The Classical Greeks, by Michael Grant..wonderful if you are a scholar of ancient Greece. Ponderous if you are not.
Basically, the Greeks learned from the many wars, and power struggles, that cooperation was better than non cooperation. At the same time in history, deductive thinking became more prevalent as a fruit of the newly acquired leisure time, afforded by their society.
A burst of creativity led to further didactic thinking that traveled through the society, in paintings, and literature. This developed into more sophisticated presentations, as the creativity of the artists caught on encouraged by the release from the back breaking toil of centuries.
Largess toward others began, not only in the form of government , as the Greeks headed toward early Democracy, but in the sharing of the beauty of their creativity, through the arts.
What are the lessons of the ancients? I guess it is that we all need time to develop our own pattern of growth. Just as a child goes through stages of development each society has to go through stages of development. Each society, whether modern or ancient, has to develop a way to allow their people to rise up from the back binding toil of hand to mouth existence. Providing sustenance, is not enough, since we have not shown success with that program.
I happen to disagree with our elitist way of taking jobs from people in other nations, that are not being paid "sufficient money" , by out standards. Jobs are needed everywhere in the world, to allow people to rise into the different standards of living, from poor, to working poor, to middle class, and so on.
Just look at the mess we are in , in our own country. We had to wait for the figures to show that jobs where being lost during this recession, that started in August 2005. Anytime a major industry is in trouble, it has a trickle down effect.
My Dad, was not a scholar, but he knew, that our national industries, housing and cars, could have a devastating trickle down effect. That hint from our conversations, and the experience I have accumulated now convince me beyond a doubt, that we can not let our national industries fail without severe economic problems. Where jobs are lost, new ones must be created, not only job re-training, but new jobs in a related industry.
Maybe I am wrong in my deductions, but, I believe that if we put the construction workers back to work, on the most needed projects, rebuilding roads, and bridges that are over 50 years old , we will be on the right track. Pork barrel projects have unfairly used the taxes that are collected for the maintenance of roads and bridges, and when more disasters occur, what do we tell the loved ones? A bridge to nowhere in Alaska, was worth more than the life of your loved one who died on a bridge crossing the Mississippi.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Global warming
If you are feeling guilty about Global warming , it is time to stop listening to people who do not know anything about the studies , or maybe they do not want to know anything about the studies that have been done.
Anyone who is concerned about our planet, should be concerned about protection of the planet, but, should we go blindly ahead without knowing the scientific details? Should we be as sheep, who follow the pied piper, as he tells his/her tale, of woe?
Take a look at this book, which helps you understand how lucky we are to be living in a warming period on earth. In the midlle ages, there was a mini ice age. It is too bad, that there are among us, leaders who feel it necessary to say that the scientists who are saying that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles are like people that believe that the earth is flat.
How dare anyone say that? Everything that we profess, we need to profess with a grain of salt, because so called truths , can prove to be wrong. Are the ice cores wrong? Is the fact that the Romans grew grapes in Britain, and that it is still not warm enough in Britain to grow grapes a mis-statement ? History unveils itself to those that search for answers, just as science, opens itself to those that search for answers.
Take a look at this article I copied for your convenience. There is a little summary of the book at the end of the chapter list. The book is easy to read, and as a justice to the people of the world, we should spread the word about the information in this book. Our teachers are teaching our children the wrong stuff...do we want this to continue? How many schools are showing the film, An Inconvenient Truth, when the truth should be taught from this book?.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
HOME / DONATE / ONE LEVEL UP / ABOUT NCPA / CONTACT US
The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
NCPA Study
No. 279
September 30, 2005 Read Article as PDF | Get Adobe Reader
by S. Fred Singer & Dennis T. Avery
Executive Summary
Introduction
The Ice Cores
Seabed Sediments
Lake Sediments
Cave Stalagmites
Fossilized Pollen
Boreholes
Tree Rings
Mountain Tree Line Elevations
Glacier Advances and Retreats
Miscellaneous Climate Proxies
Summing Up the Worldwide Physical Evidence
Sidebar: Climate Cycling in North America
Notes
About the Authors
Executive Summary
The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.
It has long been accepted that the Earth has experienced climate cycles, most notably the 90,000-year Ice Age cycles. But in the past 20 years or so, modern science has discovered evidence that within those broad Ice Age cycles, the Earth also experiences 1,500-year warming-cooling cycles. The Earth has been in the Modern Warming portion of the current cycle since about 1850, following a Little Ice Age from about 1300 to 1850. It appears likely that warming will continue for some time into the future, perhaps 200 years or more, regardless of human activity.
Evidence of the global nature of the 1,500-year climate cycles includes very long-term proxies for temperature change — ice cores, seabed and lake sediments, and fossils of pollen grains and tiny sea creatures. There are also shorter-term proxies — cave stalagmites, tree rings from trees both living and buried, boreholes and a wide variety of other temperature .
Scientists got the first unequivocal evidence of a continuing moderate natural climate cycle in the 1980s, when Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland first saw two mile-long ice cores from Greenland representing 250,000 years of Earth’s frozen, layered climate history. From their initial examination, Dansgaard and Oeschger estimated the smaller temperature cycles at 2,550 years. Subsequent research shortened the estimated length of the cycles to 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years). Other substantiating findings followed:
An ice core from the Antarctic’s Vostok Glacier — at the other end of the world from Greenland — showed the same 1,500-year cycle through its 400,000-year length.
The ice-core findings correlated with known glacier advances and retreats in northern Europe.
Independent data in a seabed sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, reported in 1997, showed nine of the 1,500-year cycles in the last 12,000 years.
Other seabed sediment cores of varying ages near Iceland, in the Norwegian and Baltic seas, off Alaska, in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Arabian Sea, near the Philippines and off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula all also showed evidence of the 1,500-year cycles. So did lake sediment cores from Switzerland, Alaska, various parts of Africa and Argentina, as did cave stalagmites in Europe, Asia and Africa, and fossilized pollen, boreholes, tree rings and mountain tree lines.
None of these pieces of evidence would be convincing in and of themselves. However, to dismiss the evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle, it is necessary to dismiss not only the known human histories from the past 2,000 years but also an enormous range and variety of physical evidence found by a huge body of serious researchers.
Anyone who is concerned about our planet, should be concerned about protection of the planet, but, should we go blindly ahead without knowing the scientific details? Should we be as sheep, who follow the pied piper, as he tells his/her tale, of woe?
Take a look at this book, which helps you understand how lucky we are to be living in a warming period on earth. In the midlle ages, there was a mini ice age. It is too bad, that there are among us, leaders who feel it necessary to say that the scientists who are saying that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles are like people that believe that the earth is flat.
How dare anyone say that? Everything that we profess, we need to profess with a grain of salt, because so called truths , can prove to be wrong. Are the ice cores wrong? Is the fact that the Romans grew grapes in Britain, and that it is still not warm enough in Britain to grow grapes a mis-statement ? History unveils itself to those that search for answers, just as science, opens itself to those that search for answers.
Take a look at this article I copied for your convenience. There is a little summary of the book at the end of the chapter list. The book is easy to read, and as a justice to the people of the world, we should spread the word about the information in this book. Our teachers are teaching our children the wrong stuff...do we want this to continue? How many schools are showing the film, An Inconvenient Truth, when the truth should be taught from this book?.
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
HOME / DONATE / ONE LEVEL UP / ABOUT NCPA / CONTACT US
The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle
NCPA Study
No. 279
September 30, 2005 Read Article as PDF | Get Adobe Reader
by S. Fred Singer & Dennis T. Avery
Executive Summary
Introduction
The Ice Cores
Seabed Sediments
Lake Sediments
Cave Stalagmites
Fossilized Pollen
Boreholes
Tree Rings
Mountain Tree Line Elevations
Glacier Advances and Retreats
Miscellaneous Climate Proxies
Summing Up the Worldwide Physical Evidence
Sidebar: Climate Cycling in North America
Notes
About the Authors
Executive Summary
The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.
It has long been accepted that the Earth has experienced climate cycles, most notably the 90,000-year Ice Age cycles. But in the past 20 years or so, modern science has discovered evidence that within those broad Ice Age cycles, the Earth also experiences 1,500-year warming-cooling cycles. The Earth has been in the Modern Warming portion of the current cycle since about 1850, following a Little Ice Age from about 1300 to 1850. It appears likely that warming will continue for some time into the future, perhaps 200 years or more, regardless of human activity.
Evidence of the global nature of the 1,500-year climate cycles includes very long-term proxies for temperature change — ice cores, seabed and lake sediments, and fossils of pollen grains and tiny sea creatures. There are also shorter-term proxies — cave stalagmites, tree rings from trees both living and buried, boreholes and a wide variety of other temperature .
Scientists got the first unequivocal evidence of a continuing moderate natural climate cycle in the 1980s, when Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland first saw two mile-long ice cores from Greenland representing 250,000 years of Earth’s frozen, layered climate history. From their initial examination, Dansgaard and Oeschger estimated the smaller temperature cycles at 2,550 years. Subsequent research shortened the estimated length of the cycles to 1,500 years (plus or minus 500 years). Other substantiating findings followed:
An ice core from the Antarctic’s Vostok Glacier — at the other end of the world from Greenland — showed the same 1,500-year cycle through its 400,000-year length.
The ice-core findings correlated with known glacier advances and retreats in northern Europe.
Independent data in a seabed sediment core from the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland, reported in 1997, showed nine of the 1,500-year cycles in the last 12,000 years.
Other seabed sediment cores of varying ages near Iceland, in the Norwegian and Baltic seas, off Alaska, in the eastern Mediterranean, in the Arabian Sea, near the Philippines and off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula all also showed evidence of the 1,500-year cycles. So did lake sediment cores from Switzerland, Alaska, various parts of Africa and Argentina, as did cave stalagmites in Europe, Asia and Africa, and fossilized pollen, boreholes, tree rings and mountain tree lines.
None of these pieces of evidence would be convincing in and of themselves. However, to dismiss the evidence of the 1,500-year climate cycle, it is necessary to dismiss not only the known human histories from the past 2,000 years but also an enormous range and variety of physical evidence found by a huge body of serious researchers.