DMGreer's Web Log

Google Page Rank and Changes to 3dSkiMaps.com

2007-03-23T15:28:00.000-05:00

From time to time people ask what will happen if they make major changes to their site, so I thought I'd give an account of my recent experience.

My site, 3dSkiMaps used to have under 1000 visitors a month, probably mostly bots and crawlers. Actually I was trying to not have be too popular because my 3d ski maps weren't ready. But the site did manage a PR of 4 and that with only a few low quality external sites linking in, and it had the number one spot for my primary key phrase. It was a vertical market with no competitors.

Then I finally decided to make a big push on it, and some new competition came onto the playing field. I completely revamped the site, adding a few hundred new pages but obsoleting a few hundred in the process. I posted to some relevant forums, and started getting over 3000 visitors per month, excluding spiders and the like. 3dSkiMaps' Alexa rank went from about 4.8 million to around 320,000 now.

But my links dropped to 0 even while more and more sites were linking to my site, and my Page Rank dropped to 0 over a 2 month period. It was weird watching it happen one by one on the Google servers on livepr.raketforskning.com. Finally after about 9 weeks all servers gave 3dSkiMaps a zero for PR.

But now 11 weeks after the beginning of my campaign, Google shows 25 good links. Never mind that a search for 3dskimaps yields 740 results and climbing.

Meanwhile, my visitors remain steady and even my not very well placed Adsense ads are getting higher click through. It will be interesting to see what happens over the Summer.

I guess it's true that PR isn't everything, and you can still have good news in the face of not so good statistics as long as you continue to build and/or profit from your traffic. Now that Google is showing that I have links again, I expect the PR to begin rising too.

T619 Web Settings

2007-03-16T23:55:00.000-05:00

To set the default web page for Samsung T619 with T-Mobile,

*#87927# to get into the Browser Settings area
Navigate to Profile Settings and open an empty profile
Enter a profile name
Enter the home url, this is the default url your phone will go to
Save
Navigate to Current Profile and select the new profile

Now when you go to T-Zones, you'll go to this page instead of the T-Zones page. I set it to go to http://3dskimaps.com. Some of the graphics took a long time to load. The user agent was

SAMSUNG-SGH-T619/T619UVFG8 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 UP.Browser/6.2.3.3.c.1.101 (GUI) MMP/2.0

Of course, you might find it more useful to set it to a search engine like Google.

New US Dollar = Ugliest Coins Ever!

2007-02-13T09:13:00.000-06:00

Check this out.

http://www.usmint.gov/mint_programs/$1coin/index.cfm?flash=yes

Man, that's the worst artwork on any coins ever! They look like something out of The Onion, or even Mad Magazine, especially James Madison. And that's the ugliest, meanest portrait of George Washington I've ever seen. Leave it to mean-spirited, anti-art Republicans to come up with crap like that. Yet another disgrace to America.

Google Analytics Tracker Not Installed Error

2007-01-03T15:02:00.000-06:00

I was adding Google Analytics to http://www.fortresssolutions.com, and it kept telling me it the little Javascript snippet wasn't installed. I looked at the code, it was there. I looked at the page using View Page Source, it was there. But it still wasn't working.

So I looked at it using Firebug, and found the problem. The snippet is supposed to be added just before the </body> tag, which I had done. But Firebug showed that it was inside of a div instead of outside. I had an unclosed div block, so when I added one more </div> to my footer, that fixed it, put the code in the body just before the </body> tag, and it started working.

Why Atheism Is In The News Lately

2007-01-03T13:37:00.000-06:00

I think it's because of the virulent hatefulness of a large number of "Christians" in the US over the past 25 years, combined with similar but more extreme hatefulness and rigid thinking in the Islamic world. Extreme religionists killed 3000 people on 9/11, they helped elect George Bush twice, in the classroom and in public policy they're trying to replace science with faith, and they fervently support their divisive "us vs them" mentality throughout the world.

More and more people see no difference between various forms of extreme religionism. It doesn't matter what religion it is, they're the same people just using religion as a means of feeding their hate-filled agenda of domination and exclusion. It's no wonder people are interested in alternative viewpoints when it's obvious that religionism is no guarantee of wisdom or morality and threatens to rend apart society as we know it.

Or maybe that's just me.

Old Mobile Telephones

2007-01-03T12:12:00.000-06:00

My dad used to work for the telephone company back when it was The Telephone Company. I got to see the insides of the phone building pretty often, and one day he showed me the equipment that handled mobile phone calls. It was just a couple of devices, about 4 feet tall I guess, and you could switch the sound on to make sure it was working or to debug it if it wasn't.

He thought it was funny that people would pay so much for a mobile phone and then mostly use it for mundane conversations. He switched it on and sure enough some guy was saying something like "Hey, honey, I'll be home in a little while, want me to pick up something at the grocery store?"

The rest of the telephone office was the coolest thing, because in those days they used huge (by today's standards) rotary relays to connect calls and the entire floor was filled with rows of racks 12 feet tall, full of relays chattering away. it's amazing to me nowadays to think that when you called someone local back then you had a direct conductive metal link to them. Nowadays when you call it's buffered on so many levels it's almost more lke real-time voice mail than like a phone call was back then.

Anyway, when you picked up your handset at home, your relay at the office would activate, and as you dialed your rotary dial, your relay would rotate too, making a clicking sound as it worked. I'm not sure exactly how connections were made, but the sound of thousands of people dialing was amazing, because you'd hear this huge 3-dimensional clicking coming from throughout the building. The clicking was completely random, but sometimes there would appear to be waves of clicks sweeping from one end of the building to the other. Then sometimes almost everything would stop and, you might hear some clicks off in the distance, and then there would be a shower of clicks all around.

I dream of making an art installation one day to simulate the effect.

CO2 Facts and Figures

2006-12-29T11:33:00.000-06:00

Some CO2 facts:

CO2 is transparent to visible light, opaque to infrared. CO2 contributes about 5 or 6 degrees Celsius to the total Greenhouse Effect which warms the Earth by about 33C. Most of the rest is due to water vapor.

In 1850, there were 2100 billion tonnes of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere.
In 2005, there were 2800 billion tonnes of CO2 in Earth's atmosphere.

In 2005, humans burned

3.9 billion tonnes of oil,
2.9 billion tonnes of coal (oil equivalent units),
2.5 billion tonnes of natural gas (oil equivalent units).

In 2005, the burning of fossil fuels added about 26 billion tonnes of CO2 to the Earth's atmosphere.

By 2030, emissions of CO2 from fossil fuels will have increased to 43 billion tonnes a year.

References:

http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6842&contentId=7021390
http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/2_global_warming.htm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/emissions.html

The Truth About Economics And Carbon Credits

2006-12-10T02:18:00.000-06:00

What most people don't realize about the economy is that any need beyond food and shelter is just made up, an invention of the human mind. There's no inherent human need for Pyramids or SUVs or PlayStations or to go to the Moon, but crap like that keeps people occupied, and as long as they are occupied, they will think they are happy, and the economy will appear to be productive.

So humans invent the need for _things_ to keep themselves occupied, and to make themselves think there is meaning to life, and this is what fuels the economy. Now, people who are convinced that CO2 is a major cause of global warming, and that anthropogenic global warming is a bad thing, will gladly occupy some of their time with diminishing CO2 emissions or otherwise abating their effects.

Then, even though logically this anti-CO2 effort might appear to be completely useless and a drain on the economy, in fact it is not, because it fulfills a desire in a large part of the populace to be CO2-free. Thus is would have an overall positive effect on the economy even if it had no effect on global climate, as long as enough people wanted it too.

This imaginary benefit (imaginary even though it may actually be useful) is behind the inception of the huge new industry of Carbon Credits, which is real enough in Europe, though it hasn't reached the US much.

5000 Cubic Kilometers Of Coal Per Year

2006-11-14T18:09:00.000-06:00

Imagine a cube of coal 17 kilometers per side. Now imagine burning one of those cubes each year. If this were a natural phenomenon, people would regard it as a disaster.

We're also burning a 3300 cubic kilometers of oil each year. Imagine a lake of oil 100 meters deep and 1500 kilometers square. Now imagine burning one of those each year.

If an asteroid struck the Earth, or a volcanic caldera erupted, no one would doubt that it could change the climate. Human burning of fossil fuels is a smaller disaster, but it is a disaster, and it will affect Earth's climate.

More Than Just a CSS Design Gallery

2006-10-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

If you're a part of a web standards world, join the css globe and use the opportunity to create the news yourself.

read more | digg story

NK Nukes

2006-10-09T12:58:00.000-05:00

the light water reactors where not completed. the fuel for them not sent.

the material came from reactors built in the 80s.

# Yongbyon Reactor I - The construction of this natural uranium-graphite power reactor began in 1980 at Yongbyon, 100 km north of Pyongyang. It is based on a 1950 MAGNOX technology (graphite moderator, aluminum-magnesium clad natural uranium fuel , CO2 gas cooling). The reactor was completed in 1984 and it as was activated in February 1987 under Prof. Ha Kyong Won, a Korean physicist educated in US. After many startup problems, it was operating at 20-30 MW by 1990.

N Korea removed about 30 lb. of plutonium from this reactor in 1988 and built two nuclear bombs. From 1989 to 1991, N Korea may have extracted additional 60 lb. of plutonium, enough for five nukes.

# Yongbyon Reactor II - A 50 MW MAGNOX-type reactor was started in 1984. N Korea built a military nuclear complex next to this reactor. This complex was completed in 1989 and the reactor was tentatively activated in 1992. This reactor alone is capable of producing enough plutonium for 10-12 nukes a year.

# Taechon Reactor I - The construction of a 200 MW MAGNOX-type reactor was started at Taechon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang in 1988 and it is expected to be completed in 1996.

# Taechon Reactor II - A 600-800 MW reactor is also underway at Taechon (completion possible by 1997). This reactor could produce 180-230 Kg of plutonium a year, enough for 30-40 nukes.

# Simpo Reactor I - This 635mw reactor is based on a German design. In May 1989, N Korea and Germany signed a comprehensive agreement on the transfer of "substantial" amounts of German nuclear technology and nuclear weapons materials, including enriched uranium, to Pyongyang. The transfer of the German nuclear know-how has continued via Iran, Libya Syria and Yugoslavia.

and the Taechon where not completed - they stopped construction under the 1994 clinton deal.

0.5 kt North Korean Test? Comparison With Other Tests

2006-10-09T12:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB200/index.htm

Thus, on August 16, 1997 a seismic signal from the vicinity of Novaya Zemlya registered at 3.2 on the Richter scale--consistent with a very small blast of between 0.1 and 1.0 kiloton, which might indicate scaled-down tests of a warhead primary.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9805/30/pakistan.nuclear/index.html?eref=sitese arch
[Pakistan Test]
U.S. officials say the blast registered about 4.6 on the Richter scale, roughly equivalent to Thursday's blast...Preliminary analysis of the data suggests a yield in Thursday's test of six kilotons...

http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/ctbt/news/980521-ctbt.htm

UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA SEISMOLOGIST TERRY WALLACE HAS BEEN TRACKING SUCH EVENTS FOR 25 YEARS. HE SAYS A ONE KILOTON NUCLEAR TEST SHAKES THE EARTH ABOUT THE SAME AS AN EARTHQUAKE MEASURING 4-POINT-ONE ON THE RICHTER SCALE.

Marijuana Legalization Is Near At Hand

2006-10-07T02:09:00.000-05:00

Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman has come out in favor of legalization. He doesn't poll very high, only 16 to 19%, but this declaration doesn't seem to have helped or hurt his poll numbers at this point. It could be that most people don't know, but that will change over the next few weeks.

In order for pot to be legalized, politicians have to present bills proposing legalization. To do that, they have to believe that doing so will either be neutral or positive to their polling numbers.

If Kinky Friedman can prove that this is the case, then we'll start to see some action on this. Even if he isn't elected, the effect of his support for legalization will not go unnoticed by the people who plan campaigns and make policy platforms.

Kinky may not be elected, he didn't do well in the debate tonight. On the other hand nobody demonized him for his legalization position. There was one question about it, one of the panelists asked if he would appoint known drug users to his staff in light of his support of legalization.

There will be four more weeks of campaigning, surely the subject will come up, and pollsters will get a real chance to see how the electorate feels about it. After that I think we'll see some positive movement on it in the next few years.

New Vmoblogger(TM) Service Turns Mobile Phones Into Blogging Machines...

2006-09-26T23:54:00.000-05:00

Voice Genesis, a mobile messaging and entertainment company, today announced the immediate availability of its Vmoblogger

read more | digg story

I Had A Splenectomy At Age 17

2006-09-25T14:51:00.000-05:00

In a t-bone car wreck, the arm rest of my Fiat Spyder busted my spleen. Those cramps they're talking about are not just your normal cramps. Your entire abdomen tigtens up to protect your internals from injury, I guess. It took three of those emergency guys to get my legs down.

This was back before so many people were into fitness, so when I was in the emergency room, and the doc was showing me to some interns, one of them remarked about the "curious striations" on my stomach. I didn't have much muscle back then, but I had hardly any body fat. She was talking about my six-pack!

The doc explained to her that some young men the stomach muscles are well-defined like that. But really, it was only because of the intense cramping.

The doc called in another group of interns to watch as he showed them a new technique he had just read about in the latest medical journal. He held the pages of it open so they could see.

Then with only a swabbing of topical anesthetic, he tried to punch this huge needle into my abdomen to find out if I was bleeding internally, this was the new technique. The needle was about as big around as a pencil but maybe two feet long, and with a plastic handle on one end.

The Doc tried twice to push it but it wouldn't go. He told my Dad he might ought to wait outside. Then he bore down on it with two hands and most of his upper body weight and it finally went in.

Some blood started coming out of the top, which he explained to his interns was a positive sign of internal bleeding. He was either pulling the thing in and out, or my breathing was making it feel that way. I tried to be polite and not interrupt his lecture, but after a while I asked him if he could remove the needle, and he said "Wha...? Oh, yes of course."

They split me open from my belly to my sternum because they have to pull a bunch of stuff out to get back to where the spleen is. And they put this drain tube in the side of my stomach, which really felt good when they pulled it out some days later. Now it looks like a gunshot wound.

I don't know if I've suffered any ill effects from it. They still aren't sure what if any ill effects people should have after a splenectomy.

Now I See Why I need Something More Than A Blog

2006-09-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

I need something to takes notes with when I'm not at home.

Topic
Nonviolence - Yesterday, Today, & Tomorrow

Guest
Dr. Michael Nagler

Description
In addition to the 5th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 2001, September 11, 2006 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Nonviolence Movement based on a speech made by Mahatma Gandhi in Johannesburg, South Africa. To commemorate this anniversary, the Dallas Peace Center is bringing Nonviolence scholar and UC Berkeley professor Dr. Michael Nagler to Dallas for two talks this weekend. We'll get a preview of his presentations on "the recovery of human wisdom in a time of violence" when he joins host Krys Boyd this hour.

Events/Appearances
Dr. Michael Nagler will speak at 7pm on Friday, September 29th and 10am on Saturday, September 30th at Unity Church of Dallas (6525 Forest Lane). These events are free and open to the public. Visit www.dallaspeacecenter.org for more information.

Links
Dallas Peace Center
METTA Center for Nonviolence Education

Mr. Nagler mentioned something called "cultural creatives".

Greenhouse Gasses and Global Warming

2006-09-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

In answer to a taunt about water vapor being the main greenhouse gas.

Contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect is well known. That doesn't mean the other greenhouse gasses have no effect.

Without any GHGs, the Earth's average surface temperature would be -18 C, or -0.4 F. Thanks mostly to water vapor, average surface temperature is more like 15 C, or 59 F. That's a difference of 33 degrees C, or 60 F.

Raising CO2 levels by 35% has raised that by about 0.6 C, or 1 F. Lucky for us isn't a huge effect!

Doubling CO2 will raise Earth's average surface temperature by another 3 C or so, 5 F. Still not huge, but it's enough to change things significantly.

But then suppose we're also in a natural warming cycle that will heat us up by another 3 C for a total of 6C, 11F. That's a huge change, enough to have truly drastic effects.

This is the gamble we're taking, the big experiment we're conducting on our home planet from which there is essentially no escape. And it's a gamble that can't be taken back for at least a century. If nothing else we need to be prepared for the consequences.

From A Yahoo Discussion Board by dvz88

2006-09-01T13:43:00.000-05:00

People should really stop name-calling with science they don't understand. It is one thing to speak bad about something if you are educated on the topic. It is another thing to spout hate, when you are not fully educated on something.

I am a Ph.D. microbiologist and have been in science for 14 years. It is a disgrace that people out there think that we, as scientists, are devoting our lives to solving disease/problems at a low paying jobs (we get paid as much as or less than people with high school educations), and that we are doing this with "bad moral intentions". Ridiculous.

We are sacrificing our lives to do this work. And it is to save others: Your grandma who doesn't have it all together any more. Or the boy who was just diagnosed with cancer. Or someone who was in an accident who needs a transplant, a skin graft, or new research to walk again. Or someone who gets infected by a virus or bacteria that needs an antibiotic to survive. Those moments are why we do this for a living when it is far from a glamorous lifestyle. 14-hour days...weekends...grinding away and getting paid less than 50K a year. The only benefit is finding that cure or medicine that you know you contributed to...to help someone else who needs it.

Let me point out two important things:
1) First, an embryo is a ball of cells that hardly constitutes life. The skin that recycles itself daily on your body has the same amount of cells. While a path is set in motion with an embryo to make life, true life...life with a purpose...does not actually exist until much later. We are talking 8-12 weeks when you actually get brain waves and functions.

2) If you really want to understand God's purpose, then go into science and try to understand it. Only then do you really understand how nature functions. Now, people will debate and say that there is no divine purpose. Nature just is, and that may be true. But for me, I study science because I believe it provides a glimpse of higher power. How things function at a molecular level. That beauty, that simple wisdom, I believe can only come from that. Right now we are only scratching the surface of DNA and proteins in your body, and how they all work. That complexity is not beyond Nature's realm. Natural selection explains a lot about how things have gotten to this point. Do you know that some signaling pathways in bacteria...are similar to humans. Imagine that. It is all connected. But I believe, something set it all in motion. That is beauty of it. That is God. Imagine that all of this can come from the big bang. That there is one master plan for life, and then nature just takes over. That is amazing.

So ask yourself. Would you rather be in the dark about science and make stupid comments without understanding its beauty? Or would you rather try to understand how it all works to better people's lives. People who are already alive. Maybe a soldier wounded from a stupid war, maybe his life can be saved by our studying it, an appreciation of how it works. Think about it. Then ask yourself, these same people sent us to war based on lies. A war that ended up killing close to a 100,000 people. Who is more moral? A person devoted to saving others or a person devoted to war and lies.

What I Remember From 9/11

2006-09-01T00:19:00.000-05:00

I was driving to work when the first one hit, but I wasn't listening to the radio. I worked for Ericsson at the time, and in our fancy new building built at the peak of the telecom boom, we had two large plasma tvs in the lobby, which most always showed some kind of Ericsson PR, or if not that images of whales under the ocean or something like that.

People were gathered around the two screens as I walked in, I saw that one of the Twin Towers was on fire. Someone said a plane had crashed into it, I assumed it had been a small private plane and went to my desk. The building plan was open, and my desk was near the lobby area, so I could see people milling around, and my co-workers were alternately coming to their desks and going back out to watch. So I went to have a look, and heard that it had been an airliner.

My God, how could that happen, I thought, how could an airliner get that far off course? And then we all saw the second one hit, and we all knew in that instant. Some people screamed a little, there was a lot of hubbub, I remember thinking that was impressive, that someone could have pulled off something like that. Like, Oh yeah, I guess you _could_ do that. Well, you could do it once, anyway.

Then there were the other two planes, I don't remember now the timing of them, but for a while it seemed like they just kept coming down. And they hit the Pentagon, for crying out loud!

I didn't know what to do, there seemed to be no point in standing there watching it so I went back to my desk. Then a co-worker came in and said "The Tower fell!"

We talked about how many people there would be in the WTC, they said up to 25,000 in each tower. I remember trying to comprehend 25,000 people dying in the collapsed tower, trying to get some kind of handle on what was going on. And then the other one fell.

I remember thinking God damn those people. I remembered when they had destroyed the Buddhas at Bamiyan, and I had thought then that anyone capable of destroying a world archeological treasure was capable of any kind of atrocity, and here it was, up to 50000 people killed at once, and another world treasure destroyed.

It made me even angrier that they had used our own trust of the outlaw mentality to commandeer those aircraft. Before 9/11, everyone knew that the safest course of action for everyone in a hijacking situation was to play along with the hijackers. No good to be brave and try to do something because individual bravery would only jeopardize the lives of hundreds of fellow passengers. Even though the details had not yet come out, I knew that this is what they had done.

I thought about my daughter who was born at the very end of the Cold War, and had never known what it was like to live with the spectre of total annihilation, 12 years of relative peace she had seen, and now it would never be the same in her lifetime.

I took long walks during the two days following 9/11, I wanted to experience the days when all flights were grounded as much as possible. There would never be another time in my lifetime when there would be no sound of airplanes overhead, no contrails marring the skies. I wished I were in a wilderness area so I could get the full effect of a world before flight.

God damn those people, God damn them. It still hurts to think about it, more than it should, it seems, for someone who lives so far away from where it happened. Whenever I watch documentaries of it, I still just hurt, my heart races. I want to see World Trade Center, but even just the ads for it get me so upset, I know I'd be crying through the whole movie.

Apostrophe Misuse Alert

2006-08-17T22:48:00.000-05:00

I've noticed lately that the misuse of apostrophes is rampant throughout the web, so I've decided to launch a campaign to stamp out apostrophe illiteracy.

Here is the condensed version of how the apostrophe should be used:

1) In contractions. Example: "It's" is short for "It is".

2) In possessives. Example: "Dale's house", or "The Robinsons' house". Exception: "Its" is the possessive of "it".

3) APOSTROPHES ARE NEVER USED TO DENOTE PLURALS!

For more info, see:
http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/

Yes, Humans Can Have An Effect On Climate

2006-07-01T18:47:00.000-05:00

We already know that we've increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 20%. If human activities are too small to affect the Earth, how do you explain that?

The total CO2 content of the atmosphere is 2800 billion tons of CO2. Humans are burning enough coal, oil, and natural gas to put an extra 26 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. At this rate atmospheric CO2 content will double in 108 years. You don't think that's going to have an effect?

Water vapor accounts for 66% to 85% of the greenhouse effect, whike CO2 accounts for 9% to 26%.

So, yes, human activities CAN and we DO have a significant effect on Earth's atmosphere. The greenhouse effect increases the Earth's surface temperature by about 33C over what it would be without those gasses. Doubling the CO2 content will add another 5C or so to that.

During the 60s humans started burning a lot of high-sulfur coal, resulting in sulphate aerosols that blocked out the sunlight so we had a cooling spell until laws were passed to limit sulfur emmissions. Of course humans can have an effect on the Earth's climate.

Sure, there are natural cycles, but just because there are natural cycles doesn't mean there isn't a man-made effect on top of them.

Somalia Social Experiment

2006-06-29T10:46:00.000-05:00

The example of Somalia shows why religion almost always becomes the pre-eminent authority of a society. In a situation of complete anarchy, thieves and bandits will take whatever they want. Murders will followed by revenge.

Then protective groups will form, as people pitch their allegiance geographically to get some relief from the bandits and murderers. But in the absence of a strong philosophy these groups will end up fighting each other, since they will usually be lead by bandits and murderers who are only protecting their people to get more of what they want.

Finally, a group filled with religious fervor will inspire a righteous energy in its followers, who will believe that their group should lead because it is blessed by God. This belief is infectious and it offers the promise of social stability, hence the religious group will continue to gain adherents, and in the end even most of the bandits and murderers will join in.

Religion IS a means of controlling the masses, but contrary to what many think it doesn't come down from the top, from the wealthy who wish to control the masses for their own ends. Religion is the masses means of controlling the masses.

Of course, it can be later hijacked by the wealthy who wish to control the masses for their own ends, but that's another story.

Want to live better and healthier?

2006-06-27T16:18:00.000-05:00

Want to live better and healthier?

Shoot your television. Read or learn to play an instrument - even a cheap Casio keyboard.

Use your car sparingly. Use a bike instead.

Move closer to work or into a city.

Don't eat fast food or processed food.

Avoid candy.

Cook balanced meals at home with fresh or fresh-frozen vegetables.

Avoid food with a lot of preservatives.

Don't work more than 40 - 45 hrs a week if you can avoid it.

Take vacation.

Open your windows instead of using the AC unless it is really hot.

Go outisde and play.

Get enough sleep.

Don't be suckered into consumerism. Be a citizen instead.

Don't get jealous when your neighbor puts himself deep in debt to buy an expensive new toy.

Make friends in your neighborhood.

---
From a Yahoo message board

How Could There Not Be Global Warming?

2006-06-01T01:20:00.000-05:00

Anthropogenic global warming, I mean. We know that we are adding 26 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year. That's enough to double the amount of atmospheric CO2 in 108 years, since the atmosphere already contains about 2800 billion tons of CO2.

We've known about the greenhouse effect of a planet's atmosphere since 1824. Without our atmosphere, the average surface temperature of the Earth would be about -18 C, whereas in fact it is about 15 C.

We know that CO2 is responsible for about 26% of the greenhouse effect on the Earth, and we know that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increased from 313 ppm in 1960 to 375 ppm in 2005, an increase of 20%. The only way to get this out of the atmosphere would be to increase the Earth's plant biomass by 20% - is that happening?

These are just the facts, no matter what you think of global warming, these are facts you cannot dispute. Therefore the burden of proof is on the naysayers. If someone is going to deny anthropogenic global warming, then they need to come up with some reason why we WOULD NOT have global warming in light of the clear facts which we know to be true.

Volcanic CO2 .vs. Man Made CO2

2006-06-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

Burning fossil fuels puts 150 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as volcanoes do annually.

http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm

We know exactly how much fuel we're burning, and it's easy to calculate that this burning puts 26 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. We know that the atmosphere contains about 2800 billion tons of CO2.

Yet I have seen global warming deniers claim that volcanoes spew hundreds of times more CO2 into the atmosphere than humans. If that were true, then we would expect volcanic CO2 production to exceed 2600 billion tons - little less than the current amount of atmospheric CO2 each year.

Clearly this is a mind-bogglingly ridiculous argument. Even if volcanoes put out the same amount of CO2 as people do, then they would have already put out the equivalent of the current atmospheric CO2 over the past 108 years!

This might be reasonable if there were some sink into which that much CO2 would go, sequestering it and taking it out of the atmosphere much like what happened to the fossil fuels we are now burning. But there isn't, at least not one that big.