It's getting warm

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ukcanuck
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Re: It's getting warm

Post by ukcanuck »

Per wrote:You know in most ways, a warmer climate is not all that bad for Sweden, but one drawback of the milder winters we've had the last twenty years or so, is an increase in the number of ticks, but also the invasion of the Spanish slug, or "killer slugs" as we call them.

They're not killers as in killer bees, the name comes from them being cannibalistic, so you can often see one of them eating a weaker compadre... Anyway, they're bigger, uglier and more repulsive looking than traditional Swedish slugs, they multiply like crazy (being adapted to the Iberic peninsula and its dry climate they lay hundreds of eggs in the hope that at least some may actually hatch, but in the moister Northern Europe - they all do. :shock: ) and completely devestate gardens. They have no natural enemies here. Apparently the musk duck eats them, but that's about it.

Now that it's spring and I ride my bike to work there are scores of them crawling all over the bike lanes.
Some squashed, others not, but all of them equally disgusting. :evil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_slug

Still haven't seen any in our garden. Maybe the hedgehogs take care of them? We have two of them living there, a male living under a dutchman's pipe in front of the house and a female living under the playhouse in the backyard. Now during spring the two of them socialise quite a bit in the evenings, some summers we have "hoglets", but the rest of the year they tend to each stay in their designated half of the garden... Anyway, hedgehogs eat slugs, but I've often heard people say that they don't like the Spanish ones. Maybe ours do? :look:

Hey Per here in the UK gardeners use beer as bait in slug traps, it seems they love the taste and an inch of the stuff in a shallow pan or container works great as a death trap for them to drown in... as traps go it seems like a helluva way to die
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Re: It's getting warm

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ukcanuck wrote:
Per wrote:You know in most ways, a warmer climate is not all that bad for Sweden, but one drawback of the milder winters we've had the last twenty years or so, is an increase in the number of ticks, but also the invasion of the Spanish slug, or "killer slugs" as we call them.

They're not killers as in killer bees, the name comes from them being cannibalistic, so you can often see one of them eating a weaker compadre... Anyway, they're bigger, uglier and more repulsive looking than traditional Swedish slugs, they multiply like crazy (being adapted to the Iberic peninsula and its dry climate they lay hundreds of eggs in the hope that at least some may actually hatch, but in the moister Northern Europe - they all do. :shock: ) and completely devestate gardens. They have no natural enemies here. Apparently the musk duck eats them, but that's about it.

Now that it's spring and I ride my bike to work there are scores of them crawling all over the bike lanes.
Some squashed, others not, but all of them equally disgusting. :evil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_slug

Still haven't seen any in our garden. Maybe the hedgehogs take care of them? We have two of them living there, a male living under a dutchman's pipe in front of the house and a female living under the playhouse in the backyard. Now during spring the two of them socialise quite a bit in the evenings, some summers we have "hoglets", but the rest of the year they tend to each stay in their designated half of the garden... Anyway, hedgehogs eat slugs, but I've often heard people say that they don't like the Spanish ones. Maybe ours do? :look:

Hey Per here in the UK gardeners use beer as bait in slug traps, it seems they love the taste and an inch of the stuff in a shallow pan or container works great as a death trap for them to drown in... as traps go it seems like a helluva way to die
It's not the beer...it's the brewers yeast...attracts them then kills them with toxicity...Pair can't use beer in Blue und Yellowland...to expensive to waste on a slug 8-)
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Re: It's getting warm

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Per wrote:
Knucklehead wrote:Not to derail this heartwarming thread on global warming but a greater and more immediate threat to mankind is the spent fuel pool #4 at Fukushima.

If that baby gets out of control it could be the end of the world as we know it and I won't feel fine.
http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/04/682.html
Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air. This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced.
I'm not to worried for myself, I'm 56 this year and have had a good life, Hell I've even been dead once 4 yrs ago, but I feel for all the young people that will have to deal with the horrific afereffects if this shit came down.
More hysteria. Certainly not the end of the world, but perhaps the end of people living in a huge chunk of Japan.

If you read it more carefully they compare it to 85xChernobyl, or half of the total radiation released by all atmospheric nuclear testing. I have a hard time knowing what to do of 85xChernobyl, but let's look at half the total radiation released by all atmospheric nuclear testing. There's been a study published in American Scientist that tries to estimate the health effects atmospheric nuclear testing has had on the American population. Their conclusion is that it has caused an estimated total of 54,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer, some 1,800 deaths in leukemia and some 22,000 cases of other cancers, half of them fatal. You may compare this to the roughly 60,000,000 incidents of cancer expected in the same population by other causes, ie the increase in cancer caused by the fallout was just over 0.1%. That being said, some 40,000 people had their life cut short by these tests, and the increase in thyroid cancer, the one most clearly linked to radioactive fallout, is as high as 10% above the "normal" expected rate.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues ... er-risks/7

So, what can we conclude from this? If the fallout from all atmospheric testing caused an additional 40,000 cancer deaths in the USA, and an overall increase in cancer rates of roughly 0.1%, isn't this roughly the magnitude we should expect from the Japanese situation, if they compare it to half the radiation released by all nuclear testing? Granted, this is a bit more concentrated, so maybe we should compare it to the effects on the 14,000 people on the Marshall Islands, where cancer rates have jumped a whooping 3% due to nuclear testing.

Let's try some middle ground. Let's assume that cancer rates in Japan increase by 1%. Incidently, Japan today has roughly the same population size the USA had in the 1950's. Assuming that cancer rates are roughly the same (probably not, the Japanese have a healthier life style), we should have the same estimated 60,000,000 life time cancers. The expected effect should then be an additional 600,000 cancer cases, half of which are fatal. Let's say that the global effects, where of course the concentration has been diluted, adds the same number of cancers in the outside world. We then look at a total of some 600,000 people dying as a result of this incident over the next 50-70 years. We're talking about perhaps 10,000 people per year. Then compare this to the current global death rate, with more than 150,000 people dying every day, or 56,000,000 per year.

As catastrophic as this scenario is, and especially locally in Japan... Seriously, I think we've seen worse. :?

Yes, a lot of people may die. Yes, a large chunk of Japan may be unfit for human habitation for decades, but no, it's not the end of the world, or even of civilisation as we know it.

As a comparisson, a survey published in the Lancet suggested that the American war on Iraq had caused 654,965 excess deaths in the Iraqi population between March 2003 and June 2006. This figure is much higher than the official body counts, but that is because they compare the total number of deaths in this time to the total number of deaths in a similar time frame before the invasion. Thus they do not just include people who die from fighting, but also people who die due to deteriorating infrastructures leading to lack of healthcare, safe drinking water, etc and an increase in lawlessness.
http://brusselstribunal.org/pdf/lancet111006.pdf
Fallout is reaching BC waters and expected to peak in the next couple of years.

Somewhere around peak levels in the 70's and 80's from nuclear bomb testing.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Fall ... story.html
The scientists predict the Fukushima radioactivity off North America will continue to increase before peaking in 2015-16 at levels comparable to those seen in the 1980s as a result of nuclear testing. Then levels are expected to decline and, by 2021, should return to levels seen before that Fukushima accident — considered one of the most serious nuclear reactor accidents.
The background level for Cesium-137 in the Pacific Ocean is about one becquerel (Bq) — the decay of one Cesium-137 nucleus per second — per cubic metre of seawater. Fukushima has increased the radiation level off the B.C. coast to about 2 Bq and the level is expected to peak about 3 to 5 Bq per cubic metre of water by 2015-16. Canada’s drinking-water standard for Cesium-137 is 10,000 becquerels (10 kBq) per cubic metre.
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Re: It's getting warm

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Over the Internet, you can pretend to be anyone or anything.

I'm amazed that so many people choose to be complete twats.
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Re: It's getting warm

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http://www.torontosun.com/2016/06/03/th ... ate-change

The 'duckspeak' of climate change

We hear it all the time: “Climate change is real”, “97% of experts agree”, “we must increase our use of green energy to reduce carbon pollution”.

But it is all “duckspeak”, precisely what George Orwell warned us about in his novel 1984.

Duckspeak was a form of speech consisting entirely of words and phrases approved by the controlling party in Orwell’s disturbing vision of a dystopian future.

Someone who had mastered duckspeak could fire off ideologically pure assertions like bullets from a machine gun, without thinking, their words emanating from their larynx like the quacking of a duck.

Being called a duckspeaker was a compliment in 1984 since it indicated one was well-versed in the official language and views of the state.

We are now in an era of climate change duckspeak.

Rather than being merely ridiculous or social satire, the purpose of climate duckspeak is ominous: To convince opinion leaders and the public to think about climate change only as the government and eco-activists want.

To support alternative points of view is “climate change denial”, today’s version of thoughtcrime, punishable by excommunication from responsible citizenry.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sets the stage for climate change duckspeakers by repeatedly asserting, “climate change is real.”

Trudeau’s claim is correct but trivial, since the climate is always changing. It is the duckspeak equivalent of proclaiming “sunrise is real”.

But Trudeau is employing a strategy right out of 1984.

His statements imply that experts have concluded that unusual climatic events are happening because of humanity, and that government must save us.

U.S. President Barack Obama does the same, asserting in the Cutting Carbon Pollution in America section of the White House web site: “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”

Referring to greenhouse gases (GHG) as “carbon pollution,” as both Obama and the Canadian government do regularly, is pure duckspeak.

“Carbon pollution” conjures up subconscious images of dark and dangerous emissions of soot.

But what they are almost always discussing is carbon dioxide (CO2). But were they to call it that, most people would be unconcerned, remembering from grade school that CO2 is a trace gas essential for plant photosynthesis.

So government and climate campaigners mislabel it as “carbon” to frighten the public and discourage critical thinking, closely following Big Brother’s strategy in Orwell’s classic.

Similarly, Trudeau and Obama err when they refer to low CO2 emitting energy sources as “clean” or “green” since CO2 isn’t unclean.

But the label promotes an image of environmental wholesomeness, hiding the ineffective and damaging nature of many alternative energy sources.

Finally, the “97% of experts agree” phrase is designed to suppress debate.

After all, who would dare contest experts about such a complicated issue?

But appealing to authority or consensus is a logical fallacy that proves nothing about nature.

Regardless, the surveys used to back up the consensus argument are unconvincing.

They either asked the wrong questions, or asked scientists who don’t research the causes of climate change, or polled mostly those who would obviously agree with the government.

It is not surprising, then, that language tricks like Orwell’s duckspeak are being used today to justify the unjustifiable in the war of words over global warming.

- Tom Harris
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Re: It's getting warm

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I love every move Jim Benning makes 8-)
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Re: It's getting warm

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Strangelove wrote:
Quack = Tom Harris 2016 Winner of the Darwin Award! 8-)

http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris
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Re: It's getting warm

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Spidey, somehow someway you've become... them. :look:

Lemme guess, your family has a military background?

They :look: ... told you it's okay, you'll be serving your country in a cool way and... you'll still be you.

Well listen, you're not Spidey... you're not you!

Trust me Spides... they :look: ... took everything from you (those bastards!).

When you're ready, let me know, I can get you to a safe house...
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Re: It's getting warm

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There's no life.

Like it.
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Re: It's getting warm

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I'm.........Fred?! :shock:
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Re: It's getting warm

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Arachnid wrote:I'm.........Fred?! :shock:
No, no, no... Fred is most certainly not one of... them! :look:

Fricky is among the ignorant masses who are owned+operated by... them. :look:

But then you knew that. :sly:

The door is open Spidey, the doctor is in, I can get you out but you've gotta let me in...
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Re: It's getting warm

Post by Strangelove »

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/07 ... -isis.html

Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna on Friday that air conditioners and refrigerators are as big of a threat to life as the threat of terrorism posed by groups like the Islamic State.

“As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we–you–are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.

“The use of hydrofluorocarbons is unfortunately growing,” Kerry said. “Already, the HFCs use in refrigerators, air conditioners, and other items are emitting an entire gigaton of carbon dioxide-equivalent pollution into the atmosphere annually.”

New EPA rules along with the global deal would band HFCs in the United States and push for alternative chemicals for use in appliances. The negotiations are part of President Obama’s climate agenda to combat global climate change.
I'm just sad for the dinosaurs... sniff... they didn't have Obama & Co there to save them. :cry:

Hmmm soon they'll be rounding up air-con users and shipping them to Guantanamo Bay...
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Re: It's getting warm

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Over the Internet, you can pretend to be anyone or anything.

I'm amazed that so many people choose to be complete twats.
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Re: It's getting warm

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Over the Internet, you can pretend to be anyone or anything.

I'm amazed that so many people choose to be complete twats.
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Re: It's getting warm

Post by Per »

Just like the jobs in many mature/outdated industries, ice is disappearing in the northern hemisphere but increasing in the southern hemisphere.

Here's an attempt to explain it: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/3105 ... al-warming
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