Slashdot Mirror

According to this article by New Scientist, the arrow was discovered almost by accident. A CT scan performed in April by team specialist Paul Gostner showed no sign of foreign objects. Then three weeks ago, he took a chest X-ray that showed the outline of the arrow. A second examination of the CT scan confirmed the finding, as did the physical examination with pathologist Eduard Egarter which showed a two-centimetre cut in the skin matching the trajectory of the arrow. It turns out that because the arrow lies between the shoulder bone and the ribs, it would only show up on a scan of the side. And since all previous scans had been of only the front and back of the body, they hadn't found it until now.

Kind of makes you think how some of the greatest scientific discoveries were made almost entirely by accident (like how they discovered the electron, electric motors or radiation).

Self Bias Resistor

As someone else has already pointed out, they do use two very different technologies.

Here is the candescent model.

Here is the IBM model.

The IBM is different in the fact that it uses permanent magnets to focus the electrons into tight beams to hit the phosphor screen, while it seems that the Candescent model uses small holes on a grid placed over the cathode that direct the electrons into a focused pattern.

Nope, it's one hole per pixel, as shown in this picture.

(link to picture was stolen from a previous post by someone else, so if moderators are thinking of modding me up, go find the original and mod him up)

Aha, found the original New Scientist article. They've moved it here.
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Not the same graphic, but really close.
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here. Jeez, it's hard to find real information about this.

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Check out the newscientist interview with Mr. Alibek here.

with my favourite quote:-
"One of the biggest problems is that we don't know whether or not we have had such attacks. We are just ignorant. We cannot distinguish between naturally occurring epidemics and ones we create. I'm not saying that foot and mouth disease is [the result of a biological attack] because I don't know. But if you see something this size in the 21st century, it is getting very suspicious. To imagine that we have had nothing for the past few decades and then suddenly such a huge, uncontrollable epidemic of foot and mouth disease--it raises many questions."

If you've ever thought "it could never happen here" then the fact that one of the worlds experts isn't so sure must certainly be something to think about...

bil

Show me the evidence suggesting that there is some widespread consensus that I'm not aware of. I'll wait

Global temperatures are rising. Observations collected over the last century suggest that the average land surface temperature has risen 0.45-0.6C (0.8-1.0F) in the last century.

The earth's climate is predicted to change because human activities are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The heat-trapping property of these gases is undisputed. Although uncertainty exists about exactly how earth's climate responds to these gases, global temperatures are rising.

These sources do not agree on all the details, but they do agree that the earth is warming. Whilst you are right to point out that the earth's temperature has changed before, you seem to miss the point that many others have made: just because climate change happens naturally does not mean it is good. Climate change could kill us all, just as previous climate changes wiped out a large percentage of all life on earth. Whether or not we are the largest cause of global warming, we should be doing everything in our power to slow it down, and the best evidence seems to be that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the way to achieve this. Moreover as the problem is one that threatens our future as a species, I'd suggest that it would be incredibly stupid to wait for climate models to be perfectly fine-tuned: by then it may be too late for any greenhouse gas reductions to make a difference.

Show me the evidence suggesting that there is some widespread consensus that I'm not aware of. I'll wait

Global temperatures are rising. Observations collected over the last century suggest that the average land surface temperature has risen 0.45-0.6C (0.8-1.0F) in the last century.

The earth's climate is predicted to change because human activities are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The heat-trapping property of these gases is undisputed. Although uncertainty exists about exactly how earth's climate responds to these gases, global temperatures are rising.

These sources do not agree on all the details, but they do agree that the earth is warming. Whilst you are right to point out that the earth's temperature has changed before, you seem to miss the point that many others have made: just because climate change happens naturally does not mean it is good. Climate change could kill us all, just as previous climate changes wiped out a large percentage of all life on earth. Whether or not we are the largest cause of global warming, we should be doing everything in our power to slow it down, and the best evidence seems to be that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the way to achieve this. Moreover as the problem is one that threatens our future as a species, I'd suggest that it would be incredibly stupid to wait for climate models to be perfectly fine-tuned: by then it may be too late for any greenhouse gas reductions to make a difference.

In an era of rapidly expanding space-based enterprises, the Russians have an incredible opportunity. The New Scientist article hints at the potential market for Buran's capabilities. There are, however, several important questions with difficult answered.

This program has been mothballed since 1990 and unfunded since 1992. How well have all the millions of components been maintained? For example, are there decaying O-Rings that are just waiting to fail? The majority of the turn-around time for the US Space shuttle is post-flight inspection, maintenance, and pre-flight inspection. Which components have weakened in the last decade and will they be found before a catastrophic failure.

In the 11 years since Buran was "put into the barn" how much technical skill has been lost? Without dragging this into an off-topic debate about military spending, the US Navy must purchase a new nuclear submarine every year or so simple to maintain the technical expertise of the thousands of specially trained engineers, welders, machinists, and other highly specialized technicians who build subs. Does Russia have the skills to support this program once the stockpiled rocket parts and fuel tanks are gone?

The Russians are perfectly poised to pull this off. There is already activity at the Baikonur Cosmodrome paying for the all the necessary infrastructure improvements (not to mention providing great advertising. Russian Engineer to international client-- "Hey, have you seen OUR shuttle?") Russia is also smart enough to see the potential in space tourism. Right or wrong, Denis Tito has issued in a new chapter in manned space flight; a chapter that NASA is prohibited from acknowledging currently.

Any AeroSpaceEngineers out there know how much demand there is for a launcher that can haul up 200 "tonnes" at a time (minus the weight of Buran itself of course)? Certainly, if Buran gets off the ground there will quickly be a demand as companies build larger satellites that require the special capabilites of a shuttle rather than a conventional unmanned booster. I wonder what the cost per unit weight will be and how it will compare to current lift systems.

The world is changing around us so fast that sometimes it's hard to see 10 days into the future, let alone 10 years. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look into the future. Quite the opposite is true-- it means we need to look that much harder! If all goes well, Buran may be the vehicle to catapult us all into space. (Pardon the pun.)

In an era of rapidly expanding space-based enterprises, the Russians have an incredible opportunity. The New Scientist article hints at the potential market for Buran's capabilities. There are, however, several important questions with difficult answered.

This program has been mothballed since 1990 and unfunded since 1992. How well have all the millions of components been maintained? For example, are there decaying O-Rings that are just waiting to fail? The majority of the turn-around time for the US Space shuttle is post-flight inspection, maintenance, and pre-flight inspection. Which components have weakened in the last decade and will they be found before a catastrophic failure.

In the 11 years since Buran was "put into the barn" how much technical skill has been lost? Without dragging this into an off-topic debate about military spending, the US Navy must purchase a new nuclear submarine every year or so simple to maintain the technical expertise of the thousands of specially trained engineers, welders, machinists, and other highly specialized technicians who build subs. Does Russia have the skills to support this program once the stockpiled rocket parts and fuel tanks are gone?

The Russians are perfectly poised to pull this off. There is already activity at the Baikonur Cosmodrome paying for the all the necessary infrastructure improvements (not to mention providing great advertising. Russian Engineer to international client-- "Hey, have you seen OUR shuttle?") Russia is also smart enough to see the potential in space tourism. Right or wrong, Denis Tito has issued in a new chapter in manned space flight; a chapter that NASA is prohibited from acknowledging currently.

Any AeroSpaceEngineers out there know how much demand there is for a launcher that can haul up 200 "tonnes" at a time (minus the weight of Buran itself of course)? Certainly, if Buran gets off the ground there will quickly be a demand as companies build larger satellites that require the special capabilites of a shuttle rather than a conventional unmanned booster. I wonder what the cost per unit weight will be and how it will compare to current lift systems.

The world is changing around us so fast that sometimes it's hard to see 10 days into the future, let alone 10 years. That doesn't mean we shouldn't look into the future. Quite the opposite is true-- it means we need to look that much harder! If all goes well, Buran may be the vehicle to catapult us all into space. (Pardon the pun.)

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 9936

With that out of the way...one of the main problems with NASA's space shuttle seems to be the near-infinite amount of testing and precautions they take, thus skyrocketing the cost per flight. It'll be interesting to see what Russia, which puts a more value on results than safety-at-any-cost, does.

Tim

For those sea trips, how about supersonic subs?

http://www.newscientist.com/features/features_2248 13.html

The russians have torpedos that use the principle

IIRC, the Shkval (sp?) isn't supersonic. It's much faster than any conventional torpedo (somewhere on the order of 150-200 knots), but considering that Mach 1 underwater is considerably higher than Mach 1 in the air, it's not there just yet.

Thanks to those nutty museli-munching sandal wearing communist tree-huggers, the general public and *even world governments* (well, ones that aren't lead by an animated glove puppet, at any rate) are already well aware of the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels...
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"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"

..after an European Parliament report on Echelon which "recommends all Europeans use encryption and open source software." Here is the article.

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I hit the karma cap, now do I gain enlightenment?

• Distributed.Net, OGR project: Our current combined OGR network speed is 182.49 Giga-nodes per second
• UD Cancer Research Project: 609,178 devices, 104,791,203 hours total CPU time
• Seti@home: 3044035 users, 673412.833 years of computer time

• restricted access to the communication medium
• the need to filter out the relevant communication from a huge mass of communications taking place at the same time."

But came and said the words "Open Source"

Click Here>

Also, this maybe of interest too:

Click here

Have fun.

can be found here.
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"In the land of the brave and the free, we defend our freedom with the GNU GPL."

New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com) is a UK magazine that fulfils a similar role to Scientific American - it reports on the latest results in many different journals and includes features by scientific journalists who generally provide a few choice references. The aim is not to act as an 'accredited, peer-reviewed journal', but to inform interested parties over a wide range of scientific issues.

The UK's New Scientist had an article about this a long time ago ( Flesh and blood , free registration required). It referred to a number of studies that have found negative effects of at least some kinds of pornography.

• One study found that exposure to pornography depicting women in degrading roles made men more 'callous' towards women.
• Two studies found that viewing soft pornography made people less satisfied with their partners.
• Quote: "Studies on the effects of hard-core pornography have been much more consistent in their findings. The main conclusion is simple: pornography with violent imagery does change men's attitudes about sexual aggression towards women."
• Quote: "exposure to the sexually violent films increased male students' acceptance of 'rape myths' - for instance, that women actually enjoy being raped"

Do read the original article for the full story.

In fact they could send this book out in the past so that the customer got it a few days before he thought about ordering it.

Too bad this time machine paper didn't come out a year earlier. I could have used it to get VCs to give me millions of dollars.
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Good-bye.

Ha! Excuse me, but I can't really see your "genetic code compiler", where you download, ./configure, and make. Remember that gene therapy is highly experimental, and genetic modification a bit of a hot potato at the moment ethically and morally. (I, by the way, believe that genetics is the way forward medically, but that's just MHO. See this story about restoration of sight to blind dogs).

We're a long way from self-modification (I 4m 3l337 with the biggest cock ever kinda thing!) if we ever get there.

But I do agree with you, information should be available. And that's what this article is about. It was an ingenious method of searching vast quantities of data to link relevant papers.

One of the best things about this is that the methodology could possibly be applied to diciplines outside genetics, speeding up research in other areas.

Surprisingly, dams are not clean energy sources. Many of them produce a large amount of carbon dioxide http://www.newscientist.com/nl/0603/stink.html, so they wouldn't help with global warming.

The real problem is that evolved hardware can specialize itself very precisely for its environment, and the environment includes everything.
Some of Thompson's early evolved designs only worked in a narrow temperature range, because that's what they evolved in (see here for the article that prompted Slashdot to look at this last time).

Link to New Scientist article

It talks about the unconnected cells and the way it was trained, and the fact that the circuits only worked at one temperature(!)

Check out a more detailed description of the work being done over in England here:
http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/ai/prim ordial.html

This is quite old, but still interesting.

See the following article from New Scientist for more info.

Actually, there was a whole story on this thing, I think, here:

http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/23/1350208_F.sh tml.

Originally New Scientist had a story on it (here), and now it looks like it made it into Nature.

I guess it must be officially "cool" now.

but we will not likely see it next year... it will take a while.

However several rather frightening changes have been seen in the temperature and saltiness (haline) of various important currents off the northern coast of Scandanavia . One apocalyptic scenario is indeed for the Gulf Stream to shutdown, which would ****up western Europe nicely.

However this is a *local* effect in the context of the global climate. The whole system is *extremely* complex (chaotic, even) and hard to model or predict. Broad, long-period predictions are easier to make than short term ones - we can model nice equilibrium states, but it's highly likely that in the short term (a few hundred years) that the entire planet will see wild fluctuations in precipitation, temperature, sea levels, yadda yadda.

Ob links:

• UN IPCC Third Assessment Report: Summary (PDF) This is especially sobering reading; contributed to by ~1000 leading world authorities on the science)
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change main site
• GEO-2000 report
• Worldwatch
• EPA Global warming site
• New Scientist special report

Note to the inevitable sceptics: if you accept (say) evolution, Relativity, Quantum mechanics (random eexamples) as being very very very likely to be true, then at least read the damn docs, look at the scientists who are putting their reps on the line on this, and consider whether it's more likely that we *are* affecting the global climate in unpredictable ways, or that vested interests are funding astroturf movements to try to convince American voters that it's all a commie plot...

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If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

Once again, you're committing the cardinal sin of implying direction in evolution. WE ARE NEITHER BETTER NOR WORSE, WE ARE MERELY DIFFERENT.

Our backs probably were fine, yes. But that was more than likely when we didn't have heads bobbing around on top of them and hips below them. We are the way we are because of our ancestry.

This is put forward very simply in Fick's Law, which states "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny." This means, if you look at the life history of an organism, you can see a great deal of their eveolutionary ancestry reflected in their form. If you look at a week-old embryo, it had gills. If you look a bit later it looks a hell of alot like a lizard. Later, you can't tell the difference between a human and a pig. A chimp and a human, a human and a bonobo. You know how you looked at embryos when you were in High School and figured it was interesting how they all looked pretty similar? That's because older organisms are typically less specialised and have less complex structures. We came from those, and alot of our genes are similar or modified versions. So first, we look like them.

We were not born six thousand years ago with blonde hair and blue eyes throwing the discus to please the gods. We crawled our way out of the muck and the slime! We are forever in a race with the pathogens that prey on nothing because they are mindless and soulless. And little by little, we also become them. See New Scientists' story on endogenous Retroviruses.

There is no "better" or "worse", simply fitter, less fit, and luck.

Never ceases to amaze me that people are insisting on physical sails for solar sailing, given that there are a slew of problems to contend with. Furthermore, the mission profile simply calls for a deployment test and minimal motion (no plans for a planetary or extrasolar mission).

Using an M2P2 (Mini-Magenospheric Plasma Propulsion) drive would be a much better choice, because in addition to the lack of launch mass (expensive!), you don't need to worry about deployment problems, and can then think about actually doing some science instead of a publicity stunt. More on M2P2 here and here.

FYI This month's New Scientist has an interview with Nersi Razavi who has his own solar sail project underway, estimated test launch date 2005! Check it out... here .

Over a decade ago I proposed the National Science Trust that would be a trust fund that paid out only for information delivered, from whatever source and by whatever lawful means. In other words, new information flowing in causes new cash to flow out.

I'm no longer one to advocate political action about anything, but The National Science Trust idea can easily be adapted to private philanthropy as well.

Well, they didn't actually use an entire lamprey brain, just took some tissue and hooked it up to a Khepera robot and some light sensors. The robot then could be made to avoid or follow light sources. There's a was a brief article about it in the New Scientist.

This article on the New Scientist web site discusses marine parks to preserve fish stocks. It demonstrates how marine parks increase fish catches in areas outside the parks and advocates an increase in their number.

Fishing vessels could have this GPS chip installed in them. The chip could then shut down the fishing equipment when the vessel was within a marine park, or in an area where the vessel is not supposed to be, such as the territorial waters of another country.

Governments could make it mandatory as a condition of the fishing licence for this chip to be installed and working properly. There is the likelihood that old vessels without the chip could fish illegally. The best way of deterring and combatting this would be for such vessels to be scuttled when detected, and only catches from certified compliant vessels having access to the best fish markets.

Such measures may sound draconian, but they may ultimately be necessary. At present fish stocks the world over are being overexploited: one estimate I have heard recently puts the annual catch of the world fishing fleet at 40% more than the level needed to maintain stocks.

However, installing this sort of technology in consumer electronics to serve no higher purpose than protecting the profits of the manufacturers will ultimately result in lower profits for the manufacturers. Not all manufacturers will opt to licence this technology, and they could gain market share because of it. There are also countries in the world with a good manufacturing base who would not allow this technology to be employed. Globalisation and free trade could also see such technology being made illegal, so expect a lot of bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying by major corporations to ensure that such technology is legal.

We seem to be rapidly moving towards a corporate-run police state, with all the dire consequences that such a state will bring. A worst-case scenario would see the majority of the Western world's population enslaved by profiteering corporations within 50 years. (You Must Spend All Your Income To Make The Corporation Richer. This Is Where You Will Go Today. You May Not Do Anything That May Compromise Corporate Profit. Work Shall Make You Free.) The sooner the general public is made aware of all this restrictive technology, the better off we will be in the future.

Finally, I have a short reading list that you may find useful.

George Orwell, "1984".
Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451".

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This article on the New Scientist web site discusses marine parks to preserve fish stocks. It demonstrates how marine parks increase fish catches in areas outside the parks and advocates an increase in their number.

Fishing vessels could have this GPS chip installed in them. The chip could then shut down the fishing equipment when the vessel was within a marine park, or in an area where the vessel is not supposed to be, such as the territorial waters of another country.

Governments could make it mandatory as a condition of the fishing licence for this chip to be installed and working properly. There is the likelihood that old vessels without the chip could fish illegally. The best way of deterring and combatting this would be for such vessels to be scuttled when detected, and only catches from certified compliant vessels having access to the best fish markets.

Such measures may sound draconian, but they may ultimately be necessary. At present fish stocks the world over are being overexploited: one estimate I have heard recently puts the annual catch of the world fishing fleet at 40% more than the level needed to maintain stocks.

However, installing this sort of technology in consumer electronics to serve no higher purpose than protecting the profits of the manufacturers will ultimately result in lower profits for the manufacturers. Not all manufacturers will opt to licence this technology, and they could gain market share because of it. There are also countries in the world with a good manufacturing base who would not allow this technology to be employed. Globalisation and free trade could also see such technology being made illegal, so expect a lot of bribes^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbying by major corporations to ensure that such technology is legal.

We seem to be rapidly moving towards a corporate-run police state, with all the dire consequences that such a state will bring. A worst-case scenario would see the majority of the Western world's population enslaved by profiteering corporations within 50 years. (You Must Spend All Your Income To Make The Corporation Richer. This Is Where You Will Go Today. You May Not Do Anything That May Compromise Corporate Profit. Work Shall Make You Free.) The sooner the general public is made aware of all this restrictive technology, the better off we will be in the future.

Finally, I have a short reading list that you may find useful.

George Orwell, "1984".
Ray Bradbury, "Fahrenheit 451".

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The ITC (or any other international trade group: UNCITRAL ) doesn't appreciate dumping, so any price change must be justified by cost, to a point. Granted, Sony would never be able to pull of the PS2 if they had to sell it for $700, but the price is roughly the same everywhere. Anyway...

According to New Scientist magazine's "Feedback" column 17 Feb 2001 (see http://www.newscientist.com/feedback/, ntl has the following cable modem "user policy" provision for "abuse of the service":

"You must not disclose your password or user ID to anyone else. Your account can only be used for a single internet session at any one time and for no more than 24 hours in any one day."

Ridicule is an appropriate antidote to bureaucratic fever.

BTW, readers in Korea who can't put up their own web sites from their apartments, please read from Eldritch Press the English translation of the classic Korean novel, annotated and illustrated, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, at http://www.eldritchpress.org/kim/cloud9.html.

Eldritch Press runs from my home via ATT Mediaone RoadRunner cable modem service in New Hampshire, USA. Thanks, ATT!

I'm not sure what has been done lately if anyone has some more recent links let us know.

A great deal of extended phenotypics in humans is grounded in the manipulation of mirror neurons of susceptible populations. Autism, in particular, is symptomatic of genetically recessive populations that are experiencing extended genetic dominance -- autism being a pathological byproduct of the imperfect intervention in social identity mechanisms that normally produce such extended phenotypic social structures as religions, bodies politic, etc.

The inappropriate attention historically given to autism and mirror neurons by the academic establishment is an indirect result of the genetic interest among urban elites in maintaining the extended phenotypic social structures that rely on the manipulation of mirror neuronal responses. Recent defections by Italians and Jews (e.g: Vittorio Gallese, Giacomo Rizzolatti and their colleagues at the University of Parma and Hugh Fudenberg), ethnic groups that have historically been the prime beneficiaries of such urbanizing social structures in the West, are being driven by the increasing presence of Dravidians (V.S. Ramachandran and Vijendra K. Singh) whose group is not as dependent on the existing extended phenotypic structures of JudeoChristian civilization, and whose relatedness to the recessive European populations, combined with their own genetic dominance, creates a unique relationship with northern European ethnicities -- the primary victims of autism in the U.S.

Here is a snippet from that article

Are writers entitled to profit from their novel ideas? Evidently not, if you take the example of US Patent 5 878 155, issued on 2 March to a certain Thomas Heeter of Houston, Texas. It covers a scheme for writing invisible symbols on people that can be used to verify their identity when they use credit or debit cards.

The idea is a bit odd, and the patent's citation of an episode of the X-Files TV series in which aliens etched bar codes on the teeth of human abductees is even odder. But what really caught my eye was that Heeter's patent comes very close to an idea I suggested--not at all seriously--in a science-fiction story titled The Number of the Beast that was published in 1994.

I thought my story should trump his patent. It was published in June 1994, more than two years before Heeter filed his application on 5 September 1996. Publication of an idea more than a year before a patent filing makes it "prior art", which voids applications under the American patent system. However, when I called the US Patent and Trademark Office, I found that this only works for nonfiction. Science fiction is a different matter. A patent examiner said the patent must describe some way of building the invention. Patents on wrist radios are being issued today although comic-strip hero Dick Tracy wore one over 40 years ago, because the technology wasn't available earlier.

I would be more annoyed if my idea had been serious. But that twist of patent law still isn't fair. Fictional inventions take real skill and some prove truly prescient. Besides, patent royalties would be a welcome supplement to the paltry pay that goes with science-fiction writing.

I hope they are going to do it with humans, since for some species, parthenogenesis is the normal way to reproduce.

But let's be honest. We always knew it: Sex is best.

I've seen a lot of comments here along the lines of "How come this is OK, but cell phones aren't", along with replies "Cell phones are safe on 'planes".

Anyways there was an article in new scientist a little while back about how aircraft electronics can quite easily be affected by cellphone, I figured I'd throw it in here.

That's why most scientists will neither confirm or deny global warming.

So does this mean there are some scientists who don't believe in the greenhouse effect or global warming?

No, this is a myth. All scientists believe in the greenhouse effect. Without it the planet would be largely frozen. And all scientists accept that if humans put more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere it will tend to warm the planet. The only disagreement is over precisely how much warming will be amplified by feedbacks. And there is a growing consensus that the average global warming of 0.6 C seen in the past century - and particularly the pronounced warming of the past two decades - is largely a consequence of the greenhouse effect.

My favourite entry from that FAQ:

So how worried should we be?

How lucky do you feel?

Yea - kinda inappropriate I think. There's a _much_ better article up at New Scientist.

It took much discussion and a lot of preceding sentences about uncertainties and qualifications and multiple reasons for supporting the conclusion before the IPCC scientists were able to conclude in the summary that "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." This may sound like indecision, but it is merely standard clarification of the context of their findings. There are no bold or unsupported claims.

First of all, reducing C02 doesn't really lower greenhouse gases. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor, making up 98% of all greenhouse gases. We can't control water vapor.

That's a gross simplification, and may not even occur. But we don't know. We don't know how delicate the system is. And we don't know if some previously undiscovered feedback loop is going to leap up and bite us on our arses (several candidates are already known).

It was similar to the worry about global warming now, only the reverse. As we know now, this didn't happen.

Third, global temperature depends on where you measure temperature. If I measure temperature in the middle of the city, it will go way up as the city increases in size and population. If I measure it in the country, it's not going to increase. Statistics lie, that's what they're good for.

Lastly, scientists don't agree on global warming. There was a similar conference earlier this year where scientists decided that they couldn't come up with a solid decision on global warming.

First of all, reducing C02 doesn't really lower greenhouse gases. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor, making up 98% of all greenhouse gases. We can't control water vapor.

That's a gross simplification, and may not even occur. But we don't know. We don't know how delicate the system is. And we don't know if some previously undiscovered feedback loop is going to leap up and bite us on our arses (several candidates are already known).

It was similar to the worry about global warming now, only the reverse. As we know now, this didn't happen.

Third, global temperature depends on where you measure temperature. If I measure temperature in the middle of the city, it will go way up as the city increases in size and population. If I measure it in the country, it's not going to increase. Statistics lie, that's what they're good for.

Lastly, scientists don't agree on global warming. There was a similar conference earlier this year where scientists decided that they couldn't come up with a solid decision on global warming.