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This is something I've had to deal with a lot, because I have a lot of environmentalist friends who are deeply concerned about global warming due to horror stories they've been fed by the media or environmental activist organizations. And I cannot tell you how frustrating it is for scientists on both side of the debate when the media mischaracterize their papers, positions, and statements, especially when this is done with a political slant. I try to tell them "Don't worry about it, relax and wait until science has a difinitive answer for you" but to many this is unacceptable and they wish to meddle with the sources of anthropogenic climate forcings before we can really understand what effect that may have on the climate system. Case in point was this little post: As I hope the exchange I posted earlier illustrated, this is an extremely complex issue which the layperson has absolutely no chance of comprehending, as has been illustrated time and time again by various media reports on global warming.

jdurg, I highly suggest you have a look at this paper and reevaluate your statements: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/80/5/1285 Abstract: But anyway, to respond to your post: We're talking about particles which are getting deposited directly in contact with lung tissue, so the distance it has to go is roughly from the cell wall to the cell nucleus. They don't have to be. Think of the cumulative effect of smoking a pack a day. What about the rest of the radon decay sequence? radon-222, with a half-life of 3.825 days, emits an alpha particle to become polonium-218. polonium-218, with a half-life of 3.05 minutes, emits an alpha particle to become lead-214. lead-214, with a half-life of 26.8 minutes, emits a beta particle and a gamma ray to become bismuth-214. bismuth-214, with a half-life of 19.7 minutes, emits either an alpha particle or a beta particle and a gamma ray to become either thallium-210 or polonium-214. polonium-214, with a half-life of a 150 microseconds, emits an alpha particle to become thallium-210. thallium-210, with a half-life of 1.32 minutes, emits a beta particle to become lead-210. lead-210, with a half-life of 22 years, emits a beta particle and a gamma ray to become bismuth-210. bismuth-210, with a half-life of five days, emits a beta particle to become polonium-210. polonium-210, with a half-life of 138 days, emits an alpha particle and a gamma ray to become lead-206. lead-206 is a stable isotope of lead. Polonium-210 and Lead-210 are the isotopes found in tobacco, and they have half lives of 22 years and 138 days respectively. Please see the paper I linked in regards to radon products found in tobacco. Won't most of these chemicals be flushed out of the lungs through natural processes, as opposed to insoluable Pb210/Po210 compounds which will remain in the lungs and continue to bombard the tissue with ionizing alpha radiation? Anyway, I'd like to see what you have to say about that paper...

For the record I'm not an atheist, I'm a pantheist/organicist. In lieu of my response in the first quote I probably should've pointed out that you were using an Appeal to Authority.

Calcium phosphate contaminated with radon, used in chemical fertilizers (see the above quoted section of the web site I linked) But how does that compare to an emitter of ionizing radiation?

As I've said repeatedly, we don't even know if global warming is a "problem" or not. As it stands we are merely augmenting the natural trend. If you really feel global warming is a problem, can you tell us why? Do you think the polar ice caps are going to melt (I've already gone over why this isn't doesn't appear to be the case, but when it comes to global warming, the jury is still out on pretty much everything). What other doomsday scenarios do you forsee brought about by global warming? Because while these get a lot of attention by the press, most of them are either unsubstantiated, mischaracterized, or highly unlikely. If you feel like I'm not giving you the answers you want, I suggest you e-mail a PhD climate scientist. There are two very noteworthy blogs on climate science, RealClimate and Climate Science.

Dunno, but I guess Bush is planning on using his veto power for the first time ever, and here's what McClellan had to say: So let me get this straight, his first veto ever and he's using it to block... a ban on torture?

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SP1977:

Allard (R-CO), Bond (R-MO), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Cornyn (R-TX), Inhofe (R-OK), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Stevens (R-AK) Yes, here we have a Republican sponsored bill which 90% of Senators, 45 Republicans and 43 Democrats, all voted for. This is McCain's bill banning the use of torture in military investigations. This is from McCain's statement on the bill: So, like the topic says... the people who voted against this bill are assholes. One of my senators is among these people, and he will definitely be receiving a very nasty letter from me...

I'm talking about them whispering secrets in James Dobson's ear then refusing to share that same information with a U.S. Senator (of whom Dobson makes up his constituency). It's downright disrespectful. So I guess we'll just have to wait for Miers to dodge Salazar's questions when he finally gets to grill her just like Roberts dodged Salazar's questions when he got to grill him.

Because, believe it or not, global warming is something we're not necessarily sure we need to be worried about. Specific eh? Uhh... here's a three way exchange which can hopefully elucidate the complexity of this debate for you. I've decided to change it from 3rd to 2nd person to give it a bit more of a conversation format. However, keep in mind that Scientist A is peer reviewing Scientist C's paper. Scientist B is attempting to (unsuccessfully) defend Scientist C's paper, and Scientist C is basically telling Scientist B that he's wrong. The topic being discussed is the use of multi-decadal models of ocean heat to assess the Earth's radiative imbalance. Jargon ho! Scientist A: Scientist B: Scientist C: This is not a debate that can be broken down for laymen to comprehend, but the alarmists will always get more attention. The thing few seem to comprehend is that if we take action based on bad science we have just as much potential to damage the climate system as we do if we do nothing. No, but how we use land can alter the Earth's radiative imbalance significantly more than "greenhouse gasses" like CO2. It's big. It's black. It absorbs heat...

Because, believe it or not, global warming is something we're not necessarily sure we need to be worried about. Specific eh? Uhh... here's a three way exchange which can hopefully elucidate the complexity of this debate for you. I've decided to change it from 3rd to first person. However, keep in mind that Scientist A is peer reviewing Scientist C's paper. Scientist B is attempting to (unsuccessfully) defend Scientist C's paper, and Scientist C is basically telling Scientist B that he's wrong then going on to be a klaxonic mouthpiece of global warming alarmism (notice his conclusions are essentially "No, we don't have enough data yet, but by the time we do it'll be too late!") The topic being discussed is the use of multi-decadal models of ocean heat to assess the Earth's radiative imbalance. Jargon ho! Scientist A: Scientist B: Scientist C: This is not a debate that can be broken down for laymen to comprehend, but the alarmists will always get more attention. The thing few seem to comprehend is that if we take action based on bad science we have just as much potential to damage the climate system as we do if we do nothing. No, but how we use land can alter the Earth's radiative imbalance significantly more than "greenhouse gasses" like CO2. It's big. It's black. It absorbs heat...

I'm not say we should be worrying about that. The main thing we should be worring about, at least in the near future, is Arctic sea ice, and we are seeing below average summer Arctic sea ice cover. However, if this is attributable to global warming, then we would naturally expect to see a subsequent reduction in Antarctic sea ice, but in fact we see the opposite, an increase in Antarctic sea ice cover. However, this hasn't stopped the media/Hollywood from directly attributing changes in Arctic sea ice cover to global warming and feeding people disaster scenarios about global warming melting the ice caps and flooding coastline areas. I'll answer the questions it seems you really want to know from this: Yes, global warming is happening, due to both a natural trend and the influence of man. How much is man influencing it? We don't know. That's a very complex question heavily debated by climate scientists. Should we be worried? We don't know. That's also a very complex question heavily debated by climate scientists. Land use as a forcing comes into play primarily with changes to the biosphere, most notably agriculture; plants alter the moisture content of the air around them and thus allow it to store more heat.

Ocean temperatures are an excellent metric because of the low degree of variability in heat content of ocean water relative to tempature as compared to the atmosphere (in fact my boss did a lot of pioneering work on this in the '70s) The point I was trying to make was that surface temperature is a relatively poor metric by which to measure atmospheric heat content due to the high variability of heat content of the atmosphere relative to temperature (i.e. in order to properly assess surface temperature as a metric of global warming we must consider all possible climate forcings which can increase atmospheric heat relative to temperature). Think of the old (and incorrect) adage "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" which comes close to the truth of "It's not the temperature, it's the heat"

Yes, because you have only two points of reference, therefore you can not see how the allele frequencies may or may not have changed over time. That is why I quoted the section I did, because it specifically addresses your complaint by providing a genetically substantiated phylogenic breakdown of man/apes based on the principles I outlined in my previous post. However once again you have simply glossed over what I have provided. The scientific method is not about selectively ignoring evidence to the contrary; that's called cherrypicking and it's highly frowned upon in most scientific circles (although with the global warming debate I really have to wonder...). If you encounter evidence contrary to your theory then the consistency of your theory is in jeopardy unless you are able to come up with an explanation for contrary evidence which is further supported by evidence/experimentation.

I'd contend that "consciousness" operates in an entirely asynchronous manner and trying to assign a "clock frequency" to it is an absurd concept.

Modern biology/evolutionary isn't looking so much at individual case instances as it is the cumulative pattern formed by changes in allele frequency. Taxonomy forms a temporally-arranged hierarchy of how traits were passed from parent to offspring and how advantageous variations spread throughout populations in a gradual, incremental process. To put it simply, these kinds of similarities occur in all lifeforms everywhere, and form the basis of evolutionary theory and modern biology. Biologists have observed a high level pattern of allele frequencies changing according to the rules of natural selection, and use similarities in traits/genes to taxonomically classify species by common ancestor. You can't simply say this pattern works for all other animals, but ignore the similarities between apes and men. If you're saying this pattern doesn't exist for other animals at all, then you are completely contradicting evolutionary theory. Please take a look at the linked post again, along with the explanation I just gave, and hopefully you can see what's wrong with your logic here. Namely, this section: There is a pattern in the interspecies arrangement of similar alleles/traits. That's what biologists are looking for.

According to "The Price of Smoking" by Duke University economist Frank Sloan and four colleagues (available through MIT Press) the cost of smoking to "pooled-risk programs like Medicare, Medicaid, group life insurance and sick leave" is estimated to be $1.44/pack, and estimate the lifetime "social cost" of smoking to be $106,000 for women and $220,000 for men. No, not at all, and I don't want to see it derailed. Smoking is also the #1 cause of "preventable death" in America. We've tried very very hard to make people stop smoking and prevent new people from starting, but that hasn't worked. However, isn't this a problem that could be dramatically mitigated on the manufacturing side? Wouldn't one of the ways we could dramatically decrease the number of deaths associated with smoking to eliminate all preventable carcinogens?

It's a metaphor to be discouraged when attempting to familiarize someone who thinks in terms of the Cartesian Theater to adapt their thinking to a pandemonic/multiple drafts model. However, it's simply how the brain works; there are highly algorithmic components which are the result of evolutionary legacy and handle initial sensory processing or autonomic functions. These parts of the brain can receive feedback and do work in tandem with the experiential components, primarily the cortex, but the influence of the experiential components upon the pre-experiential ones is extremely limited (for example, you can't make yourself see only in red merely because you want to) Experiential consciousness is the result of the pandemonic model in action; the collective function of innumerable abstract processing centers in the cortex which pass abstract rerepresentations correlated sensory data and memory back and forth between each other, "evolving" the data through a selection process which mimics the behavior of natural selection. But there are other pre-experiential parts of that brain which break down and transform sensory data into an abstract form in an entirely non-heuristic, algorithmic manner.

This seems to be an issue of much confusion, especially since I've heard many trying to claim that nicotine is in and of itself a carcinogen. As far as I can tell these are the primary carcinogens in cigarettes: Polonium-210 and Lead-210: Radioactive isotopes which emit ionizing alpha radiation, making them extremely mutagenic. They are present in chemical fertilizers enriched with phosphate and comes in the form of either soluble or insoluble compounds. The soluble compounds are removed from the body through natural processes, whereas the insoluable compounds remain in the lungs and bombard lung tissue with ionizing alpha radiation. According to this site: Nitrosamine: A carcinogenic compound which appears to result primarily from the use of direct fire curing. Nitrosamine used to be found in beer, however beer manufacturers switched to indirect fire curing of barley in the 1980s and reduced the levels of nitrosamine betlow detectability. Some cigarette manufacturers have switched to indirect fire curing, but Marlboros were found to have the highest level of nitrosamine in the world. Benzopyrene: A carcinogenic compound which appears to arise through the burning of organic matter and is thus a seemingly unavoidable consequence of smoking anything organic. I am very curious why the EPA and the rest of the government continue to allow two carcinogens which seem to be direct consequences of the cigarette manufacturing process to remain in cigarettes, especially with the enormous burden cigarette smokers place upon the national healthcare infrastructure. If anyone has knowledge of exactly how carcinogenic these particular chemicals (or any I haven't listed) are in relation to each other I'd certainly like to know (Dr. C. Everett Koop is anecdotally quoted as having said in 1990 on US national television that radioactivity in cigarettes accounts for at least 90 per cent of all smoking related cancers.) Wouldn't requiring organic farming methods for the production of tobacco virtually eliminate the presence of Po-210 and Pb-210, and wouldn't mandating the use of indirect fire curing dramatically reduce nitrosamine levels? Nitrosamine has been virtually eliminated in Snus, a Swedish brand of smokeless tobacco. So, bottom line, would eliminating, or at least dramatically decreasing the levels of Po-210/Pb-210 and nitrosamine in cigarettes dramatically reduce their potential for harm?

Photons have no rest mass, but they do have relativistic mass. All energy has relativistic mass. E=mc^2...

In terms of land use as a climate forcing, paving a parking lot has a much higher impact than litter.

Most climate science research is conducted via data analysis and modelling. The more accurately scientific models are able to replicate the effects of the climate system when applied to a set of input data (using climate modelling computer programs), the more accurate we assume the model to be. This is how the majority of atmospheric research is conducted, by collecting atmospheric data and then crunching numbers on computers. I'm directly involved in both parts of this process. Through this we are able to define a set of anthropogenic forcings on the climate system, and the main one impacting "global warming" isn't "greenhouse gasses" as the media would have you believe, it's land use, which can greatly affect how much solar radiation is stored by the earth as heat and then released into the atmosphere. (sadly, much global warming research uses temperature as a metric, which is a poor indicator of how much energy is actually being stored by the system as all sorts of things like moisture content can affect the amount of energy being stored relative to temperature) Global mean surface temperatures are often touted as an indicator of global warming when what we should really be looking at is atmospheric heat content. Regardless, the majority of "greenhouse gasses" are being emitted through things like industrial processes and automobiles. The amount being released into the atmosphere by smokers is statistically insignificant. Wrong. Ozone depletion occurs through the emission of gasses which are chemically reactive with ozone, the foremost of which was CFCs which were banned after they were linked to ozone depletion. Furthermore, ozone depletion is not a climate forcing, nor is it linked to global warming. Ozone depletion results in higher levels of solar ultraviolet radiation which is known to damage DNA and is therefore linked to an increased risk of certain types of cancers, most notably skin cancer. It's really sad global warming is such a hotbutton political issue yet the public remains so incredibly ignorant about its nature...

Or small changes are mitigated as they either become part of or are mitigated by greater trends. That's generally how the climate system works.

Uhh, source? What you're saying conflicts completely with... reality. The insurgency consists primarily of Sunni Arabs with connections to Al Qaeda which is a primarily Wahhabist group (Wahhabism is a puritanical form of Sunni Islam which views Shiaism as being a novel and therefore non-Islamic offshoot of the reigion) Sunni Arabs are a minority in Iraq and used to hold considerably more power and clout when a fellow Sunni, Saddam Hussein, was in charge. Now that democracy has been installed, they feel comparatively underrepresented as there is no longer a dictatorship to elevate them above the rest of the country. Iran is a nation of Shiite Persians with a great number of ties to the elected Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shiite Arabs. Iran has an ally in the elected government of Iraq; why would they jeopardize that by supporting the insurgency? Especially considering that by supporting the insurgency they'd be helping Sunnis fight their fellow Shia. I don't think you can really blame any nation for "supporting the insurgency." Jordan? Saudi Arabia? These are certainly helping and they're where terrorist groups have their support structure, but it's something the governments merely condone, not actively support. There's many reasons to fear Iran, most notably their clandestine nuclear program, but supporting the insurgency isn't one of them. That's simply factually inaccurate.

Epicman, can you provide any evidence which contradicts the theory of humanity's common ancestry with the apes? Do you have any explanation as to why the genetic makeup of the higher apes and man is so very similar?