Our great president was quoted in the Globe today as saying that the record 40 billion profit by Exon Mobil was market econimics and that we should not expect any action from the government. Tell that to my 94 year old grandmother whom I just paid her oil bill after visitng her and seeing that she had her heat set on 60 degrees. A lot of Americans are suffering needlessly under this bastard, thank God the US is having a mild winter so far. In my opinion Bush is most uncarring and rotten president in my life time. The US is taking a beating both domestically and especailly internationally under this moron. It is going to take a long time to clean up this mess.

I think God has spared us a cold winter so those Arabs and US oil companies don't get even richer at our expense.
Either that or Global warming is really upon us.:nailem:

Global warming is a farce...total BS in my opinion!:hs:

i feel hung out to dry by our government.

I perdict between 4-5 dollars a gallon in two or so years. We will be saying " remember when it was 2.50??"

If that happens I predict a revolution in which the government in this country is overthrown by the people....you think it can't happen???:rollem:

Larry:
Not sure about Global warming. What I do know is that it's feb 2nd and I have spent aver $1100 on oil so far this Winter and it has been mild. if we go into the deep freeze this month I expect to be over $2000 this Winter to heat my house. I burn wood also but not as much nor as efficiently as I should.
I took out my wood stoves because the insurance company wanted to raise my home owner insurance rates. I may have to put one back in. It's still in the garage and would work fine.

Piemma...how big is your house? Is it insulated? I have used almost a full tank at my house since I moved in August 31st....I think that is pretty good! I would put the stove back in!

It's about 2300 sq.ft. Well insulated but I live in the NW corner of RI. 710 ft elevation and about 10 degrees colder than Prov RI, on average. I'm not burning more oil...just spending more per gallon. Got a deliver Friday. $2.59 a gal for #2 fuel oil.
Friggin' ridiculous

Damn! Thats expensive! Had I paid for my oil it would only have cost me about $425.00 so far. Just lucky I got some free oil from my job....I don't always...last year I had none and we spent about $1,600.00 heating the tiny uninsulated apartment we were in!:poke:

Global warming is a farce...total BS in my opinion!:hs:

Interesting... there are alot of people with this sentiment...
I do believe that climate change is occuring, and there is the very distinct possibility that we are the cause of this. How much of it is natural variability still isnt clear in my mind.
Regardless. I think it is foolish for us as a society to not prepare for the possibility that these changes are coming/here and are permenant.
The fact that 5 previous EPA heads believe it, while this administration ignores it blows my mind.....

You can debate the causes for Global Warming, but to ignore it and not prepare for coming changes to our way of life (like we all aren't) is beyond foolish.

The Administration by not even engaging in the Global discussion is doing great harm to our children's future. Clinton was in a position to do more, and should have...but that's last years news.

When blowhards like Rush Limbaugh proclaim that "God created the Earth so Man can't destroy it" I really can't believe what I'm hearing.

-spence

ha, you should see my propane bill at work.. im going to have to raise my prices :(

When blowhards like Rush Limbaugh proclaim that "God created the Earth so Man can't destroy it" I really can't believe what I'm hearing.
-spence

OK; I'm not about to defend that right wing whack job.. but...
having an education in Geology, you begin to appreciate the time scales at work... if every nuke was launched today, as a species we'd be gone... but in a million or so years.. check back... it'd be a different planet, but the Earth would still be there... there just would be a noticable lack of Homo sapiens......

Just get used to bending over for two more years.

:bshake: <Us

:humpty: <Bush Government

:hihi:

Tell the people in Moscow that global warming is in effect! :laughs:

OK; I'm not about to defend that right wing whack job.. but...
having an education in Geology, you begin to appreciate the time scales at work... if every nuke was launched today, as a species we'd be gone... but in a million or so years.. check back... it'd be a different planet, but the Earth would still be there... there just would be a noticable lack of Homo sapiens......
Yea, but that's not his point.

The religious argument is that man isn't going to do such damage as to make the Earth inhospitable...and even if we do it's all moot when rapture happens...

-spence

I understand...
thats why I said I wasnt trying to defend him...
thank you for making it clear....

Skip.. spoken like someone who doesnt believe global warming without understanding it... there is alot of evidence that while the worldwide global temperature will rise, some areas may get colder...
again, though looking at one year is not global warming, you need to look over decades and centuries of trends.....

There been some great programming on this topic lately on Discovery. SOMETHING is happening out there, evidenced in particular in the areas of the North and South Pole. Life is changing there.

The cause? Certainly open to debate (sort of), but as a rule I always look for the most obvious answer, and that would be human influence. It's possible the Earth is gettting warmer from natural causes as well, but my money is on us, or a combination of the two. The risks are too high to bet against it.

I understand...
thats why I said I wasnt trying to defend him...
thank you for making it clear....

Skip.. spoken like someone who doesnt believe global warming without understanding it... there is alot of evidence that while the worldwide global temperature will rise, some areas may get colder...
again, though looking at one year is not global warming, you need to look over decades and centuries of trends.....


Well said. Too many people spout off about something they know very little or nothing about. 2005 was the warmest year on record.

The earth's axis is reorientating itself as it it wont to do so many thousand years or so. New tilt, newe conditions all the way around. The earth undergoes changes through time. Ice ages, inland seas now Mountain ranges, tropical forests now barren deserts. I do not understand how anything can be so obvious yet so many are blind to it? Nothing remains the same yet we humans believe, in our minscule inhabitation of this planet that we can figure it all out or can come up with a cause which is really just the natural evolution of not only plant and animal species but of the very planet itself. Constant and continual change in the life experience of a planet.

Flap:
The problem is that all of those happen on geologic time scales, and we can't readily observe alot of these changes.
Axis/orbit length/orbit ecentricity are all part of the Milankovich cycle; which have periods of 23K yrs, 41K yrs, 100/400k yrs...

ice ages (glacial/interglacial) is generally on the order of 100k... i.e the last glacial max was ~20K BP, before that there was a long warm period ~75K yrs...

All of these are longer time scales than greenhouse gases, increased heat absorbtion (all that black-top) etc....

But you're right... there is change going on constantly.... most people dont appreciate it or grasp it....

I understand...
thats why I said I wasnt trying to defend him...
thank you for making it clear....

Skip.. spoken like someone who doesnt believe global warming without understanding it... there is alot of evidence that while the worldwide global temperature will rise, some areas may get colder...
again, though looking at one year is not global warming, you need to look over decades and centuries of trends.....

I think most people think of Global warming as the entire world getting warmer. This might be a dumb ass question but if the world is warming why whould some areas get colder? On the surface it doesnt make sense. Just an honest question.

Skip:
I dont have time to write a long winded response with references etc..
First off: I'm not a climatologist, when I write stuff here, its off the cuff stuff I know, but am not an expert in.
Best example I can give you off the top of my head:

IF the gulf stream slows down; i.e due to increased freshwater input into the NW atlantic, (i.e melting the ice caps). When this happens, the denisty contrast that allows the gulf stream to 'run'; then the warm water than heats western europe would slow or stop. This would make for colder conditions in Europe while the rest of the planet is getting warmer. There are alot of other effects of this as well.

Bryan- we are presently on the downside of an Ice Age, no? So wouldn't it make sense that the temps would increase, as the ice is retreating?

We're well past the end of the ice age;
We're in an interglacial period, the true "Ice Sheet' called the Laurentide that was over New England etc.. at one point is gone... ~6k yrs ago.
the ice retreating today is from increased melting and is limited to Alpine glaciers, as well as the polar caps.

Actually the climate infront of the retreating Laurentide sheet was quite unusual, with probably no modern analog.. fiercely cold winters and pretty warm summers (lots of melting)

guess that you paid attention in geology class :claps: :kewl:

Bart, I think what's of most concern is the rate of change. Scientists have a pretty good idea of glacial patterns for some time, and in the last 30 years there has been a shocking loss.

-spence

Yeah the main point there is that the 'ice age' ice sheet is gone and it's modern glaciers melting

thanks for clarifying, i knew it was going to be more complicated than what i wrote.

me likey Geo :tm:

CO2 level pre-industrial age- 280ppm
C02 last week- 379 ppm

Thats a pretty large increase in a short period of time, its gotta have some effect.

Yeah C02 is a concern....
There is a climate guy named Ruddiman who published a paper in May-ish 05, that said he could detect evidence of a human impact 8,000 years BP.. thats pretty amazing if it's true because it shows that the earth system may be much more sensitive than people previously thought....

Not a defense, but just some clarification. the market drives oil prices, not the oil companies. Oil companies keep huge supplies of oil barrels. The cost to produce them remains the same. If the price to produce them is $10 and a barrel is selling for $25, they have a profit of $15. If it is selling at $65, then profit is $55. hence the record profit. They basically do nothing, and make a ton more profit. Oil is a limited resource that scientists have been saying for decades is running down, world oil consumption has increased 10 fold in the past 5 years. A dramatic rise in price is to be expected.
The key is to find alernate fuels. Oil will be expensive for as long as we are around. It is not some profit drive conspiracy, as much as it is hurting the common man, it is hurting other businesses. Do you think CEOs of major corparations would be sitting back if they beleived the oil companies were shafting them?

I cant even imagine what oil is gonna go for when china/india are fully industrialized!

Not a defense, but just some clarification. the market drives oil prices, not the oil companies. Oil companies keep huge supplies of oil barrels. The cost to produce them remains the same. If the price to produce them is $10 and a barrel is selling for $25, they have a profit of $15. If it is selling at $65, then profit is $55. hence the record profit. They basically do nothing, and make a ton more profit. Oil is a limited resource that scientists have been saying for decades is running down, world oil consumption has increased 10 fold in the past 5 years. A dramatic rise in price is to be expected.
The key is to find alernate fuels. Oil will be expensive for as long as we are around. It is not some profit drive conspiracy, as much as it is hurting the common man, it is hurting other businesses. Do you think CEOs of major corparations would be sitting back if they beleived the oil companies were shafting them?

I think that more explains the Profit that the OPEC nations are getting from selling to the Exxons of the world. its the fact that the Exxons of the world are reporting "Record Profits" and not just for the company but EVER....No company has ever made that much profit in a quarter.

If Exxon buys a barrel of crude at $40 a barrell (which equals 42 Gallons) and they are charging us so much for a gallon of gas. Then the price of a Barrel goes up to $60 a barrel you would think that a gallon of gas should only go up by about .47 cents, I mean, under the same logic, it doesn't cost any more to refine it.....so why does it increase by almost twice that or more at the pumps.....and then oil Companies are Bragging about "Record Profits"

I'm no economics major so I'm just offering up my observations as I see them...but something just doesn't smell right.

Global warming is here in my opinion. We can bury our heads in the sand and hope it goes away but it won't . What made Katrina so dangerous was that the ocean temperature was two degrees above normal. This should have been a wake up call. FishHawk

Free market capitalism, gotta love it. If someone has a problem with a company's profits being too high the solution is simple: Become part owner of the company and buy some common. Computers in the 90's, now its housing and oil. If anyone figures out what's next, let me know. :think:

nothing effects so many people in a negative way than food and oil. People are deciding which are they going to have. This bull%$%$%$%$ to let whores like exxon and shell rape us and do nothing. Can you imagine living on 8/hr trying to fill you %$%$%$%$ box with 30 bucks of gas that take you 5 hours to earn. WTF people are being serously hurt buy this.

So what was the deal with the "mini ice age" during the Middle Ages? Was it just an aberation in the Big Picture of overall climate change? I realize that the time that it lasted is barely a blip in geologic time scales.

MS;
If memory serves me the impacts of the LIA (Little Ice age) that was ~1400-1850 are well understood from historical accounts etc..
The causes are less clear. the last thing I had read on that was a while ago, and it basically had it narrowed to two forces; one would be volcanic eruptions; this would have put ash into the atmospehe which reduces the amount of solar energy getting to the surface of the earth. The second has to do with the actual variability of the solar output of the sun, which can vary.
The LIA was important because it shows again that small factors can induce change on the earth....
It is also less clear if this was world wide of it the LIA was confined to Europe/Western Asia....

you cant tell me there isnt global warming...

it used to be....that you could plant a second crop
in the latter half of august and take advantage of
the cooler temperatures in fall for the cole crops
that like cooler temperatures....

not last fall... :doh: to friggan hot...90 degrees
for almost all of september...at least where i live

no matter how much i watered it wasnt enough...
most everything bolted.... i finally said: frig this,,,
and i have never done that before..

it's getting to the point that i'll have to build a shade
cloth trellis to make 50% shade...
------------------------------------------------------------
the north and south poles ice,,,,,
are the earth's Air conditioners....

Why not just take them over? Turn the profits into larger public programs.

Our great president was quoted in the Globe today as saying that the record 40 billion profit by Exon Mobil was market econimics and that we should not expect any action from the government. Tell that to my 94 year old grandmother whom I just paid her oil bill after visitng her and seeing that she had her heat set on 60 degrees. A lot of Americans are suffering needlessly under this bastard, thank God the US is having a mild winter so far. In my opinion Bush is most uncarring and rotten president in my life time. The US is taking a beating both domestically and especailly internationally under this moron. It is going to take a long time to clean up this mess.


Skip N must love you Duke :hihi:

Skip N must love you Duke :hihi:

I love everyone :hee:

on high oil prices:

CA CHING ! $$$$ :D