Ultralight Backpacking Ethically (UBE)

"This thread has gone beyond ridiculous."

'Tis the fate of all chaff.

"Tom… So true. Remember the conversion to metric?"

Ah yes. The only way you're going to take my pint away from
me is to pry it from my cold dead fingers!

Not really. Michael has a new thread. The rest has gone to chaff. Thanks everyone.

I'm not going to comment on the bulk of the last part of this thread, except to make a statement to Michael Neal. You seemed quite upset by comments made about the Catholic church, and yet you didn't see fit to keep your own opinions about Islam (your comment about Sharia) to yourself. There are a number of Muslims in these forums who might feel the same way about your comments as you did about the comments about the church. I would urge you to show some respect to these people in the same way that you expect people to show you and your beliefs respect. Otherwise don't expect people to show respect for you.

P.S. I am Catholic, though I no longer practice or believe in it.

Best post in this thread:

"Boy…I guess I have to wade into this, where to start? This is not directed at anyone in particular and I haven't read all the prior threads, I apologize in advance if I am too off topic, I just want to express my opinion.

So how do you like them apples? ; )"

Take it to Chaff with the rest of the non-backpacking oriented commentary. Seriously.

>Take it to Chaff with the rest of the non-backpacking oriented commentary. Seriously.

Yes. Sigh. This thread started out so well . . .

Stargazer

Take it to Chaff with the rest of the non-backpacking oriented commentary. Seriously.

The thread should have moved there long ago. Just didn't want to leave such a comment hanging with the possibility that there are people who were hurt by the statements. Muslims are not likely to openly say much in these forums, mainly for fear of backlash, but also because, contrary to popular belief, they tend to be quite tolerant. It doesn't matter where in the forums one posts the discussions, be it chaff or whatever, invariably someone always seems to make such comments. Taking it to chaff will not solve the problem, nor does posting them in chaff make it right.

Yes. Sigh. This thread started out so well . . .

Yes, it did. Very much so. But I think it is incorrect to think of ethical backpacking purely in terms of gear. The gear is what you end up using, but before that there is a philosophy that influences your choices. That needs to be talked about, too. Then there are the social/ ecological/ economic aspects, too, which are a big can of worms. Such discussions are not clear cut or easy to reduce to a few pat statements, and certainly focusing only on talk of gear addresses nothing of the ethics involved. As I wrote earlier, there has to be a consensus that there IS an environmental problem. I am not convinced that everyone here believes there is. These diverging beliefs are going to have an enormous impact on what choices each person makes in terms of what kind of gear they will use, how they will use it, and what they believe the impact both the gear and their behavior will have on the places they travel to.

There is no reason this discussion can't get back on track. Just steer it that way and refuse to engage in the irrelevant talk.

"Muslims are not likely to openly say much in these forums, mainly for fear of backlash, but also because, contrary to popular belief, they tend to be quite tolerant. It doesn't matter where in the forums one posts the discussions, be it chaff or whatever, invariably someone always seems to make such comments. Taking it to chaff will not solve the problem, nor does posting them in chaff make it right."

++1 to this specifically, but also to your entire post. I'll be watching to see if it had any effect.

Thanks, Miguel

Glad I missed out on that part of the thread. Not sure what UBE has to do with religion, and don’t care.

Something that I’ve thought about a fair amount is batteries. I prefer to use Lithium-ion batteries as they last longer and are lighter, but, of course, there’s a somewhat limited supply of Lithium.

Just ran across this discussing a new ZINC battery that is rechargeable and can store three times the amount of energy as lithium per volume at half the cost.

Since zinc is inexpensive and widely available, this has promise to revolutionize Ultralight Backpacking (Ethically)…..phone, cameras, headlamps, Steripens, ipod, SPOTs, oh my!

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

On that note, I am not going to take this environmental stuff too seriously. I have always believed in conservation and will continue to act this way despite the fact that the global warming theory has shown to be a fraud of epic proportions.

Awwww, shucks.

James Delingpole hath wielded the hammer that drove the final nail and ended global warming debate once and for all.

I guess that only leaves me 999,999 other reasons to support the environmental justice movement.

You can attack the messenger but the message is still true, the emails are factual evidence.

Calling your cause "environmental justice" only goes further to illustrate our point about it being a fringe movement that has gotten completely out of hand.

You are doing a disservice to the environment because when you make false claims people will no longer listen and may become completely unmoved by any causes for conservation.

Ok, let me rephrase that.

Thanks to your post, I now believe global warming has been undeniably proven to be a fraud.

If that was your sole argument, breathe easy my friend, now you no longer have to worry.

But I'm still left with 999,999 reasons to support environmental justice movement.

Have a beautiful day :)

Good day :)

.

Begin with explaining where the "justice" is in spending a massive amount of precious human resources over many years (money, human resources, time) on this global warming myth.

Justice should begin with these scientists going to jail for this fraud due to the economic and emotional terrorism they have perpetuated on the entire world with this stuff.

.

For the sake of civil discourse and debate, I've already conceded global warming to the fraud camp.

So, as I said, there are still (in my humble estimation) 999,999 solid reasons to pursue environmental justice- global warming aside.

Anything else you're mad at environmentalists about today?

Yea I don't take it too seriously as in the world is ending routine we have been hearing from the global warming alarmists. Glad I did not buy it. I do however practice conservationism: I recycle, conserve energy, promote protection of natural habitat, things a normal person should do to be a responsible citizen. The "justice" stuff is just an a radical approach in my view, as proven by the warming hysteria. It only hurts the cause by turning people away due to the approach.

Tons of time, money and resources have been spent on this global warming stuff. Of course I am mad, how could any sane person just shrug this off?

999,999, yea if you count every piece of litter as a separate environmental incident of global magnitiude.

There are definitely plenty of environmental issues that I also believe need to be remedied, maybe if we were't wasting the last decade focusing everything on a fraud we could have fixed a lot of things.

"You can attack the messenger but the message is still true, the emails are factual evidence."

Ummmmm, evidence of some sort, yes, but of what no one is quite sure yet. You're predisposed to immediately label global warming a fraud, and so you do. That's certainly your right. So is Mr. Delingpole, as his sensationalistic 'reporting' shows. His right too.

I haven't read the 61GB of information. I'm betting you haven't either. Mr. Delingpole might have started, but he hasn't gotten through it all either.

Emails might suggest that the earth isn't warming as quickly as we've been told. If that's the case, it still doesn't make global warming a fraud. Just perhaps not as dire as we've been led to believe.

Emails might suggest something entirely different when taken as a whole, who knows.

Since I'm not predisposed to dismiss global warming out of hand from a few snippets of information from a huge amount of released info, I'll instead wait to see what, if anything, the rest of it turns up. In other words, I'll wait for the WSJ version instead of the Fox News version.

And I'm not sure why 'justice,' even in the context you seem to take issue with, is a dirty word. I don't see environmental justice as some fringe idea, any more than I see social justice or economic justice fringe ideas. But that's just me. Obviously, doesn't make me right. Doesn't make you right. Hopefully, we just agree to disagree, smile, and get on with our day.

Here is the wall street journal version

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html

The emails show there was an organized conspiracy to put forth fake data, that is fraud.

@MODERATOR:
Totally understand if you want to move this to CHAFF… ;-)

@Michael:
What an interesting story. Thanks for publishing it.

Does it make those scientists at UEA look like idiots? I think so! Does it prove that global warming is a fraud? That seems a bit of a stretch.

It is interesting how we humans are willing to immediately accept information at face value when it confirms something they already believe.

On the other hand, published data which proves that (say)violent crime is highly correlated with abortion laws in the US (i.e. when laws are changed to allow choice, crime statistics begin to improve 15-18 years later in almost every case and stay that way; when laws are changed to make abortion illegal, crime statistics suddenly get much worse 15-18 years later, and stay that way), seems to be completely ignored by the anti-abortion lobby.

Same is true of teenage drinking – countries where teenagers can drink from age 12 in the safety of their own homes (i.e. most of Europe, except the UK), do not have significant youth drinking, drunk drinking, youth violence issues when these kids reach 18-21, whereas we know that youth drinking & violence are real issues on campuses and at football games in the UK and US.

The recent announcement about mammograms not being worth doing until women are 50 rather than 40, was completely evidence based and yet a certain segment of the population is interpreting it as government rationing of healthcare. In the UK health service, the decision to not treat cancer patients who refuse to give up smoking, completely evidence based, caused a national political outcry (with the inevitable campaign funded by the cigarette manufacturers!). How about the debate about hand guns? How many hand gun shootings are there in entire countries like the UK which ban handguns versus pretty much any major US city (i.e. more gun crime in Hartford, Connecticut than in the entire country of England with its population >65M people in 2008)?

I understand that your point is that these things should be assessed in an unbiassed way, but what you fail to appreciate is that your perspective is just as biassed as the next guy's. We are human beings and what we believe going into an argument has an enormous impact on whether we accept evidence or not. None of these issues are black & white, it is almost ALWAYS about the most compelling body of evidence, and the answers are usually highly nuanced.

So, to the debate at hand… all the emails I have seen (and I read as much as I could based on what you posted), could be interpreted as these two articles suggest OR equally as a community of concerned scientists trying to make sure that their data is not mis-used by those who's non-evidence-based beliefs might choose tiny pieces of the huge body of evidence and take them out of context to try to "debunk" established theory, without really understanding the context of what they are doing. In the honest opinion of these scientists, that would be doing a huge disservice to mankind!

Ultimately, for me, the arguments for changing human behavior going forwards are pretty compelling, regardless of whether global warming was completely caused by humans, partially caused by humans, or not caused by humans at all… we MUST start to consider end of life economics and waste disposal as part of the cost of different energy sources. For example, the cost of disposing of spent nuclear material 30 or 50 years in the future, should be being paid for NOW by consumers who think they are getting cheaper energy by buying nuclear. That is just good economics.

Bottom line – there are always as many ways to interpret information as there are people in the room. We might wish that the world was a simple place, but it isn't. Rather than ignoring or avoiding complexity, let's attempt to understand it. We might all want to think about Einstein's Knot – "try to make things as simple as possible AND NO SIMPLER" (paraphrased of course).

Happy thanksgiving, all…

Peace, James.

"Here is the wall street journal version
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html
The emails show there was an organized conspiracy to put forth fake data, that is fraud."

That's the WSJ opinion piece, not reporting. Regardless, the larger point, to me, is that I agree that "an organized conspiracy to put forth fake data" is fraud. That does not, however, make global warming a fraud.