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	Create New Topic   My Posts   My forum buddies   Invite friends   Private messages Russian brides > Main Forum > -17 in kyiv last night! but we still have gas... Author Post ragingbull Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/21/2010 1:02:15 PM   Mr. Durak, as an engineer or scientist, what is your take on global warming? westerngent44 Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/24/2010 7:24:56 AM   Hi all.just returned from kiev,my first trip out there.it was so cold,but i really enjoyed my trip,met two wonderful ladies who kept me warm )))) daytime was -16 c,evening was -21c. SirDaniel Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/24/2010 1:53:29 PM   Westerngent44: Well done ! Rivne today = minus 20 - tonight it looks it'll be minus 27. Even my Ukrainian friends are complaining it's too cold for them. They have full sympathy however for this humble British guy living amongst them, who used to complain back in Blighty of temps being minus 5 some winters. Regards. durak Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/27/2010 5:18:25 PM   @rb, I'm a humble engineer, with little formal education. And I don't know more about climate than the next guy. I am a life-long student of science, and I believe: * science is our best way to understand the truth of nature * most scientists love truth more than money or prestige * most scientists treasure their reputation for integrity, and for that reason are very careful not to publish, or to say in public, any findings from their work -- unless they are very confident, that what they are saying is correct (when a scientist publishes something that is wrong due to sloppiness, haste, etc., his colleagues around the world will never forget this) * when lots of scientists are studying something, and some of them publish something that is both important and wrong (whether by dishonesty, or mistake), then others will soon set the record straight Now that you know my beliefs about science, "global warming" is really five different questions. In order of increasing difficulty: 1) Is worldwide climate getting warmer? Science says "Yes!" That Earth is in a warming trend since the industrial revolution, is very clear, supported by massive data. Lots of political types dispute this, but very few scientists. 2) Did human activity cause or increase the warming? Science says, "Most likely." Many smart researchers have been studying the question for decades. They had a lot of communication and argument among themselves. Ideas were critized, studied, refined, discarded for others. When these researchers reached a consensus (agreement among the great majority of many scientists in a certain specialty) that it is 90% probable that human activity has been a big part of warming ... then I accept and trust that burning fossil fuel (among other things) is probably making Earth warmer, than it otherwise would be. 3) How will climate look in the future? Science says, "Warmer still." This is strongly connected to question 2. Scientific predictions are, that if CO2 output follows recent trends, that warming will continue, with some really large changes in coming decades. But there are big uncertainties, about what temperatures to expect by 2050 or 2100. The best knowledge available today can give only a fuzzy picture. 4) What would be the effects of more warming? Scientists have also studied this a lot, because it may be of vast human importance. These predictions are based on assumed CO2 production, and on forecasting models that have lots of uncertainty (see above). Trying to understand how Earth would look at these warmer temperatures adds a lot more uncertainty, so these predictions are educated guesses. 5) What should be done about global warming? This is not really a scientific question at all. It is a moral, political, and to some extent a legal question. For many folks today, the answer is, "nothing whatsoever". Scientists can only advise "if change X is made in human activity, then our forecasts predict change by such-and-such in future conditions." Batman Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/27/2010 9:24:09 PM   Durak, I am an engineer, too. I think that anybody that believes that man is responsible for global warming seen the evidence. 1) Earth has had periods of global climate changes through out time. Europe had a mini ice age cica 1650. No cars and hardly a period of mass industrialization. 2) Your gas-guzzling-land-barge is apparently affecting the climate of Mars also as that planet is experiencing some polar ice meltage too. I think we'd all agree that the National Geographic Society is a reputable source. Here's a link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html 3) Earth has also had periods polar shifts. Archeoligists have found ancient campfires sites where the rocks, when heated to a specific temperature, the iron content of the rocks aligned themselves withthe magnetic north of that era. In fact, our polar north is moving now. 4) It's more plausible to explain globalwarming from other sources; solar flares, sun spots, planetary wobble, minute changes in orbit, etc. 5) Some question whether we're experiencing any global warming at all. Some of the data collection methods and locations are dubious at best. I lost the email a friend sent me but it showed some questionable collection methods. One had the temperature collection site some ten feet from the office's air conditioning box and next to an ashphalt parking lot. Both are sources of heat above ambient temperature. 6) As a scientist, I’m going to rely on fact and data to determine whether global warming exists or not. If it does exist, then again I’m going to rely upon data to determine its cause. Data: not Al Gore, Michael Moore or any a liberal politician. 7) Ask yourself this: why are politicians so keen on getting you into a tiny, wind up car? ragingbull Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/27/2010 9:47:39 PM   Thanks for your post, Mr. Durak. Shortly after I posted it, I thought about it and I decided I put you in a spot. Thanks for your reply, Batman. Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 9:57:22 AM   do you believe in infinity? that is, if you tavel in a straight line heading into the cosmos, will your journey never end? If you believe that, then you must also believe the opposite. If there is no boundary to the vastness of infinity then surely there is infinitely "small". If you walk toward a wall and only travel half the distance to that wall then you will be travelling forever - never reaching the wall. That is why 'Horton Hears A Who' the original cartoon is one of my favorite stories ever. It is profound in its simplicity. I was going to comment on the global warming question but Batman seems to have it covered. I will say this. Do you think the nearnderthal man was bitching about global warming? Probably not. Also hurray for New Hampshire! It is starting. Americans are now beginning to realize what a load of shit the liberals are trying to ram down our throats. Good luck and I hope this helps in your quest for a woman. Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 10:03:28 AM   I meant Massachesetts. But hurry for New Hampshire anyway. Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 10:05:32 AM   u GeminiDreams Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 10:21:32 AM   I guess you guys dont believe smoking or obesity is harmful to the health just because you find an old and fat smoking guy. The consequence of being wrong is a huge shift in the habitable areas in the planet, mass migration, potentially a substantial reduction in population and extinction of many species on the planet. There is unequivical evidence that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen sharply and that rise is mainly due to the activity of man. The reality is that there is not a great cost to changing technology and lifestyles to reduce the emission of CO2 and why risk the consequences if you doubters are wrong? At least your granchildren will be breathing cleaner air. Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 10:28:54 AM   capitalism and greed -- mostly greed -- are the answers durak Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/28/2010 12:05:13 PM   @Gemini, The men in this forum are typically middle-aged+ ... if Earth continues to warm as predicted, most of us may be dead before the consequences become really severe. I see climate change as a scientific question. Most of the doubters/deniers see it as a political question! Discussion is fruitless, between people who have such different premises. Here in America we have "Fox News Channel" - a gift from Australia! In their programming, they love to put unsubstantiated claims in the form of questions, and then to say to the TV viewers, "you decide!" This would make sense, if truth were determined by opinion polling. I'm an old-fashioned guy. In my mind, Earth orbited the Sun a very long time, before any person suggested that it did! And even if 82.3% of people didn't believe that Earth orbits the Sun ... Earth would orbit nevertheless. It simply isn't a political question. I have little formal education, but I have been fascinated by and studied science for most of my life. On the average, scientists are very, very skeptical people in their work. When a scientist comes up with a new idea, his colleagues will delight in shooting at it with every kind of ammunition they can find. They will ask, "did you consider explanations A, B, C, D .... ?" "What are the errors in your instruments?" "Are you misinterpreting your data?" Before a new hypothesis becomes accepted in a field of scientific research, it must survive a baptism of fire that is probably beyond the experience and imagination of most people. And likewise, most people would be amazed by the obsessiveness with which scientists look for mistakes in their own work, as well as that of their fellows. Two examples from recent scientific history: 1) A paper reported an effect on bacteria from magnetic fields. [As it happened, the finding was a mistake.] Another researcher, seeking to reproduce the experiment, got no effect. So he asked himself, "does it depend on temperature?" and ran the experiment at various different temperatures. Still no effect. He wondered, "does it depend on the shape and size of the test chamber?" So he contacted the guys who wrote the paper, got the dimensions of their chamber, and built one to match it. Still no effect. This man spent about 3 years of his life running this experiment over and over again, before he felt justified in concluding that the original paper was wrong. 2) A team was looking for a non-uniformity of radiation coming from space, by making simultaneous measurements with two sensors with a certain angle between them. If the sensors always read the same, then the radiation is uniform. Simple, right? Well, this team identified (as I recall) about SIXTY DIFFERENT MECHANISMS that might cause the two sensors to show different readings, even if they were looking at the same amount of radiation, and came up with techniques, corrections, or protocols to correct for every one of them. To most people, this obsessiveness would probably seem like mental illness. In scientists, it is a kind of integrity. It isn't that they're any better than other people - it's that they passionately and desperately hunger to discover the truth of nature, and they are deeply aware of the human capacity to fool ourselves and each other. There really is a consensus: all of the recognized climate research institutions agree that Earth is warming, and that the primary cause is probably increased CO2. If a person knows this (and not knowing this is wilful ignorance, because it is easy to find this out), and is confident that the consensus is wrong, then that person must suppose that the climate scientists are either corrupt or incompetent. For example, just before be suggests that maybe there isn't any warming after all, batman suggests that warming is best explained by "solar flares, sun spots, planetary wobble, minute changes in orbit." This certainly sounds reasonable, at face value. Can it be that all these climate researchers failed to look at these explanations? Or if they did, were they simply too prejudiced to take them seriously? If someone cares about these questions, and doesn't know the answers, this is again wilful ignorance, because scientists publish their work - the answers are out there for the world to see. Political pundits have truly shallow minds, untroubled by doubt. People with almost no scientific education will tell you that global warming is "junk science," with the certainty of someone who got the Truth directly from God. Real scientists, on the other hand, keep saying "probably" or "very likely", and don't like to say "proved" - proof is for mathematicians. As a community, scientists are required to keep their minds open. Unlike most politicos, they really do abandon (after plenty of argument!) long-cherished beliefs in the face of conflicting data. It may be that global warming is NOT man-caused, and climate scientists are very frank about their uncertainty. Not so with the deniers. Their motto: "I hope to God I'm right, because I'll NEVER CHANGE MY MIND." GeminiDreams Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 4:04:20 AM   Durak I didnt bother discussing the science as they dont want to listen. The reality is that for many they will not change unless they are forced to change. They will drive large cars untill the price and supply of fuel forces them to drive small cars or take a bus and all the time they will be complaining that it is the governments fault or someone elses fault rather than them collectively consuming resources and failing to develop and support alternatives. I remember ther days when I was young and there were clear blue skys. In 50 years people will be saying remember when the poles had ice, in 150 years they will be saying remember when they burnt so much coal that they stuffed everything up for us! I must admit though that this is the coldest i have experienced in Kiev in January. Not too keen on going out, first day out ended on my arse with all the ice on the footpaths. SirDaniel Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 4:17:35 AM   Gemini: You're in Kiev now ? I'm just about 360km from you to the West. Do you live in Kiev, or just visiting ? Weather here in Rivne is pretty much the same as there with you, it's getting a little less cold now, it did hit -27C a couple of times, now it's -6C and it's dark around 17.00, as apposed to 15.30 just 10 or so days ago. I too have been down on my arse several times when I've stepped outside. Hopefully this snow & ice will "Get Out" in the next week or so, although with the amount there is, there maybe mass flooding everywhere for a while first. Regards. Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 7:08:19 AM   facts-- yes CO2 is a huge factor, Greenland ice pack is falling back, the Acrtic winter ice has recovered - though not completely and over the past decades there is a notablce difference in ocean ice thickness, The eastern Antarctic ocean ice (I forget what real scientists have labeled it - LS-12?) has receded or almost completely gone. The western Antarctic ice has solidified due to the flux of local winds keeping the 'warmer' air to the east. El Nino -- and the AOS are changing. It is colder below the 45 parallel and warmer in the Arctic. There are shifts in air masses AND ocean flows that are either a result of the depletion of the ozone layer or just an anomoly due to what some can speculate is a shift in the magnetic characteristic of the earth, alignment with other planets and their magnetic (gravity) effects on the earth, solar activity etc. etc... Could it be that the masses are creating this. Why do we have more drouts? Could it be because we are constructing ridiculous amounts of cement/concrete buildings, paving of ground for highways and parking lots... Ground water is not the same. It is basically run off. The ground does not collect water as it did 100, 200, 50 years ago. Perhaps the natural evaporative activity that cools the air is the culprit. And that the water table has shifted greatly. Why are my local rivers either at flood stage or barely flowing? There are so many factors into why man is ruining the earth. Population is out of control. Could it be because there so many people are farting it is ruining the atmosphere? Cows and grazing - cows fart a lot! I could go on and on about this... "They paved paradise, put up a parking lot..." - Joni Mitchel I believe this was from the seventies. The hippies and radicals have been bitching about what is happening for fifty years. No-one listened. Now we just want to get by in our life. As for the rhetoric espoused by our government I just saw a movie -- "Doubt" There was a line by the main character, " A dog that bites is a dog that bites." Meaning as I understand it, 'You can't change a person.' They are what they are. Politicians, big business, people who wrap towels aropund their heads and want to kill everyone else... 'A dog that bites is a dog that bites.' Unless there is a real revolution our fate is left in the hands of those that control the money - politicians and big business. Now I must go and press flowers in my scrap book... :) Harvey Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 7:21:26 AM   I must qualify myself to comment on this. I am not qualified to comment on this. : ) My expertise is in nuclear physics. And trout fishing. durak Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 9:26:13 AM   @ralph: Last year, a friend (with the best of intentions) used a metaphor that compared me to a dog. Thank God, men are not dogs. I f***ing hate dogs (though I've never tasted one, have to check 'em out if I ever visit East Asia). To paraphrase from a book, most men don't drink from puddles, urinate every place they take a walk, or die by age 14. According to people who knew him, Mohammed Atta (the leader of the 9/11 attack) was a kind and thoughtful student, before he went into the darkness. On the other side, I long ago read the personal story of hate-filled Klansman who had an epiphany one day, suddenly understanding that his black neighbors were living in miserable rural poverty, just as he always had. He became an activist for tolerance and civil rights in his little southern town. Dogs can respond to different environments and training, but they can't decide to change their own direction. Most human beings fall into narrow patterns of thinking that make us like senior citizens before the age of 30. But our capacity to learn and grow is enormous. GeminiDreams Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/29/2010 10:30:25 AM   I am in Kiev now. I spend 4 months of the year in kiev and the rest working, though this will change once my wife gets her residency and finishes her study. I leave next week. This was a short stint as took the kids on safari. Met the wife in dubai and spent 4 days there. On the trip to kiev missed the connection in Istanbul so was put up for the night there. Decided to do a tour but we only had our hand luggage and not much warm clothing. After 5min the wife was freezing so I gave her my jumper. It was cold, snowing and windy and I was wandering around in a warmm shirt. I think everyone thought I was crazy. after 30 min managed to buy some gloves and a beanie and spent the next hour ducking in and out of shops keeping warm. On the return the guide organised me to visit a coat shop. Bought myself a lovely leather coat for about $500. It was good for me as in Kiev I find it very difficult to find big sizes. So now Im not so bothered by the cold. beemer18 Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/30/2010 2:42:22 PM   what is this talk of cold freezing weather.......it is 83F outside and was laying out in the beach yesterday, no winter here......no I am not at home...Costa Rica...... RodanTsunami Member send PM   block PM add to buddies Send: 1/30/2010 5:15:00 PM   I just got home earlier in the week from Kiev and a great time with my lady friend on the spur of the moment made arrangements two weeks before. It was as cold as they say with ice 5 centimeters thick on the sidewalks. I stayed in an apartment next to a supermaket and the parking lot was like a "bumper Car ride" with cars bumping into each other and not being able to get rolling because of the pits in the ice. I am from California and if I had the option of transit in town I would never drive to the market for a loaf of bread if there was the Metro or a little market close by. The temperature varied little between day and night. My home can get very cold in the night, but warms up quickly when the sun comes out. Somestimes 50*F swing or more. I came prepared with a down jacket gortex boots and gloves and lined pants, hat and long johns. I only lacked a scarf and will never make that mistake again. Still the young women walked the streets in thin, tight capri type pants and a faux fur jacket. I stood out like a "Cowboy", but I was more comfortable than most, I think. I had rain gear for the one day it snowed just to remain dry. My lady came on the train from the Crimea and I sent her home on a plane. She got to Simferopol just intime for the heavy snow and it was colder than it was in Kiev the day before. Missed my connecting flight in the U. S. because of Customs secondary inspection. One line for a painting and another because I has a vacuum package of salami I couldn't get out of my checked baggage that was to be my lunch in Paris. I was in JFK when we were taken from the secured area for a breach and then hours of delay to get back in. I have found travel is much easier in Europe and Ukraine than in returning to the US. Have the tickets for another trip before I planned this one. Hope we get a "Santa Ana" in Kiev next trip. My "Baby" got cold. Anyone have good connections on excursions to Egypt? Had an apartment in Kiev, not in the center , but only ten minutes by Metro. Modern furniture and trendy with internet service and satellite television for $65 US a night. Can send reference to anyone interested. Your Reply: Your name:   New Registration Password:   Forgot password?   refresh Code:   Russian brides > Main Forum > -17 in kyiv last night! but we still have gas...
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