How many years before China is No. 1?
POSTED BY: TraineeAlternate
UPDATED: Saturday, September 5, 2026 17:48
VIEWED: 15091
PAGE 8 of 15
Quote:What about spreading micronized iron across the ocean surface? Apparently, iron is the limiting nutrient is surface waters, and seeding the water with iron causes plankton blooms.
I just read the worst idea I think I've ever heard: Stop global warming by creating a giant plankton carbon sink. There are many variations of this plan, but then all involve drastically altering the composition of ocean life to alter teh rate at which plankton takes in co2. The wonderful thing is that plankton is most rapidly evolving community of species on the planet, in part because it has constant fluid congegation with the planets largest DNA database. So, a rapidly evolving, potentially unstoppable force could be modified to take in much more co2. The best endgame I ran into was: what if we can't shut it off? well we'd basically throw the world into a permanent ice age. Sweet. Anyway this now tops 'Invade and occupy the middle east to secure our energy needs' as the worst solution to a current problem.
---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Well, this is what happens when an economy can't offer jobs with livable wages to most of its' people. Thinking about China as a specific example, it was an empire (with a real emperor and fuedal structure) not too long before the Communist takeover. The culture, somewhat like Japan, seems to be more about blending in than standing out. Our focus on freedom and individuality is just that- OURS. The main concern of the average Chinese seems to be bent more towards economic issues rather than theories of governance... altho with an increasing standard of living there does also seem to be more involvement with environmental issues and the problems of provincial/ local corruption.
This isn't hysteria. Ten million people are dead because of Chinese agression, and it isn't even slowing down. What's going to happen if there's an uprising in Taiwan over the disassembling of their democratic govt.? This is a very likely scenario. I think there is a lot of cause for genuine concern.
There was a lot of cause for genuine concern with the Soviet Union, a nation that killed 30 million of it's own people and conquered and robotized at least a dozen sovereign nations and fed revolutions in at least a dozen more to the same end.
---------------------------------
Please don't think they give a shit.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Yeah, this is one of the parts of the really bad plan. It's the one that fortunately won't work because there's not enough available biomass, but even that will dangerously alter the eco balance of the earth in a way potentially more catastophic than global warming. In spite of dire predictions, Global warming is a relatively innocuous event, since it is reversing a longstanding trend of global cooling, thus setting the earth back millions of year. But most of the land was land then, and most of the species of lifeforms were in some form alive and well. Since the iron level was never at the height proposed, and since this also, if it worked and was effective, could, like the bio-engineered superplankton idea also plunge the world into a permanent ice age, there's nothing natural about the solutions.
Here's a short list of better ideas:
1. Stop producing greenhouse gasses at an uncontrolled rate.
2. Intentionally accellerate global warming, it's a terrible plan, but it's not as bad as the permanent ice age one.
3. Invade an occupy Iraq to cure our energy supply. This is one of the worst plans I've ever heard, but only second to this plankton thing.
4. I'm still leaning toward the hummus offensive.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:No, please, at least drop a few comments from time to time, we need niceness in here too!
Originally posted by Nellie:
Good Grief! That's the last time I ever try to say anything positive about Real World Events, or anything at all.
Goodbye---it was nice talking to you...
I understand it gets pretty fast and furious in here, but don't let it upset you, a lot of times folk here are just playin', albeit HARD.
In any case, be well.
Chrisisall
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Signym,
I don't buy it. We got this same 'communism is in the nature of Russians' argument all the time during the cold war, but this turned out to be more or less hogwash. I can't think that it's true about the chinese. It's certainly not true about the Taiwanese or the Hong Kongese. So they used to be oppressed by something else, and now they're oppressed by the commies. Doesn't mean they like it.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Thank you so much, Chrisisall, for your kind words---you surprised me! 
I realize now that Dreamtrove must have a lot of relatives from Taiwan, who are naturally terrified of being "swallowed up" by China, so they stir up lots of scary stories and drag up all that stuff from the war half a century ago, in order to keep Daddy America fighting for them.
Remember how terrified everyone was when the British had to hand back Hong Kong to China a few years ago? There were predictions that all the Hong Kong people would be thrown into prison, tortured, executed or dragged away into darkest Mainland, never to be seen again. All the capitalist trading and businesses would be destroyed, everyone's property would be seized, and there would be wholesale slaughters of babies, kittens and fluffy bunny rabbits.
Did any of that stuff happen to Hong Kong? Well, NO, actually---it's all business as usual there, and China is now busy building a rival to Hong Kong: the new "enterprise city" of Shenzhen.
So quit tossing around these numbers of millions of people killed here and millions more there, Dreamtrove---that has happened on both sides of every war in every country. Every country has done terrible things and endured terrible things, and if we all keep dragging up this historical stuff, we might as well just have one continuous planetary war and never stop.
I'll never forget the news item about one Muslim group who threw hand grenades and machinegun fire into a mosque while a different Muslim group were praying on their knees inside, all because of some quarrel that happened nearly 1000 years ago, for Pete's sake!
No one thought the Berlin Wall would ever fall down. It was unthinkable that people would ever walk freely in the sunshine from one side to the other without being shot. But it did---one day, the people tore it down.
Let go of the past, Dreamtrove, and move on---things have changed. Things always change, and sometimes the most wonderful things happen unexpectedly.
OK, I really am going to shut up now...it's all Chrisisall's fault for saying nice things!
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Nellie,
I'm appalled. No, they're from Beijing. The Chinese people are somewhat concerned that their govt. is evil. Just like the American people are somewhat concerned that the govt. of George W. Bush is evil.
A few this about this global imperial menace called China which thinks it has a divine right to control every country that has asians in it:
1. The British made a lease deal with imperial China. After that ended, it made sense for the british to leave. Hong Kong should have then become an independent country, but it was annexed by Beijing. It's a place that I've actually been too, and the people were most definitely not communists. Also they spoke two languages, neither of which was the language of Beijing.
2. Taiwan is a sovereign nation that apart from being occupied in WWII by China has never really been Chinese. It's been more or less an independent nation since its founding 400 years ago. As a wealthy independent democratic nation with 23 million people in it, the parallels to Iraq are obvious.
3. I certainly have heard of the dismantling of Hong Kong's elected govt. and the replacement with a Communist govt. agency.
4. This is a world being taken over by a system that accepts no dissent, where the people comply because they are forced to comply, it's ant hill society.
5. This is my clay pigeon of the moment:
Quote:
So quit tossing around these numbers of millions of people killed here and millions more there, Dreamtrove---that has happened on both sides of every war in every country.
Particular when one or more sides is a socialist.
and this:
Quote:
Let go of the past, Dreamtrove, and move on---things have changed.
Not on your life!
Things have changed all right, evil has the upper hand. I'm not going to sit back and let Nellie's engine of perpetual genocide take over. A million here a million there, who's counting? who cares? right? Not on my watch!
Everyone knew the Berlin Wall was coming down, that was the objective, and that, btw, was a symbolic defeat of communism. This doesn't happen accidentally. For the reign of terror in China to end someone has to work for it. Remember the massacre in and around Tiananmen Square?
Well, the reality is that the Chinese really did kill ten million people, and they will do it again if they're not stopped. And they will do it in the name of power, absolute power, over the Earth. Somewhere, maybe in the Middle East, maybe in South America, they will fund a revolution which will go out of control and millions will die. It's inevitable. Yeah, you can quote me on that.
So, to your plea "Please turn a blind eye to the marching empire," I respond:
Hell No!
Not in a million years. In my book, people have:
1. A right to life, and the right that that right should not be taken away.
2. A right to freedom, to swing their arms as long as their doing so does not interfere with anyone else.
3. A right to assemble or take part in any activity, in any group, even any nation state, and therein set up any rules of conduct they wish, without being systematically dismantled by someone who happens to have a bigger gun.
Didn't find your post particularly nice, and not stomping for Taiwan here, but if I was, then so what? Someone should be stomping for Taiwan here.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I thought this was an informative article that addressed 'quality of life' in the US:
Source: Brandeis University
Date: 2005-10-29
URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051029093925.htm
Hunger In America Rises By 43 Percent Over Last Five Years
Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999.
The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans (13% of the entire US population) live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999.
"This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome," noted center director Dr. J. Larry Brown.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
And for those waho maintian that privately- provided services are more efficient that government-provided ones:
Source: University of California - San Francisco
Date: 2005-11-10
URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051110215547.htm
Study Finds Billions Of Health Insurance Dollars Used For Administrative Costs
Billing and insurance paperwork consume at least one out of every five dollars of private insurance health spending in California, according to a new study by health policy researchers.
The findings suggest that about $230 billion in health care spending nationally is devoted to insurance administration.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME