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Gee guys it has been a rough couple of weeks for me. It seems that everything I know is wrong for one reason or another; makes me wonder if anyone EVER taught the truth to me in school or anywhere. I am led to suspect that I mis-interpreted almost all I learned as someone is always there to show that what I seem to think is right, is indeed proven wrong.
I know that many of you take what you find written on the internet as some kind of almost devine truth, but you may also be deceived as I always thought that my sources were so correct also.
I would bet that you can now go on the internet and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Tonken Gulf Incident, which propelled the US into a more involved war in Vietnam, was aboslutely false and that politicians made it up, etc. Well, I was there and I know that it happened. I heard the calls on the radio as I was on the bridge of my ship at the time. I heard (second hand of course) of eye-witness accounts of what had happened as the men on the destroyer which had been attacked, talked to the men on my ship about it. They described seeing torpedos in the water and I saw for myself the bullet and shell holes in the side of the ship.
But the incident is being taught in schools here as a lie! School kids are taught by their teachers that this thing did not occur and even site proof from articles written about it on the internet! I can probably still find a guy I knew who was an officer on one of the destroyers involved, and he would be angrily recounting for you those events. Would you believe him or what you see on the internet now days?
I say these things because some day what many of you now believe as fact will be somehow shown to be wrong, at least in some small way. Do you think in 40 years you will be able to find those wonderful proofs to support your story? Maybe not. In my youth I took many things I was taught in school as being factual although I did of course have some degree of sceptacism in a lot of things. We were told not to believe all we read as many put their own agenda into what they wrote and sometimes could twist the facts to suit what they said.
As to what I was told about German/English similarities and how it could help me learn German and even my English better, I guess it was all wrong since I can't seem to prove it. I know that Cossie did affirm some of it and I thank him for that. It did help me learn my German a bit so even if it was not true in any part of it, it did help me.
I guess my main fault in all of this lately is that I was used to thinking that my teachers would not deliberately lie to me. In the days when I did the majority of my learning there was no easy way to go and verify every word you were told. However, I dont necessarily take everything I find on the internet to be the absolute truth either.
I think that the whole thing about Global Warming is a case in point which has many in the press making the statement that "The majority of scientists agree that it is occuring" or words to that effect. Well in my humble opinion it makes a lot of difference as to just who these scientists are whom you ask. I heard an interview on radio with a fellow who was a scientist who studied weather and was using satalite weather statistics to record temperatures all over the world and had been doing it for a number of years. He stated that although it was a lot warmer in the summer in the USA it had been a lot colder in Europe during the winter. In the US the winter had been a lot warmer, yes, but in Siberia they were experiencing a lot colder than normal. He made the statement that although temperatures had changed in places that the average world temp had only gone up .01 degrees in 10 years. I wish I had remembered his name and all that and could dig up this for you, but I dont think I can. Does that mean what I am saying is a lie? Does it mean this guy I heard was a fake or lying; I dont think so. I just took what he said as reason to not totally trust the conclusions given to me by the press on this.
Ken
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pimple
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: March 2006
Messages: 375
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The things I'm almost positive about is a pretty big list! I can't say anything about political history, as it is virtually impossible to get reliable second and third versions of the facts.
However; I've been to Greenland, and it shouldn't ought to look like this!
Joy Peace and Tranquility
Joyceility
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Ken,
Dear-oh-dear; you do seem to have a bee in your bonnet. Since when have I accused everything you say of being wrong? I have simply drawn attention to those things that you say that are not consistent or factually incorrect.
>I know that many of you take what you find written on the internet as some kind of almost devine [sic] truth
Not I. As you don't qualify who these "many" people are, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and not fault you on that point.
The fact of the matter is that there are some good resources on the internet, and some that are not so good. The knack is to be able to tell which is which. I would remind you that television, newspapers, radio and even books are all susceptible to misinformation. And much as you would like to suggest otherwise, human memory is the most unreliable of the lot. Note that I am not specifically refuting any of the memories you refer to. I know very little about the Vietnam conflict.
As for global warming, you will not hear me arguing either for or against its existence as a major environmental issue. I don't know. In fact, just in case you failed to spot that simple declaration on my part, I'll repeat it. I do not know. Next time you bring up the subject of your supposed lack of knowledge, please remember not to cite it as a subject upon which everyone thinks you have entirely crackpot views. At least one person doesn't.
Finally, I ought to mention the old English/modern English/Germanic languages debate. I don't know very much about that subject, but I knew enough to know that when you made the comment "Nouns do have genders" that it went against everything I have ever been taught. So I disagreed and asked Cossie for backup, as I was not totally sure on the subject. I didn't disagree with anything else you had said (maybe the dates, but you conceded the dates, so it was a non-issue); and I don't think Cossie or anyone else rubbished your views, either. But now you seem to think we were all conspiring against you.
That particular debate is pretty much over, fortunately. What I object to, now, is how you keep telling us how upset you are and how everyone is against you, when it is patently not true. What are you expecting us to do? Prostrate ourselves and apologise for upsetting your feelings -- when you seem to have brought those upon yourself by setting yourself up as a victim, when you weren't one to begin with?
David
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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Please don't feel unwelcome here. You are very welcome indeed, and you are perfectly entitled to take a different view from me, or indeed anyone else.
I think that, if you stand accused of anything, it might be a certain degree of political naivety. Politics permeates every aspect of our lives, and it exerts a tremendous influence upon what we are taught in school. I suppose that we ageing Brits have an advantage there; when I was at school we were taught about how wonderful the British Empire was. Those of us who are not terminally thick have discovered since that in many ways it was far from wonderful. So we have been obliged to revise the ideas taught to us as children.
I don't for a moment think that your teachers lied to you; they taught what they believed to be true. But what they believed was much influenced by political dogma - as was my own experience in learning the merits of the British Empire.
I can't comment knowledgeably about the Tonken Gulf incident, but I have no reason to doubt what you say. Historians on this side of the pond have argued that the Nazi holocaust never happened, even though there is contradictory testimony from thousands of survivors.
Everyone has an agenda; the skill of trying to arrive at a reasonable opinion lies in balancing the conflicting arguments.
For example, if we consider global warming, the source you cite is contradicted by a large number of other sources, so I accept that the globe is becoming warmer. I arrive at that conclusion simply by adopting the majority view. So far, it's simply a question of who took measurements, where they took them and what they showed. What I am very much less happy about is the conclusions as to the CAUSES of global warming. The historical record shows that the surface temperature of the Earth is constantly changing for purely natural geographic reasons. I don't see any conclusive evidence that 'greenhouse gases' are responsible for the change. At the same time, it does seem clear to me that 'greenhouse gases' aren't helping, and that it would be in the best interests of humanity to do what we can to limit such emissions. Unhappily, the US political machine shows no inclination to be prudent!
In any event, please don't ever feel unwelcome. I may disagree with what you say, but I will always try to make the reasons for my disagreement absolutely clear.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Grandfather! I take the global warming issue with a grain of salt. They had a big to do about the great spotted owl. That they only would nest in old growth forrest. Everybody was down on the logging industry untill they found one of the owls nesting in the K part of the sign for a Big K store. I saw a bumper sticker that read "NYC welcomes global warming" ;-D
All these environmentalist have a hidden agenda. They dont want anybody owning property. They want a government agency to dictate what can and cant be done on any land. Of course this agency is to be run by environmentalist. 
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... so there aren't many spotty ones!
Yeah, I agree that the environmental lobby overplays its hand - most species are pretty resilient and adaptable. But in the US of A you are fed a constant diet of political propaganda which isn't the case in most of the rest of the world. The unarguable facts are that the ice-cap in Greenland is collapsing and the glaciers in the rest of the world are contracting alarmingly. I spent a holiday in Switzerland with my Scout Group in 1967, and visited some of the glaciers. I went back with my wife and kids in 1997, and the surface level of the glaciers had dropped by around 40 feet, whilst the tongue of the glaciers had receded by over a mile. I was frightened then, and I am frightened now.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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HI Brian,
Hey I am flattered by that grandfather salutation! Thanks!
Yeah I do agree with you as a lot of what we are told is so politicised in this country that it is hard to really get at any semblemce of truth on anything. I agree with you on your thinking that some of the environmentalists want to tell all of us how to live while they go on living the way they have. I go back to what my grandmother said, "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander". It means that things should apply equally to us all, but then some people have different meanings as to what constitutes "equal" and we end up with even more problems.
The global warming is as Cossie has put it; that many places are showing that ice caps are receeding etc. But, didnt Europe have a colder winter than normal in 2004? Didn't Russia (Siberia) have colder than normal? I do know that we had a much milder winter here in southern Minn. We certainly were below normal in snowfall while in the north it was way over normal. Most reasonable scientists will admit we know that the weather is cyclic and that the earth goes thru periods of warming and cooling of temperatures many times. We have records from only a couple of hundred years and the cycles are known to be over thousands of years so we can't assume too much from such short record keeping.
I can remember how the scientists in the mid 1950's declared that an increase of only about 4 or 5 degrees F would cause the entire polar icecaps to melt and we would have disaster. In the next breath someone would declare that a warming trend would bring on another ice age and both were using computer models to prove the point. I think it is safe to say we dont really know for sure. Now I would be nuts to say that we shouldn't care about emissions from burning fossil fuels. Now if we increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere wont that promote more growth of plant life?
We should carefully look into all these things we are doing and see if we are willing to pay the price to have the convenience of a car for instance. I don't think we gain much by promoting ethenal as we are doing in the USA. To produce the ethenal from corn uses energy in the form of gas burning or electricity made from coal burning plants. Same goes for all those hybrid cars they are hyping. I would like to see some effort put into using hydrogen as fuel as it can be obtained from water using solar energy and of course when it is burned it produces more water. I witnessed a pilot plant run by an engineering graduate student (professor) at the U of Minn aver 20 years ago and he said it was most feasable and the plant could be self sufficient.
I know that many things that could be done to lesson our fossil fuel problems are not being done as greed rules most everything. That, and who is able to benefit from any new energy source. I am in hopes that mankind can get beyond the greed for once and do something right, but it is going to take the whippersnappers we know here to do it. Us geezers have had our chance and it is now up to the next generation. Please try not to make the same old mistakes guys!
Ken
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Simon,
I appreciate your even-handed responses and I know I over-react to things a bit. If I offended anyone I sure appologize. I wish I could just put things down (write them on paper) on here the way you and some of the others are able to do it. Like I say, theme writing was always my very worst subject other than art class.
I know that if we were to have a conversation most of you would see I agree to the most part of what is said but have some opinions that differ and maybe some scepticism on some subjects you accept as true. When it gets to writing about things that cant be expressed as an equation I get into trouble. I know what I want to say but it sometimes just doesn't get said in the way I want to say it. Sometimes I am just picking on some minor point and what is percieved is that I disagreed on the main point. Even telling you this is hard to do properly I guess.
If I ever manage to get to England, am I going to be able to meet any of you I wonder? It would be fun to get drunk with some of you.........lol.
Actually I do that (get drunk) about once every 20 years so dont get worried about it. But I can see you guys could really be interesting to sit down and have a chat with. (I know I ended a sentence with a preposition, so sue me.LOL)
David, I hope you can tolerate me enough to tell me more about what you know as you seem to really be a very intelligent guy. We need a bit more give and take I guess and I will try to be a bit better from now on. I think if you knew me better it would help a lot and you wouldn't think I was as dense as I appear at times. *hugs*
Ken
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Ken,
The thing about environmentalists is that they tend to have a political agenda. If the government is doing it, it must be wrong. (Absurd.) If it's how things were a couple of hundred, or a couple of thousand years ago, it must be right. (Absurd.) They "pick and choose" the science to support their point of view.
I think it is safe to say that the vast majority of people who support organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have no idea of the science behind global warming; they believe whatever they are told by organisations whose business it is to try and get them to agree with them (and hence donate); and if they are asked to justify their position by a commentator with half a clue, they seem even more ignorant than the man on the street who has no opinion at all.
That's why I say I do not know. I don't want someone to ask me difficult questions and expect me to come back with expert answers. The problem is, these days everyone likes to set him- or herself up as an "instant expert", and the fact is, if he or she does not have a significant academic interest in it, then he or she is not qualified to speak on it. (I particularly hate celebrities in other fields who use their celebrity to endorse something that they don't know anything about. Ahem, Prince Charles. Though I don't mind if they take a serious, academic interest, then speak out on it.)
I don't deny that Greenpeace and similar organisations have good people working for them; I do, however, think that their reliance on propaganda and hyperbole obscures their good intentions.
You're absolutely right that many "alternative energies" rely on huge amounts of "seed energy" (often fossil fuel energy) for manufacturing and storage; that many global warming models are flawed and inconsistent; that weather patterns fluctuate and that trends can sometimes only be seen after thousands of years; that most developed countries are very energy-greedy; and so on. For once I agree with you!
David
P.S. I think Brian's "grandfather" was probably for Cossie -- note the thread-based structure of the board: theoretically each reply should be directly in reply to the one it addresses. It's not always intuitive, but it works most of the time. 
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Ken,
My apologies if any of my replies seem a bit personal. I still stand by their contents, however.
If it's any consolation, I've just posted a message agreeing with virtually everything you have said. Now, that doesn't happen very often!
Best wishes,
David
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Thanks David. I guess what we do agree on here is mostly my original premise anyway. I just see so many people who are willing to jump into things such as teh global warming issue and state such and such as absolute fact when it is not that absolute.
As to the granfather thing, I am certainly old enough to be grandfather to most who post here.......I will be 67 on July 24th.
BTW, being old doesn't grant me anything as to being a sage. It has been pointed out that I am pretty naieve(sp?) and I know that is true. If I knew only half of what I thought I knew I would be happy.
Ken
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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"Facts" where they relate to politics, are mutable.
As we all know, the evil events of the holocaust did not happen, and Japan was not an aggressive power. I am sure Sweden never practised eugenics.
I am unaware of the Tonken incident, and it seems not to be taught here in schools, but that is your history, not ours.
Things that are genuine facts, like the laws of physics, were probably never facts at all, more theories that explain physics at the level one studies it.
Global Warming is a good case. However, whether global warming is fact or fiction it does make sense to pollute less and less and less. If the Global Warming stories are fake, less pollution is good. If they are true, less polltion is essential. My own view is that it deopends who is paying the scientists. A friend's son is a renowned expert on the subject. Since he is paid by being a renowned expert it stands to reason that it is a fact. For him anyway. But is he right?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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>If I knew only half of what I thought I knew I would be happy.
That's an interesting statement! If you knew half of what you think you know now, then the chances are you would then think you knew it. If that statement still stood, then it would be okay for you to know only half of that -- you'd still be happy -- because you could at least say that you knew half of what you thought you knew then. And, assuming it continued to stand, it would be okay for you to know only half of that. And so on, ad infinitum.
It's a bit like x = x/2, as a piece of computer code within a loop. To end, x has to equal x/2 -- in other words, the only solutions are zero or infinity.
Hence, according to that statement, you'd be happy knowing nothing. You'd also be happy knowing an infinite amount. There is nothing, according to that logic, to stop you being happy knowing something, but we need more information to be able to tell you whether you will be, I suspect. Any logicians in the house?
Sorry; I don't expect a response. I just found it an interesting thought experiment.
David
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Thank God I wasn't taught by Thomas Gradgrind! Because, taken to extremes, there is no such thing as a fact.
Anything that is based on human memory -- that is, virtually everything that has not been captured via a scientific instrument or a camera or a microphone -- is suspect; at the very least, there is an element of bias to it. We remember what we want to remember.
Scientific data* is the closest we can come to absolute fact. Unfortunately, scientific data cannot speak for itself.
David
*provided that it can be proven, absolutely, not to have been tampered with, deliberately or inadvertently; nor for the instruments to have been in some way wrong; and while these are, of course, technically impossible, in practice it is usually possible to ensure these to a much greater extent than any anecdotal evidence.
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I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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Ken, you are absolutely right about the long-term temperature cycles, but within the big picture there are also shorter-term and local variations. British records go back several hundred years, though in the earliest periods all we know is whether the harvests were good or bad and whether the seasons were hotter or colder or wetter or drier than usual. The records can be verified from tree-ring growth, and in turn that allows us to use tree-ring growth to push our knowledge further back. In Northern Europe we had what is known as 'The Little Ice Age' from the middle 1400s to the early 1800s. The Alpine Glaciers reached their maximum extent since the beginning of historical records, and British rivers regularly froze over, so thickly that frost-fairs were held on the ice. That was the origin of the Dickensian model of Christmas, with snow a-plenty. These days, snow is rare in Britain at Christmas, and the major rivers almost never freeze over thinly, let alone thickly.
This actually supports the view that greenhouse gases may not be the cause - or certainly not the only cause - of Global Warming; the pendulum may simply be swinging the other way. On the other hand, the most important factor in the 'Little Ice Age' was a probable change in ocean currents; the difference today is that the rise in temperatures seems more widespread.
I don't know whether other parts of Europe had a particularly cold Winter last year, but it average, or even milder than average, in the area where I live. The problem with observations based on a single year is that they prove nothing because, as we all know, the year-on-year variation can be substantial; what matters is whether the trend of average temperatures is rising or falling. There's a huge amount we DON'T know about global warming so, as you say, it simply makes sense to do our best to avoid making things worse.
I take your point about carbon dioxide omissions, but the amount which plants can absorb (and thus release oxygen while retaining the carbon) is directly proportional to the surface area of carbon dioxide absorbent plant material. The indications are that we are producing - simply by breathing, as well as by burning fossil fuels - faster that the Earth's plant life can absorb - and the felling of rainforests is certainly not helping. Western nations need the conversion capacity of the rainforest - should we not be buying the land to keep it out of the hands of logging companies? Or is this too simplistic, because it's impossible to say that one piece of forest is of benefit to Britain, while another piece is of benefit to the USA? Meanwhile, coniferous forests in Scandinavia are receding because of sulphur dioxide emissions from the UK - and I'm pretty sure that whoever is downwind from Minnesota is suffering too!
Aargh! Pass the whisky bottle!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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David, You are amazing! LOL I wish I lived next door to you; I am sure we would be friends. I like that mind of yours.
I used to be so neat and just plain annally retentive as a kid. You should see my house now.............messy is hardly a word to describe it. It got that way during the time I was so depressed I guess. I remember my old self where I would have everything so neat and orderly with it all in its exact place. I yearn for that again, but fear it is beyond my grasp.
Ken
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Right now today there are more trees in the USA than there were when Columbus landed and did the indians such a big favor.
There was an article in a paper here some time ago. some Enviromentalist believed that cow farts were a danger to the ozone layer. a woman for this group was stomped to death by an angry bull. She tried to put a condom on it.
Pour me a drink Grandfather;-D
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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No Message Body
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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Yeah I agree with what you are saying. I wish everyone was a bit more open minded about this issue. It seems there are many who just jump on some part of the issue and think it can be solved in some simple way. Look at all the hoopla about cfc's causing the hole in the ozone layer. The molecules are very heavy and dont make it into the upper atmosphere. Then we are told that they break down and the chlorine is the culprit when it reaches the upper atmosphere and breaks down the ozone. Seems these people forgot about the chorine released from the oceans every day; more in one day than all the chlorine in all the cfc's ever produced. Yeah it was more about the expiration of Dupont's patents on cfc's.
For instance, if you think about the way things were when Europeans got here; at least here in Minnesota. There were large areas with which I shall simply call pine forests with little or no undergrowth and large stands of old majectic pines which were cut down for building of houses and railroads. etc. For the most part these forests were replaced by large amounts of scub oak and undergrowth which actually has more plant material in it than the old forests. It is also a fact that the deer population is probably 10 times what it was in 1850 now in 2006 because of the tremendous amount of undergrowth that exists now.
Ken
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Thought you were teaching me to be a good Scotsman?
I believe in Karma....what you give is what you get returned........
Affirmation........Savage Garden
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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... but if you fall down and get incoherent, you're in dead trouble!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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>The indications are that we are producing - simply by breathing, as well as by burning fossil fuels - faster that the Earth's plant life can absorb
Maybe I'm just reckless, but I don't see that as too much of a problem. The proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is very nearly the lowest it has ever been. All the carbon that is currently locked up in fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere. Increased carbon dioxide is good for plants, and it doesn't really affect animals (except where it displaces the amount of oxygen). The weather has been many, many times more extreme in the past. Life is good for humans as things are at the moment, but I'm sure if the climate changed a bit -- or even a lot -- we could either adapt, or another animal would step in to fill the gap.
It's not by any means a good thing for us to be meddling around with the climate, but on a macroscopic time scale I don't think it will make any difference at all. The world is in a constant state of flux: we only see equilibrium now because we're too short-lived to see anything else. Sooner or later the climate would change anyway, with or without us.
It may seem heartless, but I feel very much that, ultimately, if mankind wipes itself out in an attempt to survive, it will be rather amusing. At least ironic.
Maybe I'll feel differently if I have children. When I have children.
David
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cossie
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On fire! |
Location: Exiled in North East Engl...
Registered: July 2003
Messages: 1699
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It's bad enough putting up with pedantry - I hope you're not moving towards cynicism as well!
For a' that an' a' that,
It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man tae man, the worrld o'er
Shall brithers be, for a' that.
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