On Wednesday’s Radio Show…
June 11th, 2008, 6:00 PM EDT
• John McCain says it’s “not too important” when our troops come home. Is he right? Or is he out of touch?
• A group of climate change skeptics says that instead of saving the planet, we should pollute it! Global warming denier Steve Elliott of Grassfire.org debates environmentalist David Roberts of Grist.org.
• Can you survive the cut? It’s Sudden Death Radio!
He’s wrong.
I’m not a fan of Sudden Death Radio. The calls are fairly short to begin with, so shortening them via this method seems unecessary, and the only really nice thing about SDR is getting to hear the women on your staff, and Joel’s ok, but SDR is a bit on the sadistic side.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Hey, Alan, H&C is becoming a standup act for you (and even Sean). Didn’t Hannity actually give you credit for your “Hillary 3AM” joke yesterday? Surprised me…you’ve been cracking jokes for a decade and he rarely budges.
And McCain essentially said that CASUALTIES are more important than withdrawal dates. This is like the Obama and the “uncle at Auschwitz” thing…it’s a nonissue even if he did misspeak. Big deal.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
I only get up in the morning, breathe in and out and continue to live my weary life for the remote possiblity of hearing Sudden Death Radio.
YES!
Not only that, SDR is instructional and educational for all current and possible future callers. :D
I think it’s alot of fun, it gives Alan and the crew a break and they seem to enjoy it very much.
Well to each his own…
June 11th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
To each his own. Just comes off as mean to me. Not entertaining.
Que sara, sara..
June 11th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I got more of the impression that McCain is dismissive of indefinite presence in a given place where we might not be welcome but are safe than that he was comparing that to casualties. I see those somewhat separate.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
I thought we were already polluting the planet? We are talking about Earth, right! There need to be a balance between each extreme on the enviroment. We do not want to kill animals, have dirty water, dirty air, or have trash dumps everywhere.
At the same time I do not want someone coming up behind us if we aciddently forget to recycle something, drop a piece of trach accidently, or do something else wasteful. There are a few people who take the extreme views on every issue.
I recycle when I can because my city only allows so much to be reycled, I try not to be wastful, I only kill bugs or field mice, I have fairly clean water, the air is ok here, and the noise if fine too.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term “plutoid” as a name for dwarf planets like Pluto
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080611/sc_space/plutonowcalledaplutoid
ok woo hoo
June 11th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
check myspace comments, cheryl.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
As much as I freaking love SDR, it seems a little soon for Alan and the gang to be doing it again. Alan, hope you’re feeling ok buddy.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Well, the last time it was short, so I can understand it on that basis.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
he is wrong and out of touch.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
I was contemplating Carnak the Magnificent so I think I know what’s going to happen about climate change.
We’ll just putter along for the next couple decades, doing next to nothing. Then we’ll wake up, say, on a Tuesday, and find out that our way of life is no longer sustainable. Well maybe for another three months. So then the feces will hit the fan and plaster us all in the face.
And then we’ll have a great big convulsion, because people can’t get to work, or the water supply to several big cities runs dry, or the breadbasket of the nation turns into a desert just like back in the dustbowl years.
So, suddenly, it won’t be a question of convenience, or who’s got the money to fuel what vehicle, or who believes what. It’ll be life or death.
It’ll be like the Depression. We won’t have choices. We’ll have to do things to survive.
Because we don’t move till it’s a crisis.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Wow this Elliot guy is an IDIOT!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
And the other guy David is wonderful! Hahaha … he said all these guys like Elliot wanna do … it’s like monkeys throwing around their poop! LOLOLOL!!!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Because we don’t move till it’s a crisis.
Why is it always like that? Even sometimes in my own life. What the hell is wrong with us???
June 11th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Alan~ here’s how to get people to stop asking how you are and thanking you for the call- when you give out the number, just say “I welcome your call, but don’t bother asking me how I am. I’m fine. Don’t thank me for taking your call. I have to.” See? Say something like that every tieme you give out the number.
I’m enjoying SDR, I’m pissed I still can’t use my phone b/c I’d call! I’m not scared of the Alan Colmes Crew. Plus I like hearing Aimee and the other people.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
Of COURSE somebody who wants to be President of the United States in this day in age should know how to use a computer.
This is coming from a “hip, cool” Mac user, as Alan calls them:D
June 12th, 2008 at 12:11 am
McCain’s blooper statements are coming far too often to be accidential. Liberals have plenty of reason to celebrate concerning the war already. Months ago, we were fighting an endless war and illegal occupation. Now it’s no longer a question if our troop will get out, it’s a matter of when. Now we need to focus on keeping America from being attacked again before the election. If everyone agrees that an attack on America would help the Republicans, this is the time for us all to be Americans and not partisan.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:11 am
“What the hell is wrong with us???”
I guess we get too comfortable, and we see what we want to see, and rationalize the rest.
I’ve got this conservative friend who owns lots of guns, and I always remember the time he told me he watches Fox TV because that’s what he wants to hear.
Is Lake Mead drying up? Will Las Vegas become a ghost town because there isn’t enough water to support it?
Nobody wants to hear that.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Every time we purchase a product we generate waste, depletion of the source material, or an alteration to the eco-system and biosphere. For every tuck load of finished product 32 truckloads of waste are generated (Ray Anderson, Interface Inc.). We never directly witness what it takes to create the products we buy. Consumption equals waste, plus depletion of all resource, multiplied by cost of externalities plus direct cost of products.
C=W+DR (E+P) we only experience the C in the equation, the consumption. Our addiction to easy access products and our search for a fulfillment of all our emptiness or greed, with material items fuels our addiction to oil and energy. The energy required to make, transport, buy, and use these products is why we are trapped in a system of growth beyond the means that this planet can support via fossil fuels or ancient energy. The creation of a product creates more waste or pollution than does the product itself. Your key chain is responsible for pollution, the depletion of resources, any effect upon eco-systems and biosphere before it ever secured a single key. It is responsible for chemical pollution in the water, air, and soil due to the production process. It takes coal, petroleum, chemicals, and material resources to create the key chain. We have cut most of our old growth forest, turned large swaths of rain forest into unproductive potential desert. Desertification is on the rise especially in Africa and China. A single tree can absorb approximately 57,000 gallons from a large rainfall reducing flooding and soil degradation. Yet, still we cut and clear away our flood and desert prevention protection. We have over fished and depleted our fish stocks by as much as 90% around the entire globe (National Geographic Mag.,) What fish are left to catch are not worth eating due to the levels of chemicals and heavy mettles. If we loose our ocean’s ability to sustain life, we loose life on the land. If the plankton blooms decline due to pollution and warming oceans a Precambrian Extinction event will acquire. Global Warming is heightened by our reduction of old growth forest CO2 absorption. Even the amount of Oxygen is directly affected by our actions. The increases of Ocean Dead Zones have decreased the ocean’s plant growth, which is responsible for 75 percent of the Earth’s Oxygen. We have a direct effect and relationship with the biosphere and its health or collapse. There is not an eco-system that has not been damaged, depleted, or ill affected by human contact. Global warming is the totality of all our actions upon all the eco-systems that are responsible for the stability of our climate, food supply, and the protection of the sustainability of life on earth. If the Biosphere collapses due to eco-system pollution and degradation, we may become extinct. But the earth will regenerate over millions of years, without us. Steven Hawking, the renowned physics guru has stated that the, “Worst case scenario is that Earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temp. of 250 deg. centigrade and raining sulfuric acid.” That is, if we continue to destroy the biosphere, thus ourselves. The Earth’s biosphere and the health of our environment controls the weather with a little help from the Sun. When we destroy the eco-systems of the planet we destroy the stability of life and the weather patterns. All our actions via consumption add CO2 and other gases to the atmosphere, but it is all the other factors that are part of consumption that magnify our Green House gas pollution. Global Warming is Carbon pollution plus Eco-System Collapse. GW=C+ESC, Our extinction is when Ignorance and Denial are added to the equation.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Robert Felix “Not by fire but by Ice” book
And the petition signed by 31,00 so called scientists who claim that human activity has no effect upon Global Warming. The signatories were Medical Doctors, Bachelors Degrees in Science (that would be called a lab technician), Meteorologists (as if they have a deep background in science outside of AP new wires and Doppler Radar), assorted PhD’s and some Climatologists. Now I could have a PhD in Harmonica or Mid Evil History, yet that PhD gives me no latitude to claim any expertise on Global Warming or Global Eco-Systems. Thus the majority of the 31,000 scientists are not scientists that have any real expertise pertaining to the Climate. The fact that some of so-called scientists were Medical Doctors is very disturbing. Having a Medical Doctor claim expert opinion on Global Warming is like having a Dentist perform open-heart surgery. This is a joke possibly funded by industry, made up of people unrelated in most cases to the field of global climate and global eco-systems and their biology. I can get 60,000 PhD’s from multiple unrelated backgrounds to agree on conjecture at any moment of any day.
Robert Felix is out of touch with reality. Why? Well he blames underwater volcanoes for the heating of the Ocean’s and Global Warming in conjunction with, what he calls natural cycles. Then he throws in the Sun or some unknown Cosmological force as another reason for Global Warming. Why is he so vehemently against the fact that Humans do alter their Environment? Has Mr. Felix seen a major city from the window of an airplane? Is he unaware that we cut down more trees than we plant? Is he aware that we release millions of unnatural chemicals into the air, soil, and water? Does he think that Green House gases are the only cause of global warming? If he does he is blind to all the possible variables that can influence weather. Most of those influences have an origination with Humans. Any Scientist with ethical, moral, and logical observational thought cannot claim that we as a species have not damaged the planet as a whole. Even if Global Warming is not real.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Some of the opponents of Global Warming like to argue that humans have no significant effect upon the environment especially the weather. They use the argument that Global Warming is influenced by CO2 from Volcanic Activity, Solar Cycles, and other unnamed natural cycles. Volcanoes do add CO2 to the atmosphere. Unfortunately this is a half-truth. Volcanoes add much more Particulate Mater into all the levels of the Atmosphere, which block Sun light from reaching the Earth’s surface. This Particulate Mater is a counter to Global Warming, yet it has not stopped or placed a significant dent in the advancement of Global Warming over the past 50 years. Thus Volcanoes may add CO2, but they do not add to warming, they actually add to cooling. The other excuse industry scientists argue is that Global Warming is only the logical result of natural cycles such as Solar Cycles. They point to Solar Cycles as the reason for our decades of Green House Warming. The Sun does play a part in our weather, true. But Solar Cycles are only 22 year sections of time split in two 11 year high and low periods. This does not account for the continual Global Temperature rise over multiple decades. They like to point to CO2 levels on other planets as proof that Global Warming is entirely a natural occurrence. This is a joke due to the fact that these fluctuations are minuscule in comparison to the CO2 levels on earth. They also point to prehistoric examples of Climate Change as proof of Natural Cycles. OK, there are long term, slow, or hundred thousand, even million year changes that have occurred, true. But the past 100 years of modern history does not match those stalwart cycles. Many of the past natural cycles were the result of Comet, Meteor, or Mega Volcano events, and the dissipation or correction of such events. We are experiencing quick or rapid Climate Change that is not the result of traditional long-term cycles or catastrophic events. They also claim that there is not enough evidence to reach a conclusion about climate history. This is a half-truth as well. We have Ice-Core samples that go back approximately 600,000 years, Geologic layers that go back multiple millions or billions of years, tree rings that reach as far as 8,000 years, and decades of satellite data. That is a lot of evidence. It is testable evidence; rather than the conjecture put forth by paid pundits, many of whom, are scientists outside of their field of expertise. When all else fails they like to conjecture that humans could not have a major effect upon the environment. This is not a half-truth; it is a lie. Why do we have an EPA? Why do we have to remove lead paint to protect our children? Would you feed your child fish from known polluted waters? Have we cut down over 80 too 90 percent of old growth forest? Unfortunately, yes we have. Have we depleted fish stocks by 75 percent or more? Yes. Have we hunted Buffalo and large predators to near extinction? Yes. Have we altered the face of the Earth with major cities and sprawling suburbs? Yes. Was Chernobyl a direct effect upon the Environment? I would hope logic would bring you to the answer to that.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Really, there’s only one question.
What are we gonna do about it?
If we do nothing, and just let the dice roll where they may, then who knows? Maybe we luck out.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Sorry for the re-post I had to make a correction.
Every time we purchase a product we generate waste, depletion of the source material, or an alteration to the eco-system and biosphere. For every tuck load of finished product 32 truckloads of waste are generated (Ray Anderson, Interface Inc.). We never directly witness what it takes to create the products we buy. Consumption equals waste, plus depletion of all resource, multiplied by cost of externalities plus direct cost of products.
C=W+DR (E+P) we only experience the C in the equation, the consumption. Our addiction to easy access products and our search for a fulfillment of all our emptiness or greed, with material items fuels our addiction to oil and energy. The energy required to make, transport, buy, and use these products is why we are trapped in a system of growth beyond the means that this planet can support via fossil fuels or ancient energy. The creation of a product creates more waste or pollution than does the product itself. Your key chain is responsible for pollution, the depletion of resources, any effect upon eco-systems and biosphere before it ever secured a single key. It is responsible for chemical pollution in the water, air, and soil due to the production process. It takes coal, petroleum, chemicals, and material resources to create the key chain. We have cut most of our old growth forest, turned large swaths of rain forest into unproductive potential desert. Desertification is on the rise especially in Africa and China. A single tree can absorb approximately 57,000 gallons from a large rainfall reducing flooding and soil degradation. Yet, still we cut and clear away our flood and desert prevention protection. We have over fished and depleted our fish stocks by as much as 90% around the entire globe (National Geographic Mag., April 2007) What fish are left to catch are not worth eating due to the levels of chemicals and a variety of heavy metal pollution. If we loose our ocean’s ability to sustain life, we loose life on the land. If the plankton blooms decline due to pollution and warming oceans a Precambrian Extinction event will acquire. Global Warming is heightened by our reduction of old growth forest CO2 absorption. Even the amount of Oxygen is directly affected by our actions. The increases of Ocean Dead Zones have decreased the ocean’s plant growth, which is responsible for 75 percent of the Earth’s Oxygen. We have a direct effect and relationship with the biosphere and its health or collapse. There is not an eco-system that has not been damaged, depleted, or ill affected by human contact. Global warming is the totality of all our actions upon all the eco-systems that are responsible for the stability of our climate, food supply, and the protection of the sustainability of life on earth. If the Biosphere collapses due to eco-system pollution and degradation, we may become extinct. But the earth will regenerate over millions of years, without us. Steven Hawking, the renowned physics guru has stated that the, “Worst case scenario is that Earth would become like its sister planet, Venus, with a temp. of 250 deg. centigrade and raining sulfuric acid.” That is, if we continue to destroy the biosphere, thus ourselves. The Earth’s biosphere and the health of our environment controls the weather with a little help from the Sun. When we destroy the eco-systems of the planet we destroy the stability of life and the weather patterns. All our actions via consumption add CO2 and other gases to the atmosphere, but it is all the other factors that are part of consumption that magnify our Green House gas pollution. Global Warming is Carbon pollution plus Eco-System Collapse. GW=C+ESC, Our extinction is when Ignorance and Denial are added to the equation.
June 14th, 2008 at 2:40 pm