global warming

[Campo]

Straybow,

You're obviously intelligent and selectively well-read, but I think you're suffering from a case of "believing is seeing". You're focusing strictly on evidence that supports your opinion and ignoring evidence that contradicts it.

I'll state one small example:

I grew up in suburban Pittsburgh. The pictures of how nasty the air pollution was during the height of the steelmaking boom are scary. Yet my grandmother grew up downwind from Pgh only an hour away, in a rural comunity, and there was no impact.

I live in upstate New York. Many trees in the Adirondack State Park forests are dying. Scientists -- not the media, not liberal politicians, but real and numerous scientists -- have analyzed the contaminants and traced it to acid rain generated by pollution from factories in the midwest. We're not talking an hour away, we're talking over 500 miles away, with more than a 1000 square mile spread. The effect of pollution is worse in the locality, but it's not necessarily limited to it.

I'm not going to get into a long discussion because it's obvious I'm not going to convince you of anything, but I have to comment on this:

Most political conservatives do want to conserve nature. But we do it by contributing money to Nature Conservancy or WWF to buy land.

That may be true of genuine "conservatives", and it may be true of you, but it's wildly inaccurate for the vast majority of modern U.S. political conservatives.

To have a minor on-topic point:
I don't like the Civ2 global warming ramifications (my engineers have better things to do) or the nuclear weapons impact (the game degenerates badly if the AI gets them, IMHO), so I edit RULES.TXT to eliminate nukes in most of my games. Does anyone consider that a cheat?

[Marquis de Sodaq]

No, it's not a cheat - It gives no one civ an advantage. I, too, dislike nukes in games. Luckily I've learned to win long before that option comes up. Before that, tho, I disabled the manhattan project in games I wanted to play on a really big map. You can edit the rules to make the game fun - that's why CivII is still being played after years!

[Campo]

You can edit the rules to make the game fun

That's something I'd like to do more of. The only changes I've made to RULES.TXT have been very limited and experimentation could be fun.

[Straybow]

I agree. I didn't even know about rules.txt until I can to this site around Xmas '98. My civving experience was greatly improved by experimentation with movement rates, combat values, etc.

The first thing I did was eliminate nukes. Then I found out one can defang them. It turns out that anything with an Attack value greater than 49 is interpreted as a nuke. Change nukes to Att 49 and it becomes tolerable, but then the AI wastes too much effort on them so it's better to eliminate them totally.

Has anyone ever seen the AI use a spy to plant a nuke? I haven't.

[Straybow]

Now to wander off topic again…

Marquis, don't worry. I'm only riled at those who insist that I spend my money on their speculative projects. I'm just presenting the reasoned arguments of a skeptic. Data is good, but it isn't perfect. Scientists are good at what they do, but most have an agenda: keeping themselves in funding. If that makes them less receptive to skepticism directed their way I'm not the least surprised.

Sorry, I simply don't consider any of their ongoing research to be conclusive enough to warrant anything beyond academic attention. Making it into a media issue or a political activism is going too far. Collect all the experts and activists in Kyoto and stamp out a treaty that makes them beat their chests and crow about how concerned they are. Then ignore them until estimates can be refined and supported (or not) and until solutions with worthwhile results can be proposed.

This cycle already happened once before. In the early '90s many scientists were convinced, based on published, peer-reviewed work, that the Southern ozone hole was causing all kinds of problems in Argentina and Chile. Melanomas and lip cancers among gauchos and shepherds, cataracts among livestock, UV burns on plants, etc. were all grist for the mill.

C-12 was banned and liberals tried to convince themselves that pit stains were chic alternatives to forking out $1200 to price-gouging specialists to convert their car A/C units to some other refrigerant. Industries spent billions switching to alternate processes and refrigerants.

Several years later all those were found to be unrelated to the ozone hole. Lip cancers were related to tobacco and other habits, eye problems in livestock were due to a misdiagnosed conjunctivitis outbreak, and leaf "burns" due to atmospheric contaminants rather than UV slipping through the thinned ozone layer. NPR actually did a feature on it (and you know how rare it is to get a three line retraction from the media, much less a feature, and you know how PC "All Things Considered" is).

Every year that a Southern ozone hole appeared it closed again in the Antarctic summer. Why? Because sunlight UV creates the ozone in the first place. Only in the polar winter can CFC catalysis "get ahead" of the rate of formation, and as soon as insolation rises above some threshold level ozone is quickly replenished. Due to the persistant nature of the C-12 molecule trace levels in the upper atmosphere have not dropped much since the ban, nor have polar ozone layer effects changed much. It turns out that transport to the upper atmosphere is relatively insensitive to ground level concentrations.

[Straybow]

Still wandering…

Campo, the same thing with acid rain. Over a decade ago, acidification in upstate NY and Scandinavia were found to be as much due to soil and bedrock types as to air pollution. One lake would be acidified and contaminated with leached metal ions, and the lake a mile away would be unaffected. All due to different layers of soils and rock types in the lakebed and surrounding terrain.

Some soils are easily capable of buffering all but the worst acid rain, others have little effect. Steep terrain leads to more surface runoff and less groundwater migration, and thus less buffering. That means rainwater low pH levels don't correspond closely to surface water pH levels except in special cases. Granite and diorite bedrock leach metal ions that kill fish, sedementary rocks generally don't. That means that lake water low pH levels don't correspond to biological impact except in certain cases.

Recently glaciated terrain was more likely to be effected due to thinner soil layers and larger areas of exposed granito-diorite bedrock. Hence, New England, Eastern Canada, and Scandanavia are prime targets.

The same goes for trees. Some species are sensitive to sulfuric acid levels but not nitric acid levels, or vice versa. In the case of the Black Forest it was found that observed defoliation was a less harmful and more temporary effect than activism and media hype had led the world to believe. AFAIK, no satisfactory explanation of weather conditions (due to man or not) has explained it fully.

Wherever the problems appear, they are primarily anthropogenic because the acid rain does come from anthropogenic sources. This is mostly due to coal burning, which means that power generation is the culprit rather than industrial contamination. Liberals on both sides of the Atlantic find themselves caught between the antinuclear rock and the acid rain hard place.

What to do, oh, what to do?

As for gw, I've read the mud-slinging in American Scientist over Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg admits to anthropogenic gw, but points out that Kyoto would only delay effects slightly: Kyoto CO2 levels in 2100 are only six years behind levels without Kyoto, by their own figures. The annual cost for implementation estimated from $350 billion upwards could be better spent on almost any other environmental conservation or standard of living effort.

To me, that alone is compelling argument to throw Kyoto out on its collective ear. Let the "experts" nit-pick where Lomborg dares to wander onto their protected turf. Their conclusions ring hollow.

Cite UN studies on climate change, but unless by some miracle that committee is unaffected by the UN's pandemic PCness and socialistic bias I remain skeptical about their estimates and projections. Taken with a bit of salt I still disagree with conclusions that hasty attacks on marginal industrial contributions are called for. Complete conversion to non-CO2 power (hydrogen fuels, solar, nuclear) in developed countries could do only slightly better than Kyoto.

I personally think it would be good for political reasons to cut dependence on oil, and that the technological diversification would yield less tangible benefits. Until I see all these celeb advocates driving electric cars and using alternate power in their megabuck egocastles I'm not going to take any of them seriously either.

Civ and Civ2 were created when hype far outpaced science in the gw department. Without that pc hype I doubt either Sid or Bryan would have included such a wacky idea into the game. I'd bet it could be disarmed by changing just a few constants, if the formulae could be located in the code.

[Campo]

This would indeed be a wonderful world if we could just get rid of all the liberals, right?

I never knew that about Attack value 49. Do you know what the AI does if you change nukes to even lower attack values? I'll probably just leave them disabled. It's been a while since the AI came anywhere near nukes in my games, but when in the early days when they got there I didn't enjoy how the game went.

[Straybow]

Come, now, we needn't get rid of all the liberals, just convince them not to take themselves so seriously. You can't save the world, period. Heck, you can't even save your next-door neighbor. Look what happens to some of these wunderkind atheletes and Lotto winners who can't handle wealth and find themselves broke or even in debt after a few years of bad investments.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll resent your condescending intervention and go begging for a fish from somebody else. Cut him off from the freebies and he may pull himself up by the bootstraps.

With Att at 49 the quasi-nukes do tend to wipe out whatever they hit. Bump up the firepower to 9, too, for good measure. If you play bloodlust on a huge map sometimes you haven't even explored the whole thing by the time you get Apollo and see where all the cities are. You will run into lengthy nuclear exchanges if you haven't disabled them.

[La Fayette]

Straybow
IMO you would be a very convincing manager for the department of public relations in the region of Murmansk (I wouldn't swear about the high wages though ).

[Campo]

Come, now, we needn't get rid of all the liberals, just convince them not to take themselves so seriously.

As someone with rather mixed political and social opinions, I find that most conservatives take themselves every bit as seriously as the liberals. Need I refer to Pat Buchanan or Jesse Helms, for example? Not that I'm putting you in their category.

Regarding the nukes, I was wondering what the AI would do if their Attack was less than 49, for example 40.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Originally posted by Campo
This would indeed be a wonderful world if we could just get rid of all the liberals, right?

I never knew that about Attack value 49. Do you know what the AI does if you change nukes to even lower attack values? I'll probably just leave them disabled. It's been a while since the AI came anywhere near nukes in my games, but when in the early days when they got there I didn't enjoy how the game went.

The default attack value is 99. Anything less, and it is just a cruise missile with a really big boom. It's the attack value that triggers the explosion graphic, the sound, and destruction effects. That works with any unit...

[Campo]

Hey Ming,

Are you keeping an eye on us here? We're trying to tread the line between Civ relevance and social debate.

At least we're being Civil about it, pun intended.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Re: Now to wander off topic again…

Originally posted by Straybow
Marquis, don't worry. I'm only riled at those who insist that I spend my money on their speculative projects. I'm just presenting the reasoned arguments of a skeptic. Data is good, but it isn't perfect. Scientists are good at what they do, but most have an agenda: keeping themselves in funding. ...

(re: bold) Which is why the argument continues, and we can both make valid arguments - a conclusion is not at hand, only a pile of observations and associations. Interpretation is still king in this field, imho. As for having your money (I presume you mean tax $) spent on speculative projects, don't worry. Research issues are a drop in the bucket of federal expenses. There are other, more inflamatory wastes than that. I was recently involved in a project for a US agency that has drained its budget - the agency must spend zillions in order to "prove" that a certain administrative action was legitimate - all because a litigation claim by a dozen yahoos in michigan was filed (basically "we disagree, so we sue"). Service must be cut, improvements put on hold, etc, until the legal case is resolved.

Scientists can keep themselves funded with or without global warming. There are plenty of other things we don't understand that would warrant research $ instead. I don't think that's a real issue. Researchers always need to apply for new grants, whatever the hot topic of the day might be.

I think the only scientists not open to skepticism are those who hold ego higher than science. After 20 years claiming truth in something that turns out to have been a castle built on sand, one may refuse to accept that his work has been debunked. O well, that's something he needs to work out on his own.

[TCO]

Originally posted by debeest
SG1: Be nice, now. Many of us Amurricans are smarter than the oil man appointed by the Supreme Court justices appointed by his daddy. Smart enough to wonder how it is that "politically correct" is only used to refer to left-wingers, when the dominant politics of this country and most governments is thoroughly right-wing. And smart enough to see that that's exactly why the right wing got to define the term.

Then again, maybe I only know about Wales because that's where my grandaddy was born....

ooooh, you're so much better, debeest. Good to know that you can suck up to somebody trashing Americans. **** em. Napalm their babies. We showed them in 1776 and 1812 what we think of em.

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by GP
ooooh, you're so much better, debeest. Good to know that you can suck up to somebody trashing Americans. **** em. Napalm their babies. We showed them in 1776 and 1812 what we think of em.

"Trashing Americans" -- oh I don't think so, I have found that you quaint colonials are so much better at that than we could ever be...

SG[1]