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Post by antichrist on Apr 1, 2009 17:32:57 GMT -5
The argument I always hear is that this passage of Genesis tells us that the Earth was made for people to use, so by not using the natural resources that God gave us at every possible opportunity we are actually disobeying God. Then why did "God" give us renewable energy? Why is it wrong to use those?
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Post by canadian mojo on Apr 1, 2009 18:02:14 GMT -5
The argument I always hear is that this passage of Genesis tells us that the Earth was made for people to use, so by not using the natural resources that God gave us at every possible opportunity we are actually disobeying God. But... fossils are the work of the devil, and we know that oil is dead dino juice, so obviously oil is the work of the devil too.
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Post by dasfuchs on Apr 1, 2009 18:25:56 GMT -5
Because a perfect god created a perfect world so perfectly that his perfect creations could never unperfect his perfect world. To say that the earth will not just be a great place to live no matter how bad we rape the resources and do nothing in return smacks that concept in the face with a baseball bat And yet, when you ask why there's so much suffering in this world, they say that's the fault of man. How's the old saying go, "Ignorance is bliss"?
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Post by Trevelyan on Apr 2, 2009 1:58:27 GMT -5
The whole problem is the fact that the US is not going to force power companies into the renewable energy avenue until the 11th hour. Too many people stand to lose money if the US gets off of its oil addiction. This has always, and will always, be the problem with a market system that is allowed to "regulate itself".
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Post by Redhunter on Apr 2, 2009 2:43:13 GMT -5
Of course you're right, we still need to buy things, but hey, do we really need twenty t-shirts and a house full of gadgets and stuff we hardly use. hell, 20 t-shirts IS my wardrobe. I'll bet I didn't spend more than ten bucks on clothing last year. I am in desperate need of new tennies, they are ripped and my feet get wet when it rains. But I get what you're saying. Most folks do buy an awful lot of shit they don't need. I was going to buy a cool picture frame yesterday for 6 bucks and I decided against it. I'm a no-bullshit kind of guy. I did buy a collection of 70's grindhouse movies though, 20 movies for 20 bucks! My phone is old but I'm only going to get a new one because the battery won't hold a charge anymore, not because I'm looking for the latest gadget. I think people buy shit as a sort of addiction or "drug" for lack of a better term. Everyone has their escape and for my ex, shopping was one of them (shopping and sleeping). It's pretty sick. Damn... I think I might go back and buy that frame...
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Post by deliciousdemon on Apr 2, 2009 4:33:16 GMT -5
If you have a good picture, go for it!
Sometimes I have problems buying items I do not need. Case in point: pair of 100 quid jeans. Lately the only thing I have bought is food and a return ticket to Greece for spring holidays (which is incidentally, for a biology research project) and it feels very good to avoid the shops and just enjoy being outside in the sunshine.
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Post by ozznova on Apr 2, 2009 8:00:44 GMT -5
I'm convinced that the data from the 1970s was actually correct and we're heading into a period of global cooling and global warming is just some weird smokescreen :tinfoil:
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Post by Aqualung on Apr 2, 2009 8:39:59 GMT -5
Once again I have to disagree with this, since we still need to buy groceries and clothing and whatnot. What we SHOULD do is stop making everything in China and quit buying their worthless plastic shit that breaks two seconds after you get it home or poisons you. Let's get back to making QUALITY products here in the USA, so that it lasts longer and we don't need to buy so much all the time. Also, how exactly are we supposed to combat global warming WITHOUT using technology, for developing alternative (renewable) fuels, I'd like to know? skyfire: I don't think support is the proper word here; I believe in global warming, but I don't support it. See what I'm saying? Probably not.that will never happen, the second someone tosses quality into a product whether it cost anything or not, they jack the price up. All companies try to price gouge where they can And that's fucking disgusting.
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Post by The_L on Apr 2, 2009 14:07:40 GMT -5
Here in the US, some global warming supporters have a habit of taking an "us vs. them" approach to the issue: either you're behind global warming and initiatives to curb it 100% or you're completely against it. As a result, people who do tend to believe in global warming but express skepticism at the pundits or urge caution in rolling out initiatives are frequently regarded as no better than the people who deny that it exists. Since there's division within Christianity over the matter (some deny it, some support it, others simply want questions answered first), Christianity as a whole is regarded as opposing it. I personally believe that, whether we're causing it or not, it wouldn't hurt to cut down, just to be on the safe side. (Plus, I love my mother Earth! *hugs a tree*) Frankly, I could care less whether we're actually affecting GW or not--we should care for our planet ANYWAY, even if there isn't a horrible disaster about to unfold. My father, on the other hand, doesn't even take that view. He insists that the planet warming up now is no different from the other Warm Period/Ice Age cycles it's gone through. Never mind the trillions of tons of CO2 we're suddenly producing every year since the Industrial Revolution. Never mind that the planet is heating up faster than it ever has before. Nope, the earth's heated up naturally before, so global warming MUST be bunk. >.<
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Post by skyfire on Apr 2, 2009 14:18:11 GMT -5
The whole problem is the fact that the US is not going to force power companies into the renewable energy avenue until the 11th hour. Too many people stand to lose money if the US gets off of its oil addiction. This has always, and will always, be the problem with a market system that is allowed to "regulate itself". Not quite. Power companies have been trying to make the move into alternative fuels and renewable energy sources for some time, but have constantly run into roadblocks. For example, "not-in-my-backyard" and green types frequently turn out to oppose wind turbine construction along the coasts on the basis that birds supposedly don't learn at first to go around them and so get chopped to shreds. So in those instances, it's a damned-if-you-do for the company as no matter what they do they'll be offending people. It also forces turbines to be constructed in the Midwest instead, where the infrastructure often isn't in place to effectively make use of them. Likewise, the government itself inadvertently killed the electric car. Initial reviews for GM's EV-1 were poor owing to the batteries not being quite powerful enough (the designers calculated power demand based on the raw weight of the vehicle and didn't factor in for passengers or cargo), and so pre-orders began to fall off. GM moved to scale back production accordingly while they worked out the issues, only for the battery producer to halt shipments as GM's proposed scale-backs went below the other company's break-even point. Government law requires auto manufacturers doing business in the US to supply parts for 10 years past the model year, and so w/o a new source of batteries GM couldn't meet the requirements; killing the EV-1 and recalling the vehicles on the road was their only option.
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Post by m52nickerson on Apr 2, 2009 15:12:19 GMT -5
Not quite. Power companies have been trying to make the move into alternative fuels and renewable energy sources for some time, but have constantly run into roadblocks. For example, "not-in-my-backyard" and green types frequently turn out to oppose wind turbine construction along the coasts on the basis that birds supposedly don't learn at first to go around them and so get chopped to shreds. So in those instances, it's a damned-if-you-do for the company as no matter what they do they'll be offending people. It also forces turbines to be constructed in the Midwest instead, where the infrastructure often isn't in place to effectively make use of them. Yes and construction of any type of power plan that offends people instantly stops the project, please. Power companies use this as an excuse. So it is the governments fault GM tried to put out a crap car?
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Post by schizophonic on Apr 2, 2009 15:40:45 GMT -5
Power companies have been trying to make the move into alternative fuels and renewable energy sources for some time, but have constantly run into roadblocks. One of which is that they don't really want to. Stereotypes kick ass, don't they? Anyway, I agree with the above post. This lack of popularity doesn't stop other types of construction. It's rather convenient that it only when it comes to developing new technologies and infrastructure that cost money. If we had an existing technology that ran on live babies, they would continue to use it. Public outrages is a bullshit excuse, and doesn't actually hold water on a lot of the East Coast where it's supposed to be such an issue. Partial truth.
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Post by Vene on Apr 2, 2009 17:28:58 GMT -5
My father, on the other hand, doesn't even take that view. He insists that the planet warming up now is no different from the other Warm Period/Ice Age cycles it's gone through. Never mind the trillions of tons of CO2 we're suddenly producing every year since the Industrial Revolution. Never mind that the planet is heating up faster than it ever has before. Nope, the earth's heated up naturally before, so global warming MUST be bunk. >.< Um, does he realize that those periods of time are often followed by mass extinctions? I don't doubt that there will be life even with global warming. The question is, will civilization or even humans survive it?
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Post by Julian on Apr 2, 2009 18:40:09 GMT -5
For example, a year or so back it came out that NASA's algorithms were wrong; a re-calculation of the data and the numerical metrics showed that the "hockey stick" shape of temperature increase wasn't as pronounced as first thought and that the hottest year on record was actually in the 1930s. Some of your more moderate and conservative voices raised the incident as proof that we needed to act more cautiously in the future and double-check the data before raising an alarm. Those voices were regarded as being no better than the villain-of-the-week from "Captain Planet." Skyfire - how many fucking times have we asked you to cite your utter rubbish, so we can tell if it's your own idiocy or someone elses biased crap! 1/. The algorthims were not WRONG. 2/. The NASA did not make that graph, three climatologists/meteorologists/university professors wrote a paper that was peer reviewed and published in Nature. 2a/. NASA did however efffectively refute the work of the two guys who brought up the contraversy, pointing out the critical data that they ignored in order to make their claim - they only concentrated on one data set, not everything. Tree rings were only one minor piece of evidence the original authors looked at in order to calculate temperatures for this period. 3/. Statistically insignificant and isolated regional temperature anomalies don't mean jack shit. 4/. The 'contraversy' concerns a small segment of the methodology used to calculate temperatures for a period that occurred over 500 fucking years ago, not the 30's. We'd appreciate it if the villian of the week refrained from being Captain Dumbass for once! PLEASE! [Edit to add:] v V v And it wasn't from bloody last year, it was from 2005! Since then the NorthWest passage has opened up. Also, since you seem to have a thing with NASA, and the UN, so undoubtedly the WMO, UNFCCC, IPCC, etc, why don't you start with this page from NOOA. www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.htmlSkyfire, before you add any more uncited, weaselly, erroneous, fictitious, fallacious, inflammatory misinformation, how about you cite your source for here, and address the claims in the website... After you've done that you can please explain why you posted something saying the companies would love to do what you've already decried in this thread and many others as being not cost effective. Are you a professional troll or just a full time idiot?
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Post by skyfire on Apr 2, 2009 21:01:51 GMT -5
So it is the governments fault GM tried to put out a crap car? GM was actually about to take the rare step of fixing their own screw-up when the battery company backed out of the deal: an upgraded version was in the works that would have corrected for the flaws of the production version.
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