Tell Japan to grow some balls

[Thundercat 60]

I think they might wipe their butts with them here... not too sure they would do much else with them though!

[tripler 0]

armageddon, bring it on!

[Oyuki kigan 0]

Originally Posted By: ger

OK, try petitioning Harper.

is that a joke?

as for the effectiveness of Avazz, they have had some suprisingly good results.

And anyone who thinks i'm full of gloom and doom needs to read some Derrick Jensen

[Yuki's Passion 1]

Originally Posted By: tripler

Originally Posted By: Matt

Originally Posted By: Oyuki kigan

Um, i don't know about you, but two shitty winters in a row, along with 3 in the past 5 is disturbing to say the least.

Hakuba still not open with no big dump in sight. Global warming is getting me down.


As we speak, the talks in Copenhagen are deadlocked, and Japan has a chance to take the lead and do something to save the talks with the Hatoyama initiative.

If you give a rat's ass, please go here and add your name to the petition

http://www.avaaz.org/en/hatoyama_initiative/?cl=394049144&v=4801&signup=1

Thanks

Last season wasn't great but I thought the season before was fantastic...

yeah, 07/08 was a good season but I notice you don't go back any further, could that be because 06/07 was SO BAD it made 08/09 (a shit season) look GOOD?

I love the gambler's optimism, which I can smell in a few posts on this board, that because you lose big on red next time the ball's bound to land on black. NO! roulette is not affected by previous results. Simple probability maths will tell you this. 10 reds in a row doesn't make it any more likely to get black.

2004-2005 was an epic winter and was fortunate to get around 40 days that year

[tripler 0]

Originally Posted By: Oyuki kigan

Originally Posted By: ger

OK, try petitioning Harper.

is that a joke?

as for the effectiveness of Avazz, they have had some suprisingly good results.

And anyone who thinks i'm full of gloom and doom needs to read some Derrick Jensen

You can stick your petition up where the sun dun' shine, sonny-jim. I don't give a rat's arse about starving Africans, I just wanna ride some fat POW!

[Thundercat 60]

I always find the best way to get someone to listen to you is by insulting them straight away. Something along the lines of "Hey you, grow some balls! Now listen to what I have to say..."

[Oyuki kigan 0]

personally, i find it an effective way to get people to read a post.

 

And while you are at it, may i also suggest this article written by Bill McKibben, scholar in residence at Middlebury colledge and founder of 350.org

 

The Physics of Copenhagen

Why Politics-As-Usual May Mean the End of Civilization

 

December 08, 2009 By Bill McKibben

Source: TomDispatch

 

Bill McKibben's ZSpace Page

 

Join ZSpace

 

Most political arguments don't really have a right and a wrong, no matter how passionately they're argued. They're about human preferences -- for more health care or lower taxes, for a war to secure some particular end or a peace that leaves some danger intact. On occasion, there are clear-cut moral issues: the rights of minorities or women to a full share in public life, say; but usually even those of us most passionate about human affairs recognize that we're on one side of a debate, that there are legitimate arguments to the contrary (endless deficits, coat-hanger abortions, a resurgent al-Qaeda). We need people taking strong positions to move issues forward, which is why I'm always ready to carry a placard or sign a petition, but most of us also realize that, sooner or later, we have to come to some sort of compromise.

 

That's why standard political operating procedure is to move slowly, taking matters in small bites instead of big gulps. That's why, from the very beginning, we seemed unlikely to take what I thought was the correct course for our health-care system: a single-payer model like the rest of the world. It was too much change for the country to digest. That's undoubtedly part of the reason why almost nobody who ran for president supported it, and those who did went nowhere.

 

Instead, we're fighting hard over a much less exalted set of reforms that represent a substantial shift, but not a tectonic one. You could -- and I do -- despise the insurance industry and Big Pharma for blocking progress, but they're part of the game. Doubtless we should change the rules, so they represent a far less dominant part of it. But if that happens, it, too, will undoubtedly occur piece by piece, not all at once.

 

Moving by increments: it frustrates the hell out of many of us, and sometimes it's truly disastrous. (I just watched Bill Moyers' amazing recent broadcast of the LBJ tapes in the run-up to the full-scale escalation of the Vietnam War, where the president and his advisors just kept moving the numbers up a twitch at a time until we were neck deep in the Big Muddy.) Usually, however, incrementalism, whatever you think of it, lends a kind of stability to the conduct of our affairs -- often it has a way of setting the stage for the next move.

 

We may have to wait years for the next round of health-care reform and, in the meantime, doubtless many people will suffer, but here's the one thing we know: what we don't do now doesn't foreclose future progress. In fact, it may make it more likely -- if, after all, people grow comfortable with the idea of a "public option," then the next time around the insurance industry won't be able to make actual, honest-to-God public medicine seem so scary.

 

Climate Change as Just Another Political Problem

 

When it comes to global warming, however, this is precisely why we're headed off a cliff, why the Copenhagen talks that open this week, almost no matter what happens, will be a disaster. Because climate change is not like any other issue we've ever dealt with. Because the adversary here is not Republicans, or socialists, or deficits, or taxes, or misogyny, or racism, or any of the problems we normally face -- adversaries that can change over time, or be worn down, or disproved, or cast off. The adversary here is physics.

 

Physics has set an immutable bottom line on life as we know it on this planet. For two years now, we've been aware of just what that bottom line is: the NASA team headed by James Hansen gave it to us first. Any value for carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible "with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." That bottom line won't change: above 350 and, sooner or later, the ice caps melt, sea levels rise, hydrological cycles are thrown off kilter, and so on.

 

And here's the thing: physics doesn't just impose a bottom line, it imposes a time limit. This is like no other challenge we face because every year we don't deal with it, it gets much, much worse, and then, at a certain point, it becomes insoluble -- because, for instance, thawing permafrost in the Arctic releases so much methane into the atmosphere that we're never able to get back into the safe zone. Even if, at that point, the U.S. Congress and the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee were to ban all cars and power plants, it would be too late.

 

Oh, and the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is already at 390 parts per million, even as the amount of methane in the atmosphere has been spiking in the last two years. In other words, we're over the edge already. We're no longer capable of "preventing" global warming, only (maybe) preventing it on such a large scale that it takes down all our civilizations.

 

So here's the thing: When Barack Obama goes to Copenhagen, he will treat global warming as another political problem, offering a promise of something like a 17% cut in our greenhouse gas emissions from their 2005 levels by 2020. This works out to a 4% cut from 1990 levels, the standard baseline for measurement, and yet scientists have calculated that the major industrialized nations need to cut their emissions by 40% to have any hope of getting us on a path back towards safety.

 

And even that 17% cut may turn out to be far too high a figure for the Senate. Here's what Senator Jim Webb (a coal-country Democrat) wrote to the president last week: "I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the Administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed in Copenhagen... The phrase 'politically binding' has been used. As you well know from your time in the Senate, only specific legislation agreed upon in the Congress, or a treaty ratified by the Senate, could actually create such a commitment on behalf of our country."

 

In any case, the Senate has decided that it will not debate any climate-change bill until "the spring," after health care is settled, and maybe entitlement reform, and perhaps even financial regulation. And awfully close to the next election.

 

Meanwhile, the Chinese are apparently prepared to offer a 40% reduction in the "energy intensity" of their economy by 2020. In other words, they claim they'll then be using 40% less energy to make each yuan worth of stuff they ship off to WalMart. Which is better than not doing it, but more or less what the experts think would happen anyway as China's economy naturally becomes more high-tech and efficient. It's at best a minor stretch from "business as usual."

 

Meanwhile, the Indians almost sacked their environment minister after the newspapers decided he was compromising the national interest by engaging in real negotiations about global warming.

 

Meanwhile, the Australian opposition last week did sack their leader for being willing to compromise on an already-compromised Emissions Trading Scheme that would have capped carbon -- meaning nothing will pass.

 

Meanwhile...

 

A Challenge Unique in History

 

A new analysis released Thursday by a consortium of European think-tanks shows that the various offers on the table add up to a world in which the atmosphere contains 650 parts per million and the temperature rises an ungodly five degrees Fahrenheit.

 

What I'm saying is: even the best politicians are treating the problem of climate change as a normal political one, where you halve the distance between various competing interests and do your best to reach some kind of consensus that doesn't demand too much of anyone, yet reduces the political pressure for a few years -- at which time, of course, you (or possibly someone entirely different) will have to deal with it again.

 

Obama is doing the same thing with climate change that he did with health care. He's acting with complete political realism, refusing to make the perfect the enemy of the good (or, really, the better-than-Bush). He's doing what might make sense in almost any other situation.

 

Here, unfortunately, the foe is implacable. Implacable foes emerge rarely. The best human analog to the role physics is playing here may be fascism in the middle of the last century. There was no appeasing it, no making a normal political issue out of it. You had to decide to go all in, to transform the industrial base of the country to fight it, to put other things on hold, to demand sacrifice.

 

Yet it's all too obvious that we're not dealing with it that way. The president hasn't, for instance, been on a nonstop campaign to make everyone realize the danger. When he went to China, he certainly reached some interesting agreements about cooperation on automobile technology, but that's not the same as seeking a wartime partnership.

 

Nor is the senate meeting late into the night figuring out how to mobilize our country's resources and people in the struggle to save our planet. Here's how Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill summed up the mood: "I don't think anyone's excited about doing another really, really big thing that's really, really hard that makes everybody mad."

 

Some of us have been trying hard to open some political space for world leaders to step up to this challenge. We built a worldwide movement at 350.org that managed to pull off the "most widespread day of political action in the planet's history" (at least according to CNN). In some places, it even sparked the desired result. Ninety-two nations, all poor and vulnerable to the early effects of climate change, have endorsed that radical 350 target.

 

Some of their leaders, like Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, a nation made up of more than a thousand islands in the Indian Ocean, have emerged as tigers, ready to fight. No one would be surprised to see him lead some kind of walkout from the Copenhagen negotiations, since he's declared over and over that he won't be party to a "suicide pact" for his low-lying nation; he is, in other words, unwilling to treat global warming as a normal political issue.

 

We, however, couldn't get even the most minor player in the Obama administration to come to one of the 2,000 rallies we staged across this country. None of them were interested in jumping into the space we were trying to open. If the U.S. is this willing to treat climate change as politics-as-usual, most of the other major players will simply follow suit.

 

They'll sign some kind of paper in Denmark -- that became all but certain on Friday night when Obama announced he'd jet in for the meeting's close. European leaders and some environmental groups may then call it a "qualified success," and on we will go through more years of negotiation. In the meantime, physics will continue to operate, permafrost will continue to thaw, sea ice to melt, drought to spread.

 

It's like nothing we've ever faced before -- and we're facing it as if it's just like everything else. That's the problem.

[69 5]

Originally Posted By: Oyuki kigan

personally, i find it an effective way to get people to read a post.

You probably can't accept that your posts put some people OFF the topic, rather than ON it. Bloody 'ell it's Oyuki again blabbering on and preaching about boring shit.
Will you walk up the hill at the resort in protest rather than use the lifts?

[Oyuki kigan 0]

well, i'm not that interesting of a guy. I gotta do something...

[snowdude 44]

This global warming crap load of BS! Just a way for the politicians to get more money out of us and to control us! And anyway I believe its global cooling that is happening not global warming! And there are always going to be good years and bad years as far as the snow goes, no matter how good and consistent the weather may be!

[Thundercat 60]

gotta disagree there snowdude. Whether global warming is BS or not, whether climate change is a money grab or not we should still respect the environment and try to make as little impact as possible. If what we as humans are doing to the environment isn't good, then we are doing something wrong. I'm not the kind of person who thinks we should all be living in caves again but just to be conscious that our actions have consequences and there are things we can do to be less wasteful.

[Oyuki kigan 0]

global cooling? The resorts in the European alps that are on the verge of going under from reduced snowfalls are gonna love to hear that, Snowdude.

[thursday 1]

so tell it to them.

[Go Native 70]

Originally Posted By: snowdude

This global warming crap load of BS! Just a way for the politicians to get more money out of us and to control us! And anyway I believe its global cooling that is happening not global warming! And there are always going to be good years and bad years as far as the snow goes, no matter how good and consistent the weather may be!

snowdude please, please don't start with your conspiracy theories again about how the UN is using the climate change agenda to enforce population control or whatever it was.

Also the earth is demonstrably getting warmer, not cooler. There is really no debate about that. The debate is only whether mankind is having much effect at all on that warming.

[Tex 3]

Originally Posted By: Go Native

The debate is only whether mankind is having much effect at all on that warming.

That's it GN. What I can not reconcile is the fact that deforestation is THE major contributor to rising CO2 levels (18%) and yet it hardly rates a mention in reduction plans with every major player preferring to drive forward with CAT and ETS agendas that all mean TAXES = income HMMMMMM

[mitchpee 10]

Originally Posted By: Go Native

Originally Posted By: snowdude

This global warming crap load of BS! Just a way for the politicians to get more money out of us and to control us! And anyway I believe its global cooling that is happening not global warming! And there are always going to be good years and bad years as far as the snow goes, no matter how good and consistent the weather may be!

snowdude please, please don't start with your conspiracy theories again about how the UN is using the climate change agenda to enforce population control or whatever it was.

Also the earth is demonstrably getting warmer, not cooler. There is really no debate about that. The debate is only whether mankind is having much effect at all on that warming.

Precisely GN

There are politics involved in the climate change of the earth, but to the extent of a puppet master controlling the effects...that's just ridiculous.

[snowdude 44]

 

I never said that we shouldn't respect the environment, I agree with you we should look after the environment and not use up all our precious resources, what I said was that I disagree with all this manmade global warming. Why is it that in the past the earth was hotter than now and colder than now and carbon dioxide levels where higher than now and lower than now, way before industries ever existed.

I too think us humans are not treating our planet very well, and would surely like to see us all be more environmentally conscious.

 

 

Originally Posted By: Black Mountain

gotta disagree there snowdude. Whether global warming is BS or not, whether climate change is a money grab or not we should still respect the environment and try to make as little impact as possible. If what we as humans are doing to the environment isn't good, then we are doing something wrong. I'm not the kind of person who thinks we should all be living in caves again but just to be conscious that our actions have consequences and there are things we can do to be less wasteful.

[Go Native 70]

Originally Posted By: snowdude

Why is it that in the past the earth was hotter than now and colder than now and carbon dioxide levels where higher than now and lower than now, way before industries ever existed.

Because there are natural variations in climate over time due to many factors. That is a moot point. Past periods of warmer climate though have also been associated with higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere so if humans are increasing the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere I think it is reasonable to assume that this will have some effect on our climate. The extent to which we are enhancing the greenhouse effect is certainly debatable but I think it ridiculous to believe that we are unable to effect climate change at all or have little if any effect when we are definitely increasing CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere.

[snowdude 44]

Absolutely I am sure we are causing some effects after all we are pumping so much into the atmospher, but what I am getting at is that a lot of the scientists are saying it is us and only us that has caused the temps to rise and we are the reason for the global warming, what I am trying to point out is that this is anyway a natural cycle that the earth is going through, whether we are here or not the earth will continue to warm and cool.

And the fact that in the past CO2 levels where higher than today, proves that we are not causing co2 to rise or global warming! I am sure we are having a slight effect, but no where near as much as they are making out.

 

At the end of the day I don't think the scientists really fully understand the complexity of the earth and are making many assumtions that they can not 100% back up. If they could be 100% sure great then I would agree and support them, but the fact that there are so many if and buts doesn't make it easy for me to believe them!

[Go Native 70]

If science was a religion then they could just ask us to have faith that what they tell us is true and I guess it could be argued that some scientists do expect us to do that in respects to climate change. In reality the science of something as complex as the global climate is not something where you can expect 100% unequivocal proof. We can though say with some certainty that there is a high probability that mankind is having some effect on enhancing the natural greenhouse effect by increasing greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.

The fact that past CO2 levels have varied greatly is not proof at all though that we are not affecting current levels. Yes there is natural variation but yes we are also contributing to increased levels. The amount of increase that can be solely attributed to human activities is currently in debate of course.

[skidaisuki 0]

bit early to write off the '09 / '10 season isn't it?

[cram400 0]

yep!

some very cold air set to move into japan next week!

 

even JMA predicting below average or average temps for 2nd half of december to mid Jan..

 

[gaijindrifter 0]

i can't stand how global warming is such a fad in this damn country... everyone has completely forgotten the last thing that Japan's people were 'united against'...

 

but screw politics, off to kazawa for some NATURAL SNOW!!!

[kokodoko 67]

How about stop arguing about climate change and just

 

1. stop polluting

2. recycle

3. stop logging forests

4. use renewable energy sources like sun, wind, geothermal, etc.

 

That would be a huge start and improve the environment.

[samandfee 1]

Talking about how much snow and which season was good and bad,where can we see some kind of graph with lets say 10/15 years of snow depth and weather conditions and temps in Japan resorts....... clearly marked on........i imagine there would be a clear trend if this "global warming" is fact or fiction........the reason for that is here in Fremantle WA we have just had the coldest winter i can remember just the most cold/wet days .