigate matters too deeply, and in that he is one more symptom of the problems the next generation is going to have to face, because the fact is, this train left the station many years ago now, and that Humpty-Dumpty is now nothing but bits of egg shell all over the bottoms of the hooves of the king’s horses and the boot bottoms of the king’s men.
And outside of going outside in the midst of the storm to shake our fist at the heavens, there is nothing we can now do to halt the change.
How do we now go about, pulling all of the heat ENERGY we have put into Lake Ontario, for example?
Do we now invent some giant form of refrigerator to remove that heat?
But where will the power then come from to run that refrigeration unit?
Where will the heat from that power generation go to?
Out into space with all the other waste heat we are generating to maintain a lifestyle that is consumptive, which requires more and more environmental destruction and devastation, like blowing up whole mountains, and therefore, unsustainable?
And when you manage to pull all that heat out of Lake Ontario, what on earth do you do with it?
Put it in a rocket and blast it off into space?
Or maybe we can get some politicians to come along and tell us there really is no problem, so go back home, for there is nothing here to see.
As Forrest Gump once said, stupid is as stupid does, and people, here we are, heading for that apex at a frenzied pace, because we have built a machine with no OFF BUTTON.
Those nuclear plants can’t be turned off without destroying the unstable and unsustainable U.S. economy, so the only other alternative is for the supposed “regulatory” agency to keep looking the other way while granting emergency waivers that allow the nuclear facilities to keep raising the water temperature of the receiving bodies more and more, which in turn pumps yet more heat energy and water vapor into the environment, while hoping that nobody will notice.
And most of us won’t.
More fools us, then, is how history will look at this age of gluttony and greed we are now mired in.
And now, in the spirit of equality, it is time for a counterstatement from the science deniers of America who will tell you this is all bull****, nothing to worry about, it is just the result of a poorly designed (that is so America, isn’t it) drainage system that nobody raised any questions about as it was being poorly designed at taxpayer expense, so stay tuned!
Yes Paul I, the one who posts novel length rants at the rate of 9 an article is the “foaming at the mouth” one………Pot, meet kettle.
So, after your diatribe on the US economy-which I agree is in bad shape- you recommend adding ADDITIONAL blocks and fences to growth? Please name the Country that taxed or regulated itself into prosperity?
Indifferent? Buddy, I am doing my level best to make sure your grandkids can live in a Country that SOMEWHAT looks like the one we grew up in.
M’kay. I’ll make this brief so you can start your next book………errr, comment.
Mike, I don’t have a clue as to what kind of world you grew up in, but with your outlook on life, and your attitudes, I wouldn’t want my grandchildren having to grow up in such a world.
It seems awfully monochrome and limiting to me, and who would wish that on their grandchildren.
Not I, anyway.
Nor would I wish on them your Harkonnen world, your Geidi Prime with its polluted and debased environment, looking like something out of a future shock movie, or the northern New Jersey shoreline where all the refineries are, or China, with whom we are engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to protecting the environment.
No offense, Mike, because all in all, you sound like a nice dude, but it sounds like a place of benighted ignorance to me, and like I say, that is not the world I wish to bequeath to my grandchildren.
As to the length of my posts, Mike, you know as well as I that the person who tells a lie in the 140 characters of a TWEET to the TWITTERATI in the world of TWITTER has the huge advantage here, because to debunk a lie that is only a few words long, it can take a paragraph, or a page, or yes, Mike, if the lie is big enough, like the lies of the science deniers associated with what is called “global warming,” it can take a book, and as a grandfather, I don’t mind being the one to step up to the plate to write that book.
To me, that is what grandfathers are for.
And Mike, really, dude, where have I recommended adding ADDITIONAL blocks and fences to what you are calling “growth?”
Growth of what, Mike?
Growth of a cancerous malignancy?
Is that the growth you are talking about?
See, it is right here where you have the advantage, Mike, using the word “growth” as if it meant something, when it means nothing at all unless you set down here exactly what it is you are calling growth?
Growth in imports?
Growth in exports?
Growth in polluted water supplies?
Growth in polluted and contaminated air?
Growth in the number of sub-micron particles in the air?
Growth in the number of job openings in bars and restaurants?
Growth in the number of people in this country with cancer?
Growth in the number of opiod-addicted people in this country?
Growth in the number of real stupid wars we are mired in?
Growth in the national debt?
Growth in the number of chronically-ill people in this country?
Growth of the balance sheet of the federal reserve?
QUANTIFY GROWTH, Mike, if you can, and then I will respond in kind.
Don’t just use the word “growth” in the holier-than-thou stance you are adopting here, as if I wanted to stop the U.S. economy, which is exploitative, especially of women, in its tracks to have us all living in caves again, wearing animal skins for cover, if we are lucky enough and strong enough to make the animal part with its skin in the first place.
It is a good debater’s trick for a demagogue in a presidential debate or a town hall meeting, but in here, where your words are frozen in time and space, giving people time to really consider the import of your words, the debater’s trick falls flat on its face.
In the meantime, your statement that I recommended adding ADDITIONAL blocks and fences to what you are calling “growth” is a bull**** statement, because I never did such a thing.
What I did do, was to show that the federal government itself, through a FAILURE to regulate, is itself responsible for global warming and any adverse impacts from that global warming.
Back to you, Mike, balls in your court now.
DEFINE GROWTH!
Ahh, there goes the race card. A liberal never lets a chance to toss that one out go by.
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”
Justice Brandeis.
Archimedes weeps.
Have a nice day, enjoy the chains that bind you.
http://www.lomborg.com/press-release-research-reveals-negligible-impact-of-paris-climate-promises
A little light reading from someone who actually knows about the sciencey stuff.
And Chas? I never said NO regulations, I simply said that THESE regulations regarding global cooling…..errr, sorry that was the 1970’s……..warming are only going to impact US and not some of the REAL polluters.
As to a country that taxed and regulated itself into prosperity, that would be the United States of America.
Every school child used to know that.
The purpose of ratifying the United States Constitution was so that the United States could then tax and regulate themselves into prosperity after the War of the Revolution, to free themselves of crippling war debts.
School-boy history, Mike, how is it that you are unaware of it?
A little light reading from someone who actually knows about the sciencey stuff?
Mike, why are you trying to conflate science, which is a discipline, with politics here, which is all the so-called Paris Accords really was, a show, and more to the point, why are you expecting us to be so stupid as to go along with your conflation without question?
Politics is not science, Mike.
And why are you trying to pawn off this Bjorn Lomborg, who Business Insider in 2009 cited as one of “The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics,” on us as some kind of expert on science?
Have you checked him out, Mike, to see if, beyond his spew of words that resonated with you, he actually has some kind of real science background?
According to his bio, Lomborg spent a year as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.
Political science, Mike, is not science, no matter how hard you try to hang your hat on that flimsy peg.
And did you actually try to read his supposed new “peer-reviewed paper” by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal that is said to measure the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit?
Who are his peers, Mike?
They would be fellow science deniers, wouldn’t they, since that is how the science game works.
And did you try to comprehend the meaning of the words “significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit?”
What is a “promise,” Mike?
Is a promise any kind of science, or “sciency stuff,” as you call it?
Or is a promise simply what it is – political BULL****, as it was in the case of Obama and the recently concluded Paris Accords, which never were binding on the United States of America in the first place.
So what are you all hot and bothered about there?
Getting back to the so-called peer-reviewed Lomborg paper, this is what it says about the politics involved:
Governments have publicly outlined their post-2020 climate commitments in the build-up to the December’s meeting.
These promises are known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs).
end quotes
“INTENDED,” Mike, where “intended” is an empty, squishy term the politicians just love to use.
“I intend to give you the sun, moon and stars if you will just make me your next president.”
What politician, including this up-jumped casino operator in the white house now, has not told us about all he intended to do for us, Mike?
And doesn’t every successful con man and grifter operate off that same mantra, what they intend to do for you, if only you will part with some of your hard-earned cash first?
Didn’t we recently see a dude named Bernie Madoff putting that process of gulling people with the word “intend” into practice with his Ponzi scheme that took in so many gullible fools?
Outside of applied psychology, Mike, which has nothing to do with the science involved in climate change, where is there any science involved in that – gulling people?
And here it is right here, Mike, right in your own paper:
Dr. Lomborg’s research reveals the climate impact of all Paris INDC promises is minuscule: if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.
end quotes
“I am just a poor boy, though my story’s seldom told, I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises.”
Promises and $7.50 plus tip buys you a grande latter with pretty sprinkles on top at your local Starbucks, Mike.
Without the $7.50, your promises don’t buy squat, and such it was with the recently concluded show known as the Paris Accords – just more political BULL**** to fool the masses.
But that political bull****, which never was based on any kind of science, in no way, shape or manner, negates science itself.
The hydrological cycle remains the hydrological cycle, and all the waste heat we put into the environment warms that environment, just as my wood stove warms my house, in the winter.
A politician mouthing the word “science” does not make him or her instantly into a scientist.
It is just political grandstanding, and that is all that it is, no matter how many times the flannel-mouth politician mouths the word “science.”
And as you well know, Mike, the United States of America is a Capitalist/Socialist nation, where business profits are privatized, and business losses are socialized, so as to protect the capitalist class from the folly of their bad decisions by making the people adversely impacted by the folly of those bad decisions have to pay extra for the harm that was caused to them by the greed and gluttony of the capitalists, so there was no way, despite Obama’s empty rhetoric, that the United States ever intended to take serious action on climate change.
For proof of that, just look at this from the Lomborg paper, which has nothing to do with science and everything to do with political bull****:
US climate policies, in the most optimistic circumstances, fully achieved and adhered to throughout the century, will reduce global temperatures by 0.031°C (0.057°F) by 2100.
end quotes
Let’s see, Mike, it is now 2017 by my clock, and 2100 is therefore 83 years into the future, so who of us alive right now, reading or participating in the discussion, is going to be alive in 2100 to challenge any of that, which is the beauty of bull**** political promises.
Like Obama setting all these vehicle emission standards the auto makers have to achieve by 2030, or some sufficient time into the future, when Obama would be long gone and the standards long since ignored and forgotten, like our National Environmental Policy, and United States Constitution.
As to the obvious political bull**** nature of the Paris Accords, in the Comments from Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, we have this:
“Paris is being sold as the summit where we can help ‘heal the planet’ and ‘save the world’.”
“It is no such thing.”
end quotes
There, Mike, is where the POLITICAL SHOW called the Paris Accords begins and ends – with HYPE and a press release, as always, and in the meantime, bidness will go on as usual, because the United States has an out of control machine, called its economy, having to run faster and faster and faster, and there is no off switch, Mike, because that machine was designed by Rube Goldberg, not a real engineer.
It’s too bad so many Americans got fooled by all of that pomp and circumstance, but that is just so American, like putting in a drainage system at public expense that won’t work because it was designed wrong, but put in anyway, because people like to see the government doing things for them, even when those things are poorly done and bound to fail.
Getting back to how fake this political show called the Paris Accords really was, we have this background from the Lomborg paper:
And let’s be clear, that is very optimistic.
Consider the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, never ratified by the US, and eventually abandoned by Canada and Russia and Japan.
end quotes
You’re a bright dude, Mike – what do the words “never ratified by the US” really mean there?
Don’t they mean that just, like the Paris Accords, the so-called Kyoto Protocol was never binding on the United States, because outside of the press releases, the United States never intended to change the way bidness is done here – it was all just a show?
Buwahahahaha, Lordy you useful idiots sure do work yourselves up.
Read my last reply to Mr. Cornweller. And then y’all can sit in your little town encased in the amber of the past. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
I laugh at your ‘progressivism’ ……..
As do actual scientists with far more education and experience with this subject.
Now, go bow down before your progressive masters and lick them boots, kids.
As do actual scientists with far more education and experience with this subject?
WOW, okay, Mike, it is sounding like you might have us there, dude, so it might be time to throw in the towel here.
Uh, Mike, so we can tell, what is an “actual scientist?”
I asked Siri, and all she could say was “beats the **** out of me.”
How do you tell if someone is an actual scientist versus what apparently would have to be a faux scientist?
Are the actual scientists the ones who work for corporations, taking corporate money for their scientific prognostications in support of what the corporation who is paying them is doing?
Are the actual scientists the ones who support the claims of the up-jumped casino operator presently in the white house that global warming is a sham cooked up by the liberal media based on false science?
Is that how one can tell the difference?
As to masters, Mike, I am my own, and I am surprised that you didn’t know that by now.
It goes to show how little attention you pay to details.
In the jungle in VEET NAM, Mike, that got people dead, so it is a good thing for you this is only an exercise on paper – “oh, whoops, I think I just stepped on a mine WHOOOM!”
That would be you, dude, with your sloppy attention to detail in here.
And Mike, I am hardly worked up here.
To the contrary, I am very much enjoying myself, getting this intellectual stimulus from you in here.
I live out in the countryside, Mike, out where only the poor people know, and only the poor people would go, and one of the things that is sorely lacking out there is the kind of intellectual stimulus I get from you in here, which I am greatly appreciative of.
You get older, Mike, and let your mind go to seed, and there is a heavy price you have to pay, unless you don’t mind sitting there all day long drooling on yourself.
That is why I engage intellectual people like you to keep my mind agile.
As to getting upset because the United States government lies to us, and hides evidence, why, Mike?
Why should I destroy my health worrying about living in a country with a government that lies?
To the contrary, Mike, especially as a grandfather, shouldn’t I be taking this golden opportunity you have afforded us in here to expose those lies?
Isn’t that what a loyal patriotic American citizen would do, Mike, expose the lies of the government that falsely claims to have his interests at heart?
And there certainly is precedent for it, Mike, as you probably already know from this following from an article in The Daily Beast by Kelly Weill on 7 August 2017, to wit:
Congressional Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act—so a former Trump volunteer wants to repeal his donations to the party.
Robert Heghmann is a former Trump campaign volunteer, and a sworn enemy of ObamaCare.
In a lawsuit filed in Virginia’s Eastern District Court on Thursday, Heghmann says he and fellow Republicans had donated to the GOP with the understanding that the party would repeal the ACA once they took control of Congress.
But Republicans’ doomed repeal efforts last month left Heghmann feeling scammed.
He accuses the party of running a racketeering and mail fraud scheme to rip off anti-ObamaCare donors—and he wants the GOP to return every donation it received since 2013.
end quote
Now, Mike, that is what I would call getting all worked up, and Lordy, that “useful idiot” as you call him is a card-carrying conservative Republican Trump supporter just like you.
Do you think the Republican party was running a racketeering and mail fraud scheme, Mike?
And if they would do it there, why wouldn’t they do the same thing with respect to climate change?
Mike, dude, did I ever tell you that you were a hoot?
Well if I didn’t before, and I don’t know why I would have missed the opportunity, let me say it now – Mike, dude, you are a hoot with your catchy “Now, go bow down before your progressive masters and lick them boots, kids.”
Billy Ray Cyrus could take that line, Mike, and turn it into a country-western chart topper in a week, like he did with “Achey-Breaky Heart,” which many people thought was an all-time classic when it came to catchy lyrics you just couldn’t get out of your head after hearing it just once.
But you seem to be really confused here, Mike, with that statement, because a true Progressive, and here I am talking about Teddy Roosevelt, who probably was the last real progressive we had in American politics, wouldn’t tolerate people bowing down to them and licking their boots, nor would a true Progressive consider him or herself to be the master of anyone, other than themselves.
You hear these mindless, adolescent bubble-gum chewers on TV prattling on about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and HILLARY Clinton and the Democrat party being progressive, and you buy into that line of crap because some talking head without a brain inside it said it on television, so it must be true.
Far from it, though, Mike, if you had ever bothered to look up what a real progressive is, as opposed to what Rush Limbo and Sean Hannity tell you it is, as if either of those bozos would have a clue, nor do they need a clue, because the audience they address has even less sense than they do, which gives them both a huge following in this country of non-thinkers today.
Check it out, Mike.
According to WIKIPEDIA, which is an on-line encyclopedia for the common person, written in a manner easy to comprehend and understand, the main objective of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government.
There are my progressive values simply stated, Mike, in the length of a TWEET.
True progressivism targeted political machines and their bosses, Mike, as I do in real life, so we can clearly see that true progressivism such as I believe in would today be targeting the Democrat party as a political machine, along with its bosses, just as was the case during the Progressive Era.
According to The Heritage Foundation, Mike, and of importance to our understanding in here of progressivism, is this pair of sentences:
There are however certain significant differences between Progressivism and modern liberalism.
Whereas modern liberalism exalts freedom of self-expression, especially sexual liberation, most Progressives embraced traditional morals.
end quotes
That, Mike, is the kind of Progressive that I am.
What is it about that that you don’t like, Mike – that I am for traditional morals, or I am against corruption, or both?
And “Archimedes weeps,” Mike?
Seriously dude, what is up with that?
Which Archimedes are you talking about who is weeping?
Some conservative talk show host on TV?
The only Archimedes we are familiar with up here, and you have to consider that we are just poor folks over on the poor side of town which does limit our knowledge of the world around us somewhat, is Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 – c. 212 BC) who was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer.
As we were taught up this way, Mike, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity, and he generally is considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time,
Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying concepts of infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems, including the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, and the area under a parabola, which makes him an actual or real scientist in my book, anyway.
Other mathematical achievements of his include deriving an accurate approximation of pi, defining and investigating the spiral bearing his name, and creating a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers.
He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, founding hydrostatics and statics, including an explanation of the principle of the lever.
He also is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion.
Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.
Is that what he is crying about, Mike, getting killed by a Roman soldier?
If that is the case, he is but one voice in a huge chorus, because before they were finally done, before all the relatives of all the people they killed came to kill them, instead, they sure did kill a lot of people, and that is a fact.
So it is no wonder then that Archimedes would weep, and what is surprising is that more people today don’t weep with him, for all the killing of innocents that is still going on, with us being the new Romans.
“As far as our country looking like the one you grew up in…that ship has long left the station. I don’t know where to even begin on that one. It’s the twenty first century man.”
The utter hypocrisy of this statement being disseminated on a platform that exists SOLELY to keep Cape Charles FIRMLY in the past is simply too much.
The Wave has no other purpose but to seal off the Eastern Shore from the future.
Buwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Oh, and as for racism? Ain’t got no “Cheapside” in my neck of the woods, bigots.
Note: But you can’t stop reading it (Mirror), can you Jersey Mike?
Cognitive Dissonance. Not quite sure how or where you came up with that term, Mike. Amazed if you can claim it as your own…but, it seems to be quite popular for you to say. Sounds like newspeak to me. A lot like “duckspeak”. But, hey…it’s okay there dude. I am used to the rude and calloused words low information Uber-Radical “Rightist” use to relay their points as argument. In truth, they just end up looking foolish and unknowledgeable.
Now having explained that…show me examples of my “Cog-Diss” that you find so irritating. I welcome any and all debate of my writing. IF I am proven wrong, I am not so thin-skinned and snow-flaky as one might think. I have years…many years both in the private sector and in the public sector in the service of land development and understanding the edifices of both environmental and political and the codifications of said environments and policies. So…bring it, big guy. Let’s see what you got.
And another thing…as far as your comment, “The amber encasement” of Cape Charles (and the implied, ALL the Eastern Shore for that matter!), your slip is showing. You “come here’s” (not all, but some) are so entranced by the allure of the beauty and serenity and the ducks and the fishing and the magnificent sunsets when you first arrive at your little slice of paradise. But suddenly you become the loudest of voices to insist on shopping malls, franchised restaurants and a sparkling Starbucks, when you finally settle. A very few would love to pave and build on every square inch of land available and sell it to others who come for their share of “Paradise”, if they could and still make a profit. So, yes, if you consider me a brake on the future and the “progressive growth” facing the Shore, you are correct. The Eastern Shore is a precariously located, multi-link environment with a very fragile eco-system. You have one water source. One. Take that away and you have, what? You have very few infrastructure facilities within the Cape Charles area. Take any one of those away and what happens? The bay…well, I don’t have the time nor the inclination to take that one on right now, but I am old enough to remember better days. And the worst of days…the bay, today is coming back. Somewhat. But, still rated poor to moderate conditions. Now, ask me about the composition of the Eastern Shore populace and their personality. Hardworking, blunt speaking, mostly honest (there’s bad apples in every barrel, dude) no nonsense receiving, deeply faithful (for the most part) and true to their values. Like I said…there’s a few bad seed out there and I for one, would not like to cross them. But for the most part, they are the salt of the earth. But they don’t take kindly to being screwed. Capisce? So, would I keep the Shore as it is and slowly allow responsible growth? You bet I would. If you consider that “Amber Encasement”, then you are missing the best part of living there. Maybe Big Pharma can help YOU there, Mike. Look into it.
And…one last thing…um, the Cheapside comment. Might want to re-read that one. It surely doesn’t sound like I’m the one that’s the bigot. I am not sure, but did you mean to say there are no African Americans in your neck of the woods? Is that an issue with you, Mike? Just curious. Have a great day!
Actually Chas I was one of the few CH’s who was very vocal about NOT developing the area, but did give a nod to changes in ‘highest and best use.’ Few were as upset as I about the old CC school debacle.
Starbucks? Nah, but I did once buy my kid like 9 smoothies in one day at the CC Coffee house, and dozens more over the years. I also gave Robin over at the Chesapeake near the theater a lot of my business, but gee never really saw too many locals in HIS restaurant…….wonder why? Chain Restaurants? Nope, but Gene got thousands of my dollars. As did Aqua, and the crab shack.
The cognitive dissonance refers to your admonition to me that the world we grew up in is gone, yet all a y’all have the absolute desire to keep CC the exact same way it is…that’s all.
As for the term “Cheapside” that my friend is the name that YOU folks gave the neighborhood.
I just have friends who have homes there. Do you?
Look, you have a great day too. Enjoy the stasis you seek and I wish you nothing but happiness in the future.
Take Paul for a drink, you both can use the break.
And Mike, dude, you’re getting scatter-shot with us here, seemingly veering all over the place, from one political extreme to the other, and back again, in some kind of apparent Circadian rhythm that was programmed into your psyche back when the BIG BANG went off and put the Newtonian Clockwork that governs your Circadian rhythm and accordingly, makes you tick, according to the Jungians up this way, anyway, who have been following you along, Mike, as a kind of real-time science experiment, in motion at the beginning of time to produce you as a character in this drama now taking place in CYBERSPACE, thanks to the community spirit and patriotism of the Cape Charles Mirror, because to northern Liberals, Mike, and this is meant as no slight on yourself or any kind of offense, you are like a creature from another solar system or planet, or maybe another dimension or galaxy, because they have never met anyone like you, Mike, and being intellectuals as they are, Mike, given to thought and contemplation of the world around them, they welcome the opportunity to mingle with you in here, and to observe your moods and mannerisms and modes of communication, so that the world at large can better appreciate the role you play in promoting the ecological movement in the United States of America today, for which you really should be presented with some kind of civic award, Kiwanis, maybe, or the JayCee’s.
But getting back to scatter-shot, Mike, some of the more technically-minded up this way thought one of your main directional gyros had spun a bearing and jumped off its gimble which then stripped you of automatic control of your longitudinal stabilators and thrusters, with the result that you now have some serious pitch and yaw around your transverse axis as well as serious nutation around your longitudinal axis, that seems to have you spinning and tumbling off into space somewhere.
I mean, consider this, Mike:
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says August 9, 2017 at 1:37 pm:
Buddy, I am doing my level best to make sure your grandkids can live in a Country that SOMEWHAT looks like the one we grew up in.
end quotes
That is you, Mike, or maybe an imposter claiming to be you, and that is REACTIONARY as all get out, Mike, where “reactionary” is defined as “a person or a set of views opposing political or social liberalization or reform.”
Some would say you are an American Taliban here, wanting to impose your views of how society should operate on the rest of us through intimidation and/or force.
Your will and your views are the will and views that should prevail.
In that world view, it is left to the rest of us to follow your commands and go HUP-TWO-THREE-FORE, YESSIR GENERAL MIKE, and you know what, Mike, quite a few will, because you already have quite a following on the internet – people who see you as an authority figure in this troubled world through which they roam.
And Mike, in all truth, I cannot say, as some do, especially the New England liberal crowd, that being a reactionary is a really bad thing.
I mean, where is the evidence either way?
And Mike, in all candor, because you are someone people feel they can be candid with, when you say, “Buddy, I am doing my level best to make sure your grandkids can live in a Country that SOMEWHAT looks like the one we grew up in,” that can be taken many ways, and when you look at the phrase you employed there for dramatic effect, “live in a Country that SOMEWHAT looks like the one we grew up in,” one could think that you were staunch environmentalist decrying all the environmental devastation and destruction caused in the name of what is laughingly called “development,” as in “developing a real serious headache here in the name of profits.”
But then, you seem to do a 180-degree gyration or flip over into being an anything goes liberal from the Hamptons on Long Island with your vociferous castigation of the Cape Charles Mirror as follows:
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says August 10, 2017 at 12:12 pm:
“As far as our country looking like the one you grew up in…that ship has long left the station.”
“I don’t know where to even begin on that one.”
“It’s the twenty first century man.”
The utter hypocrisy of this statement being disseminated on a platform that exists SOLELY to keep Cape Charles FIRMLY in the past is simply too much.
The Wave has no other purpose but to seal off the Eastern Shore from the future.
end quotes
Pardon me, Mike, but HUH?
In your first post, you want to change the world back to what it used to be, and here you are jumping all over the Cape Charles Mirror for wanting to keep things down here the way they presently are, instead of letting things degrade even further, which is a position that has always made sense to me, who admittedly am very conservative, which means I am not a proponent, as are many in public service today on planning boards, of growth for the sake of growth, because some developer who is not from here and never has lived here blew into town two days ago from some big city because land here is cheap and now is telling everyone what the towns and the Cape needs to keep up with the times.
Speaking of that, Mike, did you see where Trump finally woke up to see the real serious opiod epidemic in this country and declared it some king of national embarrassment and calamity.
That is what keeping up with the times looks like in real life.
And then, here you are climbing on Chas Cornweller, because he appears to desire for his home town what you are talking about in your first post in here about “Buddy, I am doing my level best to make sure your grandkids can live in a Country that SOMEWHAT looks like the one we grew up in,” to wit:
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says August 10, 2017 at 5:48 pm:
The cognitive dissonance refers to your admonition to me that the world we grew up in is gone, yet all a y’all have the absolute desire to keep CC the exact same way it is…that’s all.
end quote
Can you see why people think you lost a directional gyro, Mike?
How many different positions are you taking in here at the same time, Mike?
That is what people up this way now would like to know.
If the world I grew up in that you want to preserve for my grandchildren, which incidentally is both honorable and altruistic of you at the same time, looks like the Cape Charles of today that the Cape Charles Mirror and Chas Cornweller want to preserve, how can you be for and against the same thing at the same time?
People wonder if you are one of those fancy traveling Greek sophists who go from town to town, arguing in the morning that the world is round, and equally persuasively in the afternoon that it is flat, so people are left no knowing what to think.
So help us out here, Mike, if you possibly can, exactly what is it in this thread that you are for, and what is it that you are against?
Or are you still getting that figured out?
If so, Mike, take your time, don’t rush, we’ve got all day, so feel free to take a few hours of it to get figured out whose side in here you might be on.
We’re patient, we’ll wait.
You know what’s rude and condescending?
Repeating your debate opponent’s name over and over again in your responses.
Your talking points get lost when your posts drip with sarcasm.
It’s possible to make your point without it.
Like this.
Roy, how’s it going?
Long time no see, dude.
How’s things been by you, anyway?
Been wet up this way, Roy.
I think we are some six inches ahead on precipitation this year.
As you can imagine, flash flood warnings have been pretty common this year.
After one event alone, I had six inches of rain in my rain gage.
You hear the saying “I’ve never seen rain like that before” quite a bit these days, Roy, and not from just up here.
Tell me, Roy, and this is hypothetical, of course — some fast-talking dude calling himself a “developer” goes to a planning board of a town near a seashore somewhere, with its members being made up of real estate agents and local building contractors, and the developer tells them that rich people in New York City and elsewhere are just clamoring and salivating for the chance to own a mega-dollar McMansion right there on that town’s ocean beach, and they are willing to pay millions for the opportunity, which is going to bring in huge tax dollars to the town so it can be remade in the style the rich people want it to be remade in, and of course, the planning board, which exists to protect the profits of the developers, as well as to raise the town’s tax base, so the public officials including the planning board members can raise their salaries and increase their benefits, approves the project, which gets built, and subsequently fully developed and sold, and then, along comes an ocean wave which washes it away.
Who bears responsibility for that loss, Roy?
And why should we people who live far from the ocean have to pay to make those people whole again?
Because we are all fellow Americans, and the poor should have to share the burden of the losses of the rich, because it is the right thing to do?
What are your thoughts on that?
Your response is both rude and condescending so thanks for proving my point.
BTW, it’s Ray not Roy.
I don’t know who Roy is but I bet he can make a point with brevity and humor.
Hey, Ray, good to see you, dude,
How are you this morning?
Well, I would hope.
And Ray, if any points have been proven to you in here about anything, it is because of what in your case is called an a priori assumption of facts, which is to say, you go through life with your mind made up about things before you encounter those things, like what is rude or what is condescending, both of which are undefined terms which are in the eye of the beholder.
Because you believe something is rude and condescending makes its so to you, and you know what, Ray, God bless America for that, but what is rude and condescending to you has no universal value or impact.
You could be in a room with 99 other people, and out of that 100 people, you might be the only one who thought something was rude and condescending, which would make you a one percenter.
Conversely, those 99 people could think something rude and condescending, and you wouldn’t,
See how that all goes?
And if you can believe it, Ray, and a sharp dude like you (that, Ray, is praise, not condescension) probably can, I was accused of being rude and discourteous as a public health official charged with upholding the law, to people who were openly and flagrantly violating the law I was supposed to enforce, that in a corrupt county in a corrupt state to the north of you, and how I was rude and discourteous to them was I charged them with the misdemeanors they were engaged in, with the intent to see them in jail as an example to others.
That is rudeness defined, Ray, and yes, in that case, it was I who was found guilty, not they,
I’m was supposed to make nice to them instead, Ray.
Such is America, dude.
So have a great day, Ray, and hey, if you do run into Roy, give him my warm regards, will you, for he is a prince of a guy, or so I think, anyway.
So, I pointed out that we could all use a little more internet decorum. No condescension, no rudeness, no name calling, really, nothing that would upset any balanced denizen of these pages. In fact, I’d say most folks would agree with me.
However, in response you’ve now written two exceedingly long screeds that drip with sarcasm.
if you want people to actually read and digest your posts it would behoove you to reassess your literary style.
Of course, if all you want to do is rant, well, rant on, no one’s listening.
Ray, dude, you are clearly the MAN in here when it comes to defining what rude and condescending should be to what you are calling “balanced denizen of these pages,” who seem to derive their balance from you as their guide, be it spiritual or otherwise.
Call them your flock, or whatever, and there is where you have me at a disadvantage.
These people, the ones you call “balanced denizens of these pages,” are people who know you, and so, in looking to you as their leader, they find out how they should be thinking from you, and such it would be when it comes to how you people look at what is rude, which is defined as “offensively impolite or ill-mannered,” as in “she had been rude to her boss, with such synonyms as ill-mannered, bad-mannered, impolite, discourteous, uncivil, ill-behaved, unmannerly, mannerless, impertinent, insolent, impudent, disrespectful, cheeky, churlish, curt, brusque, brash, offhand, short, sharp, offensive, insulting, derogatory, disparaging, abusive, tactless, undiplomatic, uncomplimentary, and condescending, which is defined as having or showing a feeling of patronizing superiority, versus how people in other parts of the United States would view things.
With that said, Ray, while we are talking about how values can change so radically from region to region of the United States, to tell you the truth, and it’s the God’s honest truth, so help me God, when I read those posts about somebody being rude and condescending, I honestly thought they were addressed to Mike.
Still do.
At what point in history did the Climate not Change?
At what point did climate not change, David?
Why, there have been many times in the history of the earth when the climate was quite constant and unchanging.
Look at the Little Ice Age, for example, which was a period extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries, or from about 1300 to about 1850, which is 550 years, or roughly 27 human generations of essentially no climate change.
And then there was the Pleistocene Epoch, typically defined as the time period that began about 1.8 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago, when the most recent Ice Age occurred, as glaciers covered huge parts of the planet Earth.
Actually, there have been at least five documented major ice ages during the 4.6 billion years since the Earth was formed — and most likely many more before humans came on the scene about 2.3 million years ago, according to my research.
At one point during the Ice Age, sheets of ice covered all of Antarctica, large parts of Europe, North America, and South America, and small areas in Asia.
In North America they stretched over Greenland and Canada and parts of the northern United States.
Overall, the climate was much colder and drier than it is today.
Since most of the water on Earth’s surface was ice, there was little precipitation and rainfall was about half of what it is today.
During peak periods with most of the water frozen, global average temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees C (9 to 18 degrees F) below today’s temperature norms.
As for vegetation, it was fairly limited in many areas.
And that lasted for thousands of years, with essentially no climate change.
If you ask the question the other way around, at what points in history was there climate change, the answer would be not many, I think.
Look at the dinosaurs, for example.
Scientific consensus places their origin between 231 and 243 million years ago, and their dominance continued through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
A long time, David, of essentially no climate change.
Yes, it has been hot on this planet before, if you go back in time, for, example, back to the geologic period known as the Neoproterozoic, between 600 and 800 million years ago, and another “warm age” was a period geologists call the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred about 56 million years ago.
As science tells us, our planet probably experienced its hottest temperatures in its earliest days, when it was still colliding with other rocky debris called planetesimals careening around the solar system, and the heat of these collisions would have kept Earth molten, with top-of-the-atmosphere temperatures upward of 3,600° Fahrenheit.
But of course, that is millions and millions of years ago, and that excessive heat was quite constant for a long period of time, or a time of no real climate change.
And as I write these words, there was just another flash flood warning on the radio for an area just to the north of me that has been having flash flood warnings quite a bit this year.
As for me, the last time I experienced rain like these storms was during the monsoon in Viet Nam.
Where do you think all the rain is coming from, David?
Obviously, it comes from the sky, as any schoolchild can tell you, but how come there is now so much water up there to come down on us to cause these flash floods?
Any guesses, anyone?
On a perhaps related subject, since we are talking about how divided and quite frankly, weird America has become in recent years, according to the breaking news, at least one vehicle hit a crowd of people gathered in a Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, hours after police broke up a clash between white nationalists and counter-protesters, according to witnesses, but it was not clear whether the incident was connected to the earlier melee.
The future is now.
David, there is one simple question here in this discussion or debate, and it is not “At what point in history did the Climate not Change?”
That question is totally immaterial and totally irrelevant.
The sole question up for debate is this:
DO THE ACTIONS OF MANKIND INPACT THE ENVIRONMENT?
As you can see, David, it is a yes or no question.
The science deniers and global warming deniers and the actual scientists who support their belief system all say no.
Then there are people me who say of course they do and it is absurd to think otherwise, so I say yes.
The proof that our actions impact the environment in such a manner as to cause climate change are all around us, David, and it is amazing, but no longer surprising, that so many people are completely blind to those changes.
And either way, David, whether you say yes to that question or no, the fact is that the climate is changing, and depending on where you are, that could be a good thing or a bad thing.
And either way, there is nothing we as individuals can do to stop that change.
Can we affect that change?
Most certainly.
If you want to retard the change, stop making heat.
It is as simple as that, David.
As simple as that – stop making more and more heat.
I understand your position and agree that humanity does have an impact on the environment and climate change. The question is to what measurable degree? And if this is to be taken seriously then those who think man can change the climate should start acting accordingly. Why are those who are making such a big deal about this not leading by example? Stop flying private jets, maintaining multiple mega mansions and driving gas guzzling cars? Seems like they are just cashing in on fear!
Thanks for responding in a sensible manner, David, it is appreciated, and the points you raise are those which must be addressed, but in truth, at least based on my experience, won’t be.
You say you understand and agree that humanity does have an impact on the environment and climate change, and then you ask what is perhaps the most pertinent question of our times which underlies this whole debate: The question is to what measurable degree?
And there you will never get a straight answer.
For example, according to public records, there is one nuclear cooling tower alone, out of many just like it, that is putting 17 MILLION gallons per day of water vapor into the atmosphere.
Without the cooling tower, would that water vapor have stayed a liquid instead?
And does adding 17 million gallons of water vapor per day to the atmosphere, which is to say, surcharging the atmosphere, make any discernable difference.
The nuclear people, including most likely the federal government, and their actual scientists who are their mouthpieces, and the science deniers and climate change deniers all say NO, and there is nothing you can do to change their opinion, because the federal government has staked our energy future on more nuclear plants, which is to say, yet more waste heat, and our unsustainable economy would crash if those facilities were closed down.
So that discussion goes nowhere, and you notice it is never even included in the debate – only what are called “greenhouse gases,” when the root of the problem is the generation of heat energy, not the entrapment of heat energy as those people argue.
So there is not even a coherent debate to begin with, with certain topics kept off the table for purely political reasons.
And in the meantime, it keeps getting warmer and more and more rain continues to fall, because all that water vapor added to the environment by mankind is unstable as a gas, and so, turns back to its other phase, which is liquid water, and down it comes.
You then say, “And if this is to be taken seriously then those who think man can change the climate should start acting accordingly.”
In a rational world, David, that would be the case, but we do not live in a rational world, and haven’t for some long time now.
And then you ask: Why are those who are making such a big deal about this not leading by example?
There are many people, small folk like myself, who are living conservative lives with regard to energy and heat generation by doing simple things like turning off a light when you leave a room, and using LED lights, and not having our property lit up like a SUPERMAX prison at night with high intensity lights that turn night into day, but being small folk, we are largely invisible, and would be totally invisible were it not for publications like the CCM that lets the voices of the common people in America be heard.
You then make the common sense argument – “Stop flying private jets, maintaining multiple mega mansions and driving gas guzzling cars,” but David, for probably a myriad of reasons, beginning with stupid is as stupid does, that is not going to happen, not in a nation whose national anthem is “WE WANT WE WANT WE WANT WE WANT!”
I don’t know if you are old enough to remember back into the last century and millennium to the early-1970s and the energy embargo.
Lights were turned off back then in big office buildings and government buildings and such to conserve energy, and boy, did the American people get to bitching and grousing and complaining about that, and now, there are more lights on than ever, which is to say. more and more heat generation.
And that is just one simple example.
My model of human “progress” is based on the march of lemmings to a sea cliff so they can throw themselves headlong into the sea to drown.
Why lemmings do that and why humans emulate them in that regard, acting against what would seem to be their interests, will likely never be explained.
Despite Pinocchio’s cautionary tale, people still willingly flock to Jimmy Lampwick’s amusement park to be turned into donkeys, and they get very defensive and perhaps violent when someone points out their ears are getting longer and they are growing a tail.
An example is given in David McCullough’s excellent story, “The Johnstown Flood,” where these people riding through the area on a train were told to evacuate the train and run for high ground, which advice was pooh-poohed by the high-born on the train who said there was no flood coming, because the rich people on the mountaintop whose dam had burst would never have allowed that to happen, because they were rich folks, and rich folks didn’t have things like that happen to them, because, er, ahem, well, because they were rich folks.
So the train and the people in it who didn’t run for high ground got washed away by the flood, which didn’t give a damn about what the rich and high-born thought about anything.
There, David, is human nature in action.
And you conclude -Seems like they are just cashing in on fear!
Perhaps some are, David, because that is just one more thing that people do, and the wise among us remain constantly vigilant and aware of that propensity.
David, whether you are aware of it, or not, and whether you approve of it, or not, what is called modern science in the United States of America today has a very church-like, organized structure with a hierarchy of cardinals, arch bishops, bishops and such right on down to the drone levels.
Long ago, based on my experience with its dogma, I began to call it the CHURCH OF SCIENCE, because of the lock-step rigidity of its thought processes.
And yes, David, I do mean dogma, as in institutionalized beliefs, if you don’t want to be labeled a heretic in the CHURCH OF SCIENCE and ostracized by the Church members as an unbeliever and original thinker, which is not permitted if one is of a lowly rank.
Conventions, David, that is how the CHURCH OF SCIENCE operates, on conventions, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, which is an expression of the meaning of quantum mechanics that was largely devised in the years 1925 to 1927 by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.
Note the word “devised,” David, which carries the meaning “plan or invent a complex procedure, system, or mechanism by careful thought,” and note that while the Copenhagen interpretation remains one of the most commonly taught interpretations of quantum mechanics, it is not the only one by far, just the one the CHURCH OF SCIENCE uses, by papal decree.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation, physical systems generally do not have definite properties prior to being measured, and quantum mechanics can only predict the probabilities that measurements will produce certain results, which tends to make people who want absolutism crazy.
It drives them foaming-at-the-mouth berserk to think that the act of measurement affects the system, causing the set of probabilities to reduce to only one of the possible values immediately after the measurement, a feature known as wave function collapse.
Of importance to this discussion on the CHURCH OF SCIENCE, and the science of climate change according to the science deniers, which denials are based on an a priori assumption that the impacts of humans are negligible, there have been many objections to the Copenhagen interpretation over the years, just as there are challenges to that assumption that the activities of mankind have no impact on the environment, but because those objections conflict with established dogma, they don’t get heard.
Those objections in the case of the Copenhagen interpretation include discontinuous jumps when there is an observation, the probabilistic element introduced upon observation, the subjectiveness of requiring an observer, the difficulty of defining a measuring device, and to the necessity of invoking classical physics to describe the “laboratory” in which the results are measured.
There, David, it is right there that the science deniers draw their sustenance from – because of the probabilistic element introduced upon observation, and the subjectiveness of requiring an observer, and the difficulty of defining a measuring device, and to the necessity of invoking classical physics to describe the “laboratory” in which the results are measured, NOTHING CAN BE KNOWN, and hence, there is no evidence to support the theory of global warming.
What people are ignorant of cannot scare them.
That is the driving philosophy behind the suppression of evidence linking the activities of man to heating of the environment.
As I said on another posting, this is why I stand with Paul Plante and Chas Cornweller in RESISTING the Attenuators proposed for the harbor. How dare the town even THINK of foisting a man made monstrosity into the harbor for the sole purpose of ‘keeping those filthy rich folks’ boats from a rockin’. Why, that would impact the natural cleansing action of the waves and create a toxic stew of boat fuel and garbage and dead fishies.
Wait, what? Paul and Chas AREN’T resisting tooth and nail the wave attenuators? But But but that would make them HYPOCRITES.
Or liberals.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Make us hypocrites, Mike?
How so, dude?
Help us out here if you can by giving us some much needed edification.
What do wave attenuators put in place down here by some town to keep the fancy boats of the filthy rich from rocking have to do with global warming due to heat energy generated by the actions of mankind?
How are you making that connection, Mike?
What math are you using?
Do you think the waves of the ocean are generated because of global warming?
Is that your operative premise here, the basis of your thesis?
Don’t you know that there have always been ocean waves, regardless of whether it was warm or not?
I’m not going to say outright you are wrong, Mike, in saying ocean waves rocking the boats of rich people are due to global warming, because I like you and don’t want to crush your ego or hurt your feelings, but dude, talking to you as friend – that is quite a reach for you to say there are ocean waves now needing an attenuator to stop the boats of rich people from rocking because of global warming caused by the activities of mankind.
It would be more correct to say, Mike, that there have always been waves, but now they are higher, because there is more water, which effects the wave dynamics in such a way as to make those boats rock more than they did before.
I know that won’t fit in a TWEET for you, Mike, but that is the shortest I could make that explanation in such a way as to make it comprehensible to you without having to use science you don’t believe in anyway, which would make it a waste of my time to try to explain it to you.
Hope that helps!
It was interesting to see this blast from the past on CLIMATE CHANGE GRIFT and CLIMATE CRISIS GRIFT and GLOBAL WARMING GRIFT from our dear friend Chas Cornweller trending this morning when I sat down, cup of coffee in hand, to begin reading the Cape Charles Mirror, especially the following:
The sole question up for debate is this:
DO THE ACTIONS OF MANKIND INPACT THE ENVIRONMENT?
As you can see, David, it is a yes or no question.
The science deniers and global warming deniers and the actual scientists who support their belief system all say no.
Then there are people me who say of course they do and it is absurd to think otherwise, so I say yes.
The proof that our actions impact the environment in such a manner as to cause climate change are all around us, David, and it is amazing, but no longer surprising, that so many people are completely blind to those changes.