Originally Posted By vbdad55 <"and there's a Hall of Fame for honest Democrats or liberals or independents somewhere" I don't know. I'm neither a liberal or a democrat. I suspect not. But when you are trying to discuss a subject and an individual does his best to derail the topic, and turn the subject around to posters, when they plainly have lost yet another argument, then that is not being honest. And considering I've seen some flat out lies about me in particular, well, it's just rather telling that if you can not support your viewpoint with reasoned facts of any kind, then your argument does not have a leg to stand on.< to me that is why using either party as an example of either good or bad weakens any argument. An individual maybe can be used that way - but most are just sheep within their parties also. We have all these enviromnental concern threads, and comments made about neocon thinking, yet it occurs to me we had 8 years of rule from supposedly one of the best presidents that ever walked the earth ( according to devout Democrats ) - and I didn't see any nuclear plants built in that era -- any direction for the country any different than now. Two wrongs don't make a right, but assuming a Dem in the White House will change things in '08 is very presumptious. Tell me why the media has yet to ask Barack Obama - who is from Illinois - why Chicago has the highest gas prices in the US ? Why does he get a pass ?
Originally Posted By jonvn "I didn't see any nuclear plants built in that era" Nope, you didn't. That was a failing of the Clinton Admin. We have had NO energy policy to get us off of foreign energy sources. IN 1973, when the oil embargo hit, the thing for Nixon to have done is to say "Keep your oil, we'll conserve until we can find a better way." People would have done it, and we'd be in a far better position in the world. But he didn't, and no one succeeding him did, either. That's no excuse to not do it now.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 (jonvn) <Since no one has claimed that, there is little reason for me to find that.> (douglasdubh): <You claimed it. You said, "So what it's saying is that it got hot enough to melt stuff, whereas it had not been hot enough before." And here's the actual quote. "Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula," said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "But now large regions are showing the first signs of the impacts of warming as interpreted by this satellite analysis." So Jon is correct here. Unless Doug wants to define "before" as meaning "back to the beginning of time," Jon characterized the statements correctly. Steffen is saying that warming has been observed in non-peninsular Antarctica where this warming has not been observed before (i.e. in the recent past while it has been monitored).
Originally Posted By jonvn Yes, of course. The thing is he lost the argument and resorted to semantics. He got his last word in, so that ended it, but it's pretty clear what a mess his viewpoint is in when he can't do anything but pick apart statements typed into a bulletin board like this. Pretty sad for that entire viewpoint.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Unless Doug wants to define "before" as meaning "back to the beginning of time," Jon characterized the statements correctly.> Well, no. We've only been studying this area in this way since 1999. <Steffen is saying that warming has been observed in non-peninsular Antarctica where this warming has not been observed before (i.e. in the recent past while it has been monitored).> Yes. But just because we weren't looking doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's what I was pointing out.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <The thing is he lost the argument and resorted to semantics.> That's not what happened.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<Unless Doug wants to define "before" as meaning "back to the beginning of time," Jon characterized the statements correctly.>> <Well, no. We've only been studying this area in this way since 1999.> Even if you're right on that, jon still characterized it correctly. "Before" to Steffen meant "before this year, for as long as we've been monitoring." And it's unclear from the article exactly what period Steffen was referring to when he said "Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula." The article referred to data collected between 1999 and 2005 that showed melting, but what Steffen is comparing that to is unclear. Previous data from ice cores? Previous studies of inland Antarctica? You are assuming they've only been looking at this question since 1999, but I'm not sure you're reading that correctly. In fact, when Steffen refers to the 1999-2005 data and then says "Antarctica has shown little to no warming in the recent past with the exception of the Antarctic Peninsula," if anything it would indicate he was comparing the 1999-2005 period to an earlier period in which non-peninsular Antarctica had NOT been melting. If the 1999-2005 period was all they had, how could even make a comparison? It seems most logical that he is comparing the 1999-2005 period, in which there has been non-penninsular melting, to an earlier monitored period of the "recent past" in which there was not. The link does not spell this out, but that's a more logical inference than saying they've only been looking since 1999. <<Steffen is saying that warming has been observed in non-peninsular Antarctica where this warming has not been observed before (i.e. in the recent past while it has been monitored).>> <Yes. But just because we weren't looking doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's what I was pointing out.> Then you should have said that specifically. Instead you accused jonvn of "incorrectly summarizing" it, which is unfair. Jon correctly summarized Steffen's position; Steffen did not address the issue (at least in the link) of whether there might have been similar warming 200,000 years ago, say.
