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Godwin's Law: the longer a discussion progresses, the more like that some one will make an analogy with Adolf Hitler. For the record, I fear the hard-right just as much as I fear the hard-left. Religious zealots of every faith also scare me.

Your position is much like saying an unconscious skydiver with no AAD, in freefall and 100 feet above the ground, is just fine because they are breathing and their heart is beating, and perhaps you could throw in that birds are singing somewhere. More objective people, taking a more inclusive view of the situation, may have a different opinion.

x > y does not place an upper bound on x.

In 100 years: gasoline will be a niche fuel coal will be mostly an anachronism in the developed world With solar and wind power supplementing the grid, it will be far more resistant to attacks and outages Most appliances and energy-using equipment will be far more efficient than they are now With population continuing increase, although not at as great a rate, we'll still be arguing over how much (x) is too much Air quality will continue to improve in developed countries And all of this will be a good thing, because there will have been lots of migrations of people who can't live in no-longer-sustainable places (e.g. Arizona) will be moving to sustainable places (e.g. Pennsylvania). Countries, as well as states. I won't be around in 100 years, but I'll work towards all the stuff in the bulleted list to avoid the stuff that's likely to happen anyway. Wendy P.

I'm starting to see the problem here. Some of you guy's don't grasp what Brent is talking about when he's discussing climate models. He's thinking bikini models. Salubrious? I wouldn't go that far but in fairness I can sort of see how certain tiers of our current AGW intelligentsia might be in favor of global warming.

A freshly ordained young priest was walking to his newly assigned parish in the inner city. As he walked down the street, a prostitute stopped him and said, "Hey father, $20 for a blow job." The priest had never heard of such a thing and hurried away from the prostitute. When he arrived at the church he was greeted by the Mother Superior who showed him around the place and guided him to his room. Before she left the priest alone in his room, she asked if he had any questions. The young priest said, "I do have one question, Mother Superior, what is a blow job?" And the old nun says, "Twenty bucks, same price as on the street."

Win win! I will make a profit on my house . Who cares if that means I have to move, that’s not a problem unless it happens Wendy P.

Yeah but none of those guys predicted last Tuesday's rain, so fuck them and their so-called 'models'

West to east is going to be more likely for most climate migration. Californians and such moving to New England and the mid-Atlantic because they are sick of mega drought, sucking forest fire smoke 24-7, and would like to actually have reliable water sources.

This topic made me want to look up past predictions and see how well they did. 1973, John Sawyer of the UK Met office. He predicted that between 1973 and 2000 the climate would warm by approximately .6C. Actual value - .56C 1975, Wally Broeker of Columbia. He claimed that "a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide." He was, of course, ridiculed. 1981, James Hansen, NASA. In his fast-growth scenario (i.e. rapid economic growth, minimal attempts to reduce CO2) he predicted .75C between 1981 and 2020. He was almost dead on - his (smooth) curve goes right down the center of the peaks and valleys of the actual climate in the past 40 years. 1988, James Hansen, NASA. This was the first detailed climate model that took into account individual areas of the globe and what would happen with them. His midrange scenario B was within 20% of the warming we are seeing today. 1990, first IPCC assessment. Their business-as-usual model mean was accurate to within 15%. So even going back 49 years, predictions (and then later models) have been remarkably accurate.

Dont keep poking if you don't want endless back-and-forths, warnings, etc. Poking is a form of trolling. If the discussion is tiresome and repetitive, just quit. Being the last one standing in an internet discussion isn't winning. Wendy P.

I almost forgot. On that last ride to altitude I did take that into account regarding the hop n pop. "If we have to exit now, can I do it?". Honestly it's less intimidating actually being on the plane than thinking about it.

That he can get you to reply to any meaningless post he makes.

Mike Godwin himself said that the rule was suspended when discussing Trump. The MAGA morons have done so much to destroy democracy in the US and usher in one-party rule that it's not funny. On the plus side, both France and Slovenia rejected far right nationalists. So there's some hope.

I do note that most conservatives are quite staunchly anti-large-government - unless that government is banning things that they don't like, like gay marriage, interracial marriage, certain books, abortion or studies of structural racism in America. Then government can't be big or powerful enough.

On average jumpers will do nothing, just like the general population. You may have some individuals boycott travel or take other actions, but it will be the minority and while those individual actions may illustrate individuals' characters it will be gnat on a windshield in terms of swaying state policy, same goes for drop zones and skydiving manufacturers too. Even if we could be impactful, you are assuming that the powers that be have enough intelligence to recognize the impact. I am 16 years in, and skydiving has cleaned up a lot from the stories I used to hear about the good old days, but even in my more recent time I still have seen plenty of evidence that skydivers will in general tolerate a lot of "bad behavior" if the jumps are fun, the lift tickets are cheap, or the creep can really shred.

If I was castaway on an uninhabited island, and I had my choice of companions: a) MTG. b) "Wilson" the volleyball. I would be forced to choose "b", just for the more intelligent conversation.

Based off what I found on Ancestry with a quick search, Kenny has Scandinavian (Denmark) roots and what looks like English and French. Not to say there is no Southern Europe in there, but I don’t see it. Granted that there are exceptions to every rule, but swarthy and olive are not usually terms associated with Denmark or England or France (maybe the south of France). This is a situation where it would have been good to have follow on questions. Witness A says he’s swarthy. So show some pics of people and have them identify what swarthy is. Same for olive. Is Dean Martin swarthy? Al Capone? Richard Nixon? What is olive? Is Fidel Castro olive or swarthy? Regardless of all of this, we have a composite B that is pretty detailed and shows a white man with medium skin maybe dark. Not pale. And contrary to many comments on other boards, not every American male in 1971 looked like that.

I knew he was a great guy who cared about the sport, and who used that care to improve the sport. But that was a wonderful obituary. Wendy P.

Gary Peek was found dead in his house yesterday morning. Concerned neighbors asked for a wellness check because they had not seen him around in recent days. Gary took an early morning walk every day. A few weeks ago Gary was in a car accident were his SUV rolled 4 times. He was treated and discharged by a hospital. No one knows, at this time, if this had a relationship to his death. Gary was a long time USPA Central Regional Director. In fact, he had the longest tenure of the current board members. Gary served on the Safety & Training committee during several of his terms. He chaired the Constitution and Bylaws committee last term. He was a strong advocate for the needs and concerns of small DZs and many were in his region. Gary also served on the Group Membership committee during several terms. Gary was also a prolific speaker at the PIA Symposiums. He gave talks on various subjects, including opening forces that he measured with custom strain gauges and recording devices that he engineered. He was also one of the test jumpers. One year he made a bunch of itty-bitty LED circuits with a 555 timer chip that could plug into expired CYPRES batteries and give a light show with blinking LEDS. Gary was well versed in the happenings at every DZ in his region. He called, emailed and visited the DZs frequently. After he bought his Cessna, he was able to visit the DZs more often. Gary posted in rec.skydiving and DropZone.com. He wrote several articles for DZ.com. Gary was instrumental in getting me a gig as a load organizer at the WFFC in 1996. He also recruited others as LOs for the WFFC. After I bought an arduino, Gary helped me with my tinkering with microprocessors. He even brought back issues of Nuts and Volts to the board meetings. He told me who the the best electronic component distributors were. There are a bunch more stories about Gary and the board, electronics and jumping. Gary Peek will be missed by many, as he touched so many people's lives, whether you knew him as a jumper, an electronics guru or board member. Blue Skies Gary Peek. RIP