Moonbox

I think this is pretty small potatoes and I really don't care one way or another. There are more important things to worry about. This is just something for the opposition to get their knickers in a knot over.

Haha 10 degree rise in world temperature? Let's see someone make that case wyly. LOL. 200 year forward projections from computer models can do it right?????

I don't agree with much of anything you said there. The suburbs developed because they are nicer, cleaner and generally safer places to live. They sustain themselves through taxes and there's nothing wrong with people not wanting to live in dirty and unmodern city centres. The problems with most older and larger downtown cores is that they were not designed to accomodate modern society. Narrow, one way streets and alleyways, no parking and congestion are the results. Few people want to contend with that when they have the means to live outside of it. If we're to stop the sprawl it will have to be as a result of intelligent city and transit planning. Suburbanites might then think about coming back to the city if they don't have to spend hours in traffic to get anywhere and they actually have somewhere to park. It might also help if they don't have to contend with rif raff begging for change everywhere they go. If anyone wants an example of a disastrous downtown core just look at Kitchener Ontario.

No I wouldn't say that. I'd say the model was wrong and start to wonder why it was wrong. If the model was wrong then failing something outstandingly out of the ordinary you have to assume that there's something wrong with the actual model itself. Not at all man.

Sure I'll agree with that.

JB there comes a certain point in time where people wake up to the fact that we should not be wasting gas stupidly. $1.40/litre gas last year killed the SUV and casual truck market. It would be the same with $200/barrel oil. People would simply adapt. Smaller cars and more efficient industry would be the eventual result. Hybrids will become a normal thing and eventually we'll stop needing oil altogether.

Well we agree then.

WYLY! Don't be dense! I'm not saying the globe isn't warming. I'm not saying I don't believe we are warming the planet. I'm saying the models and the science aren't reliable. For all I know the oceans could boil next year. I'm not making a conclusion one way or the other. The MODELS though, have shown that they aren't reliable. You said they made inaccurate predictions about how fast the globe would warm. That SHOULD lead people to wonder why so many people are willing to blindly accept the conclusions scientists are making from them. Just because the models erred conservatively doesn't mean they're valid. The model had a 50% chance of doing that regardless.

Problem is that we clearly don't understand the causes, have proven we CANNOT predict the effect and thus our conclusions are nothing better than guesses.

All I understand is that the models were WRONG. It doesn't matter whether they were too conservative or too aggressive. They weren't accurate. This isn't evidence that we are not warming the Earth, but it IS evidence that the models aren't reliable.

Wyly think about what you're saying. The models were obviously wrong. They were unable to project how much temperatures have risen. They therefore clearly weren't a reliable measure. Any bad climate model is going to either guess low or guess high. The fact that a bad model guessed high (it had a 50% chance of doing so) is hardly proof for global warming.

Haha burned.

I don't understand what you're getting at here.

I don't think you're grasping my problem with the models. It doesn't matter if you run them a hundred thousand times backwards and forwards. We barely understand the data we're putting in to them and the assumptions that are being made and thus the predictions they provide are little more than giant guesses.

Depends on where they are. Some of the factories out in rural areas perhaps not but the ones in the city most definetly have access to public transportation usually.

People living in the suburbs wouldn't all of the sudden be unable to commute because their gas costs twice as much. They would likely spend less elsewhere and buy smaller and more efficient cars. A $400,000 commuter home isn't all the sudden going to be worthless because it costs $80 instead of $40 to fill a tank of gas. LOL

When you are modelling airplanes and rockets, however, you are expected to account for and understand the variables. The engineers and physicists who build these fully understand the properties of the materials they are working with and can control the variables in their simulations and testing FULLY. They don't send a man into the air or into space on assumptions and guesses. There are very serious limits to what a computer model can tell you. If you tosses a rubber duck into the ocean and asked the computer to tell you where it will wash up on the shore, I doubt many of the 'scientists' would bet big money on the predictions. Why? Because there's no way to reliably program the variables. A big wave could make the difference. It's the same with climate models. Computer models right now can't even reliably predict the weather a few days from now yet we're trusting them with modelling what our climate will be like 100 years from now? How do you account for the sun? If the earth is warming, and as a result we see more clouds, rain and storms, can the computer tell us what effect that will have in cooling the planet? Can the computer tell us what the effect will be of larger oceans, more arable land and thus presumably more trees? Can it reliably predict air and ocean current change? Not as of yet. If the computer can't even reliably predict the smaller pieces of the puzzle, why are we so CONVINCED that it can solve the puzzle as a whole?

That's one of the weakest analogies I've seen here in some time. Be glad you're not a lawyer, because your comparison doesn't even make sense. I'm embarrassed for you that you wrote that.

Sounds PRICEY!

I doubt it lol

I understand what you're saying Machjo, I simply don't agree with it. It's not at all the urban infrastructure that makes life hard for the poor. If anything, it helps them. Public transit, however meagre it might be, allows the poor to find work further away than usual. 100 years ago you couldn't work anywhere that was outside of walking distance. Today you can. Sure the areas are more spread out, but it's easier to move around now. In 1910 if you were poor and you couldn't find a job within walking distance you were screwed.

I don't really think there was ever much question about that. Anyone who's saying we should just cut off welfare outright is suggesting thousands starve and freeze to death. It does not, however, have a whole lot to do with the suburbs but rather with society completely reinventing itself over the last century. Your challenge is pretty pointless though. Had welfare never come to be, we'd have less slums and more people either dead or starving. Welfare wasn't our ticket to expand our urban centres and sprawl all over the continent. Simple want and desire was. Not paying welfare, if anything, would have the double effect of freeing up a lot of money for further urban infrastructure and also removing a lot of poor votes from politics. Homeless people don't have a strong voter turnout. Less poor votes shifts the political centre to the right which promotes even more urban growth. I suggest you re think what you're saying here.

No! He's way more thoughtful and analytical. He would first ask you what the daily inflation rate is before deciding don't you think?

No I'm not prepared for that and you don't even make sense. A hundred years ago those same poor would have probably spent more time hungry and in the cold than they do now. They still live in the city now and today they have bus service instead of having to walk everywhere. Relative to a poor person 100 years ago, things are better for them. Yeah totally.... It's all the fault of the suburbs. Damn all those greedy hard working people who made a living for themselves and pay their taxes so that today's poor can be looked after.

Topaz the US economy tanked further and thus a faster rate of recovery is not surprising. The Feds in the US are also pumping WAY more money (relatively) into their economy than we are here. I don't expect you to understand any of this though...