We're too busy dealing with health care reform and the economy.

This. I hadn't even heard about the summit and I do turn on the news/get to newspapers and news sites from time to time. Also, lots of Americans think global warming is a myth still (I know right?), and we're widely known domestically (internationally prob too?) for inability to prioritize and a general lack of understanding for the long term (at least, as it seems to translate into policy and legislation IMO).

We're all pretty screwed anyways.

Oh right, you guys take your time...

For those who haven't heard, one of the most important meetings in human history is due to take place next month in Copenhagen.

Seriously,

Is this summit a big deal in some parts of the world?

Ohaiguise!!!

Been home for a total 2.5 days and I'm already considering death a viable option to avoid Thanksgivingaments.

also..

Only, where they care about the environment..
Paging Germans obv..

Incase anyone missed this thread

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...profit-640248/

it got moved to bbv

Hey, quick question in case anyone knows. I just noticed I had some sharkscopestars lol. One of them is about average profit in the last 500 games.

How is this calculated?
Best 500 game run? Really last 500 games at the given stake, so that playing more might make you lose the star (not that I care ofcourse)?

afaik it's your average profit over your last 500 games, hence the name

Yo Fiddy, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zXiClnK8oE

haiiii KB - any good links for us today?

just move to any other country where they don't have a day celebrating giving thanks or whatever the hell thanksgiving is anyway. better than suicide imo.

I think you are greatly over estimating the impact that this meeting can possibly have on the state of the environment.

Anthropogenic Global Warming fans have taken a huge hit this week because of the disgraceful antics of the so called scientists at the university of East Anglia which controls 1/3rd of the raw data used for predictions. For a long time it has been a scandal that they won't release the data so that scientists can analyse it openly - er the scientific process, but only release it to confirmed supporters of AGW.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...odern-science/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ja...lobal-warming/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle6927598.ece

Bottom line for me is 4 questions:

What is happening to the climate - is it getting warmer, colder or what?
Are the changes attributable to human action?
If we change our activities will we make a difference?
If the climate is changing and our activities will affect it? what are the optimal things we can do?

From my own fairly extensive reading of the published science;

a. I conclude that the climate is changing, but we are not sure how much it will warm up or cool down over any defined future period.

b. Human activities have and continue to affect the climate, but whether this is significant or not is unknown.

c. Changing our activities is highly unlikely to make much if any difference - kind of locking the stable door after the horse has headed for a night at Foxwoods.

d. Optimal solutions seem to be non-mainstream; eg reducing new build on coastlines (believe Australia is doing this), improving flood defences; reducing planning restrictions to encourage building more nuclear power stations etc. Mainstream solutions seem to be complete fantasy and will never be implemented on any scale which would result in a measurable effect on climate eg reducing the use of coal, building wind farms the size of Texas, initiating global carbon trading schemes, etc.

So if the world's climate is going to hell in a handbasket, we're screwed no matter what we do. If it isn't then any measures we take are just a waste of money anyway.

Have at me thou scurvy knaves!

i hope it gets warmer

its too cold

lol dale you live in frikking scotland :P nice win on the weekend btw, not that im much of a fan of egg chasing

I'm sure some of you have seen this, but if you haven't, it's wayyyyy TL;DR but a really solid read IMO. DOGISHEAD on current high stakes cash stuffs-

http://blogs.cardrunners.com/BLAG/an...ets-1258491260

IMO climate change is a red herring and a total detractor to the entire argument at hand.

Fact:
1) The earth's climate has changed drastically including the polar ice caps extension into what is now North America within the last 10,000 years. I think we can discount the bronze age camp fires' effect in melting these.
2) We are polluting our earth beyond recognition with our current policies.
3) There is a slew of geopolitical reasons why we shouldn't be using as much fossil fuels as we are.

Using Man-made Global Warming as the primary reason for decreasing carbon emissions is just bad logic imo. Global Warming may in fact not be man-made at all. Additionally, many low carbon fuels cause other types of pollution in an effort to reduce air pollution (most notably water pollution).

I think the choice is simple.. We live on a water planet, we can live in the sink or the toilet bowl. The many of the means to achieve living in the sink are the same that the anti-carbon folks are fighting for, just the argument is more compelling if you ask me. For example, many of the right wing yahoos who bash the Man-made Global Warming argument because Baby Jesus told them so, would be appalled by what is happening to the fish they catch every Saturday because of the **** that goes into our water.

It's 16°C here (germany)... I was wearing a T-Shirt 2 days ago.

INTERNETPOKERZ on current Internet Pokaz

cool. will read.

if you guys want some entertainment go thru the comments on this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11SvDtPBhA

she says that shes wearing converse but shes wears boots...LIES ALL OF IT LIES

Public opinion in the uk (and apparently on 2+2) regarding this is very depressing also.

I would argue it's a big deal in all parts of the world.

Without global consensus and agreements we really stand no chance of avoiding disastrous climate change. I'm not saying that Copenhagen is guaranteed to be a success, just that it's one of our only chances to avoid temperature rises of ~5-6 degrees.

I don't know all the details of this but I know that the scientists in question are strongly arguing that their comments have been taken out of context and misinterpreted. Maybe, maybe not, I don't know.

Imo it's irrelevant. There are thousands of climate scientists around the world and this specific case of a few people allegedly fudging numbers, while being a PR disaster, doesn't change the fact that the basic physics behind the greenhouse effect is simple, completely uncontroversial and has been understood for a very long time.

a. The book I'm reading at the moment by Nick Stern (of the Stern reports on poverty and then climate change) assumes that the global temperature average has gone up by 0.8degrees. Not exactly sure where he gets this from but the ipcc graphs up until 2007 are here: http://www.ipcc.ch/graphics/syr/fig1-1.jpg. The climate is changing. I agree we don't know exactly how much it will go up under different scenarios but we have a decent idea of the range of possibilities. Remember it's not a case of looking at that graph and extrapolating, our predictions come from our understanding of atmospheric physics.

b. Yes. It's obvious that we've significantly increased the concentrations of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas. We've also had most of the hottest years on record within the past decade. This part is not difficult to understand and we really need to move on from it and concentrate on the future.

c. This one is slightly harder but yes again. The IPCC give ranges of temperature rises for different CO2 concentrations. This is based on the "consensus" of a large number of scientists and while it's by no means perfect and while some scientist argue that the rises will not be nearly as linear as the ipcc says, it's really the best we have to go on at this stage. Making investments now to avoid the largest predicted rises of ~6 degrees and the mammoth costs associated with that is massively +ev, even if we're not sure our predictions are very accurate.

d. This is too compex to really discuss here. I agree with you that some of the mainstream "green" ideas are fantasy, one of the worst offenders being biofuels. However adaptation alone is not the optimum solution. Mitigation, keeping the temperature from addition rises, could save a huge amount of lives, property, economic output, etc.

Joss I'd highly recommend Nicholas Stern's new book to you. He is an economist from treats the issue from an economics viewpoint. It's very well written and thought out but maybe you'd be able to point out any holes in his arguments to me.

I'd also recommend this podcast to anyone, taken from a lecture by Ed Miliband, UK minister for energy at LSE (London School of Economics) last week:
http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publicLec...mateChange.mp3

Lastly I'd recommend to anyone having a look at the IPCC 2007 report and thinking about what the world will be like for your kids if it's 5 degrees warmer.


Sorry if this sounds preachy. I'm spending a lot of my time thinking about this recently and can get very frustrated by it.

all of my thoughts come from this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBzR0-j0O0o

Wow, that is an amazing read. Thanks for posting