Slashdot Mirror

The use of deception in primates of many kinds is well documented: see

here or here.

It's a useful adaptation for social mammals, and far from unique to humans, let alone post-Babel humans.

The bicameral hypothesis is crap, by the way.

I dunno about space, but down here on earth, IIRC the probability of a bit flip in computer memory is fairly high. Per This, "back in 1996 IBM estimated you would see one a month for every 256MB of RAM.", so in my 3G laptop that's about 12 per month. And that's at the bottom of the atmospheric well, using much larger scale memory technology that is more robust with respect to this problem. Today's RAM is what - 100 times smaller in area per bit? Which makes it 100 times more susceptible, all other things being equal. If 100 is the right number, that's about 40 per day on my laptop.

You may be experiencing bit errors all the time, but many/most are occuring in memory blocks that are not in use just at that moment, or in data or code that your program doesn't happen to access for various reasons, or maybe that bit just isn't important. The more memory you have, the more likely it is that the bit error doesn't matter. But if you only have 16KiB RAM, one bit is much more likely to make a huge difference.

That would explain why North Korea is one of the most brightly lit countries in the world. They have so much electricity available for everyone to use because they have harnessed nuclear fusion. But then, why does it look like this?

"the study suggests scientists may one day be able to tune in to the words you're thinking."

too bad it's allready been done.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726466.000-hightech-necklace-can-speak-your-mind.html

Plants also take up CO2 to produce O2, the more the faster. Basic chemistry. CO2 is a life giving gas. We could do with more of it.

Most plant growth is limited by nutrients other than CO2. Making more CO2 available does not help if you don't have enough nitrogen to do your growing, for example. With that said, don't you think that the people studying this stuff seriously for the last few decades have thought of this issue and are doing their best to include it in their models?

Here is a link from 2007 talking about the issues:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11655-climate-myths-higher-co2-levels-will-boost-plant-growth-and-food-production.html

In short while there are a number of expected results for plants with higher CO2 levels, they are unlikely to be our saviour.

Instead, the plant actually withstood the quake and, what's more, actually shut itself down automatically during the quake. What happened next is what screws TEPCO (rightfully so)

Hmmm, actually it is not true .
The meltdown of at least one of the core was caused by the earthquake.
In a country like Japan, were magnitude 7 earthquake happens on a 6 months basis, the Japanese safety at the site was absolutely inadequate. And TEPCO new it.

You link to an article that explains that in one particular region of the Sahara the localised effects of climate change may have caused more rain, and hence desert greening. This does not mean that the same thing will occur everywhere in the world. In fact, desertification is increasing. Consider some other recent evidence:

climate change is making desertification "the greatest environmental challenge of our times"
Australia suffers worst drought in 1,000 years
THE GREAT DROUGHT OF 2011 Is America's Worst Since The Dust Bowl
Africa drought pushes Kenya and Somalia into pre-famine conditions

Predicting the world's overall changes in food production in response to elevated CO2 is virtually impossible. Global production is expected to rise until the increase in local average temperatures exceeds 3C, but then start to fall. In tropical and dry regions increases of just 1 to 2C are expected to lead to falls in production. In marginal lands where water is the greatest constraint, which includes much of the developing world but also regions such as the western US, the losses may greatly exceed the gains. Climate myths: Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Anthony Watt's work in photographing the locations of the various weather stations used to create the temperature record and discovering them located in places like parking lots.

Investigated by "instrumental temperature record skeptic" Richard Muller, who finally concluded that the instrumental temperature record was in fact ok... Following his reversal, deniers now say that Muller was never a "true skeptic" because he accepted some tenets of global warming, completely missing the point that he was skeptical about the temperature record and he named Watts's survey as part of the reason for his skepticism:

A careful survey of these stations by a team led by meteorologist Anthony Watts showed that 70% of these stations have such poor siting that, by the U.S. government's own measure, they result in temperature uncertainties of between two and five degrees Celsius or more. We do not know how much worse are the stations in the developing world. - Richard Muller

But apparently being skeptical of the instrumental temperature record (ala Watts) is no longer enough to make you a "true skeptic" - you have to be all in, and deny everything, or else you aren't a real skeptic anymore.

the hockey stick will create a hockey stick of any random data.

Climate myths: The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

climategate emails and the various inquiries into practices at UAE CRU

You mean, the leaks and practices that have been investigated by several different independent science groups, all of which concluded that there was no fraud? The "discredited" researchers who have been backed by every science journal that has commented on the matter?

you.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

and you need bacteria not only to evolve in dna, but also develop into a multicellular organism. in your lifetime.

please.

Global cooling:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643-climate-myths-they-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s.html

See subject-line, & this article -> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/12/chinese-water-army-hijacks-onl.html

* Shouldn't be a "big surprise" to anyone that comes to /. though... see my 'p.s.' below on that account!

APK

P.S.=> There's also a pack of trolls here, literally ADMITTED trolls, they run a domain called "trolltalk.com" in fact who do PRETTY MUCH THE SAME!

Trolltalk.com = gmhowell, tomhudson, webmistressrachel, squiggleslash, ountertrolling, mcgrew, & other registered LUSER 'guises',

They regularly cheat/game the moderation system, literally, in 2 ways:

---

1.) Modding themselves up in collusion/teams

2.) Modding down those they are stalking/harassing/trolling

---

Think it's bullshit? Ok, fine - here's where they LITERALLLY ADMIT TO ALL OF THE ABOVE & how they cheat the mod system here:

---

A.) countertrolling telling others how to moddown opponents as registered lusers 1st, then to logout to save your karma/cookie state of your reg'd luser account, & then to troll others via ac replies -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2245866&cid=36491652 [slashdot.org]

B.) mcgrew stating how he modded up webmistressrachel 5 times, & she's his "partner in crime" around here (probably SAME person with multiple guises is my guess) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2212152&cid=36361542 [slashdot.org]

C.) I've literally CAUGHT a fool named clone53421 posting in the same post as clone52431 (notice the #'s appended, not the same)

---

& plenty more I've caught doing bogus things around here to "fool the system/game the system"... would you like more? I can list them, in seconds!

... apk

"MASTER of survival. Can withstand pressures six times greater than those at the bottom of the ocean and endure temperatures ranging from more than 100 C down to absolute zero. Can shrug off lethal radiation, survive in a vacuum and go without water for more than a century."

Tardigrades are by far the toughest animals on Earth

An example of inherited epigenetic changes:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228434.900-highfat-diet-leaves-its-mark-on-sperm.html

It does. Governments around the world are planning on spending trillions of dollars and rerouting much of the energy structure in response to these reports. The reports are based on a few computer models and a few more wild predictions. The programmers here know that computer programs can be wrong, and we all know the wild predictions can be wrong. We want to see the source code and check things ourselves. The IPCC has not done that, and in fact has hidden the source code.

It almost seems possible that it could have been done much earlier. Automatic sources of rotary motion were known (waterwheel, steam engine) along with gearing mechanisms.

One of the first "programmable toys" was a cart controlled by a winding string

But it wasn't until the Industrial revolution in the 1850's, that the use of punched cards for storing instructions and input data that made mathematical calculating machines possible. That's one important factor. The other one is the use of mathematical notation for expressing algebra that can be converted into instructions.

What if he had got both these engines working by 1849? Would he have moved onto more advanced calculations or extended the use of mechanical computation to commerce like Hollerith punched cards did in 1889? If so, that would have advanced computing by 40 years.

First documented geared calculating mechanism (Antikythera) 150 - 100BC

First documented use of waterwheels - 300BC

First documented Steam Engine - 1AD

First use of punched cards - 1725AD

I was thinking the advantage of passwords or physical tokens is that they aren't tied to your body too, but for a different reason. Not so that you share them with friends, but so that nobody chops off your body parts just to access your stuff. People have had their finger chopped off just so that someone can steal their fingerprint-scanning car.

What's more important to you, your finger or your car? Considering replacing the car just requires an insurance claim..

The wheel was patented in 2001. I don't think that patent will survive a lawsuit, but it does show how much of a rubber stamp getting a patent has become (in Australia, and for one type of patents).

Based on this maybe we don't need a big moon. Then again how rare is a large collision really? Something big hit Venus to give it its slow retrograde rotation, something big hit Mars to carve out the 'ocean' (at its North Pole), something big hit Pluto to give it Charon (yeah, I know it isn't a planet, but it is kinda big). In fact Charon is huge relative to Pluto. Perhaps large moons aren't that rare anyway. As an aside, after reading "Rare Earths" I found I just couldn't agree with some of the authors' ideas because some of them were not convincing. But it is a good book, just maintain a skeptical stance.

Read this on the train this morning

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21256-rats-free-each-other-from-traps-then-share-chocolate.html

They worked out that in 76% of cases (after training) the rats would free each other from cages.

In another test they were given the choice between chocolate or freeing a mate, and in one or two cases they freed it and shared the the cholocates.

they also did another test where the caged rat could not get any chocolate (even if free), and the first rat still let them out. This is meant to show that they were not just letting the other rat out to social company/rewards.

Point being it is interesting to watch animals show behavoir traits that we have said only humans/apes can feel. Anyway read the paper, my summary wont be great i was really sleepy on the train this morning

Me

"Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html

Everything is random.

"The Higgs field is also thought to make a small contribution, giving mass to individual quarks as well as to electrons and some other particles. The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual."

And if it's all virtual who or what is running the simulation? Or maybe it's self generating "I am because I think I am"

It wasn't a scifi story. Edwin Land, Mr. Polaroid himself, did a lot of research in the area and proposed a combination of headlights and windshields. I remember reading a pretty interesting article in New Scientist about it. Here's the teaser before the "subscribe to read the full article" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426061.800-histories-still-dazzled-after-all-these-years.html

as a Muslim, I will be the first to say that there is no problem with evolution...
I do believe that there is no basis in Islamic tradition and culture for rejecting evolution

While I appreciate your argument supporting your position, I think it only fair to note that you aren't exactly presenting the typical mainstream majority Muslim view. The unfortunate fact is that a substantial majority of Muslims disagree with you.

I'm not saying this is any sort of "Muslim problem", it's just plain a problem. There is a large minority of Christians who believe there is an inherent conflict between God and evolution, and I think you'll have to admit the Muslim community has an even bigger problem with a majority believing a conflict exists.

The only Islamic nation where I'm familiar with evolution polling results is Turkey. In Turkey a quarter accept evolution, a majority of the population rejects evolution, and the rest responding 'unsure'. Turkey is perhaps (?) the most developed, educated, secularized majority Muslim nations in the world. I think it's safe to say Turkey represents a far-above-average acceptance for evolution, compared to other majority-Muslim nations.

-

But are Christians and Jews really that different? Yes. A lot of the advancement in the west has been due to religion taking a back seat. Take Einstein, religious but doesn't let it control him. The west still has various religions but the advances were strongest when church and state or at least science and culture were separated.

Einstein was not religious. See e.g. New Scientist or the Wikipedia article dedicated to this subject.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20547-fishing-has-driven-evolution-of-smaller-alaskan-salmon.html

"Go west" doesn't work anymore. You can't just rest all your hopes on being able to continue life on another planet. It's a romantic idea, but actually doing so would require efforts that are by far much larger than ending world poverty or convincing people to care about the environment. A manned mission to mars would cost $40-$80 billion. Here are some problems, each enough to explain why we won't be anything near this in the next 50 years (just some examples, I'm sure there are more):

Space expenses don't scale well. While development costs do scale, things like transport, fuel, assembly of rockets, etc. does not scale very well.

Full Autonomy is extremely hard. If earth goes down the toilet, you can't rely on yearly shipments of equipment and technology. You'd have to build *everything* in your colony, which would require a huge colony indeed (so that you have a factory that makes the robots that manufacturers your mp3 players and *everything else you rely on nowadays*) and thus an even greater effort.

Humans just love earth. Even mild changes to our environment can have extreme consequences on our health. Thinking about going to Europa, that trendy Jupiter moon? Well, it only has 0.134 g, so you need to put *everything* in giant centrifuges. And that's just one factor. Building a huge shell that keeps the pressure of 1 bar earth atmosphere and 10^-12 bar Europa atmosphere separate is another one...

What do you think shifting some water from poles towards equator will do?

Here is a picture of the agro robots. It's OK, there are no goats around.

And more often than not, this "population correction" involves war and genocide. People will chose invading their neighbor or eliminating the "undesirables" of their own society over starving. They have for millenia.

What is your solution?

ORLY?

Yes, really.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028136.200-renewable-oil-ancient-bacteria-could-fuel-modern-life.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028135.100-prepare-for-the-renewable-oil-gush.html
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html
http://news.discovery.com/earth/bacteria-turn-coal-and-oil-into-renewable-energy.html
http://www.drfriendly.tv/PDFs/Huntley+Redalje200611.pdf

You might also be shocked to know that every country lies about their oil reserves to speculate on the rising prices. There are new oil fields being worked on right now that have enough capacity to last for years at current rate of consumption and some are kept secret for future development.

I've worked in the oil & gas industry for a while now, its second in corruption only to governments, if you think "peak oil" has come and gone it what they want you to think so that you are happy shelling out at the fuel pump. Even if you drive electric and have solar panels on your roof you still bought the electricity from a coal power plant and had your panels manufactured out of plastics made from oil.

There is a huge plastics plant being designed right now to cope with the extra oil... http://www.chemaweyaat.com/home/

Lots of other "Mega" projects on the drawing board. Stuff that takes 15 years to plan and another 30 years to finish building. They are increasing oil processing capacity with a look-ahead of 50 years, this would not be happening if we were in peak oil.

And more often than not, this "population correction" involves war and genocide. People will chose invading their neighbor or eliminating the "undesirables" of their own society over starving. They have for millenia.

What is your solution?

ORLY?

Yes, really.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028136.200-renewable-oil-ancient-bacteria-could-fuel-modern-life.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028135.100-prepare-for-the-renewable-oil-gush.html
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/bainerman/bainerman083105.html
http://news.discovery.com/earth/bacteria-turn-coal-and-oil-into-renewable-energy.html
http://www.drfriendly.tv/PDFs/Huntley+Redalje200611.pdf

You might also be shocked to know that every country lies about their oil reserves to speculate on the rising prices. There are new oil fields being worked on right now that have enough capacity to last for years at current rate of consumption and some are kept secret for future development.

I've worked in the oil & gas industry for a while now, its second in corruption only to governments, if you think "peak oil" has come and gone it what they want you to think so that you are happy shelling out at the fuel pump. Even if you drive electric and have solar panels on your roof you still bought the electricity from a coal power plant and had your panels manufactured out of plastics made from oil.

There is a huge plastics plant being designed right now to cope with the extra oil... http://www.chemaweyaat.com/home/

Lots of other "Mega" projects on the drawing board. Stuff that takes 15 years to plan and another 30 years to finish building. They are increasing oil processing capacity with a look-ahead of 50 years, this would not be happening if we were in peak oil.

If it were the USA each would need a patent lawyer to make sure nobody made something tablet shaped, with buttons that can be clicked more than once, had wheels or anything else covered by patents.

PI also has no pattern, why didn't they choose it?

Your post is a good example of a bad argument, or a good question. At some point he says something like "A piano happens to have 88 keys", as if it were an afterthought.

The point here was to find something that was completely pattern free, but can also be represented by some sort of musical instrument. Mathematically proven pattern free, not just apparently pattern free. So you would have to use primes mod 88. No one has proven that primes mod 88 is pattern free to my knowledge. Primes mod 1 might seem to have a pattern, mod 2 might, there's no reason to say mod 88 or 89 won't.

The research here, from my understanding while half listening during a conference call, uses modulo as a basis for generating randomness, so it is a much better fit for the problem than anything else that anyone involved could think up.

Even more likely, someone noticed that the prime number 89 would fit on an 88-key keyboard, and generated this TED talk as a result. So, to answer your question:

1) Mathematically proven algorithm was needed
2) The discussed result was probably a side effect, not the intended goal
3) Mod 89 actually gives 89 results, 0 through 88. There is no 0 key on the keyboard, or if there is there is no key 89, so this is kinda shoehorned in somehow.
4) If you started with the idea of coming up with completely pattern free music, you probably would not have read about sonar pings, and would most likely not come up with anything that is mathematically proven pattern free. That's why the poster didn't think of it.

Also, my PI link was a good example of a terrible reply, since someone intentionally imposed order by restricting it to the 8 keys of a tonal scale.

Looks like Siri actually is pretty innovative: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228365.300-how-innovative-is-apples-new-voice-assistant-siri.html

The real issue with Fukushima is that the reactors survived the earthquake and tsunami. What caused the meltdown was loss of electrical power to reactors that required active pumped water cooling and valve control.

Actually, there is a growing bit of evidence That the meltdown was an inevitable result of quake damage, and the tsunami only hastened the disaster.

If you dont like my link, Google Fukushima quake damage and see for yourself. The gist of the story is that certain radiation and instrument readings could only be the result of damage before the tsunami hit, and that those readings imply damage that would have eventually led to meltdown. The tsunami pretty much just sealed the deal, and guaranteed that everything else was in vain.

-=Geoskd

From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

No, it isn't in context. The full quote is:

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Context bolded for clarity. It is clear what they are referring to in your quote: being bounded for 500,000 years and rising sharply beyond those bounds in only a few hundred years. This is only two sentences before your quote. It's difficult to miss.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff.

The article suggests political deals involving finance and technology transfer to encourage the developing world to adopt low-carbon industry. They point out that this approach has already been successful in dealing with ozone layer depletion. Nowhere do they mention destroying the economy.

Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

It differentiates between historic climate change (ice ages/hothouse earth), climate change caused by the Sun and Milankovitch cycles, co2 from human and natural activities (including volcanoes), the Little Ice Age, and the Medieval Warm Period. What "natural change" skeptic arguments did they miss?

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit." and "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Again, this quote is out of context. If you continued the quote only one paragraph further you see:

The regional climate changes that higher CO2 will bring, and their effect on these limiting factors on plant growth, such as water, also have to be taken into account. These indirect effects are likely to have a much larger impact than CO2 fertilisation. For instance, while higher temperatures will boost plant growth in cooler regions, in the tropics they may actually impede growth. A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent

and

What's more, even if plant growth does rise overall, the direct and indirect effects of higher CO2 levels will be disastrous for biodiversity. Between 20 to 30% of plant and animal species face extinction by the end of the century, according to the IPCC report.

Growth reduced by 50% in some areas and a collapse in biodiversity: these are part of the "context" of the article. You can't just pick two sentences out of an entire article and then claim that the quotes are "in context". You are missing the entire context: the rest of the article.

From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

No, it isn't in context. The full quote is:

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Context bolded for clarity. It is clear what they are referring to in your quote: being bounded for 500,000 years and rising sharply beyond those bounds in only a few hundred years. This is only two sentences before your quote. It's difficult to miss.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff.

The article suggests political deals involving finance and technology transfer to encourage the developing world to adopt low-carbon industry. They point out that this approach has already been successful in dealing with ozone layer depletion. Nowhere do they mention destroying the economy.

Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

It differentiates between historic climate change (ice ages/hothouse earth), climate change caused by the Sun and Milankovitch cycles, co2 from human and natural activities (including volcanoes), the Little Ice Age, and the Medieval Warm Period. What "natural change" skeptic arguments did they miss?

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit." and "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Again, this quote is out of context. If you continued the quote only one paragraph further you see:

The regional climate changes that higher CO2 will bring, and their effect on these limiting factors on plant growth, such as water, also have to be taken into account. These indirect effects are likely to have a much larger impact than CO2 fertilisation. For instance, while higher temperatures will boost plant growth in cooler regions, in the tropics they may actually impede growth. A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent

and

What's more, even if plant growth does rise overall, the direct and indirect effects of higher CO2 levels will be disastrous for biodiversity. Between 20 to 30% of plant and animal species face extinction by the end of the century, according to the IPCC report.

Growth reduced by 50% in some areas and a collapse in biodiversity: these are part of the "context" of the article. You can't just pick two sentences out of an entire article and then claim that the quotes are "in context". You are missing the entire context: the rest of the article.

From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

No, it isn't in context. The full quote is:

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Context bolded for clarity. It is clear what they are referring to in your quote: being bounded for 500,000 years and rising sharply beyond those bounds in only a few hundred years. This is only two sentences before your quote. It's difficult to miss.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff.

The article suggests political deals involving finance and technology transfer to encourage the developing world to adopt low-carbon industry. They point out that this approach has already been successful in dealing with ozone layer depletion. Nowhere do they mention destroying the economy.

Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

It differentiates between historic climate change (ice ages/hothouse earth), climate change caused by the Sun and Milankovitch cycles, co2 from human and natural activities (including volcanoes), the Little Ice Age, and the Medieval Warm Period. What "natural change" skeptic arguments did they miss?

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit." and "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Again, this quote is out of context. If you continued the quote only one paragraph further you see:

The regional climate changes that higher CO2 will bring, and their effect on these limiting factors on plant growth, such as water, also have to be taken into account. These indirect effects are likely to have a much larger impact than CO2 fertilisation. For instance, while higher temperatures will boost plant growth in cooler regions, in the tropics they may actually impede growth. A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent

and

What's more, even if plant growth does rise overall, the direct and indirect effects of higher CO2 levels will be disastrous for biodiversity. Between 20 to 30% of plant and animal species face extinction by the end of the century, according to the IPCC report.

Growth reduced by 50% in some areas and a collapse in biodiversity: these are part of the "context" of the article. You can't just pick two sentences out of an entire article and then claim that the quotes are "in context". You are missing the entire context: the rest of the article.

From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

No, it isn't in context. The full quote is:

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Context bolded for clarity. It is clear what they are referring to in your quote: being bounded for 500,000 years and rising sharply beyond those bounds in only a few hundred years. This is only two sentences before your quote. It's difficult to miss.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff.

The article suggests political deals involving finance and technology transfer to encourage the developing world to adopt low-carbon industry. They point out that this approach has already been successful in dealing with ozone layer depletion. Nowhere do they mention destroying the economy.

Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

It differentiates between historic climate change (ice ages/hothouse earth), climate change caused by the Sun and Milankovitch cycles, co2 from human and natural activities (including volcanoes), the Little Ice Age, and the Medieval Warm Period. What "natural change" skeptic arguments did they miss?

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit." and "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Again, this quote is out of context. If you continued the quote only one paragraph further you see:

The regional climate changes that higher CO2 will bring, and their effect on these limiting factors on plant growth, such as water, also have to be taken into account. These indirect effects are likely to have a much larger impact than CO2 fertilisation. For instance, while higher temperatures will boost plant growth in cooler regions, in the tropics they may actually impede growth. A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent

and

What's more, even if plant growth does rise overall, the direct and indirect effects of higher CO2 levels will be disastrous for biodiversity. Between 20 to 30% of plant and animal species face extinction by the end of the century, according to the IPCC report.

Growth reduced by 50% in some areas and a collapse in biodiversity: these are part of the "context" of the article. You can't just pick two sentences out of an entire article and then claim that the quotes are "in context". You are missing the entire context: the rest of the article.

From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

No, it isn't in context. The full quote is:

Ice cores show that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have remained between 180 and 300 parts per million for the past half-a-million years. In recent centuries, however, CO2 levels have risen sharply, to at least 380 ppm So what's going on? It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Context bolded for clarity. It is clear what they are referring to in your quote: being bounded for 500,000 years and rising sharply beyond those bounds in only a few hundred years. This is only two sentences before your quote. It's difficult to miss.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff.

The article suggests political deals involving finance and technology transfer to encourage the developing world to adopt low-carbon industry. They point out that this approach has already been successful in dealing with ozone layer depletion. Nowhere do they mention destroying the economy.

Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

It differentiates between historic climate change (ice ages/hothouse earth), climate change caused by the Sun and Milankovitch cycles, co2 from human and natural activities (including volcanoes), the Little Ice Age, and the Medieval Warm Period. What "natural change" skeptic arguments did they miss?

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit." and "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Again, this quote is out of context. If you continued the quote only one paragraph further you see:

The regional climate changes that higher CO2 will bring, and their effect on these limiting factors on plant growth, such as water, also have to be taken into account. These indirect effects are likely to have a much larger impact than CO2 fertilisation. For instance, while higher temperatures will boost plant growth in cooler regions, in the tropics they may actually impede growth. A two-decade study of rainforest plots in Panama and Malaysia recently concluded that local temperature rises of more than 1C have reduced tree growth by 50 per cent

and

What's more, even if plant growth does rise overall, the direct and indirect effects of higher CO2 levels will be disastrous for biodiversity. Between 20 to 30% of plant and animal species face extinction by the end of the century, according to the IPCC report.

Growth reduced by 50% in some areas and a collapse in biodiversity: these are part of the "context" of the article. You can't just pick two sentences out of an entire article and then claim that the quotes are "in context". You are missing the entire context: the rest of the article.

• Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
• We can't do anything about climate change,
• Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Sorry, Couldn't help but reply.

You really need to do some thinking of your own. Without questioning the conclusions of each of the articles in question, if these are the arguments being used to come to the conclusions, someone needs to go back to school. From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

"It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions."

tells me that the author has never seen the Vostock ice core records of CO2 levels.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff. Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

The higher level of CO2 doesn't increase plant growth article has these insightful things to say in proving that CO2 doesn't boost plant growth. Again, these are in context. Read the articles if you don't think they are.

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit."
and
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Just to be clear, there is a very strong case that human emissions are significant enough to matter. The article you quote is clueless as to what that case is. Those New Scientist articles are horrible. They are horrible because they are so easily rebutted. If I were a "denier", I would encourage everyone to read them. As Napolean said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

• Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
• We can't do anything about climate change,
• Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Sorry, Couldn't help but reply.

You really need to do some thinking of your own. Without questioning the conclusions of each of the articles in question, if these are the arguments being used to come to the conclusions, someone needs to go back to school. From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

"It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions."

tells me that the author has never seen the Vostock ice core records of CO2 levels.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff. Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

The higher level of CO2 doesn't increase plant growth article has these insightful things to say in proving that CO2 doesn't boost plant growth. Again, these are in context. Read the articles if you don't think they are.

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit."
and
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Just to be clear, there is a very strong case that human emissions are significant enough to matter. The article you quote is clueless as to what that case is. Those New Scientist articles are horrible. They are horrible because they are so easily rebutted. If I were a "denier", I would encourage everyone to read them. As Napolean said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

• Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
• We can't do anything about climate change,
• Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Sorry, Couldn't help but reply.

You really need to do some thinking of your own. Without questioning the conclusions of each of the articles in question, if these are the arguments being used to come to the conclusions, someone needs to go back to school. From the first article regarding the relative size of human impacts, this quote (and it is in context)

"It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions."

tells me that the author has never seen the Vostock ice core records of CO2 levels.

The article about doing something about climate change is the usual destroy the economy stuff. Given that the article does not differentiate between human caused climate change and natural climate change gives one pause.

The higher level of CO2 doesn't increase plant growth article has these insightful things to say in proving that CO2 doesn't boost plant growth. Again, these are in context. Read the articles if you don't think they are.

"Where water is a limiting factor, all plants could benefit."
and
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."

Just to be clear, there is a very strong case that human emissions are significant enough to matter. The article you quote is clueless as to what that case is. Those New Scientist articles are horrible. They are horrible because they are so easily rebutted. If I were a "denier", I would encourage everyone to read them. As Napolean said, never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Water stores an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy to heat a cubic metre of water by 1 degree Celsius as it does the same volume of air. Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere (see figure 5.4 in the IPCC report (PDF)). Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising.

I'm just not convinced that 1) humans are making a measurable effect on the climate

You can believe whatever you want, but at least admit that your approach is completely unscientific. Here's how science works:

• 1. Observe some data.
• 2. Note error between existing accepted model and observed data.
• 3. Propose new model that explains the observed data with lower error.
• 4. New model becomes accepted.
• 5. Goto step 1.

  We have a model (increase of CO2) that explains the observed temperature increase and is accepted by the vast majority of climatologists and scientists in general. If you want to propose a new model that discounts CO2 levels as driving the observed temperature increase, then you have to explain not only where the temperature increase is coming from, but also your model needs to fit the observed data better than the existing one. You also have to explain why the observed increase in CO2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't causing the expected increase in temperature that it should be causing. Waving your hands in the air and saying "I just don't believe it" is not an option.

  As for your other points, they have been refuted many times over:

  • Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
  • We can't do anything about climate change,
  • Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

I'm just not convinced that 1) humans are making a measurable effect on the climate

You can believe whatever you want, but at least admit that your approach is completely unscientific. Here's how science works:

• 1. Observe some data.
• 2. Note error between existing accepted model and observed data.
• 3. Propose new model that explains the observed data with lower error.
• 4. New model becomes accepted.
• 5. Goto step 1.

  We have a model (increase of CO2) that explains the observed temperature increase and is accepted by the vast majority of climatologists and scientists in general. If you want to propose a new model that discounts CO2 levels as driving the observed temperature increase, then you have to explain not only where the temperature increase is coming from, but also your model needs to fit the observed data better than the existing one. You also have to explain why the observed increase in CO2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't causing the expected increase in temperature that it should be causing. Waving your hands in the air and saying "I just don't believe it" is not an option.

  As for your other points, they have been refuted many times over:

  • Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
  • We can't do anything about climate change,
  • Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

I'm just not convinced that 1) humans are making a measurable effect on the climate

You can believe whatever you want, but at least admit that your approach is completely unscientific. Here's how science works:

• 1. Observe some data.
• 2. Note error between existing accepted model and observed data.
• 3. Propose new model that explains the observed data with lower error.
• 4. New model becomes accepted.
• 5. Goto step 1.

  We have a model (increase of CO2) that explains the observed temperature increase and is accepted by the vast majority of climatologists and scientists in general. If you want to propose a new model that discounts CO2 levels as driving the observed temperature increase, then you have to explain not only where the temperature increase is coming from, but also your model needs to fit the observed data better than the existing one. You also have to explain why the observed increase in CO2 - a known greenhouse gas - isn't causing the expected increase in temperature that it should be causing. Waving your hands in the air and saying "I just don't believe it" is not an option.

  As for your other points, they have been refuted many times over:

  • Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter,
  • We can't do anything about climate change,
  • Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

> Given that this is a tech site ...

As a tech site, we would like to hear about evidence from comprehensive computer models.
These are the kinds of articles I tend to believe:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21093-fasterthanlight-neutrino-result-to-get-extra-checks.html

Here is one of my bi-annual posts reminding all about Thomas Gold's theory about the abiological origin of natural gas, oil and/or coal (which we call "fossil" fuels, perhaps erroneously). He published a book about this: The Deep Hot Biosphere

One part of this theory has apparently become commonly accepted: "extremophiles" extend deep throughout the earth's crust. Cosmic hydrocarbons had already been observed in nebula, this new result appears to be another pointer in the same direction.

There's a certain kind of conservative that likes this theory-- see, we're not Running Out of Oil! The peakies are wrong!-- but there's no particular reason this would be good news for environmentalists. There may be enough hydrocarbons in the crust to completely combine with all the earth's oxygen...

This has been the topic of a great deal of discussion. The problem is that in the current economy we live in, the benefit of greater and greater efficiency through human replacement by robots goes to a small handful of people. The rest simply find themselves scrambling harder and harder for the fewer and fewer remaining jobs. Ultimately, everyone becomes unemployed. We are quickly heading towards a two class society, with all but perhaps a few hundred haves (and their families), and 7 billion have nots.

If you think of "Fair Trade" as a game (see game theory), this game is so designed such that the nature of human competition demands there must eventually be a winner, and the effect of technology is to ever accelerate the rate of play. A winner in this case resolves to one person, or a tiny group or family. This is why we have barriers to monopoly (the place where capitalism fundamentally fails to serve the greater population.) Sadly, over the last 30 years, the control rods have been removed from the reactor, the planets wealth and control has been placed in the hands of tiny few financial houses. A team in Zurich using a database of 37 million companies looked at the 43,000 critical transactional corporations on the planet and found that only 147 controlled the entire structure, and that these were primarily banks.

Add to that the accelerating trend to criminalize poverty, and the advent of "for profit" privatized prisons. We have a strategy to turn the vast majority of humanity into a captive resource. Add to that the separation of sexes in prison (controlling population growth), and one might conclude a program designed to sequester and control humanity is now fully under way. Ever since the French Revolution, the rich and powerful have exquisitely been clear where the threat to their control lies. They now have the resource and the means to manipulate large populations. We are left misinformed, confused, angry, and impotent.

I'm not saying this is happening, and these observations may represent naturally emergent phenomenon, that is a global system like ours may naturally tend to resolve into a small controlling class. It demands that we begin to look at what kind of world we actually hope to live in, and press for that. One possible outcome is that people are issued stock at birth (retroactively) on global corporations so as they lose their jobs, the growing robotic economies provide them with a life long pension and high quality of life. That way all people can participate in technological advance fairly and equally. This is only one possible ideam there are many. We simply need to ensure that human life remains a precious and the quality of that life remains sacred.

I have a strong hope desalination will get vastly cheaper when the need manifests. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. There's already a number of small scale concepts that can do it cheaply. I don't think we're too far away from being able to utilise the oceans as potable water, but it's just the little countries that need it right now so why bother? As soon as Vegas (or similar) starts to wilt, I'd expect funding in this area to gain some traction.