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https://www.nap.edu/read/13263... average exposure from environment is half what you cite (3 mSv per year average, and if you live in city building on the coast it is probably more around 1mSv per year - thorium radon exposure is less conversly if you live in a granite ground e.g. limoge your basement will be full of radon making a higher average, then there are some other local stuff, e.g. how far you live from a coal plant - you are safer around a nuclear plant). That's at least half what you cite. The radiation exposure I can find is either identical to that background or higher http://www.chernobylgallery.co... (that was 2008 and I did not check the source, but most exposure are around 0.7 uSv per hour so around 17 uSv per day or 6 mSv per year which is at least *double* of the average of 2.4 to 3 mSv globally.

So again, citation needed on your number.

So that puts Nitrates on the same list ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) as Vapors from frying
Hot beverages
Earl Grey Tea (Bergapten)
Coffee (Acrylamide)
Red Meat (Which already includes bacon)
Charred Meat (2-Amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline)
All cooked and smoked meat (N-Nitrosodimethylamine)
and last but not least
Shift work that disrupts the circadian rhythm
Yeah all we need now is wheat and beans and Everything in British and American breakfasts will be cancerous...
On a more serious note:
I would like to reach across all the demographics of Slashdot commenters and try to get a thread going here telling the Admins that we are more critical thinkers than most and really don't appreciate this kind of clickbait alarmist fad science being posted here.
Everyone here knows that applying the linear no threshold model to anything that causes genetic damage is bull shit
You want a statistic bigger than 6600 cases of bowel cancer here's a statistic for you
In the United States alone 10,000 people die a year due to stress and hysteria over Radiation and Nuclear Energy ( https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12... )
Now Imagine how many cases of stomach and bowel cancer are caused by undereducated over read people getting their stomach in knots and their panties in a twist over bullshit overstated cancer headlines.
Right, Left, Others let's all say as one "Shut the fuck up!"

Fukushima's biggest problem, for example, was that they stored 20 years of spent fuel rods in a "temporary" holding area that was only designed to hold a few month's worth.
No it was not. The fuel storage had nothing to do with the initial disaster nor with the later core melt downs.
https://www.nap.edu/read/21874...

The spent fuel only contributed to the spread of contamination.

Nuclear is the answer. Any country that isn't pursuing it is stupid.
Countries are not stupid. People are.

E.g. people like you.

Who had two thorium reactors running? I mean "which country"? You don't know? Does not matter. Guess what: both reactors _failed_ and showed that the initial idea at that time (that was in the 1980s), how to run them was not feasible.

Your other claims are simply: all wrong!

So lets see if one is either building a thorium molten salt reactor, or uses a CANDU design with Thorium.
 

FYI, this isn't actually true. Gun ownership in the U.S. is correlated with an increase in mortality. That means if you own a gun, you're more likely to die.

Dying in an airplane crash is also correlated with having a pilots license... as is dying in a car crash correlated with owning a car... however neither change the fact that on a mile per mile basis, flying is safer than driving. Lazy people simply throw out stats they don't understand to justify their view, intelligent people drill into the data to understand it's meaning.

Given that ~2/3rds gun deaths are suicide, that correlation simply means that if one opts to kill themselves and they own a gun... they are going to be more successful, as most don't use their car to do the job.

It's odd, isn't it... we have hundreds of millions of firearms and trillions of rounds of ammunition, and when you remove places like Chicago and Baltimore from the stats, the nations overall rate of gun violence (suicide not being included) plummets dramatically.

But the idea that they're great for self defense is a myth.

The CDC disagrees, and did so under Obama even: http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/...

Look up stats on the number of guns stolen in home invasions annually, and compare that to defensive gun usage.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu... says an estimated 1.4 million guns stolen during a 6 year period or ~233k per year, while https://www.nap.edu/read/18319... mentions:

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million

It's been a few years since I had a math class, however I believe 500k is more than 233k.

FYI, this isn't actually true. Gun ownership in the U.S. is correlated with an increase in mortality. That means if you own a gun, you're more likely to die.

Dying in an airplane crash is also correlated with having a pilots license... as is dying in a car crash correlated with owning a car... however neither change the fact that on a mile per mile basis, flying is safer than driving. Lazy people simply throw out stats they don't understand to justify their view, intelligent people drill into the data to understand it's meaning.

Given that ~2/3rds gun deaths are suicide, that correlation simply means that if one opts to kill themselves and they own a gun... they are going to be more successful, as most don't use their car to do the job.

It's odd, isn't it... we have hundreds of millions of firearms and trillions of rounds of ammunition, and when you remove places like Chicago and Baltimore from the stats, the nations overall rate of gun violence (suicide not being included) plummets dramatically.

But the idea that they're great for self defense is a myth.

The CDC disagrees, and did so under Obama even: http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/...

Look up stats on the number of guns stolen in home invasions annually, and compare that to defensive gun usage.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pu... says an estimated 1.4 million guns stolen during a 6 year period or ~233k per year, while https://www.nap.edu/read/18319... mentions:

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million

It's been a few years since I had a math class, however I believe 500k is more than 233k.

And yet the CDC did exactly that research. https://www.nap.edu/read/18319...

Guess what? Guns help prevent crime more than they cause it. And we're not talking about indirect deterrence here where knowing a populace is armed keeps potential criminals scared. We're only talking about direct defensive uses of firearms.

If you can't be arsed to read the whole thing, Guns and Ammo summarized it here http://www.gunsandammo.com/pol...

Funny, because for over 20 years, the CDC was prohibited from studying gun violence. Yes, the NRA has bought legislation that prevents any money the CDC gets from going into gun violence research.

So obviously the CDC did not conduct the research, because they're not allowed to. They're allowed to contract it out for no money, which basically means really self-interested researchers (i.e., industry) gets to write an opinion piece about it.

Your article is dated to 2013, and the CDC has not conducted any gun violence research since 1996 (Dickey Amendment).

And all my article states is the AMA is lobbying for its appeal since 2016, because one really cannot make any sort of judgements without proper research. Of course, the NRA opposes this, almost as if they're worried about the real truth, that it might be the next cigarettes, or leaded gasoline, or climate change, or something. Or it might be because their whole set of mottoes end up being lies...

Well, I already refuted you above, but I'll link to the study again anyway. https://www.nap.edu/read/18319...

The majority of guns used at the time of arrest "came from family or friends, drug dealers, street purchases, or the underground market."

Note that gun shows are not listed there, nor are failures to properly check backgrounds.

And letting anyone who applies and is not objected to by the government have a permit is not a loophole, it is the intended function.

The Dickey Amendment restricts only the CDC (e.g. not the entirety of the government), only restricts them from advocacy or promotion of gun control (e.g. not the study thereof), and only places that restriction on the specific portion of their funding earmarked for injury prevention and control (e.g. not their entire budget). Perhaps you should actually read the damn thing sometime?

Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong. But, if you choose to do that, be prepared to explain how they've actually been able to legally conduct such research (this from 2013) and even as recently as 2015.

And yet the CDC did exactly that research. https://www.nap.edu/read/18319...

Guess what? Guns help prevent crime more than they cause it. And we're not talking about indirect deterrence here where knowing a populace is armed keeps potential criminals scared. We're only talking about direct defensive uses of firearms.

If you can't be arsed to read the whole thing, Guns and Ammo summarized it here http://www.gunsandammo.com/pol...

Try not to cherry-pick so much. The facts are evident in the National Academies’ Firearms and Violence report:

In the first quasi-experimental study to examine effects of gun policy on adult suicide, Ludwig and Cook (2000) evaluated the impact of the 1994 Brady act in 32 “treatment” states that were directly affected by the act, compared with 19 “control” jurisdictions that had equivalent legislation already in place. The authors found a reduction in firearm suicides among persons age 55 and older of 0.92 per 100,000 (with a 95 percent confidence interval = –1.43 to –.042), representing about a 6 percent decline in firearm suicide in this age group. This decrease, however, was accompanied by an offsetting increase in nongun suicide, so that the net effect on overall suicide rates was not significant (–.54 per 100,000; with a 95 percent confidence interval = –1.27 to 0.19). Using a similar methodology, Reuter and Mouzos (2003) found no significant effect study of a large scale Australian gun buy-back program on total suicide rates.

summarized as "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population."

Your Washington post link is irrelevant. No one (except leftists with a man to fill with straw) is arguing that killing criminals in self-defense is the usual way for people to defend themselves using guns. Generally speaking, criminals just leave people alone once they figure out they're armed. From the Obama Administration CDC sponsored Institute of Medicine and National Research Council Report:

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million”

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies”

Let me guess, you get your "statistics" from cherry-picking left-wing "news" articles which are regurgitated press releases from anti-gun groups?

Try not to cherry-pick so much. The facts are evident in the National Academies’ Firearms and Violence report:

In the first quasi-experimental study to examine effects of gun policy on adult suicide, Ludwig and Cook (2000) evaluated the impact of the 1994 Brady act in 32 “treatment” states that were directly affected by the act, compared with 19 “control” jurisdictions that had equivalent legislation already in place. The authors found a reduction in firearm suicides among persons age 55 and older of 0.92 per 100,000 (with a 95 percent confidence interval = –1.43 to –.042), representing about a 6 percent decline in firearm suicide in this age group. This decrease, however, was accompanied by an offsetting increase in nongun suicide, so that the net effect on overall suicide rates was not significant (–.54 per 100,000; with a 95 percent confidence interval = –1.27 to 0.19). Using a similar methodology, Reuter and Mouzos (2003) found no significant effect study of a large scale Australian gun buy-back program on total suicide rates.

summarized as "Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population."

Your Washington post link is irrelevant. No one (except leftists with a man to fill with straw) is arguing that killing criminals in self-defense is the usual way for people to defend themselves using guns. Generally speaking, criminals just leave people alone once they figure out they're armed. From the Obama Administration CDC sponsored Institute of Medicine and National Research Council Report:

“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million”

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies”

Let me guess, you get your "statistics" from cherry-picking left-wing "news" articles which are regurgitated press releases from anti-gun groups?

See this paper, kicked off and sponsored by the Obama administration, which confirms 500K to 3MM defensive uses of firearms every year.

Guns are used to prevent at least 500,000 crimes per year - according to the Brady Foundation for Handgun Control. And most of those would-be victims are women and the elderly.
The CDC says that it's more likely over 1,000,000.

Why do you want hundreds of thousands more women to be raped and robbed?

Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004).

- "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence." Institute of Medicine and . 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.

But, robbery and rape are many times more frequent than murder. Somehow, you imaginary world just doesn't match up with the real one.

In the real one, the CDC studies of gun violence have consistently show the same thing: Private gun ownership prevents about 1.5 million crimes per year. Minimum 500,000, max 2.5 million. Most of those would-be victims are women and elderly.

But you'd rather see more women beaten, robbed, and raped than see someone allowed to protect themselves. That makes you an asshole.

Objects about 10 cm and larger can be tracked in low orbit. That means the radar can follow an object long enough to derive orbital elements, allowing reliable predictions of where the object will be later. Objects about 2 mm and larger can be sampled by high-power radars. That means the radar helps build a statistical population based on whatever zips across a fixed beam.

I found a couple of figures (Fig. 1 and Fig. 24) showing the gap between tracking (Space Surveillance Network) and other sampling data sources. Also a recent presentation.

The CDC studies gun violence all the time. They just aren't allowed to dole out cash to political activist groups anymore.

Incidentally, in 2013 the CDC has found that private ownership of guns in the US prevents somewhere around 1.5-2 million crimes per year.
The Brady Foundation for Handgun Control disagrees - they say it's only 500,000 crimes.
The NRA claims guns prevent over 3 million crimes per year.
By the way, there are only about 300,000 crimes involving guns per year right now in the United States.

People like you that want to ban guns are saying that you'd rather have 500,000 more people every year, mostly women and elderly, be victimized rather than feel bad for a few thousand innocent shooting victims. Why do you hate women, Ratzo? Why do you want them to be raped, beaten, and abused?

You heartless bastard.

The American Petroleum Institute, in particular its members Exxon and Chevron, have been funding denial and manufacturing doubt ever since their own scientists told them of the risks of continued fossil fuel use back in the 80s (here is an empirical study describing their efforts to deny and deliberately misrepresent climate science findings, including from their own scientists).

And the reason fossil fuels appeared as cheap as they did was because the huge emission and pollution costs were being borne by the public, rather than the industry. If these externalised costs were factored in, the price of coal-fired electricity would triple (study) - and the RoI for investment in alternatives like renewables or nuclear would have been much larger. Likewise, the health and other external costs of oil exceeded $56 billion annually back in 2005, adding at least 23 to 38 cents per gallon (again without including climate costs).

External costs are a market failure. Regulation is one option to correct that failure, but it's not the only possible option. Feel free to choose a solution that fits your political preferences, but ignoring or hand-waving away the problem won't make it go away. You'll still be paying for it, with excessive health premiums, illnesses and lost productivity, and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths every year.

The "climate change" concern in the 60s and 70s was global cooling, not global warming. The only bit you got correct is that Carter got involved; he signed the National Climate Program Act to deal with "the global cooling crisis."

I worry for Slashdot when I see such revisionism as yours upmodded to +5.

See this report from the National Research Council, which the Carter White House commissioned in 1978 about carbon dioxide and global warming:

See, also, Wallace Broecker, "Climate Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?" Science 189 460 (1975).

Going back to the 1960s, we can see Lyndon Johnson requesting a report from the Presiden't Council of Advisers on Science and Technology about global warming:

On 5 November, 1965, the group now known as the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) cautioned President Lyndon B. Johnson that continued accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from fossil-fuel burning would “almost certainly cause significant changes” and “could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.

In fact, we have climate data going back further than you apparently believe. There are direct measurements of sea temperatures from the mid-18th century (ships logs) and many proxy measurements, going back far, far, further.

The margin of error on those measurements are huge, and even in those there are rather large swings. Check out the historical rate of change in this reconstruction, or look at around 1100 in these reconstructions. The green in that second graph definitely shows a rate that changes more than our current rate. But again, the error bars are so huge in the reconstructions that a lot of questions remain: the science is definitely not settled there.

https://www.nap.edu/read/13089...

"In 1999, Allison and colleagues calculated that in 1991, between 280,000 and 325,000 deaths of U.S. adults were due to overweight and obesity (Allison et al., 1999a, 1999b). Six years later, Mokdad and colleagues announced that overweight and obesity (together with physical inactivity) had been responsible for 365,000 excess deaths among U.S. adults in 2000, making it the second-leading preventable cause of death in the United States, behind only smoking (Mokdad et al., 2005)."

"Those numbers, which were publicized widely, now appear likely to have been major overestimates. For example, one study published shortly after the Mokdad et al. (2005) article that used more recent data and took into account how mortality risk varies by age yielded much smaller numbers (Flegal et al., 2005). According to that study, obesity, defined as a BMI of 30 or above, caused approximately 112,000 excess deaths among U.S. adults in 2000, while being overweight had a protective effect and led to 86,000 fewer deaths than would have been expected if all of those people had had a BMI in the normal range. The net result was that overweight and obesity together resulted in an excess of 26,000 deaths in 2000, the authors concluded, which was less than a tenth of the earlier estimate."

Body Mass Index (BMI) and life expectancy follow a curve, and the curve peak - the longest lifespans on average - are for BMI between 27 and 28, which is qualified as overweight. An individual athlete can have BMI 28 and ultra low body fat, but these were population studies and across populations BMI 27 or 28 carries lots of fat on average.

But quoting research and statistics like that cuts into profits for the diet industry and takes away all the fun of mocking the fatties, so it doesn't get much press attention.

330,000x faster than all previous known trends it's nothing like previous trends.

No, check out this graph, which contains historical temperature reconstructions. You'll find other spots in (relatively recent) history where the speed of the change is quite rapid.

I see claims for this on both sides of the argument. Where can I find temperature data output from a model in the past in comparison to actual temperature data as recorded since that model was run?

I've been graphing it myself. What you need is the climate sensitivity out of the model-- this will be in units of degrees C per doubling. The prediction is that the delta-T equals the sensitivity times the Log_(base2) of the carbon dioxide currently divided by the carbon dioxide at the reference year. You can find carbon dioxide levels in the Mauna Loa dataset, here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c... and you can find temperatures in whichever source you like, such as Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST), or the NASA GISS data. This site has list of different sources of data, with a link to the BEST: https://climatedataguide.ucar....

The older the prediction, the longer a run of years you can compare predictions to reality, of course. The 1979 National Academy of Sciences report "Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment" is a good place one; it has error bars on the prediction: 3 C, plus or minus 1.5 C (per doubling): https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12... The prediction hasn't actually changed much since then though, so that's a good one to pick in that it's representative of pretty much all the later models

The majority of your 931,000 'gun crimes' are paperwork crimes - possession, failure to pay taxes, illegal modification, import or transport violations, being black while driving, etc. Actual crimes involving guns, even those where they are never fired, are far fewer - around 300,000.

Here's a direct quote from the CDC study:
"...estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

The 500,000 number? That came from a pro-gun-control organization. Remember the Brady Foundation for Handgun Control? Yeah, they've admitted the same.

You can try reading the CDC report yourself. And remember - the CDC wants to bad guns entirely, so when they admit that there are good uses, it's because they can't deny it.

but 50,000,000 lines is quite small for all the firmware in a modern car.

You have got to be joking. The entire Linux kernel, including all the device drivers, is under 17,000,000. The space shuttle control software was less than 500,000 lines. (source)

".... With the current trend toward larger vessels and longer voyages, the risk to mariners is increasing and the ability to avoid rogue waves takes on an even greater importance. I get the impression that certain classes of vessels have overemphasized construction economies at the expense of crew safety. In conducting the research for this book, I was shocked at , somewhere in the world. Ironically, with the environmental sensitivity that exists today in most parts of the world, if an oil tanker spills a few hundred barrels of oil on someone's beach, it is front-page news. But let a 650-foot-long bulk carrier suddenly disappear with 30,000 tons of cargo and its entire crew, and it may only be noted in passing in the newspapers...."

http://www.nap.edu/read/11635/...

Honestly? You are surprised by this?

You spill a bunch of oil on my beach and I care...

Some ship goes awol in the middle of nowhere, and I don't.

".... With the current trend toward larger vessels and longer voyages, the risk to mariners is increasing and the ability to avoid rogue waves takes on an even greater importance. I get the impression that certain classes of vessels have overemphasized construction economies at the expense of crew safety. In conducting the research for this book, I was shocked at , somewhere in the world. Ironically, with the environmental sensitivity that exists today in most parts of the world, if an oil tanker spills a few hundred barrels of oil on someoneâ(TM)s beach, it is front-page news. But let a 650-foot-long bulk carrier suddenly disappear with 30,000 tons of cargo and its entire crew, and it may only be noted in passing in the newspapers...."

http://www.nap.edu/read/11635/...

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/03...

Now imagine a ship more than twice as long, suspended at bow and stern over the void. Snap!

http://www.nap.edu/read/11635/...

http://www.nap.edu/openbook/03...

Now imagine a ship more than twice as long, suspended at bow and stern over the void. Snap!

http://www.nap.edu/read/11635/...

This link should get you a free copy. From reading the summary, OP's claim doesn't seem substantiated.

Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) model having been discredited decades ago, one can at most say that they put it together in a pretty fashion.

That is a claim at odds with the most up to date research into ionizing radiation and a big claim like that really needs a citation.

If you are you talking about radiation hormesis that is a hypothesis who's claims are rejected by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.

If such a claim is true then you should make regulatory agencies for human radiation exposure aware as they continue to use the LNT model to estimate exposure.

Here's another one.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/218...

> After a few years cooling in a pond

They were doing exactly that in Fukushima but a tsunami arrived. It could be an earthquake or a tornado in the USA, instead.

> keep the spent fuel rods in above-ground 10 ton concrete casks permanently

Those could be stolen for making a dirty bomb or a plane or a meteorite or space junk could fall onto them, during the hundreds of years required for 10x half-life storage or the above mentioned hurricane or earthquake could happen.

Smart to post as an AC, since you are pulling objections out of your nether regions.

Fukushima is a good example of where to never to site any nuclear facility whatsoever. The cooling ponds were a trivial problem compared the reactor units that were breached. In a non-insane site they are fine.

But objecting to the cooling ponds is a complete red herring - fuel is only held in ponds for a few years. We are discussing the problem of long term storage.

Clearly you know nothing at all about the characteristics of concrete fuel casks. Or tornados, or earthquakes, or hurricanes, or plane crashes, or space junk, or meteorites, for that matter. None of these are going to breach a storage cask - even a one in a thousand year meteor strike like Tunguska would not breach one, even if it happened to just hit that exact spot.

And even if you did breach one, the fuel is in solid intact rods of metal encased uranium oxide. Radiation is not going to go flying out everywhere.

Successfully stealing rods to make a dirty bomb is a bit of a problem too. Medical radiation sources are much easier to get and actually more dangerous as dirty bombs. I don't see radiation treatment in medicine going away.

The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction

Actually, an interesting question. The oldest "scientific consensus" I can find that gives a number that can be used as a prediction is the 1979 National Academy of Sciences report. This predicted that the climate sensitivity was between 1.5 and 4.5C per doubling: that is, 3 plus or minus 1.5. Citation: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1979. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/121... (you can go back earlier than this, but this is the first one where a panel of scientists came together to evaluate all the models available at the time, and not just a single team making a model.)

That's 36 years ago, so it's long enough to compare prediction to reality. In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm. citation: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/... That's an increase of 118%, log(2) of that is 0.243. So given that CO2 increase, the predicted temperature rise between 1979 and 2014, if the NAS value was correct, is 0.81 plus or minus 0.4.

Actual temperature rise, according to the GISS temp, is 0.17 above datum in 1979, 0.75 above datum in 2014, for a temperature rise of 0.58C. citation: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...

The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4 is within the error bars of the actual measurement, 0.58. So I will rate this as a correct prediction.

I think you'll find you aren't even in the right ball park of when CO2 can become a problem.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...

I think you'll find you aren't even in the right ball park of when CO2 can become a problem.

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...

Further, those quotes are not from Mark Steyn, they are comments from (mostly) scientists about Michael Mann, and his infamous Hockey Stick. They are not comments by Steyn, at all. In fact many of those quotes are from Mann's own colleagues. The only person who is being nasty or misrepresenting anything here is you. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

As usual, Jane/Lonny ironically regurgitates nasty comments about Mann's "infamous" Hockey Stick and claims not to be nasty or misrepresenting anything.

I showed Steve McIntyre this quote from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS):

"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. ..."

... I just showed you a graph from NAS. That's not good enough for you? You want maybe I should call God down to talk to you? [Lonny Eachus, 2015-07-08]

Lonny Eachus, I just showed you a quote from NAS. That's not good enough for you to finally stop regurgitating all your nasty and baseless accusations?

Then @KenCaldeira should commit suicide immediately. He emits 40,000 ppm CO2. Talk about unacceptable levels! @tan123 [Lonny Eachus, 2015-08-11]

Lonny Eachus' comment was a remark about the logical fallacy of Caldeira's statement that "no amount" of CO2 emission is safe or acceptable, when he emits a rather large amount all by himself. No SANE, rational person could read it in context, and honestly think it was a call for anybody to actually commit suicide. You can't even get this right. What a loser. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-12]

Since no sane person could read my comment IN CONTEXT and honestly mistake it for "telling someone to commit suicide", it is obvious that this is just another of your attempts at harassment and character assassination, via out-of-context misrepresentation of my comments, for which you are rather famous by now. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-08-13]

No, Lonny. Your despicable statement was morally and scientifically wrong. He doesn't emit "a rather large amount all by himself" because breathing simply can't raise CO2 levels.

Well, do you truly understand that EPA's proposed regulations (truly, no joke) declare your body a toxic polluter? Because you exhale 40,000 ppm CO2. [Lonny Eachus, 2014-10-27]

The EPA does not distinguish among sources, or whether it is "circulation". Emission is emission. Emission from vehicles burning ethanol is also "circulation", via a very real and rather simple cycle, yet EPA still classes it as emission. So you are wrong in principl

When you genetically engineer an organism, you run the risk of creating or altering traits you never intended.

Correct, but this is true of all genetic alterations, including conventional breeding: known examples include toxic potatoes and celery.

This can and has lead to problems like feed corn that's toxic to the cattle and pigs it was intended for.

Citation needed. I believe you are referring to a case where GE corn was contaminated with fungal mycotoxins, and as the corn was GE, anti-GMO groups claimed it was the GE aspect that made them sterile, not the well known toxic agents that happened to also be in there (which they conveniently neglected to mention).

If we take your argument, we should label conventional breeding, with known cases of harm, not GE crops, with zero instances of harm (beyond baseless accusation anyway). Of course, that's a bit silly, yeah?

I don't understand. For the sake of argument. How does an average temperature that's half a degree warmer than it was 40 years ago wipe out the Bummblebee's habitat. Do the flowers stop growing?

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.ph...

This is hardly evidence that women "utterly dominate virtually every measure of academic success and achievement we have at pretty much every level."

While there may be some in the scientific world who dislike Mann several investigations of him have not turned up any damning evidence of wrongdoing.

The studies in question didn't attempt to interact with the damning evidence from the emails, in fact they carefully avoided addressing it.

Regarding similar studies confirming Mann's hockey stick graph here are some:

Huang 2000

Smith 2006

Oerlemans 2005

Here's a book from the National Academies of Science with more details:

Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years

If you throw out data from measurements are not known to be reliable proxies for global temperature, you are left with very little if anything; and certainly not with a thousand year hockey stick shape. The hockey stick is an artifact of cherry picking data. There are many reasons for an upswing in various physical measurements in the 20th century, including (yes) a warming temperature as we swing up from a low point on the multi-century scale, but also modern agriculture and its effects on things like tree growth.

Case in point, take Figure 6 -- the proxies seem to show a dip which we'd identify as the Little Ice Age of ca. 1300-1870. Not much else is obvious there, except the somewhat misleading superimposition of the instrumental record. It's not really fair to slap instrumental readings on the end of the proxies, since even assuming these proxies reflect global temperature in some way (big assumption), they will flatten out upswings like the instrumental record shows in the late 20th century.

It's true that water vapor is responsible for the largest chunk of greenhouse warming but it is not a greenhouse gas that can drive warming because the amount of WV in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature (and regionally the availability of water to evaporate). The level of WV is not something humans can have any significant direct effect on therefore it is not something to worry about.

Water vapor's status as the number one greenhouse gas makes it a hard problem because of the water cycle. What is the effect of cloud cover? How is the water cycle affected by more CO2? These are the billion dollar questions.

The "Pause" is not something that is statistically significant. Here is a statistical analysis that uses several different techniques to try and find some significance to the "Pause" but fails. There is no reason statistically to say the rate of warming since the 1970's has changed significantly.

The Pause has shown that the most highly vaunted predictions of carbon sensitivity were mistaken. What we do with that from here is a tricky question. Simply changing the fudge factors for aerosol albedo to keep our predictions "accurate" is a pretty lame response (Mann's, if you hadn't guessed).

While there may be some in the scientific world who dislike Mann several investigations of him have not turned up any damning evidence of wrongdoing.

Regarding similar studies confirming Mann's hockey stick graph here are some:

Huang 2000

Smith 2006

Oerlemans 2005

Here's a book from the National Academies of Science with more details:

Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years

It's true that water vapor is responsible for the largest chunk of greenhouse warming but it is not a greenhouse gas that can drive warming because the amount of WV in the atmosphere is strictly limited by temperature (and regionally the availability of water to evaporate). The level of WV is not something humans can have any significant direct effect on therefore it is not something to worry about.

The "Pause" is not something that is statistically significant. Here is a statistical analysis that uses several different techniques to try and find some significance to the "Pause" but fails. There is no reason statistically to say the rate of warming since the 1970's has changed significantly.

Historians are often asked what the Founders would think about various aspects of contemporary life. Such questions can be tricky to answer. But as historians of the Revolutionary era we are confident at least of this

That's all you have? One source, acknowledging the question as "tricky to answer", but offering its opinion nonetheless?

would be flabbergasted to learn that in endorsing the republican principle of a well-regulated militia

I contend, they would be even more flabbergasted to learn, that producing and selling pornography is protected by the right to petition the government for redress of grievances...

which is at odds with gun lovers

Gun lovers? Simple swords are illegal in most of the country — as are brass-knuckles.

for some insane lack of simple intelligence

Ah, yes, whoever disagrees with you must simply be lacking intelligence. Founding fathers were still alive, when Hans Christian Andersen dealt with this sort of argument. Feel free to educate yourself...

think that more guns somehow means more safety and somehow does not mean more death

Chicago, where even a museum can not showcase a WW2 rifle, and Washington D.C., where one can get imprisoned for using an empty shell-case as ashtray, have more violent crime, than Texas' cities, where guns are relatively easy to obtain.

But my argument is not that arms "help" — it is that, for better or worse, it is our right to keep and bear them. And that any laws and regulations infringing that right are unconstitutional and thus it is the citizens' moral duty to ignore or sabotage them.

the second amendment speaks of redcoats and muskets

No, actually, neither word is found anywhere in the Bill of Rights.

then there is the whole *well-regulated* part: trianing, proficiency, responsibility, level headedness *BEFORE* you get a gun.

If we read the 1st Amendment the way you propose we read the 2nd, then your Freedom of Speech would also be limited — to Petitioning the Government. And only for Redress of Grievances. And only after a cool-off period. And only using the medium in existence back then — not on radio, TV, or the Internet.

As things stand, however, we consider selling pornography on the Internet and the publishing of bomb-making instructions to be protected by the 1st Amendment...

the second amendment is nothing at all like the dirty harry fiction

Huh? I think, you got carried away...

Can you define for me what a "well regulated malitia" is

Yes, I can. But first, please, explain, how the right to produce and sell pornography is related to petitioning the government for redress of grievances.

You would not suggest, we apply different rules to reading two consecutive Articles of the Bill of Rights, would you?

I don't see any of them creating "a well regulated militia"...

If we read the 1st Amendment the way you are proposing we read the 2nd, your right to Free Speech would likewise come with the following restrictions:

• Only if your speech petitions the Government — addressing anybody else is not covered and is subject to regulations.
• Only if the petition is for Redress of Grievances — for example, neither pornography nor bomb-making instructions would be covered.
• Only if the medium you chose for your speech existed, when the Bill of Rights was written — anything said on radio, TV, or the Internet is not covered.

Is that your proposal, or are you going to suggest, we apply self-inconsistent set of rules, when reading the Bill of Rights?

... the energy yield is about 16,000 kJ/kg ...

How did you arrive at this figure? The energy content of 1kg of uncompressed hydrogen gas is somewhere between 120,100-141,900 kJ, or 7.5x the yield you gave. Reaching your figure would require an efficiency of less than 13.3%, but hydrogen fuel cells have a well-to-wheel efficiency of roughly double that (PDF).

Citation needed, I think.

PRIORITIES FOR RESEARCH TO REDUCE THE THREAT OF FIREARM-RELATED VIOLENCE

Snarky article about the findings: http://www.gunsandammo.com/politics/cdc-gun-research-backfires-on-obama/

In what way is a semi automatic rifle with no serial number consistent with a well regulated militia?

In a way pornography is consistent with the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Heck, much better than that: any militia — well-regulated or otherwise — can use such a rifle whether or not it has serial number.