I say potato you say potatoe
Mar 14, 2007 3:57:28 GMT
Post by gns on Mar 14, 2007 3:57:28 GMT
Potato? Or is it Potatoe?
I can't remember which famous polly once said the latter but I know it was one of those USA ones.
Actually it doesn't matter which country they rule over, in my opinion they are all illiterate. I don't think one of them was a good scholar.
Take for example the denial of global warming or climate change in the White-house - natural causes? Nothing to do with mankind?
Let me take you back to around 1930:-
"The Dust Bowl was a series of catastrophic dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, caused by decades of inappropriate farming techniques. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean." (Source: Wikipedia)
I guess mankind is a bit thick (stupid, slow, nomark, etc). I've now seen two progs on the UK history channel describing historical environmental events down to inappropriate this, that or the other, as well as remembering my history lessons from my schooldays 40 years ago augmented here by Wikipedia above.
I guess nobody ever learns? Especially in the most powerful seat of power on the planet?
I'd guess you can't get much more inappropriate than the industrial revolution? And chasing the last dollar, which has made other countries race like crazy to keep up, and in doing so also join in with inappropriate techniques - India and China for example.
However, we're not talking about a handful of prairie farmers anymore are we? We're talking nearly all of the planet.
The farmers didn't realise what they were doing because nobody warned them. But now there are lots of people shouting warnings. The problem is that some of the warnings are a load of cods-wallop - some people are very blinkered.
In the UK there's been talk of preventing cows farting, while a major contributor of greenhouse gas gets off Scot-free - the airlines: They place CO2 where it does more harm than land based polluters - right in the stratosphere. But the future prime minister of the UK is incapable of bending his neck backwards to look into the skies and see the contrails criss-crossing our skies, or so it would seem. He has adopted the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of thinking - blame anything A-V. He is concentrating his efforts on making electronics manufacturers save the last few milli-amps. So what will he achieve?
Let me put it into perspective. 473 long haul 12 hour jumbo flights consume approximately the same power as all the TV sets in the UK parked continually on standby for a year. All this equates to 52 two thousand kilowatt power stations
www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13865&ch=infotech
The jumbo jet engines develop 240,000 kilowatts of power to keep the plane in the sky. Times 12 hours gives 2,880,000 kilowatt hours. The TV on standby a whole year typically consumes 100 kilowatt hours.
So it makes me wonder, if the future UK prime minister was asked to spell Potato, what his answer would be? ;D
I can't remember which famous polly once said the latter but I know it was one of those USA ones.
Actually it doesn't matter which country they rule over, in my opinion they are all illiterate. I don't think one of them was a good scholar.
Take for example the denial of global warming or climate change in the White-house - natural causes? Nothing to do with mankind?
Let me take you back to around 1930:-
"The Dust Bowl was a series of catastrophic dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, caused by decades of inappropriate farming techniques. The fertile soil of the Great Plains was exposed through removal of grass during plowing. During the drought, the soil dried out, became dust, and blew away eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. At times, the clouds blackened the sky all the way to Chicago, and much of the soil was completely lost into the Atlantic Ocean." (Source: Wikipedia)
I guess mankind is a bit thick (stupid, slow, nomark, etc). I've now seen two progs on the UK history channel describing historical environmental events down to inappropriate this, that or the other, as well as remembering my history lessons from my schooldays 40 years ago augmented here by Wikipedia above.
I guess nobody ever learns? Especially in the most powerful seat of power on the planet?
I'd guess you can't get much more inappropriate than the industrial revolution? And chasing the last dollar, which has made other countries race like crazy to keep up, and in doing so also join in with inappropriate techniques - India and China for example.
However, we're not talking about a handful of prairie farmers anymore are we? We're talking nearly all of the planet.
The farmers didn't realise what they were doing because nobody warned them. But now there are lots of people shouting warnings. The problem is that some of the warnings are a load of cods-wallop - some people are very blinkered.
In the UK there's been talk of preventing cows farting, while a major contributor of greenhouse gas gets off Scot-free - the airlines: They place CO2 where it does more harm than land based polluters - right in the stratosphere. But the future prime minister of the UK is incapable of bending his neck backwards to look into the skies and see the contrails criss-crossing our skies, or so it would seem. He has adopted the Arnold Schwarzenegger school of thinking - blame anything A-V. He is concentrating his efforts on making electronics manufacturers save the last few milli-amps. So what will he achieve?
Let me put it into perspective. 473 long haul 12 hour jumbo flights consume approximately the same power as all the TV sets in the UK parked continually on standby for a year. All this equates to 52 two thousand kilowatt power stations
www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13865&ch=infotech
The jumbo jet engines develop 240,000 kilowatts of power to keep the plane in the sky. Times 12 hours gives 2,880,000 kilowatt hours. The TV on standby a whole year typically consumes 100 kilowatt hours.
So it makes me wonder, if the future UK prime minister was asked to spell Potato, what his answer would be? ;D