Abizaid: ‘We’ve Treated The Arab World As A Collection Of Big Gas Stations’
Do you agree with the General?
FROM GENERAL ABIIZAD
SD-“Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that,” Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk.
“We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations,” the retired general said. “Our message to them is: Guys, keep your pumps open, prices low, be nice to the Israelis and you can do whatever you want out back. Osama and 9/11 is the distilled essence that represents everything going on out back.”
Although the general acknowledged that America is “not making the progress we need to be making” in Iraq, he argued in his final remarks against a military pullout.
“The world is too small to turn our back and we can’t walk away,” he said. “To retreat from the role that needs us would be the greatest crime of all.”
I see he added this
quote:
Although the general acknowledged that America is “not making the progress we need to be making” in Iraq, he argued in his final remarks against a military pullout.
“The world is too small to turn our back and we can’t walk away,” he said. “To retreat from the role that needs us would be the greatest crime of all.”
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Also, the comments on “climate change” were revealing of a “push for my way” agenda.
quote:
“Climate change is the problem of our times,” Hennessy told the audience. He urged Stanford and other research institutions to provide overwhelming evidence to put global warming beyond doubt, saying that “the universities and scientists need to play its role.”
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Play its role? You mean “push the agenda.” I like what England’s Judge recently said.
quote;
Gore gets a cold shoulder
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Steve Lytte
October 14, 2007
Climate crusader: Al Gore.
Climate crusader: Al Gore.
Photo: AP
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ONE of the world’s foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize “ridiculous” and the product of “people who don’t understand how the atmosphere works”.
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.
“We’re brainwashing our children,” said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. “They’re going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It’s ridiculous.”
http://tinyurl.com/354c4l
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So, right or wrong about the war, how much stock can you put in anything this group says?
I don’t think putting more “state dept. employees” instead of soldiers is going to help as they suggest.
quote:
“I’d rather have more members of the State Department on the field than soldiers on the field,” Abizaid said.
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Jan Paul,
The guy you quoted is not respected in the scientific community. He apparently did some pioneering 1/2 a century ago but hasn’t kept up to date with modern science.
Apparently Gore getting a Nobel Peace Prize has sent conservatives into fits. An ideology that worships stupidity will never produce anyone capable of thinking on their own or even pioneering an idea.
Jan
I will add that to the post. I was focused on the oil issue.
I think, however Caroline, you are missing the point. Gore is wrong that man is causing global warming. We have been warming for 18,000 years. I just a visit to Alaska where the Park service showed charts of the glaciers movements over the last several thousand years and the huge melting of glaciers that make today’s recession look mild.
Gore isn’t the problem, his “facts” are. Even many Kyoto scientists admit we can stop global warming, only slow it a few years out of a hundred and that is only if the huge nations, like China, cut their emissions by amounts that China isn’t prepared to do because it would hurt their economy.
Al Gore is not the issue, fraudulent statistics and a “one world” agenda are the problem and Al Gore is just one more sucker that has bought the hype.
Maybe in 2012 when the solar cycle switches and that change can be evaluated we will know more but, bottom line we can’t stop “climate change.”
Oh, by the way. I would hope he isn’t respected in the “scientific community” if it includes the scientist that are lying to the people about them being the cause of climate change which is a normal on-going event that man can only affect the speed of. When it is ready to reverse and we see people starving because of global cooling eliminating crop producing areas warming has helped with, then those same scientists will be blaming man for that too and demanding the world unite to fight global cooling.
Man produces less than 1% of total greenhouse gases when you include all the water vapor, methane, CO2 oceans, volcanoes, cows, termites, etc. produce. Gore’s “green companies” are making millions and he is a puppet for the “one worlders.”
Jan Paul,
You keep using the theory from this discredited scientist to prove your point.
Do you honestly think that polluting has no consequences? That’s the crux of what you are saying.
Your posts are showing that conservatives have even politicized science. It’s another “you’re either wid me or agin me thing” with you guys isn’t it?
Think about it this way:
If everybody believed in global warning the oil companies would be out of business would they not? Of course, they have a vested interest in keeping people like you “in line” so to speak.
I guess you could call it “Operation Squeeze More Jelly”.
Caroline said:
Do you honestly think that polluting has no consequences? That’s the crux of what you are saying.
================
Caroline, we weren’t talking about pollution but climate change.
As you know, I have written many times that we need to concentrate on NO2, SO2, chemicals in water, soil, food, etc. Instead of wasting money on something we can do nothing about, we should be spending it on pollution that we can control.
CO2 is not pollution. As you know, we have to have it for plants and the more we have of it the more plants that can survive. They pump CO2 into greenhouses in some cases,to make plants grow better.
The list of scientists that have spoken about the greenhouse gases that come from natural sources in amounts of 98-99% of total is very long.
quote:
“Greenhouse gases” in Earth’s atmosphere also influence Earth’s temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% – 0.3% to Earth’s greenhouse effect.
snip===================
(1) Astronomical Causes
* 11 year and 206 year cycles: Cycles of solar variability ( sunspot activity )
* 21,000 year cycle: Earth’s combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun ( precession of the equinoxes )
* 41,000 year cycle: Cycle of the +/- 1.5° wobble in Earth’s orbit ( tilt )
* 100,000 year cycle: Variations in the shape of Earth’s elliptical orbit ( cycle of eccentricity )
(2) Atmospheric Causes
* Heat retention: Due to atmospheric gases, mostly gaseous water vapor (not droplets), also carbon dioxide, methane, and a few other miscellaneous gases– the “greenhouse effect”
* Solar reflectivity: Due to white clouds, volcanic dust, polar ice caps
(3) Tectonic Causes
* Landmass distribution: Shifting continents (continental drift) causing changes in circulatory patterns of ocean currents. It seems that whenever there is a large land mass at one of the Earth’s poles, either the north pole or south pole, there are ice ages.
* Undersea ridge activity: “Sea floor spreading” (associated with continental drift) causing variations in ocean displacement.
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
=========================
Just how much of the “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by human activity?
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.
This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn’t factored into an analysis of Earth’s greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.
Water vapor constitutes Earth’s most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many “facts and figures’ regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC’s, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).
Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small– perhaps undetectable– effect on global climate.
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
===========================
Again, even the most ardent supporters of man causing global warming admit we can’t stop it. Some believe that even if we were the cause, it is past the point of no return and that it feeds on itself now. Others, as I pointed out, who support man as the problem admit we can only affect the speed, not the direction of climate change.
Look at Gore’s 20ft rise in oceans. Yet, just the weight of snow in the north causes the earth’s equator to bulge every winter 3/4 an inch and go back down when the snow melts. What do you think adding even a foot of water weight to 3/4 of the earth (area covered by water) is going to do to the earth’s crust under oceans. You could easily have ocean floors sag and land masses pushing up that don’t have that weight on them.
Florida was once covered completely with water. Some believe the forming of the ice caps lowered the water enough to expose Fla. but, it could also have been the sagging of ocean floors providing more room as well as ice caps. As weight on the earth’s crust shifts, the crust shifts and adapts to the new changes.
For Gore to say this or that will happen to ocean levels when the “formula” is so complex and still relatively unknown, as to what adding that much water weight (from melting ice caps), is ridiculous.
If he has said, this is one of the possible scenarios, and list alternate possibilities, that would be one thing but, to say with “certainty” what is so unknown, is proof of an “agenda” that serves mainly him and the people he has “bought into,” and his companies that are making so much on this.
quote:
The molten rock, or magma, that lies beneath volcanoes contains abundant gases that are released to the surface before, during, and after eruptions. These gases range from relatively benign low-temperature steam to thick hot clouds of choking acid fume jetting from the earth.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-262/of97-262.html
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regarding sea level increases that whether man or nature is causing warming to contribute to.
quote:
There has been a lot of speculation about the rise in global sea levels (GSLs) as the result of global warming. For example in the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” promoted by politician Al Gore, it is suggested that the sea level might increase by 20 feet in the next century. Of course such an increase would cause a lot of havoc, which is emphasized in the press, It is instructive to know how much GSLs have actually gone up during the recent past. These increases are found in an article written by climate experts in a recent article in Science (vol. 313, 11 August, 2006 , page 827). Over the past century the GSL increased by 1.7 mm per year, but over the past decade, as the Earth has become warmer this rate of increase has accelerated to 2.8 mm per year. Most Americans do not use the metric system. They know figures such as inches and feet. There are 10 mm in one cm and 2.54 cm in one inch. A rough calculation shows that according to the figures given above, the GSL may go up by as much as 8 inches over the next century. Such an increase would be noticed and will probably be harmful in some low-lying areas, but the estimates indicated in this movie are extreme. Science is becoming politics.
http://www.stanford.edu/~jpc/Chapter8.htm
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Furthermore, Methane is a huge contributor and both man and nature are contributors.
quote:
Methane is the greenhouse gas which has the second greatest effect on climate, after carbon dioxide. The concentration of methane in the atmosphere has almost tripled in the last 150 years. Methane is best known as natural gas, currently an important energy source.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics have now discovered that plants themselves produce methane and emit it into the atmosphere, even in completely normal, oxygen-rich surroundings. The researchers made the surprising discovery during an investigation of which gases are emitted by dead and fresh leaves. Then, in the laboratory and in the wild, the scientists looked at the release of gases from living plants like maize and ryegrass. In this investigation, it turned out that living plants let out some 10 to 1000 times more methane than dead plant material. The researchers then were able to show that the rate of methane production grew drastically when the plants were exposed to the sun.
http://www.physorg.com/news9792.html
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Stick to pollution and stop worrying so much about “controlling global warming” and instead prepare for it, educate people as to what the effects of it will be and what they need to do to minimize its effect but, stop telling them the lies that they can make it stop.
Clean up our planet and get the smoke stacks cleaned up to stop acid rain downwind. Clean up the rivers and lakes and soil. Get rid of the cancer causing agents. Spend the money on things we can do something about and if it helps “slow” climate change by a year or two in 100, fine.
More on Methane
quote:
Bacteria that breakdown organic matter in wetlands and bacteria that are found in cows, sheep, goats, buffalo, termites, and camels produce methane naturally. Since 1750, methane has doubled, and could double again by 2050. Each year we add 350-500 million tons of methane to the air by raising livestock, coal mining, drilling for oil and natural gas, rice cultivation, and garbage sitting in landfills.(www.envirolink.org/orgs/edf/sitemap.html) It stays in the atmosphere for only 10 years, but traps 20 times more heat than carbon dioxide.
http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm
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You really think oil companies would be out of business? People will rebel once the “cost” becomes too high for plastics, heat, other products we use gas and oil for. Fertilizer that improves crop growth comes from these sources. Eliminating all the cars using oil for fuel still doesn’t end our need for oil companies and as oil supplies become more drained and more expensive, the move to vehicles not using oil will happen with or without climate change.
In case the other post doesn’t appear I did on other sources of man’s small amount of contribution, here is the link
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
===============
Real statistics, causes and sources
Impact of volcanic gases
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-262/of97-262.html
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Just how much of the “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by human activity?
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
========================
Scientist after scientist is working on climate change and the “jury is still out” on many issues but, they do know we can’t stop it. They do know the earth and solar system is the major cause and we just change the rate.
If we focus on cleaning up pollution (CO2 is not a pollutant like chemicals in or rivers, lakes and soils but needed for plant growth) and spend money used for “carbon credits,” for real cleanup then we will be much better off.
Regarding earth’s bulge
quote:
MORE volcanoes erupt between November and March than at other times of the year. This could be because the Earth’s crust is under stress from the snow and ice that pile up on the continents.
David Pyle of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues trawled through the Smithsonian Institution’s records of 3200 eruptions between 1700 and 1999. They noticed that 18 per cent more eruptions worldwide began during the northern hemisphere winter months than in summer.
snip——————
During the northern winter, the weight of snow and ice on northern continents deforms the Earth slightly, pushing the crust down in the north and making the southern hemisphere bulge out. Using satellite-based altimeters, other researchers have measured this deformation, which can be as much as a few centimetres in the far north. The group believe that this deformation could add to local stresses building up in volcanic regions, making eruptions more likely.
=======================
Another a article I had read on this said 3/4 inch but, whatever the distortion is, adding even 2 ft. of water weight to the 3/4 of the earth covered by water would probably cause the ocean floors to sag and land masses push up possibly creating new mountain ranges or at least higher land masses.
The unknowns outweigh the knowns.
JP – You’re wasting your time on Caroline. Don’t attempt to confuse her with something silly like facts.
Thought you might like to read a couple of articles on the issue. This one is the infamous 1975 Newsweek article where these “scientists” are predicting a coming ice age. Take note Caroline…this is barely 30 years ago.
The second piece is even more telling. The same guy who was predicting an ice age in the 70s is now a firm “global warming” nut. Take note again Caroline, this is the SAME guy.
Of course, “discredited scientists” (exactly whom are they discreadited by Caroline?) can be mistaken. Oh, one more thing, these are from really RIGHT leaning organizations. You know, “Newsweek” and the National Geographic.
Try a few real facts Caroline. It makes all the difference. ROTFLMAO!!!!!
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/newsweeks-1975-article-about-the-coming-ice-age
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290
VOTE CHIP ROGERS!
Quote:
o scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
========================
That from the Newsweek article is important. While they were wrong that global cooling was taking place, their estimates of the harm of it are real. If, in 2012, as some are predicting, we start a new cooling trend due to the change in solar activity, even a small cooling could reduce crop growing season and places where crops can now grow.
Interestingly, many scientists say both warming and cooling will reduce crops. Yet, again, if the earth’s history is any indicator, we will have one or the other and need to prepare for change either way. In either case, some places will no longer produce crops but, new areas may and/or different crops may be productive in a changed climate for a region.
The “fear” is legitimate. We will face many concerns but, we are wasting money on the wrong things. We need to focus on what we can do to eliminate pollution that kills people and prepare for the impact on coastlines, agriculture areas, and energy use.
In the 2nd article
quote:
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in “the next 50 years” fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, “could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.”
====================
He wasn’t alone. Scientists often feed off each others data and “what appears” to be a “cause and effect” relationship based on what data they have. Since the data is still being collected, we have a lot to learn and they will change their minds many times, probably.
Look at how little was known recently about the warming and cooling (El Nino-La Nina) in the Pacific causing Atlantic hurricane potential to change due to changing air patterns in the upper atmosphere. Even what they know now about that may have to be revised as more data comes in from studies on that.
silly sgt,
We all know you use “faith based science” ie. you put your “faith” in W and the ditto monkey network to minister the “truth” to you. If you checked on the guy, he’s been discredited by most in the scientific community. Go ahead and think that anonymous posts are the same things as “facts” RTFLMAO!
Caroline
As usual, you provide ZERO corroboration. EXACTLY WHOM “discredited” this scientist? You said “most in the scientific community” which translates to “Caroline hasn’t got a clue, but loves to re-hash leftist talking points.”
I know I’m repeating myself, but do you mind adding the odd fact from time to time? It really would add a touch of credibility to your air-head comments.
Anonymous posts? Newsweek and National Geographic are anonymous? If that’s true, why have you southpaws quoted each of these publications on a regular basis?
VOTE KINGSTON AND ROGERS! Caroline hates them both so obviously they’re against her free cable idea.
RTFLMAO!
What I’m hearing from the conservatives here is that you all don’t believe that man is a force of nature.
I believe we are a force of nature, and like any force we have the capability to change the world in some very unforeseen ways.
I personally think global warming is just what the earth needs. We really need to cull the herd. The question is which part will get culled?
RTFLMAO!
Captain Menace
Man is definitely a force in nature. He is polluting the air, the water and the soil. He just isn’t a major contributor to climate change.
If the scientists are correct and we start an cooling trend after the solar cycle changes direction in 2012, will we say man did that too? I think some will say he did.