Is global warming real?

[T2 Ernie]

One of the TWO primary reasons why seat belts are important is that they help lock you into your seat, therebye keeping you in front of the stearing wheel. You know, that round thing you trun to avoid running me over? They're not just concerned about you. Your freedoms are limted when your exercising them endangers my life, eh? My own corollary is: you're welkcome to own a handgun. Walk out onto a street sugar and waving one and you can bet I'm going to make sure you never touch one again

My seatbelt is only important AFTER I've been in an accident. Keeping me locked in my seat? Disagree with you on that one until after I've been struck, then, if there are lateral forces involved (like getting T-boned) it might help.

As for the handgun - come to New Mexico where we have an OPEN carry law. I can carry anywhere (except certain restricted places like federal bldgs) as long as it's visible & you know I have it. They also have a concealed carry law here.

You tread a very fine line when you place restrictions on other people's freedoms/liberty based on your PERCEIVED endangerment. There is a balance to be struck, but we live in (or at least used to) what's called a utilitarian society. Spock said it best when he said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one." But "needs" is very subjective...

We've devolved from the original debate re: global warming somewhat. My contention is it's not about party lines, but money & control. ...just like the insurance lobby.

[muddyboots]

Hit a wet spot and start spinning. You'll be glad you have a seat belt to keep you in the seat. Hit a pothole. Seatbelt holds you in place. Let your tire drift off the road and go flying when it bounces and jolts yo...oh wait you're wearing a seatbelt. They make good sense for reasons other than your own personal safety. If you can't keep your hands on the whell because your bouncing into the passenger seat and therefore can't regain control, your "freedom" has endangered my life. I happen to think my life has more value than that particular freedom.

I got edited. The sugar was "drunk". If you walk out drunk and acting like an idiot, and are armed, you are a threat to me. That was what I meant. Getting drunk is fine. Carrying concealed or not IMHO is fine. Combining th two makes you a threat to public safety, just like driving and drinking does. Not wearing a seatbelt does the same, although to a lesser extent. My point was simply that the insurance industry wasn't just trying to lessen their expenses due to drivers dying, but victims as well. I can't remember the book but I'm speaking from memory of reading an insurance company insider who helped shape taht fight.

And to drag us back to the real topic, I only made the point to show how corporations can be both good and bad in their decision making process. All for money, but not necessarily good for the world beyond their shareholders. And I agree that it is about control--industry has it, industry uses it for what they will. We shoudl change that.

[T2 Ernie]

Hit a wet spot and start spinning. You'll be glad you have a seat belt to keep you in the seat. Hit a pothole. Seatbelt holds you in place. Let your tire drift off the road and go flying when it bounces and jolts yo...oh wait you're wearing a seatbelt. They make good sense for reasons other than your own personal safety. If you can't keep your hands on the whell because your bouncing into the passenger seat and therefore can't regain control, your "freedom" has endangered my life. I happen to think my life has more value than that particular freedom.

Do you drive something with a smooth vinyl bench seat that you keep well oiled or something? I don't have any of these issues when driving...ever. Even before I started wearing a seatbelt. In fact, my 1940 Ford doesn't even have seatbelts & the big, springy bench seat with no lateral support (unlike my modern cars) poses none of these issues.

This "control of the car" is more of an emotional argument than a logical one appealing to people's sense of "safety for the public good" just like anything that puports that "you are a danger to others so you don't get to make the decision" - I disagree with that one too, but I'm in the minority because...

There's another issue at work here (gov't restrictions based on "public good") that's just as insidous - accountability for one's actions. We have decided we don't want to be responsible for the consequences of our own actions. We've also let group dynamics through politics dictate what is acceptable and what is not based on propaganda from gov't & lobbys.

No conspiracy theory here other than big business & special interests.

Ever seen the theory on the evolution of democracy? Frightening if accurate & it would seem to the casual observer that it is...

I can't remember the book but I'm speaking from memory of reading an insurance company insider who helped shape taht fight.

No wonder your position looks like that of the insurance companies. I refer back to my point that they only want to improve their bottom line. I hear you when you say that means the other party in the accident as well, but that's just them covering on all bets. If they could, they'd wrap us in bubble wrap & pack us in styrofoam peanuts too - believe me. It'd be safer for everyone & less payout for them. I believe insurance is the modern-day scourge of this country & will be significantly at fault when this country goes under. Insurance requirements drive the cost of everything up, payouts drive insurance up, & you're in a vicious cycle from which there is absolutely no escape.

You really want to keep me safer? Let's have a real driver's training program that is standardized. In most of Europe, to get a driver's license is a huge deal. Here in the good ol' US of A, you pretty much only need to read. Germany, for instance, requires so much formal training that to get a driver's license costs about what it costs to get a PPL here!!!

Instead, we have knee-jerk reactions that put band aids on sucking chest wounds in regard to driving safety and it always comes in the form of restrictions on the motorist lobbied for by insurance - based on money, not safety.

More training, less insurance, more accountability for ones own actions.


Global warming - it's a brisk 40 deg here with the wind howling & I'm in the "desert southwest"!


Sorry, I just don't get folks who like to give up rights, no matter how small, on the premise of 'public good'...don't even get me started on random drug testing - even for pilots!!!

[Bill Greenwood]

Guys, you are a tough bunch. I was not thinking of mandatory seat belt LAWS, just an example the fact that seat belts save lives and are Accepted Use by Most people, Not Divided between Dems or Rep. Just like smoking and cancer relationship is known by both parties. Now global warming is not fully proven yet, but generally accepted by most knowledgeable scientists in the field, so why does the oppositon come mostly from conservatives?

[bdk]

Now global warming is not fully proven yet...

Bill is displaying weakness with this statement... Garcon, quick, more Kool-Aid!

[T2 Ernie]

, so why does the oppositon come mostly from conservatives?

Money & control.

Liberals would rather tax us & control us (grossly sweeping generalization acknoqledge). Conservatives would rather allow big business to prosper & let trickle-down economics help us (another grossly sweeping generalization).

Libs want to restrict & control - biggest impact will be to industry, not individuals. Implement bigger gov't to control/oversee/enforce green laws - funding comes from taxation.

Conservatives want to unencumber big business so trickle-down will work & lessening big gov't means taxes can be reduced.

Follow the money...

[rwdfresno]

Now global warming is not fully proven yet, but generally accepted by most knowledgeable scientists in the field,

There was a period of time when scientists generally believed that the world was flat and the sun rotated around the earth. It was just the 1970s when scientists believed that the earth was cooling and that people should eat margarine instead of butter. Just becuase the majority of so called experts theorize that something is true that doesn't make it so. The earth has been changing temperature for millions of years and for scientists to say that there complete theory is reliant on the fact that the average temperature has risen a degree or so in the last hundred or so years is frankly laughable. Scientists can't predict reliably what the weather will be tomorrow and the fact that they can tell me what it will be 100 years from now makes me a little skeptical. Until someone can give me an reliable explanation of why throughout history there have been average temperature changes greater than 20 degrees in the earths temperature when humans were taking up a postage stamp of the worlds real estate
and that was nature and now that temperature has risen a half of a degree in the last 5 decades all the sudden I need to exchange my Dodge Ram in for Yugo, quit eating beef, and live in darkness while liberal politicians are content riding around in corporate jets, eating endangered sea bass, and using 20 times the electricity my family of 4 does in just one of their several homes. It just doesn't add up to me. I keep hoping that intelligent liberals like you Bill will one day start to see the light and start asking questions but it just doens't happen.

[muddyboots]

And so we liberals should just smile at the idea of cars and particularly trucks gettinf 20 or 25 Mpg when they could be getting 50? And all the beef we eat, we should just smile at the idea that it's ruining the land they raise it on, killing rainforest by the bushel, and generally creepy to drive by on the I5? No, I'll keep hugging my tree, thanks.

[Bill Greenwood]

Gas milage is probably not a subject that most of us Wix pilots want to primarily be concerned about. I do run 1800 rpm and economy power in cruise!

[bdk]

And so we liberals should just smile at the idea of cars and particularly trucks gettinf 20 or 25 Mpg when they could be getting 50? And all the beef we eat, we should just smile at the idea that it's ... killing rainforest by the bushel, and generally creepy to drive by on the I5?

How is my consumption of Tri-Tip killing the rainforest? I thought it was the Chinese buying up wood for European furniture sales that was doing that (they have just surpassed Italy in exports of furniture to Europe).

Why is it creepy to drive by cows? They have been domesticated for thousands of years now.

[rwdfresno]

Why is it creepy to drive by cows? They have been domesticated for thousands of years now.

Do I smell a story about a cow tipping adventure gone wrong?

[T2 Ernie]

And so we liberals should just smile at the idea of cars and particularly trucks gettinf 20 or 25 Mpg when they could be getting 50?

This has more to do with market economy than green. Automakers sell what folks will buy, not what someone decides they should buy.

If I want to demonstrate gross American consumption by buying a 1-ton pickup truck running some ginormous engine that gets 10mpg & I'm willing to pay the invoice, insurance, & gas - why shouldn't I?

I don't - I actually drive old cars, so am saving the enviroment by recycling!

And all the beef we eat, we should just smile at the idea that it's ruining the land they raise it on, killing rainforest by the bushel, and generally creepy to drive by on the I5? No, I'll keep hugging my tree, thanks.

Lost me on this one, I'm afraid...

[muddyboots]

And so we liberals should just smile at the idea of cars and particularly trucks gettinf 20 or 25 Mpg when they could be getting 50? And all the beef we eat, we should just smile at the idea that it's ... killing rainforest by the bushel, and generally creepy to drive by on the I5?

How is my consumption of Tri-Tip killing the rainforest? I thought it was the Chinese buying up wood for European furniture sales that was doing that (they have just surpassed Italy in exports of furniture to Europe).

Why is it creepy to drive by cows? They have been domesticated for thousands of years now.

You're from Fresno, right? You haven't seen those massive feedlots of cattle standing shoulder to shoulder, packed in by the gazillions, sugar on each other because they don't have enough room? I eat beef, by the way, but still. The way we raise our beef is creepy if you ask me. As for the chinese and Europeans, what, we don't own furniture? It's all a crazy cycle of eating, sugar, and chopping down more trees so we can eat and sugar some more, then buy new clothes because we're getting fatter, and then bigger chests of drawers to hold our bigger clothes in. Dunno what the world will do about it, but I suspect we'll eventually run out of space, resources, and just collapse. If you haven't noticed, animals in a natural state which outgrow their environment tend to collapse due to starvation, or disease gets them. Just because technology has allowed us to stretch out and use our environment to increase our numbers, you don't think it will eventually reach an unmanageable state? I say we start a war with the Chinese and knock about 75% of their population off. It'll save the humanity. Truth

Oh yeah, I forgot to reply to your oily carseat hypothesis. Never driven a jeep over rough country? Seat belt every time just to hang on to the wheel. The fact that your car or truck doesn't always handle like a jeep on rocks doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. Insurance companies in their "wisdom" saw that seatbelts would save passengers struck by cars, and lessen the number of accidents caused by drivers losing control of their cars, and supported them. In the end, it's still all about the money, as you said.

[T2 Ernie]

Oh yeah, I forgot to reply to your oily carseat hypothesis. Never driven a jeep over rough country? Seat belt every time just to hang on to the wheel. The fact that your car or truck doesn't always handle like a jeep on rocks doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. Insurance.

Offroading is another venture entirely! I like it, it's a form of motorsports (love anything with engines), doesn't apply to my on-road driving really. Could I hit a pothole & bounce & inadvertently move my steering wheel & possibly swerve & maybe hit someone & perhaps cause an injury - yeah, I 'spose. I'll put my money on black - much better odds. darn near anything is possible...probability is another thing entirely.

I agree with you on China! They're using up all of MY resources!

[bdk]

You're from Fresno, right? You haven't seen those massive feedlots of cattle standing shoulder to shoulder, packed in by the gazillions, sugar on each other because they don't have enough room? I eat beef, by the way, but still. The way we raise our beef is creepy if you ask me. As for the chinese and Europeans, what, we don't own furniture? It's all a crazy cycle of eating, sugar, and chopping down more trees so we can eat and sugar some more, then buy new clothes because we're getting fatter, and then bigger chests of drawers to hold our bigger clothes in. Dunno what the world will do about it, but I suspect we'll eventually run out of space, resources, and just collapse. If you haven't noticed, animals in a natural state which outgrow their environment tend to collapse due to starvation, or disease gets them. Just because technology has allowed us to stretch out and use our environment to increase our numbers, you don't think it will eventually reach an unmanageable state? I say we start a war with the Chinese and knock about 75% of their population off. It'll save the humanity. Truth

Nope, not from Fresno.

So to cut out the middleman, maybe we should just eat the rainforest? More people means more consumption of resources. Doesn't matter if the resource is beef, furniture, trees or air.