Balta1701

You know, at some point, the Republicans will actually have to start announcing that they're running to replace the unconstrained disaster for that party that is George W. Bush. Anyway, Arizona Governor Bill Richardson is ready to annouce that he is officially running for the White House in 08 by forming the classic exploratory commitee. Trying not to offend anyone, personally, I think the best possible ticket for the Dems in 2008, regardless of who the Republicans run, would be an Obama/Richardson ticket. Both candidates are perfect in my mind; Obama thus far has embodied everything I want in a chief executive, from the intelligence to the willingness to serve, and Richardson has experience beyond what Cheney came into the Job with, and instead of a legacy of Failure Richardson has a legacy of success. And on top of just their abilities, there's the race issues, which unfortunately are still of unmitigated importance for this nations' future. Barring a significant change by someone doing something incredibly stupid like endorsing Osama (not Obama Fox News, read the letters), I will vote in the primaries to advocate that ticket from now on.

Senators Feinstein (D-CA) Leahy (D-Vt) and Pryor (D-Ark) have introduced legislation to remove a newly discovered provision of the USA Patriot act, inserted casually by Arlen Specter, which alllows the Executive Branch to appoint prosecutors to fill any vacancies that appear in the federal prosecutor brigade without having the appointee approved by the Senate. In the past month or so, 7 different prosecutors, including the Prosecutors who went after Barry Bonds and Duke Cunningham, have resigned, possibly at the insistance of the White House, which has left the White House able to appoint their replacements with no debate or approval.

God I miss that City. Someday I hope UofC or Northwestern is hiring a Geochemist. Anyway...

Man, do I ever miss the chicken that they sold at the gas station at the corner of route 6 and McCool rd. but that's a bit beside the point.

QUOTE(NUKE @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 05:51 PM) I agree with the Democrats plan to eliminate tax breaks on the oil industry provided it goes, as promised, to fund alternative energy research. Personally, I could care less about global warming but as a national security issue, energy independence is a big deal to me. Since if you're in the army I'm going to assume you're about my age...let me say that from my position as a geologist who has had a decent amount of training in climate science, before your life is over, you will wind up caring very very much about anthropogenic climate change and wishing that the world had done something about it before it was too late. But I will agree with you on the other part; if the U.S. were to develop full energy independence, it would be a wonderful thing for both the country and the world.

So, after that rainy last game with Cameron where we won the ol' oaken bucket, as a Bills fan, I'm not going to enjoy rooting against Cam. But hey, he couldnt' do jack sh*t with the defense while he was at IU, so I guess I can tolerate it.

Youtube link. This will make you all feel better, I promise.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:37 PM) About time too! Well, you should have voted for a Democratic Congress earlier

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:30 PM) 2. Any recommendations won't be taken seriously (9/11 Commission what?) The Dems finally just passed the huge majority of the actual 9/11 commission reccomendations as part of their 100 hours boom.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:21 PM) sounds good to me. a t-shirt at walmart might be $10 instead of $3.50, but i'm ok with that. remember though, many countries will see this as another attempt as the 'evil' United States imposing their will on other countries. may cause resentment. But, it would also involve the U.S. actually signing a treaty presumably, which would show the U.S. actually reaching out to the rest of the world to do something for the good of the world, for the first time in a long time.

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 02:07 PM) i do not think it would be inhumane. i also support import tariffs on chinese goods to help american manufacturing. their labor practices and trade policies give them illegal trade advantages. Then I think we're at least not too terribly far apart on this one. The interesting thing about CO2 is that a cap and trade type system would almost certainly work, and work well, if it were set up globally. A global treaty, say signed in a Japanese city, sets up a system where each country is given a goal to reach in terms of decrease in CO2 output compared to today, and countries which decrease faster than the current rate wind up turning a profit by selling their credits to countries that decrease more slowly. That sort of system doesn't work for some pollutants, like Mercury, that hang around in one spot, but because CO2 is so well mixed in the atmosphere, I think it would actually be fairly effective if we could get the major powers in the world to join in (and the developing world would actually have motivation to join as well, because they'd have the opportunity to turn a profit just by cleaning up)

QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:56 PM) of course. but aren't you against embargo's? remember, they are inhumane tools of the white male oppressor. like the ones cuba has to endure. it's not castro's fault cuba is poor, it's america's. Actually, I'm opposed to the Cuban embargo for one simple reason; I'm sick to death of having to drink soft drinks that substitute corn syrup for real sugar because that embargo has made real sugar more expensive than corn syrup in this country, but that's a different story. So let me ask this, do you think that if the U.S. started using its economic power as a negotiating tool to force developing nations to enforce Carbon limits as they develop, or set up a cap-and-trade system such that countries which clean up their act even more are further rewarded, it would be an inhumane thing? We're not talking about preventing people from getting medical supplies, or at least I hope not, all it would involve would be some establishment of a reward-based system for compliance with rules. THen the only remaining question is how stringent we want the rules to be.

QUOTE(Jenksismyb**** @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:48 PM) I think you're ignoring the fact that you have 1,000,000 years worth of data out of how many millions? Isn't it possible that CO2 levels have fluctuated due to natural events that are beyond a 150, hell, a 1000 year window? Imagine the fear of the world if we went through a mini-ice age like what happend in the 1620's-1630's, the same time the Pilgrims were coming over here. People think it was strange that it was 60 in Dec, what would they think of blizzard/sub-freezing conditions going on into April like they experienced? Fixed that for you. Yes, it is entirely possible that CO2 levels have fluctuated due to natural events. But you know the other remarkable thing? By taking measurements of the CO2 concentration in oceanic surface waters, measuring the amount in the atmosphere, and doing some simple calculations, it can actually be shown quite readily that there is close to a 1 to 1 correlation within error between the amount of CO2 released by human burning of fossil fuels and the CO2 increase in the environment. The current rise in CO2 by 50% within 100 years is not only unprecedented within the last million years (in both the rapidity of the rise and the absolute value of the atmospheric CO2), it is also nearly entirely due to human consumption of fossil fuels. And the little ice age is in fact another good example of the real issue here; how tied humanity actually is to the climate. The little ice age killed quite a few humans, simply by disturbing crops. That's seriously all it takes. QUOTE(mr_genius @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:51 PM) ah, so thats the excuse the left will use to let china off the hook for pollution. i was wondering what it would be. of course, it's america's fault. Did I not also suggest a solution that the U.S. could use to make Countries like China comply with new regulations?

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:41 PM) The main problem is, while we do this (and while the US could do better, it still does a better job than anyone else, imo) we have no ability to force other nations to do this and many 3rd world countries (and 2nd world/developing nations) are polutting like mad as they are essentially industrialist doing anything they can to make a buck (and yes, I'm sure many of those factories do in fact involve products us Americans are buying). Still, what body is going to truly enforce the entire world to clean up its act. Its great for the US to do so, but the US is far from the problem (even though we are obviously vast consumers). I want our country to strive to be leaders in the world (both economically, politically, environmentally and so on) but we also must find ways to force the hand of other countries (and thats going to be tricky). 2 points. 1. The U.S. is actually a HUGE part of the problem. In terms of energy consumption, the U.S., with something like 1/20th of the world's population, consumes over 25% of the world's resources, and therefore is producing over 25% of the world's CO2 outputs (and yes, it will be more if you consider the fact that many places in Europe are moving rapidly to cleaner sources of energy and the fact that a large chunk of the non-U.S. pollution is created to send products to the U.S.) If we ignore the U.S., we are quite literally ignoring the elephant in the room. 2. The U.S. itself can actually find ways of enforcing these sorts of measures if it really wants to. The nation simply doesn't have to take imports from every country that wants to send stuff here; we already embargo nations for other political reasons, there is absolutely nothing from stopping the U.S. from using its economic power to motivate nations to clean up their act.

QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:19 PM) And we will see climate changes regardless of what humans do. No one is going to tell me the first ice age was created by humans. Who do we blame for the dinosaurs dying off (and the climate being ridiculously hot at that time). We've had ice ages and times where the earth is much hotter and its been very cyclical. Sure humans may have some impact, but the long history of the earth shows many different time periods with drastic climate changes (that take place over a period of time). So yes, I think we should help the environment and do things as such, but maybe we should also realize we aren't necessarily the cause of global warming since the earth has had climate changes its entire history (and not all of them could have possibly changed by humans). Ok, this is simply wrong. Yes, the earth has had climate changes in the past, and yes, the earth will do so again. But The fact that the climate of the earth has changed in the past is in no way an argument that humanity can't change the climate of the earth, nor is it an argument that the current climate changes are not due to human activities. Right now, we believe we have a very solid understanding of the underlying principle here. A certain amount of light is radiated away from the earth. Gases in the atmosphere can absorb this light and prevent it from leaving. Water has done this for billions of years. But CO2 has been kept artificially low in the Earth's atmosphere by the fact that life takes up CO2 and stores it. Because CO2 is so low, when you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you can significantly increase the amount of heat absorbed by that CO2, and therefore you can force the earth's surface temperature to rise so that it will emit heat at a different wavelength where CO2 does not absorb as much light. Simply saying "There are climate changes in the past and there will be again" is totally ignoring the reality of what we're doing. We've increased atmospheric CO2 by something like 50% in the past 150 years. Simplyt saying "oh the climate will change" ignores the abruptness of what we've done, and totally ignores the interdependence of humanity on the climate systems. Oh, and who do we blame for the dinosaurs dying off? Well first, evolution; they took a major hit with the development of angiosperms, the leaves of which their stomachs were not able to digest. Then, they were finished off by a very large impact event which killed large numbers instantly and left the rest to starve in a nuclear winter (they may very well have survived though had it not been for the development of flowering plants). Which I think is interesting because it is a nice illustration of how inter-dependent many of the systems on earth are; one thing changes, then a species moves to the brink, then a catastrophe happens and they're wiped out, but without the first change, they may well have survived.

QUOTE(knightni @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 01:04 PM) QB and WR are totally different in the learning curve. Very true. I'm just saying I think he'll be back trying out for an NFL team in a couple years.

Drew Henson says hi.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 12:19 PM) I bet global warming contributed to the end of the ice age. What do you think about that? Actually it did. In fact, humanity may even have played a part in the ending of that ice age...there are studies out there that do suggest that the climate cycle for the earth for the last 10,000 years or more may be strongly tied to human activity through such practices as deforestation or domestication and harvesting of crops. QUOTE(Chisoxfn @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 11:51 AM) Considering I think for a large part global warming is more a natural issue than it is a polluting issue (Ie just globa temperature changes are cyclical as the history of the world has shown). Now I'm not saying pollution doesn't have an impact and I'm always for less pollution, but at the same time I don't buy into this end of the world global warming crap that a lot of people spew. The problem is, if there are people out there saying that global warming will end the world, they're not the ones you should be listening to. The earth and the human race in particular are remarkably adaptable systems, and anything less than a Venus-type greenhouse (highly unlikely, I can explain why if you'd like) won't put an end to civilization/life as we know it. On the other hand though, the fact that mankind will live through it does not mean that dramatically changing the climate won't be very very very very very bad, and that doesn't mean that it won't potentially kill or displace billions of people. Pretty much you name the feature of human existence, it is in some way tied to the climate. Shifting the climate shifts growing regions, shifts water resources, shifts shorelines, moves diseases, changes erosional patterns, and changes patterns of natural disasters. All it takes is a small shift to make many places where hundreds of millions of people live suddenly become uninhabitable.

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 11:21 AM) From the Irish to the Cubs... well at least I get to keep my irrational hatred of the guy. And as a former Portage Indian, I'm happy to throw Valparaiso onto that list too.

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 11:01 AM) It's most. All except Elbert were above AA. And Elbert was #55, while Danks was #59. So in other words, of the class of lefties who should be starting around AAA this season, Danks was ranked as the 2nd best by BA last year. And Elbert didn't exactly murder folks at AA last season (1.35 WHIP, 11 home runs in 11 games), so it's at worst a wash.

QUOTE(jackie hayes @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 11:05 AM) Samardzija decides on baseball. So much for all that 2-sport stuff. With the money the Cubs threw at him, that's hard to disagree with. But anyway, does anyone else have a feeling he'll be in the NFL within a few years anyway? (Drew Henson)

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 09:33 AM) You're getting the shirt, aren't you? If they sold those they'd make a fortune.

QUOTE(Soxy @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 09:48 AM) I think you got the first link wrong there tigre. Fixed.

Colbert on O'Reilly O'Reilly on Colbert

QUOTE(witesoxfan @ Jan 19, 2007 -> 09:15 AM) Very first part of this He is not the best left handed pitching prospect in baseball. And best left handed is sorta similar to tallest midget, only slightly more meaningful. I mean, how much would it matter if he was in fact the best left handed pitching prospect if there were 40 other right handed pitching prospects better than him? FWIW, he was ranked 59th on BA's top 100 prospects last year. LH pitchers in front of him were Francisco Liriano, Jon Lester, Scott Olson, Adam Loewen, Jeremy Sowers, and Scott Elbert. When BA is evaluating their prospects, they also take into account which level of the minor leagues a player should be starting at, because people can sometimes hit a level and then plateau out or struggel. To my eyes, either most or all of that list of pitchers you just gave were expected to start last season at AAA or above, while Danks hadn't even pitched a full season at AA when the 06 rankings came out.