Welcome to Gaia! ::

Okay, putting smilies in your posts doeesn't really do anything to help, and all it does is make us think that you're not taking anything seriously, which makes it difficult to take you seriously. This is an area for intelligent discussion, where you're supposed to take things seriously. If you want to just play around, the CIF and COS are great.

This particular bit gave me a lot of worries:
If that's the case, what are you doing here? The point of this area is to discuss topics that we disagree on, weighing the validity of differing points of opinion. If you truly believed in what you said, and had the knowledge/research to back it up, then you would do so. Knowledge and logic win in this particular space of the Internet, so break the arguments against you. Martian Princess did quite a job breaking down yours and finding flaws in the logic and sources you set down; it's your turn to do the same. If you are unable to, it means your argument isn't as strong, and I'm sure that's not the case.

Don't take the cop-out answer, you most certainly are NOT above debating with us. Use your brain, think things through, and show us what you're made of.

EDIT: Also, concerning the bit about hippies (which is actually a bit personal, as my roommate last year was, in fact, a real hippie). I was unable to find any information on SI Hayakawa's definition of "hippie," but that's beside the point. It doesn't really matter to me what YOU define a hippie as, I don't identify myself as one, going by the Merrian-Webster definition, as generally accepted by the majority of Earth's populous:


While I must admit that I am a young person (relative to the majority of society) and I happen to have long hair (relative to the majority of males in my age group), I dress rather conventionally for societal standards, and do not advocate communal living (although I am currently residing in college dorms, it is most certainly not my first choice of living quarters). I do advocate non-violence when I believe words will suffice, but am prone to violent outburst of a much more personal nature.

Let me clarify that I share my account with various other people.

Now, back to the topic.


Exactly, and that may be the definition that your long-built rage toward this kind of person has assignated to the word 'hippie', but there's always the chance that some will only consider it a desperate guess. Now, let's talk about these mystifiying creatures that have caused so much controversy and have, tragically, been used as a sort of emotional and rather poor and archaic weapon. It is known that people, out of desperation, will resort to some additional, minor techniques when some sort of inconvenience surges, such as the lack of an argument with wich to keep the adversary silent or temporarily distracted. Some people, those who, most of the time, are too focused on winning or loosing(or on what they believe those words mean), consider such arguments as a convenient weapon, one that will cause an emotional blow deep enough to disorient such adverary and and or intimidate him, thus forcing him to retire from the discussion. However, such tricks which this person so genialy forged inside his head will not, surprisingly, be considered by a vast mayority of the audience as a valid argument, thus forming some sort of ideal (yet rather negative) bubble around that person. Said person will then feel satisfied with what he will consider a triumph, but the tricks will not be enough to satisfy the perplexed and confused witnesses of the discussion. They will feel out of place, because, just as they will never be capable of reading thoughts or sharing lunatical and far-fetched visions, they will not be able to catch the marvelous cause for the victory in which the hero will be rejoicing.

In this case, the additional, minor technique to which I'm refering is that intricate and frustrating word, the word hippie. Now lets go to the many definitions that, through the ages, have derived from the original meaning. As you all know, hippie is a word that can be widely interpreted because of its curious origin. Surprisingly, hippie is not an ordinary word, or at least not one that can be used in our every-day language. Hippie is word that, due to the many political factors that it has dragged along the way, has been assigned by a wide list of offended people, a lot of meanings. The real definition of the word, tragically, is non-existant. In its place, many definitions that are strictly related to different point of views have been assigned to the word by this army of outraged, frustrated or lunatical lads. These definitions, however, are not completely different from one another. In fact, they are so similar that, when it comes to escence, they can be joined and/or mixed up.
Some people, a wide mayority of us, believe that the word hippie should be used when refering to an imbecile, a lunatic who believes to be reshaping the world by pumping drugs into his body and spitting incoprehensible speeches about nature and peace that end up in nothing. Tragically, this interpretation surged, not only because of the differing of political ideas, but because of a wave of people who were eager to fit in, people who wanted to play pretence and adhere to the more vanal characteristics of the word. That is why those who accused the hippies of being worthless human matter were partly right. However, they conveniently ignored the fact that the vast majority of those who claimed to be hippies were, in fact, just ordinary and perfectly normal people who wanted to get stoned and ********. In other words, they were just self-conceited bastards who craved for physical pleasure. Many who had focused on this behaviour, from then on, instinctively associated all who they considered a social stain with the term hippie. Thus, basing themselves on a negative effect, they chose to sink, along with the mass of ordinary people wo wanted to fit in and be rebellious, the minority who they were unable to fight with their pitiful arguments. They generalized, they exploited a temporal (because those who wanted to be cool would eventually find another shelter in which to hide) loophole when they had the chance.

Now, like I said, hippie is a word that has many similar meanings. The only difference is that some utter the word hippie with pride, others with desire, and others with hatred. That is because some were proud of what they did, while there were others who never had the chance to be, but wanted to be, or who were repulsed by the general idea spread through the masses. However, the meaning which best suited the minority was thrown aside because it did not reveal their flaws or because it wasn't as attractive as the general idea. Their adversaries resorted to those archaic, yet sometimes succesfull tricks in order to win the discussion and back up their favorite politician. They took a flaw that only a handful of them shared, a flaw that did not characterize them as hippies, a flaw that could have belonged to them as well as to anyone else who was completely unrelated with the word. So in the end, the only thing they accomplished was to defend their politician, which was, by the way, their only purpose. It was all turned into a big, ridiculous game in which some people wanted to sink, with no reason whatsoever, a certain politician or ideal, and in which another group wanted to protect that polititian or ideal to whom they swore eternal and unwavering loyalty.

That was one of my sisters with which I sometimes share my account. They ocassionally borrow it when they feel the urge to post something. Sorry for the inconvenience.

global warming is caused by smog and cfc's we release into the air, so lets try not to use our AC's too much ^^

ok.

first off, we haven't even proven that global warming's happening--the change in temperature depends on where you get your data.

secondif there is, it's highly unlikely that it's happening as fast as some people seem to think. some scientists have revised their timelines and made them much longer....

thirdly, even if there is global warming (which i doubt is serious) then how do we know that its us? the earth naturally goes through cycles...before the little ice age, the world was much warmer. you used to could grow grapes in england. english wine used to be better than french! doesnt it seem a bit arrogant to give humans all the credit for global warming when it has happened many times before, without our help?

fourth of all, i love how we natter on and on about how stupid bush is, and then we say it's his fault global warming's happening...ok, it's either a nefarious plot or not! one man is not capable of changing the world's tempuratures!!!!!!!!!!

I figure the anti-global warming folks were getting a bit outnumbered (and outclassed, I suspect...), so I decided to pitch in.

Alright, I'll try to keep this simple. I hate reading huge blocks of uninterupted text, and I'll bet you do too.
Global warming is happening. However this is natural, and has been going before the modern era, and has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emisions. Evidence:

1. Since the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age over 18000 years ago, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen 300 feet. This was not spread out over a long period of time like many think. Rather, over a century it would rise 7 degrees, the next it would drop three, then one, then no or minimal change for half a millenium, then another series of numbers getting on adverage warmer. (I'm drawing this from several sources-5+-not all of which I have easy reference to here, so I'll skip sources for the moment)

1A- According to an arcticle by the Illinois State Museum, "If 'ice age' is used to refer to long, generally cool, intervals during which glaciers advance and retreat, we are still in one today. Our modern climate represents a very short, warm period between glacial advances."

1B-"...the Earth was evidently coming out of a relatively cold period in the 1800's so that warming in the past century may be part of this natural recovery." -Dr. John R. Christy, leading climate and atmospheric science expert for the University of Alabama

2. Greenhouse gases and the amount humans produce have nothing to do with global warming. While it would be nice to clean up a bit, the world it not going to end anytime soon.

2A- "The idea that man-made pollution is responsible for global warming is not supported by historical fact. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)- long before human's...industrial pollution." -Global Warming, A Chilling Perspective

2B- "Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% - 0.3% to Earth's greenhouse effect.

I think you begin to get my point.

Just to show solidarity, I want to also add that in an article in this week's Nature (a scientific publication), Jeffery Richey and colleagues from the University of Washington in Seattle say that the breakdown of leaf litter is already releasing large amounts of carbon in the rivers and wetlands of the Amazon rainforest. This means the forest may be releasing as much CO2 as it absorbs, if not more.