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题目: Re: Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans
Iamon lyme: Hey.. since when have I been limited to one word answers!! Is this a new conservative board policy restricting freedom of speech for liberals yet again!!
题目: Re: Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans
Iamon lyme: Jesus attacked those who abused devout people.
N' as "no rebuttal".. Is that why Al Gore keeps being used. He's not a good example, like those 'preachers' who take some families entire life savings.
.. If I really did want to attack a religion.. I'd start on Scientology.
The Col: "I'll bet if a Republican rang the alarm on global warming it would considered gospel"
Nope. It would recieve the same attention Democrats give to "birthers".
But you are right about it being a political game. Too bad we will never know what the reaction would be, because that is something I would bet on... easy money.
Iamon lyme: It's pretty silly that the climate has become a political thing.I'll bet if a Republican rang the alarm on global warming it would considered gospel
题目: Re: Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans
(V): "Muller leads the Berkeley Earth Project"
I suppose it beats being an underemployed sceptic. Now Muller can afford to pay his light bill... no more shivering under the blankets on those cold winter nights.
题目: Ex-sceptic says climate change is down to humans
A formerly sceptical climate scientist says human activity is causing the Earth to warm, as a new study confirms earlier results on rising temperatures.
In a US newspaper opinion piece, Prof Richard Muller says: "Call me a converted sceptic."
Muller leads the Berkeley Earth Project, which is using new methods and some new data to investigate the claims made by other climate researchers.
Their latest study confirms the warming trend seen by other groups. The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.
The team argues that the good correspondence between the new temperature record and historical data on CO2 emissions suggests human activity is "the most straightforward explanation" for the warming.
The paper reiterates the finding that the land surface temperature has risen 0.9C just in the last 50 years.
In a piece authored for the New York Times, Prof Muller, from the University of California, Berkeley, said: "Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.
"Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.".....
.....Prof Michael Mann, director of the Earth Science System Center at Penn State University, said that there was "a certain ironic satisfaction" in seeing a study funded by the Koch Brothers "demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly two decades: that the globe is indeed warming, and that this warming can only be explained by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations".
Prof Muller, meanwhile, describes his own change in standpoint as "a total turnaround".
He explained: "These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming."
(V): The small percentage controlling most of the wealth in this world are no more likely to allow the simple voters to control decisions , than Gordon Ramsay is going to allow some reality show winner dictate his menu(and chances of success) at one of his restaurants
Commentator Sarah Wildman says the Affordable Care Act finally makes healthcare affordable and accessible for women.
Fact: Before the Affordable Care Act it was perfectly legal to charge women more for health insurance; indeed it was the norm. Fact: Before ACA, pregnancy was a pre-existing condition. So was a Caesarean Section. Both were legal cause for denying care. Fact: Before ACA, pre-natal care wasn't normal women's care. Some 87% of insurance plans on the individual market did not offer maternity or labour and delivery as part of their coverage package.
Women have been going into debt, declaring bankruptcy, ruining their lives; all to give birth....
......The Affordable Care Act changes all that. It ends what's called "Gender Rating" - which allowed insurance companies to charge women more for being women.
It mandates maternity coverage. It ensures that pre-existing conditions will not force a woman to go without coverage. It ensures that insurance companies will no longer be allowed to turn down a woman for health coverage because she had a c-section.
The majority of Americans - some 63% - are covered by employer-based health insurance. Another handful qualify for Medicaid. Those of us on the individual market, at any given moment, are only 5-7% of the population.
But that number is misleading. It doesn't show those who are between jobs or starting new projects.......
......When I told my story in 2009 - of being billed $22,000 for the prenatal care and delivery of my child, despite having insurance that covered maternity expenses - I was shocked to discover how many fraudulent plans were out there.
Plans that charged women over $1,000 a month to include maternity care - only to discover that care would be capped at $3,000 or less for an entire pregnancy, and hospital care.
Coverage that insurance companies were well aware did nothing to actually cover the costs incurred. Plans that insisted women pay extra fees for a full year before getting pregnant. Plans that didn't allow women to be pregnant at all.
>>>>>>>> Such Freedom that women have in the land of the free ..... NOT!!
Iamon lyme: I was thinking more of what happened at the birth of our universe.. If the laws of nature were uniform then.. we wouldn't exist.
But, if we go back to what I said "Strangeness is relative to the observer" .. Then to most in the UK the belief that God created the world in 6 days and then rested, and that such is still 'believed unquestionably' (as many are forced to accept from birth in the USA) as very, very baroque.
MissDelish: Next time when you are in London, we'll be sure to ask Paul to organize the ceremony. But I'm not sure of the exchange rate... Him and his people not being of this Earth.
A political press agent or publicist employed to promote a favourable interpretation of events to journalists.
This is of American origin and came about during the 1980s, when the need for 'sound bites' became pressing enough to require a new class of publicist to provide them. The earliest printed references are from that period, For example, this from The New York Times, October 1984:
"A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates."
So, why 'spin'? For the derivation of that we need to go back to yarn. We know that sailors and other storytellers have a reputation for spinning yarns. Given a phrase in the language like 'spin a yarn', we might expect to assume that a yarn was a tall tale and that the tellers spun it out. That's not quite right though. Until the phrase was coined, yarn was just thread. The phrase was coined as an entity, just meaning 'tell a tale'. That came about in the early 19th century and was first written down in James Hardy Vaux's A new and comprehensive vocabulary of the flash language, in 1812:
"Yarning or spinning a yarn, signifying to relate their various adventures, exploits, and escapes to each other."
So, spin became associated with telling a story. It began to be used in a political and promotional context in the late 1980s; for example, in the Guardian Weekly, January 1978:
"The CIA can be an excellent source [of information], though, like every other, its offerings must be weighed for factuality and spin."
From there it is a small step for the people employed to weave reports of factual events into palatable stories to be called 'spin doctors'.
The Col: I doubt that that's true. Although Romney isn't my first choice as he's too much of a centrist. Maybe even a bit left of center. But a vote for Romney will simply be a vote against Obama (who is destroying the US economy).
Silvery Moon: If Romney is elected you're basically getting Bush's economic policies anyway, actually it would be Bush on steroids, economically speaking.The same policies that brought about the economic crash of 2008 revisited
Silvery Moon: Can't be done but Clinton was the only one that didn't produce a deficit. Bush screwed that up in a big way and Obama even more. Fact is, Obama is in a league all his own when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.