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Damn all you fools running without your cats (I'm not serious about this; I believe it has more to do with natural climate shift than man-released greenhouse gases. But who knows?) Now us people who bought AWD Touring Wagons specifically to feel the beauty of AWD for the 1st time this winter are out of luck. It was freaking 70 degrees earlier this week. 70 EFFIN DEGREES. Seriously. I wish 1995 would roll around again.

I got to drive my TW once in the snow so far (last week of November?), about 2 inches chaperoning my wife and friends (aka no parking lot/back-road fun). By the time we got back, good old PennDOT had the entire state plowed, caked with salt, plowed again, and caked with salt several times over, probably because they knew they wouldn't have much work for the rest of the season (and because they know all to well of my disdain for road salt and continue to use it egregiously just to piss me off).

When does the 2008 Rally-X season start? My poor Touring Wagon feels like it's not getting the attention it deserves... (probably should fix my radiator leak, first....)

Catalytic converters don't reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Yes, they actually increase it by turning CO and parts of HC to CO2. It also breaks NOx into its base elements, reducing smog. Unfortunately, there's no real way to prevent CO2 as pretty much everything puts it out (even old-growth trees), though I've read that it may be able to be turned into limestone, which would be awesome. I need to start scouting locations for the limestone pyramid to be built to me. An environmentally-sound World Wonder for my New Age.

Carbon dioxide emitted by living things isn't typically a problem because it was recently sucked out of the air by living things. The problem is fossil fuels -- they allow us to inject carbon from outside the carbon cycle.

it hasnt snow yet this year

almost everyone, even those who reject the idea of global warming say that humans have accelerated and increased the effects of the natural warming and cooling cycle

James614 wrote:When does the 2008 Rally-X season start? My poor Touring Wagon feels like it's not getting the attention it deserves... (probably should fix my radiator leak, first....)

Check out the following: http://www.stpr.org/
The run the first week of June in upper PA (Wellsboro). Many big name pro drivers/co-drivers show up to participate.

I think the argument of global warming dodges the issue - pollution is bad. The whole debate is just another distraction, the same way the government keeps people divided with bullshit political labels and their infotainment propagandist dogs.

There's really not a hell of a lot we can do at this point about global warming whether or not it's a natural cycle, manmade, or a combination of the two (though doing nothing is just stupid) however, we should do what we can to reduce pollution. Unless people like things like chronic respiratory problems, cancer, learning disabilities, and general poor health. I suppose a lot of people love those things as long as the political party/religion/misc. other group they've chosen as a substitute for their own identity and thoughts tells them it's good.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying 60* days in January in New England.

Actually, it's still not clear whether or not we can change it. We might still be able to recover, or at least stave off disaster.

There is talk about this being just a cycle of the earth since we don't have records dating back far enough to prove that prior to the 1800's that it wasn't like this.

it would have been much further back than the 1800's im sure, but they get records from things like soil and ice core samples.
in the 1500's and 1800's was a period known as "The little ice age", the year of 1816, was know in England as "the year without summer".
in 1693, the worst famine of the 17th century occurred in France because the cold had ruined all the crops.
there are records that go back to the early 1000's, maybe earlier

Sorry I was speaking of written records in particular. I did catch the show on the Discovery Channel talking about soil sample records which went into the fact different parts of the US had mini ice ages.

The earth is warming, there is no doubt of that. For how long and why, I don't believe we can say with any real certainty.

What can we do, just try to live cleaner and reduce overall pollution and the consumption of fossil fuels.

One thing that has always struck me about all this 'recent' emphasis on living green, we continually improve our vehicles with more efficient engines, yet we continue to stuff it full of crap we don't really need resulting in fuel economies that haven't really changed.

*This is going to sound biased and harsh, no offense meant to anyone on the boards* How many tree hugging people bitch and moan about how poorly we all treat the earth yet insist on buying a brand new bottle of water instead of getting some out of the tap and putting some ice in it. I know that the vast majority of the empties don't get recycled. Where do people think plastic comes from? It sure ain't from earth friendly trees.

The whole thing of global warming/pollution just rubs me wrong. If there is to be any signficant improvement, there has to be MAJOR shift in culture to move away from cheap, one use items and frivolous frills. Not saying I'm the best at this myself, but it's not just an issue of car emissions, it's the whole fricken world economy/culture that is the problem.

[/rant]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the earth constantly been heating up since oh say, I don't know....the Ice Age??

I personally believe that this is just a cycle. Hundreds of years ago there was a giant ice bridge connecting Asia and North America and it melted HUNDREDS of years ago. It couldn't have been caused by cars. Maybe a mastadon fart? I don't know.

I'm just saying that this isn't a new problem. It's been happening for a long, long time. I think it's a cycle. We'll probably just go into another ice age in a couple hundred years...

I agree with Lee 100%. Not only does it require a shift on thinking (if that word can apply to blind consumerism of the hopelessly shallow) for the earth's benefit, but if society and the homogenizing education system actually taught people to find in themselves what's really important and how to develop it, they would be happier themselves. We'd also have less problems with drugs, crime, etc. First, the country needs to be de-privatized. Or we can all start secession movements and leave the rotten core to the freaks and watch them become complete mirror images of the Arabs they most fear and revile (not that they'd know what that word means).

Education, pragmatism, moderation, and practical intelligence have been dangerously suppressed. People point and laugh at Britney when they should be pointing at themselves and looking behind the Britney veil that the United Corporations of America don't want them to see.

vrg3 wrote:...The problem is fossil fuels -- they allow us to inject carbon from outside the carbon cycle.

Green Day~ American Idiot wrote:Now everybody do the propaganda. And sing along to the age of paranoia.

I suggest you read this:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/crispin/crispin11.html

In summary, oil may not be fossil fuels.

Honestly, sure the earth is warming up...

So are we going into global warming or coming out of global cooling and the mini ice age?

Mark Twain once said, "There are Liars, Damn Liars, and Statisticians."

Generally speaking, Environmentalists and Global Warming... Excuse me, I mean Global Climate Change (the new, replacement term for Global Warming) activists fall into the last catagory, Statisticians, Why? Because they love to twist the graphs and mold them and cut data etc. to fit their cause. (Al Gore)

I'll pull together some more stuff on this and report back...

Oh and did you know that, there are 186 Billion Tons of C02 dumped into the atmosphere each year... Anybody know how much of that is man-induced (breathing, cars, "fossil fuels", etc.)?

A whopping 6 Billion Tons... oh yea, were causing it all right...

It was "We're going into another Ice Age in the 1970s!!!"

Then in the late 1990s and early 2000s it was "Were All going to die because of Global WARMING"

Now its "We're all gonna die because of Global Climate Change!!!!"

REM wrote: It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.

[sarcasm]

Oh yes, Jack Hall of The Day After Tomarrow has been right all along!!

Even though everybody laughed at how preposterous that movie was when it came out, they now say that the North Atlantic Current could shut down...

roflmao!

[/sarcasm]

This year is at least better than last, as far as snowfall. I go up to Vermont to ski, and it's been cold all winter except for last week... Last year was a real bitch, with a freeze/thaw cycle about every two weeks, it wrecked the snow base; never got good until February.

Jay Peak!!

6-hr drive...

dropdfocus wrote:

James614 wrote:When does the 2008 Rally-X season start? My poor Touring Wagon feels like it's not getting the attention it deserves... (probably should fix my radiator leak, first....)

Check out the following: http://www.stpr.org/
The run the first week of June in upper PA (Wellsboro). Many big name pro drivers/co-drivers show up to participate.

Eeek! Expensiveness! That sounds a little extreme for my first-ever entry into a timed event. By rally-x season, I was kinda thinking the dirt track equivalent to auto-x/solo... (with minimal prep, possibly AGXs and a 5mt swap) not really looking to take on big pro teams in my 160hp station wagon (I AM looking to turn it into a beast that can run with race-prepped Rexes, but that's.... well, school loans take priority)



Last year, we got some snow in late February/March, so mabye there's still hope for this year...

smh0101 wrote:I suggest you read this:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/crispin/crispin11.html

In summary, oil may not be fossil fuels.

Even if the hypothesis presented on that page were correct, petroleum is still a source of carbon dioxide outside the carbon cycle.

Oh and did you know that, there are 186 Billion Tons of C02 dumped into the atmosphere each year... Anybody know how much of that is man-induced (breathing, cars, "fossil fuels", etc.)?

A whopping 6 Billion Tons... oh yea, were causing it all right...

The assertion implied by your comparison seems flawed -- aren't the non-human sources part of the carbon cycle?

And I like my shellfish, dammit! If all this extra CO2 being absorbed by the oceans turns the water too acidic for shellfish to maintain their shells I'm going to get pissed! Er, even more pissed!

vrg3 wrote:The assertion implied by your comparison seems flawed -- aren't the non-human sources part of the carbon cycle?

I've read several places before that volcanoes are actually the single largest polluters. I don't know if they meant CO2 or just noxious/toxic gases, though.

Every time a shuttle goes up it releases about as much pollution as 3 million cars for a year. So I read. Don't know exactly how that breaks down as far as types of gas since it burns aluminum, ammonium perchlorate, and a polymer that is somewhat derived from ethanol in the boosters. The main tank burns liquid oxygen and hydrogen, so that's probably not so bad, though collecting all that damn hydrogen and compressing it likely is. Then there's the wasted material the tank is made of that isn't recovered, etc., etc.

Volcanoes emit about a tenth as much carbon dioxide as the burning of fossil fuels.

vrg3 wrote:Volcanoes emit about a tenth as much carbon dioxide as the burning of fossil fuels.

Are you referring to normal errupting volcanos such as the ones on Hawaii or a more violent eruption like Mt. St. Helens?

Just averaged over the past few decades.

The notion about man-made global warming is a promotion.

Temps have been rising since the last ice age ended some 12,000 years ago. And there has been an accepted theory that involves the tilt of the earth towards the sun.

The other variable is the amount of energy radiated by the sun.

The best explanation of the Little Ice Age that recorded extremely cold temps through the 1600s from which the latest warming trend started was an unusual decline in solar activity. Going the other way, activity has been increasing quite dramatically since.

A sound theory of climate change has to be able to explain all of the warm periods --including the period to 1300 when temps were as warm as recent. There were much fewer people than and no industry.

Another point involves logic. The term primitive syllogism is the error that because two things occur at the same time they must be causally related.

The classic example is the oldie about roosters crowing in the morning "causes" the sun to rise.

The reason for the intense promotion is that today's authoritarians - no longer able to directly promote socialism for the public "good" have turned to the urgency of catastrophic warming to control people.