Dean Roddey

No, feedback cycles have happened, numerous times in the past. The ice ages being particular spectacular examples of them. The question is not whether they happen, but whether we could contribute to one happening. And you don't answer my point that the very complexity of the system should argue for us being careful about our concerns about how effects on it, not be less worried.

I suggest you read his views. I may if I get the time. But no matter what he says, do a search on 'greenhouse gases' and see how many articles you find that demonstrate that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Is his one article supposed to override all those years of research and publication? I ask again, can you show any broad support for his position in the scientific community? You have to see the point, right? You are saying, read this one guy's article, it proves that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. But I'm saying, read the huge number of articles over probably decades now, that shows that it is and that it's concentration in ice cores correlates strongly with large temp differences and so fort. If an article proves something, then why doesn't it work the other way, when there are way more of them? Why do you read one article and believe this disproves a far larger body of work?

I'm not sure I get your point. Scientific arguments aren't characterized by having no compexities or free variables. They are characterized by how well they explain the complexities or free variables and predict their actions. The climate is complex, effects based on a single feedback cycle can certainly be overwhelmed by some other effect and prevent the cycle from going to the extreme. This is hardly any sort of controversial idea. A negative feedback cycle could be overwhelmed by an increase in output from the sun, or vice versa. An upwards cycle could be cut short by a very large volcanic eruption that lowers temperatures. Either cycle could probably be heavily affected (upwards or downwards) by some change in large scale ocean currents. It's a complex system. But it makes no sense to me to use the complexity of the system as an argument against being very careful about how we monkey with it by our actions. It should be an argument for being very careful exactly becasue of the complexity of what we are monkeying with.

Well, yeh, it is about a show of hands. Clearly there are two sets of 'facts' or at least interpretations of the facts, otherwise there wouldn't be any argument. The issue is which one is correct. If there is a significant consensus in the scientific community that specializes in the area that one interpretation is correct, that carries a lot of weight.

When was the last "feedback cycle" on earth? The last really bad one would be the last ice age, AFAIK. Not all of them are going to run all the way to the extreme. Some will go for a while and be affected by some larger change that counter acts them in some way. And our planet certainly has compensating mechanisms, else it wouldn't be able to maintain any sort of equilibrium. The issue is whether our continuing to pump out greenhouse gases and de-forest the planet could contribute to an upwards cycle because we overwhelm the normal compensating mechanisms. I.e. we pump out CO2 while simultaneously killing off one of the largest absorbers of CO2 that would constitute a natural compensation mechanism if we were not interfering.

In the 15th century the widely held scientific opinion was that the world was flat. In 1492 a Spanish sailing captain disproved this. This is not true. Few educated people after the Greeks believed that the world was flat. This is a very widely held misconception. Everyone involved in his preperations to sail knew perfectly well the earth is round. It was merely a matter of how big the sphere was, which was the crux of whether his theory was going to work or not (i.e. that he could get to the Indies sailng the other way.) Not that it would make any difference to this issue anyway. People always bring up this point, as though some possible misunderstanding in the pre-scientific world means that widely held scientific understandings today are somehow bogus and that one guy posting an article somehow disproves that consensus. Adhominem attacks are unnecessary in this discusion. There was none. I pointed out that he is quoting very limited sources as proof of the incorrectness of a widely held consensus.

What is a feedback cycle? It's any process which feeds on itself in a positive or negative way. It's just like guitar feedback. The strings are affected by the speaker output, which feeds back into the pickups which causes the speakers to react which causes the strings to react, etc... It feeds on itself. Large climate changes, such as the ice ages, are feedback events. A cycle starts which feeds on itself and creates further effects that make it go further, etc... So you start getting more snow cover, which reflects more sunlight back out into space, which cools the planet more, which causes more snow, etc... That kind of thing. Greenhouse cycles can also be feedback cycles. More heat is held into the atmosphere which causes more release of gases, which causes more heat to be held in, etc... Venus is an example of a greenhouse feedback cycle run amok.

but Dr Roy Spencer, head of the Aqua satellite for NASA has already published a peer reviewed paper showing that CO2 does not produce a positive feedback. It produces a negative feedback. You seem to have a tendancy to quote single papers or books which are at odds with widely held scientific opinion, which you tend to want to believe because they support your view, but in the process ignore the much more widely held view. These people who you quote, if they were widely believed in the scientific community, would be highly famous because they all seem to be proving that the rest of the scientific community is wrong on fundamental things. Anyone can post a 'peer reviewed' article, since it just requires being accepted by a published scientific article. But you would kind of need to have more than one published article to prove that CO2 is now not a greenhouse gas and that it's increased concentration doesn't cause warming. Can you point to any broad change in the scientific community that CO2 is no longer a danger for global warming?

I think that's stretching things way beyond reasonability. We've created the most powerful and extensive civilization of all time and we didn't need a climate optimum to do it, assuming that there's really any real connection to those previous events, which seems pretty iffy at best. And those civilizations didn't then start pumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, so they weren't in danger of setting off a feedback cycle.

1. We've gotten onto the score board in a single century, which is nothing. And there are more and more people who want to live our lifestyle moving forward and more people being born all the time. 2. How do you know that that percentage increase isn't important? 3. We are producing those molecules on a continuing basis year after year, and that will go up and it will continue to increase in rate if we don't do something about that.

But we're not the worst polluters. Far from it. Per capita we pump out more carbon dioxide than anyone else. Per-capita we consume more energy than anyone else. Our climate is very complex and no single person understands it completely. It is based on the sun, plate tektonics, ocean currents, atmospherics, and natural planetary change. Getting tunnel vision about one possible aspect of it only serves to obscure understanding of the overall phenomenon. There's no tunnel vision involved. Yes all those things are part of the climate. But we are responsible for the effects that *we* cause, not those things that we cannot do anything about. There are so many of us now, and our technology allows us to have so many effects on the environment, that it's impossible to pretend like we are not having a major effect on the planet. Loss of forests, pollution, carbon generation, pollution, loss of species, etc... We are causing these things ourselves, so these things are our responsibility to deal with. If those who came before us had done what we've done on the scale we've done it, we'd be a far worse situation than we are now. So I can't see how those who come after us are going to look very kindly on us if we don't work harder to not do it to them. We have to live on this planet for the unforeseen future, i.e. a long freakin time. Even if you project out a thousand years from now, less than a blink of an eye, just the rate of those effects that have occured so far in this century, leaving aside potential increases in those rates, the prospects aren't good, IMO.

The problem now is that the vast majority of the planet has no such legislation. Keep in mind that China, for a month prior to the Olympics, prohibited manufacturing and automobiles within a 100 mile radius of Bejing so the smog would clear and the media could film in sunshine. China+India = half the planet. But it's not exactly practical to put any useful pressure on them when we are the worst per-capita consumers of energy on the planet. As long as that's the case, they are going have a completely founded ground to stand on that why should they remain primitive so that we can keep being such? We are like a known coke addict preaching to people to say no to drugs.

It doesn't have anthing to do with controlling the weather or climate, it has to do with not contributing to a natural tendancy of the climate to go off on really bad feedback cycles due to changes in the gaseous composition of the atmosphere. It's done it before, and we are pumping a lot of known greenhouse compounds into the atmosphere which could contribute to kicking off another cycle.

Wha? You are comparing religious persecution of people with an attempt to figure out if we are contributing to global warming? The fact that we are putting out a lot of gasses that contribute to greenhouse effects is not a religious position, it's a fact. The issue is how effect are they having. Clearly the ice packs have been reduced and sea levels are rising. If there's even a reasonable doubt that we are contributing to this, we should be trying to do something about it. It's not one of those things that you wait until even the biggest sceptic can doubt before you do something about it, because if it turns out to be true, then the longer we wait, the great the sacrifice required to do something about. But, as I said above, it's ridiculous for a number of reasons not to be trying to get away from fossil fuels as fast as we reasonable can. It doesn't have to have anything to do with global warming. If all you care about is the security and sovereinty of this country or the country you live in, that's reason enough. Fossil fuels are are not going to last that much long with other large countries coming online quickly. Long before it's all gone the price is going to get ridiculous and the people who have it are going to use that to great effect against us. So there's every reason to move forward as fast as possible. It will help us in every conceivable way.

Whether fossil fuel usage is the issue or not is irrelevant. They aren't going to last that long in the larger scheme of things. Anyone with any sense would be looking at moving off of them as soon as possible, so as to avoid giving those folks who still have it a huge stick to beat everyone else with. Once we are off of them, then they are no longer a issue, whether they cause global warming or not. So whether you believe that fossil fuels cause global warming, or that Russia and OPEC and Venezula et al are using (or might use) their fuel resources in ways that aren't in our interests, or that pollution is not a good thing for us and our children and would like to leave a better world to them, all those things would argue for getting away from them as quickly as it is reasonable to do so.

Mine is the Pearlman TM-1, but since that's the only mic I have, it would kind of be my choice even if it wasn't. If you are playing a large accoustic and using an LDC, try backing off of it a good bit to help reduce the low end. Get a few feet or more from it, if you can afford the extra gain that requires.

You could use my scheme, which was to go ahead and wreck the walls and worry about how to avoid it after it's too late.

Some people have problems with Vista, some really like it. As always, when you are mixing and matching hardware, drivers, OS, etc... you can get unexpected issues. If you don't want the Vista style security prompts, I believe you can turn them off en masse by setting it back to an XP type of scheme. But, in the end, for a dedicated DAW, there's no need to use anything other than the bare minimum required, and XP is more than enough for that. I even turn off the XP looking an feel, which frees up considerable resources as well, in addition to turning off any services that aren't required for a dedicated DAW machine. And of course use quality hardware from companies who know how to write drivers, like RME or Lynx or MOTU.

Finally gettin the balls to let other people hear my stuff!! been glued to the corner of my room for a few years guess its time to see if it was all worth it:freak: whadda ye thinks me fine recording gents!!!?? http://www.myspace.com/lukeall hope i posted it right Corerat is a good tune. It's a little overly reverby perhaps. That does add a certain type of thick, nice vibe to the mix, but it might be a little too much, as best I can tell on my wee speakers and of course with a super compressed Myspace version. There are a couple places where it sounds like you were a little scared to really cut loose on the vocals and really hit some of those notes. But the song and composition I really like. It's a really nice melodic alt-rock type of thing, which is a genre I always like.

I've got a couple I wouldn't mind a critique on. namely "something heavy" & "reminds me of surfing" just click the link in my sig. Heavy sounds pretty good to me. Maybe it's just my crappy computer speakers but the snare sounds a little dry and up front relative to the big and fairly pushed back production on the rest of the tune. The playing sounds fine to me. On Surfing, I like it. Again I'd say the drums are the weakest part of the production. But it's a nice composition and flows along nicely. I assume that the slightly more 'garage rock' production relative to Heavy was purposeful thing, and I think it works better for this than a more polished sound would. Again though the playing is all fine. You don't need super-chops to do good stuff (thankfully, since I don't have any super-chops.) I like the tone on the lead a lot. Take all of this with a grain of salt since I'm not listening on my DAW but on my work machine with some little M-Audio speakers.

I could'a done been sword I posted my piece in this thread, but I don't see it, so I guess I must've been hallucinating. So here it is, a song about male lust and the problems is causes us. Everywhere Are Signs This is my first real piece. I started in Feb last year by buying SONAR, and did a lot of studying and a number of short trial bits. This the first full attempt. It took a long time since I decided about half way through that I was serious about this enough now to sell my home theater to finance a modest but workable little studio, so I kind of started all over again and had to put the new studio together and learn all new plugs, pre-amp, mic, monitors, room, etc... So it was about probably 4 months from start to finish. Other folks would already be putting out their greatest hits album by now. Hopefully the next one will be a little quicker... I'm off now to do my duty and review a few other folks bits.

Not to be an overly anal retentive hall monitor, but quoting six big pictures in your response is non-optimal.

You could sue yourself for hazardous working conditions there, dude.

My "studio" is still in it's infancy. I don't make that much scratch and I have only been doing this for a couple of years so I don't have alot to show for it. Don't let that stop you. I basically 'financed' my new studio by selling everything in the apartment that wasn't tied down or required for survival. Of course I'm and 'all DI' type of studio, with only vocals via mic, so being in an apartment isn't so much of an issue for me in terms of noise. No big amps or anything. They may call the cops once in a while when I'm laying down vocals becaue they think someone is torturing an animal or something.

Many A/V processors these days have a 'night mode' which engages a compressor on the audio tracks, and probably more so on the sub output I'd imagine.