The Presidential Debate

View 744 Wednesday, October 03, 2012

Romney was presidential. He won the debate: if it were a boxing match I’d give Romney 13 of 15 rounds. No knockdowns, nothing spectacular, but Romney showed that he can be President.

He was respectful of the office, and he showed that he knows the issues. He was motivated, and he looked at his opponent. President Obama almost never looked at Mr. Romney.

The polls won’t show much change, and this election shows the limits of election polls; but I would guess that Romney’s numbers will go up just a little.

My guess is that Obama’s advisors will try to make the next debate a bit less polite, but it will be difficult to do. Romney is good at keeping his cool.

The election goes on.

This is worth thinking about:

OSLO (Reuters) – A 200-year period covering the heyday of both the Roman Empire and China’s Han dynasty saw a big rise in greenhouse gases, according to a study that challenges the U.N. view that man-made climate change only began around 1800.
A record of the atmosphere trapped in Greenland’s ice found the level of heat-trapping methane rose about 2,000 years ago and stayed at that higher level for about two centuries.
Methane was probably released during deforestation to clear land for farming and from the use of charcoal as fuel, for instance to smelt metal to make weapons, lead author Celia Sapart of Utrecht University in the Netherlands told Reuters.
"Per capita they were already emitting quite a lot in the Roman Empire and Han Dynasty," she said of the findings by an international team of scientists in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.
Rates of deforestation "show a decrease around AD 200, which is related to drastic population declines in China and Europe following the fall of the Han Dynasty and the decline of the Roman Empire," the scientists wrote.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-climate-romansbre892120-20121003,0,1510687.story

Another report:

http://www.livescience.com/23678-methane-emissions-roman-times.html

And something else worth following:

Iran police, demonstrators clash in Tehran protests

Hundreds of merchants join in a rally outside a bazaar in Tehran to decry rising prices and the plunging value of Iran’s currency, the rial.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-economy-protests-20121004,0,6484678.story